And pride, in both their eyes. But maybe this wasn’t the time to say that. “I see brothers.” Sadness punched through her. She didn’t have a single photo like this one with her sister. Josh and his brother looked comfortable together. She and Pippa had never willingly appeared in a photo together. They’d never been comfortable together. Maybe she should stop trying to fix that and accept that it was the way it was. “Do you have more?”

He flicked through his wallet and pulled out a couple more. “These were taken when he took me surfing. He joked that the ocean was his office. I was never sporty. I can fix your laptop but don’t ever ask me to catch a ball or a wave.”

And yet he’d gone surfing with his brother. And he lit up when he talked about him.

She handed the photos back. “You had fun.”

“Spending time with him was fun, although I would have chosen to spend it on dry land. I wish I’d done it more often. I wish I’d spent less time fixated on work and more time having fun with Red. I’m not big on life advice, but if I were to give some it would be ‘do it now, because there may not be a tomorrow’.”

And now she understood why he’d reacted so strongly to their conversation about success. His success was a wound. He was being tortured by every moment he’d spent at work and not with his brother.

She could see the regret in his eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.” He put the photos back in his pocket.

“I don’t pretend to understand what you do, but it does seem to me that you love it. It’s your passion, yes?”

“Yes. Since I was a kid. I was as crazy about my computer as my brother was about his surfboard. I had as much fun with my virtual surfing game as he did with the real thing.”

She sipped her water. “You both followed your passion. It wasn’t as if you’d gone down the route you chose because you were chasing money, or corporate success—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Money is a necessity, that’s a fact. But the point is you loved the job. So did he. You were both doing what you loved. You said you had nothing in common, but you had that. I don’t claim to know much about anything, but doing what you love is the very definition of a life well lived, surely? That’s the success I see, not the money. And I think that’s something to be proud of, not a cause for regret.”

He was silent for a long moment. “You’re wise, do you know that?”

“No. Usually I’m told I know nothing about real life.”