Remy wasn’t here because she wanted to be, but because she had believed Sinclair might be the only person who could and would be able to help her. But the man standing in front of her was a stranger, and nothing like the kind and caring man Remy remembered. As for wanting to help her…he looked as if he would rather be standing in a nest of vipers than talking to her.
Why he felt that way, she had no idea.
She gave a weary shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Remy turned toward the glass doors fronting the hotel, anxious to escape outside. The air crackling between the two of them was far too tense.
But she’d taken only a single step in that direction when the top of one of her arms was captured by strong and inflexible fingers. Sinclair’s touch instantly sent a thrill of excitement coursing through her.
She half turned toward him, her lashes lowered so as not to allow him to see the tears of disappointment swimming in her eyes. “Let go of me, Sinclair.”
He removed his hand to clench it into a fist at his side. “Did your father send you?”
Remy raised her head sharply, her eyes wide with incredulity. “Are you being deliberately insensitive?”
His eyes were narrowed to icy slits. “Answer me, damn it.”
She gave an incredulous scoff. “Where have you been for the past month, Sinclair? Living under a rock?”
His jaw tightened. “Answer me.”
She shook her head, her expression dazed. “You really don’t know.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“Know what?” he prompted harshly.
She swallowed. “My father’s dead. My mother too. They were both killed a month ago, along with the pilot, when the helicopter Dad had rented to fly him and Mama back from their holiday in Wales crashed into the sea off the Welsh coast. Only the pilot’s body has been found so far, and the authorities are now saying it’s been too long since the crash to hold out any hope that Mama and Dad survived.”
What the fuck!
How had Sinclair not known about any of this?
Because you’re a fucking recluse. Sinclair heard the words in his head spoken in his brother Malachi’s conversational rather than accusing tone.
Mal lived his life to the beat of a different drum from everyone else, which was why his comments, always succinct and truthful, could also very often be brutal. Never deliberately hurtful, Mal simply didn’t recognize the same emotional cues others did.
And it was true that nowadays, Sinclair preferred to keep to his suite of rooms at Kingston Manor, the family’s country estate an hour’s drive from London. But through various means and methods, Sinclair still kept his finger on the pulse of what was going on in the seedy underbelly of the world. It was how he knew which douchebag kidnapper or abductor would be next to receive a visit from him and learn exactly how helpless it felt to be in that situation.
After his wife had been kidnapped and killed five years ago, Sinclair had stepped back from being the public face of Kingston Security. Instead, he had become a one-man vigilante, doling out a punishment suitable to the crime when the police failed to do so. Not because they didn’t want to, but because the law often prohibited them from doing so.
Sinclair didn’t allow himself to be restricted by the same laws that had allowed men like the ones who had murdered Cathy to go free.
But he hadn’t read or seen a single news report on the deaths of Ralph and Gina Mitchell. Admittedly, a single helicopter going down in the sea off the coast of North Wales, killing the pilot, with the two passengers who also happened to be a husband and wife still missing, was more of a sob story than world-breaking news. Even so, there should have been news reports on the accident somewhere for Sinclair to see and respond to. As it was, he’d been completely blindsided by the news of the Mitchells’ deaths.
He could think of only one person, his youngest brother Casper, who had the technical skills to ensure that information never got as far as Sinclair’s numerous internet feeds. Which meant he would be demanding answers from Casper in the very near future.
How did Sinclair feel now that he knew, somewhat belatedly, the Mitchells were both missing and presumed dead?
His first, knee-jerk reaction was, karma is a bitch.
His second, it was a pity Gina and the pilot had died too.
Followed by, why the hell should any of that have brought Remy here today, with the obvious intention of wanting to speak to him?
“They’d initially driven to the hotel in Wales,” Remy continued flatly. “But Dad’s car wouldn’t start when it came time to leave. The garage there told him it would take a few days to get the new part and fix it, but he was due to talk at a medical seminar in London the following day and decided to arrange for them to be flown back by helicopter.”
“Why not just hire a car and drive back?” Like normal people, he added inwardly.
She shrugged. “Dad loves—loved helicopter travel, ever since Malachi took him up with him a few times. He even took a couple of lessons, but hadn’t got his license yet,” she added wistfully.
