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

by Jennifer Hayward

  “Gutsy,” she supplied softly. “To take the untraveled path is full of peril, but it also provides the greatest rewards.”

  His mouth curved. “I married a philosopher.”

  “Who believes in you.”

  “Yes.” He bent and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. “Thank you.”

  The light glittering in his magnetic blue eyes as he drew back to look at her stole her breath. “This is what I’ve been fighting for our entire marriage, Diana. The bond, the power we create when we believe in one other.” He ran the pad of his thumb across her cheek, the gentle caress sending a shiver sliding through her. “When you let me in...”

  A warmth unfurled inside her, wrapping itself around her insides. He loved her. She knew he did.

  Her heart sat suspended in her chest as she waited to hear the words she so desperately needed to hear.

  His gaze darkened. “I have so many things I want to say to you,” he murmured softly, “but this is not the place.”

  Her heart stuttered forward in her chest. She had to swallow past the lump in her throat to speak. “I know.”

  He pressed a kiss to her cheek in a silent promise and drew her into the throng of guests being directed toward the other sweeping hall for dinner. A staff member checked the list and escorted them to their table. They were to dine with Coburn’s Austrian customer and his colleagues.

  Coburn’s fingers tightened against her back as they approached their table. “Is that Frank Moritz?”

  Her gaze zeroed in on the tall, graying figure set in profile standing beside their table. Oh, God, it was. Her stomach dropped. She hadn’t told Coburn about Frank’s job offer. Hadn’t given her mentor an answer yet, either. As if by avoiding the whole subject, clarity would come to her.

  Now that seemed like a very unwise decision.

  She managed to secure a seat beside Frank and his wife, Carole, at the round table for ten, Coburn on her right. She would find an opportunity to tell Frank the fellowship was an off-limits conversation.

  “Six degrees of separation,” she murmured when they all laughed about the connections between them all, Frank and Coburn’s client seeming to go way back. Apparently Frank and the client’s father had competed in luge together during Frank’s youth in Switzerland.

  She focused on finding an opening to talk to Frank while Coburn was engaged with his client. It never seemed to come. The conversation was intimate, moving back and forth across the table like a Ping-Pong game, keeping everyone engaged.

  She started to relax when the chatter stayed rooted in topics such as politics and international business policy. Perhaps Frank knew better than to talk personal business tonight.

  Launching enthusiastically into a discussion about a film generating awards buzz, she kept the conversation flowing. Frank added his usual cutting commentary, then sat back in his chair, bringing his wineglass with him as he trained his gaze on Diana. “You still haven’t given me an answer on the fellowship. I take it that means you aren’t interested.”

  Her husband went rigid beside her. A buzzing sound filled her ears. “Coburn and I haven’t had a chance to discuss it,” she said quietly. “Things have been chaotic.”

  Frank pointed his wineglass at Coburn. “What do you think? Your wife is too talented to not be using her skills.”

  “I think it’s not good timing,” her husband responded in a lethally quiet voice. “Considering Diana is pregnant.”

  The buzzing sound in her ears flatlined. He had not just done that. He had not just outed her pregnancy at a table half-full of strangers.

  Carole’s face lit up. “That’s so wonderful. Congratulations, you two.”

  “I’m only a couple of months along,” Diana murmured. “It’s a bit soon to be talking about it.”

  Frank was watching her with an assessing look. “We could make it work. A few weeks off is no problem. I’d rather have the most talented surgeon.”

  Coburn put his fork and knife down on his plate. “It’s not happening, Moritz. I know how your underlings work. I will not have my wife running from the OR to the delivery room.”

  I will not have... She turned to look at her husband, fury raging through her. Not even the white-hot anger sizzling in his blue eyes could stem the desire to strangle him.

  The silence at the table was deafening. Diana looked at her mentor. “You’ll have to allow us some time to discuss.”

  He inclined his head. “As I mentioned, I have to put a name forth by next week latest. I’m sure your husband will see this as the opportunity it is. I take on one surgeon every two years. That’s it.”

  Coburn said nothing. Carole moved the conversation along. Diana reminded herself her husband was a barely functioning human being right now, but it was no use. She wanted to kill him.

  She had contemplated turning the fellowship down because of him. Because he was more important to her than a job. But she was not and never would be a possession. She’d spent her life allowing her father to make her decisions for her. Coburn was not going to take on that mantle.

  After dinner, Coburn’s customer suggested liquors at the bar. Coburn declined and escorted her out of the building. She waited silently at his side while the valet retrieved the car. When the young man brought the Jaguar to a halt in front of them, Coburn held her door open, waited while she slid in, then slammed it shut behind her.

  She waited until he had gotten in and put the car into gear before she spoke.

  “I was thinking about turning the job down. That’s why I hadn’t responded to him. I knew you needed me more than I needed the job.”

  He pulled out of the driveway. “If you really believed that, you would have turned it down.”

  “It’s more complicated than that, Coburn.”

