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“You didn’t know my father well, then. Actually, no one did.” She swallows hard. “Back to you.” It’s a hard push from any question I might have made about that statement “no one did.”
“You really do look like your father and brother. I can’t believe I didn’t immediately place you.”
“You mean Hunter, I assume, since my younger brother, Brody, beats to his own drum. A drum that doesn’t include running the core whiskey operation or any involvement with the Knight Hotel brand.”
“Yes, Hunter,” she says, and there’s a flicker in her eyes, an understanding that we’re talking about a brother that is no more with us on this earth than her father. “I met them both, briefly. I ah—”
I narrow my eyes on her waiting for her to finish that sentence, prodding when she does not. “You what?”
“You—”
“Lost them both, as you did your father,” I supply. “Yes. My father to a ski accident, a year ago next week. Six months ago next month for my brother.” I leave out the cause of death. That isn’t a place either of us wants me to go with the Knight family tonight. “Time helps, but anyone who tells you it makes the cut heal is lying. It just stops the bleeding.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she says in a deep breath, “because if one more person tells me time will make it all better, I might scream.” She softens her voice. “I’m sad to say that I barely knew your father and brother, and only know you now because my intrusion, that you neither chose nor invited.”
“Should I have?”
“Why would you? You don’t know me.” She laughs a bitter laugh. “Well, there is my family money. That’s what everyone knows and wants. They think they know my worth, but they know nothing.”
I don’t ask what that means. I dare to slide closer to her. I dare to allow my leg to press to hers, the current between us charming the air. “Iama North, which means that I have power and money. I don’t need yours.”
“Money feeds greed. What you have is never enough.”
“There are other things to want besides money, Emma Knight.”
“Can I deny that identity perhaps for the rest of my life?”
I lean closer, the scent of her distinctly warm—amber and vanilla, I believe—my interest in this woman piqued in both expected and unexpected ways. “Why would you want to?”
“A complicated answer to a simple question.” Her voice cracks and she turns away from me. She reaches for my glass again and downs every drop in it.
“More?” I ask.
“Yes, but I should warn you that I’m a very bad drinker.”
I refill the glass and sip before handing it to her. She stares at the glass before her gaze lifts to my mouth. Unlike moments before, she’s now thinking of exactly what I intended: about her mouth where my mouth was moments before. “I promise to catch you if you fall,” I say softly.
“Don’t start this relationship off by making promises you won’t even try to keep.”
Relationship. She’s planning on this encounter leading to more, which of course could simply be because I’m now in charge of my family empire. Or perhaps it’s about “more.” And I plan to make it so much more than this little rendezvous behind a curtain.
“I never make a promise I don’t keep,” I say, and I will catch her if she falls, because once I catch her, she’s mine. Once she’s mine, everything comes full circle.
“Never?”
“Never,” I assure her, “which is something my friends value and my enemies dread.”
“Do you have many enemies?”
“A man or woman with money and power always has enemies.”
Her cellphone rings and she pants out a breath. “Of course. They’re now looking for me by calling me.” She pulls her cell from her purse and glances at the number.
“Randall?” I ask.
Her gaze jerks to mine. “How do you know that and him?”
“I know a lot of people. Enemies everywhere, Emma,” I say softly, and I find myself really wanting her to listen. Really wanting to protect her, which is a contradiction to everything I would do otherwise where the Knights are concerned. “And that one wants to be in your bed. If he isn’t already.”
