by Serena Grey
She exhales sharply. “Why would I feel secure about the fact that you saw your former long-term girlfriend without letting me know, even though you’re aware that I have an issue with your continued relationship with her?” The words tumble out of her in rapid succession. “Maybe you need her to convince her family to sell you a few more properties, or maybe she needs some comforting seeing as her asshole brother is going off the rails. And you’re so considerate of her feelings, aren’t you, even when your safety is at stake.”
I take a deep breath. “Don’t be like this.”
“Why did you meet her?”
“Evans left the rehab facility, and I haven’t been able to find out where he is. I thought she might know.”
Her silence goes on for a few seconds. “When?”
“More than a week ago.”
“More than…” She makes a frustrated sound. “You didn’t tell me! I was right there with you and you didn’t tell me? You let me travel…” Her voice constricts with pain. “You keep treating me like I’m some piece of candy on your arm. I ask you to see someone about your nightmares—you don’t. You have a problem and you ignore my input, and the problem escalates but you choose not to share it with me.”
She’s right. Everything she’s saying is right, and I should have seen it before now.
“I want to trust that I’m your partner,” she continues. “Not just a replacement for Ava, the woman who somehow keeps popping up in your life, in our lives.”
She’s not a replacement for Ava. How many times do I have to tell her Ava means nothing to me and she never meant anything compared to what I feel now?
“Stop it,” I reply. “You’re making this much more than it is.”
“Am I? Why did you have to meet with her? Why couldn’t she tell you on the phone if she knew where he was? Did she ask to set a date, tell you she’d rather talk in person? I’m sure she did, and of course you couldn’t say no because…Ava.”
How can she be so wrong and so convinced she’s right? “You’re obviously not prepared to listen to me. I have a lot to deal with over here. If you want to be supportive instead of creating a scenario in your head and refusing to entertain anything else, understand that I have a lot on my mind.”
“So, I’m being unreasonable,” she mutters. “You know what? I don’t feel like talking anymore. I want to go to bed.”
“Rachel—”
She ends the connection before I can say anything else.
I arrive in Barbados late at night the next day. Rachel is still not taking my calls, so I leave her be, trying instead to get some sleep before the wedding the next day.
It’s a beautiful ceremony right on the beach. Laurie is glowing with happiness, and Brett looks like he can’t believe his luck. The sight of Rachel in her bridesmaid dress makes my heart expand, and I know right then that one day, it’ll be me and her, planning to spend forever together.
If only she’ll trust me.
I don’t get a chance to talk to her until after all the pictures have been taken. When I walk up to her, she glances up at me, a shadow passing over her eyes. Her hair is braided with flowers, and the salty breeze ruffles them gently. She looks like a sea nymph, beautiful and sad at the same time.
“Hey,” I say softly.
“Hey to you too.”
“You look lovely.”
She sighs. “So do you.”
“But I don’t have flowers in my hair.”
Reaching into hers, she pulls out a flower and sticks it in my hair. I don’t resist, though I’m sure it makes me look ridiculous.
Our eyes lock and I can’t go one more moment without addressing our fight. “I’m sorry—”
“No,” she interrupts. “I’m sorry. I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”
I swallow. “We shouldn’t do this here.” The party is lively, and children are playing and chasing each other between the tables. “It was a beautiful ceremony.”
“Yes, it was.” She smiles. “When did you arrive?”
“Last night, much too late to do anything after the manager told me you weren’t in your room. I had breakfast with the men in your family this morning.”
“I’m glad you came.”
That she would even doubt that I would come… I touch her cheek. “I wouldn’t dream of missing something so important to you.”
Through the rest of the ceremony, I stay by her side, meeting the members of her extended family and enjoying the happiness that permeates the air. We linger at the beach long after Brett and Laurie leave for the first stage of their honeymoon. Then we all head back to our hotel.
“I have sand everywhere,” Rachel complains in her room.
“Yes, I probably need a shower too.” I start to remove my shirt then remember all my clothes are in my suite a floor above. “My clothes are in my suite.”
Her eyebrows go up and she gives me a naughty smile. “Do you think you’ll need them?”
The teasing invitation is all I need. “Come on,” I pull her into the bathroom. We’re both laughing as we shed the clothes from the beach. In the shower, I finally get to kiss her as I’ve been longing to do all day.
“About Thursday night…” I explain when we return to the bedroom. We’re sitting in bed wearing hotel robes.
Her smile disappears as she waits for me to continue.
“I love you,” I say simply. At the core of everything, that is what matters the most. “I need you to know that. I need you to know I’ll never do anything consciously, deliberately to hurt you. There is nothing as important to me as you are.”
Her eyes fill, and I want to stop and kiss the tears away before they fall, but I have so much more to say.
“I should have told you I was going to see Ava, and I should have told you why. I was hoping I’d be able to resolve the whole situation with Evans before coming here and you’d never need to know he was missing.” Now, I realize how stupid that was. “Of course, that was wrong as well.”
