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That slight hesitation tells me everything I need to know. She thinks I’ve lied to her.
I let out a sigh, getting to my feet. “You’ve gotta love little sisters. Their sense of timing is immaculate.”
Livia’s face clears in an instant, and I smile when I hear her sigh of relief. I was right. For a second, I think about taking the receiver from Livia and telling Ella to call back, but I don’t want to over-react. I could be reading too much into a few very simple gestures.
Except I don’t think I am.
I walk to my office door, pausing on the threshold and looking back at Livia. She’s staring at me, her eyes alight, her lips parted, and I stare back, unable to move, unwilling to breathe, to break another of those moments.
“Y—Your call,” she says eventually and I remember Ella and nod my head, going into my office and sitting at my desk, before I pick up the phone.
“Sis?”
“Take your time, Hunter. I’ve got nothing better to do with my evening.”
I can hear glasses clinking, a hum of voices and music, and a woman laughing. “It sounds like it. Where are you?”
“In a little bar we’ve discovered.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Just me and some friends.”
She’s being evasive, but I’m not sure I want to know exactly what she’s doing, or who she’s doing it with. “As long as you’re being careful.”
“Oh… lighten up, will you?”
“You’re still my little sister.”
“And I suppose you’re gonna fly over to Paris to protect me, are you?”
I sit forward slightly. “Do you need protecting?”
“No. I need you to stop fussing, and tell me who just answered the phone. It sure as hell wasn’t Doreen. She didn’t even know who I was.”
“Why should she? You’re not a world-famous chef yet, you know?”
“I’m never likely to be. But who was she?”
“My new PA.”
“What happened to Doreen? Did you finally drive her away?”
“No. She left of her own free will to spend some time with her family in England.”
“When did this happen?”
“She resigned a while ago, but only left last week.”
“And nobody told me?” She’s not hurt. I can hear the smile in her voice.
“If you called a little more often, you wouldn’t be so far outside the loop.”
“Okay, okay. So, Doreen left, and you employed a child in her place, did you?”
“Livia isn’t a child.”
She isn’t, but I’m suddenly reminded of how young she is… that three years ago, when I was where Ella is now, in Paris, keeping busy, and blissfully unaware that Sadie was cheating on me, Livia would have probably just graduated high school.
