I knew I was kidding myself. I knew seeing the sister of the girl I’d loved with all my heart would be a slam to the chest, to the gut, to fucking everything.
But I was wrong.
I was so fucking wrong that I took three steps back as that door opened inwards.
Because it wasn’t Amelia George’s sister who stood there.
It was Amelia George herself.Chapter Twenty-ThreeBrandonHer eyes were like dinner plates as she stumbled back into the hallway, hand over her mouth as she stared right up at me. The shock was a mirror pool between us, two clashing expressions of pure disbelief.
“Brandon!” she said, her voice barely more than a breath. “I wondered if you’d ever get here. Hell, how I always wondered.”
I shook my head, words failing me, leaning into the doorway just to steady myself on the frame.
Her eyes tightened, just a fraction. Her brain clearly ticking as she stared me up and down.
“You didn’t know it would be me? Who did you think you would find here?”
The words came out thick and foggy. “Your sister. I thought it would be your sister.”
She tipped her head to the side, and the beauty of her pounded in my stomach, even after all these years. “Well, technically I guess you are. I’m Stacey Ann George these days.” But no, with that, her fingers moved from her face, twisting a ring on her left hand. “Or kind of. I’m kind of Stacey Ann George. I was Stacey Ann George for a fair few years.”
That’s when the pitter patter of feet and laughter caught up with us in that hallway. A young boy of barely more than five or six burst on through with a toy cowboy in his hands.
He looked like her. Big blue eyes and a tumble of dark curls. Two little dimples in his cheeks that screamed he was part of the same beautiful gene pool.
“Go back through and watch your cartoon please, Freddie,” she said, and the boy tore his eyes away from me long enough to grin right up at her and heed her words.
Still we stared, me on the doorstep, her clutching the banister railings of the stairway headed upstairs. There were kiddie drawings on the walls, colourful raincoats and boots lined up at the side of her, but my senses were reeling with the lot of it, just desperate to make sense of her being there.
The TV in the adjoining room started up loud. The roar of horses’ hooves and cowboy chants carrying on through.
“Who sent you?” she asked, and I opted to clear my throat before I answered.
“Old man Fred. I went back to the house for some answers. He delivered some of them.”
She nodded slowly. “And I guess you’re after me to deliver the rest of them.”
I took a step over the threshold, reaching in to lay a hand on her hair, not quite believing it, that she was really there. “I thought you’d run,” I told her. “I thought you’d run away with a million without giving a shit for me.”
“Not quite,” she said, but I kept on talking.
“I thought you’d run away with a million, and then I thought you were dead.” She flinched at the words, and still I kept on going. “I’ve been putting scraps of useless pieces together. Scraps of nothing. Scraps that told me Drake finished you off to save a million and finished my father off soon after.”
“He thinks I’m dead,” she whispered. “Drake thinks I’m dead. So did your father, I’m pretty sure of that.”
I still couldn’t believe I was staring at the girl I’d been so crazily in love with. Everything about her was familiar. The spring of her hair against her shoulders. The curl of her eyelashes as she blinked. Every. Fucking. Thing.
Everything except the way my heart belonged to another woman now.
“We need to talk,” Amelia said, clearly stating the obvious. It was then that a creak sounded loud overhead and a guy headed down to join us, taking the stairs two at a time. He was shirtless, bearded, jeans slung low around his hips and eyes that were glowing for her.
Her eyes glowed for him right back.
“Hey,” he said to me, with an arm slung over her shoulders. “I’m Mike, have we met before?”
I shook my head, and she reached up to turn his attention to her. “Mike this is Bran,” she told him. “From my old life. From Chepstow.”
His eyebrows raised, his hand sweeping through his hair as he weighed me up fresh.
“Oh right,” he said. “And how are things doing with you, Bran? Long time coming.”
I managed a nod. A wave of my hand. What I hoped was reassurance enough that I wasn’t out for any shit in this place.
“Bran and I need to talk,” Amelia said to her husband. “He needs answers.”