“No!” Lara cut fiercely into the conversation that had been taking place in her apartment for the past hour.
As she’d expected, the Kingston family were both loud and forceful as they argued and bandied ideas about as to what should be done next to solve her brother’s problem. All of them seemed to agree on playing a waiting game.
Except her.
“Lara—”
“No,” she said again as Malachi would have tried to placate her. “This might be a random client to all of you, but it isn’t to me. This is my brother. It’s his life and career you’re all talking about in such a businesslike manner, when there is literally only a matter of days left before Gerard Taylor blows all that to hell by publicly humiliating Thom.” She glared at each member of the family in turn.
The three women’s expressions were full of compassion, the men’s all as hard as the rock they looked as if their faces were hewn from.
One by one, those hard expressions softened, until only Sinclair continued to look forbidding. “We all appreciate how important you are to Malachi, and by extension, that makes you and your family equally as important to us. But in situations like this, we have to remain detached in order to ensure we make the right move at the appropriate time.”
Lara snorted. “Is that what you did when your first wife was kidnapped?” She regretted the comment as soon as she made it, the words she hadn’t said—and is that why she’s dead—starkly obvious. “Oh God,” she choked as she buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, that was completely uncalled for.”
“Yes, it was,” Malachi bit out.
Tears stung her eyes at the lack of forgiveness in his tone. That lack of emotion was normal for Malachi, of course, but somehow it seemed worse in this situation. Just as the silence in the room seemed charged with… Lara had no idea what it was charged with, but she knew it was bloody uncomfortable.
These people, Malachi’s family, had come here at his request, to discuss what they could do to help her and Thom. None of them had known that was the reason before they arrived. It had been enough that Malachi had asked them to come here.
She lowered her hands. “I’m really sorry, Sinclair,” she apologized again. “Please forgive me.”
“Of course,” he accepted smoothly.
Her grimace was pained. “I don’t know you very well yet, and maybe now I never will.” She glanced toward Malachi and was met with only his expressionless face before she turned back to Sinclair. “But even I can tell your comment wasn’t sincere.” She sighed. “I really am grateful to all of you for at least wanting to help my brother.”
“But?” Max sounded amused rather than annoyed.
“Your solution is too slow for me to agree to it,” she admitted. “Thom is on the edge of having a nervous breakdown, and I need to do something before that happens or the recording is released.”
“Does he even know you’re trying to solve this problem for him?” Casper prompted shrewdly.
Lara tensed. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Does he?” he persisted.
“No,” she admitted grudgingly.
Thom was her older brother, and he took his duties very seriously. The only reason he had confided in her about the events of that night was because he had known that as a nurse she would understand why he couldn’t, ever, steal drugs from the patients at the hospital where he worked.
Lara had decided she was going to do something about the situation because she took her younger-sister duties just as seriously.
“That’s what I thought.” Casper nodded. “The man in this recording doesn’t look like the type who would be happy having his little sister involving herself in this situation in a way that might result in her being harmed.”
“The man in… Have you succeeded in hacking into the memory stick?” Lara rushed over to the breakfast bar to look over Casper’s shoulder to try to see the images.
Casper immediately lowered the screen so the image was no longer visible. “You don’t need to see that.”
“And you do?” she snapped, having already seen enough to understand Thom’s feelings of humiliation. “Oh God, I’ve done it again,” she groaned. “I’m sorry, Casper. You didn’t deserve that either.” He’d spent over an hour now totally concentrating on hacking into Taylor’s memory stock. For her. For Thom.
“It’s understandable that you’re upset,” Darius put in smoothly. “I suggest we all leave Malachi and Lara alone for now.” He turned to his family. “We can continue our conversation elsewhere.”
“I really do appreciate you wanting to help my brother,” she told them in a please-forgive-me voice.
“You just don’t think we can do it,” Adam stated.
Heat burned her cheeks at the unmistakeable reprimand in his tone. “Malachi believes you can, and that’s enough for me,” she assured huskily.
“Good answer,” Adam said appreciatively as he helped Cara to stand before doing so himself and then linking his fingers with his wife’s. “Okay, you heard Darius. Let’s go,” he instructed the rest of the family as he walked toward the door.
The excess of testosterone in the room had been almost tangible for the past couple of hours. So much so that Lara was surprised when, five minutes later, all the Kingston men and their wives had taken their leave. Except Malachi. He remained, silent and worryingly unapproachable.
What had she been thinking to talk to Sinclair and Casper that way? She hadn’t been thinking, only feeling, and those raw emotions had caused her to be hurtful and disrespectful to two of the men who were trying to help her and Thom. Worse, the were two of Malachi’s brothers.
