Having finally said those words out loud, Rosie now dropped heavily onto the couch, sitting forward to once again pick up the glass of brandy and empty it of its contents in one swallow before putting it down again. The raw alcohol robbed her of breath for several seconds as it burned its way down her throat.
But it was nowhere near as painful as the absolute terror that had been burning in Rosie’s chest since she’d realized her sister was missing.
“Why have you only just discovered Cara is missing?” Max probed. “Aren’t the two of you close?”
Rosie looked up at him blankly for several minutes, knowing from his compelling expression that he would wait as long as it took for her to answer him.
Something seemed to have stilled inside her now that she’d told him Cara was missing. As if, having passed that burden onto Max, she was at liberty to fall apart. Which, as well as allowing the tears to now fall hotly down her cheeks, seemed to involve the inability to think or speak.
“Rosie.” Max came down on his haunches in front of her to lightly smooth the tears from her cheeks before resting his hands on top of hers. “How do you know Cara is missing?”
Rosie found it difficult to think when Max was touching her.
Being held in his arms earlier had been both ecstasy and agony.
Ecstasy, because she’d reveled in the brute strength she could feel beneath that tailored tuxedo. She’d also become almost lightheaded on the clean and muscular scent of him.
Agony, because she knew he would never feel the same complete awareness of her she’d felt for him since the moment she’d first looked at him a year ago.
Oh, for just a few tense seconds, it had felt as if they were looking into each other’s hearts. As if their souls had seen and recognized each other, even if Max and Rosie didn’t.
But the moment Max stepped away from her, that feeling had dissipated.
The fact Max was touching her again now, with not an ounce of softness revealed in those hard and chiseled features, told her she must have imagined he felt the same connection to her as she felt toward him.
She now forced herself to concentrate on how she knew Cara was missing.
The sisters had each been left money from their mother, to be inherited when they reached the age of twenty-one. Cara had used some of her inheritance to move out of their father’s home three years ago after she’d left university. Rosie had lived with Cara for the second and third years of her university course, but moved out a year ago to open her own florist shop and live in the apartment above.
As they were no longer living in the same house, the two sisters spoke on the phone every day instead. Well, mostly every day. Cara could occasionally be a little vague about time, usually when she became lost in finishing one of her paintings.
Which was why Rosie hadn’t thought too much of it when Cara didn’t answer her call that first day. Cara was really busy at the moment finishing and preparing a dozen or so of her paintings to be ready for an exhibition due to take place in a prestigious London gallery at the end of the month.
When Cara hadn’t answered Rosie’s call the second day or the third, she’d gone to visit her father to ask if he’d spoken to Cara. He’d grudgingly admitted he hadn’t heard from her either for several days. He’d warned Rosie not to make such a fuss about it that the media would learn of her concern, adding that Cara had probably “gone away for a few days with that new boyfriend of hers.”
The latter was a possibility, of course, but Rosie had still gone to Cara’s house. She’d rung the doorbell several times and banged on the door before deciding to use her own key to let herself in. The two of them had keys to each other’s homes.
The apartment and studio were both empty.
It wasn’t only Cara who was absent, but most of her paintings were gone too. The ones that were to be included in the exhibition next month, anyway.
Rosie knew Cara worked haphazardly. Sometimes she was driven to finish a painting in a couple of days; other times, she would leave the canvas to come back to when the mood struck her, often days or even weeks later.
But there should have been more paintings in the studio then, ready for them to be delivered to the gallery at the end of the week.
“Is your father aware Cara is missing?” Max prompted at her silence.
She was reluctant to admit her father was more concerned about Rosie creating bad publicity that might impact his political career than he was his missing daughter. To the extent he’d labeled Rosie’s concerns as her being overdramatic.
For several seconds after he made that accusation, Rosie had asked herself if it was possible that was what she was being.
Only to dismiss it just as quickly.
