“Karina?”
Hearing her name called, she left her things behind before walking back over to the counter to grab her coffee and croissant. Finally, she picked up a straw, a few napkins, and a packet of honey before she returned her table.
Karina had only just sat down and opened up her notebook when a man of considerable height bumped into her chair. Not hard enough to make her spill her drink but just enough to make her glance back to get a better look at him.
A navy blue suit complemented the light gray of his eyes, offset by the darkness of his hair that was shorter along the sides and back but longer in the middle, a stubborn lock falling over his eyes.
“My apologies,” he said immediately, his accent making her blink in surprise.
“No problem at all.”
New York might have been a melting pot of various cultures, but it wasn’t often that she met someone from the southern regions of Wales, though there was an odd inflection to his voice that made her think he’d had speech therapy at some point in his life—very much like the sort she’d had while at boarding school.
Curious.
“Would you mind if I joined you?” he asked, gesturing to the vacant chair across from her.
She had stopped believing in coincidence the moment she learned her mother had been behind her introduction to Uilleam. She highly suspected this meeting wasn’t by chance either.
“Not at all,” she answered, throwing caution to the wind.
Whether he was a friend or enemy of Uilleam, it didn’t matter very much at the moment. He wouldn’t attempt anything in a café full of potential eyewitnesses. Despite not knowing anything about him, she felt relatively safe with a crowd of people around her.
Not to mention, if he was being this friendly now, he didn’t intend on harming her.
She watched him as he removed his coat and tossed it across the back of a nearby chair before he took his seat. He obviously had money—that much she could gather from the expensive suit he wore down to the platinum watch on his wrist—but there was something a bit more … unsettling about him.
As if his every move was carefully measured.
As if he was purposely moving slowly and deliberately—as if he were trying to show her he meant her no harm.
For a long moment after he sat, he didn’t speak but merely took a sip of whatever he was drinking before setting the mug down on the table. But he certainly watched her. Not in an alarming way where his gaze tracked her every movement, but she could almost feel the way he studied her.
It made a chill run up her spine.
“I confess, I didn’t think I would have the pleasure of meeting you. You’re nothing at all what I imagined you would be.”
“No? Who were you expecting, though I have to say, I have no idea who you are.”
He seemed to come to a decision, extending his hand between them. “Kit. Kit Runehart.”
It felt as if all the air in the room had completely vanished.
And now that he had given her context, she could see it.
In the shape of his jaw, the slant of his brows. Had she ignored the color of his eyes and the brown of his hair, she would have noticed it sooner, but now that she did know, she couldn’t see anything else.
But he was not at all what she had been expecting of the brother Uilleam never seemed too happy to talk about.
There was a polished sort of quality about him, similar but very different from his brother.
His expression seemed surprised as she slipped her hand into his. “You’ve heard of me.”
“Uilleam might have mentioned you once or twice.” Never voluntarily, though she didn’t bother to mention that fact.
“Then you must be very special indeed if he’s told you about me.”
Even as the thought made her warm inside, she didn’t let it completely go to her head. “I never said they were good things.”
His laughter was deep and masculine, so very much like his brother’s. “Had you said otherwise, I would think you were lying anyway. Tell me, how on earth did you make my brother’s acquaintance? I can’t begin to imagine how the two of you crossed paths.”
“Why don’t you ask him?” she asked with a tilt of her head, and not just because she was curious. If he was here, it was clear he had spoken to his brother at some point—though Uilleam hadn’t mentioned it.
“You’ve met my brother. He’s never been overly fond of sharing, and that also includes those he cares about.”
Yes, as far as she could tell, he was notoriously private—sharing only when he was in the mood, and even then, one could only get a few bits from him before he changed the subject. He was so good at it that she often didn’t realize what he had done until later when she was thinking back over their conversation.
“He has,” Kit continued after a moment, “mentioned what you do. A journalist, is that right?” he asked even as his gaze skirted over her notebook, then the screen of her laptop that had, thankfully, gone dark after she’d gone so long without using it. The last thing she needed was someone else learning what she was working on.
Especially someone who was actually close to Uilleam.
Whether estranged or not, she knew what it was like with family, and sometimes they revealed things without realizing how important it was.
“I am,” she answered. “I work for the Gazette Post.”
He nodded, confirming he already knew as much. “And he says you have one of the keenest minds he’s ever come across.”
Wishing the ridiculous blush on her face would just go away, she cleared her throat. “He’s sweet, and—”
“No,” Kit cut her off, not unkindly. “He’s really not. Unless he’s speaking about himself, he doesn’t have a tendency to over embellish. Whatever you’ve done, whoever you are, he’s impressed by you. So much so that I felt compelled to have this little chat with you.”
According to Aurora, Uilleam and Kit hadn’t been on speaking terms—going through one of their bouts of silence, she figured—yet here he sat as if they had been speaking all their lives. It made her wonder whether the feelings Uilleam had toward his brother were more one-sided than she’d originally thought.
