“Something or someone tried to infiltrate the perimeter fence three minutes ago,” Rosie explained as soon as Cara joined her in the hallway downstairs.
Her sister looked as if she’d dressed hastily in the jeans and a T-shirt similar to the ones Cara was wearing. But unlike Malachi, Rosie didn’t look as if she’d been woken, and her long hair looked tousled from something other than sleep too. No doubt she and Max had been otherwise occupied.
Cara couldn’t have been more pleased for her sister. She had never seen Rosie happier and so completely in love as she was right now with Max. Not that Rosie had ever been in love until now, harboring the same distrust of men and relationships as Cara, and for the same reason.
Rosie had told her she believed it was because a part of her was always waiting for Max, that the two of them were somehow fated to meet again all these years later. She had been utterly convinced of it since seeing Max again a year ago and that feeling of a connection between the two of them was so deep and instant.
There was that year ago again!
Except Cara and Adam didn’t seem to be heading toward the same happily ever after together as Rosie and Max. She just wished Adam would get over himself and see that the two of them could be just as happy and in love with each other as his cousin and her sister were.
Instead of which, Adam was still trying to push her away.
Oh, he’d eventually gotten on board with her kissing him earlier. How could he not when his injury rendered him a virtual captive in his own bed?
Except…he’d proved that wasn’t true once he knew there might be an intruder on the grounds.
“Did they succeed?” she answered Rosie.
Her sister grimaced. “Max doesn’t think so, but they’re going to do a thorough check out there just to make sure.”
“Adam isn’t well enough to be part of that search,” Cara insisted.
Rosie’s smile was rueful. “Something you’ll learn as you get to know Adam better is that little things like gunshot wounds don’t hold these men back from doing whatever they decide is necessary. Adam included.”
Cara sighed. “There’s very little chance I’m going to get to know Adam better.”
Her sister eyed her curiously. “Malachi said he not only found you in Adam’s bedroom just now, but you were on his bed too.”
She scowled. “Malachi has a big mouth.”
“Malachi has no filter,” Rosie corrected. “What he sees is what comes out of his mouth.”
“Then yes, I was in Adam’s bedroom and yes, I was lying on his bed with him,” Cara acknowledged. “But he’s in too much discomfort for us to share anything more than a few kisses.”
“A few kisses is good,” Rosie encouraged. “They were good, I hope?”
Cara gave her sister a narrow-eyed glare. “They were very good,” she conceded. “Then Malachi burst in and Adam insisted on going outside and taking the dogs with him. Stubborn, impossible, unreasonable bloody man.” She had refused to leave the bedroom as Malachi helped Adam into a pair of jeans and boots. She’d also followed behind the two men as they went down the stairs and seen how much discomfort Adam was in.
Rosie chuckled. “They all are. And those are some of their good points!” She sobered. “We really need to go. Max told me to get us both to the safe room as soon as possible.”
“Do they seriously expect us to stay in some hidden room in the house while they’re all out there looking for intruders who, in all likelihood, are armed and dangerous?”
“They not only expect it, but will be mad as hell if we don’t. Max promised me a smacked arse if I don’t go to the safe room,” Rosie told her with relish.
She winced. “I really don’t think I want to know what you and Max do in the bedroom.”
“Sometimes it isn’t just in the bedroom.” Rosie chuckled.
Cara studied the unconcerned expression on her sister’s face. “You like having your arse spanked?”
Rosie grinned. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. There’s something about feeling the initial burn followed by the afterburn between your—”
“Enlightening as this conversation is, ladies, you need to take it, and yourselves, to the safe room.”
Cara turned to face Sinclair, wincing slightly at the way the eldest Kingston brother seemed to be developing a habit of walking in on embarrassing conversations.
He was still dressed in one of the three-piece suits he favored, despite the fact it was after two o’clock in the morning. Did this man ever sleep?
“On our way,” Rosie dismissed as she linked her arm with Cara’s and pulled her toward the back of the house. The lightness of her tone implied she didn’t share Cara’s discomfort at having Sinclair overhear their conversation.
Rosie stopped in the middle of the hallway leading to the kitchen at the back of the house and opened the door there. She turned on a light, then went down some stone steps ahead of Cara into what she eventually realized was a wine cellar.
It was much cooler down here, the lighting dim in the windowless area, but bright enough for Cara to see bottles and bottles of wine, some stored in racks against the stone walls, others inside a glass-walled and temperature-controlled space at the end of the room. There were also more boxes of the cigars in there the brothers had smoked after dinner earlier.
Cara turned to Rosie. “Dad would kill for a wine cellar like this one.” Their father was nothing if not a wine snob.
But the house he owned and lived in at his London constituency wasn’t anywhere near big enough to be able to boast a wine cellar. It simply wouldn’t do for their member of parliament to live in anything too grand and not be “a part of the people,” as he was so fond of condescendingly saying. He did have a second home in Majorca, but his visits there were usually when parliament was closed for the summer months. Cara had always hated how hot it was there during those months. She’d been relieved, once she was old enough to stay home, to be able to refuse to go with them.
Rosie wrinkled her nose dismissively as she entered the temperature-controlled room. “I have no intention of ever letting Max invite him here, even for a brief visit.”
Cara chuckled. “Does he even know about your wedding next week yet?”
