Worlds Apart (32 page)

Her frown deepened. “That’s weird. You saw your plane though, right?”

“A plane? No. My toys have long gone.” Taylor slipped slices of bread between the metal holders. “Why think it was mine when it’s in Niall’s room?”

Roo spooned coffee into the mugs. Something wasn’t right here. Roo had thought it was Taylor’s plane, Niall said it was and now Taylor denied it.

“Pass the marmalade,” Taylor said.

Roo handed it over and then poured boiling water into three mugs. When she put the kettle down, she turned to find Taylor had moved closer. He pulled her into his arms and gave her a long, slow, leisurely kiss that made her toes curl and her heart thump.

“Thank you,” he said after he let her go.

“For what?”

“For helping make this happen, for making me happy, and for being you.”

Roo gulped. She didn’t know what to say. Then suddenly she did. “Toast’s burning.”

Taylor leapt for the stove. “Shit.”

“See you upstairs.” She put the mugs on a tray and carried them out of the room. Roo was fighting not to cry. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. She should have said something nice back, but she’d blurted out about the toast. Stupid, even though it
was
burning.

Niall lay on his back with his arm over his eyes. Roo put the tray on the bedside table and slipped back up the stairs to the attic. One glance and she blew out a heavy breath. Bed, wardrobe, a chair strewn with clothes. Her gaze drifted to the corner where she’d seen the blanket and the plane, and it was empty. But this was the same room.

Roo wandered to the corner and kicked the empty space where the cushion and—
what the hell?
She dropped to her knees, reached out and squeaked. The blanket was here. She could feel it.
Impossible.
Roo’s mouth lost all moisture. Was she dreaming this? Had the guys slipped her some drug?

She waved her hand above her head and her fingers snagged the plane. Heart pounding, she traced the line of the string to the ceiling and tugged it free. She had to fight the urge to giggle. She knew she was holding something yet couldn’t see it.

“Roo?” Taylor shouted. “Where are you?”

“Coming.”

Roo held her hand up so the plane didn’t hit the floor, but as she walked out of the attic, she almost let the thing drop because suddenly it
was
visible. Roo made her way down the stairs, nipped into her room to get Stephanie’s book and tucked it under her arm, hidden beneath Niall’s shirt.

When she went into Taylor’s room, they were sitting on the bed eating toast, Niall, under the duvet, leaning against the headboard, and Taylor on top with his back toward the door. When Niall saw what she was holding, his mouth tightened.

Taylor turned and his reaction was a puzzled frown. “Where did you get that?”

“The attic,” Roo said. She put the plane down on the floor and slipped the book under the bed before she sat next to Niall.

“Why’ve you bought it down here? You shouldn’t touch Niall’s stuff.”

The press of Niall’s fingers at her back told her to keep quiet. The look in his eyes begged her to.

“Er—I’ll put it back later.”

Taylor turned his attention to Niall. “Right, now you’ve got your toast and coffee, explain what happened in the bathroom.”

Niall’s fingers pressed more insistently into her spine.

“Take your private detective hat off for a minute,” Roo said. “This isn’t quite the loving cuddle I’d hoped for after such stupendous, sensational sex.”

Taylor grinned. “You think we were stupendous and sensational?”

Roo shook her head. “I was talking about me.”

Taylor sighed and rolled onto his side, propping his head up with his hand. Roo’s heart was racing. She felt as if a monster storm were brewing, the air full of electric charge, making it hard to breathe. The three of them had to be open for this to work and already there were too many secrets, particularly what was going on in the attic and what was wrong with Niall. Roo thought about the book lying under the bed. She had secrets of her own.

Maybe she had a way to help them open up.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked Niall.

“Three brothers.”

“Younger? Older?”

“Older.”

“Are your parents still alive?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Thank you, Mr. Chatty.

“My father died seven years ago.” Roo felt a jolt of pain when she said that. “My mother and my sister live in Greece, I think.”

“You think?” Taylor stroked her knee, drawing circles with his finger, making her quiver.

“They moved there eighteen years ago. I haven’t seen them since.”

Taylor’s finger stopped moving.

Niall wrapped his arms around her. “How old were you when they left?”

“Ten.”

Taylor’s eyes widened. “Sure they’re still alive?”

“Until seven years ago, they sent Christmas and birthday cards. I moved house then. Maybe they’re still sending them.”

“No return address?” Taylor asked.

The private detective in him. “No. Just a Greek stamp.”

“What happened when you were ten?” Niall asked.

Roo choked up as she remembered. “I went to school as usual. Madison didn’t go because she said she felt sick. When I came home, she and Mum weren’t there.” She swallowed hard. “Madison’s room was almost empty. All my mother’s things had gone.” And Roo’s money box. Her mother wanted her money but not her. She’d saved up more than two hundred pounds of her pocket money and birthday money over the years. Maybe her sister had taken it, but it still hurt.

“What did you do?” Taylor asked.

“Made some weird dinner for my dad with potatoes, cheese and bacon, and did my homework while I waited for him to come back from work. He smashed a vase and a plate and he kept saying, ‘What am I going to do? What am I supposed to do with you? How could she do this to me?’ I didn’t understand then, but later I did. She’d left me to punish him. He’d been going to leave her and instead she left him.

“The woman he’d been seeing didn’t want him with a child in tow, so it was just me and my dad. And he never resented me for it.” Roo gave a sad smile. “We were happy most of the time. I was better off without my mum. She was hard and brittle as toffee, not soft and cuddly. She was angry all the time, shouted if I didn’t eat all my dinner, if I didn’t get full marks on a test, if she caught me reading under the covers in bed.”

