CHAPTER 9
“Fuck! Evan never mentioned his childhood to any of us. No wonder we hardly ever saw him.” Jared Sinclair’s grip tightened around the mug of coffee he was holding. “Why didn’t he tell us?”
“Maybe because we were all too involved in our own problems to notice that he had his own challenges. It was easier for him to just stay quiet,” Grady observed from his position on the leather couch. “He’s always been the one to take care of us, and I’m betting that he’s not used to talking about his problems with anyone. I’m not saying it’s fair. It’s just not comfortable for Evan not to be in a position of control.”
“No shit,” Jared admitted, possibly because he was remembering the dark times in his life that he might not have survived if not for Evan.
Micah Sinclair felt just a little remorseful himself as he remembered a few jests he’d thrown at Evan, trying to take his pompous eldest cousin down a few notches. He liked Evan, he even understood him a little since he was an eldest son too, but he could never resist a poke at the arrogant, stuffy side of him. No doubt Evan was arrogant, but maybe not quite as much as Micah had previously believed. Oh hell, honestly, his cousin definitely was a cocky bastard, but not quite for the reasons he’d imagined.
He looked at the three men sitting with him in Jared’s living room, all of them pretty somber about Hope’s earlier revelations regarding the things none of them had known about Evan. The women had retreated upstairs to finish up plans for Hope’s party. The guys were still trying to make sense of Evan’s silence.
Hope had said that Evan had never asked her not to share, and she thought that everyone should know about the issues he had dealt with while he was growing up. Micah was pretty sure Evan’s omission didn’t mean he had wanted his sister to tell the whole family about his problems. In fact, knowing Evan, he never wanted anyone to know at all. Micah could relate to feeling that way. But Hope had taken a chance and shared what she knew about Evan because she cared about him.
Hope just wants all of her family back together and whole after what they experienced earlier in their life.
Micah knew how she felt. Right now, his own immediate family was so torn apart that he was pretty sure nothing would or could put them back together again.
Looking at how far his cousins had come to being a complete family again, Micah envied them. He rarely saw Julian because he’d been in Hollywood for so long trying to make a name for himself. And Xander . . . his youngest brother seemed to have a death wish; it appeared that he simply didn’t care if he lived or died.
He mourned the days when all three of them had been close, thinking no amount of distance would ever tear them apart. Admittedly, distance hadn’t been the only thing that had separated them; one nightmare tragedy was the biggest factor. They’d all handled it differently, and separately. The one who had come out of it the worst was Xander, and Micah still wasn’t sure his youngest brother would recover from his emotional and physical wounds.
Looking around the room, he noticed that the men, and now their brother-in-law, Jason, were deep in conversation about how they could help Evan. Grady and Jared were in a heated conversation, with Jason throwing in his occasional opinions. Dante was out handling calls and checking on the elderly in the community because he was a police detective, and the force here in Amesport was fairly small. Micah had no doubt that it would be even more chaotic if Dante were here.
Micah stood, knowing he had to get back to the guesthouse to make a couple of calls. He’d decided to stay until the party on Saturday night, but he still had to conduct business while he was away from his company.
A big part of him wanted to stay, wanted to keep talking to his cousins. He’d felt more relaxed being here with his extended family than he’d experienced in a long time. But he had responsibilities to his own siblings, and he couldn’t ignore them any longer.
Julian had delayed his arrival since he couldn’t get through the bad weather, but he should get here by Friday night. Even so, Micah knew he wouldn’t share many of his burdens with Julian, who was finally accomplishing everything he’d ever dreamed about in the film industry. He deserved his time to bask in the limelight without worrying about his family right now.
Bidding the guys good-bye during a rare moment of silence, Micah ducked out the sliding rear door and sprinted to the guesthouse, the cold wind whipping around him as he covered the short distance to the smaller house.
Closing the door quickly behind him as he entered to block out the wind, he leaned against it, still in awe of the winter storm they were experiencing.
It should make him feel gloomy or at least a little bit on edge. Instead, it exhilarated him, made the adrenaline pump through his body just a little harder. He was a risk-taker, an adrenaline junkie. Although he’d stopped some of the crazy things he’d done when he was a little younger, he still took calculated risks. For him, there was no better feeling than accomplishing something that had previously been considered impossible.
Pulling the sweatshirt over his head, he moved toward the bathroom, knowing he really needed a shower. He’d popped over to Jared’s house because Hope had asked him to come over for a few minutes so he could join the conversation about Evan. He’d grabbed coffee next door, but he hadn’t had a chance to shower before he went to the big house.
He turned on the water and stripped off the rest of his clothes, wadded them into a bundle, and shot them across the bathroom, raising his arm in victory as they all landed squarely in the hamper. “Two points,” he announced to himself, grinning as he opened the shower door and stepped into the enclosed space.
Tempted to linger because the hot water felt so incredibly good, Micah forced himself to make short work of showering so he could get to work. Punching the rounded handle that shut off the water completely when he was done, he turned to push the door open, but ended up stopping short before shoving the shower entrance open.
Completely nude, water dripping from his body, Micah stood stock-still as he heard someone singing very close to the shower.
Who in the hell is that?
Listening closer, he noticed the voice was a clear soprano, and that she was slightly off-key. It didn’t seem to matter to the songbird. Her voice got louder and surer of herself as she reached a crescendo in the composition.
What. The. Fuck.
Was somebody crazy trying to rob the house? How many cat burglars struck during a blizzard and sang badly at the tops of their lungs?
More curious than afraid, Micah pushed slowly on the door and slipped silently out of the shower.
She was there, right in front of him, her shapely ass in the air as she cleaned the toilet. He was looking directly at her rear end, as her back was to him.
