Kingstons redemption, p.1
Kingston's Redemption, page 1
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Newsletter and Social Media Links
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2022 Carole Mortimer
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Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
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Editor: Linda Ingmanson
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Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign
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ISBN: 978-1-914336-05-8
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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All Rights Reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
“Sinclair?”
He felt an inner jolt in reaction to hearing someone call his name across the hotel reception area. Along with the stirring of something else. A feeling of familiarity, as if the softness of what sounded to be a young woman’s voice was stirring memories he’d chosen to shut away because thinking about them hurt too damned much.
Wasn’t that usually the reason for some memories being kept and others deliberately suppressed?
Whatever these ones were for Sinclair, or why this woman’s voice should have awoken them, it was causing him enough discomfort to spur him into lengthening his stride and continuing on his way across the marble-tiled reception area toward the elevator that would take him down to the underground car park.
As he walked, he inwardly made a bargain with himself.
One where if he reached the elevator before the woman managed to catch up with him, he would go down to collect his car and get the hell out of here. Which had been his original intention.
If he didn’t reach the elevator in time—
“Sinclair!”
The woman’s voice had become more strident—or desperate? It also sounded closer than before.
One of Sinclair’s brothers, Max, and their cousin, Adam, had married the women of their dreams this afternoon. Two sisters, as it happened. The happy couples were currently hosting their joint reception in one of the private function rooms on a higher floor of the hotel.
Perhaps the woman who seemed so determined to gain Sinclair’s attention was another one of their wedding guests?
Maybe, but that still didn’t mean she had the right to approach Sinclair in this way, or that he had to respond to her.
Pleased as he was for both the newly married couples, he’d had more than enough of smiling through the happy-ever-after for one day. More than enough! Which was why he was choosing to leave before the couples had even reached the cutting-of-the-cake part of the ceremony, followed by the dancing he definitely didn’t need to be there for.
“Sin!”
He came to an abrupt halt, jaw clenching, eyes narrowed as he whipped round to face the woman who had dared to use the shortened version of his name that only his family and those close to him were allowed to use. She certainly wasn’t family, and there had been no female close enough to him for years to have earned the right to use that familiarity.
He took in the woman’s appearance in one sweeping glance as she hurried toward him. He’d been right about her being young. The casual blue T-shirt and black low-rider jeans she was wearing and the laptop-size backpack slung over one shoulder, also indicated she probably wasn’t one of the wedding guests. In fact, she didn’t look as if she belonged in this five-star hotel at all.
She was possibly aged in her early twenties, and taller than average, with straight, just-below-shoulder-length black hair. Her figure was all willowy curves.
But it was her heart-shaped face that captured and held Sinclair’s attention. That caused his scowl to deepen when just looking at her awakened something else inside him. An emotion he’d ruthlessly chosen to keep at bay for the past five years.
Desire.
Because whoever or whatever else this young woman was, she was also compellingly beautiful.
And since when did I start reacting to and desiring a woman just because of the way she looked?
He didn’t. He hadn’t so much as glanced at a woman and felt desire in the past five years. Nor had he wanted to.
It was becoming increasingly impossible for him to look away from this one.
Her skin was smooth and unblemished and the color of ivory. Her blue eyes were surrounded by long lashes, her cheeks hollow either side of a straight nose. Her lips were a naturally deep rose, and her chin small and pointed above a slender throat.
Her brow was currently creased into a frown over those beautiful long-lashed eyes.
Eyes that he could see were edged with another emotion he also recognized.
Fear.
Of him? Sinclair couldn’t see how that was possible when he still had no idea who she was or why she had accosted him—ambushed him?—at the hotel where he was attending a wedding reception.
But those haunted blue eyes continued to stir up disturbing memories.
Eyes, Sinclair realized with a sinking heart, he’d seen before, but on another woman entirely.
“Who the hell are you?” he now demanded, angry with her and furious with himself for having allowed even those few brief moments of desire now that he suspected who this young woman might be.
Who was she to him, Remy mentally enlarged on Sinclair’s question.
Because that way, it became a valid one.
But then, if she’d learned anything about forty-one-year-old Sinclair Kingston in the past few days, it was that he didn’t appear in public anymore. That he now lived a life of solitude and rigid self-discipline that didn’t allow for weakness or compromise of any kind. Instead, he demanded answers, and other people could either choose to answer them or refuse at their peril.
The fact he was even at this hotel today, attending the wedding reception of his brother Max and his cousin Adam, to the two Carlton-Smythe sisters, had required that Sinclair step out from behind those ten-foot security walls surrounding the Kingston estate where he now lived exclusively.
