In His World: His #8 (A Billionaire Domination Serial) (4 page)

But Chloe wasn’t buying that logic for even the time it took me to get it out of my mouth. Halfway through my spiel, she’d already folded her arms, eyes rolling. “So now you’re trying to tell me you never really cared about the eco park, beyond how it could make you look. Like I never saw you out there butting heads with Gabriel because you were both so damn concerned that the demonstration project be done right. Even Luiz wouldn’t swallow that load of crap. How many times did you make him rebuild the garden beds?”

“I’m a control freak, remember, Miss Bloom?”

She raised a brow at me. “Among other things. Are you also going to tell me you don’t care what happens to anyone here? What about Manuela and her job?”

“They won’t tear down the resort, Chloe. I can include legal language requiring the administrators to keep her on staff as executive chef so long as she maintains her performance.”

It was especially strange then to have my petite Miss Bloom step forward to loom over me where I still sat on the bed. “But she won’t be your chef. Or your avό. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

I tried not to let Chloe see my back stiffen, as a chill like ice water shot down my spine. “She was never my grandmother.” Or my mother. “That was a quaint expression of appreciate between Manuela and me. That’s all. She was grateful for the job.”

That smooth, exotic, perfect face—now wearing a scowl—came down level with mine. “I know what you’re trying to do, Adrian, but I can’t comprehend how you can even stand to say that.” If she’d had even the fainted idea of how important it was for me to keep the fallout from all of this from landing on the people here, she would have understood. It didn’t matter how much it hurt me. “Manuela is your family,” she reminded me, quite unnecessarily.

Slowly, with an ache in my neck and my temples, I shook my head no. “I gave up on family a long time ago, Miss Bloom, about the time it gave up on me.”

The anger faded suddenly and unexpectedly from Chloe’s face, and she straightened above me, her arms coming unfolded. “That’s not true.”

“Trite reassurances, Chloe? Really?”

“No, I mean that really isn’t true. Oh my god. I can’t believe I forgot.” She put her hands over her face and issued a huge sigh, before darting out of the room with all that sensuous long hair waving behind her.

After resuming my selection of deck shoes to quell the nausea in my stomach from the shame of betrayal I felt at even pretending not to think of Manuela as a mother—pretending I’d never at least wished it—I ventured down the hallway to find Chloe back on that damned PDA phone of hers again. She was, apparently, just finishing a call.

“What’s all this about then? I don’t imagine that was Karl Richter.” And why was Chloe sucking at her lower lip? She only did that when she was nervous. Yet only a few minutes ago, she was nothing but livid with me.

“It was Edward,” she replied in a small voice.

“Should I know the name?”

Another moment of worrying her lips. “Yes, you should. It’s your grandfather’s name. Edward Knight.” I tilted my head, completely unable to make sense of her statement. “Your mother’s father, Adrian. He was at the courthouse earlier today. I had coffee with him. He’s been trying to see you.”

Still convinced I’d lost the ability to interpret the English language, I asked, “Why would he do that? He hasn’t wanted anything to do with me since I was a child. And would you please stop chewing on your lip and start making some sense?”

Chloe approached me hesitantly, gently, like she might a skittish horse—or someone about to receive very bad news. “Your family—your father’s family—lied to you about why you weren’t going to see the Knights anymore. Alistair wanted to forget your mother after she died, and he didn’t want people thinking of you as the shop girl’s boy. They fought him over it for a while, but he kept paying off their solicitors, and then… Then your grandmother had a stroke.”

“Not possible,” I breathed, feeling my chest start to collapse in on itself. “That would mean…”

She stopped herself gnawing her lip again. “I know. It would mean that all the time you were alone at Siemer and at Cornell and afterward… None of it was necessary. The Knights were just waiting for you to come find them, but your father’s family made sure you wouldn’t.”

An incredulous snort burst from my aching throat, and I laughed low and briefly and without mirth. “My whole life would have been completely different if…if…” If that had been the case, but it couldn’t have been true. To even entertain the idea would be to hazard considering how many of my choices—my mistakes—were needless. What if I’d never left England for Siemer Academy? What if I’d never met Penn Ellison or even Jessica? What if I hadn’t spent my whole life living down the Alexander name? I’d only taken Knight as my surname as a sort of secret “fuck you” to my mother’s family for their rejection, as a way of taking something from them.

