by Regina Kyle
“More like you don’t want to listen to us go at it all night long,” Brooke teased.
“Please.” Mallory sat on the bed. “That’s an image I can’t unsee.”
“Don’t worry.” Brooke plopped down next to her. “You won’t hear a thing. The walls in this place are really thick. Eli designed them to keep the heat in in the winter and out in the summer. The soundproofing’s an added bonus.”
“The next thing I know you’ll be telling me you have a red room of pain.”
“No.” Brooke kicked off her Chuck Taylors and tucked her feet underneath her. “We thought about it but opted for a wine cellar instead.”
“On the fifth floor? Very funny.”
Mallory flopped onto her back, fighting a yawn. Travel always wore her out, and today was no exception. Long lines at TSA. Packed plane. Getting stuck between two guys who could have been sumo wrestlers with an antsy toddler behind her, kicking her seat back for the entire three-hour flight home.
Strike that. Not home. Home was Flamingo Key. Or had been. Now she was drifting, like a ship without a port, until she got her next assignment from the staffing agency. Which, according to Alison, wouldn’t be long. No kids this time, just cooking, per Mallory’s request.
If leaving Rhys had been heartbreaking, leaving Oliver was gut-wrenching. No amount of explaining could convince him that even though it was time for her to move on, she still cared for him. All he could see was that another woman he’d grown to love and depend on was deserting him. By the time she stepped onto the launch with Collins for her final ride, they’d both shed enough tears to flood the Atlantic Ocean.
It was an experience she had zero desire to repeat.
Mallory covered her eyes with one arm and tried to regulate her breathing. In, out. Slow and steady. Her own version of playing possum. Maybe if she lay there like that long enough her sister would get the hint and give her some peace and quiet before starting the inevitable interrogation.
“So…” Brooke let the word dangle, and Mallory’s stomach churned with the knowledge she wasn’t going to like what was coming next. So much for her sister getting the hint. “Are you going to tell me what happened with von Dreamy? Last I heard you two were hot and heavy.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It usually is, especially when sex is involved. Of course…” Brooke paused for dramatic effect. “If it was more than sex, then it’s even more complicated.”
Mallory opted for the safest course and stayed silent, knowing she’d give herself away if she spoke. It was more than sex for her and, she was almost certain, for Rhys. They’d never said the words, but the feeling was there in every kiss, every touch, every secret, shared smile.
She loved Rhys Dalton. She loved his razor-sharp mind, his huge heart, how he could make her laugh one second and moan with pleasure the next. She especially loved the way he made her feel—cherished and important and more alive than ever before.
But what good was loving him when she couldn’t be with him, not if it meant being an accomplice in isolating his son? She hadn’t come this far—bucking her parents’ wishes, quitting her job, leaving New York—only to take a giant step backward by going against everything her hard-fought independence stood for.
It was true what they said about standing on principle. More often than not, it meant standing alone.
“Was it?” Brooke prodded.
“Was it what?” Mallory asked, not ready to say out loud what her heart was silently screaming.
Brooke let out a frustrated huff. “More than sex.”
“I haven’t unpacked. Do we have to do this now?” Mallory sat up. Feigning sleep was a bust. Once her sister got started, she was relentless, like a hungry dog with a particularly juicy bone. “I’ve seen Law & Order. Even criminals get a glass of water and a cigarette before the cops start questioning them.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Trust me, you’ll feel better getting it off your chest.” Brooke put her arm around Mallory and gave her a quick squeeze. “And who knows? I might be able to help. Remember what a hot mess I was when I found out Eli had lied about his job and hidden that he was buying this building?”
“Hot mess is putting it lightly. You were drowning yourself in junk food and diet soda.”
“That’s not the point. The point is you talked me off the ledge and convinced me to listen to him.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I was the one giving the advice. I’m the sensible, look-before-you-leap one. You’re Miss Close-Your-Eyes-and-Jump-Without-a-Net.”
