Midsummer Man

by Zelah Roberts

  She couldn’t. Pasting on a polite smile, she said, “It’s a good cause. It helps a lot of people, young and old. I don’t believe, in this day and age, that there should be anyone forced to be without a roof over their head.”

  James nodded, though Holly did not like the thoughtful, perceptive gleam in his eyes. It felt as if he could see right through her to the secrets she held inside. But then he smiled, and he was once again mild-mannered James.

  As Leonie went on to ask Holly about how she came up with ideas for her books, Mac tuned out. His mind was too full of their previous conversation for him to attend fully to what was being discussed.

  Had Holly been right? Did he have an—how had she put it?—‘overdeveloped sense of responsibility’?

  As the conversation flowed, he thought about what she’d said. His initial, wounded, defensive knee-jerk reaction was to disregard her words, to dismiss them as the opinion of someone who didn’t understand.

  But the trouble was, he had a sinking feeling she understood all too well how he felt. She was an unnervingly perceptive woman, and she’d recognised in him that compulsion to protect and shield those he loved. She probably saw where that compulsion had originated—in the loss of his parents. When they’d died, things had quickly spiralled out of control and he’d been fighting on all fronts to stop the ship from capsizing, struggling to keep the business afloat, even as he’d tried to cope with Emily’s betrayal and his and Leonie’s grief.

  Had that struggle been so difficult, so traumatic, that he now couldn’t relax and let people step up to take their own responsibilities in life?

  Was this what Holly had been trying to tell him by the riverbank in London? That it was Leonie’s choice to live or die and that he really was not responsible for it? That his responsibility was to love, support and protect her as best he could, but beyond that, her decisions were her own?

  Naturally, having raised Leonie as a teenager, he felt responsible for her. He guessed most parents felt like that about their children. But his parents had gradually loosened the strings of parental guidance as he’d got older. By the time he’d reached nineteen, he’d been standing on his own two feet, and they had positioned themselves as sources of advice—but only if he asked them for it. They’d given him his independence and autonomy as an adult to make his own calls, his own mistakes and he’d learned from them to become a capable, confident man.

  But he could see he hadn’t done that with Leonie. Oh, he’d let her make her own decisions—to a point—but then he’d taken over. When she’d said she wanted to study in London he’d agreed, but then he’d set about finding suitable accommodation that was safe and pleasant for her, rather than letting her sort things out for herself.

  And he’d instructed her as well about precautions against kidnapping—even before the abduction had happened, he had been theoretically aware of the risks—warning her never to drive with the roof of her convertible down in the city, to stay alert, not to walk around on the street with earphones in…

  He’d instructed her, rather than giving her the information so she could make informed decisions for herself. And what had happened? She’d behaved just as a teenager would when issued with edicts from a parent. She’d instantly gone against them. She’d been taken from her car whilst turning in to a side street when coming home from a day at the beach. She’d had the roof down, the music on and she hadn’t noticed what was happening until it was too late to do anything about it.

  Not that he thought she could have done much. He didn’t blame her for what had happened. It would have taken more than simple precautions to prevent that particular gang of kidnappers from taking their target. As it turned out, the gang had been led by a practitioner—a professional kidnapper. Even if Leonie had followed his instructions to the letter, it wouldn’t have made much difference. They would have found a way to get her, no doubt about it.

  But he could see now how his attitude had contributed to their difficulties. No wonder Holly had torn a strip off him. He’d tried to use the same approach on her, and she had recognised it as the patronising and inappropriate attitude of an overprotective parent to their offspring. ‘You’ll tell me,’ he’d said arrogantly, and she’d been right. It did show a lack of respect, a lack of awareness that people had their own autonomy and were capable of making their own independent decisions. Shame washed through him at his behaviour. He had behaved like an autocrat. Suddenly, he didn’t like himself very much.