  “It’s not.” He yanked the car over to the side of the road and put it in park. “Goddammit, Diana, I thought we were getting somewhere. That we were finally being honest with each other. That we had the partnership I had always dreamed of. When all along you were keeping this from me.” His gaze pinned her to the seat. “When did he ask you?”

  Heat singed her cheeks. “A few weeks ago. But it wasn’t the right timing to bring it up.”

  He threw his head back against the seat. “So you said nothing. You allowed me to be blindsided tonight by Frank Moritz, who took great pleasure in putting me on the spot. Who made me look like a complete fool in front of a client by not knowing my wife had been offered a prestigious fellowship.”

  “It’s your fault. If you weren’t so crazed about my job, I would have told you and this never would have happened. As it was, I was doing everything not to set you off like a powder keg.”

  “So now it’s my fault?” He turned and rested his gaze on her. “It doesn’t excuse the lack of honesty.”

  She bit her lip, trying to be the reasonable one here. “I should have told you. But you can’t unilaterally make decisions for me like that. I won’t have it.”

  “And I won’t have you taking that job. It will consume you, Diana. There won’t be any room left for me or our baby.”

  It was the ultimatum that did it. “I guess that revelation in the Virgin Islands about the importance of my job was just talk. Do you have any idea how amazing this opportunity is? Frank Moritz was short-listed for a Nobel Prize. Working with him would put me on a world stage. Cement my career as a pediatric surgeon.”

  “I’m not saying it isn’t a great opportunity. I’m insanely proud of you. I always have been. But this is not the right timing for us. It will kill what we’ve built.”

  “What will kill what we’ve built,” she countered, “is if I continue this role I’ve been playing forever. I have spent the past three weeks attending every boring benefit you’ve asked me to, lunching with Jack Nieman’s wife, who is a total piece of work just like
him, by the way. I have played the perfect CEO’s partner to the hilt. And I have done it willingly because I love you, Coburn. Because I know you need me right now. But I will not have you treat me like this, no matter how stressed you are.”

  His face tightened. “I’m sorry it’s been such a chore supporting me.”

  “Take the ultimatum back,” she said levelly, “and we can talk about this.”

  “No.”

  She tried to control the bitterness, the sadness that filled her at his total lack of give in this relationship. But she couldn’t manage it. Not this time.

  “You know what, Coburn? You don’t want me. You want that mirage you were talking about. A wife intelligent enough to turn you on, but not so ambitious she might actually challenge your need for control. I hate to burst your bubble, but she doesn’t actually exist.”

  She reached for the door handle and yanked it open. Coburn curled his fingers around her arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Putting a halt to this before we implode.” She shook off his hand and slid out of the car. “This time I am saving us, Coburn. Let me know when you’re ready to start acting like a reasonable human being.”

  He got out of the car. “Goddamn you, Diana, do not walk out on me again. You do it this time and we’re done.”

  She was too busy crossing the street to flag down a cab coming the other way.

  Damn him. Just when she’d let hope take over. When she’d allowed her heart to feel everything for him, he had to prove some things never changed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A SOBER GRAY suit will strike exactly the right note.

  Coburn stood in front of the magnificent gold-accented steel structure that was the Grant Industries skyscraper, a tight feeling in his chest as he looked up at the building his father had built. He wasn’t sure the custom-tailored, charcoal-gray suit he had worn this morning per his crisis communications expert’s advice was going to be enough to convince the world that the iconic Grant brand was still to be trusted after producing the parts that had taken the lives of five people and injured countless more.

  His father, who had made Grant into a symbol of the American dream, would roll over in his grave if he knew what he was about to do. His brother, one of the great business brains on the planet, would have chosen another path. The board had fought him tooth and nail to take a more conservative route. And yet through it all, his conviction about doing what was right had remained. He hoped that by acting with honor, transparency, his legacy would weather the storm he was about to unleash.

  What the hell do you think you’re doing?

  He could almost feel the bite of his father’s voice, picture the sting of his gray gaze as it lashed over him. Clifford Grant’s blinding ambition had come before everything. Before his family, before his own mental well-being. And Coburn realized now he had been angry for a very long time—at his father for the way he’d treated him, for taking the coward’s way out, at himself for letting it happen. But he was ready to let it go now. He was poised to forge his own path. He was not going to be the kind of man his father had been. He’d decided that a long time ago.

  His steps as he pushed through the heavy glass doors and strode across the gleaming checkerboard marble floor toward the elevators were purposeful, his mind resolute. Which left his marriage as the outstanding crisis he needed to address. His asinine behavior Friday evening had done nothing but prove his wife right. She hadn’t told him about the job because she’d known he’d react exactly as he had. Like the first-class jackass he was when it came to her. Because he loved her too much.

  Waking up this morning without Diana for the third day in a row, faced with losing the woman who meant everything to him for the second time, he had been forced to take a good, hard look at himself. To question where his need to control her really came from. It hadn’t taken him long to pinpoint the source. It stemmed from a childhood in which love had been given, then taken away. From the void inside him that needed to be the most important thing in Diana’s life because he had never been prioritized in his closest relationships.

