Page 54

SINCLAIR

ONE WEEK LATER

“You should eat something.” Sullivan grunts in disapproval, eyeing my mug as I lift the coffee to my lips.

I drop my eyes from his, no energy left to have the same discussion with him again. I swallow the liquid, ignoring that it’s too hot, instead savoring the sweet tinge as it burns its way down to my stomach.

Vanilla.

It’s all I’ve been able to stomach since he left. I try to convince myself that the aftertaste on my tongue is the ghost of one of his kisses. That there’s still a part of him that exists within me somehow.

Denver left six days, twenty-one hours, and seventeen minutes ago.

And a part of me died.

I feared he might have tried to kill Brad after finding us together. But he didn’t. He just turned and walked away without looking back. The second I said that one word to him, he was gone.

My safe word.

He took himself out of my life, just like I knew he would. But the fact I pushed him to it doesn’t make living in the aftermath any easier. In fact, it’s worse. Because I’ll have to live my life wondering about the what-ifs. About what could have been if I’d chosen differently.

Being selfish or being selfless.

Either way he would have ultimately been the one who paid the price. And I’d have been the cause.

“What are your plans for today?” Sullivan asks, still eyeing my coffee mug like it’s the root of all evil.

I balance it in one hand, stroking Monty with the other.

He has his head resting in my lap, looking up at me with sad eyes as I sit on my sofa.

Animals always know when you’re hurting.

I wish he could understand why Denver left, and that it wasn’t his fault, it was mine.

Because I know by the way he runs to the door every time someone knocks on it that he’s hoping it’s Denver.

It never is.

It’s Zoey, Mikey, Halliday, Sullivan, my father, Uncle Mal. Everyone else whom I love, all taking it in turns to come and check on me since they noticed I’ve not been myself. It’s as if they have a rota planned out to make sure I’m getting out of bed each day.

But never him. Never Denver.

I shrug instead of answering my brother, and he exhales with an exasperated sigh, planting his hands on his hips, curling them around the midnight blue fabric of his suit pants. He has a meeting with the giant London-run company who provide business insurance for Beaufort Diamonds today.

I glance at my watch.

He’ll have to leave any minute now unless he wants to risk being late.

“You need to do something.”

“I’m taking Monty for a walk later. And I’m going to the store to get ingredients to make cupcakes with Molly for her sleepover.”

Sullivan bristles, rolling his lips as he gives me a terse nod. “I’ll drop her over by six.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” I answer, holding his eyes for a beat before he looks away.

I still don’t know what was so important that he had to call Denver that day and ask for his assistance.

All I know is that it involved the mysterious Tate, and that Molly said she doesn’t come round to their place anymore.

Hence why I’m going to bake with Molly today to try and cheer her up.

Because Sullivan is off on another overnight work trip to visit one of our stores and check in with them.

This time it’s San Francisco. Last week it was San Diego.

I’ve never known him to go as much as he has recently.

I drop my head back against the couch. “We’ll go for red velvet cupcakes. Molly loves—” I swallow hard.

Sullivan’s gaze returns to mine, and I swear his ice blue-colored eyes he shares with my father soften a touch. “You’re right, she does love them. So did Denver, from what I recall.”

I shrug. “I wouldn’t know.” Sullivan watches me as I try to keep my tone uninterested. “Have you heard how he’s getting on in LA?” I ask, unable to help myself.

“Spoke to him this morning, actually.”

I whip my gaze to his face, ignoring the sudden slice of pain across my chest that my brother gets to speak to him and hear his voice, ask how he is, but I don’t.

“He sounded like he always does. Serious, getting on with his job. You know Denver… or perhaps not. I guess you were never really a fan, you hardly spoke to the guy.”

“That’s right,” I sniff. “I didn’t.”

“Well, you don’t need to now. He’s gone.”

I hide my wince at Sullivan’s clipped words.

I know he’s testing me. He’s not an idiot.

My newly acquired self-pity and hibernation inside my apartment began the moment Denver walked out.

I hadn’t even gotten the last unwanted guest out of my place from the party before he’d been to see my father, handed in his resignation, and boarded a plane to LA.

“Plus, you’re free of needing a bodyguard, which is what you wanted. So at least try to look happy about it.” Sullivan sighs.

“I am happy,” I lie.

Sullivan shakes his head, muttering.

“Don’t.” I glare at him.

