A Crazy Kind of Love Read Online Free

second-story office. Outside that window lay the lake, with stands of trees thick enough to convince a man he was all alone on the planet. Unless of course, Lucas thought grimly, that man was listening to the staccato beat of hammers and the incessant whine of saws.
    But to give the construction crews their due, they’d done amazing work in a short amount of time. Just two months ago, he’d had empty acreage, a set of blueprints, and enough money to pay for extra workmen so they could finish the job quickly. Now, he was only a few doors, a balcony, a bathtub, and some finishing touches away from having a completed house.
    “If Mike Marconi stays the hell away.” As soon as the words were muttered, though, he shook his head and pushed all thoughts of the irritating female out of his mind. Damn it, even when she
wasn’t
there, she
was
.
    Memories of her face, her voice, her eyes, danced through his brain with appalling regularity. Didn’t seem to matter how many times he told himself he wasn’t interested—she hovered at the edges of his mind. Just enough to irritate him.
    And intrigue him, damn it.
    His AOL account opened up and Lucas scrolled quickly down the list of letters in his in-box. Taking a sabbatical from the lab apparently didn’t mean keeping out of contact. He’d been officially, if temporarily, unemployed for nearly three months and every day hehad several letters stacked up demanding his attention. Today was no different. There were five letters marked “priority,” a reminder about a fund-raiser, and . . .
    “Shit.”
    Lucas leaned back in his desk chair and stared at the subject line of one particular letter.
    DON ’ T DELETE THIS ONE
    He had to get off AOL. Then the bastard wouldn’t know if Lucas was reading his damn e-mails or not. Since last month, there’d been at least one letter a week from his twin brother. Letters Lucas didn’t read. Letters he deleted without even thinking about it. There was nothing Justin could say that Lucas was interested in hearing.
    God knew an apology would be too damn little and about four years too late. Besides, he didn’t want an apology anyway. Wouldn’t change anything. Wouldn’t take them all back in time to set things right. Wouldn’t mean anything but that Justin wanted forgiveness so he wouldn’t be miserable.
    “Too bad,” Lucas muttered thickly. “I
like
your being miserable.” A quick whip crack of temper spiked through him, then drained away again almost instantly. He wouldn’t go back down that road. Not again. Justin wanted forgiveness? Then he should go see a priest. As for his e-mails . . . “Don’t delete? Why the hell not?”
    Deliberately, he sat forward again, moved the cursor to the box alongside the letter he had no intention of reading and clicked the mouse button. Then he deleted it before he could talk himself out of it. Pushing back from the desk, he left the other letters unanswered and stalked out of the office, as if distancing himself notonly from the computer, but from the tenuous connection between him and his brother.
    But it wasn’t that easy. Images of Justin crowded his mind, forcing him to remember that it hadn’t always been like this between them. Growing up, the two of them had been as close as anyone would expect a set of twins to be—despite their differences. Justin had always been the athletic one. The golden child whose room was stacked with trophies from Little League and Pop Warner football. Lucas’s room, on the other hand, was filled with chemistry sets and books. It hadn’t mattered then. They were still “the Gallagher twins”—the two of them against the world.
    But all that ended a long time ago.
    “What’s so damn important that now, all of a sudden, Justin’s trying to reach out and piss me off?”
    Naturally, the only way he’d get that question answered was to read the damn e-mail—which he wasn’t about to do. Lucas scraped his hair back from his face and headed out into the