“If you hadn’t been alone,” Chloe finished for me, and I looked down into her face and jerked her suddenly into a deep, thorough kiss that had us breathless in an instant and kept us that way for many more.

If I hadn’t been alone against the world, at war with Penn, I would never have set my sights on Ellison’s former lover. I would never have become the domineering, dominant bastard who made her my submissive. And I wouldn’t have been kissing her right now.

I might have been holding Chloe in my arms, pulled up almost off her feet, but she was the one keeping me standing. A choice I didn’t have to regret. I clung to that and maintained my ravenous assault on her soft lips and warm mouth until we really did have to stop and pant for breath.

When she could speak again, Chloe whispered, “He’s on his way here.”

“Who?” I asked, feeling my brows knitting. “Edward Knight? Now?”

She nodded, and I finally released her and stepped away. Uncertain if I was supposed to be excited or angry or protectively aloof and pragmatic about the whole matter, I sat on the couch without a clue what I should say. After a moment, my Miss Bloom came down beside me, then laid her head in my lap. And it was calming. To sit there in silence with her, stroking her hair and listening to the bird calls and crashing waves beyond the shutters that stood just slightly ajar, the burnt hues of afternoon sunlight sifting through the slats to stripe the floor.

At least a half hour must have passed before I gathered a breath like I was just waking up. “I run a billion-dollar commercial development company with thousands of people working for me, and I’ve got no idea what I’m going to say when…when my mother’s father walks through that door.”

“Then let him do the talking, at least at first.”

I let that advice roll around in my head, to get a feel for what I thought of it. Simple, disarmingly simple.

The knock at the door made us both jump, me out of my thoughts and Chloe up and off the couch. “Christ, that was quick,” I huffed out, feeling at a sudden loss. I hadn’t had the time for my usual pre-business meeting ritual to steel myself,…distance myself.

“Get the door, Adrian,” Chloe urged before she fled from the room, having gathered from the couch the only clothing she had with her.

No time to make her do it instead. No time to prepare. No more time to wonder. One of my usual headaches started to build along my forehead and temples, but it hung back, not quite materializing. I was combing my hands through my hair, asking myself too late if I looked like I’d just climbed out of bed with a beautiful woman, as I opened the door for a white-haired gentleman with an elegant, silver-handled walking stick. The man who stood behind him, a fair amount of steely gray woven into his brown hair, had the same amber-flecked green eyes as his elder and was in his mid-fifties, maybe. Edward Knight’s son, perhaps? Which would have made him my uncle. Odd concept for someone who had come to think of himself as having no family.

The elder gentleman peered at me with bright eyes for a moment. Whatever he saw left a tentative smile on his lined but pleasant face. “Adrian Knight?”

“Edward Knight?”

“Quite.” He motioned over his shoulder with the turn of his head and a glance at the man with him. “My son Ian.”

Very British of us, I had to think. No American-style embrace. No continental European upwelling of teary emotion. I might have balked at anything else.

Dragging my hands through my hair again, I stepped aside for them. When Edward got even me, he looked me right in the face, the corners of his broad mouth again crooked up in an impish grin.

“Interesting how some habits seem to run in the blood. You get that one from me, I think.” From his tone, I’d have said he was pleased to find a touch of himself in me.

***

When I emerged—now dressed and passably presentable—from Adrian’s bedroom, I found not two but three Knight men standing in the entryway doing that British social dance of commenting on not much of anything in clipped, casual, ever-so-male tones.

“And there she is,” Edward observed with a gleam in his stunning green eyes. His expression, though never cool, warmed obviously as he regarded me. “The young lady making this reunion with my grandson possible.”

“Edward. Good to see you again. You mentioned having one of your sons with you. I take it this is he?”

There followed another brief round of introductions, before they mulled uncomfortably through a few moments of silence. They might never have progressed past talk of weather and the ferry ride, I knew, without a little female prodding.

