‘You’re an airline captain. Your name is Simon. And let me tell you this, pal, you fit her description to a T.’
Simon’s brows rose fractionally at the tone, but his grey eyes remained crystal clear in a way that had the intuition in Alexander’s belly do a little dance.
‘I’m thinking that what you have here is a case of mistaken identity. Can I ask what I’m supposed to have done?’
‘You broke her heart,’ Alexander said in a soft voice that was deadly.
By the way his eyes went wide Simon recognised the threat and blinked twice.
He grinned. Alexander growled.
Simon shook his head.
‘Impossible.’
‘And why would that be?’
‘I’m gay.’
Rosie had timed her visit well.
Bronte was chattering on about how moving the funeral had been, and the success of their trip to Lake Como. And how Nico and Gabriel had spent quality time together for the first time.
The twins were napping.
Nico was catching up with business at Ludlow Hall and her best friend was folding laundry.
Telling herself everything would be fine, to just get it over and done with, Rosie leaned against the granite worktop and took a deep breath.
‘I’m banging your brother.’
Bronte blinked, laughed.
‘Ha ha, good one.’
And that reaction had a bead of cold sweat trickle down between her shoulder blades.
‘Not ha ha. Although I get the disbelief. I can hardly believe it myself.’
Her friend cleared her throat, gave her big eyes.
‘Since when?’
Rosie shifted from one foot to the other.
‘Last night. I want to keep it quiet, but he just says I’m being very stupid.’
‘I repeat, since when? I mean since when have you fancied my brother?’
Now Rosie knew what a condemned man felt like as she met Bronte’s sharp stare. The woman wouldn’t stop until she winkled the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the bloody truth out of her.
Staring at her fingers, Rosie swallowed audibly.
‘It hit me when I was sixteen and he was mooning over Lucinda Menzies-Smith, remember her? I couldn’t cope with it.’
Bronte simply stared.
‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Seriously, I banged him three times last night and once this morning.’
Now Bronte’s green eyes held hers and she saw it when the truth registered as her mouth and eyes went wide.
Then her best friend gave her a smile of utter joy as she leapt to grab her.
‘I knew it! I knew he had feelings for you the way he was talking about you and Josh. And then he started talking about getting a dog. A manly dog. I should have guessed.’
Since Rose couldn’t work out the link to her banging Alexander and a manly dog, she just patted Bronte’s back as her friend tried to crack her ribs.
‘You’re going to be my sister, for real.’
Whoa.
She might have known it.
Rosie held Bronte’s face between her hands and forced her to look at her.
‘Do not get carried away with yourself. I’m still leaving. This is something that probably needed to happen.’
‘Is this because of Simon?’
Now Rosie closed her eyes and took a very deep, very cleansing, breath and told herself to be brave.
She looked Bronte dead in the eye.
‘Simon does not exist. I made him up.’
Silence.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know where to start.’ Rosie heard the whine in her voice and cursed herself for it.
Now Bronte grabbed her hand and towed her to the kitchen table, pushed her into a chair.
Big green eyes stared into hers and Rosie saw a puzzled anxiety.
‘Start right from the very beginning. Tell me what happened, when it happened and how it happened.’
So Rosie told her.
Everything.
Most of it.
And since there was only so much confessing a woman could do in one day, she omitted the fact she was a thief and a stalker.
Bronte howled with laughter over the pantie debacle, being put over Alexander’s knee and her brother’s split lip.
‘I wish I’d been there. He deserved it, the big lug. Wait until I get my hands on him.’
And she cried even harder when she heard how Alexander had found a certain Simon Lowther.
Wiping tears from her cheeks with kitchen roll, she gasped,
‘I love you so much. How the hell do you get yourself into these things.’
‘I think it’s called insanity.’
When she’d calmed down and poured them a coffee, Bronte sniffed and sent her a naughty smile.
‘My mother always knew you had a thing for Alexander.’
She did?
Rosie grimaced.
‘He’s never looked at me twice.’
‘Yes, he has,’ came the response. ‘If we’re at an event or a cocktail party you’re always on his radar. He always knows who you’re with and what you’re doing. Do you remember that time we were on half-term from school and you went out with that guy Rick, the one with the Harley?’
