He dropped his hand and stepped back. “Just because something isn’t legally wrong, doesn’t make it right.”
His withdrawal hurt even though she told herself it was what she wanted. “Can we stop talking about the past? I’d rather forget it.”
Kane’s eyes flashed with a challenge. “Would you?”
Gigi glared at him. “I don’t like you.”
His smile was twisted with irony. “That’s probably for the best, but not why I’m here. I know why you went to the wedding even if you’re not brave enough to tell me.”
Gigi pursed her lips in irritation, and glared at a place halfway up his chest.
“You want to know your brothers, but you’re too damn scared to get out of your own way and let it happen.”
“I’m not—” She stopped before voicing the lie. “Even if I am, who are you to come here and judge me? You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve been through. I went to that damn wedding in a moment of weakness, and it didn’t make it better. It made it worse. What you call hiding, I call making healthy choices. If I know something hurts me, why would I do it again? I have a life in Scotland where I am perfectly happy. I have a career I love. Tell me, why I should risk that?”
Frowning, Kane softened his voice. “You really are scared.”
Gigi turned away. She’d already told him more than she’d meant to. More than she’d ever said to anyone.
His voice was gentle and from a spot right behind her. “Do you know why I’m here?”
Without turning, Gigi answered tightly, “For my brothers.” She didn’t add the part that hurt even though it was ridiculous. Not for me. He wouldn’t come for me.
“Gio’s wife, Julia, actually. She’s pregnant, and she wants you in her child’s life.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
With a hand on her arm, Kane swung Gigi around. “You’re not sorry at all. Julia is one of the kindest, sweetest women I know. You’re lucky she cares enough about you to send anyone for you.”
Gigi struggled against his hold. “Lucky? Which part of this should I feel good about? The fact that no one respects my wishes to be left alone or your manhandling?”
His nostrils flared and his hand tightened on her arm before he released her roughly. “You’re three years older, but you haven’t changed at all from the angry little girl I met on Slater Island.”
“And you’re still as condescending and full of yourself.”
They stood there, nose to nose, in a heavily charged stand off.
From the doorway, Leora chastised both of them. “The two of you could wake the dead with your arguing.” She walked into the room, took a seat, and picked up her espresso. “I was hoping your talk would go better.”
Kane shook his head, folding his arms across his chest arrogantly. “She’s impossible.”
Gigi folded her arms in a similar fashion and planted her feet stubbornly. “Me? Mamma, I told him to leave, but he’s too thickheaded to go.”
Keeping his eyes on Gigi’s, Kane growled, “I’ll leave the moment you agree to go with me and not before.”
Gigi leaned in and growled back, “Then I hope you enjoy sleeping in my mother’s parlor because I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Gigia,” Leora said in a softly authoritative tone, “come sit with me.”
Reluctantly, Gigi backed away from Kane and went to sit beside her mother. Leora took one of her hands between both of hers and held it on her lap. “When you said you wanted to go to school in England, did I stop you?”
“No, Mamma,” Gigi said. She knew just how much her mother had given up for her and although she could fight with the rest of the world, she could never fight with someone who loved her as her mother did.
“And when you wanted to go to the university there, I agreed you should do what you want, didn’t I? We made it happen together, didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“I would do anything for you. I couldn’t love you more, but that doesn’t mean I agree with your choices. You’re wrong on this, Gigia. So very wrong. Life goes by in a flash. Do you really want to miss your chance to know your family? To be one of them?”
“I have a family. I have you.”
Leora gave Gigi a gentle smile. “You have so much more. Go back with Kane. Meet your brothers and their wives. If you don’t like them, we’ll never talk of them again. But don’t shut your heart to love unless you’re given a good reason to.”
Gigi shook her head back and forth as she absorbed her mother’s request. “So, what would you have me do—go back with him now? Just like that? I have a business to run. I have commitments.”
Leora met her daughter’s eyes. “You have a partner. She’ll understand. Go, Gigia. Do this for me.”
Gigi looked across the room at Kane. His expression was unreadable. Their eyes met. Was Kane really there because her sister-in-law was pregnant and wanted to meet her? Why is my mother so determined that I meet the very people who turned their backs on her? She thought back to the way her brothers had looked at their wives with love and tenderness. Why had they denied Gigi and her mother as long as they did? They claimed they wanted to know Gigi now. Words that came too late. Empty claims that meant nothing more than all the promises their father had made. None of that changed the hopeful look on her mother’s face. If going to the States put an end to her mother worrying over the topic, then let it be so.
“I’ll go.”
Kane’s smile held approval and a touch of satisfaction as if he’d personally convinced her.
Gigi added, “Only because you asked me to, Mamma. Not for any other reason.”
* * *
Several hours later, Kane sat across from Gigi in the lounge area of his private jet. She hadn’t said more than yes or no to him since they’d left Venice. Normally he would have appreciated a quiet flight since he had emails to answer and project proposals to read. He’d taken out his laptop and tried to work, but his attention kept drifting back to the woman who was nervously chewing her thumbnail as she stared out the window. He said, “I spoke with Julia. She and Gio will meet us when we land.”
