Reunited for the Billionaire's Legacy: Christmas at the Castello (bonus novella)

by Jennifer Hayward

  Her face lost all its color. She sat up and pulled her dress down to cover her. “No,” she said slowly, “that was perfect.”

  “Good.” He waved a hand at the shower. “I’m going to clean up. Feel free to join me.”

  But she didn’t. He knew she wouldn’t. When he emerged from the shower ten minutes later, she was gone, just as she’d been gone the last time. He took one look at the bed, threw on some clothes and walked out into the dark, quiet night. If he’d thought it would feel good, this victory over her, it didn’t. It felt as if he’d just impaled himself on his own sword.

  * * *

  Diana wasn’t sure how she got to Beth’s house. Didn’t even know she was crying until she’d pulled her keys out on her friend’s doorstep and was fumbling while trying to get them into the lock, her gaze too blurred to see. Her palm pressed against the door as she jammed the key in harder. The door opened from the inside, sending her tumbling across the jamb.

  “Sweetheart.” Beth caught her forearms and steadied her. “What’s wrong?”

  The tears turned into a torrent, sliding down her cheeks unchecked. “I am s-so s-stupid.”

  Beth pulled the door shut, retrieved her keys and guided her into the cozy little living room. “You saw him, I take it?”

  She choked back a sob at that vast understatement of what had just happened. She had just had steamy, intensely uninhibited sex with her soon-to-be ex, who’d tossed her aside afterward as if she meant nothing to him.

  Beth’s lips tightened. “I’m getting us some tea, then we talk.”

  Diana kicked off her shoes, curled up on the sofa and grabbed the box of tissues sitting on the coffee table. Images from the night flew at her like jagged pieces of a puzzle that didn’t make any sense in her head. She hadn’t consciously gone to that party tonight to have that showdown with Coburn, but it was clear now that unconsciously she had. Her heart hadn’t mended since that night she’d walked out on him. She still wasn’t over him, and worse, she’d been holding out some hope he might still love her.

  A sitcom Beth had been watching blared from the TV. She sat watching it with unseeing eyes. Had she been hoping Coburn would confess he felt the same way? That that was the real reason he hadn’t initiated a divorce?

  She swallowed hard. What a stupid, blind woman she was. She had set herself up for that tonight. Set herself up for Coburn’s masterful demonstration of just how little he cared. Because after what he’d just done to her? Those flashes of emotion she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes must had been figments of her imagination. Evidence she’d used to justify the need to be in his arms again. Because being without him had been as if a part of her was missing and she couldn’t seem to get it back.

  Was that a good enough performance for the memory book? Or should we do it again?

  His brutal words ripped at her insides. Bile rose in her throat. She might have been sick if she’d had anything more than a couple of hors d’oeuvres in her stomach. She swallowed the nausea down, pushing it away. How had she let herself do that after a whole year of telling herself she couldn’t be anywhere near him? Where had the measured rationality she was known for in her work been when she needed it most?

  Beth came back, handing her a steaming mug of her favorite peppermint tea. Her best friend since med school sat down on the other end of the sofa with her own mug of tea. “Tell me what happened.”

  Diana pushed her disheveled hair out of her face and gave her nose one last swipe. “I saw him and I was so ready to be cool and composed, and then I just— I mean—” She let out a long sigh. “I’m still in love with him.”

  Her friend grimaced. “And there’s a newsflash.”

  She pressed her hands to her temples. “He gave this toast to Annabelle and Tony that ended up being all about us and, God, it was awful. Everyone was staring at us.”

  Beth’s eyes rounded. “He did not.”

  She nodded. “Then he insisted on going back to his apartment and talking.”

  “What is there to talk about? You two are getting divorced tomorrow.”

  “He was angry. He accused me of running away from our problems. He said I was a spoiled little rich girl who’d run back to Daddy when the going got tough.” She threw her friend a despairing look. “But honestly, how many more times could we argue about the same things? It was getting toxic.”

  “You tried, Di.” Beth’s gaze softened. “I watched you try, I watched you suffer, but you are just two very different people with very different ideas of what you want out of life.”

  And that was the crux of it. It was why she’d left. Her husband’s brutal summation of their marriage echoed in her ears, the matter-of-fact, cynical tone he’d uttered it in making her cringe all over again. “In his speech,” she said huskily, “he said that someone forgot to tell him that sometimes love isn’t enough. That you can love someone madly, blindly, but it still isn’t going to work if you can’t accept each other’s flaws and imperfections.”

  Beth leaned forward and clasped her hands. “He’s right. Sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes the passionate, intense affairs like you and he have had are the hardest to sustain. They just don’t lend themselves to ordinary life.”

  A fresh wave of tears pooled at the back of her eyes. A part of her didn’t want to accept that that could be possible with her and Coburn. But the rational, self-preservative side of her said she must.

  Beth squeezed her hands tighter. “I was in the room the night you and Coburn met. I remember what it was like watching you two... It was electric. But that kind of passion? It can blind you to reality.”

  A reality she had to accept now. Coburn didn’t love her anymore and she had to move on. If it had been closure she’d been looking for as she walked away from everything she knew, tonight he’d given it to her. As brutal as it had been, Coburn had actually done her a favor.