“I’ll apologize again when I next see them. If I see them again,” she added with a wince. “I just… It was… There’s no excuse for my rudeness,” she finally acknowledged.
“No, there isn’t,” he agreed.
She looked at him pleadingly. “Malachi.”
“It’s late. You need to get ready to go to work.” He strode toward the door.
“I— Malachi!” she cried out as he opened the door and seemed about to leave without even saying goodbye to her. “When will I see you again?”
“I’ll contact you when I have something to tell you.”
She swallowed, hard. “I can’t decipher what your emotions are right now, but I can guess.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” He opened the door and left without saying another word.
Which was when Lara burst into heartbroken sobs.
She had only known Malachi for a matter of days, but imagining her life without him in it already made the future look bleak and very, very cold.
* * *
Malachi wasn’t surprised to see his family standing outside talking quietly together beside their parked vehicles when he let himself out of Lara’s apartment building.
“She’s a firecracker.” Sinclair gave him an appreciative slap on the back. “I approve.”
“Gutsy and unafraid, even when confronted by all of us in one room,” Remy agreed. “I can’t think of too many people who could do that.”
Adam nodded. “She’s going to fit in nicely.”
Cara chuckled. “Any woman who can go head-to-head with one of you, let alone two, has my vote.”
“And mine.” Rosie grinned.
“On that basis, I think we can all agree Taylor is a piece of shit wrapped up in an Armani suit,” Casper said with feeling.
“Without a doubt,” Darius agreed. “Now tell us what you didn’t want to say in front of Lara.”
Casper looked grim. “It looks as if you might be right, Mal, and that recording of Thom isn’t the only one Taylor has. I opened that particular file because it had his first name on it, but there are ten others, each with a different name, that I haven’t had chance to look at yet.”
“That man needs stringing up by his testicles,” Rosie stated vengefully.
“He does,” Sinclair agreed. “It’s a possibility, as Malachi suspected, that one of these other victims is the reason Taylor decided to hire a bodyguard, claiming he had a stalker. We would never have accepted him as a client if he’d told us he was a blackmailer,” he added grimly.
“As I said, I haven’t looked at all the files yet,” Casper said.
“We can get to work with what we already have,” Sinclair clipped. “In the meantime…” His expression lightened. “We need to do something to help Malachi win Lara’s heart.”
Malachi’s eyes widened. “I don’t need any help with that.”
“The fact you’re out here with us and not still in there with Lara says that you really do, buddy,” Darius assured.
Malachi frowned. “I should have stayed with Lara?”
“Most definitely,” Rosie said.
“But she has to get ready for work, and so do I.” It had seemed logical to him that the two of them both had other things to do. Which was why he’d left immediately after his family. “I should have stayed?”
“Depends,” Darius murmured. “Did you kiss her goodbye and tell her you’ll see her tomorrow?”
“Um…”
“You didn’t.” Darius gave a disgusted shake of his head.
“Despite the fact the two of you were obviously…intimate, earlier—and we really don’t need to know any of those details,” Felix added quickly. “This has been a very upsetting afternoon for Lara. She probably thinks, after blurting out with those comments and possibly upsetting Sinclair and Casper—”
“I’m not upset,” Sinclair assured.
“Me either,” Casper confirmed.
“She doesn’t know that,” Felix reasoned. “Not for sure. Malachi shouldn’t have left her without reassuring her that was the case.”
“That’s what should I have done?” Being in a relationship was much more complicated than Malachi had realized.
“And held her in your arms while you explained to her that your brothers all have skins as thick as a rhinoceros, which means no one’s feelings were hurt by anything she said. What?” Felix challenged as they all turned to stare at him in varying degrees of surprise. “I might not be in a relationship, but I know from watching you married guys how a woman should be treated, if or when I ever find one that wants to be with me.”
“I’ll go back— No?” Malachi questioned when Darius took hold of his arm to stop him returning to the apartment building.
“No,” his brother confirmed. “Have you even taken Lara out on a date yet?”
His brow creased in concentration. “Does coffee after the theater count?”
“Did you take Lara to the theater prior to having coffee together?”
He shook his head. “It was the night she stole Taylor’s wallet.”
“Then it doesn’t count,” Darius dismissed. “You need to take her out on a proper date.”
“We’ll help you organize it, Mal,” Casper reassured.
“Something romantic,” Remy murmured.
“Something meant just for her,” Rosie mused.
“Something that makes her feel special,” Cara agreed.
Malachi had absolutely no idea what that might be, but he had a feeling he was about to find out.