His Horizon - Con Riley Page 0,4
Jude accepted as Rob shifted in his sleep, his bedsheet slipping. Jude had wanted to see more of Rob before he’d left London in a panic. He’d wanted that despite Rob being a contender for a cash prize Jude so badly needed.
Rob shifted again, the sheet slipping some more. Jude focussed on its progress southward in the dim light, breath catching again, but it wasn’t the glimpse of hair trailing from Rob’s chest to his pelvis that caught his attention—black as sin like he’d imagined. No, it was a familiar anchor keyring that gleamed close to Rob’s sleep-curved fingers.
What was he doing with the set of keys that belonged to Jude’s mother? And why were they dumped next to a half-drunk glass of—Jude leaned closer and sniffed—cognac?
Jude weighed his choices. He could go along with his first instinct and wake Rob to get some answers. Or he could steal back the keys and get Louise’s side of the story—find out why Rob was here, and what he’d told her about Jude. He inched closer and crouched before freezing at a muffled murmur.
“Lou?” Rob mashed his face into the pillow, his voice sleepy. He turned his head a fraction. “Did the prodigal son finally return?” That previously slack hand reached out. “No?” Fingertips skimmed Jude’s bent knee before patting it as if in reassurance. “Maybe that’s for the best, sweetheart.” Rob’s eyes remained closed, dark brows drawn down as he mumbled. “It’s not like him being unreliable is surprising.”
That stung, but adding insult to injury, Rob rolled over to face the wall, making some more space behind him. He lifted the sheet as if he expected Jude’s sister to spoon him. “Get in, darling.” His yawn was jaw-cracking. “I’ll adjust the business plan in the morning.”
Like hell, he would.
Months might have passed without Jude being present, but that was no reason for Rob to talk as if it was his role to run things in his absence. His parents had left Louise in charge, not someone Jude had made damn sure to keep well off their radar. He hadn’t mentioned Rob even once in calls home, even as each heat of the contest had brought them closer, two moths circling a bright flame of attraction. Talking about any of that with them would never have happened—couldn’t have—so why was Rob talking as though he had any say in managing Jude’s parents’ business?
Jude scooped up the set of keys and retreated quietly, retracing his steps across the workshop and avoiding what he now saw were multiple stacks of chairs and tables. He closed the workshop door with the softest of clicks behind him. A minute later, the pub door opened for a new key on his mum’s ring just as the church clock chimed half past the hour.
“Rob?” His sister called, her voice faint. “I thought I told you to go to bed? I’m okay waiting up on my own, I promise.” Jude followed the sound of her voice to a kitchen he hadn’t set foot in for what felt like a lifetime. He hesitated in the doorway, a sense of being entirely in the wrong place striking at the sight of new stainless-steel workbenches instead of worn wood, the homely clutter he’d grown up with missing. Louise had her back turned, elbow-deep in suds at the sink. “You really should go back to sleep, Rob.” Dejection wearied her tone. “You were right. Jude’s not coming back this time either.”
Jude’s throat was so tight, his greeting came out raspy. “Hi, Lou.”
Louise shrieked, soap-suds flying and water slopping as she threw herself at him and clung. She let go just as fast to clock him with her wet cloth. It dropped with a splash before she launched herself at him again, tears adding to the dampness of his shirt.
“Hey, less of the violence.” Jude buried his face in her hair, red-gold frizz tickling as she sobbed. “Although I guess I deserved that.” He admitted what he’d put off saying via email or phone call.
“I couldn’t find them, Lou. Not a trace of them, or the One for Luck either. Every lead turned out to be a dead end.” Every single potential sighting of a woman with similar uncontrollable hair to his sister’s, or a man as tall and fair as Jude, who let his wife speak for him more often than not. Each scrap of washed-up wreckage that might’ve proved conclusive turned out to be a red herring. Nothing he’d found had come