by Sierra Rose
It was completely humbling to see a grown man cry, especially a man as strong as he was. I held him for another minute or two, to give him a chance to get himself under control. When he pulled gently away, there were still tears on his face, but his sobbing had stopped.
“How did you know to come here?” he asked, staring down at me.
It was a damn good question and a valid one, but there was no simple answer. I had no idea what had inspired me to come, so I could only blame that damn persistent voice in my head.
“Lucky guess.” I swept his messy hair off his forehead and gave him a gentle smile. “Nick’s freaking out, looking for you.”
James sighed. “I imagine he’s halfway to Switzerland by now. It’ll give him an excuse to have a pint of that cider he loves so much.”
I shot him a strange look, but it was no stranger than the look he was giving me. Before I could ask about the inexplicable significance of Switzerland, he beat me to the punch.
“Why are you dressed like a sexy bellhop?”
My cheeks flushed as I glanced down at my strange attire. It seemed like such a good idea back at the penthouse, but now I was beginning to regret the frills. “Do I really need a reason?” I said.
He threw back his head and let loose with a burst of breathless laughter, the first real ray of light in an otherwise dark day. His eyes swept over me with a hint of that old twinkle before he opened his arms and pulled me tenderly into an embrace. “Thank you for coming,” he murmured, pressing his lips against my hair.
My eyes snapped shut as a warm smile seemed to light me up from the inside out. “In what world wouldn’t I be here, James? I’m always here for you.” I kissed the inside of his palm. “You know that.”
He paused to internalize that promise, then eased us toward topics of a lighter nature. “Well, thank you for the sexy bellhop, whatever the reason. Saves me from having to find another.”
I bit down on my lip, trying to suppress my laughter. “Whatever you need, sir.”
He gripped me tighter for a split second before letting go with a tired sigh. “Actually, as much as it kills me to say it, what I need is to call my brother.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and powered it on again. “For all I know, he hasn’t even heard...”
I waited patiently beside him, one arm still thrown around his waist, as he pressed a speed-dial button and waited for Robert to answer. Three rings later, he was about to hang up and try again when a young man’s voice came on the line, a voice that certainly wasn’t Robert’s.
“Hello?”
James glanced down at the phone for a second, making sure he’d called the right person, before continuing tentatively, “Hi. This is, uh...James Cross. I’m looking for my brother, Rob. Is he there?”
“Oh, Mr. Cross, of course!” Seth was so impossibly effusive that it was easy to hear him, even while I stood a foot away. “Your brother is... Actually, he’s in a meeting at the moment. Is there any way I can take a message?”
James paused, unsure how to continue. “A meeting, you say?” His eyes flickered quickly to mine before he gripped the phone tighter, his brow creasing with a little frown. “Listen... Who are you?”
“Seth McConnell, sir.”
“Yeah, well, Seth, something’s actually come up, a bit of a family emergency that can’t wait. Can you please pull Rob out of the meeting for me?”
“My apologies, sir,” Seth said.
“For what?”
“Well, I-I didn’t even think to offer you my condolences.” With that, Seth’s voice dropped an octave, to a more solemn, appropriate tone. “All of us over here at Cross were so very sorry to hear about your father.”
James blinked in surprise, but my mouth fell open in confusion. For a second, all was quiet, until I gave his waist a little squeeze, urging him to continue.
“You-You know about my father? Rob knows?”
There was a tense pause.
“Rob knows, yet he’s in a fucking meeting?”
The next pause was even more intense. I could practically hear Seth scrambling on the other end, hear his mind racing before his voice jumped several octaves again in panic.
“Like I said, I’d be happy to take a message if—”
James grinded his teeth together, trying very hard to rein in his temper. “What’s this meeting about, Seth? What could possibly be more important than...this?”
During the next pause, I could have sworn young Seth popped a valium, just to stay sane.
“Well, actually, sir, the meeting is about your father. Robert called it just after he heard, summoned the entire board. I-I think he’s being named CEO.”
James’s entire body froze, and a truly terrifying expression flashed through his eyes. “Is he now?”
Within the next second, the phone was in the river, the rooftop was abandoned, and James Cross was half-dragging, half-carrying me down the stairs.
“Wh-Where are we going?” I said between gasps as we poured onto the street.
James lifted his hand to hail a cab, with that same deadly inferno still blazing in his eyes. “To work,” he replied in a flat monotone, stepping into the middle of the street as a taxi screeched to a stop in front of him. “It seems my brother called a meeting, one I should have been invited to attend.”
Chapter 3
I HURRIED AFTER JAMES across the street, dodging cars and sliding this way and that in my towering heels. I had no idea how he moved so impossibly fast, but at the moment, there were bigger fish to fry than suggesting he join an Olympic speed-walking team.
“James, please slow down,” I said as I skittered around a trio of baffled pedestrians. I grabbed him by the sleeve and held on for dear life. “Maybe you should, uh...slow down for a second and think about this.”
