And so without taking the usual route and knocking on the front door, instead she decided to go round the back and see if she couldn’t find Ben or Dominic out there, or maybe even Kevin, if he deigned to speak to his sister. If she rang the front door, they would probably foist her off with some lowly servant or butler, and she would never get to see the man in charge. Better surprise them!
But when she reached the back of the house, which looked out across a very impressive garden, complete with fountains and gurgling brooks, of Ben or Dominic there was no trace, and neither was her brother anywhere in evidence.
The frustration of being kept out of the loop had made her reckless, and she kept up her investigative streak by going in search of the garage, where she knew Ben kept his impressive collection of cars. The man was a well-known petrolhead, and had even been featured on television showing off his latest acquisition, a gleaming Lamborghini Revent?n. Price tag: one million dollars.
She didn’t find Ben in the garage, and when she asked Ben’s chauffeur, who doubled as his mechanic, he said he had no idea where his employer was, but had she tried the house?
She obviously had not. She left the garage and as she did, saw that the space above it had been turned into a loft, with curtains in front of the windows and boxes of geraniums. She frowned, wondering if this was where the chauffeur lived. One of the curtains moved, and suddenly she saw Kevin appear!
He was clearly as shocked to see her as she was to see him, for the moment their eyes met, his jaw dropped and he moved back as if stung.
Oddly enough, he wasn’t wearing any clothes!
So that’s where he’d been. Having an affair with someone! Could it be Ben’s wife? Or the chauffeur’s wife? Ben didn’t have a daughter, so it couldn’t be her.
Then, eager to get to the bottom of this mystery of her disappearing brother once and for all, she mounted the metal staircase bolted into the side of the garage, and pushed into the loft, the metal door opening when she applied pressure to the door handle. Clearly Kevin and his lady love hadn’t expected visitors, for they hadn’t even bothered to lock the door!
She stormed into the room, her eyes quickly scanning her surroundings—a messy but cozy living area, lots of framed pictures of sports cars on the walls, television blaring away, tuned to a NASCAR race, and the smell of coffee in the air. Her keen gaze spotted movement, and the sound of nervously exchanged words, and the next moment she was stomping in that direction, locked on her target like a homing pigeon. Fully expecting to find Kevin in bed with some woman, what she saw instead was her brother, standing next to an equally half-naked… Dominic Kosinski, both looking a little startled and also a little scared.
Her eyes flicked from Kevin to Dominic, at first not understanding what she was actually seeing.“Kevin?” she said finally. “What the hell is going on?”
Kevin didn’t speak. Instead he just stood there, clearly struck dumb.
“Hi, Steph,” said Dominic, breaking the awkward silence. A handsome young man with an abundance of black curls and a chiseled torso that wouldn’t have looked out of place in GQ or Men’s Health, she was reminded of how much he looked like his dad, even though Ben had let himself go a little in recent years.
“I don’t understand,” said Steph. “What are you doing here, Kevin?”
But her brother remained silent. So Dominic did the talking.“Kevin and I have been seeing each other,” he said, “on and off for the past ten years. And more seriously for the past six. We haven’t told anyone, for obvious reasons, but lately we’ve been thinking about breaking the news to Kevin’s family.”
Kevin’s spine suddenly seemed to collapse under the strain, for he sank down on the bed, whose sheets were tangled and had clearly seen a lot of activity lately, and sort of slumped where he sat. “Please don’t tell anyone,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You might be ready, but I’m not,” he told Dominic when the latter gave him a look of surprise. “Especially Dad,” he added. “He’s going to be furious.”
“He needs to know, Kev,” said Dominic. “We can’t go on like this forever.”
“Don’t you think I know that?!” suddenly Kevin burst out. “I want to tell him, but you know what he’s like. He’ll think it’s some kind of plot hatched by your dad to take possession of the Stewart Winery.” He raised his hands in frustration. “All the man can think of is his stupidwinery and his stupid feud with your dad. It’s crazy.”
“I know it is,” said Dominic, taking a seat next to him and putting an arm around his shoulders. “But at some point we’ll have to tell him, Kev. We have to.”
“Do your mom and dad know about this?” asked Steph.
Dominic nodded.“They do.”
“And they’re okay with this?”