All My Broken Dreams (Locksley Hall #1)

Chapter Eight

“O hhhh,” she said drunkenly. “Because you’re the only adult in the room…. I see how this is going to go….” Robbie’s eyes narrowed to glittering slits that fixed on him, making him blush. “How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m twenty-seven. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two, but my brother says I skew younger because of my condition. He says I’m like a hothouse orchid, too sheltered to survive the real world.”

Deacon laughed. He liked hearing this version of Harry Listowel who was the golden boy of Fuil Bratach, poised to inherit the scepter and crown before he went rogue.

“My age isn’t the reason I have to be the one to call Mrs. Cameron. I’m not allowed to have women guests overnight. I’ll get kicked out.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot about that. Sorry. I never could hold my liquor. Harry used to say I was a lightweight.”

“You don’t look like brother and sister,” he said, and then clamped his mouth shut, realizing he’d fucked up.

Robbie didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve been told I take after my mother, but she doesn’t see it. My dad was always trying to think up ways to bring us closer. Once, he brought up how much we looked alike, as though pointing it out would soften her to me.”

“And it didn’t?”

“Mom gave my dad a puzzled stare, then looked at me like she couldn’t for the life of her see what he was talking about.” Robbie’s laugh was rueful. “Harry got the looks in our family. He’s dark like his father’s side of the family. Mom has photos, but she won’t show them to me. Not even Harry knows what his real father looks like. I love my mother, but she can be impossible at times.”

“Like now, when it would have helped to know more about your brother’s paternal family before flying across an ocean to find him.”

“Yes, like that.” Robbie yawned. “She should have thought of that before freaking me out. He’s probably with them right now, enjoying a dish of haggis.”

Deacon grinned. “Haggis is the best. That’s what we’ll have for dinner tomorrow night.”

Robbie’s eyes rested on his again, this time for an uncomfortably long stretch. “How do you know what my brother looks like?”

His guts twisted. He pushed his luck with the sherry. She was obviously not too drunk or sleepy to remember his slip up. “I don’t. I wondered if you looked alike.”

“But that’s not what you said. You said: ‘You don’t look like brother and sister.’ Quote, unquote.”

He moved to the kitchenette to wash up. “Did I? My mistake. I meant it like a question. I wondered if you looked like him because you said you had different fathers.”

“Okay…. Well, we do and we don’t, I guess. I’m not eating haggis either. I can find a place to stay tomorrow, Deacon. I don’t want to disrupt your whole weekend.”

He dried a dish on the towel. “It’s no problem. You want to get into Harry’s room tomorrow, right? That might take longer than you expect. Saturday is Mrs. Cameron’s regular shopping day. She won’t get here until after lunch.”

Robbie groaned. “I can’t believe this. My brother is missing and I can’t even get into his room.”

“If anyone is inside Number One, they’ll see your note. Harry will know you’re nearby. Personally, I don’t think he’s being held hostage, but we won’t leave it to chance.”

She smiled at him and Deacon felt his chest contract, alarming him. It was like he was having a heart attack in the best possible way.

“You’re staring at me,” she said softly. “Do I have sauce on my chin?”

Deacon flushed with heat and turned back to the dishes. “No, you’re fine. I was just thinking that your mother is a lucky woman if she looks like you.”

His skin felt like it was on fire.

“I’m not used to compliments,” Robbie said. Her voice carried quietly from her place on the couch.

He turned to gaze at her, the dish towel dangling from his hand. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Her mouth opened, as if needing to inhale and he watched as she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips to moisten them. Her eyes met his and she held his stare.

“I’m not uncomfortable.”

The world stopped spinning. There was no sound.

A powerful, almost sickening feeling went through him of arousal, sexual, lust, ache, desire, longing– want .

He wanted her. The sensation hit Deacon with such force that he was grateful he had the dish towel to hide the damage.

He turned back to the sink, shaking inside himself, and focussed on finishing the dishes. A routine task that he did every night. Twenty-seven-years-old and he’d never experienced something like that before.

She said she wasn’t uncomfortable.

A thing like that, three little words … and Deacon was shot through with joy.

Robbie watched his movements, the subtle changes in his expression and listened to the tonal shifts in his voice. Deacon Wake was somewhat of a mystery. She didn’t know what was happening between them– if there was anything happening between them. It could’ve been just her imagination. Or wishful thinking.

You’re moving too fast , Robbie , she thought, hearing her brother’s voice in her ear. She just met him. How hard it was to describe attraction. She had very little experience to go on, but she felt it intensely–an energy that charged the air, weighted every word, and threw everything into doubt. It being the one thing she didn’t want to get wrong. How mortifying it would be to make a move on a guy who was just being nice.