Sinclair’s emotions were still inwardly roiling from learning that Ralph and Gina were both dead.
But not enough so that he wasn’t also totally aware of the distracting tingle of the palm and fingers of the hand he’d used to grasp Remy’s arm. Her skin felt so soft and warm to the touch. The sort of feminine warmth and softness Sinclair had long denied himself.
And that was all it was, he tried to tell himself. Knowing he was lying. Meeting Remy Mitchell again, touching her silky skin, physically aware of her in a way he hadn’t been of any woman for such a long time, was starting to cause fissures in the barrier Sinclair kept about his emotions.
Remy sighed heavily. “Some wreckage has been found, but so far, they haven’t located the main part of the helicopter or the tail where the black box was situated,” Remy explained flatly. “All they have, a month later, is the Mayday call made by the pilot not long after they’d taken-off, to say the engine had failed and they were going down, followed by complete radio silence. The search and rescue teams found parts of the helicopter floating in the sea, then the pilot’s body washed ashore a couple of days later. But after a month, with nothing else found, they’ve decided to call off the search.”
Sinclair frowned. “I hope you aren’t expecting me to ask anyone from Kingston Security to continue that search, because we don’t have those sorts of resources or skills.” The truth was, even if their company did have that ability, Sinclair wouldn’t have issued the instruction for them to do so.
She sighed wearily. “I know that.”
“Then why are you here?” he snapped, impatient with his own responses to this beautiful woman. “To ask me to attend their memorial service?” With no bodies, that service was probably all the couple could have. “I hadn’t seen or spoken to your parents in five years,” he dismissed.
“Or me,” she added pointedly.
“Or you,” he acknowledged.
She narrowed those deep blue eyes on him. “What did I do to you for you to just cut me off like that, Sinclair?”
You existed!
No, that was unkind. None of the clusterfuck of five years ago had been Remy’s fault. How could it have been when she’d only been seventeen, almost eighteen years old at the time, with her whole life in front of her. She’d been preparing to go to university at the end of the summer to study for a physics degree, followed by another year so she could teach the subject.
It was Remy’s connection to his wife’s brother, Ralph, and his wife, Gina, that had made it impossible for Sinclair to even think of continuing his uncle-by-marriage relationship with the couple’s teenage daughter.
That same rule applies now.
Most especially when it comes to these unwanted feelings of desire I’ve been having for Remy Mitchell since the moment I looked at her again a few minutes ago. A desire that sent the blood rushing straight to my dick so that it’s now throbbing and aching inside my boxers.
Well, to hell with that. Sinclair hadn’t desired any woman for years, and he certainly wasn’t stupid enough to allow himself to want this one. His dick could just return to its five-year drought, because he intended to suppress any desire for Remy right now.
Until it was as dead as Gina and Ralph Mitchell now were.
If Cathy was still alive, she would have been devastated to learn that her brother and sister-in-law had died in a helicopter crash, leaving her only niece all alone.
She would also, Sinclair knew without a doubt, have insisted on being there for Remy. As she was no longer here, she would expect Sinclair to do that in her place.
Fuck!
Remy sighed heavily. “I know how much you loved my Aunt Cathy, and how painful it would have been to see and be with any of her family after—after she died.”
“She didn’t just die. She was murdered!” he snapped.
Remy’s face became even paler. “But before that, you were her husband and a part of our family, as we were a part of yours. My God,” she choked out, “I grew up knowing you as Uncle Sinclair!”
“Don’t call me that!” It made him inwardly wince when he was so aware of the unwanted physical desire he felt for her.
She swallowed. “It’s who you were to me for fourteen years of my life.”
Sinclair’s jaw was so tightly clenched, he was in danger of either cracking the bone or a molar.
He knew who he’d been, damn it, but that had been a different man and another lifetime ago.
Before his life went to hell and his wife was murdered.
The man he had become since then hunted, punished, and killed without mercy, if necessary.
This beautiful young woman, with those mesmerizing blue eyes so like her Italian mother’s, didn’t belong anywhere near the vigilante life Sinclair now lived on a daily basis.
She was also a direct threat to the secrets Sinclair had chosen to keep about the past.