Baby for the Billionaire(70)
“There isn’t anyone I want to invite.” Victoria took a sip of her wine. “Have a taste, it’s very smooth.”
Settling himself against the antique writing desk across from her, he sipped. “Very smooth. No friends at all?”
She shook her head slowly, supremely conscious of the weight of his stare.
With the exception of Suzy, she’d lost contact with most of her friends over the past ten years, too busy with work. Occasionally she’d gone out with Suzy and her teacher friends to a movie, or to dinner with a group from Archer, Cameron & Edge. But she wasn’t close to any of them.
“What about family?” He shifted, crossing one ankle over the other where he leaned, the rustle of denim loud in the intimacy of the sitting room. “My brother’s coming.”
“I don’t have brothers or sisters.” Victoria dropped her gaze away. “My mom’s dead, and I haven’t spoken to my father in years.”
“Then this might be the time to invite him and mend some fences. Both my parents are dead—at least you still have a father who could be there for you.”
She played with the stem of her glass. Connor couldn’t know what he was asking of her. “I thought the purpose of the day was to get married and provide a family for Dylan.”
“Nothing wrong with using the opportunity for reconciliation, Victoria.”
Connor’s arrogant assumption that inviting her tumbleweed father to her wedding would make amends for decades of irresponsibility and selfish neglect rubbed her the wrong way. “So I take it you’ll be inviting Dana and Paul?”
There was a horrible pause. Then he said, “Okay, maybe we should just focus on the wedding.”
“Good idea.” In an effort to restore the peace she said brightly, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
He drained his glass and set it down on the desk behind him. “Brett’s been living it up in London for the past few years.”
“And he’s coming all the way out to New Zealand?”
Straightening, Connor gave her a grim smile. “It’s my wedding—probably the only one he’ll ever see me celebrate. Of course he’s coming.”
Less than a week after Connor had asked Victoria to marry him, the wedding took place.
In sharp contrast to Suzy and Michael’s wedding, it was a small affair with no bouquets, flower girls or white lacy bridal dress in sight. In fact, Victoria decided that celebrate was a far too strong word for the civil ceremony that they rushed through in an anonymous Queen Street government building.
Afterward, accompanied by Connor’s brother and Anne—who’d come to take care of Dylan but ended up acting as a witness—they went to a lovely restaurant set in the rolling, parklike gardens of Auckland’s domain. Sitting at a table on a verandah that overlooked a series of lakes shaded by budding willows and frequented by swans, Victoria’s gaze settled on Dylan perched in the high chair beside Anne, and she finally relaxed.
Married.
Her place in Dylan’s life was secure now.
“Congratulations!” Connor’s brother waved a glass of champagne. “Welcome to our family.”
Victoria smiled and raised her glass. Brett’s personality had come as a surprise. Younger than Connor, he had a boyish flirtatiousness that made her laugh.
“Connor needs to be married,” he told her while Connor discussed their meal with the restaurant owner. “Even though I would rather you’d had a very unequivocal, big, splashy wedding instead of this hole-in-the-corner affair.”
“Needs to be married?” Victoria raised one brow skeptically and carefully ignored the rest of his explosive statement.
“Oh, yes. He likes domesticity.”
“Connor?”
She glanced at the man whose commanding presence had conjured up the owner and a trio of waiters in minutes. His baby brother was mistaken—Connor was as domesticated as a Bengal tiger.
Brett nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes. He’s suffering from empty nest syndrome.”
She must have looked blank, because Brett elaborated. “Since I left home.” His eyes widened. “He never told you that he raised me?”
“No.”
Victoria started to feel ridiculous. She knew nothing about the man she was marrying—except that he’d been dumped by his girlfriend and betrayed by his partner two years ago, and had built a multimillion dollar corporation out of the ruins of those relationships. She’d been crazy to think that was enough. “Until last week I didn’t even know he had a brother.”
“What mischief are you whispering to my bride?”
The owner had departed, wearing a very satisfied smile. But Connor’s eyes narrowed alarmingly as he focused on Victoria and his brother.
“No mischief … yet. I’m still trying to impress her with how upstanding we are. I’ll get to the skeletons in the closet later.”
Connor’s eyes crinkled into a smile. “Those are all yours, brother.”
After that lunch became a noisy, happy affair—where even Dylan contributed much gurgling. The food was sublime and the pale-golden sunshine gave the occasion luster. After listening to the brothers bantering, Victoria met Anne’s eyes and both women collapsed in paroxysms of laughter.
Dylan finally decided he’d had enough sitting.
“I’ll show him the swans,” Anne said, rising to free the baby from the high chair. “And it’s probably time for a change, too.”
“I’ll get a travel rug from the car—” Connor was on his feet “—for you to lay him on.”
“You may have noticed that Connor doesn’t talk much about himself,” Brett said to Victoria once Connor had disappeared around the corner of the building.
Now, that was an understatement. She flashed Brett a wry glance.
“Our parents are dead—did you know that?”
She nodded. “He mentioned it, but he didn’t give any details.” And she hadn’t asked because the last thing she’d wanted was Connor asking questions about her estrangement from her father.
“A train crash.” Brett paused. “That’s why he was so upset about Michael. Brought back old memories.”
She hadn’t even known; Connor had hidden the old, festering wound so well under that icy exterior.
Brett leaned closer. “Has he told you about Dana?”
“His ex?”
“The viper.”
A giggle escaped despite Victoria’s attempts to look disapproving. “Brett!”
“She kicked him out of his own home, but in a way it was a relief when I heard. I was scared shitless Connor would marry her—she was angling for it.”
“Should you be telling the new wife all this stuff?”
“It’s on a need-to-know basis.” He dipped down close and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Dana is poison. She told Connor she wanted children, but he didn’t believe her.”
Despite her qualms, Victoria couldn’t resist probing for more information. It was unlikely to be forthcoming from Connor. “Why?”
“He thought her work meant too much for her to take time out for kids.”
Uh-oh. That went some way toward explaining his attitude in relation to Dylan with her. “How do you know all this?”
He sat back in his chair and selected a toothpick. “I watched … and they sniped at each other sometimes. And after they split up Connor came to London and I took him on a pub crawl.”
Victoria frowned.
“Think of it as therapy—it was the only way I could get him to talk.”
“You’re devious.”
“Very,” he said with immense satisfaction. “And you’d better remember that, because I’m counting on you to feather Connor’s nest and keep him happy.”
Victoria laughed at the outrageous comment. But the sound dried in her throat when a hand landed on her waist. “Be careful of my baby brother.”
Connor’s husky growl close to her right ear caused her to shiver with delight.
“He’s just been warning me of how dangerous he is.” She slanted a mirthful look up at Connor.
Resting his arms across the back of her chair, he leaned closer, his body warm and his male scent familiar. Shuddery sensations of awareness tingled over her nape as her new groom said, “Unfortunately, it’s all true.”
“Right.”
“See, I told you to be careful of me.” Brett looked as innocent as an angel. “Now I’m off to whisper some secrets to Dylan.”
“More like flirt with Anne,” Connor murmured as Brett took off down to the water. He slid into the chair that Brett’s desertion had freed.
The latent tension in Victoria wound a notch tighter. No longer laughing, she pivoted on her seat to face Connor. “Brett tells me you brought him up.”
“He exaggerates.”
“So how old was he when your parents died?”
“You mean he didn’t get around to telling you everything?” The humor vanished, and his eyes cooled, becoming remote.
“He ran out of time. But I deserve to know—I’m your wife, remember?”
“In name only.”
The terse retort came like a slap in the face and she looked down, determined he shouldn’t see how he had wounded her.