Remy had been only four years old when she first became aware of Sinclair Kingston’s presence in her life as the boyfriend of her Aunt Cathy, her father’s younger sister.
That first meeting might have been nineteen years ago, but Remy still remembered that day as if it were yesterday. How she had gazed up at the tall man who had looked like the pictures of the Roman gods in the books of mythology her Italian mother liked to share with her. It had seemed to her young eyes as if he was surrounded by a halo of light, so tall he towered over her, his hair black as a raven’s wing, his masculine features as perfect as the Bernini sculptures her mother also loved.
Looking back on that day now, Remy realized that was the moment she’d first became mesmerized by Sinclair Kingston. It was an infatuation which had deepened to hero worship as she grew from a young child into a teenager. Sinclair had appeared to her teenage heart as being everything she could ever wish for in a man. He was not only the handsomest man she had ever set eyes on—and that included his five brothers and his cousin—but he was also warm, kind, and loving.
Nor could she ever feel jealous that the woman he showered that warmth and love on was Aunt Cathy, when just being in the same room with the two of them was like being enfolded into a privileged cloud of that same love.
But Remy was no longer that enchanted young child gazing up at him, or the infatuated teenager worshipping him from afar.
How could she be when merely looking at this closed-off Sinclair was like being dropped into an icy-cold lake.
Her lashes lowered. “I had a crush on you from the age of thirteen.” The words were blurted out before she could stop them.
“I know.”
Her head rose sharply at the same time as she felt a sickening clench of her stomach. “You knew?”
A nerve pulse in his jaw. “Yes.”
Dear God, how humiliating was it to be told that!
Had he laughed about her crush, possibly with Cathy or his brothers and cousin? Not necessarily in a cruel or condescending way, because Sinclair hadn’t been either of those things then, but possibly in an affectionate or much-older-man sort of way?
She raised her chin. “Like all unsuitable infatuations, I grew out of it.”
“Remy—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand to ward off any attempt to dispel her obvious embarrassment. “I’m sorry I bothered you—”
“You still haven’t told me why you went to the trouble of seeking me out today,” he grated. “I’m guessing that’s what you did? Because this is all too staged to be a coincidence.”
She grimaced, still not looking at him. “I had no choice when you’ve shut yourself away in a fortress where no one gets to speak to the elusive Sinclair Kingston unless he wants them to.”
“True,” he bit out without apology or explanation.
Not that Remy had expected this man to offer either of those things. She really didn’t know this Sinclair at all.
Over the years, she’d met people she was once at school or university with, and within seconds of meeting them, the new image overrode the earlier one. But the changes in Sinclair were so much and so many that it was difficult to do that where he was concerned. To relate to this cold stranger at all as the man she had once known and admired. Loved.
She gave a weary shake of her head. “It isn’t important.”
Whatever was going on in her life, she would have to deal with it herself, because Sinclair couldn’t have told her any more clearly that he wanted nothing more to do with her.
Sinclair had no intention of accepting Remy’s dismissal.
The fact that she’d chosen to contact him this way, after five years of silence from him, had to mean that something was seriously wrong in her life.
Serious, as in both her parents having died in a helicopter crash a month ago?
Yeah, something like that, Sinclair acknowledged self-disgustedly.
Quickly followed by him again deciding Casper had no right to have kept that news from him.
What difference would it have made if I’d known, he reasoned.
Would he have rushed to Remy’s side? Offered to support her emotionally through the trauma?
Hell no!
That part of his life was over, with not only the lid closed on it, but a bolt and padlock attached to that lid and a chain wrapped around the whole thing, to ensure it and the memories stayed well and truly locked away.
Then why was he still standing here talking to Remy Mitchell rather than walking away, as he’d fully intended doing a few minutes ago?
Because a part of him knew, despite the fact he might have chosen to cut all the Mitchell family out of his life, that there was a distinct possibility Remy, with her aunt and both her parents now dead, simply had no one else she could ask for help.
Remy was an only child, and a single glance at her left hand showed there was no ring on her finger, or a supportive boyfriend standing at her side.
Sinclair scowled as he realized that lack of a ring or a boyfriend shouldn’t please him as much as it did.
All these years of thinking his libido had died five years ago, and now Remy Mitchell had disabused him of that belief with just a single glance at her willowy and sexy body and the soft pillow of her kissable lips.