  He took a deep swallow of his wine as he thought about what to do with his newfound insight. First, he thought, he needed to say he was sorry again to Holly. It was apparent from the expression in her eyes when he’d apologised that she hadn’t believed it was genuine. He needed to make sure that she knew he had listened and taken her words on board. And as for Leonie? Well, going forward, he would make sure his attitude was different. He would give her freedom to make her own choices. And hopefully, she would see from that that things had changed.

  He tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear Leonie say wistfully, “Oh, you’re so lucky to have an imagination like that. I’d love to be able to write a book.”

  Holly smiled gently at his younger sister and he realised with a jolt that she must have engineered the conversation to get to this point.

  “Really?” Holly said. “It’s a lot of hard work. Do you like writing yourself?”

  “Oh yes, I love it. I… I’m not very good, though.”

  Holly nodded. “I remember feeling like that. I still do. It’s hard to feel satisfied with what you write. It never comes out on paper exactly as you imagined it in your head.”

  “That’s it exactly!” Leonie exclaimed. “It’s so frustrating!”

  Holly shrugged. “You just have to keep going. You get better as you go along. Actually, Mac was kind enough to say I could stay here for a couple of weeks—both to meet you and to do some writing. My kitchen is—ah—currently being remodelled, and he thought the island might be a good place to work.”

  Leonie’s mouth dropped open. “You’re going to write some of the next Wayfarer novel here? Oh, that’s amazing!”

  Holly grinned. “I’d appreciate your help. I need to work out who you are in the story. I’d quite like to write some aspects of your personality into the character as well as your name, if you’re up for it.”

  “Really?” Leonie looked utterly astounded.

  Mac was, too. He’d had no idea she was going to suggest such a thing. It certainly hadn’t been on offer at the auction. But he could see what Holly was doing. If Leonie wanted to be portrayed in the book, she was going to have to stay alive to help her create the character. It was a clever, clever plan.

  A sudden tide of gratitude and warmth swept over him as he looked at her, gorgeous in the flickering candlelight. He didn’t doubt that by making such a generous offer, she was increasing her own workload exponentially. He dreaded to think how difficult it would be to create a character based upon a real person, especially if they were supposed to act as the real person would in those circumstances. It would be a huge challenge.

  Holly shrugged. “Sure. And if you’ve got anything you’ve written yourself, I’d be very happy to take a look at it for you, as well.”

  “Oh! Well, if you’re sure…”

  It was beautifully done. The way she’d casually dropped the offer of supporting Leonie with her writing appeared entirely unpremeditated. If he hadn’t discussed it with her beforehand, he would never have known that Holly was playing out a deliberate strategy. And that gave him pause, because it showed that she was capable of putting on a convincing front that completely masked her true feelings or intentions.

  He absently speared a carrot. She was all smoke and mirrors, this woman, a guarded person who gave little of herself away. But why? Was it because of the thing she didn’t want to talk about?

  He dreaded to think what that was. The look he’d seen on her face wasn’t one he ever wanted to see there again.
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  Glancing up, his eyes met hers, and he received an unpleasant jolt. Her expression was opaque, impenetrable, unreadable. With a sinking feeling, he realised that she’d cut him off, shut him out. He’d pushed her too far in their earlier conversation, and now her barriers were well and truly up.

  He should let them stay there, he thought savagely. It would make it easier for them to keep their distance. But damn, he didn’t want to. He didn’t bloody like this coldness between them, and he sure as hell didn’t like that they were so at odds. For better or worse, he needed to talk to her and put things right.

  But it didn’t turn out to be as easy as that.

  Following the meal, Holly excused herself, pleading the need for an early night. And the next morning when he arrived at breakfast, she was deep in conversation with Leonie.

  * * * *

  Two weeks later, she was still finding excuses to avoid him, and he still hadn’t had a chance to talk to her. It was obvious that she was lying low and it was driving him nuts.

  They’d had a very brief conversation when Jenna had contacted them to say that they were still no further forward on finding whoever had mailed the rat.