  “You’re right,” she said, grabbing another tissue and blowing her nose. Pushing her shoulders back, she gave her best friend a decisive look. “This was the eye-opener I needed to walk into that meeting tomorrow and do what I need to do.”

  Maybe when she was thousands of miles away from Coburn she might somehow be able to banish the shame she’d felt tonight when he’d looked at her as if he’d just finished servicing another of his bimbos. Because if she didn’t, she might hate him forever.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “WELL, THAT WAS REFRESHING.”

  Coburn ignored the sarcasm in his older brother’s voice and kept walking toward the elevators. The board meeting had run long and he was late for his meeting with Diana and the lawyers.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Harrison continued, keeping step with him, “I love how progressive you’re being. God knows we need a more flexible vacation policy, but how do you think it’s going to work when all our employees decide to take the same day off? We have critical processes on the supply-chain side.”

  “That won’t happen.” Coburn threw him an annoyed glance. “Employment experts have done studies on it, and it’s clear in most workforces self-ownership of deadlines will regulate all that.”

  “And self-regulation will be top of mind when the Christmas holidays hit?” Harrison frowned. “You saw the board in there. You’re pushing hard and fast to make changes here, Coburn. You have a different vision, a different style of leadership. But you need to let them catch up with you.”

  “They will.” He jabbed the call button for the elevator. “And they’ll be thanking me when our employee satisfaction and productivity numbers are up.”

  “If they don’t revolt first.”

  He gave his brother a quelling look. “I thought you were going to let me run this company my way.”

  “That was before you started spouting nonsense about no formal vacation policy and the need for badge levels to incent
employees. This isn’t a video game we’re playing. It’s a Fortune 500 company our family has spent a hundred years building.”

  “I get that.” He stepped on the empty arriving elevator and Harrison followed. He got the pressure that was on him. He got that he was following his godlike brother in the analysts’ eyes. He got all of it until he was sick to death of it.

  Harrison shook his head at him. “You make me nervous.”

  “Don’t be.” He pushed the button for the executive floor. “Focus on your campaign. Shake people’s hands, pretend their babies are cute. I’ve got this.”

  The elevator swished upward, revealing a panoramic view of New York. A long silence followed. “Are you sure,” Harrison ventured carefully when he eventually broke it, “your emotions aren’t a little...off with this divorce on your plate?”

  Coburn glanced at his watch. “Happening in minutes. In fact, I’m fifteen of them late.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.” His brother exhaled on a long sigh. “She’d kill me if she knew I was saying this, but Frankie says you haven’t been yourself lately.”

  “I have a lot on my mind.”

  Harrison fixed him with that trademark deadly stare of his. “Do you still care for her?”

  And wasn’t that the question of the day? He’d told himself he didn’t, had convinced himself he was long over his marital fling. But last night had proved him an exemplarity liar. To hijack his toast to Tony and Annabelle with that speech that had come out of nowhere? To sleep with the woman he was intent on wiping from his memory to bring some closure to that part of his life? Insanity.

  “I am over her,” he told his brother, hoping that saying it out loud would make it so. “Making this divorce official is exactly what I need to move on.”

  His brother’s gaze raked his face. “Good. I hope it gives you some perspective.”

  “To what?” He and his brother were gradually restoring the close relationship that had defined their younger years after a decade of being at odds with each other following their father’s death. But lately Harrison’s preachiness was rankling him. “Do you think I should settle down like you and have the beautiful little nuclear family? You know how much that appeals to me.”

  “Actually,” his brother drawled, “I was thinking more along the lines of what will make you happy. I don’t think you have been for a long time, Coburn, and I’m not just talking professionally. Climbing an avalanche-prone mountain is not thrill-seeking—it’s self-destructive.”

  Yes, but on those truly brutal parts of the climb when his limbs felt as if they were going to fall off and he was so cold he thought he might expire, his head had felt devoid of anything, numb to the pure satisfaction of what he’d accomplished. It was addictive.

  He lifted a shoulder. “My mountain-climbing days are over if the board has anything to say about it, so your worries are null and void there.”

  His wife’s walk on the dangerous side? Not so much. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t come home and done an internet search on the African country she was going to be working in after his hour-and-a-half-long walk through the streets of Chelsea last night. What he’d found he hadn’t liked. Diana was putting herself well within the reach of the rebels who were causing havoc for the government. Who were known to use kidnapping as a bargaining tactic. He hadn’t slept a wink.

  Harrison turned to face him as they stepped off the elevator. “Use this time to figure out what you want out of your life. We only do this once. You have a fresh start to work with.”

  He lifted his chin and met his brother’s stare. “Since when did you get so philosophic?”

  “Since my wife got hold of me,” Harrison admitted with a rueful smile. “I like it, actually...”

  Coburn watched him walk away. Now that the aliens had taken his older brother and replaced him with that man, he thought maybe he’d consider his point as he strode toward Frankie, who gave the conference room Diana and the lawyers occupied a pointed nod. It was true. A fresh start was exactly what he wanted out of this divorce, and it was exactly what he was going to get. Now.

