“Pretty sure I was told you would be staying in your apartment for the rest of the night,” Hailey drawled. She fell into step beside Sophie as she walked round to the back of the building where Sophie’s car was parked in one of the private garages there.
Sophie had decided not to drive to the wedding today because she knew she would be drinking champagne during the toasts to the bride and groom and bridesmaids. Not that she was a great drinker, but even a couple of glasses of champagne meant it wouldn’t be safe for her to drive afterwards.
Sophie gave Hailey a glance over her shoulder as she pressed the button to electronically open the garage door. The other woman was beautiful, almost six feet tall, with a slender figure any supermodel would envy, and long fiery red hair that complemented her creamy complexion. But anyone who underestimated her because of that beauty and model figure would be making a grave error. Hailey had black belts in several of the martial arts.
“Told by whom?” Sophie prompted, knowing damn well from whom Hailey would have received her instructions.
The other woman gave a grin that clearly said she knew Sophie knew it too. “What’s going on between you and the bossman? Rourke sounded as if he was chewing nails when he called me earlier and told me to get my arse over to your apartment pronto, with the added instruction I was to call and let him know immediately if anyone came near you.”
Sophie laughed humorlessly. “I doubt he put it in quite those terms.” She unlocked her car, throwing her shoulder bag onto the backseat before getting in behind the wheel.
The other woman opened the passenger door. “He did, actually. Which is the reason I got here as quickly as I could.” Hailey slid into the seat next to Sophie’s. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard such an abrupt and angry-sounding Rourke before.”
Sophie had also glimpsed a different side of Rourke today. A man who enjoyed arousing and dominating a woman as much as he did protecting her. As much as Sophie had enjoyed being aroused and dominated…
“So who am I protecting you from?” Hailey grimaced at Sophie’s tight-lipped expression. “Okay, don’t make my job easier.” She shrugged.
Sophie turned on the ignition. “I don’t suppose it would do any good for me to politely ask you to get out of my car?”
“I don’t suppose it would.” Hailey clicked her seat belt into place before settling herself more comfortably in the passenger seat. “Considering I deliberately allowed you to see me from your apartment window earlier so you knew I was outside, I definitely can’t see any point in me going to the trouble or expense of following you in a cab.”
“Fine,” Sophie bit out. “But may I remind you that you’re here as an observer?”
“Observer of what?”
“Me, apparently.”
“Where are we going?” Hailey prompted as Sophie maneuvered the car out onto the road.
“I am going to talk to Haydn. You are going to wait downstairs in the reception area for me until I leave,” Sophie stated firmly.
Hailey thought it over for several seconds before nodding. “Fair enough.”
Some of the tension left Sophie’s shoulders once she had the car situated comfortably in the flow of traffic and heading toward Haydn’s apartment, yet another luxury penthouse apartment in another exclusive building owned by the Steele brothers.
The six brothers were extremely wealthy men, collectively owning properties all over London. So wealthy, they didn’t really need to work but chose to do so. Since going to work for them, Sophie had surmised that was because they had all been in the army for five years or more, and living a life of the mundane after that wouldn’t suit any of them. Instead, they chose to run a company where they could look for kidnapped or missing persons, and protect the people who needed protecting.
Sophie was now the one in need of that protection, but more than that, she wanted information on her father. She hoped Haydn would be the one to provide the latter.
“I didn’t expect to find you here!”
Rourke’s brows rose at Sophie’s accusing tone. Her displeased expression when she stepped out of the lift into Haydn’s apartment and saw Rourke in the sitting room with his brother was more than enough to show her disapproval at seeing him again so soon.
He had been winding up his arrangements to fly to Grand Cayman when one of the guys on reception had phoned up to inform Haydn he had a visitor. Rourke had no intention of going anywhere once he knew the name of that visitor was Sophie Hammond.
He was initially slightly pissed that Hailey hadn’t informed him Sophie had left her apartment. After further thought on the subject, he realized his instructions had been to inform him if someone visited Sophie’s apartment, not if she left it.
“Is Hailey downstairs?”
Sophie gave a snort. “Yes, the watchdog you sent to follow me is waiting downstairs to accompany me when I leave.”
Half of Rourke had known it wasn’t a good idea for him and Sophie to see each other again tonight, but the other half hadn’t been able to resist staying and doing exactly that once he knew she was on her way up in the elevator.