In the ten minutes or so she had been talking to Kit, she could guess that he cared about Uilleam. It was written all over his face.
“Uilleam isn’t used to people challenging him,” she said by way of explanation. “When he sets his course, he doesn’t account for any skew on the path.”
He shook his head slightly. “That isn’t our way.”
Because their father had been a bastard, she thought, feeling far too much bitterness and anger at just the thought of the man.
She didn’t care that she didn’t know him, or that he had been dead longer than she had been in Uilleam’s life, but it should be completely fair for her to despise a dead man. Especially when his deeds had carried over even after he’d stopped breathing.
Her phone ringing on the table interrupted their moment, Uilleam’s name appearing on the screen. An amused sort of smile appeared on Kit’s face as he gestured to it while picking up his coffee. “I’d suggest you answer that.”
“Did you tell him you were coming to meet me?” she asked as she plucked it from the table.
“No, but I quite imagine the man he has surveilling you”—this he said with a nod of his head toward the front of the coffee shop—“might have mentioned me being here.”
Did she really have any right to be surprised? Maybe not.
But that didn’t stop her from turning to look over her shoulder to find who Kit was referring to. Worse, she hadn’t even noticed him following her, though if she had to guess, he’d been there for quite some time. He managed to both blend in, sitting at one of the vacant tables outside the café, while standing out, considering the suit he was wearing and the fact that his drink looked to be untouched.
Just how long had Uilleam had her followed?
Surely, it couldn’t have been for
very long. Otherwise, he would have asked her about her lunch with Katherine or her impromptu visit to Hugh McDonall’s hotel.
She couldn’t think about anything else as she continued to stare at the unknown man even as she answered Uilleam’s call. “Are you seriously having me followed?”
“Put him on the phone.”
Karina didn’t think she had ever heard him sound as angry as he did now, and if it had been physically possible for him to climb through the phone, she didn’t doubt for a second that he would, considering how upset he was.
“Uilleam, I don’t—”
He cursed in Welsh, his tone so harsh that it made her brows arch high. “Do it, now. Please.”
Had he not tacked on the please at the end, she might have elected to ignore him entirely, but instead, she held the phone out to Kit who still looked entirely too amused by the situation.
“I quite imagine you’re about to threaten me … Well, at least you’re being creative about it this time.”
She couldn’t hear what Uilleam said in response since his words were muffled, but she could certainly hear the rage. She tried to think of a time when she had ever argued with Isla and it had escalated into something like this, but beyond a couple of occasions when she had borrowed one of her dresses or her favorite necklaces without asking, their relationship had always been rather pleasant.
But then again, she didn’t harbor the same sort of resentment Uilleam did when it came to her sibling.
Not that she didn’t understand both sides of it looking from the outside.
Had Isla ever gone somewhere she couldn’t follow and left her in the care of someone as cruel as Uilleam’s father sounded, she would have been angry with her too. But hadn’t Kit been a child as well?
She couldn’t imagine the choice had been an easy one.
“If you’re quite finished,” Kit said, drawing her from her thoughts to focus on him, “we can finally discuss dinner arrangements. D’you like Italian, Karina?”
She tried not to laugh as Kit looked at her expectantly while Uilleam barked something unintelligible on the other line.
“I don’t mind it.”
“That settles it then,” Kit told then both, flashing a brilliant smile that reminded her far too much of Uilleam when he got what he wanted. “I’ll be seeing you, brother.”
Whatever Uilleam said next fell on deaf ears as Kit pulled the phone away from his ear and handed it back over to her.
“Fucking incompetence,” Uilleam muttered to himself. “Memo to me, memo to fucking me, fire his arse before the day ends.”
“That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?” she asked, though she didn’t entirely mind.
Not if it meant she wouldn’t be followed and her movements reported back to Uilleam.
And surely, he couldn’t stay mad for long.
She’d clearly underestimated the degree to which he despised his brother.
Karina looked up from her laptop at the sound of Uilleam walking in, slamming the door shut behind him.
She did her best to hide the smile on her face, but as he walked into her bedroom, his annoyed stride tempered only by the three-piece suit he wore, there was no use.
“You can’t possibly still be angry.”
“If you knew Kit the way I did, you would understand why I’m annoyed.”
Running a hand through her hair as she watched him loosen the knot in his tie, she tried a different approach. “I got the impression he truly cares about you. He did go out of his way to meet me.”
“That’s because he’s a nosy bastard.”
She couldn’t help her amusement as she stared at him. He was always so confident and in control whenever he encountered someone he considered a rival.
He hadn’t even blinked at the thought of Gaspard trying to kill him, but when it came to his brother, it put him in a state.
“Kit likes to involve himself in anything that has nothing to do with him.”
“Because he’s older?” she asked, though he didn’t seem to care she was speaking.
