“I told you I’d take the kids to school and pick them up,” Lachlan offered.
“I can do the same. We’ll take turns,” Robyn added.
“And I appreciate it. But we can’t go on like that, never knowing until the last minute who can watch them and when. I need a nanny and someone to take care of the house. Regan emailed over a very impressive set of references. So … should I hire her or not?”
I waited with bated breath.
Robyn replied, “Do it. She’ll take good care of them. But like I said … don’t stop looking for someone more permanent.”
After that, I’d hurried quietly upstairs and tried not to let their words repeat over and over in my head.
That morning, Robyn drove us to Ardnoch to meet with the yoga and Pilates instructor, Eredine Willows, who was training in MMA with Robyn too.
“Do I get a tour of the castle and estate at some point?” I asked as Robyn swung her car by what she called “the mews.” Turned out it was just an old-fashioned term for garage.
“Lachlan is pretty stringent about stuff like that. His members pay big bucks for complete privacy.”
“Didn’t he let you roam the estate?”
“I was investigating a crime.” Her tone brokered no further argument, and I shut up. “And he wanted in my pants.” She shot me a smirk.
I chuckled, but it still bugged me to be treated like I was untrustworthy. While I had shown a lack of consideration for my sister these past eighteen months, I’d done nothing in my twenty-five years on the planet to suggest I was the kind of person who couldn’t be trusted to walk around a private estate without pissing off its inhabitants.
As we walked down the gravel driveway, past the impressive castle, I caught no glimpses of a famous person. I caught no glimpse of anyone. Robyn ushered us down a path that led away from the castle. Soon, however, a small loch edged with modern cabins appeared, and I forgot my annoyance.
The cabins were compact and clad in silvered wooden larch. Each had a floor-to-ceiling glass window that looked out over the loch. The flowered shrubbery and small trees that grew around the loch reflected in the water so it was more green than blue.
“This is so pretty.”
Robyn grinned. “Great place for yoga, right?”
Definitely. “So is your new backyard, though.”
My sister chuckled because it was true and then knocked on the door to the first and largest cabin.
“Come in!” a feminine, American-accented voice called.
We stepped into a large, rectangular room with mirrors along the wall opposite the door. The wall to our left was made entirely of glass, revealing a spectacular and tranquil view over the loch. Mats and other equipment were stored on the back wall to our right on floor-to-ceiling shelving.
Standing in the middle of the room, hands on hips and a small smile on her face, was Eredine Willows.
Even though Robyn and I were fairly tall, Eredine was taller. I guessed at least five ten. She was stunning with dark brown curls I watched her pile into a large topknot. With smooth, golden-brown skin and hazel eyes so light they almost looked green, I guessed her to be around my age, but I wasn’t sure.
Robyn had given me a quick catch-up in the car. She knew little about Eredine’s past, but she knew that the young woman was good friends with Lucy Wainwright and had taken her betrayal hard. I was strictly not to mention the Oscar-winning actor who was currently in jail, awaiting trial for almost killing my sister.
The thought made me flinch as Robyn and Eredine chatted while setting up the wrestling mat. When Mom and Dad told me about Robyn and Lucy—when I saw the news splashed across tabloids—I’d felt distant from it as much as the thought of it horrified me. Now, being here, seeing my sister alive but how affected she and her friends were by Lucy’s homicidal behavior, a simmering rage burned in my gut.
They better put that woman away for life, or I might be tempted to kill her myself.
“So, Regan, what is it you do?” Eredine asked with a friendly smile as she straightened from helping Robyn.
“She’s a vagabond,” Robyn answered with a slight bite to her tone.
I glowered at my sister before smoothing my expression into bland politeness. “I’m a nanny, though without a position at the moment.”
“So that’s your profession now?” Robyn raised an eyebrow.
Trying not to let her goad me, I shrugged. “Well, it’s the job I’ve been employed in the most.”
She snorted, giving me a dirty look.
“It is,” I insisted. “Why are you being such a bitch?”
