A Forever Love

by Maggie Marr

  “Anthony, might I suggest you take it down a notch?” Leo looked from Justin to Anthony. “You’re speaking about our brother’s son and the mother of his child.”

  “His alleged son.”

  “If there’s enough proof for me, then why isn’t it enough for you?”

  Anthony pulled at the edge of his suit coat. “We’re talking about the heir to a billion-dollar fortune, Justin. This isn’t just some random hookup the tart had, but she’s now managed to wedge her trash and illegitimate child into our lives.”

  As children, the Travati brothers had fought. Tussled and tumbled. They’d broken skin and even given bruises. Justin had given as good as he’d gotten, but at some uncertain moment near adulthood, the physical punches of sibling rivalry had stopped. The physical altercations at least, aside from a jovial pound on the arm, ended. They no longer fought or pummeled or bruised each other. But at this moment, with Anthony standing across the room and his mouth spewing forth insults with regards to Max and Aubrey, the people who were now Justin’s family, Justin pulled on every bit of patience and calm to hold himself back from lunging across the end table and beating the living hell out his arrogant asshole of a younger brother.

  “Anthony,” Justin said evenly with a hard edge to his voice, “I will only ever say this once to you. If you ever make a disparaging remark about Max or his mother to me or to anyone else and I find out, I will make certain that you eat through a straw for the next six months.”

  “Threats?” Anthony pressed his hand to his hip. “You’re making physical threats now, to your brother? The person you know is related to you?”

  Devon’s head jerked toward his older brother.

  Leo leaned forward and placed his palms together. “Anthony, Justin is right. He determines the satisfaction with regards to proof of paternity, and if he says Max is his son and our nephew, then he is. This is not ours to question. Wouldn’t you expect the same sort of respect?”

  “All I know,” Devon said, “is I’m happy to not be the youngest Travati anymore. Don’t have to deal with all the crap of being the youngest for the rest of my life.” Devon lifted a strawberry from the fruit tray before him and smiled. “Got somebody to show the ropes to now.”

  Justin turned to his younger brother. “I’m not sure rope-showing would be appropriate for this trip.”

  “What? He’s coming here? You’re going to let people meet your bastard son?” Anthony asked.

  “What did you just say?” Justin walked toward his brother and halted.

  They stood toe to toe. Anthony was still a quarter inch shorter, even in those two-thousand-dollar Italian handmade shoes.

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me, little brother. One more disparaging word, and we’ll be calling an ambulance to get you out of my office. Are we clear?”

  Anthony’s nostrils flared, and his lips peeled back into a snarl. Leo jumped up from the couch with Devon just behind.

  “Hey, guys?” Devon said and stepped beside Anthony while Leo stood near the center of this soon-to-be dogfight.

  “Oh, we’re clear,” Anthony said. “And you know exactly what I think of this woman and your son.” He turned on his heel and exited the office, throwing one look over his shoulder at his three brothers, a pitying look as though to say, what fools could you all possibly be?

  The tension in the room eased. “Let it go, Justin. He’s dealing with some serious stuff right now. He isn’t himself.”

  Justin didn’t care what the hell Anthony was dealing with as long as his brother understood that he couldn’t make negative remarks about Justin’s family. Family? That’s what Aubrey and Max were to him now. He considered them family.

  “I’m happy for you, brother,” Leo said and slapped his hand against Justin’s arm. “When do they arrive? Can’t wait to get to meet my nephew.”

  “Yeah, man. Didn’t think you’d ever get to have a kid, and now? Wow. This is good news, the best news I’ve heard in weeks.” Devon threw his arms around Justin and gave him a big hug. Their baby brother had always been a hugger. While the other three Travatis were more prone to distant signs of affection, Devon was one to throw his arms around someone and give them a big hug.

  “Mom and Dad would be so happy, man,” Devon said into his brother’s ear. He pulled back, and a giant smile took over his face. “Max, huh? Just like Dad?” Devon nodded and glanced from Justin to Leo. “So when the hell do we get to meet this guy?