“I should probably make up the bed now.” His voice jump-started her pulse. “I usually go out for coffee and breakfast in the morning. I’ll pick something up for us and bring it back. You don’t have to get up until you’re ready.”

“Don’t you have to work in the morning?”

“Not on Saturday. I get the weekend off unless there’s an emergency. I’m an early riser. I’ll try not to wake you. Are you getting tired yet?”

“I can hardly keep my eyes open,” Robbie said, standing up. She dragged the blanket over her shoulders. “I’ll keep my phone on in case Harry calls.”

Deacon opened the sofa to a double bed, then fetched sheets and a duvet from a drawer in the wardrobe. “It’s lumpy in the middle,” he said. “Avoid lying there if you can.”

She talked to cover her nerves as she watched him make up the bed. “I can’t take your bed, Deacon. I wouldn’t be able to sleep all night. I’ll take the chair with the ottoman pushed up, like you said. I’m smaller than you; I’ll be perfectly comfortable there.”

“I might have exaggerated the chances of getting a good night’s sleep on that chair. You’ll wind up on the floor. We can’t take the chance of reinjuring your shoulder.”

She liked the way he said ‘we’, like they were in this together. It had been a long time since she felt someone was on her side. It made her feel a lot less lonely and anxious.

But the bed.

Robbie stared at it pensively, weighing her options. “Would you object to sharing? Platonically, of course. You’ll take one side and I’ll take the other. We can stick a pillow between us if that makes us more comfortable. Seriously. You cannot sleep on the floor.”

When he didn’t respond right away, she realized her mistake. “Oh god, I’m sorry. You have a girlfriend. I didn’t mean to–that was not cool of me to assume you’re single. Not cool at all. Forget everything I just said.”

Deacon held a pillow against his chest as though it was a shield. She stood opposite him, on the other side of the bed, and the way he was looking at her, she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Like they had the same mind but there was an obstacle in their way that she couldn’t see.

“I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m, ah, I’m just….” His eyes flicked to the fire and then the window. “It gets cold here at night. The extra body heat will come in handy.”

A slow smile stretched across Robbie’s face and her legs turned to jelly. “I’ve never done this before, have you?”

His mouth twisted to a self-mocking smirk. “Who me? I sleep with a girl at least once a week. There’s nothing to it.”

She laughed, appreciating the fact that he was trying to make the situation less awkward for her. “Fine, I’ll get over myself. I tend to overthink human interactions that normal people take for granted.”

“Has it always been that way for you? Scared to leave the house, I mean.”

She grabbed an end of the sheet to help him make up the bed. “It’s called agoraphobia and a lot of things can trigger it. In my case it was my father’s death. My therapist says I have an anxious personality; I’m wired wrong. I don’t know why. My dad was super chill. I must have got my mom’s genes. How about you?”

They shook out the duvet between them and spread it over the bed.

“What about me?” he asked.

“Well, what’s your family like? You said they pulled strings to get you the job at Locksley Hall. What sort of strings?”

“My mother’s family is in Scotland. Her brother got me the job; he vouched for me with the board.”

“Your uncle lives here in Edinburgh?”

“He’s a professor at Locksley Hall. He’s a very smart man.”

“Sorry, I’m asking too many questions.”

Deacon flushed. “It’s fine. I don’t have much to say about family, that’s all. I was sent to a private boarding school in Ottawa when I was nine. I had little contact with my family until I graduated and my uncle sent for me. He got me the job at Locksley.”

“Where were your parents?”

“They died in a plane crash. My dad was American, from New Hampshire. He was an only child. No family on that side. My mother’s family was in Scotland so they sent me to Canada for my education.”

“That must have been traumatic. Losing your parents and then being shipped off to boarding school.”

A smile stole across his face. “It was hard at first but there was a group of us who would hang out together over the holidays. We had the run of the place. It was fun.”

Deacon seemed to shake free of the memory. “It was a long time ago. Bed’s made.” His eyes fixed on her and it seemed to Robbie that his dark complexion darkened even more. “If Harry doesn’t come back, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to look for him until I find him.”

His stare flickered for a second. “And if you can’t? What’ll you do then?”

A chill went through her but her smile remained glued to her face. “I’ll keep looking, Deacon. He’s my brother; there’s no Plan B.”

He looked away with an expression that was hard to read. If she had to give it a label, Robbie would say he looked sad.