Eredine sucked in a breath.
Robyn narrowed her eyes. “In front of Eredine, really?”
“You started it with the tone.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re being passive-aggressive, and it’s not like you.”
“I guess we’re both acting unlike ourselves, then.”
“Is this how it’s going to be the entire time I’m here?” I huffed, crossing my arms as I noted Eredine sneak toward the exit. I didn’t blame her. We’d just invaded her space and immediately started arguing. I couldn’t even be embarrassed about it, I was so mad.
And I wasn’t the only one.
Robyn’s face turned red. My sister was a slow burn. She rarely lost her shit, but when she did, it was explosive.
She detonated. “You left me six weeks after I got shot, and I barely heard from you again in over a year!”
I flinched at her shriek. It was filled with so much pain and anger, emotions she’d clearly buried deep because I had never seen my sister look so unraveled. Not even after she got shot.
And I’d done that to her.
A sob burst up from my gut, and I covered my mouth as it tried to escape.
The door closed softly behind Eredine.
“Don’t.” Robyn pointed a finger at me, tears blurring her vision. “Don’t you cry when you’re the one who wronged me.”
I nodded, covering my face with my hands as I sobbed in a choked voice. “I know.”
Yet as much as I tried, I couldn’t hold back eighteen months’ worth of tears. Instead, I stumbled back, hitting the wall as my legs gave out and I slid to the floor. “I’m sorry,” I managed before I hid my face in my knees and cried. Robyn wasn’t the only one who’d bottled everything up. Easy-breezy Regan had fled the building.
Hyperaware of my sister’s movements, she slid down the wall, her shoulder touching mine as she settled beside me.
“Talk to me,” she whispered hoarsely. “I was always the one you talked to. I don’t understand what changed.”
Hearing her voice break forced me to pull myself together. I lifted my head out of my knees and swiped at my face, seeing the black mascara streaks across my fingers and not giving a shit. Meeting Robyn’s teary gaze, I repeated, “I’m so sorry.”
“I appreciate the apology.” She tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear, a gesture that was so heartbreakingly familiar, I struggled to hold back more tears. It had been so long since Robyn had been willingly affectionate with me. And it was all my fault. “But I want to know why. It’s never made sense to me, Ree. One minute we were as close as two sisters could be, and the next you were halfway around the world avoiding my calls. For eighteen months.”
I took a shuddering breath. “Have you ever done something? Something you regretted, but fear kept you stuck in the same cycle of repetition that you just didn’t know how to break?”
Robyn narrowed her eyes as she contemplated me.
I gave her a sad smirk. “No. You’d never let that happen. You’re not a coward, like me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth.” I shrugged angrily and looked out the window, not wanting to see her expression as I finally explained myself. “You know when we were kids, I never thought it was weird that when I got hurt or upset, you were the person I wanted, not Mom or Dad. I wanted to spend all my time with you.
As we got older, I realized other kids needed their parents more than their siblings. Not me.” I shook my head, smirking through watery tears. “I was the weirdo who depended on my big sister like everyone else depended on their mom and dad.”
I heard Robyn’s breathing change and turned to see the tears brighten her eyes.
That set me off again, so I looked away. “You know I love Mom and Dad. I’m not saying I don’t … but I needed you in a way I didn’t need them. Adored you. You were as much my hero as Dad was. Maybe more. Everything was always bright and shiny in my world as long as I had you.” Remembering the phone call from my dad, the one where he told me Robyn was in critical condition after being shot three times in the chest, I shuddered. I’d never experienced terror like it. Even after what I’d been through since, nothing had come close to the fear that paralyzed me when I thought Robyn might die.
“When you got shot … I … I saw you hooked up to those machines, tubes coming out of you, breathing for you, and the doctors said you’d died on the table and you might not wake up …” I met her anguished gaze. “Something switched off inside me. Like my mind couldn’t cope with the fear or something … I don’t know.” Shame swamped me. “I realized, I guess, that so much of my happiness depended on your existence. It freaked me out. I … I don’t know how to explain it. It just sounds pathetic and cowardly.”
