Reckless in Paradise (15 page)

‘You bastard!'

The words didn't stick. He'd been called much worse in his time, no doubt would be again. But it didn't help that he hadn't spoken the complete truth. He had no interest in her pointless wedding arrangements, that was true, but at the end of his work day he'd liked nothing more than hearing her talk. He didn't care about what, he'd just loved her enthusiasm and energy and hearing the laughter in her voice.

But there was no laughter now.

‘I don't know what's bothering you, but clearly you're in no mood for company. If you'll excuse me?'

He'd barely made it to the door when he heard the words. ‘Did you offer Jake money to break off with Monica?'

So she wasn't in on it.
That was his first thought. He'd suspected Fletcher was taking advantage of her all along and he was right.
So why would he have told her now?

But that didn't matter. What mattered right now was that she knew and that was why she was so angry.
Damn.
He spun around. ‘Did he tell you that?'

‘Answer the question! Did you, or that henchman you call a security boss, offer Jake money to break off with Monica? Seems to me it's got your
modus operandi
written all over it.'

He stiffened and dragged in a breath. So the truth was out. There was no point denying it, even if he wished she didn't know. Even if he wished for that other Sophie back, the warm, sensual woman who responded to his touch as if she was made for it. But that Sophie was gone, probably for ever, and even though part of him ached inexplicably at the thought he'd always known it would happen some time.

And now he could only defend his actions. His record might damn him in her eyes, but history was on his side, after all. ‘He'll say yes. They all do.'

He watched her almost crumple in a heap. Her fisted hands came up over her face as her knees buckled beneath her. But she didn't fall. She pushed herself up straight, thrust her arms away and glared at him, her eyes like polished stone. ‘For God's sake, Daniel. Can't you see? Jake
loves
Monica.'

‘So he
says
.'

‘Because it's the truth! And he asked me to tell you he doesn't want your money, whether it's five-hundred thousand,
or a million, or whatever else you decide to throw at him. He doesn't want it because he's marrying Monica, whatever you want to believe in your tortured, twisted mind.'

He frowned. She had the numbers wrong, but then she was hysterical and there was no point correcting her.

‘I thought you'd changed,' she continued, her voice softer, resigned, with a hint of melancholy. ‘I thought the fact you insisted the wedding would be held here, the way you insisted I should stay to make all the arrangements on site…' She shook her head, her eyes uncomfortably direct as they searched his out. ‘I know you're desperate to protect your sister because she's all you have, and you've been looking after her ever since your parents died, but I thought for once that you might be more interested in her happiness than shutting her off from the world. I thought that over the last few days you were at least coming to terms with this wedding, even if you couldn't openly embrace it.'

She drew breath, kicked up her chin. ‘I thought there might actually be hope for you. I'm sorry. I was wrong.'

Her last few words were the kick that set his blood pressure rocketing. She didn't know him. She didn't know the first thing about him. And yet she stood there and made out that he was some kind of disappointment?

‘You don't know the first thing about it!'

‘I know you can't bear the thought of anyone else loving your sister, so much so that you pay anyone who gets close to get rid of them.'

His spun round, needing to hit something, his open palm slamming against the wall before he turned back. ‘And you don't think I have reason?'

‘Sure you have reason—you're jealous they'll steal her away from you—and you use the excuse of them being nothing more than fortune-hunters to drive them away.'

‘No!' With a few purposeful strides he was before her. ‘Did Monica tell you about her first boyfriend, the charming Cal, her first
true love
?'

Sophie backed away, her eyes wide, but there was strength in them too, he could see, and a determination not to be cowed. In the very next moment her chin cocked up. ‘Not specifically. She said she'd had a few boyfriends but none of them had stuck around long. And we all know why that is, don't we?'

‘Do we? Let me tell you about Cal. He was ambitious and determined to make a million dollars before he was twenty-one.'

‘And this was a reason to resent him? Didn't you do something similar yourself?'

‘Not that way. Not by blackmailing the brother of the girl you're supposed to be in love with. Not with a movie of them having sex.'

Her eyes widened and he awarded himself a mental victory. At last she might begin to understand where he was coming from. ‘He did what?'

‘Either I paid up or he'd plaster the images all over the Internet. My sister. Her first time. Do you know what that does to a brother when you're supposed to be looking out for her? Of course I paid him out.'

‘Daniel, I had no idea.'