He really needed to turn and walk away. Now. Far, far away. Bury himself back behind the barricade, where all he needed to care or think about was the safety of his family and seeking out and punishing the guilty.
Remy was once a part of my family.
The child Remy had been that. Not this beautiful and desirable woman Sinclair hardly recognized.
A woman who felt absolutely no reluctance about challenging him in a way other people rarely did.
A beautiful woman Sinclair couldn’t bring himself to walk away from. “I suggest we go somewhere less…public if we’re going to continue this conversation.”
“I don’t think so,” she came back briskly, her chin high.
“Why not?”
“You’re no longer the man I thought you were,” she dismissed scathingly.
And wasn’t that the equivalent of having a bucket of ice-cold water thrown over him!
This woman had adored him as a child, then hero-worshipped him when she became a teenager. The disillusion in her gaze now told him she no longer felt either of those things where he was concerned.
A realization that hurt more than it should have.
She had been such a cute little girl, having inherited her black curls and blue eyes from her Italian mother, and her ivory complexion from her blond-haired English father and Aunt Cathy. Once Remy reached her teens, she’d been all legs, like a newborn colt, her hair no longer curly, but fashionably straight.
By the time Remy was sixteen, her childish adoration for Sinclair had turned into blushing coyness every time he spoke to her. On Cathy’s advice, Sinclair hadn’t acknowledged Remy’s obvious crush, but continued to treat her with the same indulgent affection that he always had.
The remnants of that crush had still been in Remy’s eyes several minutes ago when she’d first approached him. It wasn’t there any longer.
“No, I’m not,” he acknowledged harshly. “But I’ll take a guess on the man I am now being better able to deal with the reason you wanted to talk to me today.”
Her eyes widened. “Our meeting could have been accidental, a simple case of the two of us being in the same place at the same time.”
“I’ve already said it wasn’t.”
She frowned. “You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.” Sinclair didn’t believe in coincidences as big as this one. “What’s happened since your parents died to put that expression of fear into your eyes?” he prompted softly.
She took an involuntary step back. “You— I’m not frightened.”
“Yes, you are.”
She glared. “Maybe it seems that way because seeing you again has helped me realize what an unfeeling arsehole you’ve become.”
He shook his head. “That isn’t the reason.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” she snapped.
“I can.” He’d seen and recognized the “you’re an unfeeling arsehole” look many times over the past five years. Remy hadn’t looked at him that way once today.
Until now. “You have to be the most arrogant man I’ve ever met!”
A slight smile twisted Sinclair’s lips. “I have no doubt I’m also the most stubborn. So?” He quirked a dark eyebrow when Remy still chose not to answer his original question.
She shook her head. “I don’t—”
“You might have told me you were leaving, Sin, then I could have left with you,” a man’s accusing voice spoke from behind them.
Sinclair turned to look at his brother Malachi as he strode purposefully across the foyer toward them. “Did you tell Max or Adam you were going?”
Malachi’s eyebrows rose. “How old am I, ten?”
“No,” Sinclair answered patiently. “Telling them you were leaving and thanking the brides and grooms for a lovely day, and then wishing them all well for the future is what you do when you leave a wedding.”
“Even if it was a shit day and I already told Max and Adam at the house this morning that I wish them all happiness?”
“You didn’t tell Rosie and Cara.”
Malachi gave an unconcerned shrug. “I’ll tell them when they get back from their honeymoons. If I remember,” he dismissed. “Hi Remy,” he greeted lightly.
Remy had easily recognized the man approaching them as being Malachi Kingston, one of Sinclair’s five brothers. She couldn’t help smiling as she listened to their exchange.
At thirty-seven, Malachi was every bit as tall, dark, and muscular as all the other Kingston men, but his eyes were brown where Sinclair’s were an icy pale blue.
She stared at Malachi as he showed absolutely no surprise at seeing her there when it had been the same amount of years since the two of them last met as it had for Sinclair.
“I can’t wait to get out of this fucking penguin suit,” Malachi was muttering as he reached them, having already removed his tie to roll it up and put it in his jacket pocket before reaching up to unfasten the top button of his shirt.
