Remy felt less that comfortable once she was seated in the chair in front of Malachi’s desk, her backpack sitting on the floor beside her.
Not because Malachi was seated opposite her, and obviously prepared to wait patiently all day for her to start talking if he had to.
No, Remy’s feeling of unrest were because she was totally aware of the man standing completely still and leaning against the wall slightly to the right of her. Not with the same innate calmness as his brother did. Instead, Sinclair’s arms were folded across his wide chest, the brooding impatience rolling off him in waves.
Remy refused to look at him as she took a few moments to gather her thoughts by looking at her surroundings.
The offices she’d glanced into as she followed Malachi down the hallway were spacious and modern. This room, perhaps because it was Malachi’s, was sparsely but well furnished, with a green carpet, light oak desk, dark green leather chairs, and a small private bar and fridge at the back of the room. The view out of the huge windows behind Malachi was of the Thames and, more specifically, the London Eye.
Remy knew exactly how expensive a location this was.
One that the Kingston family could easily afford when they all, including the parents who had now retired to Florida, had individual as well as family wealth.
Remy’s Aunt Cathy had often taken her for a swim in the indoor pool on the Kingston estate. Or, as Cathy’s only family, Remy and her parents were all invited to join in the Kingston family picnics, or to a meal or party in the main house.
But, as a child, Remy couldn’t say she’d ever given too much thought to the opulence of the estate, with its helipad, private swimming pool, tennis courts, croquet lawn, and gym. There was even a small hospital wing in what had years ago been the armory.
The Kingston Security offices reflected the same understated wealth as the large family estate.
Remy’s father had been a surgeon, with both a private and NHS patient list. Her mother had been a librarian. Admittedly, their home had been a large detached house in the London suburbs, with an acre of garden, but even so, the high cost of living there had meant there wasn’t any spare cash left sloshing around.
Her parents had paid Remy’s university fees and for her to stay in Halls of Residence, but she’d taken a part-time job in a coffee shop to pay for her living expenses. Part of those expenses had been the numerous books she’d needed for her physics degree course, but luckily, her mother had been able to acquire most of those. Even so, a part-time job and the discount on books hadn’t been enough to support Remy through university, and she’d still needed to take out a student loan she was slowly paying back each month.
She knew that all the Kingston men, the six brothers and their cousin, Adam, had university degrees, along with Malachi’s second degree, a master’s’ in engineering. The Kingston wealth meant that none of the men had needed to accrue debts or find a job—or two, as some of Remy’s friends had—to support themselves while they were finishing their education. Kingston Security was also one of the world’s leading security firms.
Thinking now of those differences in their backgrounds and all those years without seeing or hearing from a single member of the Kingston family was enough for Remy to realize she should never have approached Sinclair at the hotel today. That she should have dealt with the problem herself, whatever it turned out to be, and not involved any of the Kingston family.
Something she knew, from Sinclair’s impatient stillness, along with Malachi’s calmer one, was no longer an option. Because these two men wouldn’t be allowing her to leave here today until they knew the reason she’d taken such extreme measures to speak with Sinclair.
Unless…
She turned to give Sinclair a challenging look. “You didn’t like my father.”
Sinclair’s eyes widened before narrowing again. “I’ve never said that.” He might have thought it more than a few times over the years, but he was sure he’d never said it to or in front of Remy. As far as he was concerned, the problems that had existed between him and Ralph had been between the two of them, no one else.
Remy shrugged at his evasive answer. “You expressed no regret when I told you he was dead.”
“I don’t remember saying any condolences in regard to the death of either of your parents,” he defended.
“No, but your expression softened slightly when you thought of my mother.”
“No—”
“Yes,” she maintained firmly. “My statement of you not liking my father stands.”
“You’re imagining things,” Sinclair snapped his impatience with Remy’s suddenly confrontational attitude.
Even if she was right.
Sinclair had always liked Gina. The Italian woman was not only beautiful, but she also had a bubbly and warm personality that drew people to her. The three women, Gina, Cathy, and Remy, were the reason Sinclair had been willing to put up with a lot from Ralph, when the other man did very little to deserve having any of those lovely ladies in his life.
Remy now shook her head. “I’m working as a teacher now, Sinclair, to kids aged thirteen to eighteen. Believe me when I tell you that’s given me a great grounding in knowing when I’m being lied to.”
“No need to be modest, Remy,” Malachi chided. “You got a first-class physics degree, aced your year of teacher training, and you were head-hunted by and now work for one of the leading prep schools in the city. I looked it up on my cell phone while we were in the elevator,” he explained when she turned to stare at him with wide eyes.