‘No, you didn't. You were too happy to judge from a distance. But maybe now you can understand why I never hesitated to get in first with an offer, before any damage was done, before they found a way to extract it by other means. And they took it. Which proves something, wouldn't you say?'

‘It proves that this Cal was a monster. It proves that maybe they weren't deeply involved with Monica and taking the money was easier. But it doesn't mean that every man is like that. And it doesn't mean that Monica should be punished for ever. Don't you think she deserves a chance at happiness?
Or do you intend dispensing with every man she ever shows an interest in, ensuring she leads a long, lonely life thinking there is something wrong with her. Is that what you want?'

He looked skywards. Of course he didn't want that. He wanted his sister happy, with a man who would put her on the pedestal she deserved, not some fortune-hunter. ‘She'll find someone worthy of her one day.'

‘What about Jake? Doesn't it occur to you that the reason he's saying no to your offers is because it's not the money he wants? He loves Monica. Can't you see that?'

‘He's not marrying my sister!'

‘What is your problem? What have you got against my brother, other than the fact he grew up poor and you grew up rich. Maybe he gave you some schoolboy grief at high school? What else did he ever do to you?'

‘What did he do to me?' He laughed as blood fired the furnace of his eyes, painting her outline red. ‘Your sweet and innocent Jake did nothing, nothing at all, apparently. Clearly I should welcome him into the bosom of my family.'

The tone of his voice put chills down her spine. ‘Tell me,' she said, simultaneously too afraid to hear, too frightened not to find out what it was that had driven this man to such bitterness and to take the measures he had. ‘Why is it that you hate Jake so much?'

‘Why wouldn't I hate him?' He looked at her then, his eyes suddenly empty shells, lost, lonely and soulless. ‘Because your brother killed my fiancée.'

H
IS
fiancée?
Oh God.
She remembered the photo in the guest room, the smiling girl Millie had said had died in tragic circumstances, and whose picture Daniel couldn't bear either to part with or to see. But what could her brother possibly have had to do with her death?

Nothing.

‘No.' Sophie wasn't even sure why she'd believed that, but she did and it was out there; now the word hung between them, a one-word rebuttal to an accusation of nightmarish proportions. ‘You're wrong.'

‘You don't even know him. You don't know what he was like back then. You have no idea what he was capable of!'

‘Maybe not, but I still don't believe my brother is the type of man that could have done what you said and be lining up to marry your sister. What kind of man could do such a thing? I'm telling you now, Jake's not that man.'

‘Then you don't know your brother at all.'

She shook her head. ‘No. I don't know you.' She moved to go past and he caught her arm, his fingers like claws in her flesh, although she felt no pain, her fury consuming her ability to feel anything else.

‘Don't you want to hear what he did? Or are you too scared to learn the truth about your precious brother?'

He was wound tight as a drum, his skin like a mask over the bones of his face, his eyes deep pits as he challenged her, continuing unbidden, his voice empty and flat. ‘It was our final year at high school. We'd just finished exams and my family all went to Italy for three months, to visit the extended family my parents hadn't seen for years. Emma and I were to be officially engaged the week after we came back.'

He seemed to realise he was still holding her then, and let her go, turning his head away. ‘Emma wanted to come with us, but she'd just scored a job and we thought it was better to start saving up. Three months away from her seemed an eternity—stupid, really, when I had no idea then what eternity even meant.'

He paused, his head dipped on sagging shoulders. ‘I couldn't wait to get on that plane home. Except just before we left for the airport we got a phone call. Emma had been thrown from a car when it careened off the road. She wasn't wearing a seat belt. Maybe she might have survived the crash if she was, maybe she might have survived anyway, but the car rolled on top of her. She didn't have a chance.'

Sophie shivered, the chill of his words going bone-deep. He'd lost his fiancée in tragic circumstances, then he'd lost his parents in a similar way not long after. No wonder the trauma had cut so deep.

‘I'm truly sorry,' she said, meaning it. ‘But I still don't understand what that had to do with my brother.'

His eyes turned to black holes. ‘She was in your brother's car!'

Sophie swallowed. She knew Jake sometimes had headaches, a legacy of a crash he'd once been in, but she'd had no idea of the details. Was Daniel right? Did she really not know her brother that well? Could he be responsible for such a tragedy?

‘And you blame him?'

‘Who else am I supposed to blame? He always resented that I had money and he had none. He was jealous of my success at sport and my academic results. And he hated the fact the most beautiful girl at school wasn't interested in him, despite his efforts. So, the moment my back was turned and I was away, he went after her.'