Remy glanced at Sinclair and saw he was frowning his frustration with his brother’s behavior. A waste of emotion, when they both knew Malachi had always been this way.
“What?” Malachi looked at them both blankly.
Remy couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her at seeing Malachi’s unconcerned expression and Sinclair’s growing impatience with him.
“Why aren’t you surprised to see Remy?” Sinclair voiced the reason for that exasperation.
Malachi looked puzzled. “The two of you were talking when I came over here.”
“No,” Sinclair snapped. “I meant why aren’t you surprised to see her here now, in this hotel.”
“Oh.” Malachi nodded. “Because I saw her sitting in the hotel coffee shop when we arrived earlier.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say something?” Sinclair glared.
“Like what?” his brother prompted evenly.
“Such as you’d seen Remy sitting in the hotel coffee shop when we arrived earlier,” Sinclair bit out from between clenched teeth.
Remy tried to hold back her smile, but couldn’t. She had loved Malachi when she was younger, because he had the same lack of filter as a child, which she could totally relate to. He was also big and strong and would fight off dragons for her, real or imagined, if Remy asked him to.
Even as a child, she’d known that anyone who underestimated Malachi because of that lack of a filter or the ability or desire to express the emotions suitable to the situation would be in for a rude awakening. Malachi was extremely loyal and protective of his family. Because of that, he missed nothing going on around him and saw everything. As proven by the fact he had spotted her in the coffee shop earlier and dismissed her as being any sort of threat to the people he loved.
It was because of those character traits that Malachi also dealt with life’s problems in a practical way rather than an emotional one. An attitude that had helped him to attain two degrees by the time he was twenty, and the reason he could fix any engine and drive any vehicle available to him.
As a child, Remy had found the fixing part of that to be extremely helpful for mending her broken toys.
“I’m sorry for the loss of Ralph and Gina,” Malachi now told her evenly.
“What the fuck!” Sinclair threw his hands up in disbelief, his expression one of complete exasperation. “Does every member of the Kingston family but me know my former brother and sister-in-law died in a helicopter crash a month ago?”
Malachi gave another of his dismissive shrugs. “I can’t speak for the others, but Casper and I do, yes.”
Sinclair, in complete contrast to Malachi’s characteristic calm, felt as if his head was going to explode from the overload of facts and emotions now being thrown at him.
The weddings today had been the first in the family since his own to Cathy almost twenty years ago.
Seeing Remy again, being so totally aware of her feminine curves and those soft, kissable lips, causing him to feel the unwanted stirrings of desire, had only added to Sinclair’s frustrations with the day.
Except, he’d studied Remy closely and had seen that edge of fear in her gaze as she constantly glanced about the hotel reception, as if checking to make sure no one was watching or listening to the two of them talking. Seeking him out wasn’t something she would have done lightly.
Sinclair had a sinking feeling that her reasons had something to do with her parents’ deaths a month ago.
All of which had been followed by bloody Malachi greeting Remy as if they’d had dinner together only yesterday. Which wouldn’t have surprised Sinclair in the slightest. Malachi had never felt the necessity to explain himself to anyone.
In the same way he hadn’t over knowing of the death of Remy’s parents.
Except to now express his regrets to Remy.
Not that Malachi would have felt any sadness himself at learning the Mitchells were dead. No, Malachi had expressed his condolences because he knew it was the correct, the polite, thing to do in the circumstances.
Sinclair knew that wouldn’t be the case if they lost any member of the Kingston family: parents, brothers or cousin, and now sister and cousin-in-law. Malachi just had a finite amount of emotion, and it was all reserved for his close family. They all knew, in any emergency, that Mal was the one who would come to their rescue without explanation or argument.
“What do you need from us?” Malachi now asked Remy economically.
Proving that, as far as Malachi was concerned, the past five years of not seeing Remy might never have happened. That the Mitchells might be dead, and so no longer a cause for consideration, but that Mal still considered Remy, at least, to be a member of the inner circle of his family.
Did Sinclair feel the same way?
His first instinct, because his cock was still hard and throbbing, was still to tell Remy to just go away. To make it clear that he wanted nothing to do with her, the death of her parents, or the reason she was here now.
His marriage to Cathy, and knowing of her deep love for her niece, told Sinclair his conscience couldn’t allow him to do that.
But there was nothing that said he had to like it.