  Chapter 20

  “Mom, this place is huge!”

  Aubrey didn’t know what she’d expected, but she hadn’t expected this monstrous penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan. Of course she’d worked in finance, and of course Aubrey understood wealth and the immense fortunes that a tiny number of people in the world had accumulated. Yes, she knew in theory that such wealth existed, but to see the evidence of it, the manifestation of that kind of money, to be in the center of a home that represented all those dollars made by one person, was nearly overwhelming.

  She looked at Max.

  And all this was his. Or would be some day. The pearl within the oyster. The son of one of the richest men in the world.

  Her stomach wobbled. Her fingers tingled.

  “Mom, is this real? I think I saw this painting in one of my history books.”

  Aubrey walked toward the Picasso. “Oh, I’m pretty certain that’s an original.” The spaciousness of this room made her feel as though she hovered over New York. Nearly everything was below her. Max pressed his nose to the glass, and she fought the urge to yank him away from the window.

  “Wow! How high up do you think we are?”

  “Exactly one thousand, three hundred and eighteen feet,” the voice from the door called.

  Aubrey’s heart accelerated, and now the cool feeling of sweat lined her tingling palms while the rest of her body heated. Justin, looking dapper and handsome and every bit the titan of business as he walked across the open expanse to Max. He reached out and pulled him into a hug, a giant smile taking up both of their faces. “Thanks for coming, buddy, and sorry it took so long for your old man to get it together.”

  “No problem, Dad.” Max pulled away and looked up at his dad with an awestruck look. He obviously felt that his dad had quite possibly hung the sun, the moon, and the stars.

  “Aubrey.” Justin turned toward her and walked to her side.

  Heat flared between them, but there was an awkwardness and uncertainty. While he’d exited Hudson better than she’d thought he would and her anger had died down, they’d never addressed the disagreement they’d had. And Max still didn’t know about the relationship they’d had while Justin visited Kansas.

  He pressed his lips to her cheek. “Thank you.” He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry. You were right, Aubrey. You were right about everything.”

  With his words, her remaining anger deflated like a balloon that had been pricked with a pin. Gone was the heat of anger, replaced now with the heat she always felt when she stood beside Justin. Her cheeks flushed. He held both her hands, and his eyes locked to hers. In this very moment, she wished for the briefest instant that Max wasn’t there, that he was fast asleep in some room somewhere in this monstrosity of a penthouse, because the visions dancing through her head were visions of Justin naked and the make-up-slash-you’ve-been-gone-too-long-sex that would surely ensue. Justin’s pupils dilated and his lips parted. They were so close; she took a tiny step forward—

  “Hey, Dad, you got anything to eat? I’m starved after that flight.’

  Aubrey jumped back. How could she forget? She wasn’t here for herself or for Justin and certainly not for sex … Well, not really for sex. She was here for Max so that he might experience his father’s world, meet his uncles, and take his place as a member of the Travati family.

  “Of course. Stocked the refrigerator and the cabinets just for you. Let’s take a look. I think I got everything you like and then some.” Justin slowly dropped h
er hand. Before he turned toward the kitchen where Max waited, he mouthed the words, “Missed you.”

  Aubrey’s sex tightened with the look that accompanied Justin’s silent message. Damn. She’d missed him too. His touch. His laugh. The way that with one look he made her legs turn to rubber bands and nearly crumple beneath her. Yes, she’d missed Justin. And it wasn’t only Justin. She’d missed the feeling of unity, of cohesiveness they’d started to develop the longer he was at Rockwater Farms. They’d begun to make something, an entity that seemed right, a group of three. She followed Justin into the kitchen. Max stood in front of the refrigerator with the two doors opened wide.

  “Mom, you want anything to eat?” He looked over his shoulder toward her.