“Didn’t say a word, Sis,” he clips. “You want to stay in your apartment and tell yourself you don’t miss him, that you didn’t wish he was still here, then that’s your choice. But don’t expect me to fall for your bullshit.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mutter, looking into my coffee as I swirl it inside my mug. Anything to avoid meeting his eyes.

Sullivan grunts. “Yeah. Just like you didn’t know that Denver wouldn’t accept any extra payment Dad offered him for being assigned to you.”

“What?” I reel back, almost spilling the coffee. Monty lifts his head from my lap, looking at Sullivan too.

Sullivan’s eyes narrow. “He wired it all back before he left. Personally, I think he should have asked for double.”

I ignore his jibe and stare at him, my heart hammering. “Denver didn’t take the money he earned from being my bodyguard?”

“Not a cent,” Sullivan says, turning toward the door. “See you at six.”

I slam the coffee mug on the floor by the couch and jump, bundling Monty into my arms as I race after him to my front door.

“What did Dad say when Denver told him he was leaving?” I ask in a rush.

Sullivan opens the door and steps out into the hallway. He turns back to me with an assessing gaze. “What do you think he said?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Sullivan’s eyes narrow. “What exactly happened between you and Denver?”

I push down the sudden rising tide of emotion that threatens to shoot up and spray out, drenching us in its messy, heartbreaking truth.

“Nothing,” I say, forcing my voice to sound dull and emotionless. “He just did his job. I was his job.”

A muscle ticks in Sullivan’s cheek, and he purses his lips, his eyes holding mine like a penetrating spotlight.

I can see why the Beaufort Diamond staff shit themselves when he isn’t happy about something.

Jenson’s enjoyed telling me a tale or two about fainting employees and ones who throw up just knowing my brother has called a meeting.

He’s unnervingly calm in his Tom Ford suit, eyes like lasers, pinned on me. But he’s also my brother, so he doesn’t intimidate me no matter how much the look he’s giving me might make any other person wither on the spot.

I hold his eyes, arching a brow in challenge.

“Suit yourself,” he says finally. “See you later.”

He turns and walks off, and my eyes drop to my fingers and the tremble in them as I close the door behind him, securing the bolt in place.

Two weeks later

“You doing all right, Sunshine?”

I look up from the bridal magazine I’ve been hopelessly trying to concentrate on in my father’s kitchen. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Uncle Mal slips onto the bar stool next to me, a soft chuckle deepening the creases at the corners of his eyes.

Before my mother died, they were signs of a lifetime of laughter and happy memories, worn with pride on his face.

But after he lost his sister, grief turned them into deep shadows created by the loss of the light she brought into his world.

He took their loss hard. I worry about him more than he’d want me to.

He has us, we’re all family. And he has his wife, Trudy, although they never had their own children.

But some days, he seems more lost than any of us.

“Did you and Dad get the work done you wanted to?” I ask.

“Yeah. Just going over some things that Ade brought up on my visit. Your father’s finishing up in his office,” he says, running a hand around his jaw as he stares into space.

Ade is Beaufort Diamonds contact in Botswana who manages the mining operations when Uncle Mal isn’t there. And seeing as Sullivan is on another trip again today—LA this time—and won’t be back until late, he’s been updating my father on his last business trip.

“Okay,” I say, abandoning the magazine.

I came over to discuss planning details with Halliday.

We managed to get a lot discussed until pregnancy tiredness won over and she took herself off to have a nap.

I was about to head home, but Monty decided to join her.

He likes to lay his head by her stomach.

Halliday says he does it when they mind him for me.

It’s as if he’s already protective over the new addition to the Beaufort gang.

“It’ll be strange all of us going back there together,” Uncle Mal says.

I follow his gaze to the open magazine and the article on beach weddings. “It will,” I agree.

It’ll be the first time since the accident that we’ll all be near Cape Town together. Dad spent a lot of time there to begin with. And Sullivan went over with him a couple of times, more to try to talk him into coming home, I think. Which he did eventually.

But I haven’t been back since.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of them,” Mal says quietly.

“Yeah.” My throat thickens. “Me too.”

I close the magazine, my fingers still trembling, the way they have been for the past two and a half weeks.

Calloused fingers close around mine until they stop shaking. “It’s not easy, losing people you love,” Uncle Mal says.

“No,” I whisper, the weight of his hand on mine bringing some comfort. “It’s not.”