Reunited for the Billionaire's Legacy: Christmas at the Castello (bonus novella)

by Jennifer Hayward

  When Arthur told the sports-obsessed boys Coburn had played competitive soccer in school, they pleaded with her husband to kick a ball around the yard. Never one to resist a sporting activity of any ilk, Coburn passed his drink to her and good-naturedly trailed after the two rambunctious boys.

  “You don’t have a drink,” Dana commented. “Shall I get you a glass of champagne?”

  “Actually, orange juice and soda would be lovely.”

  A speculative glimmer entered her hostess’s eyes but she was too polite to comment. She went off to retrieve the drink from the bartender while Diana and Arthur watched the boys chase Coburn around the yard. Her husband expertly faked and deked, keeping the ball out of their possession with tricks that made them laugh and chase harder. The tension faded from his face for the first time in days as he laughed along with them.

  “He’s good with children.” Arthur rested his forearms on the railing and watched the game. “He told me once he wasn’t sure he wanted any. I thought that strange given his love of life. He jumps into everything with his head and heart fully immersed, damn the consequences. It’s a great example for a child. Fear kills so many dreams.”

  How true. It had stifled hers until she’d identified what she truly wanted out of life, and that was to work with kids. To do something exceptional with her skills in Africa, where too many were denied basic health care. And perhaps, she thought, it had killed her marriage the first time around because Coburn was right. His ability to see through her made her feel naked and vulnerable. His ability to make her feel terrifying. It was why she’d run away. She knew that now.

  Her husband let out a roar of laughter as the two boys pulled on his pant leg to try to bring him to the ground, fierce determination on their young faces. He would be a good father. With Coburn, life was an adventure waiting to happen. His joie de vivre when she’d met him had been so opposite to her own careful, controlled nature that she had been blown away by it. Amazed someone could live in the present like that when she’d known as a teenager what her next two decades would look like.

  But somewhere along the way their separate agendas had collided and her husband’s lust for life had gone from being charming to infuriating. Now with more pressure on him than ever before and saddled with a baby he hadn’t even wanted, how would he react? Would it be too much for them?

  She swallowed past the knot in her throat. She couldn’t think like that. She had to be positive about this if it was ever going to work.

  * * *

  “They tire you out?”

  Arthur joined Coburn on the lawn as he held his hands up, declaring himself done with the impromptu soccer game.

  “They’re fast little devils,” Coburn conceded, taking the cold beer Arthur handed him. “I haven’t been to the gym nearly enough since I took over Grant.”

  Arthur tipped his glass at him. “It’s all consuming, isn’t it? Why do you think I got out when I did? The secret is balance, my friend, and it’s not easy to find.”

  Coburn took a long sip of his beer and stared out at the jaw-dropping view of the vast blue horizon. “Ever handle a recall?”

  His mentor nodded. “More than I would have liked. You up against one?”

  He nodded. It was highly confidential, early days yet, but he knew with Arthur it would go no further. “It could be a big one. Any advice?”

  “Get out in front of it. Get the facts, make your assessment, and if you have blame to take, carry it with big shoulders. These can make or break a company’s reputation.”

  He knew it. He wasn’t sleeping because of it.

  He picked Arthur’s brain on his experiences until the internet billionaire from the neighboring island stole Arthur away for a discussion on boats. His wife was standing with their hostess and two other women on the far side of the patio. He joined them just in time to catch the tail end of a discussion of Caribbean real estate as the wives of the internet baron and a software CEO debated their favorite islands.

  “Do you have a preference, Diana?” the diminutive, very beautiful internet baron’s wife asked.

  Diana smiled. “I love the Turks and Caicos. My parents have a place there. Unfortunately it would be difficult to live in the Caribbean with my profession.”

  “Oh. You work?”

  His wife stiffened under the hand he held to her back. “I do. I’m a surgeon in New York.”

  “A surgeon?” The CEO’s wife wrinkled her brow. “You mean a ‘cut people open with a knife’ kind of surgeon?”

  “Exactly that,” his wife confirmed. “With a purpose in mind, of course.”

  The other woman didn’t seem to get his wife’s dry sense of humor. “That’s very...impressive. I bet Coburn is wowed by you.”

  “That’s one way of describing it.”

  He slid his hand down to her waist and pulled her into his side with a reprimanding squeeze of his fingers. “I most certainly am. Beauty and brains are a definite turn-on for me.”

  “I’ll bet they are.” The blond girlfriend of another neighboring millionaire who looked young enough to be her fiancé’s daughter gave him an appreciative once-over. She had been throwing him sideways looks since he’d arrived, making him wonder if her man needed to pop a few pills to satisfy her. “My husband tells me you run one of the world’s largest automotive companies, but I wouldn’t understand what it is really because it’s all that stuff inside a car.”

  He smiled. “Very well put.”

  “Do you work?” his wife piped up. She hadn’t gotten any less stiff beneath his hand. The urge to drag her off somewhere to loosen her up was an idea.