‘You can't know that, surely? Just because they happened to be in the same car together.'

‘Oh, I know it.' His lips turned into a thin line. ‘Because there's more—the autopsy discovered she was pregnant.' He tilted his head and directed eyes of bleak, black ice at her. ‘The baby wasn't mine.'

‘You're sure?'

‘How could it be, when we'd never had sex? We were waiting for the engagement, which was half the reason I couldn't wait to get back.'

‘And you think it was Jake's child?'

‘She was six weeks' pregnant. I'd been gone three months. She was with him when she died. You work it out.'

She swallowed. The horror of the past was so vast, ugly and heinous right here in this room, wound tight inside this man, that she wanted to flee from it and from the island for ever. Because now that horror belonged to her too, courtesy of her brother's involvement, courtesy of Daniel's callous seduction of her. And still she couldn't believe it could be true; she wished she could find the words to console Daniel for his loss, wished she could find the words to defend her brother before she could talk to him and determine the truth herself.

But another thought intruded, another gut-churning question demanding to be answered: ‘Why am I here, then, organising a wedding that you never had any intention of holding? Were you just trying to pretend to Monica that you actually
cared about her happiness? Or did you somehow think, in your twisted mind, that sleeping with me was how you intended getting even with my brother?'

He flinched and growled out his response. ‘Does it actually matter?'

She decided it didn't. But she'd be damned if she'd give him the satisfaction of running away. ‘I hate you for what you've done to your sister. I hate you for the way you've treated Jake. Most of all I hate you for what you've done to me.

‘But, mark my words, this wedding is going to happen,' she said with a resolve tapped from a well she didn't know she possessed. ‘Something awful happened all those years ago, yes, but I don't believe that Jake could have done what you say he did—and I'm going to prove it. And then that wedding is going to go ahead right here, right under your nose. And you're going to suck it up!'

 

She wasn't leaving.
Somehow as Daniel stared blindly out at the pristine view of sea and sky, that one piece of information filtered through the morass of his mind and settled like a feather in the foreground. In a day when everything that could possibly have gone wrong had gone wrong, at least he'd salvaged that.

She wasn't leaving.

He wasn't even sure why it was so important. She'd been going to leave some time anyway; it had been inevitable from day one. But it was strange how the concept of her departure had gone from something he'd treated as a cold inevitability to something he'd been happy to avoid every time Fletcher had turned down the latest offer. Because the sex was so good?

Must be.

Although it might take some doing, getting her back in his bed after today. Damn. What a waste.

He turned and sighed. Did she really believe this wedding could go ahead after what he'd told her about her brother? She was either blindly loyal or blindly stupid, yet in a way he could almost admire her devotion to her brother. Wasn't it how he felt about Monica? He'd do anything for her.

Except stand by when she married Jake Fletcher.

The call came when he was back in his room, and because it came from Jo he picked up. If something was happening in Hawaii, he needed to know. ‘What's up?'

‘I doubled the offer. Thought you should know.'

‘What the hell for? I told you to wait.'

‘Because you've got to get rid of him! He's scum, Dan, you know that. You don't want him marrying your sister. Isn't it bad enough that right this minute he's probably screwing her?'

‘Shut up, Jo!' He didn't need to hear the words. He didn't need those pictures in his head.

‘She'll be banged up, just like that other one, if you don't get rid of him. I'm just trying to do my job.'

Are you? Daniel wondered, one hand massaging his pounding temple. If he didn't know better, he'd think Jo was more interested in railroading this wedding than he was, when it was he who had the issue with Fletcher.

Then again, it was probably just Jo's overactive loyalty kicking in again. After all, he'd seen the damage Fletcher had inflicted upon him before. No doubt he didn't want to have to scrape him off the floor again.

‘Okay, Jo. The four million is offered now. Let it go at that. But don't make any more offers without my okay. Got that?'

 

‘What happened?' Sophie cried when her brother picked up the phone, ‘He thinks you killed his fiancée; he thinks you got her pregnant. What happened that day?'

‘Sophie, hold on. I have to change phones.' She heard the rush of movement, the echo of a second connection before the first clicked off, and the sound of a door being shut before her brother picked up again, his voice low. ‘Sophie's dozing. I don't want her to hear.'