That decision to remain was made with the knowledge that a part of Rourke wasn’t happy for Sophie to be alone with Haydn in his apartment.
That, after today, Rourke didn’t want her to be alone with any other man but him. He didn’t want Sophie to even think of going to any other man but him for help, if and when she needed it.
Something had shifted between the two of them today, resulting in Sophie now seeing Rourke exactly as he was behind the charming façade. Whether she liked what she’d seen, he had no idea, but that shift now existed between them and it wasn’t going anywhere soon. Rourke knew it, and Sophie’s defensive posture as she glared across the room at him, said she knew it too.
Which meant Rourke wasn’t about to tolerate her rudeness toward him, even if Haydn was in the room. “Do I need to remind you what happened the last time you showed me disrespect?”
Color entered her cheeks at the rebuke. “Sorry.” She grimaced before turning her attention to Haydn. “I wondered if you had found out anything about where my father might have gone—” She broke off the query when Haydn immediately shot Rourke a questioning glance. “Obviously, you have,” she drawled. “You just aren’t sure whether or not Rourke wants you to tell me what it is you’ve found out.”
Rourke made a spur-of-the-moment decision. He wasn’t sure if it was the right one for either of them, but neither was leaving Sophie in London, prey to a vengeful bastard like Tillman. “I’ve made arrangements to fly to the Cayman Islands tomorrow. Do you have a valid passport?”
“I do, yes,” Sophie confirmed warily.
“Then I suggest you join me.”
Her eyes widened. “My father is in the Cayman Islands?”
He nodded. “He and a female companion arrived on the islands together a week ago.”
Sophie’s eyes widened. As far as she was aware, her father hadn’t so much as gone out on a single date since her mother died. Now Rourke was telling her that not only had her father fled to the Cayman Islands but that he had taken a woman with him.
It seemed that where her father was concerned, the hurt just kept piling on top of more hurt.
After the events of this past week, Sophie was seriously wondering if she had ever known him.
Or if she wanted to…
She had thought, after they lost her mother three years ago, that she and her father would become closer. The opposite was true, to the point Stephen was now almost a stranger to his daughter.
A realization that wasn’t in the least helpful right now. “If Haydn was able to find my father this easily, then why couldn’t Zachary Tillman?”
“I wouldn’t say it was exactly easy,” Haydn teased.
Sophie knew that Haydn had crazy computer skills. “I’m still not very happy with having learned you installed security cameras outside my apartment building without telling me.”
“I can think of more than one occasion when our surveillance has helped keep one of us or the people we love safe,” he stated unapologetically.
Sophie instantly felt guilty, knowing Atticus’s fiancée, Jenna, had been abducted from a night club and badly beaten just a few short weeks ago. Camera surveillance had ensured it didn’t happen a second time.
Rourke took over the conversation. “Why would Tillman put himself to the trouble of chasing after your father when he can threaten you and let you do all the hard work for him?”
Sophie winced. “When he has me he can use as leverage, you mean.”
His jaw tightened. “I’ve told you, it’s not happening if it’s in our power to prevent it.”
Sophie could hear the barely controlled fury in his voice. “What do you intend doing to my father when you find him?”
“Well, persuading him into giving his ex-employer his money back so that Tillman leaves you alone obviously takes priority,” he drawled. “I’m not sure if even that is going to satisfy Tillman, but it will be a move in the right direction.”
Sophie was also worried that Zachary Tillman might still want his pound of flesh, either from her or her father, even if his money was returned to him. But, as Rourke said, returning the money was definitely a positive step toward smoothing things over with the billionaire.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Rourke’s brows rose over dark eyes. “Okay what?”
“I’ll come to the Cayman Islands with you.”
Rourke smiled his approval. “Good—”
“I don’t advise the words ‘good girl’ leave your lips, not unless you want to receive a painful kick to the balls,” she warned harshly, shooting Haydn a silencing glance before turning that glittering gaze back on Rourke. “When do we leave?”
Rourke’s smile widened in appreciation of her threat. “We fly out tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”
She nodded. “Fine.”
“I’ll swing by and pick you up at five thirty.”
A frown creased her brow. “Is that early enough for an eight-o’clock flight?”
“Yes.” Rourke’s answer was deliberately economical. He wanted to avoid telling her where they would be flying from and whose plane they would be traveling on. In the circumstances, Sophie might not approve of the man who owned the jet.
“Are you okay, Sophie?” Haydn prompted gently. “You’re very pale. Would you like me to get you some brandy or maybe a hot drink?”