Something Remy had learned he rarely did.
But it had been Remy’s hope, after seeing the announcement and venue of the Kingston weddings and reception in the newspaper the previous day, that he would finally leave his ivory tower for this.
She’d deliberately arrived at the hotel early, relieved she had when she’d seen Sinclair enter the hotel with the rest of his brothers a short time later. She watched from the hotel coffee shop as they all took the elevator up to the floor and room where the brides and grooms were waiting to welcome their guests.
As Remy had no intention of interrupting that happy occasion, she’d stayed in the hotel’s coffee shop and waited for Sinclair to leave.
It was only two hours later, the wedding reception no doubt still taking place upstairs, when, as Remy had hoped, Sinclair came down alone in the elevator.
She’d tried yesterday to make an appointment to see him through the family-owned company, Kingston Security. But the woman who answered her call had told her Sinclair Kingston didn’t take clients anymore and instead offered to set Remy up for a consultation with another member of the Kingston family. Remy had politely refused the offer.
If this opportunity hadn’t presented itself today, then Remy might have been forced into going that route, but it wasn’t one she wanted. Approaching Sinclair and asking for his help was one thing but going to the Kingston Security offices and then having all seven of the forceful Kingston men involving themselves in her business, was something else entirely. Especially when she knew how much they all enjoyed taking charge and kicking someone else’s butt.
Whatever was going on in Remy’s life right now needed to be approached with more subtlety than that.
At least, she thought it did. She’d mainly felt numbed by the events of the past four weeks.
Oh, she’d seen the photographs of all seven of the Kingston men in the newspapers for two weeks prior to this one, as they accompanied the Carlton-Smythe sisters in and out of the courthouse during the prosecution of Caesar Bortkov, the son of the dead Russian pakhan, Kirill Bortkov. But it had been like watching strangers, not people she had known as well as she once had. Because she was no longer a part of their family, even on the periphery.
Then two evenings ago, something else had happened in her life that instantly made her think of asking Sinclair for help. The truth was, she simply had no one else she could ask.
Making that decision was one thing, but that didn’t mean Sinclair would want to speak to her, hence her stalkerish behavior today.
But until Remy had actually seen Sinclair again earlier, had a chance to look at him closely, she hadn’t known just how much he’d changed from the man he’d been before his wife died five years ago.
Then, he had been head and the face of Kingston Security. A vibrant and handsome man who laughed and te
Now Sinclair looked as if being alive was a burden he had to get through each day.
He was still handsome, only now it came with a huge dose of a harsh and unapproachable coldness.
His eyes were an icy and merciless pale blue, cheekbones so sharply defined beneath his skin they looked as if they might slice through the flesh, with thinned lips unsmiling above a square and determined jaw.
His hair had once been dark and slightly unruly, but now it was salt-and-pepper, kept short at the sides, and swept back on top from the harshness of his face.
Several inches over six feet tall, Sinclair appeared the epitome of sophistication today in a black bespoke three-piece suit worn with a pristine white shirt and pale gray tie. But even those trappings of civilization couldn’t hide the fact that the body beneath those clothes was toned and muscular, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh on it. That all those muscles were currently as coiled as a predator about to leap on its prey.
Remy had a feeling that could quite easily become her.
A cold shiver ran down the length of her spine as she lifted her chin and forced her gaze to meet those pale and narrowed eyes. “I’m sure I haven’t changed so much in five years that you don’t know exactly who I am,” she challenged.
He glanced toward the elevator that would take him down to the hotel car park, nostrils flaring as he seemed to be debating whether he should just walk away without answering her.
Remy was so convinced that was exactly what he was going to do that she was completely unprepared when he suddenly turned that razor-sharp gaze back in her direction. “What do you want, Remy?” he bit out harshly.
She took an instinctive step back from the icy fire that blazed briefly in his eyes when he said her name, before they once again became flat and unemotional. Unapproachable.
But at least she now knew that Sinclair was aware of exactly who she was.
That he had probably known that all along and simply didn’t care.
And that hurt.
It hurt a lot.
CHAPTER TWO
Remy wasn’t here because she wanted to be, but because she had believed Sinclair might be the only person who could and would be able to help her. But the man standing in front of her was a stranger, and nothing like the kind and caring man Remy remembered. As for wanting to help her…he looked as if he would rather be standing in a nest of vipers than talking to her.
Why he felt that way, she had no idea.