  “Oh, no,” the blonde pooh-poohed. “We have two children. I don’t get these women who work when they should be home. Parenting is the most important job in the world. You can’t bring back those years.”

  His wife went ramrod straight. “No, you can’t,” she agreed. “But if there were no female surgeons we’d have a serious shortage of doctors to take care of your children. And then where would we be?”

  The blonde shrugged a shoulder. “It worked just fine when women were at home.”

  The other woman must have read the antagonism painted on his wife’s face because she swiftly backtracked. “Oh, I wasn’t talking about you,” she demurred. “I’m sure you’re fabulously talented. I just think women take it a bit far sometimes...forget their priorities.”

  Diana’s fingernails bit into his side. Sensing an imminent explosion, he gave the other two women a smile. “Would you mind if I steal my wife away for a moment? I wanted to show her something before dinner.”

  Without waiting for a response, he nudged his wife forward. “Don’t let her get to you,” he murmured. “What is she going to say? She doesn’t have your skills.”

  “You’d rather I be like her,” she muttered. “I should be at home lying on the bed eating bonbons waiting for you to come home.”

  “Don’t give me ideas.” He slid his hand lower to cover her bottom. “If I thought I could have you spread out and waiting for me when I walked in the door I would, but I think the world is better off with your surgical skills.”

  She looked up at him, a fierce glitter in her beautiful brown eyes. “Don’t flatter me to get me to cool down. I am not a button to be pressed.”

  “Oh, yes, you are,” he countered silkily, his palm shaping her bottom. “And I intend to press every last one before I’m done with you tonight.”

  Her eyes widened before her long lashes fanned down over her cheeks to cover them. “Why don’t you go press the young blonde’s buttons? She’ll be more than willing I’m sure.”

  Temper rose in him, swift and sure. He stopped at the railing that overlooked the sea and stepped close enough to cage her in. “This is the last time I’m going to say this, Diana, so hear me when I tell you I have no interest in a
ny other women. Nor will I in the future, even when you are round with my child. You are the only woman who can turn me inside out. You are the only woman I want warming my bed. That’s always been the way.”

  Her breathing fractured as he stood with arms on each side of her on the railing, his heated gaze holding her in place. The darkening of her eyes to almost black said he might finally have gotten his message through.

  “Say it once more,” he promised, electing to hammer his message home while he had her attention, “and I will find a room, a corridor to convince you of it.”

  His wife’s body went slack against the railing. The glitter in her eyes said she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. That corridor wasn’t a half-bad idea.

  “Dinner is served.” Arthur walked past them on his way to alert the other guests, an amused expression on his face. “Unless you have another type of sustenance in mind.”

  Diana’s face went beet red. He stepped back and guided her to the table set under the stars. His wife was primed and ready for him. Good thing, too, because his own very primed and ready body had had enough.

  * * *

  Diana was seated to the right of her husband at one end of the long, rectangular table laid with ornate silver place settings and tall candelabras. Dana sat at the head of the table to her right, thankfully keeping her across the table from the blond temptress. If she’d had to sit beside that lipstick-encrusted wolf in sheep’s clothing she might have burst a blood vessel.

  As it was, she was having difficulty relaxing with her smoldering, very sexy husband by her side. He seemed determined to take every opportunity he could to touch her as he passed the butter and filled her water glass. His threats had made her stomach churn with a sexual awareness of him that was getting worse with every minute that passed.

  She focused desperately on her hostess, who it turned out was a very talented artist who painted scenes from the islands sold for high price tags in a London gallery. The surgeon in her loved hearing about the creative process and how she worked with her hands to achieve certain effects.

  At some point after their salad plates were cleared and before the main course was laid down, Coburn’s hand landed on her thigh. She stiffened as his warm fingers curved into her heated flesh, staking a firm ownership. She might have kept her composure had he not moved his hand down to her knee during the main course and gradually worked her dress up her thigh. She flashed him a look full of daggers, but he went innocently on talking to Dana as if he wasn’t seducing her at a table of twelve diners.

  And really? Did she want him to stop? She swallowed hard as he slid his palm between her thighs and worked them apart. Her muscles gave way of their own volition, trembling in low-grade anticipation as his calloused fingers scraped against her skin. It seemed difficult to pull air into her lungs, to maintain even the simplest of conversations with heat descending over her in waves.

  She put her silverware down on her plate, laying it neatly across the china as if to signify the discipline to stop. “Coburn,” she murmured in his ear. “No.”

  “Sound more convincing,” he rasped back, “and I will.”

  She couldn’t do it. His thumb dipped into the heat at the core of her, his swift intake of breath telling her he’d discovered just how aroused she was.

  Oh. My. God. She attempted to coherently answer Dana’s question about a jewelry boutique in New York her hostess couldn’t remember the name of while Coburn’s thumb found the honeyed, delicate nub at her center and rocked against it. Her breath seized in her throat, her hand fisting on the table.

  Somehow the name of the store popped into her head. She told Dana, who pulled out her smartphone to make a note of it. Coburn’s caress deepened, quickened. She clenched her thighs around his hand, her mind warring with her body. She could not let him do this here. She could not.