Mallory swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, stretching her arms over her head. Her back creaked in protest, making her wince. It was going to take hot yoga or a deep tissue massage—or both—for her body to recuperate from three hours of being in the middle of a sumo sandwich.
But at least her body had a shot at recovery. She wasn’t sure her heart would ever mend.
Brooke lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a careless shrug. “That might be true. But I’m the one with a smoking-hot husband who lives to give me orgasms, and you’re spending the foreseeable future sleeping alone in our guest room.”
“Ouch.”
“I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”
“You don’t say?” Mallory arched a brow at her sister, who responded by rolling her eyes. “I rest my case about which one of us is the better advice-giver.”
“What I meant was sometimes leaping without looking isn’t so bad. As long as there’s someone there to catch you.”
“Catch, yes. Trap, no.”
“Explain.”
“First I need sustenance. Please tell me you have something in your cupboard besides potato chips and Ho Hos.”
“Sure.” Brooke sprang off the bed, her stockinged feet making a soft thud on the polished oak floor. “I’ve also got an unopened package of powdered mini doughnuts, half a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and some Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.”
“I see marriage to a multimillionaire hasn’t given you a taste for haute cuisine.”
“Billionaire,” her sister corrected. “And if you asked me, there’s no finer dining than a handful of Cheetos, a pack of Slim Jims, and a couple of Twinkies, with a Diet Coke chaser.”
Mallory followed Brooke to the kitchen. She pulled up a stool at the massive center island while her sister managed to rustle up a not-entirely-unhealthy assortment of cheese, crackers, and a few sad-looking grapes. Mallory thought of the omelet she prepared the night Rhys first kissed her. Or their food foreplay after they rescued Oliver.
She stared at the pathetic plate in front of her. Oh, how the lovelorn had fallen.
“Okay.” Brooke took the stool across from Mallory and propped her chin on her hands. “Enough stalling. I fed you. Let’s hear all the dirty details.”
Mallory took a chance on a sad grape—bad idea, she thought, grimacing at the sour squirt as she bit into it—and launched into the whole saga of her trip to the movie theater with Oliver and Rhys’s reaction.
“That’s it?” Brooke pulled the plate toward herself and sandwiched a piece of cheese between two crackers. “You bailed because he got mad at you for taking his kid to the movies without asking first?”
“No, that’s not it.” Mallory snatched the plate back. “I bailed—your word, not mine—because I wasn’t about to stick around and do nothing while Rhys kept Oliver under house arrest.”
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a teeny-tiny bit?” Brooke asked through a mouthful of cheese and cracker.
“You wouldn’t understand. You weren’t the one under lock and key. Mom and Dad let you do whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted, with whoever you wanted. While I had to fight tooth and nail to go to school three hours away, and they only let me do that after I promised to come home after graduation and work at the Worthington.”
“Fine.” Brooke reach
ed down and pulled two cans of soda from the under-counter beverage refrigerator. She popped the top on one and slid the other across to Mallory. “For the sake of argument, I’ll concede your reaction was totally normal, given the circumstances. But who says you have to do nothing?”
“Rhys.” Mallory opened her soda and drank. “I tried reasoning with him. He wouldn’t listen.”
“How hard did you try?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Think of it from his point of view.” Brooke took a sip from her can and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “He lost his wife. Blames himself. Doesn’t want to go through that again with his son.”
Mallory sighed. “I’m not unsympathetic. But Mom and Dad’s motives were noble, too. They were trying to protect me. But that doesn’t make what they did right.”
“From what you told me, Rhys isn’t Mom and Dad. He admitted he’d have to cut the cord at some point. Our parents would have been happy to keep you in lockdown in perpetuity if you hadn’t grown a pair and flown the nest.”
“True,” Mallory admitted after thinking about it for a minute. “But…”
“And you could make sure he stuck to his word and started to let Oliver do more regular kid stuff. Like Maria sewed the von Trapp kids clothes out of curtains, so they could climb trees and row boats and play leapfrog.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? This isn’t The Sound of Music. This is my life.”
