The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(30)

Helena leaned closer, and squinted. Her breath fogged the glass, but she quickly brushed it back, leaving a palm-print stain. The discourse between those two men was not what she should be attending. Particularly with the still-incomplete reports for Ryker. There was something vaguely familiar about the bewhiskered man with his balding pate. Just then the man thumped Ryker on the back.

She furrowed her brow.

Thumped him on the back . . . ? Even with the distance from the window and the floor, Helena detected Ryker’s body jerk at that physical touch.

“What has you so engrossed?”

Startled into movement, she spun around. “The tables,” she dissembled.

Calum gave an absent nod. “Ryker was looking for you earlier,” he muttered.

Looking for her? Ryker had just been conversing with a patron on the gaming floor. A sense of foreboding held her suspended, motionless.

The only people Ryker actively looked for were men and women he intended to sack. Otherwise, you saw Ryker only at the times he carved out for you in his schedule . . . and that rule extended to family.

She was being irrational. Ryker wouldn’t sack her. Not simply because she was his sister, but because he needed her. The club’s success was owed in large part to her expert handling of the books. But you were caught in a bald-faced lie . . . one that potentially put every member of the family at risk. And there was the gentleman whom Ryker had been walking the floors with. “He is looking for me?” she managed to squeeze out.

“You weren’t in your office.” She’d been here. “You know your brother doesn’t tell me everything,” Calum said, not meeting her gaze.

The pebble grew to the size of a boulder. Why is he not meeting my eyes?

“He certainly tells you more than he tells me.” Bitterness won out in her failed bid for humor.

Calum came over to where she stood at the window, and stopped beside her. A sad glimmer flecked in his eyes, as he searched her face, escalating her growing disquiet. “Your brother loves you,” he said unexpectedly, in those soft tones she’d only heard from him after she’d awakened from the nightmares. “Everything he has ever done has been with you in mind.” He paused. “All of us.”

His words rang eerily of goodbye. She thrust off the silly thought. He’d never send her away . . . But he would if he found a larger reason you should not be here . . . And she’d certainly given him reason enough. Any other worker would have been summarily dismissed and tossed out for her crimes yesterday.

“Yes, well, I’m working now.” Unless she was specifically summoned, she was wise enough to not go looking for her brother. As a man so single-mindedly driven by his gaming empire, he’d at the very least respect her devotion to her responsibilities. Helena shot another glance over her shoulder, searching for her brother. Ryker and the jolly, fat nobleman had since gone. Tired of Calum’s cryptic words and glances, she coughed into her hand. “If you’ll excuse me? I’ve the liquor accounts to see to.”

Calum gave her a long lingering look, and regret flashed in his eyes. He stepped out of her way.

Helena curled her hands into tight fists, and made her way past him.

Once gone from the observatory, she drew in a slow breath, and started for her office. Although Ryker’s looking for her roused nervousness, for its unpredictability in a man committed to sameness, she’d not quake and tremble. It was not as though he’d specifically summoned her. Now if he’d made it a bid to see her called to his office . . . well, then she’d be suitably terrified.

She reached the end of the hall when the quick tread of boot steps sounded down the opposite corridor.

“He’s in my office?” Ryker’s gravelly voice echoed in the quiet.

“. . . I just escorted him there. He asked when he might see . . .” The remainder of Niall’s response to Ryker’s terse question was lost. “You do not have to do this.” Niall’s murmur reached around the hall. “Helena has not been . . .”

Heart thudding painfully, Helena quickly ducked into a nearby storage room, and drew the door closed. Helena has not been what . . . ? Her mind screamed. She left a small crack in the heavy panel and squinted.

“. . . There is no other choice.” There was a finality to Ryker’s harsh pronouncement.

No other choice? The cryptic quality of that, linked with Niall’s earlier use of her name, sent fear racing. He is going to sack me. She tightened her grip on the door handle, and pressed her ear against the wood.

“. . . Do you truly believe we cannot protect . . .”

Helena’s grip slipped on the door handle, and she stumbled into the door with such force, she knocked it open and landed hard on her knees. She grunted as pain radiated up her legs.

Bloody hell on Sunday.

Ryker and Niall paused at the end of the hall and in unison turned around.

Mustering a smile, she climbed to her feet as though they’d met on the gaming floors and not as though she’d been blatantly discovered listening in on their discourse. “I was inventorying the linens,” she lied. Their matching, piercing expressions said they knew it, too. Helena shoved herself to a stand, while embarrassed heat flooded her cheeks.

Niall rushed over. “Are you—?”

“I am fine,” she assured him. How protective they’d always been. As a girl and young woman she’d appreciated it. As a woman grown, it threatened to suffocate her.