The sister Alexander guarded so fiercely? He had sued his own parents for custody of his six-year-old sister the moment he had turned twenty and had launched his own small business. The courts had granted him custody. The ruthlessness of the story made Olivia shiver all over despite the sunlight streaming through the windows. “Your sister?”
He nodded.
“I didn’t see her at the wedding.”
It was his turn to shrug. “She’s busy.”
He was famous for the utmost security with which he guarded his younger sister. Nothing about her was known to the public, which of course, made them even more rabid for information on her. “Too busy to attend her brother’s wedding?”
Alexander shot her a warning glance, as Olivia raised her brows, her wide mouth an O. Emily would have enjoyed his wedding but he couldn’t take any chances with her safety now. “Considering the farce that went down, it’s better she wasn’t there.”
The censure in her words grated at him. And the fact that it did annoyed him even more.
It didn’t help that he was already on edge. Nothing was going as he’d planned. Carlos, his head of security, had no updates for him regarding Kim, and his contact in Paris had confirmed his suspicions. Isabella had been living incognito in Paris for more than three months and it had nothing to do with her work. The fact that his mother was here where Emily went to school was not a coincidence. At least, Emily was away on a trip to the Swiss Alps with her school. And he had to depend on the one woman on the planet who was like a ticking bomb.
Olivia spent every waking minute feeling every emotion that passed through her. Every small joy had to be celebrated, like the fifteen minutes she had spent gushing over his flight attendant’s wedding pictures. He’d expected her to rant and rage over him all through the flight for dragging her to Paris.
Instead, she had been unusually silent, her grief a dark cloud hanging over her. Any woman would have wanted to avoid the place where she’d had an affair with a married man, a man twenty years older than her, the place where her disgrace had made her notorious. He understood that. Yet it wasn’t regret or even distaste for what had happened that she had felt. Not Olivia. Instead, he had felt her pain, her ache as though she had lost something precious in Paris.
She had reminded him of what he’d been before he’d learned to ruthlessly stamp out any feeling. It had taken everything in him to let her be. Feeding his dangerous curiosity about Olivia was not a smart move.
He frowned as she banged another kitchen cabinet door closed. He put the papers he had been signing on the coffee table and turned toward her. For a woman who was willowy and all bones, she was always looking for something to eat.
She stood on her toes, stretching her hands above her head, trying to reach the cabinet overhead. His breath hitched in his throat as her cotton tee tugged upward, baring her toned midriff, silky smooth flesh glowing in the light. His jeans felt uncomfortably tight.
With a muttered curse, he joined her in the kitchen and plucked the coffee filters from the cabinet. “Have you heard from Kim?” he said, more to distract himself from her scent.
Her shoulders stiffened, her hand faltering as she scooped coffee into the coffeemaker. Would she lie? He waited as she turned it on and her shoulders rose and fell.
She turned around and surprised him with a nod. “A text saying that she’s okay.”
He pulled out a couple of mugs and leaned against the counter. She almost collided with him in her hurry to get away, until he steadied her. Her T-shirt defined the curve of her high breasts and slim waist, and her legs went on forever in denim shorts that barely covered her behind. Her wild hair was pulled into a ponytail. She was all bones and angles, and looked like a teenager instead of twenty-five. She was a far cry from the women he found attractive—successful, confident, exuding a sophistication that had always appealed to him.
Olivia was the opposite, not his type at all, yet something inside him reacted to her every move. And anything that didn’t fall into a pattern, that defied rational explanation puzzled his analytical mind.
“Well, it seems like we’re making progress,” he said, grinning as she retreated to the other side. “You didn’t lie to me just now and you didn’t try to run away once in the last,” he checked his watch, “fifteen hours.”
One corner of her mouth tugged up in mockery of a smile. She poured the coffee into two mugs and handed him one. He followed her into the living room, eying her like a hungry wolf did a tasty morsel of meat. She took a sip of her coffee and plunked down into the leather couch. Her gaze swept around her, a smile curving her mouth. “I think Emily did a fabulous job. Too good to be a passing fancy.”