  She slipped her hand under the table, closed her fingers around his and squeezed. His fiery blue gaze met hers, and for a moment she was lost. He was as gone as she was.

  His hand slipped away from her skin. Her constricted chest eased, oxygen making its way back into her lungs. Coburn tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and leaned in close. “You are so ready for me, baby,” he murmured. “Do not expect me to hold back.”

  Her nervous system short-circuited. She ignored the unabashedly curious looks the blonde threw in her direction and focused on breathing. She took absolutely nothing in as their dinner plates were removed and dessert and coffee were served. The anticipation simmering in her veins was of the all-consuming variety.

  Arthur had just asked the table if anyone would like a refill on the nightcap when a bundle of small boy appeared on the terrace in his pajamas and threw himself at his father. Maciah, Arthur’s nine-year-old son, babbled some incoherent words to Arthur, bringing the entire table to a halt.

  She thought it was a night terror at first. The little boy’s eyes were wide and he was hyperventilating, trying to pull air in. His father pulled him onto his lap, smoothed his hair and told him to take deep breaths.

  Maciah’s small chest inhaled and exhaled. “James is hurt,” he sobbed.

  His father frowned. “He’s in bed.”

  The little boy took another deep breath, his voice shaky as it tumbled out. “We wanted to have some fun, too, so we decided to build a fort on the cliff. Only James fell and hurt himself.”

  The internet CEO’s wife gasped. Diana sat up in her chair. Arthur took his son’s face in his hands. “James is on the cliff?”

  “Y-yes. Daddy, there’s all sorts of blood.”

  Diana was on her feet. “Call an air ambulance,” she instructed Dana. She flicked her gaze to Maciah. “Can you show Daddy and I where James is?”

  He nodded and slipped off his father’s lap. They raced outside and over to the edge of the cliff in front of the house, which was bounded by a tall fence. Maciah slipped through an opening she hadn’t seen. Diana followed, Arthur and Coburn behind her. Her heart lurched as Maciah pointed to a jagged ledge about five feet down from the edge, the sheer face of rock beneath it terrifyingly steep. James was lying on the ledge, barely visible in the darkness, his ragged sobs piercing the night air.

  “We need light,” she said tersely. Someone ran up to the villa and came back with a flashlight. She shone it down on the ledge, her pulse accelerating at the awkward angle the boy’s leg lay at, but more so because of the amount of blood spurting from it. He had ruptured an artery.

  “Is the ledge steady?” she asked Maciah.

  He nodded. Coburn cursed. “You don’t know if it will take your weight.”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  He caught her hand in his. “I’m going down first. If it’s stable you can come down.”

  “Coburn—”

  “Nonnegotiable.”

  She held her breath as her husband levered himself over the edge of the cliff and down onto the ledge with the stealth of a man who had climbed some of the world’s biggest peaks. Arthur looked as if he was in shock, his face white as Coburn stood up gingerly, testing the steadiness of the rock.

  “It’ll take both of us.”

  She sat on the edge of the cliff, turned and eased herself down, Coburn spotting her with a hand to her back. She knelt beside the gray-faced little boy, forcing herself to ignore how high they were over the rocky shore. Using her fingertips, she found the source of the bleed and pressed down hard to stem the flow. It was the femoral artery. A major one. Not good.

  “Take off your shirt,” she ordered Coburn. “I need to bind the wound.”

  When he didn’t respond immediately, she flicked her gaze up to him. He was staring at all the blood. “Coburn,” she bit out under her breath, “I need binding material now.”

  Her husband emerged from his trance, tearing his shirt down the front. He shrugged it off and s
tarted ripping it in strips. She grabbed the first one and bound it around the little boy’s thigh to stop the bleed. An agonized cry escaped James. “More,” she ordered Coburn. “Give me as many as you’ve got.”

  She glanced at the little boy’s chalk-white face, worried he was going to go into shock. “James,” she said softly, “did you know I’m a doctor? That I put people back together again?”

  His lips trembled but he didn’t acknowledge her. “So you’ve hurt your leg,” she told him gently. “It isn’t anything we can’t fix. We just need to get you to a hospital so we can do that. You’ll get to ride in a helicopter. Won’t that be fun?”

  His weak nod was a good sign. She reached for the strips Coburn handed her. “I’m going to tie your two legs together to stop them from hurting so much. Can you be brave for me?”

  He nodded on a little sob. She set her jaw, knowing it was going to be painful for him, and went to work. It was her job to be immune to the little boy’s tears, but his terrified wails as she stabilized his broken leg against the other tore at her heart. They were hundreds of yards above a rocky shore. His leg had been spouting a waterfall of blood. She got it.

  She secured James’s legs. Coburn climbed up on the cliff so Arthur could come down and talk to James with her until they heard the whir of the helicopter blades. She climbed up on the cliff then, so the ambulance crew could get the little boy on a stretcher and pass him up onto solid ground.