“It’s not.” Robyn tugged my hand into hers and clasped it, her expression pleading. “Keep talking to me.”
“I needed to know I could survive alone,” I admitted hollowly. “That my happiness wasn’t dependent on you or other people. Even when you woke up and it was clear you were going to be fine, the fear didn’t go away. I thought for sure you would go back to the job, and I’d have this constant terror of something else happening to you hovering over me. So … I ran.”
“You went on the backpacking trip we’d planned together.”
I winced at her wounded tone. “Yes. Not to hurt you intentionally. It’s just that I met a bunch of people through this online group, and they were leaving so I decided to … run away. I had the inheritance from Dad’s mom.” I referred to the $5000 my grandmother had put in a bank account for me when I was born. I’d always planned to use it on my backpacking trip with Robyn. “It was enough to …” Self-recrimination oozed from every part of me. “Run away. Something you would never do.”
She frowned but nodded for me to continue.
“I realized within weeks of leaving how selfish I was being, and I hated myself for leaving you, for thinking only of myself. I can never take that back, but I want you to know that I am fully aware of how selfish that was.”
Robyn squeezed my hand in answer.
“I didn’t know how to return to you,” I practically pleaded with her now. “I was paralyzed by my bad choices, wondering how you’d ever forgive me … and the time just kept stretching on and it got harder and harder to come back. I was so goddamn scared that I’d damaged us irrevocably.”
The truth, the whole truth, hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t quite admit just how badly I’d screwed up. “While on the trip, one of the guys … we slept together, and he got really clingy and obsessive. He’s one reason I didn’t come back because I was trying to put some distance between him and me. Eventually, I returned to Boston once I could face you, but you’d left for Scotland. And I was not in a good place. I started seeing Maddox, a guy who was not good for me—but I ended it,” I assured her. “And I was finally getting up the courage to face what I’d done to us. I’d booked a flight to Scotland.”
Her eyes widened. “When?”
“Before Lucy. The day before my flight, Mom called to tell me what happened. And I’m ashamed to admit, I spiraled again.” Suddenly, I did something I thought I’d never do; I turned to sit on my knees in front of my big sister and took both her hands in mine. “Please forgive me for being a quitter, a coward, selfish, inconsiderate, and unkind to you.” I pulled her closer. “I know it might not mean anything to you, but everything you’ve ever thought of me, I’ve thought a million things worse. I’ve hated who I’ve been this past year and a half, but I’m here to prove that’s not who I really am. I can be better. I am better. I know I am. Tell me you can forgive me. I’m not asking for it right away, but tell me you can at least try … because if you can’t, I can’t be here, Robyn. I don’t want to hate myself anymore. If I stay here with you hating me, I’m afraid I’ll never stop hating myself too.”
My sister pulled her hands from mine, but to my utter relief, it was only to enfold them in hers and squeeze them so hard it almost hurt. Her expression was fierce, her changeable eyes flashing an intense green. “You are my sister. I can be mad at you. I can have times when I don’t understand you. But I could never hate you. I love you. And I forgive you.”
A sob of pure gratitude broke free. Robyn hauled me into her arms. Burrowing into her, I rested my head on her shoulder, my arm tight around her waist, and cried.
She hushed me, rubbing a soothing hand up and down my arm. I felt like a little girl again. “You were right,” she said. “The other day when you mentioned how I was perpetuating the narrative Mom and Seth created for us—mostly Mom—you were right. I’ve thought a lot about it over the past weekend, with input from Lachlan, who is never without an opinion.” Her tone was dry. “And he helped me see that until the shooting, I’d unfairly labeled you because of Mom. He helped me realize that the things you got up to as a teenager were no more or no less than what most teens get up to. Our parents constantly compared you to me, and that’s not fair because I am, and have always been, boring and responsible.”
