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

  He gave the lawyer a withering look. “It took my wife twelve months to come out of hiding and face me. She can damn well wait for another few.”

  Jerry’s jaw dropped. Chase gave Coburn a wary look as if appealing for direction. Diana flicked a look at the two lawyers, her eyes ice-cold and full of purpose. “Could you give us a second?”

  The two men looked relieved to be leaving the room. Coburn closed the door with his foot behind them and stood watching his wife, arms folded over his chest. Diana got to her feet, crossed to him and stood mere inches away, her stony face not hiding for one moment what he could read in her eyes. “Don’t you think last night was payback enough, Coburn? Why are you doing this?”

  He narrowed his gaze on her. “You were the one to instigate the hot breakup sex this time, sweetheart. I only went along with it.”

  Fury wiped the composure from her face. “Do not do this to me. Do not play games with something so important.”

  “Why not?” He moved close enough to her that he could inhale her distinctive floral scent. Her fear. “How important was this to you when you ignored my phone calls for weeks? When you refused to talk it out like a rational human being?”

  Her eyes flickered. “I did that because it was over. To end the vicious circle that happened between us time and time again... To save us.”

  “No.” He caught her jaw in his fingers and commanded her attention. “You did it to save yourself. And to hell with how I felt.”

  “Coburn—”

  “Save it.” His razor-sharp words cut through the air like a knife. “Learn what it’s like to wait and wonder, Diana. Learn what it’s like to be stuck in purgatory like I was. I can tell you from experience it isn’t pretty.”

  He turned and yanked open the door. Diana set a hand on his shoulder. “I am going. Jerry will find another way to make this happen, and it will be done. Do it the easy way without dragging us all through that.”

  He turned around, never feeling so cold and emotionless in his entire life. “Enjoy your self-exploration, Diana. I hope you get your answers.”

  He walked out of the conference room and away from the closure he’d wanted so desperately. If it added another complication to his already convoluted life? So be it. That had been far, far more satisfying than what he’d walked in there to do.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, he wouldn’t sign?”

  Her father’s enraged voice boomed in Diana’s ear, intensifying the dull throb in her temples. She put down her spoon and pushed her half-eaten bowl of soup away as the ache in her head mixed with the uneasy sensation in her stomach to inspire a distinctly unwell feeling.

  “He said he needed more time.” She fixed her gaze on Wilbur Taylor’s flinty, gray-eyed one and the expression he reserved solely for conversations about her ex-husband.

  “More time for what?” her father huffed. “So he can add another socialite to his list of fame?”

  Her mouth tightened. “I have no idea, and frankly I’m over it. I’m leaving on Friday. It can wait until he sees reason.”

  Her father waved a hand at her. “Never mind. I’ll sic David Price on it.”

  She put her spoon down, her blood pressure rising. “Jerry is perfectly capable of taking care of it. It’s my business, Father. Stay out of it.”

  “Jerry Simmons is a fine lawyer, but he isn’t a pit bull like David. David will have you divorced in minutes.”

  “No.” She cut the idea off at the pass. Although she couldn’t say she didn’t have her doubts about Jerry’s ability to handle Coburn after her husband had walked all over him two weeks ago in that conference room, this was her decision to make, and she didn’t want her father anywhere near it.

  “Fine.” Her father shrugged his broad shoulders. “But I don’t think you’re handling this very well. You shouldn’t be giving him any choice.”

  Diana picked up her wine and took a sip. What did he think she handled well, beyond her patients? She’d spent her life trying to live up to her world-renowned orthopedic surgeon of a father, who overshadowed everything in his wake with his big personality and impossible standards. But measuring up had become a fruitless pursuit she’d finally abandoned for her own sanity.

  “Your father is only considering what’s best for you, Diana.” Her mother, ever the peacekeeper, attempted to smooth the waters.

  And pursuing his own witch hunt of her husband... Her father had never liked Coburn from the minute he’d laid eyes on him. She’d always wondered if it was because he saw too much of himself in Coburn—a man who viewed the world as his oyster and took his pick of it as if it was his divine right. That was what her father had done in marrying her mother, his secretary at the time, then carrying on a five-year-long affair with a brilliant fellow doctor whose brain apparently turned him on more than his society wife.

  At least Coburn had never cheated on her. She sat back as the maid came to clear her soup bowl. He’d waited until they’d ended their marriage to drink his fill. Which satisfied his code of honor. As long as he was in a relationship, he never strayed, even if, as Rory had joked to her about his friend’s philandering ways when they’d first met, it was only one night. Not once during their turbulent union had he ever indicated interest in another woman, despite the way they’d shamelessly thrown themselves at him.

  It should have quieted her insecurities, but they’d been far too deeply ingrained to elude.

  Her mother scrunched up her angularly attractive face. “I don’t like the idea of you over there in that wild country, Diana. Anything could happen to you and we are so far away. I wish you’d reconsider.”

  “I am needed there.” She gave her mother a pained look. “We’ve been over this.”