“Never knows when to mind his own.”
“Probably because he’s older,” she said quietly, thinking of her own sister.
Isla tended to worry—to mother her when no one else was around—but Karina didn’t mind it so much because she knew her sister meant well.
“You could always tell him no,” she offered thoughtfully, sliding off the mattress to walk around the bed until she was standing in front of him.
He laughed without humor. “One doesn’t tell Kit no. Even if you did, he’s far too stubborn to take that as an answer.”
Before he could start removing his shirt, she grabbed his hands, forcing him to finally stand still long enough to pay attention to what she was saying. “It’s just dinner, and,” she stressed as he meant to protest, “I’ll be there with you.”
“He’ll tell you things about me,” he said, sounding resigned.
“To scare me?”
“To warn you. He has every reason to even if I don’t like it. Sometimes I don’t always realize the lengths I’m willing to go to for the things I want. I think of it as being ambitious, and he … well, he’s far more cautious than I ever was.”
Of all the different sides of Uilleam she had seen, this one made her shift on her feet. This went beyond arrogance—it was simply the own self-knowledge to know what they were capable of.
The same version of Uilleam that had proudly revealed the details about Miranda yet hadn’t thought twice about covering up her murder because it served his end game.
It was a startling sight, but more, it was the fact that he was worried at all by what his brother might tell her. She’d already seen his dark side—had witnessed what he was capable of firsthand—yet he thought there would be more.
And whatever his secrets were … he thought she would walk away.
During the drive to the restaurant, Uilleam had remained silent, resting his hand over hers where it sat on the seat between them.
Karina had long since stopped trying to silence his fears, knowing they wouldn’t do him any good. He preferred actions, and perhaps once this dinner was over and she was still standing with him, he might calm down in the future.
Maybe he would be more willing to accept the unexpected.
She could only hope.
To her surprise, Kit’s choice in dining happened to be one of the few restaurants in the city that she had been dying to get a reservation at. With its tiled floors and brick walls, the moment you entered through the front doors made you feel as if you had been transported right into the heart of Sicily.
“I thought of taking you here for your birthday,” she said as she twined their fingers, the action seeming to make him smile.
“Did you?”
“Absolutely. As soon as you tell me when your birthday is ...”
His smile grew a touch bigger. “Devil’s Day.”
She thought on that a moment before she realized there couldn’t be a more fitting day for him.
October 31—it explained a lot.
“Unfortunately, poppet, there’s a reason this restaurant is notoriously hard to get a table at.”
She frowned. “Really? Why?”
“For one, my brother owns it. Second, he only services a very particular clientele.”
She had thought, from the moment they had stepped foot inside out of the cold, that some of the faces dining in the restaurant looked familiar, but for the life of her, she hadn’t been able to place them.
But now that he’d given her context …
“They’re all criminals,” she guessed, a little enchanted by the idea.
Of course, she knew places like this existed, but she had never imagined one that would seem so absolutely ordinary on the service. But it was one thing to picture something in her head than to actually witness it in person.
“Good,” a familiar voice called from several feet away. “I’m glad you both could make it.”
“It’s not as if you gave me much of a choice, did you, brother?” Uilleam asked, sounding as put out as he looked. “It at least goes to show what you’re capable of just to get my attention.”
Seeing them together like this, she couldn’t help but realize just how much one resembled the other.
But there was also something remarkably different about the ways they carried themselves.
Kit walked with his back straight, his arms resting at his sides. Uilleam, on the other hand, had a more casual, confident gait with one or both of his hands in his pockets.
Yet both of their gazes drifted around the room, taking in stock of everything around them.
Kit, the gentleman, pulled out her chair for her before he took his own seat, Uilleam following them both. It couldn’t have been long before the waiter walked over to take their order.
Kit did the ordering, first a bottle of very expensive wine and then the chef’s special for the table.
“I have to say,” Kit started as the waiter promised to return with their drinks.
But before he could say anything more, Uilleam interrupted him. “You don’t, actually.”
She was glad she met his brother if for no other reason than Kit was the only one who managed to turn Uilleam into a petulant child when he was annoyed.
She wasn’t sure as she lifted her wine glass to her lips whether the man across the room meant to be so blatant with his staring, but even she noticed the way his gaze seemed to linger on their table.
She was surprised neither Uilleam or Kit seemed to notice.
The feel of Uilleam’s fingers curling around her thigh brought her back to the conversation happening around her. He’d yet to take his eyes off his brother, yet he felt her discomfort.
There was nothing to worry about when she was with him. There had only been one, so far, who had attempted to harm him, but despite his efforts, he hadn’t succeeded.
Nor would he ever get the chance to again.
And Gaspard had been far more powerful than the silent man who seemed ignored by everyone around him. When Gaspard had entered a room, his presence was felt not because of the man himself but by all the others who had known him as well.
White Rabbit Page 18