Sipping her coffee, Rosie recalled Alexander going ballistic because she’d been on the back of the bike without a helmet.
‘It’s that type of behaviour that drove me nuts.’
Her friend nodded.
‘It wasn’t only that. He’d seen you on the back of the bike when it overtook his car too fast. He didn’t stop pacing until you returned home. I thought he was going to kill Rick.’
Rosie recalled the way Alexander had hauled her up on her toes and threatened to ‘
beat the living breath out of her’
if she ever did such a
‘stupid, bloody thing’
again.
Bronte continued,
‘Mum said you’d scared him and he couldn’t cope with it.’
‘I was seventeen and stupid.’
‘Yeah, and he was twenty-four and demented. Mum told me then that he had a thing for you.’
‘Why did you never say anything?’ Rosie demanded to know, happily forgetting that she hadn’t been honest with her friend either.
Bronte shook her head.
‘She warned me to keep out of it, that if you had feelings for him you’d have told me. That if anything was going to happen it would happen when the time was right. There’s been a couple of times when I’ve wondered if the pair of you would take the next step, but you fight like a pair of cats.’ She shrugged. ‘So I forgot about it.’
Now she frowned in a way that made Rosie brace herself.
Emerald eyes, wary and concerned, met hers.
‘If he’s changed the dynamic it means he’s serious. You’ve slept with him which means your feelings must be serious too.’ When Rosie said nothing, her friend leaned her elbows on the table. ‘When did you know?’
Rosie couldn’t just sit there and lie straight to her friend’s face so she stood and paced to French doors opened wide to the garden and paced back.
‘My whole life.’
Bronte simply stared at her in a stunned silence that spoke volumes.
‘Is it because of Alexander you’re leaving us?’ her voice was cool now.
Rosie knew what that tone meant.
It meant business.
Shit.
She plopped into a chair and pressed fingertips into her eyelids.
‘It feels like I’ve loved him my whole life.’ Then she met Bronte’s eyes and saw the shock.
She gripped her hands.
‘You must promise, never, ever to tell him. Please, Bronte, I couldn’t bear it.’
Bronte’s eyes went huge.
Then her hand reached for and found Rosie’s.
‘I’ve been so stupid. Why the hell didn’t I see it?’
Rosie shook her head, hot tears stung her eyes.
‘I couldn’t tell you. I was afraid it might change our friendship.’
‘That’s crazy.’
‘Please understand. I haven’t told another living soul. Well, except for Josh and that was recently because I’ve been having a hard time dealing with it.’
Now Bronte pulled her hand away.
‘You told Josh?’
‘It sort of poured out of me when we tried to see if we had the zing.’ Now her eyes pleaded with Bronte’s. ‘We didn’t have the zing. It was like kissing a brother.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
Rosie grimaced.
‘Nico’s father died and I’d already decided to move on instead of living in my head all the time.’
At the worry she saw in those big green eyes, Rosie felt her own prickle and a single tear tipped over.
‘Has it been very bad?’ Bronte’s whisper held nothing but support and love.
Seriously annoyed with herself, Rosie brushed her cheek with an impatient hand.
‘Not all the time. It sort of rolls around in cycles, like influenza. Horrible to live through at the time, but then it passes and you sort of get over it until it hits again.’
Now her friend’s voice went soft and low.
‘Oh, Rosie. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘What would you have done? I can’t cope with the thought of him knowing how I feel because you know what he’ll be like.’
Bronte opened her mouth then snapped it shut as she frowned.
‘He’d not want to hurt you. He’d be kind and caring and gentle with your feelings. Shit, Rosie.’
She knew her friend would understand.
A huge wave of relief washed over her and she gave Bronte a smile that wobbled.
‘I couldn’t bear it.’
Bronte heaved a huge sigh as her fingers squeezed.
‘Of course you couldn’t. But you’re not thinking. What if he loves you back?’
Rosie shook her head refusing to let her mind even go there.
‘It could never be an equal love.’
And what the hell did that mean?