  “The situation was never this bad,” her father broke in, a bullish look on his face. “Yes, the city is more stable now, but the rebels have still been conducting raids, and conditions could deteriorate overnight.”

  Diana was well aware of the situation she was walking into. She’d come to terms with the danger when she’d made the decision to commit. And although her nerves were growing every day at the thought of what she was about to face—a mental and physical challenge that would surely change her life—she was determined to follow through.

  “I’m not changing my mind.”

  “I rather thought so.” Her father grimaced at her from across the solid, ornately carved mahogany table. “So I reached out to a contact of mine there and arranged for you to stay in the Lione Hotel instead of the usual accommodations. It’s minutes to the hospital and has the best security you can hope for right now. Someone will walk you back and forth each day.”

  Diana stared at him in disbelief as the maid set the steaming main course down in front of her. “Dammit, Father, this is my life. You can’t just do things like that.”

  “I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t being so foolhardy.”

  “Part of this experience is bonding with the other doctors I’m working with. I want to stay with them.”

  “There is another doctor staying at the Lione. Bond with him.”

  She gave him an exasperated look. “You have to stop interfering in my life.”

  Her father picked up his fork and pointed it at her. “Do you know how many foreign-aid workers have been kidnapped from that area in the past six months? It is staggering, Diana. If you won’t do this for yourself, do it for your mother and me so we don’t spend every day and night worrying about you.”

  Worrying about your half-a-million-dollar investment in your only child, she corrected flippantly to herself. But the real hint of concern in her father’s voice made her soften. It wasn’t fair to make them worry.

  “Fine.” She picked up her fork and matched his aggressive joust with one of her own. “But do not make one more phone call, one mor
e inquiry on my behalf to anyone, or I will stay with the others.”

  “Fine.” Her father dug into his beef with a satisfied nod. Diana looked down at hers, her stomach doing a slow roll at the smell of the spicy dish. She cut a piece of the meat. A wave of perspiration swept over her, blanketing her forehead in a thin layer of sweat.

  Oh, no. Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it back down, pushed her chair out and ran for the bathroom. She barely made it inside and to the toilet before she was brutally, gut-wrenchingly sick. Her insides heaving until there was nothing left inside her, she remained kneeling on the bathroom floor draped over the toilet until finally, her head stopped spinning and she could sit up.

  What bloody bad timing. She grabbed some toilet paper and wiped it over her brow. She never got sick, never got the flu. Coburn used to call her stomach cast-iron, which made it all the more ironic her succumbing to it now with days to go before she had to get on a plane for a multiday trip.

  Deciding she was in the safe zone, she got to her feet and washed her hands. The fact that this was the third day in a row she’d suffered a low-grade and now acute nausea penetrated her consciousness. Her uninhibited encounter with Coburn filled her head.

  They’d used a condom. They’d always used condoms because she couldn’t tolerate the birth control pill and the last thing she and Coburn had needed was a baby at this point in their careers. To complicate their marriage.

  It must be the flu.

  She went back to the dining room, where her parents insisted she stay the night. But a sixth sense told her she couldn’t be here right now. She asked them to call her a cab instead and went home, where Beth fussed over her and made her a cup of tea, then put her to bed.

  She tried to sleep but her head was spinning as if a circus was going on inside it. What if it wasn’t the flu? What if she was pregnant?

  A giant knot formed in her stomach. She stared out the window at the big oak tree swaying back and forth in the darkness, high winds signaling the imminent arrival of a classic East Coast electrical storm. If she’d thought what had happened upon seeing her ex again had been a disaster, that was nothing compared with the possibilities raging through her head. Nothing.

  She spent two days in denial. On the third, she had a scheduled appointment with her doctor to receive a final shot she needed for her trip. Joanne Gibson, her GP and a former colleague, gave her a frown as she entered the examining room.

  “You look thin. Have you been ill?”

  Diana sat down in a chair, the tiny room seeming to close in on her at the question. “Could you add a—” she could barely get the words out “—pregnancy test to the list?”

  Joanne’s face lit up. “Really? Are you and Coburn back to—?” The look on Diana’s face stopped her cold. “What a stupid thing to say,” her doctor mumbled. “Of course we can do that.”

  They did the pregnancy test first because Joanne wanted to make sure the shot she was giving her was fine if she was pregnant. Diana stared at the wall, examining the cracks in the plaster until she’d memorized every last one. She could not be pregnant. This could not be happening to her now, not when she was about to walk away from everything she knew. It could not.

  Joanne came back a short while later, a studied blank look on her face. Diana’s heart seized in her chest. She knew that look. It was the one she used when she had tricky news to give to a patient.

  “You are pregnant,” her doctor confirmed quietly. “I take it this was unexpected?”

  Disastrous. Untenable was more like it. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to be a mother. Hell, she wanted to be a pediatric surgeon. Of course she wanted kids. But now? With Coburn? A haze of unreality spread over her that was so thick, so unnavigable, she couldn’t claw her way through it.