“You could never be boring.” I pulled out of her embrace. “But you’re right. Mom and Dad made it out as if I was some wild child. What did I ever do that other kids didn’t? The only real thing I ever did wrong was not knowing what I wanted to do with my life and abandoning you when you needed me.” I winced. “Sounds pretty bad when you say it out loud.”
Robyn huffed a small laugh.
“Sorry.”
She shook her head, her smile wavering. “Something you mentioned—this guy, this obsessive one. Did he hurt you? Is that why you want to learn self-defense?”
Attempting not to stiffen at the mention of Austin, I lowered my eyes. “He scared me, he didn’t physically hurt me. But yeah, he’s the inspiration for the training.”
“Is he still a problem?”
There was a chance he wanted to be, but I was in Scotland now, and there was no way he could get to me here. For a start, he didn’t know where I’d gone. “No,” I said, more out of wishful thinking than wanting to lie to her. So, okay, I didn’t want my big sister thinking I couldn’t handle myself or that I was a big screwup too.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded. “The training is just so I know how to defend myself. I should have learned long ago.”
“Physical activity isn’t really your thing.”
I wiggled my eyebrows. “Depends on the activity.”
“Stop!” She laughed, pushing me away.
And just like that, we felt like Robbie and Ree again.
“I love you,” I said.
Her expression softened. “I love you, too, kid.”
Just like that, a weight lifted from my chest.
“So you were keeping it from me deliberately?” I whispered in pretend aggravation and not-so-pretend awe as Robyn led me into the foyer of Ardnoch Castle. I wasn’t sure you could call it a mere foyer.
“No, not deliberately.” Robyn made a face. “I just had to make sure I had my Regan back. I wasn’t kidding. It’s important to Lachlan that as few nonmembers have access to the estate as possible.”
When she’d said she’d give me the tour I’d been hankering after, I quickly fixed my makeup in case we met anyone famous. There was no hiding my bloodshot eyes, but I was too happy Robyn had forgiven me to fuss about it.
I nodded, my attention dancing from one thing to the next.
“Holy cow.”
“Right?” I could hear my sister’s smile in that one word.
The huge entrance had polished parquet flooring that made the space seem like it went on forever. The décor was very Scottish and traditional, but amped up a million knots on the luxury meter. A grand staircase descended before us, fitted with a red-and-gray tartan wool runner. It led to a landing where three floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows spilled a kaleidoscope of light down it. Then the staircase branched off at either side, twin staircases ascending to the floor above, which I could partially see from the galleried balconies at either end of the reception hall. There was a huge hearth on the wall adjacent to the entrance and opposite the staircase, but no fire burned within. I’d love to see it all lit up during the winter months.
Opposite the fire sat two matching suede-and-fabric buttoned sofas with a coffee table in between. More light spilled into the hall from large openings that led to other rooms on this floor. There was a chatter of voices beyond them, and I eyed the doorways in curiosity.
“Members’ lounge rooms,” Robyn offered. “We’ll avoid those because it’s brunch and they’ll be busy.”
Damn. I was not above wanting to see a celebrity!
As usual, my sister read me and laughed. “You’ll spot someone famous at some point. And doesn’t Lachlan count, anyway?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “But it’s amazing how quickly he just became the guy who’s marrying my sister. And calls her ‘Braveheart.’ Aww, don’t think I didn’t notice that. It’s adorable.”
“Shut up.” She mock scowled and gestured for me to follow her. She led me down a doorway next to the arches, through a wide, exquisitely decorated corridor. “The first room I’m showing you is the room I know you’ll love the most.”
We stopped at a large, solid wooden door that was propped open. Robyn peeked her head in and turned to me with a relaxed smile. “It’s empty.”
Since I was already looking beyond her and could see into the room, I almost bulldozed her to get inside. I grinned at the sound of my sister’s laughter.
Wall-to-wall, dark oak bookshelves, a large, open fireplace, comfortable armchairs, footstools, and sofas made up the library.
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