CHAPTER 12
LIAM
“What in the fuck do you mean . . . she’s gone?”
I knew I was probably yelling at my only sister, but she should have never delivered the news that Brooke had left for California in the dining room of Sullivan’s.
Luckily, Tessa had just closed up, so we were alone.
I’d arrived from my meeting in Boston just in time to do cleanup so Tessa could head for home.
It had been a long drive. Maybe I should have spent the night in the city. But I’d been eager to get home to Brooke. It had been a few days since she’d spilled her guts about what had happened to her, and she seemed okay, but I wasn’t all that comfortable leaving her alone for the day. Unfortunately, I’d had a meeting with my suppliers that I hadn’t been able to cancel, and I had another personal reason for wanting to be in the city.
Tessa stopped loading dishes and turned to face me. “She said that she’d be back. She just needed a couple of days to deal with some things on the West Coast. Honestly, she did look a little shaken up.”
“What things?” I asked suspiciously. Brooke had been nowhere near packed yesterday, and I’d planned to work out the details of her staying with me tonight or tomorrow.
Hell, I had everything planned, so damn certain she was going to be willing to stay.
And now, she was gone.
“I don’t know,” Tessa explained. “She didn’t give me much information except that she’d be back. She’s not gone forever, Liam.”
“She didn’t say anything else?” Christ! I wanted Tessa to tell me something more. It made no sense for Brooke to leave.
My sister shook her head regretfully. “Her shift was over and Evan was here to pick her up. She left the keys for your SUV in your office. She didn’t say much. She looked a little . . . overwhelmed.”
Evan? “I’ll kill the bastard,” I growled. “Why in the hell was he here? What does he have to do with Brooke leaving?”
“I should have asked more questions,” Tessa said. “But I had customers. She just asked me to tell you she’d be back.”
“That’s not all that comforting right now,” I answered abruptly. “But it’s not your fault, Tessa.”
My sister was just the messenger. If Brooke was gone, I had no doubt that Evan Sinclair had something to do with her absence. But why in the hell had he wanted her to go? Why would he push her? When we’d had dinner with him and Miranda, they’d both seemed eager to convince her to stay and take a job locally.
Tessa moved forward and put a comforting hand on my arm. “Maybe it’s not my fault, but I’m still sorry. I didn’t know it was a big deal for her to leave for a few days.”
I ran a hand through my hair and tried to take a deep breath. “It isn’t really a big deal, but there’s something more happening here.”
“Why do you think that?”
I quickly explained what had happened to Brooke, and why she was here. I told my sister about our agreement to date and get to know each other. It wasn’t like Tessa didn’t already know how I felt about Brooke. We’d been all over town during the last nine or ten days together.
Tessa nodded as I finished. “You’re crazy about her,” she stated. “But that goes both ways. She cares about you, too.”
“But she never planned on leaving, Tessa. I know she didn’t. We had plans for the next few days.”
“Maybe something happened in California. She has a lot of family there, Liam.”
Was one of her family members sick? I supposed it was a possibility. “Did she look upset?” I asked.
Tessa frowned, her eyebrows drawing together as she considered the question. “Not upset exactly,” she mused. “She acted more shocked than upset. Like she was going through the motions like a zombie. I don’t think her head was quite right. She was pretty vague, like she didn’t quite understand why she was leaving herself.”
“I can bet that Evan knows why,” I said angrily. “No doubt he convinced her to go. What time did she leave?”
“She worked the day shift, and then she went home. She seemed happy until she stopped back in with Evan to leave you the message that she’d be back. She’s been gone for hours.”
I’d known that. Brooke had traded with one of my part-time employees to get on the morning shift so she could be done before I got home.
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed her number. I got her message machine.
“Fuck!” I cursed. “Why in the hell didn’t she call me?”
“She said she couldn’t reach you.”
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and tried to get a grip for my sister’s sake. “Go on home,” I said in a calmer voice. “I’ll take care of this later.”
“Do you think she’s okay?” Tessa asked.