Gigi didn’t acknowledge she’d heard him.
“When you first meet Gio you may think he’s standoffish. He doesn’t mean to be. Once you get to know him, he’s actually quite funny.”
In a quiet voice, Gigi said, “He came to my mother’s house after my father died. He was there to bring Papa back to the States. He threatened my mother, threatened to take our home if she ever spoke of my father. That’s all I will see when I look at him.”
“He didn’t know about you then, Gigi.”
“So he claims.”
“I grew up with Gio. He’s like a brother to me. If he says he didn’t know, I believe him.”
With her face still averted, Gigi said, “Either way, he was cruel to my mother. I can’t forgive that, even if she can.”
Kane put his laptop aside. “When I first met Gio I teased him about taking everything too seriously. It wasn’t until we became good friends I realized how a family could look normal from the outside but be completely dysfunctional. Gio’s mother passed away nearly four years ago, but her legacy lives on in her sons. She did everything she could to set them against each other. I’m not defending what you heard Gio say that day, but I can make a good guess why he said it. He was a messenger, Gigi, and a young one. Don’t hold that day against him.”
Gigi looked across at Kane tentatively. “What did he say when you told him I was coming?”
“He said, ‘Good.’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s Gio.”
“You said his wife, Julia, is a nice woman?”
“The nicest. So sweet you’ll wonder if it’s an act, but after you spend enough time with her you’ll see she is completely genuine.”
Gigi looked at, then hid, her chewed nail beneath her other hand. “She seemed to be a good match for him when I saw them together.”
&nb
sp; “She is. They bring out the best in each other.”
“Are you close to all of them—my brothers? What are they like?”
She asked the question with such yearning his heart went out to her. He wanted to gather her into his arms and reassure her everything would be fine, her brothers would love her, and that coming was indeed the right decision. He wanted to swear he’d stay with her to ensure it all worked out. He couldn’t. Being so close to her would be its own sweet torture. After he handed her off to Gio, he needed to put as much distance as he could between them. What had initially been a purely physical attraction was deepening. Watching Gigi with her mother had shown him another side of her. She wasn’t childishly defiant, as he’d originally thought. She felt hurt and rejected by her brothers and dealt with those feelings by isolating herself. She needed a bridge back to her brothers. “Gio is the oldest. As I said, he takes his role very seriously. Luke is the second oldest. At first, you’ll probably like him the best. I’ve never met a person who didn’t get along with Luke. He has an easy way about him. He was a surgeon in New York, but now he practices in Ohio. He and his wife, Cassie have a two-and-a-half-year-old. She’s a hoot. I joke that she has a lot of Nick in her, and if that’s true she’s going to give her parents a run for their money. Nick married my sister, Rena. They don’t have any children yet, thank God. I’m not sure the world is ready for their offspring. Nick is . . . irreverent. He was a hard one to like until my sister fell in love with him. Don’t take anything he says seriously. He has a sense of humor that can take a while to get used to. The youngest is Max. He married Tara. Max has always done his own thing, so of the four I know him the least, but he’s been spending a lot more time with his family since he and his wife had their first child last Christmas.”
“You make them sound like regular people.”
“What do you think they are?”
Gigi’s eyes were wide with emotion. “I’m not like them. I wasn’t raised with money. I’m proud of what I do, but I didn’t grow up like this.” She referenced the jet with a wave of her hand.
“What exactly do you do?”
“I connect people who have something to sell with either an auction house or a private buyer. It’s a business my friend Annelise and I sort of fell into after college. I knew my mother had sold off items to pay for my schooling, but it wasn’t until I heard her speaking to a friend about the process that I realized how often she’d been taken advantage of. Her friend, Doris Sneddon, was looking to sell off some estate items to stop her family home from going into foreclosure. Doris lived just outside of Edinburgh. Annelise was from that area, so I asked her to help me help Doris. We catalogued her estate and helped her sell the least number of items for the most amount of money. Word of mouth is a powerful thing. Money was tight in the beginning, but we’ve had a constant stream of clients since. We compare it to running a funeral home. No one wants to come to us, but we make the best of difficult situations, and people are grateful for that.” As Gigi spoke about her life in Edinburgh, her nervousness fell away. She was once again the confident woman he remembered from their first meeting. There was passion in her voice as she spoke about what she did for a living. Kane could have listened to her speak for hours. Still, something she’d said bothered him. “Your father was a wealthy man. He didn’t leave you anything in his will?” Kane’s temper rose at the thought of how little it would have taken on her father’s part to ensure his mistress and child were taken care of. That was something he’d speak to Gio about the first opportunity he had.
Gigi tensed again. “I believe he left Mamma the palazzo, but that’s all. I’ve never seen the official paperwork, so I don’t know if it’s legally ours. I don’t like to think about the possibility that it might not be. It would break my mother’s heart if she lost it now.”
“You’ll never have to worry about money again, Gigi.”
Gigi’s head snapped around, and her eyes flashed with anger. “I’m not here for a handout.”