“At least I know now,” she says, reaching for my hand. Her voice is tender. “You still haven’t found him?”
I shake my head, frustrated. “I have no idea what he’s doing or planning, and Ava refuses to get the police involved. With his drug use, he’s irrational and unpredictable, and it’s been such a relief that you were here while I was trying to find him, because at least I know you’re safe.”
“What about you?” Her eyes close and she shudders. “There’s a madman on the loose who blames you for his life choices, and I’ve been partying over here with no knowledge of that. It makes me feel useless.”
“I understand that now, and I’m sorry I didn’t think of it that way before. I didn’t want to ruin the experience of your cousin’s wedding for you.”
“I’m not a child you protect from everything, Landon.”
“I know.”
“So, Ava didn’t know where he was?”
I tell her what Ava told me.
Rachel searches my face. “Do you believe her?”
“Maybe, but I don’t believe him.”
She’s deep in thought, and after a few seconds, she shudders. I know she’s thinking about Evans and what he could do.
I need to find him.
I sigh. “You understand why I had to meet with her.”
She nods. “I do.”
“We have something special, Rachel. I want to know you won’t ever let anything like suspicion make you think of throwing it away.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll never walk away from you.”
The words soothe the deepest parts of me. I pull her onto my lap. “I’ve missed you. It took a lot of control for me not to steal you away from Laurie’s wedding and find some corner to fuck you senseless.”
“Jeez!” Her laughter tells me we’re done talking about the Sinclairs. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t. Although…” She gives me a meaningful look. “You can feel free to do so now.”
“I intend to.” I’m already undoing
her robe, and I push it off her shoulders, almost sighing at the sight of her breasts. As I watch, her nipples harden. It’s beautiful to see. “I love how responsive you are to me,” I tell her, parting her legs. “Your body was made for my touch.”
Her smile is heavenly. “Yours was made to drive me crazy.”
I slide one hand between her legs, palming her, and feeling just how wet she already is.
“God, I need to fuck you.”
Her eyes close and she lets out a soft sigh. “Feel free.”
I cover her lips with mine, and for the rest of the night, I remind her, with my body, just how much she means to me.
Chapter 34
On the flight back to New York, I try to decode the reason behind Rachel’s silence and pensiveness. Is she missing her family already, still worried about Sinclair?
“Are you fretting about something again?” I ask her gently.
She smiles quickly. “No. No, I’m just thinking about work.”
It’s not work. I can tell. I hold out my hand to her. “No matter what you’re thinking about us, you can tell me, and we’ll talk about it.”
Her response is a smile. She takes my hand, squeezing it gently. She keeps holding it until she dozes off, but even as she sleeps, there’s a small frown on her brow.
When we land, it’s still daylight. Rachel keeps her gaze out the window, and I busy myself reading reports on my tablet. I don’t notice the crowd in front of the entrance to the Swanson Court until we’re almost on top of them.
They surround the car, shouting questions we can’t hear from inside the car.
Joe gets the car to the entrance, and the reporters surge.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to go into the parking lot?” Joe suggests.
“No.” I run through various scenarios in my head and come up with nothing that could have caused this. If there was any accident involving my properties or, God forbid, Aidan, I’d know about it long before the press. “Whatever it is, it’s better if we don’t look as if we’re running away from it.”
The reporters keep swarming around the car, taking pictures. “Wait here,” I tell Rachel, squeezing her hand. She nods.
I open the door and noise explodes in my ears. Along with Joe, I go over to Rachel’s door, waiting as a few of Jed’s guys join us and make a path so she can get inside without being mobbed.
They keep screaming my name, and Ava’s.
Something has happened to Ava.
I focus on getting Rachel inside the building. After that, I’ll find out what the hell is going on.
Jed is waiting in the lobby.
“What happened?” I can’t keep the anger out of my voice. The presence of all that commotion outside the doors is very far from what we promise our guests.
“We are working to get rid of them.”
“That is not what I asked.” I need to know what the disturbance is all about.
Jed looks from me to Rachel then back.
“Ava Sinclair was stabbed this morning in her suite at the Gold Dust in San Francisco.”
I freeze.
“She’s currently in intensive care,” Jed continues, “and we know the attacker was her brother. She was expecting him. The tapes show she let him into her suite…” I can’t hear the rest of what he says. My head is pounding.
I didn’t find him, and he attacked her, in my hotel.
He could have killed her, and it would be my fault.
“How is she?” Rachel asks, her voice full of concern.
Something happens in my chest. If he could get into the Gold Dust, how many more people in my life can he reach, and hurt…
“She’s in intensive care,” Jed is saying, “but from the reports I’m getting, they’re sure she’ll be fine.”
“And Evans?”
“They don’t know where he is.”
“You’ll shut this down?” She gestures to the entrance, and I realize we’re still in the lobby. My head is still pounding. I should take control of the situation, but I just want to be as far away from it as possible.
