The Secret (The Evolution Of Sin Book 2) (2 page)

There were also my Mama’s three best friends, all chefs like herself, and Cosima’s old roommate Erika, a Dutch model with cheekbones that could cut glass, and Elena’s assistant Beau whom I had known for years and who I was closer to than Elena herself.

“So,” Cosima began as she caught my arm and spun me through the doorway into a dark room off the main hall.

I had only visited the house once, on my only trip to America after the twins had officially moved Mama and Elena here three years ago and the layout was still unfamiliar but I thought we were in the guest bedroom.

“Tell me how things ended with the Frenchman,” she said before she flicked the light on and gracefully collapsed on the deep red covered bed, patting the space next to her so that I would sit.

I sighed and placed my head next to hers on the pillow, comforted by her spicy scent and the way she casually took my hand in hers. “I left.”

“Oh?”

“I left before he woke up this morning. I just couldn’t say goodbye. What was I going to say? Thanks for the hot sex and amazing adventures. I love you. Catch you never?”

I held myself still in the ensuing silence and resisted the urge to turn over to look into her expressive face for her response. Cosima was careful with her words – when she wasn’t in a temper – and I knew she was meticulously shifting through them like individual grains of sand.

“I was worried you would love him. You didn’t tell me much about him, I don’t even know the mystery man’s name, but I know you.” Her thumb swept back and forth over my palm. “And intimacy for one so passionate cannot be untangled from love.”

I scoffed. “You’re the passionate one, Cosi.”

She propped herself up on one elbow in order to glare down at me. “Can there be only one passionate woman in this family?”

I pursed my lips but said nothing.

“Exactly. Now tell me why you left like this. You took away his chance.”

“His chance to what?” Break my heart in person?

“To ask you home with him.”

She said it as if it was a simple choice, as if it was only natural that he would want to take a complete stranger home with him.

“He didn’t know anything about me.” But I winced even as I said it because I knew it wasn’t true.

“You can know a person without knowing the trivialities.”

“I don’t even know where he lives, that’s a pretty big omission.”

She snorted inelegantly and I couldn’t help but smile at her. Before Sinclair, I had never loved another human being like I loved Cosima. To me, she was the essence of beauty and life, full of volatile emotions and overwhelming love.

“You would have liked him.”

Her expression softened and she smoothed a piece of hair away from my face. “I’m sure I would have.”

We both turned to look at the door as it creaked open, revealing Elena who blinked owlishly at us cuddled on the bed before muttering an unintelligible apology as she closed the door.

“Get in here, Elena,” Cosima scolded and jumped up to tug her forcibly into the room.

Our eldest sister looked uncomfortable but allowed herself to be maneuvered by Cosima so that we lay in a row with Cosima at our center, connecting us but tactfully giving us the space we needed with each other.

“We were talking about men.”

“Ah.”

“Giselle had a little fling in Mexico.”

“Really?” Elena’s brows almost touched her hairline. “That doesn’t seem like you.”

Anger rushed through me like a brush fire before I settled it with a deep, careful, breath. “It isn’t but I’m glad I went through with it. I want to be more bold.”

“There’s a thin line between bold and reckless,” Elena said in her schoolmarm voice, the same tone I had heard countless times as a child and the same tone I still heard every time I faced a potentially thrilling situation, always cautioning me to stay safe.

“Oh come on, Lena, it’s only a harmless fling.” Cosima winked one of her golden eyes at me. “And besides, you of all people can’t blame a girl for falling for a pretty face.”

“True.”

“Daniel was a model for a few years.” Cosima laughed at the expression of prudish disapproval on our sister’s face. “That’s how we met.”

I remembered Sinclair’s terse expression when he brought up his own short lived modeling career and even though I didn’t know his foster parents, a flare of hatred burned up my throat. I was grateful to Mama for not pressuring Cosima into the profession but that didn’t mean my little sister didn’t carry invisible scars on her pretty gold skin.

“Wait till you meet him, over the last few years he’s become even more stern.” Cosima made a face, comically constipated looking, before dissolving into laughter. “If Elena didn’t make him have Bran cereal every morning, I’d think he was having serious issues.”

I laughed, scooting from the bed as I did so. I indicated pouring some wine and moved towards the door when I got their nods of approval. It was a rare conversation amongst our family that didn’t include a bottle of wine.

“Very funny.” Elena smiled indulgently at our favorite sibling. “I should get out there, he’ll be here soon.”

“Where was he this time?” Cosima asked, idly running a hand through Elena’s short, elegantly curled tresses.

“Mexico,” she said as I closed the door behind me and made my winding way back into the large kitchen at the front of the house.

It was an open space punctuated with a large wooden island over which Mama’s prize copper pots and pans resided on a sort of rustic trellis. The cabinets were an unfinished birch and the gleaming countertops were cool under my questing fingers as I sought out the clay pitcher of red wine Mama kept filled at all times.

I smiled at the sounds of laughter from the main room and for the first time that night, I relaxed enough to stop worrying about Sinclair. The decision to leave him without a word would plague me for the rest of my life, I knew, but at least for this first month in a new city, surrounded by my loving family, I would have plenty of opportunities to take my mind off of it.

I was pouring out three glasses of wine when I felt the prickle of awareness race up my spine. There was the soft fall of shoes crossing the wooden floors and then the heat of another body pressed close to my back. Somehow, though I didn’t know how it could be possible, when I turned around to face the stranger it was my Frenchman.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped, his eyes blazing.