My sister’s expression was stricken with concern.
Hell, I had to reel in my anger. Tessa hadn’t known what Brooke had been through, nor had she been aware that I was about to make my relationship permanent with Brooke if she’d have me. “I’m sure she’s fine,” I reassured Tessa, knowing that Brooke probably wasn’t fine at all. “Go ahead and cut out. Thanks for covering the place for me.”
Something had happened. Brooke wasn’t a flighty woman. There was no way she just made an impulsive decision to go. Something had caused her to make that decision.
“Are you sure?” she asked hesitantly.
“Go,” I repeated in as tranquil a voice as I could manage.
My sister threw herself into my arms and hugged me as she said, “Call me. I want to know what happened to her.”
I hugged her back. “I’ll call you later.”
As soon as Tessa was gone, I planned on confronting Evan to see what in the hell he’d said to Brooke to make her go flying back to California.
I watched Tessa get safely to her vehicle before I jumped into my own.
A half hour later, I found myself getting no satisfaction from Evan for the second time in the last several months. I’d left last time with no answers. I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it again.
“I don’t get it,” I rasped. “What things did she have to work out with her family?”
Evan was sitting on the couch in his living room, too far away for me to take a swing from my chair across from him. But I could leap over the coffee table between us pretty easily, and I contemplated just how much time it would take me to get there.
He’d been annoyingly closemouthed about Brooke leaving.
“I don’t know if I should tell you about that. It’s her private life.”
“She hasn’t even called me,” I bellowed. “I haven’t had a single fucking word from her. This morning, we had plans for the next several days, and tonight she’s gone? What in the hell happened, Evan? You were there with her. You must know something.”
Previously, I’d liked and respected Evan Sinclair. Right now, not so much. He was stubbornly refusing to give me any information about Brooke or what he’d said to make her go.
“Actually, I know a lot,” he said calmly. “I’m just not at liberty to tell you unless I know it’s going to help her. She needs some time, Liam. She plans on returning to Amesport. She left most of her stuff here.”
“I can’t give her time, because I’m worried as fuck,” I answered tersely.
“Ah, you know about her history,” he surmised.
“I know,” I said irritably. “And I’ve been half out of my mind since the day she told me that she nearly died at the hands of some asshole who had no respect for human life.”
I’d held myself together for Brooke, but I’d wanted to puke my guts out after she’d told me the truth, and I was still feeling protective about her safety. I had no doubt that feeling was never going away.
If the police hadn’t pulled in at exactly the time they had, if they had been even a few seconds later, Brooke would have died.
“You know that the chances of something like that ever happening again are minuscule,” Evan said calmly. “The odds of it happening the first time were pretty slim.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I snapped at him. “All I know is how I feel. She went through hell, and I’m going to make damn sure it never happens again.”
Evan shrugged. “Sometimes we have no control over the events that happen in our lives.”
Rationally, I knew that. My parents had died in a tragic accident, and my sister had gone deaf from an illness. There was no way of knowing those things would happen. Problem was, I wasn’t thinking like a reasonable man.
“I need to know that she’s safe,” I said, feeling so edgy I was ready to jump over the table and strangle Evan until he gave me more information.
“She’s safe,” he answered amiably. “She’s flying in Jared’s jet. She’ll be escorted home. She’s not alone.”
“Why Jared’s jet?” Usually Evan had no problem lending out his. He rarely traveled these days.
He stared at me, examining me like a lab specimen. “Because I had a feeling you’d need mine,” he replied drily.
My temper flared. “You manipulative bastard,” I growled. “You knew I was going to go after her.”
He nodded. “I did figure as much, yes.”
I stood, pissed off that he was manipulating Brooke and me. “What gives you the right to interfere in any of this?” I bellowed. “You’re nobody to her. At least I care about her. For you, she’s just another pawn.”
He stood, his face going from impassive to furious. “She isn’t another pawn,” he corrected. “And I always have my reasons for interfering,” he explained. “In this case, I have every reason. Brooke’s real last name is Sinclair. She’s my sister.”