  “So sorry,” he murmured, striding into the glass-and-chrome conference room with its magnificent views of New York. He kept his gaze firmly away from his soon-to-be ex-wife and on the stiff, expensively suited lawyers who were five hundred an hour apiece.

  Chance Hamilton, his lawyer, made an awkward joke about this divorce not going anywhere. Jerry Simmons, Diana’s very proper, blue-blooded Harvard grad, stood and shook his hand. His wife remained seated, her eyes fixed on the windows. His guts twisted. She wouldn’t even look at him.

  “So,” Jerry began as Coburn sat down beside Chance, across from Diana, “shall we do a final review of the terms, starting with property?” Diana, who looked like something out of Madame Tussauds wax museum, moved her lips in what he assumed was agreement.

  “Fine.” He added his assent as he continued to study his wife, despite his better instincts. Only Diana could look her most beautiful in a simple white shirt, slim dark jeans and a floral scarf. Her dramatic dark features and hair made adornment unnecessary, something he’d always found vastly appealing versus the made-up showpieces he came across at most of the social functions he attended.

  Her beautiful hair was caught up in a knot today as opposed to last night’s wavy curls, her makeup minimal, designed to cover the shadows beneath her eyes, but it hadn’t quite worked. Hands that lay in her lap, constantly clenching and unclenching, were the only sign that she felt anything at all.

  Last night she had felt a whole hell of a lot. The half-moons dug into his biceps he’d noticed when he’d put on his shirt this morning bore testament to that. The sensation of her body tightening around his as he’d driven her to the brink was burned into his brain, taunting him, reminding him of just how good it was between them.

  “The Key West house,” Jerry prompted.

  Coburn gave him a distracted look. “Sorry?”

  “The Key West house. Diana keeps it.”

  He nodded.

  “The East Side apartment closes this week. Half of those proceeds will go to each of you when that happens.”

  He nodded. He’d hated that apartment from the first day they’d moved in. It had been a stuffy, cliquey building with a tiny terrace that had made him feel like a caged animal. He’d been thrilled to get out of it.

  Jerry wrapped up the remainder of their properties and moved on to the incidentals.

  “The season tickets to the ballet and the opera will go to Diana, while the basketball tickets go to you, Coburn.”

  “Fine.” Did she really think he wanted to attend a brutally boring opera now that they were through? The only reason he’d ever agreed to go was because watching the joy it put in his wife’s eyes when she finally took a night off had been worth it and ten times more.

  He nodded. Waved for him to continue.

  Jerry started listing off such minor, inconsequential stuff his mind faded to black. What the hell did he care if he had the country club membership? He’d never have time to golf. He also had no interest in the artwork Diana had walked off with.

  “I only want the painting of the Pyrenees,” he broke in. “She can have the rest.”

  He’d cycled a race there. It had sentimental value to him.

  Jerry nodded and resumed the exhaustive list. Coburn couldn’t believe he and Diana had accumulated so much stuff in two years. The free spirit in him thought it utterly ridiculous. He waved a hand at Jerry. “She can have it all. Whatever’s on the list, let her take it.”

  He needed to get out of this room now.

  Jerry looked thrown. “Okay—just give me a moment. I’ll move on with the life insurance policies and retirement savings.” He started flipping pages. Coburn blew out a breath, stood up and walked to the windows. This whol
e thing was ridiculous, insane. He and Diana both had enough money individually to never have to worry about their financials. He was seriously thinking of making his will out to a nature organization for when he eventually left this world.

  He turned and leaned back against the windowsill, his gaze moving to his wife. She was still sitting there frozen, as if she was on another planet. He had the vicious urge to do something to shake her out of it.

  “We’ll start with the life insurance policies. You—”

  “Enough.” He waved a hand at Jerry. The lawyer set the paper down with a slow movement, both of the legal experts absorbing his aggressive tone and stance. He pinned his gaze on his wife’s face. “Diana, are you all right?”

  She lifted her chin, her dark eyes flaring with emotion for the first time. “Perfect.”

  Exactly what she’d said to him last night after he’d taken her apart with his despicable behavior.

  Jerry eyed him. “Should we continue?”

  “No.” He kept his gaze trained on Diana. “The agreement is fine, all of it. I, however, am not ready to sign.”

  Diana bolted upright in her chair. He registered the movement with intense satisfaction. His wife was awake. “What do you mean,” she demanded slowly, “not ready?”

  “I mean I’m not ready to sign.”

  “Why not?”

  He lifted a shoulder, sloughing off the incredulous part of his mind that questioned his sanity. “I want more time.”

  Diana’s eyes spit fire at him. “For what? You know I’m leaving the country in three weeks, Coburn. I want this done before that happens, and I’m sure you do, too.”

  He wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. But he was going to take his brother’s advice and figure it out.

  “So sorry to disturb your plans,” he murmured in a voice as smooth as churned butter, “but that’s just the way it is.”

  “Coburn.” Jerry jumped in when it appeared his client might go loco. “It’s highly unusual for a party to back out at this point when we have all the fine print agreed upon. Once Diana leaves the country, it’s doubtful we can facilitate anything, given the spotty communications she might have where she is staying.”