Part 4: Naomi
As the doors closed behind us, Robyn brought us to a halt, and held up her hand for silence. We all complied, and she grinned at us.
“Alright ladies, I assume you brought the outfits you hope will unleash the beast in your brothers?”
We all smiled and nodded, so she continued.
“Good, we’ll show you to the rooms you’ve been assigned for your visit here; all your luggage has been taken there, so now is the time; if any of you are having second thoughts, tell me now, otherwise I will assume you agree with what will follow. Is there anyone who wants to leave? Please, if you have any lingering doubts, any whatsoever, if you’ve changed your mind, please, please tell me now; I don’t want you getting into something you’re not completely happy about. Are you all clear on that?”
Amid a low chorus of ‘yes’ from everyone present, Robyn led us all down a corridor past a series of brightly it rooms, which she told us were fully-stocked pantries, and we were to help ourselves any time the whim took us, before turning into a long corridor with a row of doors on each side, which she unlocked for each girl, until it was my turn. She opened my room and showed me in.
“Hurry up, now. We’ll be back to collect you in fifteen minutes, so get a move on, Nimmie, we need to make a grand entrance!” she smiled, and I followed instructions, hurriedly stripping out of my travelling clothes and buttoning myself into the outfit I’d chosen to stun Roly with.
Exactly on time a chime sounded, and as I stepped out of the room, so Robyn was there with the other girls, a low murmur of conversation the only sound in that elegant corridor. She smiled encouragingly, and snapped a silver bracelet around my wrist. With that done, she turned and addressed the assembled girls.
“Okay, ladies, no more waiting; your brothers are waiting for you. Let’s show them you’re all worth the wait!”
“Ladies, this is it; in a few seconds, your brothers are going to discover the real reason you brought them here; I know you had to use subterfuge and a little bit of, shall we say, ‘imaginative’ truth-massaging, so now, once I open these doors, the cat’s out of the bag, and things will change between you and your brothers’ forever, so I have to ask you one last time; is this really , REALLY what you want? No going back once that door opens; you’ll have to live with the consequences. So, are you ready?”
We all nodded eagerly, and once again she smiled.
“Then let’s go ladies; let’s show your big brothers you’re not little sisters anymore!”
We waited, almost bursting with excitement, and then the doors opened and there were the boys, their faces pictures of shocked amazement. As we trooped in, each girl paired-off with her brother, causing a loud buzz of conversation, although I only caught snatches here and there; my eyes were fixed on Rowan’s face, watching the look of shock as I swayed up to him, to pose in front of him, and the silence from him, in contrast to the gasps of appreciation from the other boys in the room. I waited for him to tell me how gorgeous I was, how stunning, how much he wanted me, but all I got was that shocked silence, and when I reached out to touch him, his hands stayed locked by his side, his eyes narrowed, and a pulse began to beat in his throat, even as his jaw muscles bunched and rippled.
“Well, what do you think, Rowan, do you like it?” I preened, hoping my utter gorgeousness had stunned him momentarily, and any second now he was going to grab me, like all the other men seemed to be doing with their little sisters.
“Nim, what the fuck are you doing in that get-up?” he hissed, and I stopped dead; this wasn’t in the script, he was supposed to sweep me into his arms, not stare at me like I was plague-struck; what was going on here?
Somewhere in the background I could hear Sylvie, or maybe Robyn, telling everyone why they were here, but it was just a background murmur to the tumult going on in my head as Rowan stared at me in horror.
“Nim, what’s going on, look at you, is this some kind of… of prank? Answer me!” he gritted, before pulling off his shirt and wrapping it around me, his lips set in a thin, bloodless line; he was furious. He pulled his shirt tight around me and stepped back, his eyes dark and pitiless.
“Cover yourself up, Nim; you can’t prance around in front of strangers dressed like… that, just look at yourself! God, Nim, what were you thinking of? Just get your clothes, we are leaving, now!”
I stood stock-still, tears blurring my vision; he wasn’t supposed to lose it with me, he was supposed to grab me and hold me and tell me he wanted me, not… this, not shame me like this, like I was doing something dirty!
Just then a pair of arms enfolded me, I looked up, and it was Robyn, her eyes calm, sympathetic, and that’s when the tears came; of loss, of humiliation, and yes, anger too, that the one man in the world I’d thrown myself at had batted me away with a couple of sentences.
“Shh, come with me, it’s alright, it’s alright…” she soothed as she led me away, “tell me what happened Nimmie, maybe we can fix this.”
