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He tried to set his face to blank as he had done so many times in the past, but it felt as though he were dissolving. But why should he be surprised? Even before he’d lost his whole family, there had been nothing solid in his life. Not as Lily had. No core of love and understanding and acceptance. The nearest he’d got to it was Mason Cooper, who had at least sat him down and talked to him.
But Lily had listened. Talking to her earlier about what had happened in the jungle, he had felt as if he could tell her anything, felt as if she cared, so that just for a moment he’d forgotten that this was supposed to be a charade for the shareholders.
He had to clear his throat to speak. ‘It gets easier with practice.’ His mouth twisted into an approximation of a smile. ‘You know, all my life I’ve been the runner-up, but this is the first time I’ve come second to myself.’
Lily watched him turn and walk away, her head still trying to make sense of the expression that had skidded across his face. Not anger this time, but pain, and a kind of exhaustion.
The room felt cold all of a sudden. Her heart was beating crazily fast, as if she had been sprinting for a finish line, and she had in a way. Only now the prize-winner’s medal looked cheap and tarnished.
What had he meant, saying he was always the runner-up? It made no sense. Trip had everything. Looks, charm, brains, money...
And yet there had been an emptiness to his voice that was as baffling as his words. She glanced furtively across the room towards him. A lock of hair had fallen half into his eyes and he blew it away in a gesture that was so unselfconscious and familiar that she had to look away. It would be so easy to give into temptation, and Trip was the definition of temptation. But she had been tempted before by another not quite so beautiful or charming man and look at how that had ended.
Not with any attempt to explain his behaviour, she thought, replaying Trip’s words from earlier.
On legs that shook slightly, she walked over to where he was sitting on the piano stool, his fingers splayed above the polished ivory keys.
Her heart was beating with clumsy little jerks.
‘I didn’t know you could play,’ she said quietly as he raised his head.
‘I can play a bit. Charlie was the musical one. I think he could have been a professional, but he was already lined up to take over the business.’ There was that same depth of loss to his voice and she shivered, imagining a world without a brother. How close she had come to that happening.
‘He seemed kind.’
Charlie Winslow had lacked the precision-cut features and seductive, curling mouth that made Trip shift the gravity in any room, but she could still remember him and she wondered what kind of hole his death had left in his younger brother’s life.
‘You never said you knew him.’
‘I didn’t know him. But I dropped my ice cream once at a polo match and he went and bought me another one.’
Trip nodded slowly as if picturing the scene. ‘He was a good son. A good guy, I think,’ he added. ‘We weren’t close. He was much older than me.’ A catch of breath lifted his chest and she felt her ribs squeeze around her heart.
‘It was supposed to be him running the business.’ His gaze dropped to his hands. ‘I’m just the understudy. Or that’s how my father saw me.’
The air in the room seemed to gather and tense. She stared at him uncertainly. ‘You were running the Far East division of one of the biggest corporations in the world,’ she said finally. ‘That’s hardly being an understudy.’
Trip turned his head. There was that same exhaustion on his face as before, but now it was tinged with a self-mockery that pulled at her. ‘My father liked that my company was touted as a unicorn, so he invited me into the family business. But we never really saw eye to eye. I found his management style too constrictive and cautious.’ He reached out and pressed two keys down together to make a jarring, discordant sound. ‘And, well... I wasn’t exactly what he had in mind for a son.’
Was that true? She realised she and Henry had discussed his wife a couple of times and he had mentioned Charlie in passing, but he had never once mentioned his younger son.
Trip had turned away and had begun to play the opening bars of an aria she recognised. He was wrong, she thought, gazing at his profile. He could play, and more than a bit. And he must be wrong about his father, too, but she couldn’t think of a way to say that without sounding either patronising or dismissive.
‘You don’t believe me.’ He straightened then, blue eyes narrowing on her face.
She shook her head. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. I just don’t understand why you would think that.’
‘Join the queue,’ he said with a smile that contradicted the edge to his voice. ‘Nobody understands anything I think or do. My incomprehensibility is part of who I am. You see, I have letters after my name too—’
Was he talking academically? ‘I know.’ She frowned. ‘You went to Harvard—’
‘I never got my degree. I didn’t finish. I dropped out.’ That note in his voice was one she had heard so many times before—mocking, careless, with a shadow underneath that made his face seem older, wary and weary.
He took a long breath and she watched his profile tighten. ‘My letters aren’t like yours. Or Charlie’s. And my father hated it because he couldn’t change them, and because he couldn’t change them, he ignored them.’
There was a taut, humming silence.
‘What letters?’ she said quietly.