‘Maybe you should tell her. Maybe you should tell all of us. I told Daniel I didn't believe him, but it's too awful. I can't fight this battle for you, Jake. I thought I could smooth the waters between you, but he hates you, and the way he tells it I can't see a way through. Please tell me it's all a lie.'

‘Sophie, I'm sorry. I should have told you. Believe me, I wanted to, but how can I when I don't know the whole picture myself?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I should have said something, but it's hard for me. Even now…' Down the line she heard the rasp of his breath, as though it physically pained him to have to remember. ‘I survived the accident but I was in a coma for two months. I still get flashbacks and nightmares, but I still can't remember clearly what happened just before the crash.'

‘You can't? But you have to, Jake. It's the only way.'

‘Listen, Sophie, the doctors think my memories of those minutes may never be recovered. All I have is fragments and impressions, but they may mean nothing, the doctors think, or they may be scenarios I've come up with since to explain in my mind what happened.'

She swallowed and wiped away moisture she hadn't realised she'd shed from her cheek. ‘What do you think happened?'

There was a long sigh at the end of the line and a sound like he had slid down the wall to the floor. ‘I have this impression—this feeling—that Emma came to me for help that night. We weren't really good friends but we'd talked sometimes
at school—when Caruana wasn't around, that was. I'd heard they were getting married and I didn't see her all summer. Until that night.'

Sophie heard his ragged breaths as he paused, willing him silently to continue so that she could make sense of the horror of that night, make sense of everything that had happened since.

‘It was raining heavily, and I have this impression of her standing on the doorstep, soaked through, her eyes swollen with tears. I can't remember the words, but it was all mixed up with the baby and Jo and Daniel coming home. She was scared, desperate to get away.
But I can't remember why!
'

‘It's okay, Jake,' she said, wishing he wasn't locked alone in a bathroom half a world away, wishing she could be there to hold him. ‘Take your time.'

‘I'm okay.' He sighed. ‘And then I have this picture, like a photo in my mind, of Emma behind the steering wheel, with me beside her yelling at her to stop. But she didn't stop. We were both thrown from the car. The police didn't believe I wasn't driving.'

‘And the baby? Was it yours?'

‘I swear to God I never slept with her, Sophie. I didn't see her all summer before that night.'

She let go a breath that carried much more than just air. ‘But everyone assumed you were.'

‘I didn't wake up for two months, and by that time everyone believed it. Emma was dead and buried and people were starting to come to terms with it. What point would there have been in digging it all up again?'

‘So you let them go on thinking it?'

‘It never mattered, Sophie, because I could live with myself. I knew I hadn't done the wrong thing and that was good enough. But it mattered when I fell in love with Monica and found out who her brother was. I tried to talk to him; I
knew we had to sort it out some time. But he wouldn't return my calls. And what could I really tell him that he'd believe anyway?'

‘I understand.'

He sighed. ‘I'm sorry. I know it was asking too much of you, but I was really hoping that if I disappeared with Monica he might get used to the idea. I thought he'd have to. I see now I was running away when I should have stayed and dealt with it myself. I'm sorry to drop you in it like that, Soph. It must have been a nightmare for you, putting up with him all this time.'

‘It had its moments,' she said quietly. ‘But I'm glad you told me at last. You know you have to tell Daniel. He has to know the truth.'

‘Even though I don't know it all? Why would he ever believe it wasn't my baby?'

‘You have to try.'

‘Yeah, I guess you're right. Maybe we'll come back early. At least then it might put an end to these offers I've been getting.'

Sophie's ears pricked up. ‘You've had more?'

‘It's up to one and half million. Nice work, if you can get it.'

Fury welled up inside her. What would it take to make Daniel believe it? ‘I told him, Jake. I told him you weren't interested.'

‘It's okay. It means I need to come back, in that case, so I can tell him where to shove his money myself. There's no way we're going to sort this out with text messages.'

She heard the muffled sound of a woman's voice and a knocking. ‘Soph, I've got to go. Talk to you tomorrow.'

 

‘I'm moving to one of the cabins,' she said matter-of-factly over an untouched plate of mushroom risotto. She'd only
come to the dinner table to tell him what she was intending to do, not to eat. ‘I'll continue my work from there, which makes sense, given we'll be having the reception at the long-house pavilion.'

Across the table from her, he put down his fork. ‘You're still persisting with this farce of a wedding, then?'

‘I spoke to Jake. He's coming back to talk to you. He's got things you need to know—need to hear. Like the fact Emma wasn't carrying his child.'