Admittedly, Cara could become distracted by work and often forgot to call or visit Rosie, but she knew Cara would never go away without telling her. Not even with that “new boyfriend.”
She grimaced. “I’m sure you’ve realized by now, despite how my father likes it to appear in public, neither Cara nor I are a priority to him. I’m sure that if one of us was on fire directly in front of him, he might ask Margot—our stepmother—to go and get a glass of water. Problem is, he’d then probably drink it rather than put the fire out,” she added disgustedly.
“Why is that?”
Rosie sighed. “Things changed after my mother died. I think…and I don’t know for certain…that maybe we remind him too much of her and the past. A part of me would like to think that’s why he never talks about her.” She grimaced. “But he does like to say I never listen to him. Which is true,” she acknowledged before sobering. “He also thinks Cara should be over our mother’s death by now.”
“But she isn’t?”
Rosie scowled. “Is there a way to get over experiencing something so shocking? Because if there is, then I wish someone would tell me what it is.” She might not remember what happened after her mother was killed that day, but she did know of the loneliness in the years that followed. A loneliness she and Cara both still felt at no longer having their warm and loving mother’s presence in their lives.
Claudia had been beautiful, both inside and out, and full of fun that usually involved arranging some sort of treat for her two daughters. All that light and laughter had disappeared from Rosie’s and Cara’s lives after Claudia’s death. Margot, so much closer in age to her two stepdaughters than she was her husband, had never even tried to fill that role in their lives.
“You’re just better at hiding your feelings than your sister is,” Max now guessed.
Rosie grimaced. “Which doesn’t mean I don’t inwardly think my father is a selfish arsehole.”
Max snorted at her honesty. “Most politicians are.”
She shook her head. “He only ever thought of himself long before he became a politician.”
“Rosie—”
“Don’t.” She waved off his soothing tone. “If he hadn’t taken that case against Kirill Bortkov in order to further his law career, none of what followed would have happened and my mother would still be alive. Yes, I know how irrational that sounds, but he did take the case and my mother is dead.” She huffed. “There’s nothing my father could say to two daughters, aged only twelve and fourteen years old, why three innocent bodyguards and their mother were shot and killed in front of them by three men employed by a Russian mobster they had never even heard of until he decided he wanted the kudos of being the lawyer prosecuting him for murder.”
Max doubted anyone or anything could explain something like that in a way that would ever erase the horror of those events.
Even so, a part of him wished that he could take away the shadows lurking in the depths of Rosie’s beautiful green eyes.
Unfortunately, experience told him that wasn’t possible.
His brother, Sinclair, hadn’t been present when Cathy was killed, and none of that violent death had shown on her face when Max accompanied his brother to identify her body at the mortuary. But Sinclair’s actions since then showed that it wasn’t necessary to see someone you loved being killed in an act of violence, only to know that they had been.
“No one could have foreseen what would happen next,” Max attempted to soothe. The gravity of this conversation had at least caused his cock to deflate.
“My father could!” she denied vehemently as she rose to her feet.
Max straightened slowly. He didn’t particularly like Richard Smythe, but… “He could probably have guessed there might be some sort of recriminations threatened against him, but he couldn’t possibly have known that would be the kidnapping of his wife and daughters—”
“He knew exactly what would happen if he went ahead with prosecuting the case!” Rosie insisted angrily.
“What do you mean…?” Max prompted slowly; Rosie had spoken with such conviction he couldn’t help but think she knew exactly what she was saying.
“He was warned what would happen.”
“Warned?”
She gave a skeptical snort. “Your brother Casper wouldn’t have read that in any of the reports he hacked.”
“Tell me now.”
“My father received several threats through personal emails before the trial even began.”
Max tensed. Surely that stupid bastard couldn’t have…? Jesus. “Threatening what?” he prompted softly.
“That his wife and children would be the ones who paid if he went ahead with the trial.”
“Fucking hell!” Max exploded, his hands clenching at his sides at having his suspicion confirmed. “Why were you so sure that wasn’t in the police reports?”
