“I have every right to want to see and identify the body that might be my mother or father!” Remy glared at Sinclair as she paced the sitting room of his suite.
It had been several hours since Casper delivered his news before going to check if he could find any more information on the body that had been netted by fishermen off the Cornish coast.
Remy now wore the same clothes she had earlier, although the jeans were less comfortable than they had been as they chafed against her throbbing bottom cheeks.
Sinclair wore tailored black trousers and a formal gray shirt unfastened at the throat, with the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows.
He didn’t even need to try to look every inch the sexy silver fox that he undoubtedly was.
“It’s better if we wait,” he now answered her patiently. “The detective told you on the phone that he’d call you immediately if he had any news.”
“I want—”
“Remy, the body they found has been in the water for at least a month,” Sinclair interrupted.
She’d called the detective dealing with the helicopter crash a short time after Casper delivered the news of another body having been found. The detective hadn’t wanted to confirm or deny it was either of her parents until they had the results of a DNA test and had checked dental records.
That last detail should have alerted her to the things Sinclair was hinting at but trying not to say.
Which was that the body that had been found was so badly compromised, they hadn’t even been able to tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Excuse me!” Remy placed a hand over her mouth as she ran to the bathroom, only just managing to reach and bend over the toilet bowl before she brought up the contents of her stomach.
Which, quite frankly, wasn’t much.
She’d hadn’t been eating well before the break-in at her parents’ home, but since then, she’d been too on edge to bother eating anything more than a few pieces of toast, washed down with several pots of coffee or tea. This morning, she hadn’t even bothered with the toast, too nervous at the thought of seeing Sinclair again. Then she’d drunk far too many cups of coffee in the hotel coffee shop waiting for him to leave the wedding.
The last thing she’d expected was for the two of them to be naked in the shower, and then in bed together, within hours of them meeting again!
An intimacy that had now taken on the same sense of unreality as her parents’ deaths, after Casper had dropped the bombshell of another body having been found.
Apparently, fishermen off the Cornish coast had hauled in their catch the previous night and found the remains of a body in amongst the fish. They’d instantly returned to their small fishing village and called in the find to the local police, who in turn had notified the detective in charge of her parents’ disappearance. The body was now at the nearest morgue for identification and autopsy.
Leaving Remy to pace Sinclair’s sitting room, her imagination running riot as she inwardly screamed at the possibility the body could be that of either of her parents.
A part of her, a slim part, admittedly, was still hoping they would both be found alive. The possibility they were both suffering with amnesia after the crash so they were unable to contact her was a big stretch of Remy’s—anyone’s—imagination. But without any proof of their death, desperation had a way of making even the most unlikely scenario seem possible.
Remy no longer had that hope.
Because a part of her knew, instinctively, that the body now in the morgue was one of her parents.
One of them.
Where the other one was, she had no idea.
She began retching again, only bringing up sour-tasting bile now there was no more liquid left inside her.
“It’s only me, Remy.”
She began to cry as a kneeling Sinclair placed a wet cloth against the heat of her forehead. “How could this happen?” she choked.
Sinclair didn’t answer as he gently wiped that cooling cloth over her cheeks and mouth before throwing it aside and sitting on the tiled floor to gently pull her so that she was sitting on his thighs as he held her in his arms.
Remy buried her face against his chest. “I had dinner with the two of them on my birthday just five weeks ago, the evening before they went away on their holiday to Wales, and now they’re both gone!” She didn’t doubt for a moment that it was only a matter of time until the body of her other parent was found.
Sinclair had no adequate words of comfort for what Remy was going through.
It had been mind-numbing for him when Cathy was kidnapped and then found murdered, despite him having paid the ransom money. But that had all happened within a matter of days.
It didn’t compare to this drawn-out heartbreak Remy was currently going through. The weeks of not knowing anything except that both her parents were missing. Now the agony of not knowing which one of her parents’ bodies might have been found, and who was still missing.
Sinclair stood with Remy still in his arms, then steadied her on her feet before releasing her. “I’m going to leave you here for a few minutes so you can freshen up while I go downstairs to get you something to eat and drink. You’ll find a new toothbrush in the cupboard beneath the sink. Once you’ve eaten and drunk something, you’re going to take a nap.”
