Even so…
She dropped her eyes and tried to enjoy some of the fantastic barbecue on her plate, but her heart was pounding, and her head was beginning to throb with stress.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Sometimes you have to stand back and let the people you care about make whatever mistakes they have to make.’
‘I gather from that remark that you and my sister have shared lots of cosy chats together? Izzy has never, never, given the slightest hint that she finds me over-protective.’
‘Well, you asked me why she disappeared, and I’ve told you. There’s nothing more I’m going to add to that.’ She shoved her plate away and wiped her fingers on the damp tissues that had come with the wings.
He had worked his way through a couple of beers and a generous helping of poke. He’d managed to get some on his expensive polo shirt and that small detail made him seem much more human, much less forbidding.
He might be tough and ruthless, and downright arrogant in his assumption that getting exactly what he wanted was his right, but he was also human, and she wondered what it must feel like for him to be told that the sister he had spent years caretaking no longer needed to be looked after.
Mia knew about their unusual and unhappy background. Not in any great detail, but enough.
She had felt sorry for Izzy. She had had a very clear idea of what her brother was like. Driven, ambitious, stifling. But she had never met him before today, and it was easy to form opinions of people based on what was said about them. Indeed, it was impossible not to.
She’d sympathised hugely with her friend. She couldn’t envisage a life without the support of parents, or the laughter of a jostling, rowdy household. It was what she had grown up with. Four sisters, nephews and nieces all meeting up as often as they possibly could because they enjoyed their times together. No family was ever without its problems, because such was the nature of life, but she just couldn’t imagine the sadness of the sort of silent life her friend seemed to have had.
‘I’m sorry.’ She interrupted the growing silence and he scowled.
‘For what?’
‘It can’t be easy learning that your sister doesn’t want you to…follow her…’
‘Thanks for the show of sympathy.’ Max looked away, jaw clenched. ‘But I’ll cope.’
‘If you choose to get someone involved to find Izzy, then I can’t stop you,’ Mia said. ‘But I don’t think that would be such a great idea.’
‘What happened with that man? Was violence involved?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ Mia said, startled. ‘You don’t have to worry on that score at all. Jefferson was an idiot, that’s all.’ She sensed rather than saw the passing shadow of intense relief lighten his lean, handsome face.
She awkwardly offered to settle half the bill, and for the first time, when he looked at her, it was without the cool remoteness that had sent chills down her spine. When his eyes rested on her this time, they were a little bit startled, a little bit amused.
‘I can count on the fingers of one hand,’ he murmured, ‘the number of women who have ever offered to do that. No—scratch that. I have never been in the company of any woman who has ever offered to pick up her share of the bill, so thank you for the offer.’
Mia blushed. Her skin tingled and she was aware of something else that had crept into the conversation, something that didn’t threaten and didn’t make her hackles rise, and that something sent a shiver racing up and down her spine.
‘Well, I always make sure to pay my half whenever I go out with a guy,’ she countered briskly.
‘And I expect those occasions happen frequently?’
Mia’s blush deepened. Suddenly, she felt out of her depth. Since Kai, she had been on a handful of dates, all of which had ended up in the ‘just good friends’ category.
She had not gone on any of those dates because she had really wanted to. All of them, all five of them, had been arranged by one of her sisters and Mia had politely gone along because she hadn’t wanted to seem ungracious.
She was the odd one out in her family, the only one without a significant other. Two of her sisters were married with kids and the other two were engaged. She was twenty-seven years old and she knew what the unspoken commentary on her life was…
When is she going to settle down?
When will Mia get over her failed marriage, which was four years ago, and find herself a nice, decent guy…?
So when they’d arranged for her to meet one of those ‘nice, decent guys’, she had known they’d done so because they loved her, and the last thing she’d wanted to do was hurt their feelings.
‘It’s getting late,’ she began, reaching for her backpack.
