across his face. She lowered her gaze, wishing she could disappear, become spectral. But he wasn’t looking at her, or Hanna.
The two men stared at one another – similar in height, but where Max had the pale skin and soft muscles of the office worker, Emil was spry and tanned, looking older than his thirty-one years. It seemed somehow innately understood that Emil would be the one to break the silence and lead the conversation. This was his birthday, his home, his island, his family, after all. It seemed an age before he held out a hand. ‘Hello, Max.’
Max shook it. ‘Emil.’
‘You look older.’
‘You look well.’
A tiny smile half-cocked Emil’s mouth. ‘I caught up on my beauty sleep.’
The same half-smile tipped Max’s mouth, but the humour hadn’t risen to their eyes, not yet, and the atmosphere remained tense in spite of the civility.
‘It’s good of you to have gone to this effort for the girls,’ Max said, waving a hand in the general direction of the lawn amusements.
‘Shame the weather isn’t quite playing ball,’ Emil nodded. ‘But I wanted to make them feel at home.’
His words were light, courteous even, but the threat glinted just below the surface like a vein of steel. Home. Here. Bell realized she was holding her breath as the men kept their gazes steady.
‘Come, let’s have a drink while the girls play,’ he said suddenly, breaking into the gracious smile of ‘mein hoste’ and leading them towards the large round table on the terrace. It had been set with a dark-grey linen tablecloth and a low bowl arranged with pale-pink dahlias, a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket to the side. ‘It’s my birthday, after all. We should be celebrating. I slept through the last seven.’
Måns, who had been standing unseen by them all, stepped forward as though into physical being and elegantly unpopped the cork as they walked over.
‘Hanna, why don’t you sit here, next to me,’ Emil said, motioning to the chair beside him. All eyes swivelled in his direction. ‘That way, the girls will see their mother chatting and laughing beside me and know I’m not a big scary monster.’
‘Right,’ Hanna said, looking wan, her eyes sliding between both men, but Max was looking away, pretending to admire the gardens. Bell knew he was only pretending because she could see the ball of his jaw, clenched in tension.
‘I’d better go and check on Linus,’ she said, stepping back away from their group. She wasn’t a guest here, after all, but an employee.
Emil’s eyes flashed towards her – the first time he’d looked at her since arriving, the first time since that night, across the bedroom – I’m awake – and she felt frozen to the spot by their burning intensity. He released her again in the next moment, and she turned away with a gasp.
‘So, thirty-one today,’ Hanna said behind her with forced levity, her voice strained with the desperate urge to see today pass without hitch. ‘My, my.’
‘Well, I still haven’t decided yet whether I should consider this my thirty-first or my twenty-fifth . . .’ she heard Emil saying as she stepped into the house.
Out of sight, Bell sagged against the wall and closed her eyes, trying to recover. The way Emil had looked at her so angrily, as though he hated her too . . . Did he despise her for her act of defiance in refusing to return? He was bristling with a hostility that was made worse by concealing it beneath a veil of manners. Outright contempt, anger and swinging fists would have been preferable to that.
She found Linus in his bedroom, sitting against the far wall beside the open window. He had his head on his knees and was rolling the Corvette back and forth on the ground, listening to the murmur of adult conversation below, the occasional shrieks drifting up of his little sisters having fun without him. Dozens of books lay face down on the floor, some of the pages ripped out and scattered around him.
‘Hey.’ He looked up, his face tear-streaked, and she felt her heart break. ‘Oh darling,’ she whispered, rushing over to him and enveloping him in a hug.
‘I’m fine,’ he said defiantly, allowing himself to be held nonetheless as she kissed his hair and rubbed his shoulders, the way he liked her to when he was sick.
They sat in silence for several minutes. She wouldn’t push him if he didn’t want to talk about it.