investors would love to get their hands on a piece of the action.”
“But they wouldn’t be family. And none of us want to give a non-Valentine a piece of the action because you don’t turn your back on family. It simply isn’t right.”
Even if family turned their backs on him? he wondered. “They’ll survive, Em.”
“I wish I could be as sure.” Sadness shaded her voice. “As you said—it’s been a dozen years. Twelve seems like a good round number to make peace. Tis the season. Peace on earth. Charity begins at home and all that.”
“I’m not feeling charitable.” Jack rested his elbows on his cluttered desk.
“Neither am I.” Frustration laced with anger making her tone more clipped. “You disappeared,” she blurted out. “Dad wouldn’t discuss it and Mum was fragile. I was sixteen when you left me with the whole mess. Big brothers are supposed to take care of their little sisters.”
Little sister knew how to stick the knife in and twist. He’d loved her. Hell, he still loved her.
“I had no choice, Em. I had to leave.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you abandoned me, but you did what you needed to, I guess. Now I need something from you.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “I got married, Jack.”
It took him two beats to pull himself out of the past. His little sister was a married woman? He hadn’t heard. “Congratulations. Who’s the lucky man?”
“He was a prince—”
“Of course he’d be a prince of a guy,” he teased.
She laughed, a happy sound, so different from a few moments ago. “No, Sebastian was actually crowned King of Meridia.”
Meridia. Jack knew it was a small European country and recalled something in the news recently about a scandal in the line of succession. “I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s very important to me that you meet him.”
“Look, Emma—”
“I’ve never asked you for anything,” she interrupted, her voice firm. “But I want this and, quite frankly, I think you owe me, Jack. Come for Christmas. The usual place for the family toast. I’ll be expecting you.”
Before he could decline again, the line went dead. Jack let out a long breath as he replaced the phone. His little sister married a king?
And he’d missed it.
That made him wonder what else he’d missed. But Emma had never told him that she’d felt abandoned. And she hadn’t ever asked him for anything. Until now.
“Jack, you’re out of your mind.” His associate, Maddie Ford, walked into his office without looking up from the proposal he’d given her earlier. “You can’t seriously want to put money into this. It’s crazy. It’s risky. And so like you it makes me want to shake you until your teeth rattle.”
She kept talking, but he was only half listening to blonde, blue-eyed, brainy Maddie. His sensible and down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is Maddie. In the two years since he’d brought her into his company, she’d become more his partner than his assistant. He’d come to rely on her sound judgment. For better or worse she’d become the voice in his head.
She was also the only stunningly beautiful woman he’d never hit on. And he planned to keep it that way because the women who gave in to him were here today and gone tomorrow. Sometimes they were gone in the same day. He wouldn’t do anything to lose Maddie because he needed her around, although what he had in mind wasn’t business related. The thing was, he hadn’t made a fortune by not listening to his gut and it was telling him now to take her with him to meet Emma’s husband.
When she stopped talking to catch a breath he said, “How do you feel about Christmas in London?”
CHAPTER ONE
London—Christmas Day
“I SUPPOSE millionaires have problems, too.”
Maddie Ford waited for a reaction from the bachelor millionaire in the town car beside her and Jack Valentine didn’t disappoint.
He glared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sorry. Did I say that out loud?” she asked, making her eyes as wide and innocent as she could manage.
“You know good and well you did. Was that a blonde moment? Don’t go blonde on me now, Maddie,” he said, irritation in his voice. Or was it tension?
Definitely tension and that wasn’t like Jack. Whatever business had made him insist she come along on this trip must be really important because the strain was showing.
And that was starting to concern her. Jack Valentine was rich, handsome, charismatic and often touted as New York’s most eligible bachelor. He did the charming British thing with overtones of brash American and it worked way too well. From his short, black, carefully mussed hair to his dark blue eyes with the bad-boy gleam that promised trouble in a most appealing way, he exuded the same exciting vibes that had brought down her heart not once, but twice.
In the beginning, she’d had a crush on him but quickly learned he wasn’t a one-woman man. So the fact that he’d never tried anything had convinced her she wasn’t his type. He wasn’t likely to turn his charm in her direction, which was just fine with her. She liked her job.
For the last two plus years she and Jack had worked well together. Her sensible side balanced Jack’s tendency toward rashness. They had been a team. Until he’d messed with her Christmas plans. Although he hadn’t smiled or teased her since leaving New York. The way he was acting made her feel guilty for giving him a hard time. Maybe a little teasing of her own could lighten him up because he normally didn’t do tension.
“If by ‘going blonde’ you’re referring to my current state of irritation, let me assure you I have a very good reason. It’s Christmas. And I’m on the wrong continent. Is there a reason this trip couldn’t have waited?”
“It’s one day and I did promise to make it up to you.”
That was a non-answer. “How do you make up for missing Christmas? I had plans.”
“I know. You’ve made that quite clear.”
He didn’t need to know that her plans hadn’t been with family. Her married siblings alternated holidays with their spouses’ families and this year her parents had taken a cruise. They’d invited her because they felt sorry for their twenty-eight-year-old unmarried-and-not-dating daughter. She’d declined because it seemed too pathetic for words, but she hadn’t shared any of that with Jack. He’d have teased her unmercifully and teasing from Mr Bachelor-about-town regarding her non-existent love life would be too humiliating.
“It’s good of you—”
“No, it’s not. I’m not good.”
“Okay. You’re bad. I can live with that.” For a split second, he flashed his carefree, charming Jack Valentine grin.
Was his grin always that potent? Or did his uncharacteristic tension just make it seem more thrilling than usual? Not going there, she thought. “I can’t believe you played the because-you’re-the-boss card to get me here.”
“Our difference of opinion showed no signs of letting up. In the interest of time, it seemed the expedient thing to do.”
She’d disagreed because she hadn’t liked his attitude and now it was time for his reminder that he couldn’t walk all over her. “My being here makes no more sense now than it did before. Since when do you want me to come along? And what business couldn’t wait a day? More important, who does business on Christmas? It’s un-American.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re in Britain.”