Brooke plucked another slice of cheese from the plate between them and bit off one corner. “You know it’s based on a true story, right?”
“‘Based on’ being the operative words. It’s highly fictionalized.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“Which is what?” Mallory gave her sister her best evil-eyed glare. She didn’t know what Brooke expected her to do. Hypnotize Rhys into submission? Use her limited powers of sexual persuasion? That was sure to be a bust. She was no femme fatale by any stretch of the imagination. “I told you, I tried…”
“Try harder.” Brooke accepted Mallory’s challenge, meeting her stare. It wasn’t in her sister’s nature to back down, a quality Mallory usually admired but at the moment wished was a little less predominant. “If Rhys Dalton is worth it—if his son’s worth it—you owe it to them both to try harder.”
“How?”
“Baby steps, little sis. Baby steps. The man’s been a virtual hermit for three years. You can’t expect him to change overnight.”
“Even if we could reach some sort of understanding about Oliver, there’s my cancer to think about.”
“What cancer?” Brooke scoffed. “You don’t have cancer. You’ve been in remission for over ten years.”
“There’s always a chance of a recurrence or a secondary cancer.”
“How does Rhys feel about it?” Brooke leaned in, resting her elbows on the counter. “You did tell him, didn’t you?”
Mallory nodded.
“How did he react?”
“We didn’t have much of a chance to discuss it. We were focused on Oliver. But his mother died from cancer, so…”
Brooke jabbed a finger across the counter at Mallory’s chest. “So you haven’t got any idea if it’s a deal breaker or not.”
“I can’t imagine he’s eager to jump into a long-term relationship with someone who’s got an expiration date.”
“We all have an expiration date, Mal. None of us come with a warranty.” The accusatory finger lowered, and Brooke covered Mallory’s hand with hers. “Keep looking for excuses, and you’re going to find them. Or you could look for solutions, and you might be surprised.”
“Anybody home?” The front lock clicked open and Eli’s voice bounced off the walls of the huge high-ceilinged apartment.
Brooke’s face lit up and she leaped off her stool. “In the kitchen, babe.”
Eli appeared a few seconds later in the doorway, a bag with what looked like the logo of a Chinese restaurant in one hand and a stack of mail in the other.
“Hey, sweetheart. Mallory.” He deposited both bag and mail on the counter before giving his sister-in-law a quick hug and his wife a long, lingering, almost embarrassing kiss. “I hope you’re in the mood for something spicy. I brought takeout from Szechuan Gourmet.”
“Sounds great. I’m starving.” Brooke’s stomach grumbled as if to emphasize her point. Her husband laughed and started unpacking the bags.
“Looks like we got a few more RSVPs,” he said, gesturing toward the pile of envelopes and catalogs.
“Oh, goody.” Brooke’s sarcastic tone and exaggerated eye roll said it was anything but good. “I’ll open them later. Probably more of Mom’s country club cronies. Why did I let her convince me to go through with this ridiculous reception? I swear, I’m not going to know a single person at this shindig.”
“You’ll know me.” Eli came up behind his wife, wrapped his arms around her, and dropped a kiss to the nape of her neck.
“And me.” Mallory stood. “I need to change out of my travel clothes. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Feel free to start dinner without me.”
With a pasted-on smile and what she hoped was a suitably jaunty wave, she turned to leave. She needed a few minutes of solitude. A time-out from her sister’s newly wedded bliss. As happy as she was for Brooke, watching her with Eli was a special kind of torture. Like a thousand knives to her fragile heart.
“Hey,” Brooke called after her.
Mallory stopped and spun around to face her sister, who was taking a stack of plates from one of the cabinets. “Yeah?”
Brooke handed the plates to Eli and pinned her sister with a worried frown. “You okay?”
