“And then he’ll come?”
“Maybe.”
Thankfully, Emma accepted that and followed me out the door into the wide hallway. We went down to where it opened up on the spacious, two-story den. We couldn’t see Robert and my mother, but we could hear they were somewhere down there. The first staircase we came to swept us down into the foyer. We doubled back through an ornate great room to find a dining room. Through another passageway we found a small kitchen, then continuing on, a bigger, beautiful kitchen that had a large island in the center. Mom and Robert were sitting in two elegant, dark wood bar stools, half a grapefruit and a cup of coffee in front of each of them.
And they were arguing.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell by the grim lines of Robert’s face, the way he kept thumping the side of his hand against the counter as he spoke in a low, intent voice. My mother kept shaking her head, her long dark hair storming around the stubborn expression on her face.
We saw them before they saw us. I tried to catch Emma’s shoulder so we could back out and let them finish this privately, but she was already running toward them.
“Gram Gram! Pop Pop!”
Their faces changed instantly as they turned from Mom and Robert the arguing couple into doting grandparents. My mother slid off the barstool and gathered Emma up into a hug. She smacked lavish kisses on her forehead and carried her away a few steps from the island.
I followed her in slowly, trying not to let on that I’d seen them arguing. Robert’s face looked smooth and untroubled now, but there was still a shadow in his eyes and his smile wasn’t quite as convincing as it usually was.
I poured us both a cup of coffee and slid onto the barstool my mother had vacated.
“What do you think?” Robert asked. “Could this be home?”
Never. Mom and Robert were making their new life here, but I already knew that Emma and I wouldn’t be. It didn’t feel right. We’d stay here for a while to let the storm blow over and the threats die down, but then we’d go. I had gotten accepted to the naturopath program, and I had to formally accept in the next two weeks. I tried to imagine waiving my acceptance, but it made my chest ache. Between that and the stabbing sense of loss I felt every time I pictured Landon’s face, I couldn’t help wincing at Robert’s question.
“Maybe,” I said quietly.
He didn’t accept the evasive answer as easily as Emma had. He peered closer, then his mouth pulled down in a sad frown, seeing everything I wasn’t saying out loud.
“Could it be home just for a while?” he asked. “Nothing is permanent, Cami.”
Didn’t I know it.
“Just for a while,” I agreed, and tried not to think about Landon.
27
LANDON
Con, Garrett, Dominic, and Julian rearranged their plans to follow me home to LA instead of whatever they had planned. The other guys tried to convince Con to stay with Lily. They’d been married less than twenty-four hours, they said. But Lily herself told him to go on. She was fine. She and Harper would stay a few more days in Croatia and then come home. Her best friend would stay with her, she’d be fine.
So that’s how the five of us found ourselves turning Julian’s private plane into command central.
I was dimly aware that beneath the panic and anger fueling me, there was a deep well of gratitude in my heart for the friends who refused to let me do this alone, even if some of them couldn’t do much to help. Con had connections in Croatia he was using to try and figure out how Cami and Emma left. His fingers were putting track marks in his dark hair, his gray eyes narrow and worried.
Garrett was calling his contacts in the media. Being a crisis manager, he had a lot of them on his payroll. His voice was low and discreet as he probed for information about the Lavignes. His brown eyes were uncharacteristically serious, his quick, flashing smile put away.
Julian, with his untroubled blue eyes and golden hair, still managed to look like he was enjoying a day on the beach as he called friends who knew the Lavignes. Next, he would call friends of friends. Then he would call strangers – anyone who the press had connected them with in the past five years. His voice rolled across the cabin, confident and confiding and casual, as though nothing was wrong. He acted the part well. If producing movies for record breaking profits ever fell through for him, he could move in front of the camera.
Dominic was trying to determine which offshore account they’d utilized. It wasn’t a matter ofif they had, he explained. It was just a matter ofwhere. I trusted he knew what he was talking about since he was a financial advisor to the wealthiest people in the country. Unlike the rest of us, he paced while he worked. His immaculate silver-gray hair smoothed back, his dark, hawk-like gaze fixed on some invisible horizon, his voice ranged from intent to menacing as he called his contacts at various banking institutes across the world.
I tried to focus on my own task. I was using every resource I had to track Cami, including shit I would lose my license for. I’d blurred the line between legal and illegal, but this was more egregious. The line I shouldn’t cross was a distant memory in my rear-view mirror. I would hack her, tap her, track her in any way I could.
If only I could.
It was like she’d vanished rather than left Croatia. None of us could find a single clue to explain why she had left, how she had left, or where she had gone with my daughter.
Every time I heard one of my friends hit a dead end, another needle of pain stabbed into my chest. I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached. The first time Cami disappeared, it hit me like a punch in the gut. I’d been surprised and then, strangely, pissed. How could she justleave? But then I’d had to let it go. I’d told her a dozen times we could never be anything serious? I’d told her I didn’t want her to waste her time on us because there couldn’t ever reallybean us?
This time was different.Ihad been different. I’d been willing to give her everything. I’d let myself fall in love with her, and I’d even fucking told her. And even if she didn’t want it, that wasn’t a good enough explanation for why she had taken my daughter away again.