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Romi didn’t even share with Maddie how bad things had gotten for her dad, but a year ago? She’d told Maxwell Black.
On their second date. Maybe that was why he’d put the sell-by date on their relationship after their third one.
But no, that was just the way Max ran his love life, or sex life really. The man didn’t believe in love. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate.
He believed the emotion was real enough, just refused to ever let himself feel it.
Romi wished she had the ability to turn her heart off.
But it was never going to happen.
“You are a good daughter.” His pewter eyes warmed with sincerity.
It was almost surreal. “What, no admonishment to leave him to work it out on his own?”
“What have I ever said that implied I did not take the obligations of family seriously?” Max actually sounded a little offended.
Feeling convicted for letting her own insecurities spill over onto him, Romi said, “Nothing.”
She knew he cared deeply for his mother.
Max had never been hesitant to admit he supported Natalya Black financially. They might live separately, but Romi had no doubt that if his mother needed to live with him, they would be sharing a residence right now. No questions, no lesser options.
“We share a dedication to family.”
“What we have of them,” she agreed.
Romi didn’t know why, but Max and his mother had no connection to their family back in Russia. He’d never mentioned his father, much less the man’s family, so Romi had always assumed they were either all gone or like her father’s family.
Estranged.
“I still see my mom’s family yearly.” Unlike the Graysons, who had turned their back on Harry when he’d married a woman from a decidedly middle-class background instead of old money, the Lawtons had remained in their daughter’s life and that of her husband and child.
Albeit on a more limited basis than Romi had always wanted.
“Why only once a year?” Max asked, like he was reading her mind.
She shrugged, looking away from him. “They only came to visit when my mom was alive. Since then, I’ve gone to stay with my grandparents for a couple of weeks every summer.”
But she and her father had never been invited to share the major holidays with them. Romi didn’t know if that was because he’d made it clear in some way he wasn’t interested, or if they weren’t, and she’d never really tried to find out.
It was enough she got a taste of the family that had made her mom the person she’d been. Even if that person was someone Romi would never know.
She’d enjoyed the different kind of living, sharing a room with the sewing machine and her grandmother’s craft projects, sleeping on the floor in the family room with her cousins when they stayed over. No servants, no cars and drivers, no shopping in exclusive boutiques.
Lots of summer barbecues, playing in a yard maintained better by her grandfather than any gardener her dad had ever employed.
“Why don’t any of them come to visit you?” Max asked.
She didn’t really know, but had made her own internal excuses. “It’s a long trip.”
“A few hours by plane.”
“Still.”
“It’s a different world for them, isn’t it?”
She nodded. She’d finally come to realize as an adult that her mom’s family found her life as an heiress—her bedroom that was a three-room suite in a multimillion-dollar mansion, all of the trappings of wealth—too foreign for comfort.
She thought maybe they hadn’t been any happier that Jenna had married Harry than the Graysons. The Lawtons just hadn’t turned their backs on their daughter.
Her grandparents were political activists like Romi, but unlike her, they had little affection or respect for the people that had populated Romi’s life since birth.
Old money wealth, big business, they were dirty words to her grandparents.
Romi had always wanted to make a difference, but she’d never felt the need to destroy the system to rebuild it.
Her grandparents had spent a month living in a tent during Occupy Wall Street. Her aunts and uncles weren’t as antiwealth and antiestablishment, but made no bones about the fact they preferred their suburban lives over Romi’s in San Francisco.
“Your cousins could come to visit, couldn’t they?” Max asked, like it mattered to him.
She didn’t know why it should. Romi shrugged. “I’m not as close with them as I was when I was little.”
Not like they were to each other.
Her mother had been the youngest and all of her cousins were at least five years older than Romi. Most were married with children, all were established in careers and lives that did not lend themselves to visiting a single cousin cross country that they barely knew.
Max made a sound that in anyone else would have been a sigh. He made it seem more like a nonverbal admission. “My family turned their back on my mother because she chose to break with tradition.”
“She married an American?”
“No.”
“But Black…”
“Is not a Russian name. She changed it from Blokov when she immigrated with me. She wanted no reminder of the family who found it so easy to reject her because she lived her life differently than they wanted her to.”
“I’m sorry. She’s a pretty neat lady.”
Romi had met Natalya Black at more than one charity function she’d attended with her son. Romi had found the older Russian woman still quite beautiful and very charming.
“She is pragmatic.”
“She raised you. I imagine she is.” Romi had never known anyone as compartmentalized and rationally logical as Max.
Max quirked his brow. “Is that a compliment or a complaint?”
“Neither, really.” Romi grinned cheekily. “It just is.”
“Now, you sound like a proper Russian pragmatist.”
“What about your dad?” Romi asked, surprised at herself.
But she’d regretted all the questions she hadn’t asked a year ago too much to make the same mistake again.
“My mother has never named him, though I have often thought his name must be something similar to mine, as Maxwell is hardly Russian.”
“Maybe she just wanted to break away from her homeland and embrace her new life in America.”
“We emigrated when I was a year old.”
“Oh.”
He smiled, no indication the discussion hurt him. “Some things just are, righ
t?”
“Right.” But somehow she was sure this man would never allow a child of his to grow up not even knowing his name.
They said good-night, with Max’s assertion he would see her again soon sounding more like a threat than a promise.
CHAPTER THREE
MAXWELL DRANK A glass of very good champagne and watched Romi Grayson fulfill her role as maid of honor for Madison Beck, née Archer, with her usual flair.
Adorned with a tiara every bit as ornate, if significantly smaller than Madison’s, Romi’s smooth bob of hair glistened in a fall of black silk around her face. Large but tasteful diamonds in a classic setting twinkled in her earlobes. She wore no other jewelry with the designer silk gown of blue that exactly matched her pretty eyes and was cut to complement Madison’s 1950s vintage gown.
Romi flicked a look at him and he made no effort to hide the fact he watched her. Pleasure zinged through him at the blush that tinted her cheeks.
She looked away, but her azure gaze returned to meet his almost immediately.
He let one eyelid slide closed in a slow wink, allowing his lips to almost tilt into a smile.
The blush darkened and he could see the breath she took. Imagining he could hear the soft gasp of air that followed, he started across the room toward her.
A hand landed on his arm and he barely broke stride to shake his head decisively at a woman he’d flirted with previously on a couple of occasions. The sister of a man who owned one of the major companies in Silicon Valley, she was a contact worth cultivating.
But not right now.
Romi had not moved so much as an inch since he’d started toward her, waiting as if she stood inside a bubble of her own.
No one approached her when she’d spent the last hours talking to everyone. But there was something ethereal about her in that moment and Maxwell knew he wasn’t the only one who felt it.
He stopped in front of her, his hand out. “Dance with me.”
This time he heard the small catch of air. “I…”
“You know you want to.”
“We don’t always want what is best for us.”
He shook his head, not buying it. “No word games right now, Romi. Just dance with me.”