Rourke scowled his displeasure at his brother’s solicitude. A displeasure he recognized as being a mixture of anger and jealousy. Sophie was his to protect and care for, damn it. Even if it was like trying to protect and care for a prickly hedgehog. Hedgehogs were cute, right? Pretty faces and soft-as-velvet noses? He doubted Sophie would appreciate the analogy.
She gave Haydn a warm and reassuring smile. The sort of smile Rourke was aware she no longer gave him. “I’m fine. I’ll be even better once we’ve found my father and he’s given back Zachary Tillman’s money.” A shadow appeared in her eyes. “I’m not sure what happens after that.”
Once this situation was sorted to Rourke’s satisfaction, he fully intended to ensure Stephen Hammond knew better than to ever again involve his daughter in any of his shady dealings and so put her life in danger.
“When you said we were leaving on an eight o’clock flight, I assumed it would be on a commercial airline.” Sophie was totally overwhelmed as she followed Rourke toward the sleek silver jet parked on the tarmac of this private airfield an hour’s drive from London.
Rourke had arrived in his car outside her apartment building promptly at five thirty this morning. Sophie, who freely admitted to not being a morning person, had merely grunted a greeting when he held the car door open for her to climb into the passenger seat. She had been busy buckling herself in when he climbed back behind the wheel, closing her eyes and pretending to have fallen asleep when Rourke drove them out of London.
If she hadn’t been, she might have noticed that he hadn’t driven in the direction he would have needed to take if they were flying from either Heathrow or Gatwick Airport.
Instead, they had arrived at this private airfield a short time ago and gone through a cursory passport and luggage check before the luggage was taken from them and the two of them walked the short distance to the waiting plane.
In any other circumstances, Sophie would have been excited at the prospect of flying to the Caribbean. Having Rourke as her companion? Definitely the cherry on top.
Except it wasn’t a vacation, and Rourke was more of a bodyguard than a companion. Sophie didn’t doubt for one moment that the only reason Rourke had brought her with him was so that she was out of harm’s—Zachary Tillman’s—way.
Even so, she had checked online to see what the weather was like on the Caymans this time of year so that she had known what clothes to pack. She hadn’t liked that it was still hurricane season, but the islands seemed to have been lucky enough not to have any so far this year, and the temperature was hot enough for shorts-and-T-shirt wear. She was dressed for colder English weather at the moment in jeans and a sweater, but she had shorts and a T-shirt in the bag she had brought onboard with her and intended to change into them before they landed at Owen Roberts International Airport on Grand Cayman.
Rourke was also dressed casually for traveling in jeans and a black polo shirt beneath a leather jacket. Which, once he had removed the latter, would no doubt be suitable for the warmer weather in the Cayman Islands.
“Rourke.” A handsome dark-haired man dressed in a formal suit was waiting to greet them at the bottom of the steps going up into the plane. Two men in black suits and short buzzcuts and wearing sunglasses stood watchfully several feet behind him.
Rourke ignored those two men as he shook the other man’s hand. “I didn’t expect you to be flying us there yourself.”
“I love to pilot my own plane as long as there are no family events or business in need of my attention here. This has worked out well for me as I intend to take care of some business of my own when we get to the Caymans.” The man’s smile became even warmer as he turned and shook Sophie’s hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Hammond. My name is Gregori, and our flight today to Grand Cayman should take roughly thirteen hours.”
Sophie stared at him, pretty sure she must still be asleep and dreaming.
Gregori’s smile turned rueful, as if he was aware of her confusion. “My staff will serve the two of you breakfast once you are onboard and then remove themselves to the front of the plane to allow the two of you privacy. My two bodyguards will also be at the front of the plane, but they will be sleeping during the flight. Candice is here to ensure your comfort, so please don’t be afraid to ask if there is anything you need. There is the usual onboard entertainment available, movies, music, etc. Also a separate bedroom and en suite shower room at the back of the plane if you would prefer to pass the time sleeping in comfort.”
Sophie was pretty sure she had seen this pilot, tall, dark and extremely handsome, before today, and it hadn’t been in a way that had anything to do with him piloting a plane. She believed she had seen this man’s photograph in several of the national newspapers a few years ago when he was called as a witness during the trial of several members of the Italian Mafia.
But this man couldn’t be Gregori Markovic, head of the London Russian bratva.
Could he…?