“Why do you think!”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me.”
She gave a humorless smile. “Is it all women you like to tell what to do, or just me?”
Max knew he was a bossy bastard. He always had been. But Rosie brought out something inside him, a need to protect at any cost, that caused him to behave above and beyond his normal level of arrogance.
“Do you use that commanding voice in the bedroom too?” she softly derided.
He really wished she hadn’t said that, because now his cock had decided it wanted in on the action again. “Only if the woman wants me to,” he answered her mockingly, and was instantly granted the pleasure of seeing the blush that entered Rosie’s cheeks.
Her eyes glittered. “I advise you stop using it on me, anywhere, and right now.” All her previous teasing had left her voice.
His mouth tightened. “And my advice to you is that you stop trying to distract me and answer the fucking question!”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Fucking tell me!” He was barely keeping it together as it was.
“Because those threats were sent before we were kidnapped, and the police had become involved. My father didn’t see the need to tell the police about them after the event.”
Max stared at her incredulously. “Why the hell not?”
“You would have to ask him that,” Rosie said with obvious disgust.
Max could take a guess on why someone as self-serving as Richard Smythe had ignored the threat made against his family. But this was Kirill Bortkov they were talking about, the Russian reputed to be responsible, but never prosecuted for the death of hundreds of people in his role as pakhan.
Once the trial began, the police would have been prepared and watching for any form of threat or retribution against the Ferrari-Smythe family. But for Richard to have received those threats privately, and then not shared them with the police, was pure madness.
He frowned. “How is that you know about those private emails when the police didn’t?”
She snorted. “Because my father printed them off and put them in a file he locked away in a drawer of the desk in his study. He then deleted them and scrapped his laptop after destroying the hard drive.”
“Then how do you know about them?”
“Because I found the printed file and read its contents.”
“Fucking hell!” Max exploded again.
“Indeed,” she agreed hollowly.
His gaze narrowed on her. “By found them, I’m guessing you mean you broke into the drawer in your father’s desk?”
Rosie shrugged. “A nail file can be used for more than smoothing your nails.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since I was sixteen.”
“Rosie…” he gasped softly.
“Don’t take that pitying tone with me, because I neither want nor need it.”
“Then talk to me.” He encouraged this time rather than ordered.
She sighed heavily. “It was hell living in that house without my mother. Made worse for me because, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t remember what had happened to us that day after she was killed.” Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “Then my father remarried and the situation became even worse. Oh, Margot isn’t cruel or unkind to us, she just has no interest in relating to two stepdaughters not much younger than she is. Cara and I were at boarding school most of the time anyway, so it wasn’t particularly a problem. During those years, I accepted what I’d been told had happened, but by the time I was sixteen, I felt sure there had to be something more.”
“And there was?”
She nodded abruptly. “Hard copy of emails that proved my father is as much of a selfish bastard as I had come to think he was,” she stated bleakly. “That furthering his career mattered more to him than the lives of his wife and daughters.”
It was a bad idea for Max to want to take her in his arms again.
On so many levels.
Except, as she’d so bravely broken into Kingston Manor, facing down the dogs and then Adam and Max, he couldn’t bear to see how vulnerable Rosie looked so suddenly. As if having shared all these things with him, she now felt as if she was no longer alone in her suffering.
Because she wasn’t.
No matter what else happened, Max was going to help Rosie find her sister.
But that could wait a little longer, because right now, the bewilderment and pain he could see in her face meant that holding her was his main—his only—priority.
She didn’t resist as he slid his arms about her waist and molded her body against his.
Dear God, none of the fantasies he’d had about this woman had told him how perfectly her soft curves would fit against his much harder ones. Or how her perfume, that mixture of citrus and floral along with something else he recognized as the underlying feminine spice of arousal, would invade and saturate his senses.
Did that arousal mean Rosie was as attracted to him as he was to her?
