Reunited for the Billionaire's Legacy: Christmas at the Castello (bonus novella) Read online

  Her face turned the color of a ripe tomato. “Get out of my room.”

  He shrugged and strolled to the door. “Call me if you change your mind. I’m just around the corner.”

  The bad word she uttered under her breath made him smile. “Oh, and, Diana...?” He turned around, absorbing her mutinous stance, hands clenched by her sides. “I’m expecting us both to bring things to the table this week. Things that will help us bridge this divide between us. So use the time between now and tomorrow to think of what you want to address. Questions you have for me, things you hate about me... This is your chance. But be ready by nine. I’m taking you for a sail.”

  “A sail?”

  “Arthur has a beautiful sixty-five footer. Assuming you still remember how to man a boat?”

  “I’m rusty, but yes. What does this Arthur do if he owns million-dollar islands and beautiful yachts?”

  “Airlines. Railroads. He’s an old friend from my cycling days.”

  She eyed him. “So this is what we’re going to do? Address our marriage like a grocery list?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “You took sex off the table. I’m just following your lead.”

  He left then. She needed rest. And if he wasn’t going to spend his night buried in his wife’s delectable body, he had a handful of pressing emails to address.

  He took a glass of brandy into the library, sat down at the desk and flicked on his computer. But he couldn’t seem to focus. His head was too busy processing the raw and unabridged version of his marriage according to his wife. She had chosen to call out “irreconcilable differences” on the divorce papers sitting in his office, which would have made sense to him given their different philosophies on life. But unbeknownst to him, she had also apparently spent their entire marriage waiting for him to call it quits and walk out the door. Just as her father had.

  Heat moved through him. He was nothing like Diana’s father. Wilbur Taylor was a megalomaniac with a god complex that came from being a world-renowned surgeon everyone treated like a rock star. He considered everything and anything in this world his domain, including the women in it, his affair with a fellow surgeon simply being the longest standing of his string of indiscretions. Yet Diana’s mother had chosen to stay. Why?

  He took a slug of the brandy, twisting the chair to look out at the sea, now shrouded in darkness, its great mass an inky pool you could lose yourself in a million times over. Wilbur Taylor’s infidelities were just one reason he didn’t respect the man. The way he treated his daughter had been inexcusable to him, the tactics and subtle threats he had used to nourish Diana’s need for perfection coming at the cost of her happiness. So that she would follow in his footsteps—so that she wouldn’t let the family name down.

  It had always taken him hours to soothe Diana after a visit with her parents. That was why he disliked them so much. That and the fact that Wilbur had never considered him good enough for his daughter...

  His mouth curved in a bitter twist. How would Diana’s father react now if his daughter had brought him home with stars in her eyes? Perhaps the newly minted CEO of a Fortune 500 company, instead of the overlooked second-in-command, would meet with his approval? Would have been a suitable alternative to the young surgeons Wilbur had kept shoving down Diana’s throat even after they were married.

  He sat back in his chair and took his brandy with him. It would make sense given her family history that his wife might have harbored a fear he might do to her what her father had done to her mother if, at any time, he had given her pause to doubt him. If he had spent his time admiring other women as he’d watched Wilbur Taylor doing. Instead, he had consistently deflected the attention of women who hadn’t cared if he’d worn a ring on his finger or not because he was rich and good-looking and being a wealthy man’s mistress wasn’t the worst gig in town.

  He hadn’t needed to stray. He’d loved his wife. He hadn’t given any of those women more than a passing smile when Diana had abandoned him on social nights out for work. And yet here she was doubting him? His supremely confident wife who had never been fazed by the women who had chased him.

  What were those women to you? A salve for your embittered soul? A way to prove I meant so little to you?

  Her words from the night they’d conceived their baby came back to him. He had taken it as her usual arrogance. Bitterness. What if it had actually been a whole other side of his wife he’d never known existed? A vulnerability at her core she’d never displayed. The fact that she’d left him, shattered him, when he’d taken those women didn’t seem to matter. In her eyes, he had proved her right all along.

  A fatalistic feeling enveloped him as he ran his finger along the blunt edge of the tumbler. How would he know? The woman he had married had been a total enigma he’d thought he could one day solve and never had. The woman he’d removed from Africa another Diana again. Who was the real Diana? He’d be damned if he knew.

  The ocean stared back at him, dark, silent. I could do an emotional autopsy on you and I’d still never get to the bottom of you. Had Diana been right? Had he been just as guilty of not showing his true self to her? Had he even known who he was? Taking over Grant had changed him. Had illustrated just how lost he’d been since his father’s death. However cutting Diana’s appraisal of him had been, she had been right about him not fighting Harrison for control of Grant. About him running. He hadn’t wanted any part of a power struggle with his brother. Wasn’t sure a legacy that had seen his father blow his brains out was something he wanted.

  If there was something he had over his wise older brother, it was the knowledge that life required living. To tie his identity to a role, to a job that was inherently vulnerable to any number of agenda seekers, was not how he wanted to live his life. He wanted that elusive balance no one ever seemed to find.

