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He knew she’d started to have feelings for him. He could see it in those expressive eyes, every time she challenged him, and every time she fell apart in his arms.
Hell, he’d started to have feelings for her, too. Why deny it? She was beautiful and talented and more captivating and challenging than any woman he’d ever met.
But as Milly tore off her headset, and hopped out of her seat, and he watched the Cade family—Milly’s sister and his brother, with two young kids in tow—head across the lawn in their finery to greet them, he couldn’t seem to shift the tension in his gut. And the shame and anger that came with it.
He’d never been here before. But he’d seen pictures of the ancestral home, and made himself ill with both longing and envy as a kid, because Brandon Cade had everything—while he and his mother had nothing.
He’d met Brandon Cade only once, when he’d managed to blag his way into Cade Tower on the Thames and begged the guy for a job,anyjob, age sixteen, full of misplaced pride and ambition. And been summarily dismissed before being manhandled out of the building and literally thrown onto the street outside.
He’d thought he’d got over that rejection a long time ago. But now, as he watched Cade approach—with a little girl in his arms, who clung to his neck with thrusting affection—the tension in his stomach lodged in his throat.
His half-brother had filled out some since that day sixteen years ago. He hadn’t actually been much older than Roman at the time, having inherited Cade Inc as a teenager. They were the same height now, virtually the same build, and he already knew they had the same colour eyes.
This moment was supposed to be good for him. A chance to finally throw off the shackles of his past, and get over the crappy hand he’d been dealt by Alfred and Brandon Cade. By making the guy eat the decision he’d made all those years ago, not to give Roman a chance. By showing him once and for all he didn’t care about what he’d been denied.
So why did his stomach feel as if it were being tied into tight, greasy knots? And where was the hot flush of guilt comingfrom? It was making him feel like an interloper, like the feral kid he remembered, always on the outside looking in.
But he knew why, as Milly grasped his hand and tugged him down the helicopter’s steps. As always, she had been completely transparent in the past two days, her excitement like that of an eager puppy who had no idea she could be kicked in the teeth at any moment.
‘Come on, Roman,’ she called above the whir of the slowing blades. ‘We’re going to meet my family and there will be no shop talk, promise.’
‘Sure,’ he murmured, doubting very much Cade would wish to speak to him at all.
Letting go of his hand once they reached the grass, Milly rushed to her sister and hugged her, around the baby she held, then she scooped the small bundle out of her sister’s arms and cuddled it. Her niece bounced in her father’s arms. So Milly gave the baby back and greeted the little girl next. Brandon Cade was frowning at him, and watching him, but Roman couldn’t seem to concentrate on the man, or his reaction to him, because all he could see was Milly with the child. Cade’s child. And everything inside him clutched tighter.
Envy, sharp and strong, twisted in his gut, right alongside the shame and guilt and anger. Because as they all stood there together, they were a family.
A family he should want no part of... But apparently some of that needy boy still lingered inside him. Because as Milly walked towards him across the grass, the little girl holding her hand and staring at him with wide green eyes, not unlike his own, the sick feeling morphed into an intense sense of longing he didn’t understand.
‘Roman, I want you to meet my niece, Ruby.’ Milly grinned at the child, the smile on Milly’s face full of the beauty he had gorged on for days. But never seemed to get enough of. ‘Ruby,meet Roman, my...umm.’ A beguiling blush lit Milly’s cheeks as she hesitated over how to refer to him, her eyes full of that intoxicating combination of awareness and innocence. ‘My new friend.’
Nice catch, he thought, at exactly the same time as he found himself wanting her to claim him as much more than just a friend.
‘Hello, Row-mam,’ the little girl said, mangling his name and forcing his attention back to her. Then she dropped her head to one side, studying him with a focus that stunned him.
He knew nothing about kids, had barely ever been one himself. But something about the perceptive way she was staring at him made him feel supremely uncomfortable. As if she could see all his lies.
‘Hey, Ruby,’ he managed, not sure how you addressed a child.
‘I like you,’ she said, sending him a gap-toothed grin. ‘You look like my daddy.’
He blinked, and stiffened, so shocked by the child’s bold statement, and the way it made him feel—angry and bitter, but also ashamed, for inviting himself into this family without ever belonging here.
‘Actually, now you mention it, they do look a bit alike, don’t they?’ Milly said, still smiling, still happy, still unaware of the house of cards she’d built around the man she thought he was.
But just as he was coming to terms with how not good he felt about being here, Cade stepped forward.
Roman braced himself for Cade to destroy his relationship with his sister-in-law—because Roman had been fool enough to give him all the power, again—but instead, he offered Roman his hand.
Roman stared at it, dumbly, not sure what was happening now.
‘Hello, Garner,’ Cade said, with an edge in his voice. He wasn’t happy to have Roman here, clearly, but he was going to play nice in front of his family.
Which was good. Wasn’t it?
Roman shook his hand, surprised to find his brother’s grip firm, but completely astonished when Cade added, ‘You’re welcome in our home. My wife tells me we are not to come to blows over the Drystar acquisition,’ he said dryly, mentioning the takeover Roman had deliberately engineered eighteen months ago—when the chance to frustrate Cade Inc’s business plans and expose him as a deadbeat dad had been irresistible. But then Cade added: ‘Although all bets are off regarding my sister-in-law...’ The warning in his tone was unmistakeable. ‘Because Milly is very precious to us.’
Roman gave a curt nod—the anger rising up his throat again, to dispel at least some of his confusion.