“I was just about to call over to the resort for fresh tea and coffee,” I said. “Why don’t you three get settled on the patio? I’ll bring cups out when they’re ready.”

“Lovely idea,” Edward agreed, and it was….interesting, unexpected, even heartwarming to see both Ian and Adrian nodding and deferring to the Knight patriarch and filing outside with him.

Lovely idea, indeed. I took my time calling over to the kitchen, speaking at length on the telephone with Manuela when I did, giving her a carefully edited update on the legal goings on to avoid worrying the already anxious woman. Then I prepared both spiced coffee and sweet tea for each of the men and carried the tray out to find an empty patio, just as I’d hoped.

After shedding my high heels, I braved a few steps down the path toward the yellow sand beach, then a few more steps. I saw them from a distance, the Knight men standing just out of the surf’s reach. Adrian had Edward’s arm to steady him on the unstable surface but with the other hand was motioning toward the tropical vegetation and gesturing in wide arcs I’d have guessed referred to the whole of the island. If I’d been a gambling woman, I would have bet money that an offhand compliment about the beauty of Ilha de Flor had set Adrian off about the different varieties of orchids and birds, the eco park project, and all the possibilities offered by twenty thousand acres of pristine paradise.

Now Edward could thank me for introducing him to his grandson, the real Adrian Knight.

I don’t know why I thought they’d hear the tone of my bleating PDA over that distance and the persistent, lulling crash of waves, but I immediately silenced the ring and ran back up the path to answer it.

“Karl?”

“Chloe, it’s a gorgeous Friday evening in Miami, did you know?”

Pacing around the patio pool, I perked a brow the German businessman couldn’t see. “So you decided to follow events in person, I take it.”

“Just a few days of vacation,” he insisted, though the playful rise in his normally smooth voice said differently. “Friends to see.”

“Friends?”

“Well-placed friends. Friends with a nice view.”

Meaning his own network of contacts, I knew. “And what do they see?”

“An unusual uptick in administrative leaves issued just before the end of the day at Southern Command Headquarters. People must be eager for a few days off to enjoy this exceptional Florida weather.”

“Must be.”

“Oh, and I thought you’d find this interesting.” He paused for effect, another trait of ridiculously successful men. They were all part showmen, ringmasters, dazzling and distracting their audience with personality—whether based on charm or wit or intimidation. “Some kind of irregularity in the paperwork has disqualified a number of the active contract bids.”

I sucked a breath in through my teeth. “Oh, I bet those bidders won’t be happy.”

“No, he won’t.”

I lingered over the moments it took for that comment to sink in. “It’s coming apart then?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, it is. He is. His private jet is in the air, on its way here, as we speak.”

A chill shot down my body and stilled my pacing. That quickly, we’d shaken up the situation, but we had also now lost the advantage of surprise. Penn had to know what we were doing—as, apparently, Richter knew every movement of the Ellison heir.

“You keep a very close watch on your associates, Karl.”

“I do. Learned that from an old business partner.”

“You will keep me updated, I assume.”

“Count on it, Chloe. You’ve helped me a great deal, with the problems before and now this. I just hope keeping our nemesis tied up here aids your cause there.”

It certainly couldn’t have hurt.

Now, as happy as I was at the idea of Adrian’s reunion with his mother’s family, at the news they’d be staying for dinner, at the rapt look upon Adrian’s face as his father and uncle recounted stories about Isabel Knight over the meal…I couldn’t get him alone fast enough. I couldn’t wait for him to check his messages from Quinton Obray on the progress of the talks with federal prosecutors. Had our push been hard enough, fast enough to upset the backroom deals setting Adrian up for a long prison term? Would Penn still care about Ilha de Flor if his contract bids in Miami were all falling apart—or would he persist just to ruin Adrian? And now me, of course.

The dinner conversation receded around me as I suffered a wave of nausea at the idea that the man I’d loved for two years was now my biggest adversary. I could anticipate most of the ways I knew Penn would come after me. My job at Ferris & Hale, but that was already a wash. He’d try to have me censured if not outright disbarred. For once I was glad my mother was gone, beyond his reach, and I doubted he’d have gone after my father in light of our strained relationship.