“All mothers do that.” Taylor looked at Niall for confirmation.

“Mine gets pissed off very easily,” Niall said. “I only have to have the wrong look on my face.”

Roo had always seemed to have the wrong look on her face for her mother. “My dad turned out to be the best dad in the world. Once there was just the two of us, we did everything together. I think he tried harder because he felt bad about what had happened, guilty because he’d been going to leave me. He said he hadn’t wanted to see how much Mum hated me and that it was his fault she was so angry, his fault she liked Madison better. He’d had an affair and Mum found out, and in an attempt at a new start, she got pregnant with me. So I wasn’t born out of love. But my dad made up for it by loving me so much.”

Roo smiled as she remembered him kissing her every night before she went to bed, the stories he’d read to her, the way he collected her when she was out late.

“I wanted to live at home while I went to university, but he wouldn’t let me. He said I had to learn to make myself happy and not rely on anyone else.”

He’d been right to make her move out. Roo hadn’t had many friends at school but she’d blossomed at college. She’d just completed her year in Russia when her father had fallen ill and Roo moved to a different university so she could live at home and look after him.

“What happened?” Taylor asked.

“Cancer. It spread very fast. He tried so hard to hang on until I graduated.” Roo’s throat began to close. “I was going to take him in a wheelchair, and when I went to help him out of bed the morning of my graduation, he was…he was dead.”

Roo had never cried so hard or so long.

Niall pressed himself harder against her back and Taylor wrapped his arms around her too.

She’d lost love that day and had been looking for it ever since.

Chapter Twenty

As the three of them lay in bed together, Roo couldn’t help but think of another mother who’d lost her little girl. Taylor’s mother probably still cried for her daughter whereas Roo doubted her mother even gave her a second thought. “Are the police still looking for Stephanie?”

“Not actively. It’s an open case but nothing’s going to happen unless someone comes forward and admits taking her or if they find… Christ.” Taylor rubbed his jaw with his hand.

“What was she like?” Roo pulled Taylor down so his head lay in her lap while she leaned against Niall.

“Beautiful. Huge brown eyes and long dark hair she tied in a pony tail—too tempting not to pull.” He chuckled. “She was inquisitive and funny and a pest and I used to tell her to get lost.” He groaned. “God, I wish I’d never said that.”

Niall held Roo tighter while she stroked Taylor’s hair, her fingers massaging his temple. “I bet all brothers say that to little sisters.”

“Except they don’t actually get lost,” Taylor muttered.

“Did you play with her in the tree house?” Roo asked. “Did she want to be the princess and you were some monster who’d captured her?”

He gave a short laugh. “I used to leave her up there for ages. I just wanted to play with…”

“Who?” Roo asked.

Niall sucked in a breath and Taylor turned his head to look at him. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember your friends’ names?” Roo asked.

“One friend,” Taylor blurted. “Why the hell can’t I remember? I can recall my mates from school—Pete, Robin, Ginger, Tommo. Who did I play with here?”

“Maybe you had an imaginary friend,” Roo said. “Maybe you played with that plane.”

Roo felt Niall stiffen behind her. Taylor didn’t miss Niall’s reaction either.

“I didn’t have an imaginary friend,” Taylor said. “And that’s not my plane.”

Roo sighed. “Yeah, you did and it is.”

Taylor rolled over to look up at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Promise you won’t be mad?” Roo asked.

Taylor rolled his eyes. Roo slid from under him and leaned over the edge of the bed. When she couldn’t feel the book, she shuffled further so she could look underneath.

The book wasn’t there.

“Roo, what the hell are you doing?” Taylor asked. “Not that I’m complaining.” He slid his fingers under the shirt and onto her backside.

Roo slithered off the bed. She lay flat on her stomach and patted the boards. Maybe it was invisible. She let out a strangled laugh and sat up.
What the hell am I thinking?
But the book had been there a moment ago and now it wasn’t. No holes in the floor. The guys hadn’t moved. Where the hell had it gone?

“What are you looking for?” Taylor asked.

Roo’s mind started to jump to impossible conclusions. She stared at Niall, not Taylor and said, “I found a book. Stephanie had written in it.”

The look on Niall’s face lasted only a moment, but it was shock, which meant he knew something. But then if Niall had hidden the book, why would he be shocked? Unless he was pretending to be surprised.

“Stephanie’s book?” Taylor’s voice was arctic cold. “Where is it?”

“It
was
under the bed. I put it there a moment ago.”

Taylor dipped his head to look and then sat back on the bed. Roo stayed on the floor. He looked pissed.

“Where did you find it?” he asked.

“In her room. I was looking for something to read and it fell out of a slip cover for
Captured by Indians
.”

“Was it a diary?” Taylor’s fists were clenched in the covers.

“A story. It began something like,
Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a big house with a big garden. His name was Taylor. Taylor had a sister called Stephanie who was very beautiful even though she was only ten years old. She had long black hair and dark eyes.”

“She wrote it when she was ten?” Taylor whispered. “What else did it say?”

“That years before, when she was five and you were nine, you lost your plane over the wall and went to get it. When you came back you said you were going to play with your new friend, but Stephanie couldn’t see him so she thought you’d made him up. Then one day she
did
see a boy in the tree house. Well, not a boy as such.” Roo glanced at Niall who stared at her without blinking.
Is he even breathing?
“When the boy realized Stephanie had seen him, he went over the wall and she decided to go and find him. The last words in the book were—
Wish me luck
.”

“Oh my God.” Taylor swallowed hard. “How come we didn’t find that? How come the police didn’t find that? Who was the boy?”

“You don’t remember?” Roo stood, picked up the plane and pushed it into Taylor’s hands.