Mallory brushed off her sister’s concern with another wave and started back toward her temporary bedroom.
“I’m fine,” she said over her shoulder. “Just tired. And hungry. I’ll feel better when I have some of that Szechuan.”
And when she figured out what to do about her train wreck of a life.
Brooke’s last words before Eli interrupted their conversation echoed in her head. Was she going to keep making excuses not to be with Rhys?
Or was her sister right, and it was time to start looking for solutions?
…
The sun had sunk well below the horizon and stars dotted the cloudless night sky when Rhys emerged from his office, his usually neat hair unruly and two—or was it three?—days’ growth on his chin.
He made his way across the foyer, through the great room, and into the kitchen, the only sounds the squeak of his shoes on the tile floor and the low hum of the air-conditioning. Had his house always been this big? Or did it just seem that way now that Mallory wasn’t there, filling the empty spaces with smiles and laughter and fancy food? Empty spaces he hadn’t realized existed until she showed up on his doorstep, as unexpected and unpredictable as a sudden summer storm.
And she’d left the same way.
Rhys headed for the stairs to check on Oliver before trying to force himself to sleep at least a few hours. One thing that hadn’t changed in Mallory’s absence was his renewed commitment to his son. He hadn’t hired a new nanny, and he was starting to think they didn’t need one. Mrs. Flannigan swore she could handle the cooking, as long as they didn’t expect anything close to Mallory’s level. And if he cut back a bit, delegated more work to Collins and the staff in New York, put in most of his office hours after Oliver was in bed, they should be able to manage on their own.
Mallory would approve. So would Beth.
Maybe that was why he’d rejected every candidate the agency had submitted. One was too inexperienced, one too high-strung, another too gruff. Collins had started calling him Goldilocks under his breath, complaining he’d never find one who was just right.
Trouble was, he already had.
Rhys reached Oliver’s bedroom and cracked the door open, expecting to find the room dark and his son sprawled across his bed, one pajama-clad leg sticking out from under the covers. Inst
ead, the light was on and Oliver sat at the tiny table in the center of his room, a sheet of paper in front of him and a crayon clutched in one fist.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Rhys asked, squeezing himself into a pint-sized chair across from his son.
“I have to finish this first,” Oliver said without looking up, his bangs flopping over his furrowed forehead as he scribbled furiously.
“Finish what?”
Oliver’s crayon stilled, and he peered up at Rhys through the blond wisps of his bangs. “Promise you won’t be mad.”
Rhys frowned. “Why would I be mad?”
“It’s a picture. For Mallory.” Oliver’s lower lip trembled. “To make her come back.”
Rhys thought his heart couldn’t rip apart any more than it already had. He was wrong. He swallowed the lump in his throat and gave his son a shaky smile. “Can I see?”
“Sure.” Oliver pushed the paper across the table.
Rhys examined it for a few moments.
“Is this me?” he asked, pointing to the tallest of three stick figures.
“Uh-huh.”
“Then this one must be you.” He pointed to the smallest figure.
“Uh-huh.” Oliver jabbed a finger proudly at the third figure. “And this is Mallory.”
“I thought so.” Rhys squinted at the drawing, his once-shaky smile threatening to break free and split his face. His son had many talents, but Vincent van Gogh he wasn’t. Picasso, maybe, if the abstract nature of his drawing was anything to go by. “So, um, what are we doing in this picture?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“Sure,” Rhys lied. “But I want you to explain it to me.”
“This is the Emperor State Building.” Oliver pointed to a bright pink squiggle in one corner. His finger moved lower to a green blob. “And this is Center Park. They’re in New York City. That’s where Mallory’s from. She told me. And Mrs. Flannigan said I used to live there, too.”
“Yes, you did.” Rhys absently traced the squiggle, his stomach knotting. Manhattan. Light years away from Flamingo Key, in distance and every other way imaginable. And the one island he’d hoped never to set foot on again. “So we’re in New York?”