A store clerk emptied water from a second-story vase, but it landed on the cement behind him. A pile of bottles slipped off a recycling truck, but they landed on the sidewalk in front of him. A furious, half-dressed woman lobbed a house key at a remorseful-looking man, but it sailed over James’s head, missing him by mere inches, and he didn’t even seem to notice. Not once did his pace falter as he stormed up and down those London streets, his dark eyes never leaving his target: Cross Enterprises.
The skyscraper loomed up ahead, getting closer with every step. Still, I had no idea what James was planning, and at that point, I didn’t think he even knew himself.
“Please, honey, just talk to me.” I circled in front of him, and for the first time since throwing his phone into the river, he came to a sudden pause. “Look, I know you’re incredibly upset, and I can’t believe that even someone as foul as your brother is trying to use this as a business opportunity, but the last thing you should do is run in there with your guns blazing.”
James stared at me for a moment, completely devoid of any decipherable emotion, then threw back his head and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Frank!”
“London is a city, James, not your personal playground. You can’t just shout for someone in the middle of the street and hope he’ll...”
I trailed off in astonishment as a black car pulled out of nowhere, and a tall man stepped swiftly onto the cement. It took only a split second for him to get his bearings, and he then walked briskly forward and came to a stop right in front of James.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he spoke with clipped, professional efficiency, one that didn’t entirely hide his personal concern over his employer’s unusual behavior. “Traffic is terrible this time of day, so it took me a moment to find you. I tried calling your cell—”
“No use. It took a swim,” James interrupted shortly. “Frank, I need a tie, please. Like right now.”
“Certainly, sir. One moment.” With that, Frank dutifully bowed his head and swept back to the car. He returned the promised moment later, with a selection of no less than a dozen silk business ties. It was the sort of collection most men would kill for, but I was quite sure James would literally knot them together to for
m a rope to escape out a conference room window rather than sitting through a meeting, if he didn’t form a noose to hang his brother first.
James perused the pile briefly before selecting a blue one in the center.
Frank nodded at once and looped it around his neck, then tied it to perfection.
“So Frank is your...” I ventured.
“My driver,” James answered in that same fast-paced clip, his eyes never leaving the sixty-fifth floor, “amongst other things.”
“Chef, bodyguard, messenger, therapist...” Frank flashed a quick smile as he finished securing the tie. “I also play many roles for which I have yet to be paid.”
“Yet to be paid? Frank, you make more money than Della,” James snapped.
My eyebrows shot into my hair with genuine interest. “Is that true?”
Hmm. I could always take up driving. Pity they do it on the wrong side of the road.
“Couldn’t matter less,” Frank said swiftly. “It’s best not to dwell on the material. Will that be all for now, sir?” he asked as he followed James’s gaze to his father’s skyscraper. “Will you be requiring a catapult as well? Are we laying siege?”
A flicker of humor flashed through James’s eyes before his lips twitched up in a wry smile. “We’re not seizing anything, old friend. We’re storming the castle...with our guns blazing.”
Without another word, he set off once more, leaving Frank and me standing in a daze behind him, staring after him in concern.
After a second, Frank glanced down at me uncertainly, wondering how far the lines of professionalism could be stretched. Whatever he saw must have been encouraging, because he gave me a sideways glance before daring, “Do you know what happened? Is he all right?”
I glanced up in surprise before turning back to James, locking my eyes on his dark head of hair as he weaved through the crowd, nearing the base of the building. “His father... Mr. Cross just, uh...died.”
Frank’s mouth fell open in shock before he, too, stared after James, a look of profound sympathy softening the lines in his face. “And Robert called the meeting, yes?”
“Yeah.” I found myself curious yet oddly comforted that James’s entourage seemed to have seen it coming. “James is going there now. I guess that was why he needed the tie.”
Frank absorbed that for a moment before nodding briskly and putting on his cap. “It could be worse,” he thought, then flashed me a sad smile and headed slowly back to the car. “The last time something like this happened, I had to drag him back from Switzerland. He’s a big fan of that cider, you know.”
I blinked once, then lifted my hand in a belated farewell, vowing mentally that I had to discover the hidden significance of Switzerland, other than cold cider. With that etched into my mind, I hurried down the street after James and reached him just as he got to the outer steps.
Jerry, the faithful doorman, pulled open the door with a silent gasp, one spawned by either the look on James’s face or the fact that he was actually deigning to visit his late father’s multibillion-dollar company. Jerry did manage to mumble a quiet but sincere note of sympathy as James swept by.
As it turned out, that was, quite possibly, the only thing in the world that could have stopped him. In the last hour, James had heard news of his father’s death screamed at him from a sea of heartless reporters he’d never meet. He’d seen it dismissed by the board, forgotten by a secretary, and leveraged by his evil twin. Even his driver and faithful servant Frank didn’t know and couldn’t, therefore, be very sympathetic. In fact, he had yet to hear a single condolence from anyone but me.