  Justin turned to her as well. Her breath caught in her chest. That instant of father and son, side by side, both of them looking at her, captured her breath. Stole the life force right from her lungs. My goodness, there would never be a more wonderful sight than this, her two men, the two men both strong and gorgeous and so … so … Travati in their stance.

  “No thanks,” she said softly.

  Justin and Max looked at each other and then turned back to plundering the plethora of food in front of them.

  “Oh yeah! You got my favorite kind of soda, the Jarritos.”

  “I don’t know how you drink that stuff.” Justin pulled out a large rotisserie chicken from the refrigerator. “But I know you love it.”

  Max pulled out a glass container and lifted the lid. He sniffed. “These smell just like Aunt Nina’s mashed potatoes.”

  Justin raised a brow. “She sent the recipe to my chef.”

  “You have your own personal chef?”

  “So do you,” Justin said and handed Max a spoon.

  Max dug into the mashed potatoes cold, taking huge chunks and eating them as though he’d not plowed through three separate sandwiches and a piece of cake on the plane.

  Aubrey’s stomach whirled. The idea of food caused a sour feeling to swirl through her belly. She’d never experienced motion sickness, but since they’d climbed onto the plane, she hadn’t felt right. She sat on one of the leather barstools beside the gargantuan granite kitchen island.

  “You okay?” Justin asked. Concern pulled at the corner of his lips. “You look a little green.”

  “Maybe a little water,” she said and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Please don’t let her be sick. She couldn’t be sick. This was her time with both her guys. Perhaps the only time they’d all spend together. This was the first time that Max would experience New York. See the sights. Be a true tourist. Because eventually this city would claim Max Travati as its own. It might not be now and it might not be during college, but one day he would live here, most likely permanently, and he would take over Travati Financial.

  Justin pulled a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, and handed the glass to her. “You okay?” He lowered his voice and leaned in closer to her. “Maybe you should lie down? Take a rest?”

  “So what’s up for tonight?” Max turned to them. He still held the container of mashed potatoes in one hand but now also had a rotisserie chicken leg grasped tightly in the other.

  Justin smiled. “It would seem the trip has exhausted your mother. I was thinking tonight we might lie low. We could go see a show or even head to the Yankees game.”

  “That’s lying low?”

  Justin nodded. “Travati Financial has a box. You want to go?”

  “Do I want to go? To a Yankees game? Heck yeah!”

  Max’s grin split his face. Even with her stomach sour and her head pounding, she loved seeing her son so very happy.

  “Mom? You going to be okay?”

  So sweet that he would even stop to ask, considering how excited he was.

  “I’ll be fine. That’s perfect because I can take a long bath. Read. Relax. I’m sure it’s jet lag and fatigue. That way I’ll be one hundred percent for tomorrow.”

  Justin nodded and smiled. “Go get ready. We’ll leave in twenty minutes.”

  Max bolted from the kitchen then stopped. “Uh, which room?”

  “The one with the signed jersey from A-Rod on the wall.”

  Max’s eyes widened. “A-Rod? Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope.” Justin smiled. “Go check it out.”

  Max raced from the room and even here, in this giant penthouse, she heard the pounding of his feet going up the stairs.

  “You okay?” Justin leaned in and pressed his hands to the back of her neck and started to rub in slow circles. The tension eased out of her body with his touch, but a different kind of heat now pulsed through her muscles with his continuous rubbing of her neck. She leaned back into his touch.

  “Mmm, that feels so good.” She closed her eyes. She wanted his hands all over her body, his lips on her sex, him deep inside her. She wanted all of him and she wanted him now.

  “Wish I could stay here and take that bath with you,” he whispered in her ear, his voice sandpaper rough with need and want.

  “Me too.”

  “Maybe later. After our son is in bed.”

  “Maybe.” She leaned deeper into his touch, and his lips pressed to the side of her neck. The hot touch caused her nipples to tighten and ache against her bra. Yes, for a moment again she wished that Max were asleep in his new room in his father’s penthouse so that she and Justin might escape to his room and she could release her sexual frustration and want for her husband.