  Following the call, Mac tried to talk to Holly about how she was feeling, but she’d just given him a brief shrug before excusing herself to go to the bathroom.

  She hadn’t returned afterwards.

  Since then, the household had fallen into a routine, dividing their time between work and trips out. Holly and Leonie were writing in earnest. Holly seemed to be on a roll, and Leonie had started a story of her own. They were spending hours closeted together in the study, which didn’t make getting near Holly any easier.

  They’d also had some gorgeous days out. They’d sailed around the Bishop Rock lighthouse and watched the seals and puffins bask in the sunshine. They’d visited the Tresco Abbey Gardens and the Valhalla Figureheads Museum. They’d wandered around Hugh Town and had cream teas in Star Castle. Mac loved watching Holly, who was easily pleased and seemed to take a childlike delight in everything.

  “Haven’t you ever seen a seal before?” he asked Holly as she took what must have been her thousandth photo of the friendly creatures playing in the water around the boat they were in.

  But she just smiled and shook her head before being distracted by a seal pup who had come to investigate the boat. And that was darned near as much as she’d spoken to him. At every turn, she’d evaded him, sticking close to Leonie and James, although he occasionally caught a fleeting glimpse of her looking at him. Sometimes he thought he saw the same longing in her expression that he felt in his own heart, but it was always quickly veiled. She persisted in treating him with an impersonal, distant, friendly politeness that made him want to throw things.

  Granted, it didn’t help that he was so attracted to her that he couldn’t think straight. Every time she walked downstairs in a pair of shorts or a little vest top, he had to stop himself from groaning out loud. He seemed to be in a permanent state of discomfort and the constant hollow ache and vivid, feverish dreams that fragmented his sleep damn near had him on his knees.

  Things came to a head one afternoon. When Leonie had been kidnapped, his working life had come to an abrupt halt. He hadn’t been able or willing to focus on anything other than getting her back. Everything had been swept to one side. Work had come at the bottom of a very long list of priorities.

  But now she was back, and contract deadlines were looming—with penalties attached if he didn’t get things finished. A whole mountain of conflicting demands was piling on the pressure, and he couldn’t think worth a damn. Every time he sat down and tried to focus, his thoughts went to Holly.

  She was haunting him. The discord between them was making him edgy and irritable. He couldn’t concentrate on what he was doing and he didn’t know what the hell was the matter with him. He’d never been like this before. But he was quickly discovering that being at odds with Holly was having a serious detrimental effect on his output.

  Throwing down his pen, he decided he was going to find her and sort things out once and for all. He couldn’t stand all this pussyfooting around. It wasn’t the kind of man he was. He tackled problems head on. He didn’t ignore them while they built up from molehills to mountains.

  He found her, predictably, in the study, where she was working with Leonie. As he approached the room, he could hear them discussing Drake. Mac had been shocked to discover, over dinner one night, that Holly intended to have Drake kidnapped in this book—with Leonie’s blessing, as it turned out.

  It was, as James had said to him later the previous night over a post-prandial brandy, a smart move on Holly’s part to include a kidnapping in the plot, as it gave Leonie an indirect way to talk about her experiences. Indeed, the two women had discussed in detail how Drake might react to the shock of being taken, how he might feel whilst being held and the coping strategies he might employ to stay sane and alert under such immense pressure. Now, they were moving on to how he might react once he’d been rescued.

  About to knock at the door, he hesitated as he heard Leonie’s thoughtful voice say, “I think… I think Drake will back off from Isabella after he’s been rescued by her.”

  He frowned. Why would Drake do that? Holly’s reply sounded equally uncertain. “Why? Do you think he’ll feel diminished by being rescued by a woman? Because—”

  “No, not that.” Leonie paused. “Actually, I’ve always thought that Isabella and Drake’s relationship is pretty equal. They’re both fiery characters. I can’t see Drake being that misogynistic—”

  “No. I don’t think he would be. So—why might he back off?”