“You might have spanked me like one, but I’m not a child,” she snapped as she flushed the toilet.
Sinclair was inwardly relieved at hearing the return of some of Remy’s previous spirit. “I spanked you like the desirable woman you are.”
She looked up at him through tear-wet lashes. “Did you?”
“Yes.” He raised his hand to lift her chin so that he could look directly into her face. “We have unfinished business,” he reminded huskily.
A blush replaced the pallor in her cheeks. “I’m sorry I didn’t—you didn’t—”
Sinclair’s fingers against her lips stopped her from finishing that sentence. “We have all night,” he assured as he removed those fingers.
She swallowed. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Am I succeeding?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He nodded his satisfaction before his hand dropped to his side. “You’ll be staying in my suite with me tonight. In my bed. Any arguments with that arrangement?”
“None.” She moistened those delectable lips with the tip of her tongue. “Sinclair, you have to know I’ve always l— Will you stop doing that?” She glared at him as she reared back from the fingers he’d once again tried to place against her lips. “It’s extremely annoying,” she snapped.
Sinclair was sure it was, but it had also been very necessary. He couldn’t be sure Remy had been about to use the L-word, but he’d prefer it if this situation with her missing parents and the break-in at the Mitchells’ home had been dealt with before they talked about what their feelings might be for each other.
Because they certainly existed.
At least for Sinclair, and he thought the same was true for Remy.
He didn’t believe it was coincidence that Remy was the woman to wake his libido from hibernation. After the heat and passion of their lovemaking earlier, a part of him now believed that it’d had to be Remy. That if they hadn’t met again, his sex drive would never have reawakened.
Had he felt this way about her five years ago?
Absolutely not.
But this Remy, the woman with fire in her eyes and seduction on her lips, hadn’t just woken his libido, she’d cracked and then melted the ice about his heart.
Ready for it to be broken?
Again?
Sinclair needed to spend more time with her before he knew the answer to that.
“Hey, Remy.”
“Hi, Remy.”
“What the hell is it with you Kingston men?” Remy glared across the kitchen as two more of the Kingston brothers, the thirty-six-year-old twins, Felix and Darius, entered the kitchen.
Despite the fact it was late at night, Remy was sitting in the breakfast nook eating the scrambled eggs and toast Sinclair had insisted on making for her, all washed down with a welcome mug of tea.
She shook her head. “You all act like we only met yesterday when the truth is I haven’t set eyes on any of you for years!”
Felix strolled over to lean down and kiss her cheek. “Doesn’t mean we haven’t missed you.”
“Yeah,” Darius echoed gruffly as he followed his twin in kissing her on the cheek.
The two men were fraternal twins rather than identical. Felix was the accountant of the family, and he tended to dress formally, Darius liked to wear faded jeans and T-shirts. Strangely, Felix kept his dark hair jaw-length, and Darius, who had been in the army along with Adam and Max, kept his military short. They both had the Kingston rugged good looks, with designer stubble on their jaws and piercing blue eyes.
“I was living in London this whole time.” Remy wasn’t about to let them off the hook that easily.
“Yeah, well.” Darius glanced over to where Sinclair was pouring coffee into three mugs. “We thought, in the circumstances, it was less confusing for you if we stayed away.”
“What circumstances?” Remy frowned her puzzlement.
“The fact your—”
“That’s enough,” Sinclair snapped, placing the three mugs of coffee on the table as he cut across whatever Felix had been about to say. “Did you do what Malachi asked you to do?”
Darius nodded. “There’s a bag of Remy’s things waiting out in the hallway.”
“What things?” she demanded, her head starting to spin with these sudden changes of topic.
“Any of the clothes you took to your parents’ house were destroyed along with their things,” Sinclair explained. “I asked Mal to have Darius and Felix go to your apartment and pick up some clothes for you after they left the wedding reception.”
Remy placed her teacup carefully down on the table in front of her. “My locked apartment in a secure building with twenty-four-seven surveillance cameras? That apartment?”
Darius’s teeth gleamed white against the dark scruff on his jaw as he grinned. “Too easy,” he assured as he laced together and then cracked his fingers.
