is in trouble. We need your help.”
The precious business Robert Valentine prized above everything? Good. It was about time the womanizing bastard paid for his sins where it hurt him most. “I’m not sure why I should care.”
“Because no matter how stubborn you insist on being, you’re still part of this family.” This time censure mixed with the steel in her voice.
“Did he put you up to this?”
“No.” Another big sigh. “Jack, what happened between the two of you?”
Jack had protected his mother. And it had cost him.
“It doesn’t matter any more, Em.”
The unladylike snort on the other end of the line told him his sister was probably rolling her pale blue eyes in disgust as she fiddled with a strand of curly light brown hair. The vivid image made him miss her.
“I hear in your voice that it still does matter,” she said quietly.
“You’re wrong. Now, if that’s all—” He turned away from the window and leaned back in his chair.
“It’s not,” she snapped. “We need you, Jack. Your job is investing in companies. The family business needs money and quite literally you’re our only hope to keep it going.”
“Lots of investors would love to get their hands on a piece of the action.”
“But they wouldn’t be family. And none of us want to give a non-Valentine a piece of the action because you don’t turn your back on family. It simply isn’t right.”
Even if family turned their backs on him? he wondered. “They’ll survive, Em.”
“I wish I could be as sure.” Sadness shaded her voice. “As you said—it’s been a dozen years. Twelve seems like a good round number to make peace. Tis the season. Peace on earth. Charity begins at home and all that.”
“I’m not feeling charitable.” Jack rested his elbows on his cluttered desk.
“Neither am I.” Frustration laced with anger making her tone more clipped. “You disappeared,” she blurted out. “Dad wouldn’t discuss it and Mum was fragile. I was sixteen when you left me with the whole mess. Big brothers are supposed to take care of their little sisters.”
Little sister knew how to stick the knife in and twist. He’d loved her. Hell, he still loved her.
“I had no choice, Em. I had to leave.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you abandoned me, but you did what you needed to, I guess. Now I need something from you.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “I got married, Jack.”
It took him two beats to pull himself out of the past. His little sister was a married woman? He hadn’t heard. “Congratulations. Who’s the lucky man?”
“He was a prince—”
“Of course he’d be a prince of a guy,” he teased.
She laughed, a happy sound, so different from a few moments ago. “No, Sebastian was actually crowned King of Meridia.”
Meridia. Jack knew it was a small European country and recalled something in the news recently about a scandal in the line of succession. “I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s very important to me that you meet him.”
“Look, Emma—”
“I’ve never asked you for anything,” she interrupted, her voice firm. “But I want this and, quite frankly, I think you owe me, Jack. Come for Christmas. The usual place for the family toast. I’ll be expecting you.”
Before he could decline again, the line went dead. Jack let out a long breath as he replaced the phone. His little sister married a king?
And he’d missed it.
That made him wonder what else he’d missed. But Emma had never told him that she’d felt abandoned. And she hadn’t ever asked him for anything. Until now.
“Jack, you’re out of your mind.” His associate, Maddie Ford, walked into his office without looking up from the proposal he’d given her earlier. “You can’t seriously want to put money into this. It’s crazy. It’s risky. And so like you it makes me want to shake you until your teeth rattle.”
She kept talking, but he was only half listening to blonde, blue-eyed, brainy Maddie. His sensible and down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is Maddie. In the two years since he’d brought her into his company, she’d become more his partner than his assistant. He’d come to rely on her sound judgment. For better or worse she’d become the voice in his head.
She was also the only stunningly beautiful woman he’d never hit on. And he planned to keep it that way because the women who gave in to him were here today and gone tomorrow. Sometimes they were gone in the same day. He wouldn’t do anything to lose Maddie because he needed her around, although what he had in mind wasn’t business related. The thing was, he hadn’t made a fortune by not listening to his gut and it was telling him now to take her with him to meet Emma’s husband.
When she stopped talking to catch a breath he said, “How do you feel about Christmas in London?”
CHAPTER ONE
London—Christmas Day
“I SUPPOSE millionaires have problems, too.”
Maddie Ford waited for a reaction from the bachelor millionaire in the town car beside her and Jack Valentine didn’t disappoint.
He glared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sorry. Did I say that out loud?” she asked, making her eyes as wide and innocent as she could manage.
“You know good and well you did. Was that a blonde moment? Don’t go blonde on me now, Maddie,” he said, irritation in his voice. Or was it tension?
Definitely tension and that wasn’t like Jack. Whatever business had made him insist she come along on this trip must be really important because the strain was showing.
And that was starting to concern her. Jack Valentine was rich, handsome, charismatic and often touted as New York’s most eligible bachelor. He did the charming British thing with overtones of brash American and it worked way too well. From his short, black, carefully mussed hair to his dark blue eyes with the bad-boy gleam that promised trouble in a most appealing way, he exuded the same exciting vibes that had brought down her heart not once, but twice.
In the beginning, she’d had a crush on him but quickly learned he wasn’t a one-woman man. So the fact that he’d never tried anything had convinced her she wasn’t his type. He wasn’t likely to turn his charm in her direction, which was just fine with her. She liked her job.
For the last two plus years she and Jack had worked well together. Her sensible side balanced Jack’s tendency toward rashness. They had been a team. Until he’d messed with her Christmas plans.
