‘Sure, I’ve got my car parked out front,’ he murmured. ‘We can sit in there, if it hasn’t been towed already.’
A strained laugh popped out of her mouth, the rueful offhand remark reminding her again—stupidly—of Alex, and all the sparring matches they’d had. But the recollection didn’t hurt quite so much this time. She could understand why Alex and Roman had become friends—they shared the same wry sense of humour.
Roman. My brother.
She gave a shaky sigh, finally able to acknowledge that fact without wanting to puke.
Progress. Of a sort.
‘Would it be okay if we went for a wee walk instead?’ She didn’t want to sit in his car. No doubt it was as deluxe as he was and her stomach did not feel one hundred per cent reliable—she did not want to risk throwing up in his fancy motor. ‘Central Park is only a block away.’
She’d avoided walking through the park yesterday evening after leaving Alex’s apartment, because it had been far too painful after their break-up, with all the memories they had shared there. But that was just another thing she needed to get over.
Roman hesitated, obviously wanting to object. Perhaps he was concerned he might be recognised—he was Manhattan’s Hottest Eligible Bachelor after all. But then he nodded.
‘Sure, if that’s what you want.’
As he arranged to have his car picked up before it really did get towed, she found herself relaxing a bit, unable to shake the thought Roman Fraser had just made a major concession by agreeing to a walk in the park. And not pressing the point about moving out of the hostel today. Or seeing his lawyers tomorrow.
She still felt nervous, her heart as jumpy as her stomach. But when they headed down the road towards the park, the nausea had downgraded another notch.
Maybe getting to know him didn’t have to be so awful. After all, she’d always wanted siblings... She just hadn’t envisioned her big brother being a billionaire with movie-star good looks and enough money to purchase Edinburgh Castle several times over.
You can adapt, Ellie, and it will be one hell of an adventure.
Surely they could find a way to connect despite everything? Plus there were so many things she could ask Roman. About the people who had sired them both. She couldn’t think of William and Edith Fraser as her parents yet. But maybe if she could at least talk about them, about the accident, and find out a lot more about Roman himself—what he loved, what he hated, his dreams, his disappointments, that sort of thing—this would all feel a little less overwhelming. A lot less terrifying.
And then there was the fact Roman Fraser was also Alex Costa’s best friend. She knew she shouldn’t want to ask him about Alex, shouldn’t need to know more about the man who had dumped her—hadn’t she found out enough already after what he’d said about his childhood last night, the brutal cynicism that had been baked into him at such an early age?
But how else was she going to stop blaming herself for completely misconstruing everything that had happened between them? And get the closure she needed.
‘Sure you don’t want a waffle to go with that?’ Roman asked as he handed Ellie the hot tea he’d bought for her at a waffle cart on Central Drive.
‘No, thanks,’ she replied, although after almost an hour of walking and talking with her new big brother, she had to admit her stomach was a lot more reliable.
While her heartache—about Alex—and her confusion and panic about becoming a billionairess overnight were both still very much there, it had been illuminating and fascinating to talk to Roman. Not just because of all the things he’d told her, and all the things he’d wanted to know about her, but all the things she could sense he had held back.
She hadn’t been wrong, he was an extremely guarded man. There was a sadness, a solitariness about him, which she suspected came from the years he had spent on his own. And from a misplaced guilt about the accident.
Alex had been dead right about that, she’d realised, when Roman had offered her an apology at the beginning of their walk. Once she’d finally realised that he was apologising for his inability to prevent her from being kidnapped, while he was in shock, gravely injured, his leg trapped under the wreckage, and he was going in and out of consciousness, she’d told him he was crazy. That he couldn’t possibly blame himself for what had happened that night.
He had said no more about it, but she could see he didn’t really accept that. They’d changed the subject, but as she’d quizzed him further—about his life now, his childhood and adolescence, their parents—she had soon realised that there were some things he was happy to divulge and others he was not.
He’d given her an in-depth account of all the Fraser businesses, for example—which included a luxury train line set up by their grandfather Ken, a property portfolio to die for and a number of other lucrative ventures, which she had no interest in whatsoever—but had said very little about his hopes and dreams, his plans for the future. And his own past. She’d had to tease that out of him gradually, but she had managed to uncover a few interesting nuggets. It seemed he had hated Eldridge Prep as much as Alex had until they’d become friends, and there was definitely something going on in his love life—because he’d clammed up completely when she’d asked him about it.
She had also discovered to her dismay that he had lost everyone who mattered in his life twenty-one years ago, not just her and their parents that Christmas, but also his grandparents—theirgrandparents—Joan and Ken, who had died earlier the same year. He’d spoken about them both with more affection than he had about his parents, which seemed significant somehow, although she wasn’t sure why. Because he’d been quite guarded about that too, only pointing out that William and Edith had struggled to have a second child for close to a decade, and because of that they had loved her very much. Even though he hadn’t said so, Ellie had suspected the quest to have a second child might have put a huge strain on the marriage and their relationship with their son.
One thing was certain, she couldn’t even imagine having to deal with so much grief as a ten-year-old and had decided that had to explain why he was such a cautious man now... And maybe also why he was a tad overprotective. Because he’d mentioned a few times already how he really wasn’t happy about her working in Mel’s bar.
Add persistent to the mix.
She took a fortifying sip of her tea. They’d talked about everything now, but the one subject still burning at the back of her brain.
Alex.
‘So, you said you and Alex got friendly at the prep school,’ she ventured. ‘What was he like back then?’ she asked, as casually as she could manage.
But not casually enough, she realised, when Roman frowned. ‘Why are you so interested in Alex Costa?’