Sinclair didn’t feel any of the same surprise. Malachi was both practical and methodical, and he liked to know everything about a situation before he proceeded with or into it.
Sinclair had always known Remy was highly intelligent and, as she matured, she became equally as ambitious. Her having done so well these past few years didn’t surprise him. “Congratulations,” he told her.
“Thanks,” Remy acknowledged dryly. “Now answer my question.”
“I’m not one of your students,” he dismissed.
“But you are lying,” she insisted.
His mouth thinned at her dogged determination. “Your mother was a beautiful lady, inside and out.”
“And my father?”
Sinclair’s jaw tightened. “Let’s just say Ralph and I had our…differences over the years.” A serious understatement, if ever there was one.
His relationship with Ralph had been tense even before Cathy was kidnapped and murdered. But after Cathy died, the situation worsened, to a degree Sinclair might have been tempted into strangling Ralph with his bare hands if the other man hadn’t stayed well away from him, at Sinclair’s insistence, for the past five years.
Unfortunately, that had meant Sinclair distancing himself from Gina and Remy too.
Something which Remy was now letting him know, rather forcefully, she hadn’t appreciated then and didn’t now either.
Remy had never noticed any tension or awkwardness between her father and his sister’s husband when she was growing up, but then children very often weren’t aware of tension that might or might not exist between adults.
But she was very aware of it now in regard to Sinclair’s feelings toward her father. It was there in his reluctance to discuss the subject or to tell a lie by expressing a regret for Ralph’s death he didn’t feel.
She sighed. “I won’t waste my breath asking what those differences were, because I very much doubt you’d tell me if I did,” she said. “But I’m fully aware my father could be…difficult, at times.” No matter how disloyal it felt to say that when her father was now dead, Remy knew it to be the truth.
Her father could be the most charming man on earth one minute and broody and silent the next, or just plain bad-tempered. He’d become even more so in the years since his sister was murdered, some of his losses of temper becoming violent.
Not that he had ever raised a hand to Remy or her mother, but his determination to be in control of everything to do with the family had often resulted in some of Remy’s visits home being ones of tension rather than enjoyment. It was usually only because of her mother’s efforts that the situation remained pleasant.
No one outside their small family had been aware of that. Having a father whose mood could be mercurial if he didn’t have his own way wasn’t the sort of thing one went around broadcasting.
Although Remy had sensed a slight shift in her mother’s tolerance of her husband’s overly controlling nature since Remy left university a year ago and began to teach.
“But that’s no excuse for my lack of sympathy at your loss,” Sinclair added heavily. “I apologize.”
Remy eyed him guardedly. “Apology accepted.”
He nodded. “So, tell us why you’re here?”
Remy straightened, deciding she needed to get this bit over with, thank them for not helping her, and then go away and deal with the situation herself. “After the first year of uni I shared a house with four other students, and then moved into my own apartment in town when I started work a year ago. When the school holidays began a couple of weeks ago, I decided to move into my parents’ house to try to sort through their business and personal papers. Pay outstanding bills, stuff like that.”
“Yes?”
To someone who didn’t know him, Sinclair would probably appear uninterested in what she’d just said.
Remy knew they would be wrong.
She might not have been near him for five years, but she could still recognize the signs that something about what she’d just said had disturbed him. The slight deepening of the frown lines on his forehead, along with the increased rhythm of the pulse beneath his clenched jaw.
She stood up restlessly, because she really didn’t like feeling at the disadvantage of sitting when Sinclair was standing.
Not that being on her feet made that much difference when Sinclair was at least eight inches taller than she was and, even in the formal suit he was wearing, his body was pure unleashed power to her softer and curvy one.
Remy still felt better being able to pace the office space as she thought about what she was going to say next. How much she should or shouldn’t tell the Kingston brothers.
“Are you going to add anything more to that statement, or is that it, and we can all go home now?” Sinclair taunted.
It had to be Sinclair, because Remy knew Malachi would sit and patiently wait for as long as it took for her to speak again.
She shot the eldest Kingston brother a narrow-eyed glare. “Their house was broken into two nights ago.” That was a serious understatement!
Shocking enough to arrive home after an evening out and find the lock on the front door was broken and the door hanging open, but totally devastating to cautiously enter the house and see the level of destruction inside.
Downstairs, all the furniture was either broken or tipped over, with the drawers pulled out and their contents spilled onto the carpets or ripped to shreds. The television and other entertainment equipment had been smashed. Everything in the kitchen cupboards had been pulled out and thrown on the floor, jars broken, open boxes soaking up the excess fluid. Even the contents of the fridge had been pulled out and the door left open. The downstairs bathroom had the sink pulled off the wall and the toilet smashed.