  “There are options, you know.”

  “No.” She barked the word out. That was not an option. Ever.

  “Okay. I’d like to examine you, then. Just to make sure everything is okay. And since you have a rare blood condition in your family, I’d like to take some tests for that.”

  Diana nodded. She somehow made her way through the next half hour without screaming, without losing her composure as Joanne examined her, because she was too numb to feel anything. This was supposed to be her time. Her chance at a new life. And she had messed it up royally over her lust for a man who had already wreaked havoc on her life for long enough.

  Oh. My. God.

  Joanne sent her off with a promise to deliver the test results in a few days. Diana found herself in the park across the street with a cup of peppermint tea in her hand, sitting on a bench while she watched the dark crimson and orange leaves fall off the trees as fall set in. It was just enough normalcy to convince her she hadn’t entered some alternate universe where condoms failed on the one night you had sex with your ex whom you were now tied to for at least the next two decades.

  Anger spread through her, slowly overtaking the numbness. How could this happen? Because it was clearly her problem. Coburn had washed his hands of her that night at his place, had made it clear she meant nothing to him. He would support this baby, no doubt; he was that kind of a man. But if she could have dreamed up the worst possible scenario of anything and thrown it at her husband, it would not have made Coburn any greener than the thought of a baby.

  Her stomach lurched, protesting even the tea. She set the cup down and breathed in through her nose. Her husband hadn’t even been capable of talking about a baby when she’d broached the subject casually to test the waters because she’d known someday it was in the cards for her. Whether it had something to do with his tumultuous, on-again, off-again relationship with his brother, Harrison, or his aloof family upbringing, she wasn’t sure. She’d just gotten the message loud and clear it wasn’t on his agenda.

  That awful scene in the boardroom when they’d been allocating the pieces from their life together as if their marriage was a board game ran through her head. A bubble of hysterical laughter formed in her throat. What would have happened if she’d thrown a baby into the mix? Her husband had been halfway off the ledge without such a mind-numbing complication as their flesh and blood being tied together for eternity.

  She sat on the bench as the bright midday sunshine faded to late afternoon, trying to absorb the enormity of the news she’d been given. The spontaneity, the freedom she’d craved to spread her wings, was about to be taken from her by the little person growing inside her. Her life as she knew it was about to change irrevocably.

  Panic clawed at her throat, a terror she had never known before it reached up to steal her breath. Was she supposed to tell Coburn and have him insist she not go to Africa, which she knew he’d do? Or did she go, knowing there was no medical reason why she shouldn’t? First trimesters were uneventful, as Joanne had said. She was perfectly healthy and strong. She could scrap her plan to go for a year and simply execute her initial contract.

  Her thoughts slowed, her breathing calming as her decision cemented itself. When she looked up to see the sky darkening over the park, purple streaks lacing a hazy gray sky, she got up, tossed her cup into the garbage can and flagged a cab. At home, she finished packing and closed off all the loose ends of her life. Except for the biggest one of them all.

  Two days later, she stepped on a plane bound for London, where she would stay overnight with a friend, then continue on to Africa. Her mind was resolute and focused. She was grabbing her dream with both hands. Then she would call Coburn when she was settled and give him the news that would undoubtedly rock his world. She liked the idea of having a continent between them when that happened. It seemed so much less confrontational.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  COBURN HAD JUST left a meeting in midtown and was standing on the street, an espresso and his briefcase in one hand while he unlocked the door of his Jaguar with the other, when his mobile rang.
r />   It never stopped ringing these days. He had a newfound respect for Harrison spending that many years under siege as CEO with every matter of crisis or political ripple that seemed to run through the company at regular intervals.

  Cursing as the phone pealed again, he set his espresso down on the roof of the car, dropped his briefcase and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Dr. Joanne Gibson, said the caller ID. Who? He filed through his brain. Diana’s doctor. Why would she be calling him? He almost ignored it, then remembered he was listed as an emergency contact for his wife.

  “Coburn here.”

  “Coburn?” The voice sounded confused. “Oh, hi. Sorry, Mr. Grant, Rebecca from Joanne Gibson’s office here. I was trying to reach Diana. Your number’s listed right below hers.”

  “No worries. You might have trouble getting her, though. She’s out of the country as of today.”

  “I thought I might catch her before she left. Has she left?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said pleasantly.

  A pause. “Oh. Okay. I have some test results I need to give to her. Do you know if she took her usual mobile with her or if she’s switching over?”

  “I wouldn’t know that, either.” He started to mutter a polite kiss-off, then frowned and tucked the phone closer to his ear. “What test?”

  “I can’t really say. It’s just a routine check with her preg—” The woman broke off as someone said something to her in the background. “Just a routine test,” she repeated. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  His blood ran cold. “Just one second,” he ordered. “Were you about to say pregnancy? Is my wife pregnant?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Grant, I really can’t tell you—”