by Jane Porter
Poppy wasn’t surprised by the brisk efficiency. Randall’s helicopter was always available and his staff was always the epitome of professional but it still boggled her mind that he had a helicopter and a private plane. It had to be a terrible expense maintaining both of these, as well as his fleet of cars. Randall loved cars. It was one of his passions, collecting vintage models as if they were refrigerator magnets.
“What about the car?” she asked him.
“I’m driving it back to Langston House,” the young man answered with a quick smile. “Do you have everything?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Enjoy your flight.”
Poppy boarded the plane self-consciously, pushing back dark tendrils of hair that had come loose from the pins. She felt wildly overdressed and yet exposed at the same time. She wanted a shawl for her bare shoulders and comfy slippers for her feet. But at least she wasn’t the only one in formal dress. Randall still wore his morning suit, although he’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button on his crisp, white dress shirt.
A flight attendant emerged from the jet’s compact kitchen galley and greeted Poppy with a smile. “Welcome on board,” she said. “Any seat.”
The flight attendant followed Poppy down the narrow aisle, past a small conference table to a group of four leather armchairs. The seats were wide and they appeared to be the reclining kind with solid armrests and luxuriously soft leather.
She gingerly sat down in the nearest chair and it was very comfortable indeed.
“Something to drink?” the pretty, blonde flight attendant asked. “A glass of champagne? We have a lovely bottle on ice.”
“I’m not the bride,” Poppy said quickly.
“I know. But the wedding is off so why not enjoy the bubbles?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t want to upset Randall.”
“He was the one who suggested it.”
Poppy laughed, nervous. “In that case, yes, a small glass might be nice. I’m shaking like a leaf.”
“From the sound of things, it’s been quite a day. A little fizz should help you relax.”
The flight attendant returned to the galley and moments later Randall and the pilots boarded the plane. The three men stood in front of the cockpit, still deep in discussion. The discussion looked serious, too. There wasn’t much smiling on anyone’s part, but then, Randall wasn’t a man that smiled often. She wouldn’t have described him as grim or stern, either, but rather quiet and self-contained. The upside was that when he spoke, people listened to him, but unfortunately, Randall didn’t speak often enough, tending to sit back and listen and let others fill the silence with their voices. Sophie thought his silence and reserve made him rather dull, but there were plenty of women who found him mysterious, asking Poppy in whispers what was the Earl of Langston really like?
Poppy usually answered with a dramatic pause and then a hushed, Fascinating.
Because he was.
He had a brilliant mind and had taken his father’s businesses and investments and parlayed them into even bigger businesses and more successful investments, and that alone would have been noteworthy, but Randall did more than just make money. He gave his time generously, providing leadership on a dozen different boards, as well as volunteered with a half dozen different charities, including several organizations in the Middle East. Randall was particularly valuable to those latter organizations since he could speak a staggering number of languages, including Egyptian, Arabic and Greek.
The Earl of Langston worked hard, very hard.
If one were to criticize him it would be that he worked too much. Sophie certainly thought so. Poppy had tried to educate Sophie on Randall’s business, thinking that if Sophie was more interested in Randall’s work and life, the couple would have more in common, and would therefore enjoy each other’s company more, but Sophie wasn’t interested in the boards Randall sat on, or his numerous investments. Her ears had pricked at the charity work, because Sophie had her own favorite charities, but the interest didn’t last long, in part because Randall failed to reciprocate. He took Sophie for granted. He didn’t try to woo her, or romance her. There were no little weekends away. No special dinners out. It was almost as if they were an old married couple even before they married.
Sophie deserved better. She deserved more.
Poppy hoped that Renzo marching down the aisle of Langston Chapel would ultimately be a good thing for Sophie.
But even if it was a good thing, it would be scandalous. It would always be scandalous.
Heartsick, Poppy closed her eyes and found herself wondering about Sophie. Was she okay? Where had Renzo taken her? And what was happening in her world now?
“Guilty conscience, Poppy?”
Randall’s deep, husky voice seemed to vibrate all the way through her.
She opened her eyes and straightened quickly, shoulders squaring so that the boned bodice pressed her breasts up.
He was standing over her, which meant she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. He was tall and lean, and his elegant suit should have made him look elegant, too, but instead he struck her as hard and fierce, and more than a little bit savage, which was both strange and awful because until today she would have described Randall Grant as the most decent man she’d ever met. Until today she would have trusted him with her life. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“No,” she said breathlessly, worried about being alone with him. It wasn’t that he’d hurt her, but he struck her as unpredictable, and this new unpredictability made her incredibly anxious.
The flight attendant appeared behind him with the flute of champagne. “For Miss Marr,” she said.
Randall took it from her and handed it to Poppy. “We’re celebrating, are we?” he said mockingly.
Her pulse jumped as their fingers brushed, the sharp staccato making her breathless and jittery. She glanced from his cool, gold eyes into the golden bubbles fizzing in her flute. “The flight attendant said you were the one that suggested the champagne.”