I looked around. No-one seemed to be staring; they were all lost in each other. I started crying even harder. I should have been one of them, Rowan should have been looking at me like that, I should have been in his arms, not alone and crying while the man of my dreams stood back glowering at me. Evan appeared at his side, taking his arm and saying something only he could hear. The hostility in his eyes seemed to die down a little, but he was still red-faced and not at all the placid, pliable, amiable Rowan I’d grown-up with.
And so we stood there while everyone else trooped out past us, all those girls hand in hand with their own dream-men, staring curiously at me as I cried against the wall in Robyn’s arms, until finally there was only Robyn, Evan, Rowan, and me alone in that room where everything had gone so wrong.
Finally, when the room was clear, Evan shut the door, and began talking to Rowan in a low voice. Robyn, meanwhile, had produced a handkerchief and dried my eyes like I was a small child, which made me smile even in the face of what had just happened.
“Tell me what happened Nim, did your brother turn you down?”
I nodded, and her lips pursed for a second, then once again she was drying my eyes.
“Did he say why?” she asked softly, and I shook my head, still unable to speak while the tears waited to catch me again.
Robyn held my chin, and gently turned my face to look her in the eyes.
“I think we can fix this, Nimmie. Look at him; he’s not angry. I don’t think he was angry at all. I think you just gave him a little too much all at once. Why don’t we go to your room? Maybe once you’ve both had a chance to calm down a little, you can talk to each other, yes? How does that sound?”
I nodded, so with a final swipe at my eyes, she put her arm around my shoulder and guided me out. I could hear Rowan and Evan following behind. When we got to our room, an LED on my bracelet flared green and the door clicked open. Robyn led us in, then crossed over to the large bathroom, and came out with a thick bathrobe.
“Here you are, put this on and go and splash some water on your face, and do stop worrying; you’re a knockout. Once Rowan gets past whatever it was that set him off, he’s going to see that, and I guarantee you’ll be okay; we saw you come in, I saw the way he watched you; he didn’t even take a second glance at any of the other girls, pretty as they are; he only watched you, and I think he’ll remember that.”
She smiled, and gave me a quick wink.
“Don’t worry, I think you’ll make him see the light. You’re gorgeous, Nimmie, he’d have to be dead to not want you! But, if by some mischance it does all go wrong, just press your bracelet, and we’ll get you both out of here and back home. Now go and have a quick wash, and remember, he loves you, you just have to remind him of that. Good luck, sweetie! If you decide to stay, I think you should remain in here tonight, both of you; there’s a banquet and a mixer, but I think you two might have some things to straighten-out, so you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. You know where the pantries are; if you get peckish, just dig-in and help yourselves. ”
She dimpled as she brushed a few strands of hair out of my eyes.
“Maybe you two can have your own romantic feast, just the two of you, right here!”
****
Part 5: Rowan
Sitting there in the room, staring at that wall, all I could think of was the look on poor Nimmie’s beautiful little face, the terrible loss in her eyes as she cried, and I’d done that to her. I’d made my adorable little sister cry just as surely as though I’d cracked her across the mouth. The girl Robyn, or maybe Sylvie, I didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter, had taken her away, and their brother had given me a good kick in the principles; he was right; Nimmie was in love with me, I could see that, but it took time before I finally admitted to myself that I was in love with her, fully, irrevocably, but I couldn’t let anything come out of that love. This was England, a small place, and too many people knew we were brother and sister, and there were just too many records and databases we both appeared on, clearly and obviously siblings.
There’d been some high-profile cases in the papers over the last few years, and while the law had smacked them on the wrists and pretty much left them alone, what the tabloids had done to those poor people didn’t bear thinking about. I couldn’t do that to Nimmie. She and mum were all I had; what she wanted would blight her life forever. She wanted to be a nurse. How could that ever happen? How could she ever hope to get a job in any reputable hospital with something like this hanging over her? I was a man, I could disappear, start again somewhere far away, in a profession where this wouldn’t follow me around the way it would her; I wasn’t training to be a professional in the healthcare industry, where a spotless police record was obligatory.
No, this had to end, here and now; if I broke Nimmie’s heart, well, given time, broken hearts mend; but if I took away her future, that was something I couldn’t fix, and I certainly couldn’t live with.
I was deep in thought, miles away from the here and now, wondering how I could ever repair this fence with her, when that sense of her I’d always had told me she was right behind me. I looked around, and there she was, wrapped in a huge robe, looking sad and small and dejected, and it was my fault. I had to do it; I had to tell her that no matter how much I loved her, we couldn’t do this; it was better she dealt with a little pain today, because the alternative was a mountain of heartache tomorrow. There was no contest in my mind.