  For him to commit to a woman had been the ultimate act of vulnerability. When Diana had walked out on him, she had confirmed everything he had ever believed about himself. That he wasn’t good enough. That he wasn’t deserving of love.

  Her keeping that job from him had triggered all his old insecurities at the worst moment. He needed complete honesty in his marriage. But it didn’t excuse his behavior. Nothing did.

  He stepped onto the elevator and jabbed the button for the executive floor. He didn’t want Diana to take that job. Knew what it would do to them. But he couldn’t deny what an opportunity it was for her. It was a once-in-a-lifetime offer that would lie between him and his brilliant wife forever if she turned it down, eventually driving them apart.

  A fist tightened around his heart. Losing Diana wasn’t an option. He would make this right. Somehow.

  If he hadn’t lost her already.

  Tracey, his director of PR, was waiting to do a final briefing with him before the press conference when he arrived.

  “We have a problem. The victims’ families just issued a statement to hijack our news.”

  She handed him her smartphone. He read the statement. Felt the color drain from his face at the astronomical settlement figure the group was putting forth. It would cripple Grant.

  “It’s a bargaining tactic,” he told Tracey.

  “So we treat it as one. We have thirty minutes to craft a response.”

  Harrison was campaigning in California. The future of Grant lay in what he did next. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “All right, then. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The scale of the press gathered in the briefing room when Coburn entered, flanked by his PR team, was breathtaking. Every major broadcast outlet in the country was there, each of them clamoring to turn a tragedy into prime-time news.

  His rock-solid readiness of earlier that morning had been shattered by the preemptive tactics of the class action suit, leaving him raw and shaken. By attempting to do the right thing and win in the court of public opinion, he had exposed Grant to a well-orchestrated, perfectly timed opening salvo by the opposing counsel. One that could devastate it.

  He scanned the room, his gaze moving over the far wall, where Jack Nieman and a couple of other board members stood. The sight of the stunning dark-haired woman standing to his right left his heart suspended in midbeat as his gaze locked with his wife’s.

  She had come. She had kept her promise to be there for him, despite the rash ultimatum he’d thrown at her on Friday night. The discovery made his knees go weak.

  Diana’s dark gaze was steady and clear as she stared at him across the sea of faces. Stay the course, her eyes said. What’s right is never wrong.

  It reinforced everything his wavering brain needed to hear.

  Tracey touched his arm. His heart kicked back into motion as he pulled his gaze away from his wife and he and his director of PR walked to the front of the room. Tracey stepped onto the podium, introduced him and indicated he’d give a short statement followed by a Q&A. The Q&A had been his decision. Tracey had warned him it might get ugly, likely would get ugly, but the only thing on his mind was total and complete transparency.

  He read the statement. Watched the frown on Jack Nieman’s face grow as he took total responsibility for a tragedy that could have been prevented. The buzzing room went completely silent as he apologized to the families of the victims and vowed to do right by them. “It has not been Grant’s finest moment,” he finished, “but we will earn your trust again. I promise you that.”

  Tracey stepped forward and began fielding questions. The first, from a national news reporter in the front row, had him closing his eyes.

 
“What do you think your father would say if he was here today?”

  He opened them. “He would say we need to do better. And we will.”

  The crucifixion went on for fifty minutes. Settlement numbers were thrown at him. Questions about the company’s safety protocols. The viability of Grant was raised.

  If he’d thought it was going to be tough, it had been ten times worse. He could only hope for his legacy’s sake that it had been enough.

  “The one-on-one with the Wall Street Journal,” Tracey prompted.

  He flicked his gaze to where his wife stood, only the space beside Jack Nieman was empty now. Diana had left.

  His heart plummeted. The urge to go after her, to dump the Wall Street Journal in favor of keeping his wife, saving the one thing that meant everything to him, was so fierce it took all he had to keep his feet firmly rooted to the ground and nod at his director of PR he was ready.

  Diana had left a door open. He would have to wait a few hours to ensure it never closed again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DIANA WAS AFRAID to watch the news that evening, too terrified to see what that shark of a press corps would do to her husband following the public dismantlement of him that morning. Heart in her throat, she paced the hardwood floors of Beth’s tiny living room. When her friend still wasn’t home by six, she gave in and turned on the news. The recall was the top story in the broadcast.

  She sat down on the sofa as the host introduced a panel of experts assembled to offer their opinion on what the recall would mean for Grant and the industry. The first question put to the panel was what they thought of her husband’s performance today. Her hands twisted in her lap, her heartbeat accelerating as the tough-as-nails head of a national industry organization took the question first. The graying official shook his head ruefully. “Undoubtedly one of the gutsiest displays I’ve seen in my fourteen-year career. The tide could have gone either way on this one. Instead, Coburn Grant pulled the public on his side with a magnificent, rock-solid performance that was a master class in brilliant crisis communications. He may just have saved an American icon.”