“Already on it,” Jed says.
Rachel turns to me. “Come on. Let’s go up and decide what we’re going to do.”
I follow her silently. Poor Ava. I was too harsh on her. I dismissed her too cruelly, and now she’s hurt, maybe even close to death.
Because however long it takes, everything I touch eventually suffers.
In the apartment, Rachel hands me a drink. I take it silently, downing half the fiery liquid in one gulp.
“Please don’t blame yourself.” Her voice comes as if from far away. “There’s already so much you feel responsible for.”
She’s an angel, and I don’t deserve one of my own. I never have.
“But I am responsible.” I close my eyes. I can feel myself slipping into a dark place. “She was meeting him, probably trying to talk him out of his insane vendetta, and he stabbed her, his own sister, because I put her in a position where he saw her as an enemy.”
Rachel is shaking her head. Her eyes hold mine, pulling me out of the darkness. “Landon, he’s clearly insane. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
She has no idea, no idea how much pain already lives in my past and how much of it I’m responsible for.
“Can’t I?” I down the drink and face her. “He wasn’t insane before I bought the Gold Dust out from under him. He was happily running it into the ground, but at least he was sane.”
“Landon…” Her eyes are pleading. How can she not see that under everything else, this is all I can give? Pain.
“Don’t you see how messed up everybody around me is? Evans is crazy. Ava is fighting for her life. Aidan is dealing with severe depression…did you know that? Sometimes he goes off the rails and disappears for days.”
She reaches for me, but I shrug her hand away.
“You already know about my mother and my father, that miserable… We might as well have killed him, you know, me and Aidan. That’s why Aidan can’t bear to look at himself at times. The last thing he told our father was that we would all be better off without his alcoholic, useless presence, and I stood there and said nothing, because I felt the same.”
Remember when you told me you wished your father had died along with your mother instead of lingering for a decade after? So dark, Landon. Do you share things like that with her?
Ava’s voice mocks me in my thoughts, and I wait for Rachel’s affection to turn to judgment.
I’m not worth your love, Rachel.
Can’t you see?
“Maybe I thought there was some truth in the stories that drove my mother to her death,” I continue bitterly. “Maybe I was sick of watching him drink himself to death while ignoring his sons, but I stood there while Aidan shredded him, and the next morning he was dead.”
“Stop this…” she whispers. Her voice is shaking, but her eyes don’t waver.
She loves me.
“How long before it’s you?” I can’t bear the thought. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll end up like us?”
She takes my hands. “No, because I don’t see anything wrong with you, Landon. I love you.”
If I were a better man, I’d let her go. I pull my hands from hers and head to the bar. “I need another drink.”
Her voice stops me. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. This is not the time to fall apart. Think of the negative press, the questions people will ask about the security at the Gold Dust. Think of the fact that Evans is on the run, of how much he hates you. You have to pull yourself together and manage this.”
I lower myself back on the sofa. She’s right. Of course she’s right.
“I’m going to ask Jed to call the pilot and make sure you’re ready to leave in a few hours,” she says. “The whole world knows she was asking for you. You have to go.”
Yes. Ava will need a familiar face beside her, a friend, and I ne
ed to find her brother before he hurts anyone else.
“You’re right,” I admit. “Of course. I have to go.”
She rises from the sofa and starts to walk away.
“Will you come with me?”
She doesn’t turn around, and for a moment, I’m afraid she’ll say no.
“Of course,” she says finally, then she turns around and gives me an encouraging smile. “Of course I’ll come.
There’s more press outside the hospital, but they’re far enough away from the entrance that they aren’t really a problem.
An orderly lead us to Ava’s ward. Outside, there are a few of her relatives, uncles and cousins I vaguely recognize. We have little to talk about, and I’m relieved when the doctor arrives.
“You’re Landon Court?”
“Yes.” I take the hand she offers. “How is she?”
“She’s asleep right now, as you can see.” She gestures toward a small window where I can vaguely see Ava hooked up to a couple of machines. “And she’s healing nicely. The attacker missed any major organs, so she’ll be out of here in a few days.”
“She’s not in pain?”
“Not right now, no, though it will take some time for her to heal completely.”
I nod. Rachel is looking through the window at Ava, a look of immeasurable sadness on her face.
“She looks…” She trails off, but I know exactly what she means. It’s hard to think of the woman on the bed as Ava.
“I know.”
Rachel sighs, and I notice the signs of tiredness on her face. In just one day, she’s spent hours in the air, taken an unplanned trip, been harassed by reporters, and endured proximity to a tragedy, because of me.
How can she still love me?
“You should go back to the hotel,” I suggest, feeling almost too guilty to look her in the eye. “I’ll wait and talk to her when she wakes.”
“Okay.” She places a soft kiss on my cheek. “I’ll see you later.”
I watch her leave, the smell of her fragrance lingering in my nose. I wish things were different. I wish being with me would be a source of unending pleasure for her, not of pain, and fights, and stress.