Bronte sat back and watched Rosie’s battle with her emotions.
‘Explain,’ she demanded.
‘I love him too much.’
The fear was back in those large brown eyes and something else too.
‘You’re scared?’
‘Terrified.’
How is it that you think you know a person inside out and yet Rosie had managed to keep such a huge secret from her?
But now anxiety for her brother joined worry for her best friend.
No way would her brother make love to Rosie unless he was absolutely sure of his feelings.
Why couldn’t she see that?
‘You need to tell him how you feel.’
Rosie’s eyes went wild in a way that made Bronte’s belly clench.
‘I can’t. He’ll never ever be able to love me enough.’
Now that, Bronte decided, made absolutely no sense.
How could Rosie know Alexander’s feelings for her unless she told him of her own?
‘How the
hell
could he hurt you if he loves you and you love him? How can you expect him to read your mind?’
Rosie shut her eyes, squeezed tight.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Damn right I don’t understand. Hell, you didn’t even tell me. Did I ever really know you? I wonder about that now because the Rosie I know would never, ever hurt my brother. Keeping secrets causes mistrust, heartbreak and pain.
‘You haven’t been honest and not only with Alexander and me. But worse, with yourself!’
Rosie’s head snapped back as if she’d been slapped.
‘I knew this would happen. I knew it.’
‘What? That I’m worried about you and concerned about my brother?’
‘I knew this would affect our friendship.’
Bronte seriously wanted to shake her.
‘It hasn’t affected our friendship, you twit. Don’t you know there’s nothing you could do that would make me love you less?’ Then she thought about it for a moment. ‘Unless you tried to sleep with Nico and then I’d kill both of you.’
Bronte’s lips twitched and the atmosphere calmed.
Their eyes met and held.
‘It’s not funny, Bronte.’ Again she pressed her fingertips into her eyelids. ‘Christ, I’m a mess. He wants me to be his partner for functions at Ludlow Hall.’
‘I should bloody well think so too. What’s the problem?’
Big dark eyes stared into hers and Bronte frowned at what she saw there.
‘People will talk.’
Blink, blink.
‘And? So?’
This was ridiculous.
What the hell was wrong with Rosie?
‘I’m not exactly his type, am I? He should have somebody like Janine at his side.’
Bronte found her voice going higher.
‘He’s doesn’t have romantic feelings for her and he’s not sleeping with Janine.’
Now Rosie pouted.
‘I’m not tall or slim or from the right background.’
How she kept her temper Bronte would never know.
Carefully she counted to ten before she replied,
‘Are you kidding me?’
Her tone was one of disbelief and Bronte saw the reaction she wanted to see in those big eyes.
Shame.
And Rosemary Margaret Gordon should be thoroughly ashamed of herself.
Now her friend’s shoulders hunched and those brown eyes flicked to meet hers.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘You’re a snob.’
That chin lifted and Bronte wanted to pop it one.
‘No, I’m a realist.’
The time had come for some straight talking.
‘You’re an idiot and I’m ashamed of you. Don’t you know how happy it would make me, Nico and the kids to have you as my sister? If Alexander is in love with you and you’re in love with him then you owe it to both of you to be nothing but honest with each other.’
She could see Rosie’s brain ticking over but something was very wrong.
What on earth had happened to her friend’s self-esteem and self-worth?
She just couldn’t get her head around it.
But Bronte knew if she pushed too hard, Rosie would simply dig her heels in and refuse to budge.
So she stood and moved around the table to hug her friend.
Rosie buried her face in her tummy, clung on.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
Bronte stroked the shiny hair, soft as silk.
She’d had her say and could only hope that some of it sank into that stubborn head.
First chance she got, she was going to speak to Alexander.
She’d keep Rosie’s secret, for now.
That afternoon Bronte Ferranti strode through Ludlow Hall and she was not in the mood for crap.
So when she walked into her brother’s office to find a guest on a foul mouthed rant with Alexander’s white faced personal assistant, Julie, backed up against a wall, she didn’t think twice and pressed the silent alarm. The guy was at least three hundred pounds and his hand was fisted around what looked like a bill.