health, but the risk to their company had been profound, and they were in jeopardy of losing several multimillion-dollar accounts if the attacks on Sutton’s reputation didn’t stop. Eve had managed to keep the company on an even keel, but now that she was pregnant with Graham’s baby, things were even more complicated.
And this whole mess was thanks to Roman and what Grace considered to be his less-than-impressive PI skills. When she thought of all the pain he had caused, all the suffering and humiliation he had subjected them to, anger lit a fire in her belly.
She would choose anger over shaky nerves any day.
“What if Brooks sent him here to dig up more dirt?” she said, hoping to talk some sense into her father. “So he can finish the job and destroy our family.”
Sutton folded his hands on the desk in front of him and looked up from the computer screen with the same clear green eyes she saw every morning in the mirror. For a sixty-five-year-old, he’d been in impressive physical shape until his lung cancer diagnosis earlier this year. Now his poor health was undeniable. Though he was a true fighter, the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and there was nothing that his team of doctors could do. It was only a matter of time.
Today, thankfully, was a good day. Some days lately, he could barely make it out of bed.
“Roman didn’t request to see me,” Sutton said. “I asked for this meeting.”
It took a second or two to process what he’d said, then her jaw nearly came unhinged, right along with her temper. And she did something that she never, ever did. She raised her voice to him.
“Why would you do that, Daddy? After all the family has been through, how could you even think of letting that man in our home?”
“It’s something I need to do,” he said firmly, and there was a softness in his gaze, a look of resignation in his eyes that broke Gracie’s heart. Sutton never showed weakness. She had never once seen him cry, or lose his composure, and rarely had she seen him truly angry. But this look of defeat was more than she could take.
She felt her own anger, and what little was left of her resolve, fizzle away. She had to remember that her father had very limited time left on this earth. Weeks. Months. No one could say for sure. If meeting with Roman meant so much to him, what choice did she have but to respect his wishes? Her pride be damned...and her nerves, because although Gracie Winchester never got nervous, right now her heart was thumping against her kidneys and her palms had begun to sweat.
The sudden rap on the door nearly startled her right out of her Manolo Blahniks and she automatically reached up to check her hair, which she had smoothed into a tasteful chignon that morning. Suddenly she found herself wishing she’d worn it down. Though she had no clue why.
As her father’s assistant opened the door, Gracie nervously smoothed the front of her Versace skirt, then folded her hands behind her back, so no one would see them trembling.
“Roman Slater to see you, sir.”
Gracie felt as if the room was spinning around her. Her heart was pounding hard, and that irrational urge to run was back, but her knees were so weak she would never make it to the door.
Or out the nearest window.
“See him in,” Sutton said, and Gracie stood frozen, trying not to hyperventilate.
The assistant stepped back and with a sweeping motion of her hand invited the family’s worst enemy into their most sacred domain. Gracie held her breath as the bane of her existence strolled through the doorway, as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
Wearing all black, he cut an impressive figure in tailored slacks, a dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck and a sport coat that showcased his wide shoulders, thick arms and narrow hips. All designer label.
So different from the Roman of their youth, the jeans-wearing, T-shirt-sporting college student who never gave a hoot about fashion. But now, as owner of a multimillion-dollar company, he had to look the part. And he did, except maybe for the hair. His dark locks were a touch too long, and a little too rumpled, but somehow it worked.
She waited for the anger to crash over her like a suffocating wave, for the resentment to turn her blood to acid and eat its way through her veins, but she felt something so unexpected it took a minute to identify the emotion.
She felt...relieved.
Several years after Roman had betrayed her the first time, he’d gone missing on a military mission, and had been rumored to be dead. It had ripped her to pieces, even after the way he’d betrayed her. At the time, she would have given anything to have him back. Anything to change what had happened, because her leaving him was the reason he’d joined the military in the first place.
She’d thought that maybe if she had forgiven him and they had stayed together he would still be alive.
The guilt had eaten her up for months, until she’d heard on the news that he and several of his fellow soldiers were still alive and being held in a POW camp in the Middle East by an Al Qaeda offshoot. And most likely being subjected to unspeakable forms of torture. Though she had been weak with relief to know that he was alive, had he been dealt a fate worse than death? Would they torture him, then kill him anyway? The possibilities had kept her up nights, and robbed her of her appetite. She’d lost ten pounds in a week, and felt so tired and depressed she could barely do her job. So she’d stopped watching the news reports and reading updates in the papers. She’d pushed him as far from her mind as she could, though there hadn’t been a day since then that she didn’t think of him at least once.
Eventually Roman and his teammates had been rescued. When she knew he was alive, and safely back in the US, she’d felt a soothing sense of peace. She’d felt as if she could finally let go of the resentment. They were, in a sense, even.
Which was a horrible way to look at it. Her broken heart and sullied reputation couldn’t hold a candle to his weeks of torture. She wouldn’t wish that upon her worst enemy.
Which, come to think of it, he was.
Because recently Brooks, with Roman’s help, had launched his campaign to destroy not only her father, but Gracie and her sisters as well, and that familiar old hatred had come oozing back like burning tar in her soul.
Yet here she was feeling relieved to see him?
What the hell was wrong with her?
“Roman,” Sutton said, slowly rising from his seat to shake his adversary’s hand, and Roman’s hesitation to take it underscored his hostility.
“Sutton,” he replied, contempt clear in his tone.
“You remember my daughter Grace,” Sutton said and Gracie’s heart sailed to the balls of her feet.
Roman turned and his soulful hazel eyes sliced through her like hot knives.
Roman had always been beautiful. Now he was a Greek god, with his wide jaw and broad shoulders. His nose had been broken at some point, and he had scars on his face. One started at his temple and bisected his left brow, coming dangerously close to his eye, and another jagged line ran across his forehead and disappeared under his dark hair. Some women might have been put off, but she thought it only enhanced his sex appeal.
Then she thought of how he’d gotten them, and that there were probably others she couldn’t see, and felt a shaft of guilt.
“Grace,” he said, his deep voice strumming her nerve endings, making something primitive and completely irrational stir in her belly.
Attraction.
Uh-uh. No way.
No normal, well-adjusted person would be physically attracted to someone who tried to ruin her life.
He reached over to shake her hand, and without thinking, and purely out of habit, she took it, regretting the move instantly. But it was too late now.
He grabbed on firmly, and she gripped his much larger hand just as tightly. It was as