  Husband?

  Her body stiffened. Justin wasn’t her husband. She pulled forward and turned to him. His eyes searched hers as if to ask again if she was all right.

  “What is it?” That raised brow.

  “Nothing … I just …” She stood and pulled away from his touch, sliding her hands into the back of her jeans. “I just keep picturing us all together.” She watched Justin. “When we’re together, at the end of your trip to Rockwater Farms and now, I keep picturing us as a family. That’s confusing to me because I know with your work and my work and with everything in our lives that us being a family simply can’t happen.”

  “Why not?” Justin asked. His voice was low. So sexy. Energy thrummed between them. “Why couldn’t we be a family? I love you, I love Max, and now you’re telling me that you love me too? Families have been formed for worse reasons.”

  Aubrey’s heart pounded. “But how would we? You’re here. I’m in Kansas. How could we make that work?”

  “I don’t know,” Justin said. “And I don’t care, we simply would. We’d make it work because that’s what we’d want. We’d want to be a family. The three of us. Together.” He pulled her close and stared into her eyes. His intensity, his desire for this, was much more than she would have expected, enough to nearly sweep her up into his enthusiasm.

  “But … I mean …”

  He pressed his fingertips to her lips. “There is nothing that would make me happier than to have the two people I love, the two people who mean more to me than anything in the world, become my family. The two of you, you and Max and me. There are no reasons why we can’t make that happen for all of us.”

  Aubrey wanted to believe him. She wanted to think there would be a romantic fairy-tale ending to their story, one that would be the three of them living together, but what about his business in New York and her business at Rockwater Farms? How did you make a romantic relationship work when one person lived in Manhattan and the other in Kansas?

  “You know, I spent three weeks in Kansas and was able to take care of everything but an emergency. I could do it again. And you have Cassidy. Surely for one week a month she and Nina could soldier on at Rockwater Farms without you.”

  Maybe … her head was spinning. Again the sour feeling in her stomach. “I … I think I need to lie down.” She grasped Justin’s arm, and he helped her to her room and the hot bath and the bed so that she could put off her decision until her thoughts were clear.

  Chapter 21

  Perfection could be pur
chased for the right price. Or near perfection. Justin pulled the box from his sport-jacket pocket and snapped open the case. There on the navy blue velvet was a near-perfect six-carat stone in a platinum setting. Clear. Hot. Sharp. Gorgeous. All the traits that the woman he hoped would soon be his wife exhibited. Even the perfection. Or near perfection.

  Across the living room, in the dining room, Max stood beside his mother while she straightened his tie.

  Warmth flew through Justin. He would never grow tired of walking into his home and seeing them both here. Aubrey said something and Max grinned. He replied and they both laughed. This was their second evening and the night that Justin would introduce Max to his uncles. The first night had been the Yankees game. They’d had the entire Travati Financial box to themselves, aside from two rock stars and a Norwegian monarch that Travati Financial had invited to the box for the evening. At first Max seemed stunned, but then he was just Max. A fourteen-year-old kid at his first Yankees game.

  Today had been filled with touristy things. The World Trade Center, the 9/11 Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. The kid wasn’t even tired, but Aubrey? She’d gone back to the penthouse before the Statue of Liberty, claiming fatigue and sour stomach. But when he and Max returned home, she looked fresh and happy and ready for tonight.

  Max seemed nervous on the ride back to the penthouse. He shouldn’t be—these men were his uncles, his family, and they would love him as though he were their own son. They would treat him as a Travati treated family. Loyal to a fault.

  Family.

  The stone sparkled on its bed of velvet. He wanted Aubrey to be an official part of his family. To be his wife. To be the woman he spent the rest of his life with. He pressed the case closed and tucked it back into his jacket pocket, then looked toward the door. There stood Leo and Devon, both of them shifting restlessly, both of them looking nervous.

  Justin strode toward them. “You’re here.” He clasped first Devon and then Leo. “Where’s Anthony?”