He looked at ease in the space. His crisp shirt was still pristine and tucked into his charcoal grey pants but it was open at his throat to reveal a deep slice of brown skin, the cuffs were rolled hastily over his forearms and his jacket hung across his shoulder casually as if he had just taken it off to relax. Even though I had just seen him this morning, the sight of him in my Mama’s kitchen threw into stark relief just how absurdly good looking he was.

“Well?” he growled when I didn’t immediately answer.

I couldn’t believe that he was here. My mind spun wildly, trying to confirm his presence. It seemed more probable that I was imagining him. I had the strongest urge to reach out and run my fingers through his glossy red brown hair.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, afraid he would disappear.

Confusion crossed his face but something like horror came over his features and he croaked, “Elle… Giselle Moore.”

I opened my mouth but no noise would come out, probably because my thoughts kept running into themselves and collapsing. I cleared my throat, about to ask
something
when Elena came in from the hall, obviously looking for him. “Oh good, you’re here.”

She walked briskly over to him and planted a perfunctory kiss on his cheek. He was still staring at me, a stunned expression on his arresting features. And as Elena tucked herself into his side, I finally understood why.

“Giselle, this is my partner Daniel Sinclair.” Her voice was cool, carefully devoid of the Italian accent the rest of the family still maintained.

A loud sound thrummed through my ears, a crackling, creaking and thunderous noise akin to a burning building falling in on itself. I hadn’t known that heartbreak was audible but – I swallowed hard against the rise of sobs in my throat – I discovered that, apparently, it was. I didn’t have time to fully absorb the behemoth emotion because Elena was staring at me as if I had grown three heads.

An awkward moment ensued where we all stared at each other but finally, my face flaming with embarrassment, I stepped forward with my hand extended.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You are supposed to be a scrawny brunette,” Daniel asserted as he quickly took my hand in his.

Even though the connection was brief, desire vibrated through my core. Irritated, I took a step forward and fought the urge to bare my teeth. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

Things like this didn’t happen in real life.

My heart crashed against my ribs and I gritted my teeth as I said, “When I was eighteen maybe.”

He plucked a framed photo off the windowsill behind him, demonstrating a familiarity with Mama’s house that unnerved me.

Thrusting it into my hands he said, “Eighteen?”

It was a picture of me from two years ago, the last time Elena had visited me in Paris. We stood before the Eifel Tower and I had to admit, it was easy to mistake me for someone else. My first few years in Paris, alone, after everything that had happened, were hard on me. Though somehow the family had scrounged up enough money to send me to school, there was little else to spend on food or good clothing. As a result, the twenty two year old me was undernourished, pallid and adorned with hair dyed an unnatural shade of black.

“Twenty two,” I demurred, unable to look up into the blue eyes bearing down on me.

“She went through an awkward phase, Daniel.” Elena took a fresh glass from the cupboard and poured wine as if she was completely oblivious to the tension between us. “All girls do.”

She and Cosima hadn’t, but I didn’t bother to say that.

“I’ve never seen a picture of you,” I spoke quietly, desperately wanting this to be a private conversation. “I don’t have Facebook.”

“Who the fuck doesn’t have a social media account,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous.

Shame flared through me, because it was an omission that my mentor at
L’École des Beaux-Arts
had harped at me about but growing up in Italy hadn’t instilled a great love of technology in me and honestly, the current social media frenzy kind of freaked me out.

I opened my mouth to snap at him defensively when I noticed that we were close, only a step away from being pressed up against each other, as if we couldn’t stand the space between our bodies even as we reeled from the shock. My heart was fluttering madly but I wasn’t sure if it was with desire or some heady mixture of anger and fear.

I raised my voice and felt it liquefy with rage. “So, Daniel, you’ve been with my sister four years. What an amazing
commitment
.”

Suddenly, he loomed over me and I lost my breath when I saw the electricity in his eyes. Thrilled to be sparring, I looked up at him, ready to volley a return when Elena came between us. She pressed a wine glass into Daniel’s hand, frowning at him when he didn’t immediately take it. Finally, with a scowl, he took the glass, put it deliberately down on the table and poured himself a tumbler full of the brandy Mama kept hidden behind the flour in the pantry.

Elena watched him with concern but didn’t say anything. Instead, she tilted the bowl of her wine glass around and around so that it caught the light and cast a red tinted glean against the white wall.

“So, you’re back for good,” he muttered over the rim of the crystal glass as he came to stand before me once again.

I nodded, even more sure of it than I had been before this exchange. I was giddy with nerves, hot with shame and lingering desire for the man who had been my sister’s for the last four years.

“And you are going to help make that happen,” Elena reminded him with a gentle hand on his tense arm and steel in her tone. “You promised to introduce to her to Rossi, remember?”

Daniel’s features softened when he looked down at her, as did hers and I was struck by how perfectly compatible they seemed. It was obvious that they shared a powerful ambition and an iron hard exterior that was impenetrable to most but the very, very lucky.

I swallowed hard;
I knew Sinclair better than that.

“I’m sorry, Lena.” He patted her hand and smiled tightly.

Her smile was wider, and I noticed how full her mouth was. “Mexico was hard?”

He nodded and ran a hand through his thick russet mane. Just last night my hands had pulled on those silky strands as I climaxed around him, hoarsely calling his name. “It was necessary.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s finished.” She turned to me and stepped closer against his side for comfort. “It’s so good to have you home after so many years, Giselle. But I have a case going into mediation tomorrow and I’m afraid I have to be off.”

We embraced each other again, and Daniel snared my gaze over her shoulder. We stared intently at each other with my heart thrumming against Elena’s, as if we could somehow discern the beginning of our inexplicable bond and severe it at the base.