yellow hair was probably pretty, but she had it rolled in a tight, no-nonsense bun at the back of her head. Her gray suit hid any hint of the body beneath it. He caught the gaze of her blue-gray eyes. In spite of the fact that she dressed to downplay her appearance, Darius felt a click of attraction. And it was mutual. He saw the flicker in her pretty blue orbs.
“It’s up to you how you divide Gino’s time. If you want to have him three days a week and Whitney four, or if you want to have him for two weeks a month and Whitney two, whatever you choose is up to you two. But she will vote his share at your board of directors meetings.”
This time Darius did curse. But he quickly pulled in a breath, struggling to rein in his temper, and glanced again at Whitney. The click of attraction he’d felt when he’d first looked into her eyes turned into a current of electricity that zapped between them. They were definitely attracted.
If this were any other day, any other time, any other circumstance, he would have pursued her. Peel off a few layers of clothes, take down her hair—he was just about certain he’d find paradise.
But those eyes, those pretty Persian-cat eyes, told him to forget it. It didn’t matter if they were attracted to each other. They had a job to do. Raise Gino. Together.
Whitney stayed perfectly still under Darius Andreas’s scrutiny, though warm, sweet attraction hummed through her. She ignored it. He was a gorgeous man with his dark, brooding good looks, his tailored suit made to accentuate his broad shoulders and trim hips, and his commanding personality. Any woman would react to him. Simply from the way his other brothers hadn’t even spoken since introductions were made, it was clear that Darius was the brother in charge. And that was very sexy.
With his piercing onyx eyes boring into hers, she suppressed a shiver. But she wasn’t worried about falling victim to the attraction. Attractions frequently grew into relationships and relationships made people vulnerable. The pain that had followed the loss of her husband had been indescribable. She’d never put herself through that again. She’d never even let herself get close. She couldn’t be attracted to Darius Andreas. She refused.
Darius squeezed his eyes shut in disgust and popped them open again. “All right. Fine.” He motioned for Whitney to follow him. “Let’s go.”
“Go?”
“If this baby’s on the board, he’s working for a living.”
Whitney’s dad laughed. “Very funny, Darius.”
“I’m not laughing. My father left the company in a sad state. There’s work to do. And nobody’s excused. Since your daughter has his vote, she’ll pull his share of the duty.”
“That’s preposterous—”
“Dad.” Whitney interrupted her father. “It’s okay. I’ve never been one to shirk my responsibilities.” She straightened her shoulders and looked Darius in the eye, accepting his challenge. If he thought he’d intimidate her on day one, he was sadly mistaken. She could handle a little work. “If everybody’s working, then I will, too.”
“All right,” her dad agreed, “but before anybody leaves there’s one more thing.”
Darius turned. His dark eyes were ablaze now.
Whitney’s dad looked from Darius to Cade to Nick and back at Darius again. “With someone else in possession of a one-third share of Andreas Holdings, and four brothers sharing the other two-thirds, you don’t have to be a math scholar to know that individually none of you has controlling interest in the whole company.” He glanced from Darius to Cade to Nick again. “Your father has instructed me to allow the holder of the one-third interest to remain anonymous until she decides how to handle her position. She’s in her seventies, so she may simply want to sit back and enjoy the profits. But if she decides she wants to be active in the company, you had better be united or Andreas Holdings will end up being run by somebody other than an Andreas.”
“We’ll need a few minutes.” Past being shocked by the conditions and warnings coming out of his dad’s lawyer’s mouth, Darius spoke quietly, with the authority of command. “We’d appreciate the use of your office to discuss this.”
Gerard Ross rose. “Whitney and I will take Gino to her office. Have Cynthia call us when you’re ready.”
Gerard and Whitney left the room through a side door and Darius faced his brothers. “This wasn’t exactly how we expected the reading of the will to turn out.”
Nick snorted a laugh, but Cade rose. “Frankly, with the exception of Gino, nothing that happened this morning surprised me. You got most of the goodies, Darius. The Montauk estate and the chairmanship, but I think it all evens out with you also getting the baby.” He saluted and headed for the door. “Good luck with that.”
Right. Cade. The rebel. He should have guessed he wouldn’t hang around to lend a helping hand and probably neither would Nick. There was no love, loyalty or unity among the Andreas brothers. They’d gone their separate ways, managed their trust funds individually, made their own fortunes. And each of them had his own life. But after Attorney Ross’s warning about the mystery shareholder, Darius was beginning to understand some of the things their father had babbled about on his deathbed. If they weren’t unified when that shareholder came out of the woodwork they could end up dockworkers in their own shipyards.
“Come on. You can’t just walk away.” He motioned for Cade to return to his seat, but instead, Nick rose.
“Sure we can. You’re the chairman and CEO. You’re the one who has to run things. You might have bullied Ms. Ross into working for you, but we’re not buying in. We’ll be back for board of directors meetings and for our share of the profits.”
“So you really are just going to leave? Even after Dad told us he wanted us to unite? Even after hearing there’s another shareholder?”
“You’ll handle it.”
“This company belongs to all of us. I thought you’d both want a part of things.”
“Yeah, and I thought Dad would be around when I was a kid. But he wasn’t.” Nick caught Darius’s gaze. “You were the golden boy. The company, the baby, the troubles are all yours.”
He left the room with Cade right behind him.
Darius fell to the sofa. Over the years he’d cursed his dad for being a philanderer who had created three very different sons … four now. Today he looked up at the ceiling, finally understanding what had troubled his father for the last ten years of his life. The Andreas brothers truly weren’t family. Having three different moms and hailing from three different parts of the United States, they were as divided as they were different. They might share dark hair, dark eyes and a shrewd business sense, but there was no love lost between them.
The silence of the lawyer’s office rattled around him. Both of his parents were dead now. He had no cousins or aunts and uncles. He had two adult half-brothers, but they wanted nothing to do with him.
He thought back a few weeks to Christmas. He’d gone to parties galore, but on Christmas morning he’d been alone. His footsteps had echoed in his cold, empty apartment. Unless he did a better job of raising Gino than his father had done with him, Nick and Cade, this would be the sound of his life. Silence.
In a weird way, he was glad he’d gotten custody of Gino. Gino was his family now.