  He finished the brandy on a last smooth, fiery gulp. He knew his future now. He intended on making Grant the most powerful car-parts manufacturer in the world, so indelibly the analysts would stop comparing him with his saintlike brother and recognize his brilliance for what it was.

  But that wasn’t what he was here to do. He was here to put his marriage back together, and that involved some truth on his part, as well. He had used those women to get Diana out of his head. To satisfy the numbness he craved. And, admittedly, if he was to be honest, to punish her for leaving him.

  He had been addicted to distraction. Addicted to never letting himself care because that had been the example set for him by his own parents.

  Had it cost him his marriage?

  A chime sounded an incoming email. He pushed his focus back to the screen of his computer. And read the email that changed everything.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “BRING HER AROUND!”

  Coburn’s shout was eaten up by the roar of the wind and the water. Diana nodded and eased up on the headsail to turn them toward the cove he was pointing to. The thrill of commanding such a big, beautiful boat washed over her like a shot of adrenaline. She tacked sharply again to bring them all the way around so they were headed directly into the mouth of the bay. Her blood pumped in her veins as they sped over the sea like the smoothest of silk. She’d forgotten how much she loved the spray of the water on her face, the freedom of flying across it and how perfectly she and her husband worked together when it was just them, sweating it out in tandem to master the elements.

  Riding a strong gust of wind, the sleek sixty-five footer cruised toward the shore. Coburn eased off on the mainsheet and slowed them into an easy, graceful glide. Expertly, effortlessly he brought them within striking distance of the shore, and they dropped anchor.

  She helped him secure the boat, then dropped to the sun-soaked deck, her breath coming in shallow, harsh pulls. Her limbs felt weighted down, heavy. She leaned back on her forearms and took in deep, restorative pulls of air while Coburn went downstairs
to get their lunch. This pregnancy was not only making her nauseous, it was zapping her of all of her energy.

  It was nearly one o’clock, the sun blazing right above them in a perfect, cloudless blue sky. She drank in the idyllic little cove they were moored in. Surrounded by palm trees and bounded by a stretch of pristine white sand beach, it looked as if it had never seen a human trespasser.

  They were in the British Virgin Islands, Coburn had revealed this morning, nestled within a cluster of private islands owned by the world’s richest men. Inaccessible to anyone but those issued an exclusive invitation to explore such nirvana.

  She closed her eyes and drank in the heat. Her husband emerged from below deck with a picnic basket and two glasses, a pair of low-slung navy swim trunks and a Yale T-shirt his only adornment. His innate grace, the way the athlete in him used his strong, muscular thighs to steady himself as he moved across the swaying boat, drew her eye. The sun was already picking up his natural tendency toward a swarthy, dark complexion, emphasizing the magnetic blue of his eyes, no less hypnotizing than the vast sea behind him.

  He was still the most physically beautiful male she’d ever encountered. Hands down.

  “All yours, sweetheart.” He caught her stare, dumping the picnic basket beside her and lowering himself to the deck. “Take what you will.”

  She closed her eyes to the magnificence of him. She’d lain awake after he’d left her last night thinking about his offer. Thinking about how she shouldn’t be thinking about it. He was utterly unselfish when it came to pleasing a woman, wickedly sensual in his methods.

  “You can’t help it, can you?” She jumped as he purred the words in her ear. “Was my offer last night a little too tempting?”

  “Hardly.” She shimmied to the side to put some distance between them. “I meant what I said, Coburn.”

  “You forget I know every variation of you. Every expression. That was lust.”

  She closed her eyes. “It’s the pregnancy hormones talking.”

  The sound of the waves lapping against the boat filled her ears. His soft laughter joined it. “I had no idea pregnancy increased a woman’s sex drive. I would have thought the opposite.”

  Her cheeks fired with a warmth that had nothing to do with the sun. This was the last conversation she wanted to be having with him when sex was most certainly off the agenda. When she was still angry at him for assuming she was going to give up her career while he played the golden-hued CEO.

  She focused her gaze on him. “I have a question for you.”

  “You did your homework. Good girl.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I want to know why you agreed to take the CEO job at Grant when you said you never wanted it.”

  He cracked open a Perrier bottle and handed it to her. “I decided I wanted it.”

  “Why? What changed your mind?”

  He shrugged. “It was clear the business community was going to back Harrison’s run for president. The only question was whether he would take it. I needed to be ready with my answer, and I realized that answer was yes, I did want Grant to be mine. It’s in my blood. But I wanted to do it my way, not Harrison’s way, not my father’s way.”

  “And now? Do you think it was the right decision?”

  He frowned. “I’m only six months in. I am not my brother. There are growing pains... But yes, I think it was the right thing to do. I’m excited about the future.”

  She could sense it. There had always been a restlessness about her husband, a low-level frustration with anything that had to do with work, because playing second fiddle to his brother had never been easy for him. The intense, focused man beside her now was a very different creature. She had seen it in him instantly that night at Tony and Annabelle’s—the ruthless edge that made her all jittery inside.