It felt to Remy as if her stomach had completely turned over in her abdomen at hearing Felix and Darius had been inside her apartment. Not that she had anything to hide, but there were a lot of photographs of the Kingston family amongst the ones of her with her parents. In all of them, without exception, Sinclair was front and center.
Darius eyed her teasingly. “We didn’t stop to look at any of your porn.”
She snorted. “Because there isn’t any.” She avoided looking at Sinclair, but she could feel the heat of a blush in her cheeks, nevertheless. She gave a shake of her head as she included all three brothers in her sweeping glance. “Why did I never realize your total disregard for the law when I was younger?”
“Possibly because you didn’t know to look for it,” Felix drawled as he sat down opposite her.
“Or you were bedazzled by how handsome we all are,” Darius suggested with another sideways glance at Sinclair.
“And we don’t totally disregard all laws,” Felix added.
“Just the ones you decide don’t apply to you,” she guessed knowingly.
“Exactly,” Darius confirmed as he nudged his twin along the bench seat so he could sit down.
Leaving Sinclair to slide onto the seat beside Remy.
She’d been fighting thinking of their earlier intimacy since coming down to the kitchen. The pleasure of having Sinclair’s hands and mouth on her. But it was impossible to continue doing that with the heat of his thigh pressing against hers beneath the table, at the same time as she breathed in the subtle lemon and pine of his cologne.
Who was she trying to kid!
Certainly not herself.
How could she when she knew everything about Sinclair, from that salt-and-pepper hair to his long and elegant feet, filled and claimed her and all her senses every time she was anywhere near him.
She kept her face averted as she sensed his gaze on her. “So, what happens next?”
Darius shrugged. “Well, it’s been a long day, and I’m going to bed as soon as I’ve finished my coffee.”
“Me too,” Felix confirmed. “Weddings are bloody exhausting.”
It seemed a very long time ago, days instead of hours, since Remy had waylaid Sinclair at the hotel when he was leaving his brother and cousin’s wedding reception. So much had happened since then. Too much for Remy to be able to take it all in. Least of all the fact that Sinclair had asked her if she had any argument with sharing his bed tonight, to which she’d answered no.
“I think we should go to bed too.” Sinclair seemed to read her thoughts. “The police have your cell phone number and the landline here, but it’s probably too soon for us to hear any more information from them tonight anyway.”
Information such as the identity of the body that had been found, along with the cause of death. Although if the body was either of Remy’s parents, the impact of the helicopter crashing into the Irish Sea would be reason enough for that. Remy only hoped it had been on impact and that they hadn’t been alive, alone, and floating in the Irish Sea until their body just gave out or some predator had smelled blood in the water and—
“Let’s go.” Sinclair stood before grasping hold of her arm and pulling her to her feet beside him. “We’ll see you two in the morning,” he told his brothers.
“Have a good night.”
“Same.”
Remy barely had time to give Felix and Darius a wan smile before Sinclair pulled her from the room.
The moment they were out in the hallway, he clasped hold of her hands and swung her to face him before backing her up against the wall, much as she’d done to him earlier. “The only thing you’re going to think of tonight is me and pleasure,” he told her gruffly, his gaze holding hers as he lifted her arms to hold her hands captive against the wall above her head. “Do you understand?”
How could Remy not understand when the proof of his arousal was once again pressing against her abdomen?
When her own body had reacted instantly to his proximity, her breasts heavy and aching, between her thighs becoming hot and wet with her arousal?
“If you share my bed, I’m not going to accept anything less than all of you,” he told her grimly. “If you can’t give me that, then I’ll show you to one of the guest bedrooms.”
There was something beneath the hardness of Sinclair’s tone, an underlying edge of…of what? If Remy had to guess, she would have said it was hurt more than arrogance.
But that couldn’t be right, could it?
Sinclair said there hadn’t been any other women for him since Cathy died, and Remy had always assumed Sinclair and Cathy were happy together. They both had their careers, and admittedly, their marriage had been childless, but they’d seemed happy enough together.
Seemed happy.
Could she, could they all, have been wrong about that?