The rhythm of Aaron’s stride faltered, just for a second. “Am I that obvious?”
“It’s the silk shirt,” Michael told him in a conspiratorial whisper. “And the shoes.”
Aaron came to a stop in front of a glass elevator. “Outed by my footwear,” he deadpanned. “There goes my future in espionage.”
You expect other people to take you seriously, I thought, but you’re capable of laughing at yourself.
Beside me, Sloane was staring at the hotelier’s son like he’d just reached into her rib cage and ripped out her heart.
“I was joking about the espionage,” Aaron told her with a smile more genuine than any he’d offered Michael. “Promise.”
Sloane searched her store of mental heuristics for an appropriate response. “There are 4,097 rooms in this hotel,” she told him, an oddly hopeful tone in her voice. “And the Majesty serves over twenty-nine thousand meals a day.”
I turned back to Aaron, ready to run interference, but he didn’t bat an eye at Sloane’s version of “conversation.”
“Have you stayed with us before?” he asked her.
For some reason, that question hit Sloane hard. Silently, she shook her head. Belatedly, she remembered to smile at him—the same painfully large smile she’d been practicing on the plane.
You’re trying so hard, I thought. But for the life of me, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that Sloane was trying to do.
The elevator doors opened. Aaron stepped on and held the door for the rest of us. Once we were all on, he glanced at Sloane. “Everything okay, miss?”
She nodded furtively. As the elevator doors closed, I bumped my hip lightly into Sloane’s. After a moment, she snuck a hesitant look at me and bumped back.
“Did you know,” she said brightly, making another attempt at conversation, “that elevators only kill about twenty-seven people per year?”
The much-touted Renoir Suite had five bedrooms and a living area large enough to host the majority of a football team. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the far wall, giving us a panoramic view of the Vegas Strip, neon and glowing, even during the day.
Lia hopped up on the bar, her legs dangling down as she considered our digs. “Not bad,” she told Michael.
“Don’t thank me,” Michael returned easily. “Thank my father.”
A ball of unease began to unfurl in my stomach. I didn’t want to thank Michael’s father for anything—and under normal circumstances, neither did he. Without another word, Michael sauntered toward the master bedroom, claiming it for his own.
Dean came up behind me. He laid one arm lightly on my shoulder.
“This doesn’t feel right,” I told him softly.
“No,” Dean said, staring after Michael. “It doesn’t.”
Sloane and I ended up sharing a room. As I peered out our balcony window, I wondered how long it would take her to tell me what was wrong.
How long will it take me to tell her? To tell all of them? I pushed back against the questions.
“Did you have many nightmares while you were home?” Sloane asked softly, coming to stand behind me.
“Some,” I said.
I’d have more now that there had been a break in my mother’s case. And Sloane would be there. She’d tell me factoids and statistics until I fell back asleep.
Home isn’t a place, I thought. My throat muscles tightened.
“We shared a room for forty-four percent of the last calendar year,” Sloane said wistfully. “So far this year, we’re at zero.”
I turned to look at her. “I missed you, too, Sloane.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, and then she looked down at her feet. “I wanted him to like me,” she admitted, like that was some terrible thing.
“Aaron?” I asked.
Instead of answering, Sloane walked over to a shelf full of blown-glass objects and began sorting them, largest to smallest, and for objects of similar size, by color. Red. Orange. Yellow. She moved with the efficiency of a speed-chess player. Green. Blue.
“Sloane?” I said.
“He’s my brother,” she blurted out. Then, on the off chance that I might not have understood her meaning, she forced herself to stop sorting, turned, and elaborated. “Half brother. Male sibling. We have a coefficient of relatedness of point-two-five.”
“Aaron Shaw is your half brother?” I tried to make that compute. What were the chances? No wonder Sloane had behaved so strangely around him. As for Aaron, he’ d noticed Sloane. He’d smiled at her, talked to her, but she could have been anyone. She could have been a stranger on the street.
“Aaron Elliott Shaw,” Sloane said. “He’s 1,433 days older than I am.” Sloane looked back at the glass objects, perfectly arrayed in front of the mirror. “In my entire life, I’ve seen him exactly eleven times.” She swallowed. “This is only the second time he’s seen me.”
“He doesn’t know?” I asked.
Sloane shook her head. “No. He doesn’t.”