His feet skidded to a sudden stop on the checkered tile, sending his dark hair flying out in front of him as he turned slowly around. For a second, I thought Jerry was going to faint dead away; after all, it was a rare day when anyone other than Madison or I bothered to talk to him, because most were far too busy rushing into or out of the building to consider him anything more than part of the furniture. It was a monumental show of bravery for Jerry to dare a word to James, and his face paled and his knees trembled as the son of the former CEO paused his blitz attack and turned around to look him square in the eyes.
“Thanks, Jerry.”
In that moment, I fell for James Cross all over again. He valued the little things, and while he was the prince of the castle, he also took the time to know the lowly doorman’s name.
Jerry’s face warmed with a flush as he lowered his eyes to the floor and gestured us toward the elevators. It was a brief exchange, to be sure, but I had never seen him look so pleased, at least not since Madison offered him a swig of whiskey from her work flask when we returned to the office late after sushi one day.
I didn’t have time to dwell on the touching moment, though, because James was already streaking toward the elevators. A microsecond later, he was smashing his fist impatiently against the button for the top floor.
I made it inside just as the doors slid shut, and I had to throw my hands out for balance as I skidded to a precarious stop. “James, I really don’t think—”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it, Della,” he said flatly, his shoulders squared and his eyes locked on those doors, every fiber of his body waiting for them to open. “I’m going, and that’s final. He has no right to...”
Never before had I heard him speak in such a way. It wasn’t exactly cold, but there wasn’t an ounce of leniency in his voice, not a hint of the playfulness I’d come to expect.
“Try to talk you out of what?” I asked carefully, unsettled by the unpredictable new side of him. “Do you even know what you’re gonna do in there? Have you even tried to think it through?”
A flicker of doubt clouded his bright eyes, but that was quickly replaced with a fiery determination, one I knew I didn’t have a prayer of tempering on a single elevator ride. “I’m going to remind the board and my brother,” he finally said, his voice tightening dangerously around that word, “that our father’s body is still warm. Before they start dividing up the kingdom, they would do well to show some damn respect for the man who gave it to them in the first place, the man who built this damn Cross castle from the fucking ground up.”
I agreed with him completely; in fact, I couldn’t have agreed more. As the number above the doors flashed closer and closer to the top, I slipped my hand into his and gave him a little squeeze to show my support. “What can I do to help?”
He looked down at me in surprise, obviously expecting more resistance. “This. You’re doing it already, just being here for me,” he said, his face softening with the ghost of a smile.
The two of us shared a fleeting look, but as soon as the doors whooshed open with a ding that felt like the bell of a boxing match about to start, the hunt was on.
James stepped briskly onto the floor, his eyes burning with a predatory kind of fire as they locked on to the conference room. Inside, the silhouettes of a dozen men sat still, all facing a single shadow pacing the floor in front of them. James’s face went rigid at the sight of Rob, and his fingers curled up into tight fists. He took on a demeanor chillingly reminiscent of the way he looked the last time he and his brother faced off on the sixty-fifth floor.
“Hey,” I murmured under my breath, “you’re not going to go all Rambo in there and tear the place up, are you? The last thing you need today is an assault charge.”
A hint of a smile flickered across his face, but his eyes dilated, until they were almost as black and haunting as a shark’s. “You know, for a yank, you sure worry a helluva lot, love. Has anyone ever told you that?” he asked as the blue returned to his irises. Then, with an air of complete and utter confidence, he smoothed back his hair. “Fear not, milady. I promise to be nothing but a gentleman the entire time.”
Then he crossed the rook, took one step forward, and kicked down the door.
Chapter 4
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO say who appeared to be more surprised. My money was on Robert and not the board members, but then again, Robert had
to be half-convinced that his brother would storm all the way across London just to kick his ass, and he wasn’t entirely wrong in that assumption.
“James!” Robert froze where he stood, angled so the massive table stood like a wall of safety between them. “I’m sorry. I-I mean... What are you doing here?”
Before James could answer, half a dozen older men pushed to their feet, lowering their eyes to the table in respect and holding their hats in their hands.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, James,” said the one standing nearest the door. He placed a heavy hand on James’s shoulder and shook his head in remorse. “Ben was a giant among men. No one in this world will ever replace him.”
It was an interesting choice of words, given what they had all gathered to do, but nonetheless, the rest of them made their way forward. They took turn offering their official, obligatory condolences, offering an anecdote here and there to try to lighten the mood. Some were sincerer than others, but most couldn’t keep their eyes off the broken hinges on the door.
I pressed my back against the wall, clinging to it like a goldfish that had accidentally wandered into a whole sea of sharks. I knew I had no business being there, and even though I’d played an integral role in saving their company, I had never actually met most of them. I was really only there because James asked me to be, and there was truly no limit to the things I would do for that man, especially when he needed me that badly.
James went through the motions with a clenched jaw, keeping one eye on Robert the entire time. He was neither fooled nor moved by the sudden show of comradery. Quite the contrary, the longer the sow went on, the more bitter he seemed to be.