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If it had been anyone other than Dylan who had found her sobbing her heart out against the locked studio door she would still be in captivity, probably locked in yet another row, or miserable round of question-and-answer, but he had driven up in his Porsche, taken one look at her blotchy, woebegone face and desperate eyes, and bundled her into his passenger seat for a therapeutic getaway.
‘Is Ethan in there?’ he said, jerking his head towards the house. When she nodded, her eyes brimming with fresh tears, he restarted the engine and ordered her to buckle up.
The actor renting his apartment had leased a jet-boat, he informed her as he headed out towards the eastern string of beaches, and he had asked Dylan to pick it up from the marina and take it out for a test-run before he delivered it to its temporary moorings near the waterfront apartment block.
‘You can be my navigator,’ he said.
‘I don’t know anything about boats.’ Emily sniffed miserably into the tissue he had produced from the glove compartment.
‘You can be lookout, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll stuff you up in the crow’s nest. But you have to stop crying because I don’t want to crash into any icebergs.’
She laughed soggily at that, grateful that he wasn’t asking any awkward questions, though she was sure she had heard him curse his brother under his breath as he’d put the car into gear.
‘Did you go out again last night?’ she asked as she dabbed at her eyes.
‘No, ma’am, I stayed home like I was told and did my brooding in the safety of my own bed. I guess I was being pretty obvious, huh? I was acting like a jerk in the car—no wonder she despises me for being immature—’
‘I don’t think she despises you—’
But Dylan was off and running, and since misery loved company Emily listened to his romantic woes and commiserated with his angry frustration.
‘Hell, I know deep down that Ethan wouldn’t cut me out with her, not unless he was really in love with her—which he isn’t. We’ve never gone for the same kind of girl. Carly is too highly polished for Ethan, he likes a bit of rough—uh—’ he almost bit off his tongue when he realised what he’d said ‘—er—no offence, Emily.’
‘None taken,’ she said mildly. At least he had put them together in his mind. She knew that initially he had picked her as a way to divide his brother’s attention, but he must have figured out by now that there was a lot more going on than met the eye.
‘I—didn’t mean—I mean, he’s an earthy kind of a guy…’ It was the first time she had ever heard Dylan stammer she and found it rather endearing. ‘He prefers a challenge—Anything too easy for him is a turn-off—uh—’
‘Quit while you’re ahead, Dylan,’ she told him wryly.
‘I think I will,’ he said, relieved to return to his favourite subject, and Emily realised as he outlined his dark plan for Carly’s ultimate downfall that she was listening to the death throes of his masculine independence.
‘Ahoy there! Any iceberg alerts?’ he called, and she felt the salt tightness on her skin as she smiled and shook her head. Holding the rail, she moved hand-over-hand to scramble back down beside him in the cockpit.
‘Nothing like a bumpy ride to blow away the cobwebs,’ he laughed.
‘It does look as if the wind is picking up a bit,’ said Emily, looking out at the increasing number of white-caps. She glanced up at the sky. It was still sunny, but high cloud was scudding in from the west, over the landmass of greater Auckland.
‘It’ll be more sheltered once we get around the leeward side of the island. The mooring at Oneroa should be pretty calm.’
‘Mooring? Dylan—I thought we were just coming out for a run,’ she said anxiously.
‘We are. A run to Waiheke and back. With a leisurely beer in between. I’ve got a key to Ethan’s place, and we know it’s empty. We can raid his fridge and you can trash his wardrobe!’
‘Dylan!’
‘Oh, come on.’ His teeth flashed like a shark’s. ‘Aren’t you the least curious to have a peek? He’ll never know we’ve been there, I promise. We can glide in and out like the proverbial ghosts. His house is right on the water, so we can zip right up alongside his jetty, whip upstairs for drinkies, and be back into town for tea with a star of stage and screen.’
Emily
’s arms were goose-pimpling. ‘We really shouldn’t. It’s invading his privacy.’
‘Privacy, smivacy. He wouldn’t have given me the key and the security code if he didn’t expect me to drop in whenever I felt like it. He made you cry, for God’s sake—don’t you want to smear some of your tears on his pillow to haunt him?’
He took her slightly stunned silence at his morbidly fascinating train of thought for agreement and throttled back the engine as they nosed into the bay.
‘He didn’t exactly make me cry,’ admitted Emily, and while they tied up the boat to the jetty and trekked up the long wooden staircase to the concrete-and-glass house tucked in amongst the trees she told him about his uncle’s bombshell, bracing herself for his furious reaction.
‘Cool,’ was all he said, punching in a security code on the solid hardwood slab that was the front door. ‘I’ve always wanted a sister.’
