The Pleasure Contract by Caitlin Crews (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

until they stopped at the top, with a view that made it seem as if they were the only people left on the planet, that Catriona settled herself on a big rock that might as well have been a sofa. And turned her sharp blue gaze on her brother.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Bristol.”

Lachlan blew out a breath.

“Bristol,” he agreed.

He waited for Catriona to jump on that. To start lecturing him, so he could disagree. Or have something to fight about.

Turned out, he really wanted a fight.

But Catriona was a canny one who knew him far too well, and so all she did was wait.

“Where are the kids?” Lachlan asked.

Obviously stalling.

Catriona looked amused. “They’re all at summer camp, hallelujah. Is that what you drove up here to ask me?”

It wasn’t as hot this far north as it had been down in New York City, which was a good thing. It stripped away one of the things gnawing at him. Lachlan shoved his hands into his jean pockets and was glad he was wearing a T-shirt. That he wasn’t in his usual work clothes.

But as he glared out at all those rolling Vermont hills, he couldn’t help feeling that the only thing he’d accomplished yesterday, standing up on his rooftop in the rain like a lunatic, was bringing the storm into him.

He didn’t feel washed clean. He didn’t feel made new.

He felt sullen and low, like a brooding summer sky, when all there was before him was blue skies and sweet sunshine.

“Tell me how you do it,” he muttered, though the words felt bitter on his lips.

Or not bitter, maybe. It was possible he interpreted them as bitter because they were so unfamiliar. So dangerous.

Because he’d decided, long ago, what was and wasn’t possible.

But long ago, he hadn’t known Bristol. And he hadn’t imagined how different the world could look when someone actually got inside the way she had.

He would have said it was impossible.

He’d been certain.

“It’s simple,” Catriona said softly, not pretending that she didn’t know what he meant. “All you have to do is decide that it’s worth the risk to make yourself vulnerable. Then do it. Especially when it feels impossible.”

“As easy as that, then,” Lachlan scoffed.

His sister smiled. “I said it was simple. I didn’t say it was easy.”

Lachlan shook his head. “Maybe you and Ben have it figured out in ways that wouldn’t work for anyone else. Nice and calm, no bumps in the road. Easy.”

Catriona cackled. “I can’t wait to tell him you said that. You’ve never seen us fight.”

He turned, scanning her face. Then he frowned. “You fight?”

“Of course we fight, idiot. What do you think? We’re real people, Lachlan. One time, and not as long ago as you might think, I was so mad at him I threw a coffee maker at his head.”

She nodded when all he did was stare at her, confirming that he’d heard her correctly.

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry to inform you that you’re not the only Drummond around. I have a nasty temper and, as I think you know, I never learned how to channel it appropriately. That’s been a pretty steep learning curve and sometimes I revert to type.”

He couldn’t take that on board. Catriona had always been so solid, so stalwart when everything else around them was noise and fury.

“But you...”

“Here’s the thing, Lachlan.” And his sister’s gaze was steady. Direct. “You’ve spent all these years doing your best not to end up like Dad. Because you’re so sure you know what happened on that plane and you’ve made it your mission to make your life a monument to being anything at all but that.”

“We both know what happened on that plane.”

“But what you’re forgetting is that Dad didn’t have that relationship by himself.”

Something in Lachlan stilled.

Catriona kept going, even though Lachlan was pretty sure she knew that her words had clobbered him. “If he crashed that plane deliberately—”

“He did.”

Catriona nodded, slowly. “I agree. But then you know that Mom goaded him into it. You know she picked and prodded and laughed all the way down. That’s who they were, Lachlan.”

Lachlan shook his head, reeling. That storm he’d taken into himself was wrecking him. Howling, raging—but his sister still wasn’t done.

“Their relationship took both of them.” Her gaze was intent on his, a piercing blue that rivaled the bright summer all around them. “I want you to take that on board, for once. They were both toxic. And they were both responsible.”

But all he could do was shake his head. “You know Dad...”

Catriona waited as his words trailed off.

“Alone, neither one of them could have done so much damage.” She held up the index finger of each of her hands, then moved them both together to make one. “Together they might as well have been napalm. They made their own tragedy. Deep down, I know you know this.”

Maybe he did. Maybe it was easier to blame his father.

Because maybe it was easier to have someone to blame.

“If I blame him, it’s better,” he managed to get out. “Because...”

“Because if there’s a villain, then they didn’t race to their inevitable conclusion without a single thought for the kids they were leaving behind,” Catriona finished for him. “I’ve thought all this myself. But they did.”

Something in him shifted, big and hard like the huge boulder his sister was sitting on, surprisingly easy after all these years. As if it had been waiting all along for him to get here.

To understand that he’d wanted the anger. The fury.

He’d found it clarifying.

Because there was nothing on the other side of it but grief.

Even all these years later.

“They did,” he agreed, his voice rough. “They really did.”

“As for you and me? It’s easy.” Catriona separated her fingers. “Don’t pick an atom bomb, Lachlan. Don’t be an atom bomb. And you’ll be fine.”

“I thought that’s what I was doing. What I’ve been doing. You like to call the precautions I take squalid.”

“Please.” His sister scoffed. “You’ve been hiding. And how will you ever