He waited.
“If you’re not going to leave, there’s some fruit in the fridge. Please get it,” she requested.
He located the fridge and grabbed the bowls of clean, plump grapes and fat strawberries.
He brought them to her.
She took them and dotted the fruit artistically around the other pieces.
But as she concentrated intensely on her task, he could see her lip trembling, an indication she was holding back emotion.
“Darling,” he whispered.
She suddenly threw a strawberry onto the plate.
It bounced off and rolled across the island as she turned to him.
“Mum has evicted me.”
“Come again?” he said low and slow.
“She’s already in New York and she’s hired movers to pack me. She’s dumping my stuff at Dad’s.”
That was when she lost control of her emotions, her exquisite face crumbled, and she burst into tears.
Fucking Helena.
He pulled her into his arms. “Shh, love. It’s not like you don’t have somewhere to go.”
She yanked out of his hold, took two steps back, threw hers to her sides and exploded, “I do! But I don’t! It’s Dad’s place. Not mine! Nothing is mine.”
“Baby,” he murmured, already knowing something was troubling her, but this was far deeper than he expected.
“I don’t have a job. I don’t have a house. I don’t have anything. I’m not anything.”
Now Dair was angry.
“Dinnae say that shite,” he growled.
“Okay, so I have a trust fund, and it’s huge. I could buy my own place. But that’s money somebody else made.” She flung up an arm. “Alex has a good job. She’s a director at a charity. She does good work. She helps people. She doesn’t have to work, but she does it anyway. Dad doesn’t have to work either. He never did. He still does and he’s good at it. He’s made the piles of Sharp money into mountains of it. Me?” She shook her head. “I’m thirty-four years old and I’ve accomplished nothing.”
“You made that cake,” he pointed out.
It was the wrong thing to say, he knew, when her eyes turned to slits and she snapped, “Shut up, Dair.”
“It’s a beautiful cake, lassie,” he returned.
“Big deal.”
“It will be for us when we eat it. Mum’s world crashed around her last night, and tonight, she’s eating cake. And that shite.” He gestured to the platter. “Which looks great and smells better. But ye working so hard on it will mean everything to her. She’ll remember you and your father’s, but especially your kindness in this time of her life for the rest of it.”
She bit her lip and sniffed.
He kept at her.
“If ye did up this house, you’re fucking good at it. Ye planned your sister’s wedding within every quarter hour, and she had a day that was nothing to her but loving and being loved in return while you were running around arranging grass.”
“Dair—”
