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I’m tempted to ask about it until a woman’s voice steals my attention.
“There you are, Dad. I’ve been looking all over for you,” she says. “It’s time for your afternoon medications.”
The tall, lithe brunette in a coral-striped sundress carries a glass of still water and offers her outstretched palm to Redmond.
“Thank you, Nicola.” Redmond tosses the pills back with a shaky hand and chases them with two generous gulps of water before wiping a drip that trails down his chin. “Whatever would I do without you?”
Her steeled facade softens with his words but only for a second.
Everything about this woman is straight as an arrow and perfectly manicured, from her posture and her glossy tresses to her starched dress and her immaculate sun-kissed complexion.
“Nicola, this is Briar,” Burke says. “Briar, meet my sister, Nicola. She and her husband are staying with us this summer.”
Nicola’s shiny green gaze flicks to my ring for a fraction of a second before she extends her hand to mine.
“Pleasure to meet you, Briar,” she says, though there’s no warmth in her tone. It may as well be ice cold. “Forgive my brother for failing to mention that his niece and nephew are here as well. Sometimes I think he forgets he’s an uncle except at Christmas and birthdays. Even then, I suspect he has an assistant who helps him remember.”
“Nicola, your passive aggression is as unparalleled as ever,” Burke says to her before turning to me. “But yes, I have a niece and nephew. What are their names again?”
Nicola shoots him a death glare.
Burke fights a smirk, as if getting under her skin brings him pure joy.
I can’t tell if they’re enjoying this or if my hunch about there being bad blood between them was dead on.
Only time will tell.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” Nicola says. “Dashiell’s cleaning up the kids, but they’ll be down shortly. Dorian’s around here somewhere . . .”
Dorian . . . ?
My stomach does the tiniest of somersaults as my breath catches.
It’s a name a person doesn’t hear every day—a name I haven’t heard in over a year.
I remind myself there are other Dorians in this world besides the one I met last summer.
The odds of that Dorian being this Dorian are slim to none.
Laughably impossible.
On a planet of eight billion people, it would take divine intervention for the two of us to wind up on the same island for a summer, and I’ve never been a believer in fate or destiny or anything that suggests our future isn’t in our own hands.
The sensation of Burke’s stiff hand on the small of my back steals me from my runaway thoughts, and I follow Redmond and Nicola to a dining room down the hall, where walls of open windows usher in an evening sea breeze that complements the savory scents wafting from the kitchen.
Burke pulls out my chair before situating himself between me and his father.
Nicola settles Redmond at the head of the table, then hurries to the spot directly across from me—a move I can’t help but feel is intentional based on the scrutinizing glances she continues to throw my way when she thinks I’m not paying attention.
My stomach rumbles as staff place baskets of warm bread on the table and begin pouring ice water into glasses much too extravagant for such a simple beverage.
A girl could get used to this . . .
“There they are.” Nicola wears a genuine smile for the first time as her husband ushers in a boy and a girl who can’t be more than eight or nine.
The young girl is the spitting image of her mother—long and lithe with stick-straight dark hair that drips down to the middle of her back. She wears a wide sky-blue velvet bow on the back of her head and a gauzy empire-waist cotton dress the color of snow. The son, identical to his father from their shared sandy-blond hair to their matching aquiline noses, scans the room, his curious gaze landing on me.
“Take a seat, my loves. I’m sure you’re famished,” she says with a sweetness in her tone that could rival a kindergarten teacher’s lilt any day of the week.
The children don’t fight over who sits where; they simply take two chairs at the far end of the table—a few spots down from where the adults are sitting.
“Augustine, Remy,” she says to the kids. “Meet your uncle’s . . . fiancée . . . Briar.”
She says the word “fiancée” as if it leaves a sour taste on her tongue, but I don’t take it personally. Maybe if we were truly engaged and I was madly in love with her brother, her coolness toward me would sting, but for now, I’m emotionally bulletproof, so it ricochets off me.
And to be honest, if I had a wealthy brother who showed up engaged to some random woman after ending a three-year relationship, I’d be skeptical too.