“I was curious to see what you would do.”
Her eyes stung. Her throat threatened to seal closed. “Take it back, then,” she said, pushing the flute back toward him. “I didn’t want it in the first place.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
The hardness in his voice made her ache. She’d thought she’d done the right thing by writing to Renzo, but now she wasn’t sure. Had she been wrong about Randall and Sophie?
Did Randall actually love her? Had Poppy just inadvertently broken his heart?
It didn’t help being this physically close to Randall when her emotions were so unsettled, either. Nor did she know how to read this new Randall Grant. He wasn’t anything like the quiet, considerate man she’d worked for, a man who always seemed to know how to handle her.
“You like champagne,” he said carelessly, dropping into the seat opposite hers. “Keep it. I have a drink coming, too.”
“Yes, but I shouldn’t drink, not when working. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were thinking that you’re a bundle of nerves, and a little bit of alcohol sounded like the perfect tonic.”
“Maybe. But we don’t drink together. I don’t think you and I have ever had a drink, just the two of us. If there was wine, or champagne open, it’s because Sophie was there and Sophie wanted a glass and we never let her drink alone.”
“No, we never did. We both looked after her, didn’t we?”
Poppy’s throat thickened. “Please don’t hate her.”
“It’s impossible to like her right now.”
Poppy stared down into her glass. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t discuss her.”
“Four hours ago she was to be my wife. Now I’m to simply forget her? Just like that?”
She looked up at him, struggling to
think of something she could say, but nothing came to her and she just gave him a look that she hoped was properly sympathetic without being pitying.
“I’m shocked and angry, not broken. Save the sympathy for someone who needs it.”
“Do you want her back?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Because even if she did decide she’d made a mistake, I don’t think you’d forgive and forget. At least not for a long time.”
The corner of his mouth curled. “I don’t like being played for a fool, no,” he said, giving her a long, penetrating look that made her squirm because it seemed to imply that he also thought she had played him for a fool. And if that was the case, then spending the next week working together was asking for trouble. He wouldn’t be in a proper state of mind.
The flight attendant appeared with a crystal tumbler. “Your whiskey,” she said, handing him the glass. “Captain Winter also wanted you to know that the new flight plan has been approved, and we’ll be departing in just a few minutes.”
“Thank you,” Randall said, giving the attendant a warm smile, the kind of smile he used to give Poppy, the kind of smile that had made her put him on a pedestal in the beginning.
And just like that, tears filled her eyes and she had to duck her head so he wouldn’t see. Because if she did look at him, he’d see more than she wanted him to see. Randall was startlingly perceptive. He paid attention to people and things, picking up on details others missed.
“I knew it wouldn’t be long before you got weepy,” he said, extending his long legs, invading her space. “Before this morning, I would have said you are nothing if not predictable, but you surprised me today. You’re not at all who I thought you were.”
She drew her legs back farther to keep her ankles from touching his, and told herself to bite her tongue, and then bite it again because arguing with him would only make the tension worse.
He gave his glass a shake, letting the amber liquid swirl. “Did you know about Crisanti?”
Poppy continued to bite her tongue, because how could she answer that without incriminating herself? Clearly in this case, the best answer was no answer.
“Poppy.”
The flight attendant was closing the door and locking it securely, and the deliberate steps made Poppy want to jump out of her chair and race off the plane. She should go now, while she could do. She needed to escape. She needed to go. She couldn’t stay here with Randall—
“My bride was carted off from the church today, and she didn’t even make a peep of protest,” he continued quietly, almost lazily, even as his intense gaze skewered her. She didn’t even have to look at him to know he was staring her down because she could feel it all the way through her.
Poppy swallowed hard. “I think she peeped.”
“No, she didn’t. And neither did you.” He growled the words, temper rising, and she jerked her head up to look at him, and the look he gave her was so savage and dark that Poppy’s pulse jumped and her stomach lurched.
“You weren’t surprised to see Crisanti marching down the aisle today,” he added, lifting a finger to stop her protest. “Enough with the lying. It doesn’t become you. You forget, I know you. I’ve worked with you, worked closely with you, and I saw it in your face, saw it in your eyes.”
“Saw what?”
“Guilt. But I also saw something else. You were happy to see Crisanti arrive. You were elated.”
“I wasn’t elated.”
“But you weren’t devastated.”
She placed the flute down on the narrow table next to her. “I’d like to take my vacation time, the time you promised me. I don’t think it’s a good idea to work together this next week. I think we both need some time, and time apart—”
“No.”
“I can take the train back to London.”
“No.”
“I don’t enjoy you like this—”
“Perhaps it’s not about you anymore, Poppy. Perhaps it’s now about me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want to know what happened today. I want to know everything.”
His voice was deep and rough and it scratched her senses. She dragged her attention up, her gaze soaking in his face. She knew that face so well, knew his brow and every faint crease at the corner of his eyes. She knew how he’d tighten his jaw when displeased, and how his lips firmed as he concentrated while reading. If he was very angry, his features would go blank and still. If he was relaxed, his lovely mouth would lift—
No. Not lovely.
