Page 43 of Sail Away
“It’s rough. But we manage.” He handed her his tablet. “And it will probably take all night. I haven’t paid much attention to the business since we broke up. The last two months, I wrapped up a deal with a thrill-seeking company in Colorado. Preston thought it would be good for me to focus on one small project while I got my shit together, and I agreed.”
She fluffed the pillow and sat cross-legged on the bed with the tablet resting on her bare thighs.
He groaned. Deciding he needed to keep a little distance, he set up his computer at the desk.
“Oh no,” she mumbled.
“What is it?”
She tapped the screen. “That’s an email Jim uses for personal use. He’s got a few of them.”
“Are you sure? Does he use it to communicate with you?”
She shook her head. “It’s his Netflix and Hulu email.”
“Text your brother and tell him you think it’s him. If he got more than one anonymous tip about me from that email, maybe he can use that to prove it belongs to Jim.”
“All right,” she said. “Random question, but did Preston pick the project in Colorado, or did you?”
“He did, but I was happy to do it. I knew the people that owned the company, and the travel back and forth wasn’t too bad.” He pulled up the mirror server. Sally was still populating all the work emails. If anyone had anything personal, well then, too bad for them. If anyone had sent anything and deleted it, a copy would be kept for six months. All contracts that had not expired would be in the proper folders. Ones that had not been executed could be anywhere, knowing Preston.
Reid would focus only on Hans, manufacturing, and the fire suit. He’d also have to look for any patents that were pending and a few other things, but that would take longer than all night.
“You didn’t find it strange that he put you on a project that required you to go to where Erin died.”
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. His jaw slackened. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“I heard what he said to you earlier, and for the record, it was a shitty thing to say.”
“I thought so, too.” Reid turned. “But I’m used to that from Preston, especially when he gets drunk and starts going off about Erin. It’s his way of coping. He did lose his sister, and he is hurting, too. And don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you being here is a reminder she’s not.”
“I don’t take offense to that,” Darcie said as her fingers pressed the screen.
“You were right about how I used Erin as an emotional shield when things got a little too heavy with us, and I got scared. In the beginning.”
“I’m the one who put Erin between us,” Darcie said.
“You did like to bring her up at the weirdest times. Why would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to understand you better. You could be so intense at times, and she obviously meant the world to you. But you and Preston never talked about her, and I thought that was weird.”
“Preston and I do have an oddball dynamic.”
“That part of the relationship was way past being quirky,” Darcie said. “You loved Erin.”
Reid tapped his chest. “I did. I do.”
“He was your best friend, and yet the two of you can’t share the one thing that bonds you together in the tightest of ways. That always frightened me.”
“Why?”
“Have you met my family?” she asked with a raised brow. “You can’t be an outsider when you date a Bowie. That’s only reserved for the baby of the family.”
“Stop. You’re not an outsider in your family.” He snagged a piece of paper and tossed it. She had this horrible habit of withdrawing from her family. The first time he’d seen her do it, he’d worried that Darcie might have some of the same problems Erin had. But over time, he learned that Darcie’s only issue was that she was too hard on herself and took everything everyone said to heart. “Why do you always have to do that?”
“I don’t know. Probably because I’m avoiding them. However, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and Preston and how you never talked about Erin, and that bothered me. Did it bother Preston? Her family?” Darcie set the tablet aside and sat up a little taller, twirling her hair around her finger.
“No. They’re the ones who refused to discuss her, and I had to learn to live with the fact that I couldn’t save her. No one could, and that was a demon I didn’t know how to live with. I used to feel guilty about loving you, as if I shouldn’t. And when we got serious, I got scared because I started to want all those things I told myself I’d never have after Erin died. It freaked me out a bit, and now that I’ve had some time to reflect, I can see how I made you feel as if you were in her shadow.”