  “Harrison is not an easy act to follow.”

  He shrugged. “It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Harrison was a known quantity—steady, dependable. He rarely worked outside of the box. With me, the board isn’t sure what they’re getting. I’m doing things differently. I’ve ruffled some feathers. It’s going to take time.”

  She studied him then, the tension etched into the grooves at the sides of his mouth. His father, Clifford Grant, had been an icon of American business, a success story that was corporate folklore. Harrison was so widely respected he had been chosen to represent the interests of business in a presidential race. It made the pressure her father had put on her seem like child’s play.

  “What was that phone call this morning? You looked stressed.”

  He cracked the other bottle of Perrier open and took a long gulp. “Just business.”

  She scowled. “Is it just me playing this game or have you checked in, too?”

  He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “This is about me and you figuring this out, Di, not business. I’m not interested in sidetracking the discussion.”

  She thought him sharing why he had been distracted all morning was them understanding each other, but she left it for the moment. “Fine. I would like to understand you and Harrison. You would never explain what happened between you two.”

  Dark lashes swept down over his brilliant eyes. “We’ve had some major philosophical differences over the years. Although, like I said last night, we’ve worked a lot of it out.”

  “Philosophical differences over what?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She gave him a pointed look. “You don’t get to veto every topic I throw out there.”

  He set the bottle down and crossed one of his long legs over the other. “My father’s illness put a strain on all of us for many years. Harrison and I were focused on keeping things running when my father was in a depressive state and out of the picture and attempting to keep the ship upright when his brilliance was running amok. We were a good team. But after my father shot himself, everything changed between Harrison and me.”

  The fact that Coburn’s father had been a severe manic-depressive for many years before he had committed suicide was something she’d known. But she’d thought the rift between him and Harrison had preceded that, had been because his father and Harrison had such similar personalities and, according to his mother, had been closer than he and Coburn.

  Her husband sat back on his forearms and looked out at the sea. “Harrison pretty much lost his mind. There were...extenuating circumstances around my father’s death. It was a period during which he was hell-bent on expansion, intent on stealing market share from competitors. He made a deal to buy a company from a Russian named Anton Markovic. Outwardly, it was an excellent deal. What my father didn’t know was that Markovic had sold him a false-bottomed company. It wasn’t until after the deal had closed that it became clear the company was pretty much worth nothing.

  “It wouldn’t have been a big deal,” he continued, “if Grant hadn’t been so highly leveraged. It nearly bankrupted us.”

  “Couldn’t you have gone after Markovic?”

  “We tried. He declared bankruptcy shortly thereafter.”

  She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. “Your father blamed himself.”

  He pulled his gaze from the water and brought it to rest on her face. “It was a perfect storm. He lapsed into depression, the stress of the run for governor hit him and he took his life.”

  A lump formed in her throat. “Oh, Coburn. I’m so sorry.”

  “Harrison was the one who found him, sprawled over his desk. I’ve never seen a rage even come close to him that night. He tore my father’s study apart. He went for the gun in the safe. An eye for an eye, he said.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “He was going to kill Markovic.”

  “I managed to talk sense into him. But Harrison vowed he would destroy Markovic the same way he had destroyed our father. I told him to let it go, that
he would destroy himself in the process. That nothing would ever bring our father back, but it was this holy grail for him, the only thing he ever wanted. It blinded him to anything else.”

  “He spent seven years laying the groundwork, until we had rebuilt Grant and Markovic had risen from the ashes. Then he quietly bought up every global supplier Markovic had to cripple him, to destroy him. He arranged a meeting with Markovic in Washington last year, intent on bringing him to his knees face-to-face. But he didn’t do it.”

  “Why?”

  A wry smile curved his lips. “I’d like to say he finally listened to me, but I think it was Frankie. He said she was his conscience.”

  She absorbed the horrific, tragic tale and what it must have been like for Clifford Grant’s two boys to go through it. To watch their father shattered like that and the shame they must have felt along with their grief. She had always known her husband was a product of his heartbreaking past, that his need to be in constant motion was motivated by a consuming desire to forget. But only now did she understand how much that night must have colored his life. Shattered him.

  “And what of you, Coburn?” She pinned her gaze on his face. “If you didn’t have vengeance to fuel you, how did you cope?”

  He shrugged. “I moved on. Righting a wrong with another wrong is never a solution. Harrison hated that I felt that way, hated that I wouldn’t back him in his plan. He thought it showed a lack of loyalty. But selling my soul to the devil was something I wouldn’t do.”

  He had run instead. Her heart broke a little bit more for him.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?” she asked quietly.

  His gaze skipped away from hers. “You don’t need to know our dirty family secrets.”

  Something throbbed inside her at that. “I’m not an expert at this, obviously, but isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Confide our deepest, darkest secrets with each other so we can deal with them together?”

  “Like you do?” he shot back. “You apparently spent our entire marriage thinking I was going to walk out the minute things got hard and yet you never thought to inform me of how you were feeling.”