Only a Millionaire (The Sinclairs #6.5)(3)

“What changed?” I questioned her. “Why now?”

She shrugged. “Because it’s time. My reasons for being here are no longer valid. I can go home.”

“You haven’t even been here for a year,” I grumbled, knowing I couldn’t challenge her decision. She was only an employee, and she had every right to quit if she wanted to, but I wasn’t letting her go without a fight.

She laughed. “A year is a long time. I never planned on staying this long.”

She was probably missing her boyfriend, even though I had my doubts about how serious he really was about Brooke. He’d only come to see her a couple of times, and he hadn’t stayed long. “Other than your boyfriend, what do you have on the West Coast? At least you have a job here.”

“My whole family is there, Liam. I have three older brothers, a twin sister, and a younger brother just out of medical school.”

I was surprised. She didn’t talk about her personal life much. I had no idea that she had a lot of family. “You have a twin? Does she look like you?”

She shook her head. “We aren’t identical, but you can tell that we’re sisters. I miss her. We talk on the phone, but I’ve never been away from her for this long.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had family there?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t say much about my personal life.”

Fuck! I hated the fact that Brooke and I had never really gotten to know each other. We should have. She’d been here long enough. But she obviously hadn’t wanted to be found, and I was too busy trying to make her believe that my attraction for her was history. We’d spent a lot of time in the same space, but we never really talked.

Honestly, I blamed myself for that. If I hadn’t been so involved in trying to tell myself that I didn’t want to fuck her, we could have been friends.

Hard to be friends when all I can think about is making her come.

“You have a big family,” I told her, not knowing what else to say.

She snorted. “You have no idea how I hated that sometimes. Having three older brothers trying to boss me around was never easy. But I love all of them. My parents are gone, so all we really had was each other.”

“I’m sorry,” I responded automatically, relating to her loss since I’d lost my mom and dad, too.

“They died a long time ago,” she answered in a melancholy tone before she added, “I’ll make some coffee.”

I moved out of her way, and then followed her to the kitchen. “So it must be hard to be across the country from all that family.”

She went through the motions of brewing a new pot of coffee as she answered, “It was good for me. I needed some time to myself.”

Her answers were vague, and I knew she didn’t want to talk about her reasons for leaving California in the first place. “I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing your boyfriend,” I commented, having trouble wrapping my mind around her being with a guy full-time again.

I was used to seeing her solo, and I liked it that way.

Actually, it pissed me off to think of her as taken, even though I knew she was.

But I wasn’t going to tell her that. If I did, I’d have to admit that I’d never gotten over my attraction to her, and that was something we probably didn’t need to discuss.

She pushed the “Brew” button on the coffeemaker before she said, “I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at home.”

How could I compete with a whole damn family and a boyfriend? I’d never really befriended Brooke. I couldn’t. Not when my cock got hard every time I saw her. “You’ll be missed here,” I said unhappily.

She turned around to look at me. “Who will miss me? I never really made friends here, and you said you could never be my friend.”

I had said that. Right after I’d let it slip that I was attracted to her. But in the months after my confession, I’d wished I hadn’t said quite so much. Brooke was the type of woman who looked at the good in everybody. She was upbeat most of the time, and the type of person who made me want to be her friend, even though I desperately wanted to fuck her. “You’ll still be missed,” I muttered.

“Will you miss me?” she asked in a curious voice.

“Of course. You’ve worked your ass off for me. You covered me when I needed to be with my sister for her cochlear implants and treatment in New York. You’ve done a lot for me, Brooke.” My deaf sister was no longer deaf. The implants had been successful, and Tessa was happily married to Micah Sinclair, another billionaire from the Sinclair family who had relocated here to Amesport.

Brooke turned, trying to hide a look of disappointment that I’d seen just before she’d hidden her face.

“I’m sure you’ll find a good replacement,” she said as she walked over to the counter next to the bathroom and hopped up there to sit.

It was the only time that particular space ever got any usage. Since I’d remodeled the restaurant, there were several old areas we really didn’t need anymore.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, not quite sure why I’d muttered that question.

Maybe I didn’t know why she’d had to leave her family, but now that I was aware of her siblings and the life she’d left behind, I knew it had to be something serious.