She gave a weary shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Remy turned toward the glass doors fronting the hotel, anxious to escape outside. The air crackling between the two of them was far too tense.
But she’d taken only a single step in that direction when the top of one of her arms was captured by strong and inflexible fingers. Sinclair’s touch instantly sent a thrill of excitement coursing through her.
She half turned toward him, her lashes lowered so as not to allow him to see the tears of disappointment swimming in her eyes. “Let go of me, Sinclair.”
He removed his hand to clench it into a fist at his side. “Did your father send you?”
Remy raised her head sharply, her eyes wide with incredulity. “Are you being deliberately insensitive?”
His eyes were narrowed to icy slits. “Answer me, damn it.”
She gave an incredulous scoff. “Where have you been for the past month, Sinclair? Living under a rock?”
His jaw tightened. “Answer me.”
She shook her head, her expression dazed. “You really don’t know.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“Know what?” he prompted harshly.
She swallowed. “My father’s dead. My mother too. They were both killed a month ago, along with the pilot, when the helicopter Dad had rented to fly him and Mama back from their holiday in Wales crashed into the sea off the Welsh coast. Only the pilot’s body has been found so far, and the authorities are now saying it’s been too long since the crash to hold out any hope that Mama and Dad survived.”
What the fuck!
How had Sinclair not known about any of this?
Because you’re a fucking recluse. Sinclair heard the words in his head spoken in his brother Malachi’s conversational rather than accusing tone.
Mal lived his life to the beat of a different drum from everyone else, which was why his comments, always succinct and truthful, could also very often be brutal. Never deliberately hurtful, Mal simply didn’t recognize the same emotional cues others did.
And it was true that nowadays, Sinclair preferred to keep to his suite of rooms at Kingston Manor, the family’s country estate an hour’s drive from London. But through various means and methods, Sinclair still kept his finger on the pulse of what was going on in the seedy underbelly of the world. It was how he knew which douchebag kidnapper or abductor would be next to receive a visit from him and learn exactly how helpless it felt to be in that situation.
After his wife had been kidnapped and killed five years ago, Sinclair had stepped back from being the public face of Kingston Security. Instead, he had become a one-man vigilante, doling out a punishment suitable to the crime when the police failed to do so. Not because they didn’t want to, but because the law often prohibited them from doing so.
Sinclair didn’t allow himself to be restricted by the same laws that had allowed men like the ones who had murdered Cathy to go free.
But he hadn’t read or seen a single news report on the deaths of Ralph and Gina Mitchell. Admittedly, a single helicopter going down in the sea off the coast of North Wales, killing the pilot, with the two passengers who also happened to be a husband and wife still missing, was more of a sob story than world-breaking news. Even so, there should have been news reports on the accident somewhere for Sinclair to see and respond to. As it was, he’d been completely blindsided by the news of the Mitchells’ deaths.
He could think of only one person, his youngest brother Casper, who had the technical skills to ensure that information never got as far as Sinclair’s numerous internet feeds. Which meant he would be demanding answers from Casper in the very near future.
How did Sinclair feel now that he knew, somewhat belatedly, the Mitchells were both missing and presumed dead?
His first, knee-jerk reaction was, karma is a bitch.
His second, it was a pity Gina and the pilot had died too.
Followed by, why the hell should any of that have brought Remy here today, with the obvious intention of wanting to speak to him?
“They’d initially driven to the hotel in Wales,” Remy continued flatly. “But Dad’s car wouldn’t start when it came time to leave. The garage there told him it would take a few days to get the new part and fix it, but he was due to talk at a medical seminar in London the following day and decided to arrange for them to be flown back by helicopter.”
“Why not just hire a car and drive back?” Like normal people, he added inwardly.
She shrugged. “Dad loves—loved helicopter travel, ever since Malachi took him up with him a few times. He even took a couple of lessons, but hadn’t got his license yet,” she added wistfully.
Sinclair’s emotions were still inwardly roiling from learning that Ralph and Gina were both dead.
But not enough so that he wasn’t also totally aware of the distracting tingle of the palm and fingers of the hand he’d used to grasp Remy’s arm. Her skin felt so soft and warm to the touch. The sort of feminine warmth and softness Sinclair had long denied himself.
And that was all it was, he tried to tell himself. Knowing he was lying. Meeting Remy Mitchell again, touching her silky skin, physically aware of her in a way he hadn’t been of any woman for such a long time, was starting to cause fissures in the barrier Sinclair kept about his emotions.
