CHAPTER TEN
‘ARE YOU CLOSE with your brother?’
Ramon glanced up from his laptop. Emily sat in the seat opposite him in his private jet. In a pale blue trouser suit, with her hair caught loosely in a band over one shoulder, she looked beautiful and flawless in spite of the vomiting spell that had struck shortly before their departure for the airport. Ramon had regarded the sudden resurgence of her nausea as sufficient excuse to cancel their trip to Barcelona, but she had refused to let him postpone the weekend.
Five days had passed since she’d agreed to marry him, three days since he’d placed the enormous radiant-cut diamond on her finger. Two days ago he’d notified his family and afterwards released an announcement to the press. Yesterday, he’d closed the deal on the house in Chelsea.
With each step he’d waited for a sense of panic to set in. Instead, he felt a deep, unmitigated satisfaction. A growing certainty that he was doing the right thing.
He answered Emily’s question. ‘Not especially.’
‘Oh.’ She sounded surprised. ‘Xavier’s adopted, right?’
‘Yes. But that’s not a factor in our relationship. We have different personalities, that’s all. Sometimes we clash.’ He closed his laptop, noting Emily’s hands fidgeting in her lap. ‘You’re nervous,’ he observed.
‘A bit. I’m afraid the whole family thing is rather alien to me.’
Little wonder, he thought. She’d grown up with an absentee father and no mother. By her own account, the closest thing she’d had to a maternal influence as a child had been her grandfather’s housekeeper, who she described as an austere woman whose one saving grace had been teaching Emily to bake and cook.
‘Have you heard from your father?’
She shook her head, her mouth turning down, and Ramon knew a fierce desire to find Maxwell Royce and hurt him. The man’s daughter was pregnant and engaged and he hadn’t bothered to return her calls. Out of courtesy, Ramon had left a message on his phone the day before the engagement was made official, but Royce hadn’t responded.
‘Why The Royce?’ he asked, voicing a question that had been lodged in his brain like an annoying burr for weeks.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re smart, dedicated, hard-working. You could have done anything,’ he said. ‘Chosen any number of professions. Why carve out your career there?’
Colour swept her cheeks. ‘When I inherited half of the club, I had no choice but to step up.’
‘But you devoted yourself to The Royce long before then.’
She frowned. ‘It’s my family’s business.’ A defensive edge crept into her voice. ‘Why wouldn’t I get involved?’ Her expression became shuttered. Averting her face, she looked out of the window at a bank of solid cloud, effectively ending the conversation. But, slowly, her gaze came back to his. ‘Actually, there’s more to it than that...’ She hesitated, her throat moving around a tight swallow. ‘I think, in the beginning, I was looking for some kind of connection.’
‘To your father?’
‘Yes. And to my grandfather. I wasn’t close to either one of them, but they were the only family I had. Working at The Royce gave us some common ground. I suppose I wanted to prove myself. To earn their respect. Their attention.’
Ramon felt a tugging deep in his chest. No young person should have to earn attention from a parent. His dislike of Maxwell Royce strengthened.
‘What about you?’ she asked, swiftly diverting the focus from herself. ‘You gave up an architectural career to join your family’s business. Do you miss being an architect?’
‘Yes and no,’ he hedged. ‘I often have a hand in the design and renovation of the clubs and properties under my purview, so I still get to dabble.’
‘It must be amazing to have a creative talent.’ Her voice was wistful.
‘You don’t see yourself as creative?’
‘Not really.’ She wrinkled her perfect nose. ‘The most creative I get is baking.’
‘I like it when you bake.’
She gave him a pert look. ‘Correction. You like it when I bake in my underwear.’
He couldn’t hold back a grin. On impulse, he reached for her left hand and pressed a kiss on her knuckles—just above the glittering diamond that proudly proclaimed to the world she was his. A smile softened her face and his mood lightened. Perhaps, with Emily by his side, he wouldn’t find this weekend with his family too painful.
* * *