Finally, he opened one eye. "Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve today, I’m not up for it. Try me again in six months."
"Trust me, this is going to make everything better. I promise."
Mia reached into her big red leather bag, something he guessed cost nearly as much as his motorcycle, and pulled out a piece of paper. Though he hadn’t indicated that he was in the market for a summer house, she’d been telling him about various lake properties for the past few months, emailing him pictures and handing him flyers when they were over at their parents’ house for a meal. Still, the constant barrage of lake house listings had gotten him thinking, which he knew was entirely Mia’s intent.
A couple of months away from crying, jilted trophy wives and cheating captains of industry?
Sounded like heaven.
His siblings all loved their work. Mia was so good at selling real estate that she’d opened her own brokerage well before she’d hit her thirties. His brother Adam had never seen a historic house he didn’t want to rehab. Ian, the oldest Seattle Sullivan, made millions while he slept. And their brother Dylan had been sailing since before he could walk, so it made perfect sense that he was building some of the best boats out on the water.
Only Rafe was stuck with a successful business that was draining the life out of him, one day at a time.
"I don’t need another house," Rafe muttered.
He closed his eyes again, settled deeper into his couch, and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. Instead of making an irritated noise, or pushing his feet off the table, Mia let silence fall between them. Frankly, the silence worried him more than anything, given that his sister was not known for her deeply meditative states. Rather, she was the perfect combination of the Tasmanian Devil and a whirling dervish. He was working to muster up the energy to put a stop to whatever she was planning, when something sharp hit him between the eyes.
"Ow! What the hell, Mia?" There was a paper airplane on his lap, its nose bent from the impact with his forehead.
"Just look at it already. I know how busy you are consoling weeping women all day, and I wouldn’t bother you unless it was really important." She pointed at the paper airplane. "Trust me, this is important."
Knowing it was best to humor her so that he could get on with his shitty day, Rafe unfolded the airplane. There wasn’t much printed on the listing page apart from the slightly fuzzy picture at the top, but it was enough for him to understand exactly why his sister had dropped everything to bring this to him.
"It’s not April Fool’s, is it?"
He honestly couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Their parents had bought a lake cabin in the Cascade Mountains when he was a little kid, and they’d spent every summer there until Rafe was fourteen. That was when their father had lost his job, and everything had changed for their family. It had sucked when they lost the lake house, but it had been far worse to watch their father lose his self-confidence and turn gray nearly overnight. Worse still, they’d all still been grieving over the unexpected loss of their father’s brother, Uncle Jack. It had been a difficult time for the West Coast Sullivans, and even now, Rafe didn’t like to think back to those years.
"As soon as I saw this listing, I rescheduled my appointments to race over here to show it to you."
Rafe glanced down at the flyer again. It didn’t look like a single thing had changed, and he was glad to see it. Man, he’d loved that place—had looked forward to summer all year long because of it. Hiking, swimming, boating, fishing, waterskiing...and girls. So many pretty girls in bikinis it had made a teenage boy’s head swim.
"You’ve got to make an offer," Mia insisted. "Today."
He could practically smell the campfires, could feel the cool water cover him as he jumped off the end of the dock. But he’d already been through this with himself a hundred times. He had employees who counted on him. He had half the Seattle elite banging on his door, demanding that he investigate their spouses. He wasn’t a kid anymore with no responsibilities. He couldn’t just pick up and leave his business behind.
Rafe forced himself to put the paper down on the table in front of him. "My next client will be here in fifteen minutes."
"Have Ben take her for you."
"Ben has his own appointments."
"He’s good with your screwed-over wives. Better than you, actually, because he’s less cynical about it all."
Rafe was six foot three, with broad shoulders and big hands. People rarely called him on his bullshit. But though his little sister was a foot shorter and weighed at least sixty pounds less, she wasn’t the least bit afraid of going toe-to-toe with him.
"We can all see what this job is doing to you," she told him now. "Seriously, you should have seen the way you looked when I walked in. Heck, the way you look right now, just thinking about meeting with another client."
His sister was a know-it-all. The problem was, sometimes she actually did know what she was talking about. Still, he had to say, "You think it’s that easy? That I can just buy the cabin, turn over my clients to Ben, and head out for the summer?"
"Why can’t you? I mean, you are the boss."
"You’re the boss over at Sullivan Realty, but you’re not exactly buying the lake house and leaving your employees to pick up your slack."
"True," she agreed a little too readily, "but there’s one big difference between you and me. I like my job. Besides, when’s the last time you took a real vacation?" Before he could reply, she said, "Fact is, there are always going to be people cheating, so there is always going to be more work coming your way. You’re the only one who can press the Pause button, Rafe. Especially after what happened to you with—"
His glare cut her off before she could talk about the same damn thing that everyone had been talking about for the past couple of months—the knife wound to the side of his ribs. He was over it. Why couldn’t they be? The guy had barely hooked the tip into Rafe’s skin before Rafe had thrown him across the parking garage.
And yet, it grated more than he liked to admit that his little sister was right about his taking some time off. Not because he was afraid of being jumped again in a dark parking lot, but because a guy needed to recharge his batteries every once in a while. Sex was usually good for that, but lately even the few hot hours in the sack he'd managed with women who weren't looking for love any more than he was had fallen pretty damned short of the mark.