“You’ll be staying here until after this situation with your sister is resolved,” Max now stated evenly.
“I most certainly will not,” Rosie answered just as firmly. “For one thing, I have an apartment of my own and a business to run. Secondly, I don’t intend to just sit back and let you do all the work. I want to continue looking for Cara too,” she told Max determinedly when he would have interrupted. “Part of that means my going back to my apartment in case Cara tries to contact me.”
Max took something out of the breast pocket of his jacket and held it out to her. “You don’t need to be at your apartment for Cara to call you on this.”
Rosie took what she recognized as being her own cell phone. “You found and searched my car.”
“Some of our men did, yes.” He nodded. “And the great thing about a cell phone is that you don’t have to be at home for people to be able to reach you on it,” he added dryly.
She glared at him. “You’re resorting to sarcasm now?”
“It’s part of his charm,” Sinclair drawled.
“Really?” Rosie’s brows rose. “Personally, I just find it irritating. Aaaand,” she added before either man could speak again, “I repeat, I’m not staying here.”
“You’ll be far safer if you do,” Sinclair insisted.
“I’m not the one in danger!”
“You don’t know that any more than we do,” Sinclair reasoned.
Rosie drew back. “Why would I be in danger?”
He shrugged. “We have no way of knowing what’s going on with Cara until we locate her. The sensible thing while we do that is for you to remain here.”
Rosie scowled her irritation. “And the last time I checked, I’m an independent, twenty-two-year-old woman, who can decide for myself what I will or won’t do.”
“Then I advise you decide to accept our invitation to stay here as our guest,” Max bit out tersely. “At least until we’ve located your sister and can confirm her having gone missing is voluntary and that you aren’t going to be taken next,” Max bit out tersely.
She breathed heavily. “I don’t remember anyone actually inviting me to stay here. Nor did it sound as if I’d be a guest!”
“You would be,” he replied evenly.
“Guests can come and go whenever they wish.”
“So can you.”
She raised her brows. “Without an escort?”
“No,” both Kingston brothers answered at the same time.
She glared at Max first and then Sinclair, knowing from their similar stubborn and implacable expressions that neither man was going to give an inch.
Rosie knew they were essentially right in surmising that if Cara did contact her, it was more likely to be on her cell phone than actually arriving at Rosie’s apartment.
But the thought of not doing something to help find her sister didn’t sit well with her.
Besides, there really was no reason to think she might be in any personal danger.
“I still have my business to run,” she insisted stubbornly.
“You also have a very capable assistant manager who can do that for you for the next few days,” Sinclair stated. “It’s in your file,” he stated when both Rosie and Max turned to look at him.
“My file?” Rosie couldn't believe Sinclair had kept tabs on her. “Why on earth would you have a file on me?”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “You’re a person of interest.”
“To whom?”
Sinclair glanced briefly at a tight-mouthed Max before turning back to Rosie. “To me,” he answered quietly.
Her eyes narrowed. “Does that have anything to do with the fact I was kidnapped ten years ago?”
His brow cleared. “It does, yes.”
Rosie had the feeling Sinclair wasn’t telling her the truth, not all of it, at least. But looking into cold, arctic-blue eyes, she doubted Sinclair Kingston was ever completely honest with anyone, regarding his actions or his feelings, perhaps not even himself.
A realization that in no way mitigated his admitted intrusion into her private life. He really had become like that spider since the death of his wife.
It seemed to her that in the past five years, Sinclair had woven his web, strand by silken strand, before sitting in the center of it to tug a little here and a lot there. All to suit himself, and to hell with everyone and everything else, least of all personal privacy.
“What else does your file tell you about me?” Rosie challenged.
The tension eased slightly from his shoulders. “Well, the guy you had dinner with two months ago was only interested in the money left to you by your mother, and the one you went to the cinema with a couple of weeks ago already has a wife—”
“What the fuck, Sinclair?” Max scowled at his brother.
Sinclair gave a disinterested shrug. “It’s the truth.”
He might well be right; Rosie had quickly come to the conclusion herself that she didn’t trust or want to see either of those men again, after only going on one date with each of them.
But it made her uneasy to think Sinclair had been monitoring her movements so closely that it included checking out the last two men she’d dated. Obviously, he no longer had any respect for the concept of personal space and privacy.
“Have you been watching Cara too?” she demanded as the idea suddenly occurred to her. “Although, I’m warning you here and now…you had better stop spying on me!”
“Or?” the eldest Kingston brother challenged.
Rosie narrowed her eyes. “Or I’m going to report you to the police for stalking me.”
“Which I will deny.”
“And I will counter accuse.”
“Go ahead,” Sinclair dismissed far too confidently for Rosie’s liking.
“You—”
“The two of you are giving me a fucking headache!” Max raised his hands to rub his fingers against his temples. “You,” he told Sinclair when he would have spoken, “can shut the fuck up because you’re seriously not helping this situation. And you”—he turned to Rosie—“you’re staying right here until this situation has been settled to my satisfaction. And I don’t give a fuck whether you like it or not.”
Her lips thinned. “I don’t.”
“Duly noted.”
“And ignored.”
“Yes,” he bit out between clenched teeth.