Upstairs was worse.
There was the same destruction of furniture and clothes in her parents’ bedroom, along with anything else breakable, such as ornaments or paintings and pictures on the walls. But the beds had also had the bedclothes pulled off them, the mattresses then slashed, and the springs and any stuffing pulled from inside. All their clothes from the wardrobes and dressing tables had been thrown on the floor. The pictures of her kept on top of the dresser had all been smashed.
In Remy’s bedroom, the bed, the contents of the wardrobe and dressing table had met the same fate. Even the cuddly animals, accumulated through her childhood, that now sat on her bed in a big heap, had been slashed open and all their stuffing pulled out.
The two full bathrooms, one en suite and one general, were even worse. The cabinets and cupboards had been emptied, mirrors broken, the sinks and toilet cisterns having been pulled off the wall. The water had already soaked the carpets, but Remy had managed to turn off the water in the house before it began to drip through the ceiling.
It was obvious from the level of damage that whoever had broken in had taken their time to break, rip to shreds, or in some other way destroy or render useless everything they could put their hands on.
Remy couldn’t think of anyone who could have wanted to cause that sort of damage to her parents’ property and personal belongings.
Her parents didn’t own anything of value. Her mother had no expensive jewelry, except the engagement ring and a gold bracelet she’d been wearing at the time of the crash. There was no safe, and her parents didn’t keep money in the house. Nor did they own any family heirlooms of any monetary value. Her father had driven his precious Jaguar to Wales, and then had to leave it there to be repaired. The car had since been retrieved and returned to London through the insurance company her father subscribed to, but it had been locked away in the integral garage since then, and when Remy checked, it was untouched. In any case, it was an older model vehicle and wouldn’t be worth much. Her mother hadn’t owned a car, the shops and library where she worked being close enough for to her walk to.
The house with its garden was the most valuable thing they owned, and despite the destruction inside, that was still standing.
“Were you actually in the house when they broke in?” Malachi now prompted.
She shook her head. “No, I only discovered what had happened when I returned after an evening out.” She gave an inward shiver, knowing that she might otherwise have met the same fate as her parents’ belongings.
“Out where?”
She blinked at the harsh demand in Sinclair’s tone. “I spent the afternoon at a museum and then went out for dinner.”
“Alone?”
Remy frowned, wondering where Sinclair was going with this conversation. “I had dinner with a friend.”
“What sort of friend?”
“The none-of-your-damned-business sort of friend,” she snapped, irritated by these too-personal questions.
Not because she had anything to hide, but because she didn’t believe her private life had the least relevance to the destruction inside her parents’ home.
She also had no intention of admitting how much she regretted having finally given in and accepted the invitation to dinner from one of her coworkers at the school. It had been a pleasant evening at best and boring at worst, when the man didn’t seem to have an off button when it came to talking about work. She’d claimed she was going to be very busy through the rest of the summer holidays when he’d suggested a second date.
He’d been the latest in a long line of men who Remy had only gone on one date with. In fact, some of her uni friends teased her by calling her one-date Remy.
And the reason for that was standing across the room, arms folded across his wide chest, as he watched her from between narrowed lids.
Sinclair Kingston.
Remy hadn’t been lying earlier when she’d told both Sinclair and Malachi her crush/infatuation for Sinclair no longer existed. But she had a feeling that was only because she’d buried those feelings beneath the hurt she felt at his having completely removed himself from her life shortly before her eighteenth birthday.
Merely seeing and being with Sinclair again today had told Remy that her attraction to him was still very much alive. Maybe even more so, because this Sinclair gave off a dangerous and totally irresistible bad-boy vibe.
His jaw tensed. “We need to know—”
“No, you really don’t,” Remy cut in forcefully, too irritated at having realized the effect Sinclair still had on her to tolerate him asking her any more personal questions. He hadn’t been interested in knowing a damn thing about her for the past five years, and she wasn’t inclined to confide in him now either.
“I agree with Sinclair on this point.” Malachi looked up briefly from reading the screen of his cell phone to cut in on the exchange that was cold on Sinclair’s part and becoming increasingly heated on Remy’s.
“Traitor,” she accused, but without any real rancor. It was difficult to be truly annoyed with Malachi.
He shrugged. “How many people, beside the person you met for dinner, knew your parents’ house was going to be empty that particular evening?”
“I don’t see— No,” she said vehemently, having realized exactly why Sinclair had been asking her these probing questions. “My date had absolutely nothing to do with the destruction done to my parents’ house while I was out.” Gary was far too self-orientated and ego-driven to take that much interest in someone else.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Sinclair challenged.