She shouldn’t ever think his mouth was lovely.
Even though she’d vanished, he still belonged to Sophie. He’d always belong to Sophie. They’d been engaged since Sophie was eighteen, with the understanding that they’d be married one day happening even earlier in their lives.
The fact was, Randall and Sophie had been practically matched since birth, an arrangement that suited both families, and the respective family fortunes, and Sophie insisted she was good with it. She’d told Poppy more than once that she hadn’t ever expected to marry for love, and wasn’t particularly troubled by the lack of romance since she liked Dal, and Dal liked her, and they complemented each other well.
A lump filled her throat because Poppy didn’t just like Randall, she truly cared for him. Deeply cared. The kind of feelings that put butterflies in her stomach and made her chest tighten with tenderness. “It’s not my place,” she choked. “I wasn’t your bride!”
“But you were part of today’s circus. You took part in the charade.”
“It wasn’t a charade!”
“Then where is Sophie?”
* * *
His question hung there between them, heavy and suffocating, and Dal knew Poppy was miserable; her brown eyes were full of shadows and sorrow, and usually he hated seeing her unhappy. Usually he wanted to lift her when she struggled but not today. Today she deserved to suffer.
He’d trusted her. He’d trusted her even more than Sophie, and he’d planned on spending the rest of his life with Sophie.
Dal shook his head, still trying to grasp it all.
If Sophie had been so unhappy marrying him, why didn’t she just break the engagement before it got to this point?
It was not as if he didn’t have other options. Women threw themselves at him daily. Women were constantly letting him know that they found him desirable. Beautiful, educated, polished women who made it known that they’d do anything to become his countess, and if marriage was out, then perhaps his mistress?
But he’d been loyal to Sophie, despite their long engagement. Or at least he’d been faithful once the engagement had been made public, which was five and a half years ago. Before the public engagement was the private understanding, an understanding reached between the fathers, the Earl of Langston and Sir Carmichael-Jones. But for five and a half years, he’d held himself in check because Sophie, stunning Sophie Carmichael-Jones, was a virgin, and she’d made it clear that she intended to remain a virgin until her wedding night.
He now seriously doubted that when she’d walked down the aisle today she’d still been a virgin.
Dal swore beneath his breath, counting down the minutes until they reached their cruising altitude so he could escape to the small back cabin, which doubled as a private office and a bedroom.
Once they stopped climbing, he unfastened his seat belt and disappeared into the back cabin, which had a desk, a reclining leather chair and a wall bed. The wall bed could easily be converted when needed, but Dal had never used it as a bedroom. He preferred to work on his flights, not rest.
Closing the door, he removed his jacket, tugged off his tie and unbuttoned his dress shirt. Half-dressed, he opened the large black suitcase that had been stowed in the closet and found a pair of trou
sers and a light tan linen shirt that would be appropriate for the heat of the Atlas Mountains.
Hard to believe he was heading to Mehkar.
It’d been so long.
No one would think to look for him in his mother’s country, either, much less his father’s family. Dal’s late father had orchestrated the schism, savagely cutting off his mother’s family following the fatal car accident twenty-three years ago.
It was on his twenty-first birthday that his past resurrected itself. He’d been out celebrating his birthday with friends and returned worse for the wear to his Cambridge flat to discover a bearded man in kaffiyeh, the traditional long white robes Arab men wore, on his doorstep.
It had been over ten years since he’d last seen his mother’s father, but instead of moving forward to greet his grandfather, he stood back, aware that he reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke, aware, too, of the disapproval in his grandfather’s dark eyes.
Randall managed a stiff, awkward bow. “Sheikh bin Mehkar.”
“As-Salam-u-Alaikum,” his grandfather had answered. Peace be to you. He extended his hand, then, to Randall. “No handshake? No hug?”
It was a rebuke. A quiet rebuke, but a reproof nonetheless. Randall stiffened, ashamed, annoyed, uncomfortable, and he put his hand in his grandfather’s even as he glanced away, toward the small window at the end of the hall, angry that his mother’s father was here now. Where had he been for the past ten years? Where had his grandmother gone and the aunts and uncles and cousins who had filled his childhood?
He’d needed them as a grieving boy. He’d needed them to remind him that his beautiful mother had existed, as by Christmas his father had stripped Langston House of all her photos and mementos, going so far as to even remove the huge oil family portrait only completed the year before, the portrait of a family in happier days—father, mother and sons—from above the sixteenth-century Dutch sideboard in the formal dining room.
Perhaps if Dal hadn’t spent a night drinking, perhaps if Dal’s phone call with his father the evening before hadn’t been so tense and terse, full of duty and obligation, maybe Dal would have remembered the affection his mother had held for her parents, in particular, her father, who had allowed her to leave to marry her handsome, titled, cash-strapped Englishman.