“I don’t have anything with me except what I’m wearing.”
“Which looks very nice on you,” Sinclair complimented.
She gave him a scathing glance. “They aren’t clothes I can sleep in. Nor would I want to when I’ve been wearing them all evening.”
“To make it easier to scale a ten-foot-high wall,” Sinclair admired again.
Max gave his brother another scowl before turning back to Rosie. “I can lend you a T-shirt of mine to sleep in tonight— No?” He frowned when she glared her displeasure.
“No.” As hyperaware of Max as she was, even the thought of wearing something of his to sleep in made it hard for her to breathe. If it was a T-shirt he had already worn, it would be so much worse. Her nipples engorged, and between her thighs felt hot and moist, at the thought of it.
He shrugged. “Then Adam can go to your apartment and pick up some things for you on his way back from checking out Cara’s house and studio.”
She gave a shake of her head. “He doesn’t have the keys to enter— I’m guessing, from the pitying look on both your faces that Adam doesn’t need keys to get into my apartment, any more than he needs them to enter my sister’s house?”
“You guess correctly,” Max confirmed.
She huffed her frustration with these two incredibly arrogant men. “And if I don’t like the idea of him pawing through my underwear drawer?”
A nerve pulsed in Max’s now tightly clenched jaw. “Okay, you win. I’ll drive you to your apartment myself, and you can pick out any clothing you might need to stay here for the next few days.”
“If I’m back in my apartment, I might as well remain there,” she announced with a triumphant smirk in his direction.
“Your car would still be here,” Sinclair reasoned.
She shrugged. “I don’t need my car when I have a van to make floral deliveries.”
“A van which one of your employees is also insured to drive to make those deliveries.”
At this point, Rosie saw no reason to even ask Sinclair how he could possibly know that. He was a seriously worrisome—and dangerous?—man.
More so than Max?
Maybe in a different way…but oh yes.
“Also, tomorrow is Saturday, your last working day of the week,” Sinclair noted. “Your shop closes on Sunday and Monday, so you staying on here won’t be a problem at all for those two days.”
A very dangerous man, Rosie mentally concluded.
She was doing this for Cara, she reminded herself. The sister she loved and who was currently missing. “Have you been watching Cara too?” she asked Sinclair.
He grimaced. “No.”
She looked puzzled. “Why not, if you’ve been spying on me?”
Sinclair looked at Max again, and there followed some sort of ocular conversation between them Rosie couldn’t even begin to understand.
Sinclair was the one to answer her. “It’s called surveillance, not spying. And Cara wasn’t the twelve-year-old girl responsible for shooting one of the men who kidnapped her and her family.”
Rosie’s expression became pained as she gave a shake of her head. “I don’t remember doing that.”
Sinclair shrugged. “That doesn’t make it any less the truth.”
She gave a pained frown. “Are you implying that makes me emotionally unstable and so in need of being watched—sorry, kept under surveillance—in case I have another ‘episode’ and shoot someone else?”
“Not at all.” Sinclair gave a half smile at the accusation. “You’re one of the most exceptionally levelheaded young women I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. You’re also strong and brave. And it really doesn’t matter whether or not you remember shooting that man. All reports on the incident say that’s exactly what you did. That required a level of courage unexpected in a girl aged only twelve.”
Rosie swallowed before answering. “I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with being brave and everything to do with the fact I had just seen that bastard shoot and kill my mother. That’s what I’ve always assumed happened, anyway, and the police confirmed it.”
Sinclair’s gaze was almost warm as he continued to look at her. “The why doesn’t matter either. What does is that you did what you needed to do. Not Cara, who’s two years older, but you.”
Rosie stared at him for several long seconds, not quite sure what to make of this conversation. But perhaps there was no sense to make of it and this was all just as fucked up as the rest of her life felt right now.
She turned to Max. “Can we go and collect my things now?”
Max had no problem agreeing to do that. In truth, he was relieved to have a reason to bring this conversation with his brother to a close. Not because he didn’t agree with Sinclair’s opinion on Rosie’s courage in the past, and again this evening, but because he could see how uncomfortable that praise, and Sinclair, were making her.
Because, although Rosie didn’t remember what happened ten years ago, as far as she was concerned, her actions then and again tonight, arose from a need to protect her sister. Rosie didn’t see herself as needing to be brave to do any of that.
The family rarely saw Sinclair nowadays, and when they did, he barely spoke to any of them. Max wished that was the case now too. Every word out of Sinclair’s mouth just seemed to make Rosie more defensive.
And Max had no idea what the hell Sinclair thought he was doing having a file on Rosie!
A file Max had every intention of demanding to see the moment he was able to do so. He wanted to know the names of the two men Rosie had dated in the past couple of months, the one after her money and the other already married. Once he did, he doubted he would be able to stop himself from paying both those men a little visit.
He sincerely hoped, for their sakes, that neither of them had managed to charm his way into her bed. If they had, then Max’s desire to pay them a visit would take on a whole other meaning.
God knows he’d ached with wanting Rosie when he saw her again a year ago.
Tonight, that want had blazed inside him into an inferno that couldn’t and wouldn’t be assuaged by anything less than Rosie’s complete surrender.