“I am!” She glared her fury at being made to second-guess the actions of a man she never intended going out with again.
“How long have the two of you been ‘dating’?” Sinclair prompted.
“We haven’t.” She frowned.
“So that was your first date?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
She narrowed her eyes. “He was the opposite of interesting, as it happens.”
“Oh?”
Remy huffed. “Don’t ‘oh’ me in that patronizing tone of voice!”
“Interesting or not,” Malachi cut in lightly, “we’ll still need to know his name.”
“Absolutely not. Look, I have to continue working with the man,” she defended when Malachi simply continued to look at her and Sinclair’s determined expression and air of compelling silence continued. “That’s going to be awkward enough in itself without you wading in there and accusing Gary— Oh fuck,” she muttered when she realized what she’d just done. There was only one man working at the school with the first name of Gary.
“You’ve learned to swear since we last met,” Sinclair mused.
“I’ve learned to do a lot of things since we last met, possibly because I’m no longer a child or trying to impress you,” she challenged.
“You—”
“I’ve checked, and there’s no police report of a break-in at your parents’ home two nights ago.” Malachi interrupted whatever his brother had been going to snap.
Remy turned her glare onto him. “Because I didn’t make one.”
“Why the hell not?” Sinclair demanded.
That was a good question. It was also one Remy didn’t really have an answer to. Except, possibly instinct.
Something about the break-in had seemed too methodical, the house having been searched room by room, leaving nothing intact, before they moved on to the next room. All the electrical items, including the wide-screen television, had been smashed rather than stolen.
There was just something off about the break-in at her parents’ house. So much so, Remy had decided not to involve the police.
“I asked why you didn’t call the police,” Sinclair repeated evenly.
Her nostrils flared at his persistence. “Possibly because, as far as I could tell, nothing was taken.”
“How would you know that if you haven’t lived at home for the past few years?”
Sinclair had a point—of course, he did!—but her parents were just normal people, a surgeon and a librarian leading ordinary lives. They weren’t wealthy, or terrorists, drug dealers, or international arms dealers.
“Did your parents’ neighbors see or hear anything suspicious that evening?” Malachi put in.
Remy felt on safer ground with this subject. “I’d already spoken to both immediate neighbors when I moved back in, in case they became concerned when they saw lights on in a house that was supposed to be…to be unoccupied.” Her voice broke at the thought of why the house was unoccupied. “They did see lights on in the house that evening, but unfortunately, they’d assumed it was me. The houses in that area all have large gardens, so none of them are close enough for anyone to have heard any unusual noises once the burglars were inside.”
“There’s no record of you having booked into a hotel the night of the break-in.” Malachi regarded her curiously as he placed his cell phone on the desktop.
She swallowed. “No.”
“So where did you stay?” Sinclair bit out.
“At the house.” Once she’d made it so that the mattress in her old room was comfortable enough to sleep on and she’d found a spare duvet in the airing cupboard to pull over her as she huddled beneath the covers. She’d also left on the light on the landing, something she hadn’t done since she was a small child.
Sinclair scowled. “Did you stay there again last night?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
Malachi frowned. “You didn’t think that whoever had broken in might have returned the following night and this time you might have become their target?”
“No, of course not.” Even the thought of that now sent a shiver of fear down her spine. “It was just a normal break-in.”
“During which nothing was taken, as far as you know,” Sinclair stated.
She turned to glare at him. “Yes.”
“If you thought that, why did you come to us when you didn’t involve the police?”
“I don’t know,” she groaned as she raised her hands to cover her burning cheeks.
“I think you do,” Sinclair chided.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Malachi, could you give us the room, please?” Sinclair requested.
Remy’s hands dropped back to her sides. “I don’t want you to leave, Malachi,” she added pleadingly as he rose to his feet and stepped out from behind the desk.
Malachi gave her arm a reassuring squeeze as he paused beside her. “Contrary to appearances, Sinclair doesn’t bite. Although he might, if you ask nicely, I suppose,” he considered. “And, Sinclair.” He turned that piercing dark gaze on his brother. “After five years, don’t you think it’s time you ceased beating yourself up for things you can’t change and stop living like a fucking monk?”
“Mal!” Sinclair snapped.
“Okay.” His brother sobered before turning back to Remy. “Sinclair is the best strategist and hunter I’ve ever met,” he assured.
“Hunter?” she repeated.
Malachi nodded. “If he thinks something about this situation stinks, then you can bet a whole box of air fresheners that it does. I’ll just be outside in the hallway,” he promised her, turning to share an enigmatic glance with Sinclair before he left the room and closed the door quietly.
Leaving a thunderous silence behind him.