Max couldn’t tear his gaze away from the perfect bow of her slightly parted, full lips. They looked so soft and enticing, promising a depth of pleasure Max had never known before. He knew it was because this was Rosie, the woman he—
“I’ve never actually been into voyeurism,” Rosie taunted softly. “Especially if it’s going to involve me.”
Effectively reminding Max that Adam was still in the adjoining room watching the two of them through the two-way mirror.
Max released Rosie so abruptly that she stumbled back before regaining her balance.
Max ran his hand over the dark stubble on his scalp. Damn it, this situation was already complicated enough without adding giving in to his attraction to Rosie into the mix. “I need to talk to Sinclair and Casper.” More importantly, he needed to get out of this room and away from Rosie.
Now.
Before he did something both irrevocable and unforgivable.
“Why do you need to talk to them?” Rosie’s words stopped him at the door.
Max glanced back at her. “Because they’re the two people I’m going to need to help me track down your missing sister.”
Of course, Max was going to need the help of some of his brothers if they were going to find Cara, Rosie chided herself.
How could she have forgotten Cara, even for those few seconds of being held in Max’s arms?
Because merely being in the same room as Max Kingston was disturbing enough, but when he held her in his arms, he owned every one of her senses.
Sight.
Sound.
Smell.
Touch.
Those four things combined were so potent, Rosie had literally been able to taste the heat of him, along with the scent of trees and woodsmoke. Those latter two essences were probably his aftershave or cologne, but they were mixed with a heat and spice that was uniquely Max.
When she had seen him a year ago, there had been three hundred other people in the room, but even then, Rosie had been able to sense the powerful force that was Max Kingston, to the extent those other people had ceased to exist for her.
She’d reveled in his aura of danger that night.
Even after Max left the event, she’d remained aware of the all-consuming power he’d exuded.
And she’d instinctively known he would, if necessary, use it as a cloak to put around anyone he believed to be in need of his help.
Which was the very reason she had come here this evening.
Wasn’t it?
All she knew was that she had instinctively known Max would help her find Cara.
“She grew up,” Adam murmured, the two men watching Rosie through the two-way mirror as she restlessly paced the adjoining room.
“Yes, she did.”
“Into a very beautiful woman,” Adam admired.
“Yes,” Max acknowledged gruffly.
“She’s also brave as hell just for coming here in the way she did.”
“Yes,” Max confirmed almost with pride.
Both men knew it could so easily have been different. That after the kidnapping, Rosie having witnessed the death of her mother, along with being responsible for shooting the kidnapper who had killed her mother, she could have simply shut down emotionally.
A part of her had, Max reminded himself. He knew now that Rosie’s own mind had protected her all these years from remembering events immediately after her mother was killed in front of her.
But that didn’t stop her from being one of the bravest people he had ever met. She had proved that this evening by breaking into the estate, taming the dogs, and then demanding to speak to him.
He still had no idea why she had made that particular demand, but he was relieved she had. The thought of anyone else, another man, helping her to find Cara was totally unacceptable.
Adam glanced sideways at him. “Smythe didn’t tell anyone he was warned privately of what would happen to his family if he went ahead with the trial,” he stated flatly.
“I always thought he was a selfish bastard,” Max grated, his hands clenched at his sides.
“Agreed,” Adam snapped, then added curiously, “I hadn’t realized Rosie didn’t remember what happened that day.”
He grimaced. “Me either.”
“I wondered why it was she hadn’t recognized either of us.” Adam glanced at him again. “Although she definitely reacted to hearing the sound of your voice.”
Max released an uneven breath. “I noticed.” Impossible to miss the way Rosie had startled as if she’d been Tasered the moment Max spoke to her. “It could mean nothing.”
Or it could mean everything.
Max hadn’t needed to see the sealed report Casper had unearthed, written by the officer in charge of the special forces team involved in rescuing the Ferrari-Smythe women.
Because he’d written it.