James stepped closer, his tone rigid. “Didn’t tell her what?”
Emma let out a tiny, strangled laugh, the one she used when she was deeply uncomfortable. “You’re going to hate me,” she said, pointing weakly at James. “Possibly forever.”
“Emma,” I said.
She squared her shoulders like she was bracing for paparazzi flashbulbs, then whispered:
“I didn’t tell her, about Ethan. About… how he feels about her.”
The words just… landed. Like a dropped box of crystal.
James went completely still.
Emma rushed on in a panicked tumble. “He is in love with her. Disgustingly, inconveniently, hopelessly in love with her. And before you ask, yes, he talks to me about it. At length. Usually over overpriced rosé.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, dramatic, breathless.
“And Caroline, my Caroline, asked me weeks ago why he was being weird. Why he couldn’t look her in the eye without twitching like some malfunctioning robot.” Her voice cracked. “And I lied. I told her it was stress. Because I thought if I said the truth out loud, everything would explode. And I didn’t want to cause explosions before the wedding, Holly, I simply couldn’t do it.”
James didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
Emma kept spiralling, words tripping over themselves.
“Last night after that dreadful toast, I told Ethan he needed to stop. That he had to get over her, that she chose you, end of.”
Her face crumpled.
“He stormed off. But Caroline heard us. Heard enough to look at me like I’d grown horns. And then she left. And I…”
She pressed her fists to her mouth, chest shaking.
“I should have told her.” She choked. “I should have gone after her. I thought she just needed air, not…” She faltered entirely. “I am so, so sorry.”
She seemed utterly undone, mascara trembling, breath hitching, the glossy PR queen cracked straight down the middle.
James’s face had lost what little colour remained. For a second I thought he might snap, or shout, or crumble.
He did none of those things.
Instead he closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, shoulders sagging.
“This is not your fault, Em,” he said.
She stared at him, disbelieving. “But if I had told her sooner, if I had not let it get this far…”
“It is not your job to manage our relationship,” he said. “Or his. I am the one who chose to ignore what was in front of me. I am the one who dismissed her feelings last night. If she ran…” He paused. “If she ran, it is because I did not make her feel like she could stay.”
He stared out past us, towards the vineyards and the faint flash of the ocean beyond.
“Then we fix it,” I said. “We find her, we hear her out, and you show her you are not the man who sends her away when she is scared. You are the man who shows up.”
James nodded slowly, like someone learning how to stand again.
“Where do you suggest we look next then, Sinclair?” he asked, sounding rough but steadier.
I looked back at the guest wing, at the terrace door we could just see from this angle, its glass catching the morning light.
“The paths behind the guest wing first,” I said. “Then the cliff lookout. It’s the only place that worries me.”
