Joel, being Joel, picked up on her tension, because he set down his fork and asked, “How is Vanessa these days?”
Great question, didn’t she wish she knew. But maybe thiswas something else he could help her with. “I honestly don’t know. But I’m worried about her. You know Vanessa, she’s usually so—” Lucy stared at her wineglass and considered how best to describe her younger sister.
“Larger than life?” Joel supplied.
“Yes.” That was the perfect description for her jet-setting model/actress sibling. “She’s usually so present all the time, even when she’s in another country. We text daily. FaceTime at least once a week. But that’s tapered off over the last little while. I assumed she was just busy filming, but the last five days she’s gone even more silent. Even after the news of our engagement, which she’d normally flip over, all I got was a text line of heart emojis. Not that I need more than that, but it’s just weird for her, you know?”
Joel leaned forward, resting his forearms against the table. “It would be. I remember you two were close.”
She sighed and pushed her plate aside, her appetite gone. “She’s in Vancouver right now. I was planning on going there while I was on my vacation, try to convince her to come back with me for a while. A mini vacation, to reset and talk or whatever she might need. But thenthishappened.” She waggled her finger between them. “And I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go now. I can’t explain it, I just have this sisterly gut instinct telling me she’s not okay, and I won’t believe otherwise until I see her for myself.”
Joel sat in silence, nodding between bites of food and sips of wine as she told him more details about how her sister’s communication had tapered off, how difficult she was to get a hold of now even though Vanessa basically was attached to her phone.
“I’m sorry.” She huffed out a half-hearted laugh. “Long answer to a very simple question.”
Joel leaned back in his seat. “Obviously not that simple.She’s your sister, and you’ve always been close. You’re worried about her, and you’re allowed to be.”
Tears came out of nowhere and flooded her eyes. She lowered her gaze to her lap, not wanting him to see.
“Vancouver, you said. Canada, I’m assuming? Not the one across the bridge twenty minutes away.”
She knew he was trying to lighten the mood, but—now that she’d voiced her concerns about Vanessa, and her heart had sunk like a stone—she wasn’t up for faking it. “Yes, she has a side role in a paranormal drama series. She’s been there for just over a year. The last time we really talked, she’d been excited that her character made it to season two.”
When Joel’s hand touched hers across the table, she glanced back at him.
He brushed his thumb over her knuckles as he watched her. “I’m sure she’s alright. But if you want, we can go there together after the engagement party.”
A heavy sigh escaped Lucy’s lungs. She would have much preferred to have Vanessa at the engagement party, but she didn’t want to appear ungrateful. “That would be nice.”
Joel continued to regard her quietly, his fingers stroking her knuckles in a steady rhythm. Then abruptly he rose and collected her plate.
“Let me clean the dishes and then I have somewhere I want to take you.”
“No, no, no. Don’t you know the rules? Whoever cooks gets out of kitchen cleaning duty.”
“I didn’t cook. Housekeeper, remember?”
Fair enough. “Well, you warmed it up and served it.”
He laughed. “How about a compromise? I wash the dishes and you dry.”
“No dishwasher?” This surprised her, what with thehousekeeping and the Forbes list and all. What kind of billionaire was this guy?
“Companies don’t build them like they used to remember?” he said with a smirk.
“Really? What about an in suite washer and dryer for laundry?”
“Gabe had that installed out of sheer necessity when he lived here alone with a small child constantly in need of a clean change of clothes. But for some reason, a dishwasher never ranked his list, and I wasn’t planning on being here long enough so I didn’t bother getting one. Besides, dishes for one aren’t hard.”
“Alright then, I’ll dry.” She followed him to the kitchen carrying their glasses. “Where are you taking me after?”
He glanced over his shoulder, eyes enigmatic. “You’ll see.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Joel absolutely fucking hated seeing Lucy sad. It was part of the reason he’d left four years ago, because he’d become the reason that she was miserable, and everything else he’d tried to do to fix it had failed.
But she was back in his life now, and while she was, he planned on doing everything in his power to make sure she wasn’t unhappy. As he parked at their destination, he knew a few diamonds wouldn’t erase her anxiety over her sister’s silence, but he hoped he could at least distract her.