Kane raised one hand in a call for peace. “No one said you were, but your brothers will want to make sure you have what you need.”
Gigi’s cheeks reddened with temper. “My mother made sure I wanted for nothing, and now I work hard to make sure she has the same. Neither one of us require charity.”
Her beautiful chin jutting out proudly and her eyes bright with emotion left Kane momentarily speechless. The depth of how much he cared about the outcome of this visit shook him. He’d like to believe the protective feeling he felt for her was because she was Gio’s little sister, but it was unfortunately more complicated than that.
“Gigi, it’s not charity if you’re family.”
She pressed her lips angrily together, and he decided to let the topic drop for a while. He looked at his watch. They’d touch down on a private landing strip outside New York City in a couple hours. “You should sleep if you can. It’ll be a long day otherwise.”
She took a blanket off the seat beside her and tucked it around her legs. “I wanted to book a hotel room, but Julia insisted I stay with them in their new house.”
There it was again, that uncertainty that made him crave to be her champion. Bringing her back is more than anyone else has been able to do. Let that be enough. “That sounds like Julia. You’ll be fine there.”
“Will you—will you be there?”
Even though everything in him wanted to say he would, he couldn’t lie to her. “No. You won’t see me again after today. At least, not during this visit.”
He caught a glimpse of sadness in her eyes before she nodded, hitched the blanket up higher, and turned to look back out the window. “I didn’t want to come.”
“I know,” he said gently.
“But I guess it was time. Thank you, Kane, for not leaving when I tried to slam the door in your face.”
“Get some sleep, Gigi.”
Kane picked his laptop up and opened it, but his thoughts were not on the work awaiting him. He didn’t consider himself an emotional man, but when it came to the woman across from him he was all tangled up inside.
Right and wrong were impossible to distinguish from each other. He hated sounding like he was depositing then deserting her, but that was exactly what he needed to do. He was already beyond being able to be with her and pretend he felt nothing. He ached for Gigi in a gloriously painful way.
Her closed eyes gave him the opportunity to study her delicate features, the curve of her long neck, and the sweet outline of her breasts where the blanket had fallen away. He doubted she was actually sleeping, but he wouldn’t call her bluff. The less they spoke the better.
He could already feel himself falling for the one woman he would never allow himself to have.
Gio’s little sister. Keep telling yourself that, Kane. Gio’s little sister.
Chapter Seven
‡
Maybe it was because she had anticipated meeting her brothers for so long that she was an emotional basket case, but Gigi was unable to sleep. After a brief, fitful attempt at a nap, Gigi opened her eyes and said, “Kane?”
Kane looked up from working on his laptop. “Yes?”
“I can’t sit here and pretend I’m not going crazy on the inside, but I don’t want to talk about my family or the past.”
Kane shut his computer and put it off to the side. “Okay. Have you ever been to the States before?” Before she had a chance to say anything, he said, “Besides Slater Island.”
“No,” Gigi said slowly. Her father hadn’t taken her anywhere but she couldn’t say that nor did she want to think about it. “I haven’t had a reason to. I travel around Europe for my job. Mostly I get to dig through people’s dusty attics, but I love exploring new towns. How about you? Do you travel much?”
“Like you, only for work.” Kane made a slightly dissatisfied face. “I took over my family’s company a couple years ago and it’s pretty much taken me over as well.”
“What kind of business is it?”
“It’s diversified developments. That’s a fancy way of saying we follow the money. Whether it needs to be torn down, built, maintained, or dug up we have the resources around the globe to make it happen. A lot of what we do is for governments, but I’ve been expanding into the private sector, and the opportunities are limitless there.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“It is. My father built the company and a strong reputation, so really all I had to do was not fuck it up. But I wanted to prove to him that I could do as well as he had, and that meant taking it to the next level.”
Gigi loved the warmth in Kane’s eyes as he talked about his father. “You sound very close.”
“We are,” Kane said simply. “I have a small family. Mostly just my parents and my sister, but not much happens to any of us that the others don’t instantly know about. That can be both a blessing and a curse. If I miss a family dinner there is hell to pay.”
Gigi clasped her hands on her lap. “I can’t imagine that. My mother and I are more friends, I guess, than mother and daughter. We have our own lives. We check in with each other now and then, but it’s nothing like your family sounds.”
Kane looked across at her intently. “My impression was she loves you very much.”
Gigi nodded slowly. “I know she does. We’re just very different people.” Thinking about how often she’d tried and failed to connect with her mother threatened to make Gigi sad, and that wasn’t a layer of emotion she was looking to add to her already frayed nerves. “How did you break your nose?”
Kane’s hand went to the bridge of his nose, and a large smile spread across his face. “I would like to say college football, but I accidentally dated a married woman once. I probably could have blocked the punch, but part of me felt I deserved it.”
“How do you accidentally date a married woman?”
Kane laughed. “Start with the underdeveloped frontal lobe of an adolescent boy, add alcohol, and a trip to Montana. I hired her for ski lessons, but I learned a lot more than that before her husband showed up.”