He grabbed a towel off the bar. “Could you wait until I’m finished?” he rasped, wondering what had possessed her to start cleaning the bathroom with him in the shower. He didn’t know her. Micah never forgot a great ass, and he didn’t remember ever seeing someone with hair that spectacularly blonde. It was made up of several different shades, from honey to platinum.
She didn’t respond, never hesitated at the sound of his voice.
Micah got irritated as he quickly dried his body. “Did you hear me? Jesus, woman. Are you hard of hearing?”
Pissed off at her lack of response, he reached forward and grasped her upper arm and swung her around. “I’ve been trying to talk to you. Don’t ignore me. Are you fucking deaf?” He couldn’t figure out her intentions, but they couldn’t be good.
Strangely, he was disappointed when she stopped singing and started screaming, her eyes focused on his mouth.
“Stop it. I’m not hurting you. You broke into my home.”
She stopped shrieking after the initial shock of seeing him wore off and stared at him from the top of his head to his toes, her eyes growing wide as she perused his nude body thoroughly.
Having no problem with being naked, he let her look her fill before he wrapped the bath towel around his waist. “What in the fuck are you doing here? What do you want?” Women always wanted something from him.
She looked at him for a moment before speaking carefully. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am fucking deaf.” She signed to him as she spoke, probably out of habit. “I didn’t know you were here. I couldn’t hear you.”
Micah looked at the smoked glass of the shower and realized that she hadn’t been able to detect his presence. Looking at her directly so she could read his lips, feeling like a dick, he answered, “I’m sorry I scared you. Why are you here?” He signed the words as well as spoke them aloud.
One of his best friends was hearing impaired, and although he was a little bit rusty, Micah knew sign language fairly well.
“I clean here. Jared pays me to keep up all of the homes on the Peninsula when they aren’t occupied. My brother and I own a restaurant in town, but it’s slow in the winter. I do this on the side.” She removed her rubber gloves and placed them in a bucket on the floor, and then held out her hand. “I’m Tessa Sullivan.”
Micah took her offered hand and held on to it a little longer than he should have, his eyes trained on her delicate features and beautiful, curly hair. God, she was gorgeous, now that he could see her clearly. “Micah Sinclair. Jared’s cousin.”
For some reason, now that he could see her face, she looked familiar, yet he knew they’d never met. He wouldn’t have forgotten her if they’d met before.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had made it in before the storm. I usually clean the bathrooms first, or I probably would have seen your belongings. Are you the daredevil or the famous movie actor?” She pulled her hand away and smiled at him, a genuine grin that didn’t have a trace of deception or pretense. “I haven’t seen the movie that made one of Hope’s cousins a star yet.”
For once in his life, Micah found himself dumbfounded. Her unguarded smile made his cock spring to attention, and he had a sudden urge to take off her clothes and bend her over the bathroom vanity to relieve the throbbing his dick was experiencing at the moment. He wanted to absorb all of the warmth he could sense in her smile.
He felt like a complete jerk for having yelled at her. Of course, she hadn’t heard him—or his irritation at her presence. “Extreme sports,” Micah corrected, getting more turned on as she stared innocently at his mouth.
Of course she’s looking at my lips. It’s her only way of understanding me.
Micah didn’t consider himself a daredevil anymore at all. In truth, he never had. He still took some risks, but his main focus now was on business. Extreme sports were lucrative, and his business provided the best equipment for people in their fields. He took pride in the fact that he made some dangerous sports safer.
She nodded to acknowledge his correction. “You’re the thrill seeker. I’ve heard a lot about you and your brothers from Mara.”
“It’s a profession that’s made me very rich,” Micah answered brusquely, annoyed that he was actually defending his business.
Why do I care?
He didn’t. Not really. He’d been called worse for some of the things he’d done in the past, and her expression wasn’t making a mockery of his company. Still, having her dismiss what he did was pissing him off. He wasn’t sure why . . . but it did.
“Is there a Sinclair who isn’t rich?” she asked, a twinkle in her eyes.
“There’s probably plenty of them, but none with our DNA,” Micah admitted, still staring at her like a horny teenager.
She snorted, a sound that was probably actually a laugh. Micah smiled because, coming from her, the noise was enchanting.
“How did you get here?” The weather was horrible, and he didn’t like the idea of her on the road when it was so brutal outside.
“I drove. I’m deaf, not stupid or incapable of performing simple tasks.” Propping her hands on her hips, she stared at him stubbornly.
“That’s not what I meant. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a blizzard outside,” Micah informed her sarcastically, only realizing after he made the statement that she wouldn’t hear the censure in his voice.
She shrugged. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I have an apartment near the Peninsula. I knew the roads would be okay here since the Sinclairs have their own plow service.”
“And you call me the daredevil,” he grumbled, not quite understanding how she could see to drive on the roads right now. She was right. The road was constantly being cleared, but the visibility was almost zero.
“I know the roads here like the back of my hand. I could probably drive them blind.”
She was already driving them deaf, and he shuddered at the prospect of her being on the roads at all right now.
“It’s not safe to be outside right now,” he told her irritably.
“I’m not outside right now,” she returned reasonably.
“I’ll go get dressed, and then I’ll drive you home. The house is fine. You don’t have to clean right now.” Having her around would distract the hell out of him.
“It’s fine. I’ll go.” Tessa hurriedly gathered her cleaning products and shot out the door.
Micah sprinted to his bedroom and pulled on a clean pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt. He was taming his hair with his fingers as he walked back out to the living room.
Everything was quiet; the only sound he heard was the whistling of the wind.
“Tessa,” he bellowed angrily before realizing that she wouldn’t hear him. “Fuck!”
Micah tugged on his boots and raced outside via the front door. There were no unidentified vehicles in Jared’s driveway.
Tessa was gone.