  There was a long pause, then Leonie’s muffled voice replied, “Because…he’ll be ashamed.”

  Holly’s voice was cautious as she asked, “Because he’s supposed to be powerful, but…he’s been a victim of kidnap?”

  “No…because it was his fault!” Leonie’s sharp words exploded out of her with all the force of a bullet from a gun.

  “What?”

  “It was his fault! He’ll blame himself. Don’t you see that? He goes to a market where he knows it’s dangerous to be alone. He’s been warned already. He doesn’t take a guide or anyone to back him up and he’s taken because he was blindly, criminally, stupidly foolish!”

  Silence. Mac felt as if he’d been thrown into an icy lake. Chilled, he heard the pain in Leonie’s words and understood at last part of what was stopping his sister from recovering from her ordeal. She blamed herself.

  She blamed herself for being kidnapped. And he had never thought to tell her that it wasn’t her fault.

  If anyone was blindly, criminally, stupidly foolish, it was him.

  Holly’s next words came as a shock. “Leonie…are you the kind of person who believes that if a woman wears a revealing dress, she deserves to be raped?”

  “I— What? No. Of course not! Holly, what the hell?”

  Mac was with her on that. What the bloody hell?

  He heard Holly’s voice now, hard and inflexible. “Well, that’s what you’re insinuating, isn’t it? A woman uses her freedom to go where she wants—to do what she wants, to dress how she wants—and she deserves to be trapped, kidnapped, raped?”

  “I— No!”

  Holly’s chair scraped back and Mac heard her heels on the polished oak floor as she walked towards the window to look out at the sea. Her voice was low as she said, “Yes. You’re saying Drake deserved to be kidnapped? That he deserved to have his freedom taken away? That he deserved to be held, abused, punished…because he walked through a market?”

  “I… Well, I…”

  There was a measure of anguish that Mac didn’t understand in Holly’s voice as she said “People act according to their character, their needs, their personalities. Drake was feeling trapped, hemmed in by people, desperate for some space because of who he is…a loner. He likes company sometimes, but at others he craves solitude. He took the risk and went because he had no choic
e, because he needed room to breathe, because he was compelled.”

  “Okay…”

  He heard a glass clink and the sound of liquid being poured. “Want one?” Holly asked.

  “Yes. Brandy.”

  Another glass was poured, then Holly said evenly, “So what about you, Leonie? People act according to their character. You blame Drake for being kidnapped. What about you? Do you blame yourself? What happened when you were taken, Leonie?”

  He heard Leonie’s indrawn breath in time with his own. It was a sucker-punch of a question.

  “I—” Leonie’s voice was choked. He heard her hesitate, then say, “I was in a car, a soft top with the roof down, music blaring. I’d been to Brighton for the day. I drove back into London…towards the city centre and home. I turned into the mews where I live. There was a car blocking it…and another behind…and there were men with balaclavas. It was so quick. I didn’t even realise until the ones behind me were out of the car. They just grabbed me, dragged me out…”

  The tears Mac could hear in her voice just killed him. He slumped against the wall. She had never talked to him like this.

  But Holly was implacable as she asked, “Why, Leonie? You’d been told not to drive around with the roof down, hadn’t you? Not to have your music on so loud that you couldn’t hear?”

  Mac straightened. He’d never told Holly that. She must have heard it herself, the standard advice on how to avoid being kidnapped, and guessed that he would have told Leonie.

  With a jolt he realised that as a rich, successful woman herself, Holly was every bit as much at risk of kidnapping as any of his family. Had she, like him, accepted that as an unfortunate side effect of a successful high-profile career and taken precautions as a matter of course? Perhaps she was as acutely aware of the risks as he was.

  “I-I…” He heard Leonie stammer.

  “Why, Leonie? Why did you do it? You knew you shouldn’t, so why did you?”