“I’ll let him know the day before,” Rosie dismissed. “By which time, his schedule will be far too full for him to be able to attend the wedding of one of his daughters.” She moved a couple of the bottles of wine aside on the rack to press what looked like a notch in the wood but was actually a button. The panel next to this one swung open soundlessly to reveal a room behind it. “We can turn the light off in here once we’re on the other side.”
Cara followed her sister, barely noticing when the door shut noiselessly behind her, closing the two of them in an illuminated room with a bed in one corner, a couch and matching chairs in the main area, and shelves full of books along one wall. There was also a bathroom, plus a small kitchen area where she could see a fridge and coffee-making machine.
It looked, to all intents and purposes, similar to the bed-sit Cara had lived in during her university days and prior to her coming into the inheritance left to her by her mother, when she was able to buy her own house.
Rosie turned from dealing with some security switches on the wall beside the closed door. “Do you want some coffee? Max said he’ll come and get us when they have an all-clear.”
Cara couldn’t help worrying as to how long that would be, and if all the Kingston men would return unharmed.
If Adam would return unharmed.
“Leave the dogs here with me and go back to the house.”
Adam turned to look at Sinclair, his cousin having fallen into step beside him as he and the two Rottweilers slowly walked the perimeter. Bright spotlights illuminated the whole area. “Those same vicious guard dogs were eating biscuits out of Cara’s hand a short time ago. It isn’t funny,” he muttered when his cousin looked as if he was trying to hold back a smile.
“Don’t blame them for doing something you would do in a heartbeat, except it isn’t her biscuits you want to eat,” Sinclair derided. “Not that I can fault you or the dogs. The Ferrari-Smythe women are pretty difficult to resist. Not to me,” he dismissed impatiently when Adam gave him a sharp look. “I’m just really pleased for both you and Max.”
Adam shook his head. “I’m pleased for Max too, but there’s no reason for you to feel that way about me.”
“Adam—”
“Please don’t be a bloody hypocrite and attempt to lecture me on trusting and letting someone in. Or allowing myself to fall in love. Not when you aren’t willing to do that for yourself,” he warned gruffly.
A spasm of pain twisted Sinclair’s features. “My circumstances are different.”
“It’s been five years, Sin. More. You can’t go on grieving for Cathy forever.”
“I can do whatever the fuck I please,” the other man bit out. “Now go back to the house. You’re bleeding all over your damned T-shirt again.” He whistled for the dogs to follow him before striding off without a second glance.
Adam watched him for a few seconds longer. What he saw was a lone, and very alone, man, who, for the past five years, had deliberately cut himself off from all warmth and emotion.
Sinclair and Cathy had met and fallen in love at university and married shortly after they both graduated. Sinclair had turned his business degree into being CEO of a multimillion-pound cyber security company, with his youngest brother Casper as COO. The two of them as a team had been formidable, Sinclair having the business savvy, Casper notably one of the top hackers in the world. He had used that ability to hack into and then devise ways to protect multiple high-profile companies from having anyone else do the same.
When Adam and the brothers had decided to form their own security and protection company, they had pooled all their skills and exponentially expanded the services they offered. The business had boomed, and they had very quickly become one of the leading security companies in the world.
Then five years ago, Cathy had been kidnapped and killed.
By hacking into several security systems until he found the right one, Casper had discovered that some mercenaries had been employed by one of their competitors to abduct Cathy.
It had been meant to be a way of proving Kingston Security couldn’t protect one of its own, and so bringing the company’s reputation into question.
But once the mercenaries had Cathy, they had ignored their instructions to release her and had killed her instead. Afterward, they had collected the ransom money and left the country.
Sinclair had changed overnight after Cathy’s body was discovered. He’d turned himself into a lethal weapon who hunted down and killed the four mercenaries responsible for murdering his wife. Once he’d started, he continued that vigilante vengeance by finding and administering justice to any kidnappers who harmed or killed the people they had abducted.
Adam missed the old Sinclair.
His cousin and Cathy had been the perfect couple, the glue that kept them all together after their parents retired to Florida. The two of them had hosted Christmas at Kingston Manor every year for both their families, arranged dinner parties and other get-togethers throughout the rest of the year for family and friends.
Their only disappointment, after several years of trying, had been learning Cathy couldn’t have children.
Even that hadn’t fazed Sinclair. He’d just joked that he didn’t need any children of his own when he had five younger brothers and his cousin to keep in line.
Cathy’s murder had been a blow none of the family had really recovered from after thinking of her as their sister as well as Sinclair’s wife for so many years. But the changes Cathy’s death had brought about in Sinclair had been irreversible. Nothing else existed for him except hunting down any and all who would dare to steal someone else’s loved one from them. In that, he had remained merciless.
They had all tried over the years to pull Sinclair back from the edge of insanity he was balanced upon. They had all failed. As Sinclair had made clear just now, he would do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.
Adam gave a glance down at the white T-shirt he’d quickly pulled on earlier and saw the growing bright blood-red stain on his side.
He instantly knew Cara was going to lecture him for all the time it took to take off the T-shirt and blood-soaked bandage, clean up the blood and check the stitches, and then reapply a clean bandage.
Strangely, that thought gave Adam a warm glow in his chest rather than causing the usual impatient irritation he felt when other women had tried to remonstrate with him over his behavior.
In fact, as it was Cara who would be doing the remonstrating, and there might be some more kisses in the offing afterward, Adam was actually looking forward to it!