Page 10 of His for the Holiday

“You need to approve the Mecer Cruising quote tomorrow, okay?” she said. “Oh, and before I forget, Logan?”

“Yeah!”

“Put the permission slip for next week’s class trip in your bag. Now, please. It’s in the kitchen. I signed it for you.”

As the boys grabbed their showers and Emery helped Sawyer in the bath, I was more in awe of my sister than ever. I’d thought my life was busy, but this was ridiculous.

A little while later, the whirlwind was over and the boys—and Dad—were in bed. I grabbed one of the beers I’d bought earlier, taking it out on the porch with me and sitting down on Dad’s chair outside.

Emery joined me, exhaling deeply as she sat down with a beer of her own in hand. My sister’s blue eyes were red-rimmed and tired, her hair sticking up a little and droplets of sweat on her brow after the exertion of their nighttime routine.

“Is it always like this?” I asked, leaning back in the chair and looking out at our immaculately kept front lawn and the quiet street beyond.

I really had no idea when my sister even had time for gardening, but clearly, she didn’t need sleep.

Emery chuckled. “Tonight was a good night. You should see the bad ones. I’m pretty sure you’ll change your mind about the hotel if you do.”

I laughed, my head shaking, and sipped my beer. Our porch overlooked the port a couple blocks away. As I watched the lights of the ships on the water, I finally decided to just ask her. “Are you okay? You seem really angry at me.”

“I am,” she admitted, but then she sighed. “Not at you, really. Life took you away from here and that’s okay. I think I’m just jealous that you get to leave this little shit show of ours behind at the end of your visit.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I promised her. “You didn’t tell me it was this bad.”

“It’s not,” she said finally. “Really. It’s not as bad as it seems. We’re all happy generally. These last couple weeks have just been crazy. Did you get to talk to Sutton today?”

I sighed. “Smooth transition, but no. Not really. She kind of just took off with her kid and completely ignored that I was even there.”

Emery nodded slowly, blowing out a deep breath before taking a sip of her beer. “Well, she’s been through a lot. Maybe dealing with you on top of everything else was just too much for her.”

“What do you mean?” I frowned as I glanced at her. “What has she been through, and what’s she doing here anyway? I thought she was in the United Kingdom.”

“She was,” Emery said, her voice softening with sympathy. “I don’t know the whole story, but we had coffee together at the bookstore yesterday. It turns out she recently got divorced.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” She shook her head. “It sounds like her ex-husband basically abandoned her and their daughter when the woman he was having an affair with got pregnant.”

“What?” My eyebrows shot up. I knew I sounded like a broken record, but damn. “He had an affair?”

She nodded. “With her best friend over there. Sutton’s ex and this woman had their baby and he chose his new family over them.”

Horrified didn’t even begin to describe it. My heart slammed against my ribs as an irrational stab of rage shot through me. “What the fuck was he thinking?”

Emery shrugged. “I don’t know that he was. I suppose all men use the heads in their pants more often than the ones on their shoulders.”

I scoffed. “Thanks.”

She arched an eyebrow at me. “Are you really telling me that you don’t?”

I sighed. “I didn’t get rich using my dick, but go ahead and keep generalizing. Besides, we weren’t talking about me. Do you think Sutton means to stay in Portsmouth?”

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t imagine her stuck in her parents’ house, raising a child alone. I’d always pictured her living overseas, working as an archaeologist or something and traveling around the beautiful Scottish countryside with her perfect husband and child in tow.

This was not that.

“I think she is going to stay here, but give her some space, will you?” my sister asked, interrupting my thoughts. “I mean it, Hawk. Just stay away from her, okay?”

“Why would you think I wouldn’t give her space? It’s not like I’m still interested in her or anything like that. It’s been years.”

“Yeah, but a connection like yours doesn’t just go away. I’m sure it’s still there. I always thought you two were soulmates. I was obviously wrong, but still. She really doesn’t need anything else piled onto her right now.”

Hearing that my sister had thought that Sutton was my soulmate did something to me. As an eternal bachelor, the concept of soulmates hadn’t been on my radar for a long, long time, but as I sipped my beer and watched the boats moving in and out of the port, I wondered about it.

A tugboat pulled a cargo ship out to sea, and I thought about how close I’d been to going in that direction for work. I missed it sometimes. To this day, being a second pilot—AKA a captain—was in my blood. Between that and the concept of a soulmate at the fore of my mind, I couldn’t help wondering what my life would’ve been like if I’d made different decisions.

I was living the high life in Los Angeles, but being back here living the slow seaside life and drinking a beer on the porch with my sister was messing with my head. Any other night, I would have been in some club, even though it had been getting stale, but I was surprisingly content right now, and that wasn’t something I had been expecting to feel.