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Rafe reached across the table to curl his hand over hers. He expected her to pull away, but she didn’t. “It couldn’t have been easy, growing up without your father.”
“My mom…” Hope paused, as if searching for the right words to convey her emotions. “She did her best, but…”
He continued to hold her. In his peripheral vision, he saw the waiter heading in their direction. Then, noticing their body language, he instead walked toward another table. “Go on.”
“She didn’t recover…spent a lot of her time lost in the past. She worked as a nurse at an army hospital, taking care of soldiers, as if she could maintain some sort of connection with him.” Hope blinked. Trying to clear the memories? “Sorry. You didn’t need to hear all that.”
“She didn’t remarry?”
“No. She believed that she and my dad were soulmates.”
“And you? Do you believe in fate that way?”
“I’m pragmatic. The idea of someone being all-consuming terrifies me.”
The server returned, and she tugged her hand away and picked at her roll. After consulting Hope about her preferences, Rafe ordered an appetizer.
Before he could ask another question, she leaned forward. “What was it like to grow up in luxury as the heir of a multibillion-dollar conglomeration?”
“Not as exciting or as comfortable as you might think. Loaded with expectation. I went to nursery school at age three, then boarding school.” How did he describe an upbringing that was silent, at times frigid? “When I was home for summers and holidays, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, instead of with my parents. He believed in hard work, so he hired me as the general errand boy at the Sterling Downtown the moment I turned ten. On my thirteenth birthday, I became a bellboy. I was allowed to keep tips, but my paychecks went to pay for my education. My senior year of high school, I worked as an assistant concierge. And then in college, when others slept late or went on vacation, I worked as a manager for several different properties. I did an intern year in Asia.”
“What was his rationale?”
“He didn’t want me to be self-centered like my dad.”
She winced and pushed away her plate, and he realized she hadn’t taken a single bite.
“My great-great-great…” He frowned. “Maybe one or two more—I forget how many—grandfather emigrated from Norway in search of a better life. He understood the value of hard work, and each generation has tried to instill that in the next. My dad, you may or may not know, was not the family heir.”
“No?” She pulled the glass toward herself again, then sat back and crossed her legs.
The feminine picture she presented made him forget the past and think about the immediate future.
“You were saying?”
Rafe prided himself on his ability to focus, yet Hope distracted him. “My uncle—my dad’s brother—was killed in a car accident. Since the terms of the family trust are clear—a woman can’t inherit, and a male must be married to become the heir—my father married my mother.”
“And if you’re to succeed…”
“My cousin, Noah, is married.” To a woman who was as much of a social climber as he was. “They have a couple of kids.” That they had packed off to boarding school. Rafe suspected neither of them wanted the responsibility of being parents. “He’d like my father to step down from the CEO position. And since Noah’s married with children, he thinks he deserves to fill the role. He would begin to sell off most of our brands.”
“Would that be bad?”
He’d considered that question. “My great-grandfather was forced to do that around the time of the Great Depression in order to forestall bankruptcy. As the extended family grew stronger, they loaned him the money to get out of debt and buy back the properties. That was in the 1940s and early 50s. He swore it wouldn’t happen again. It wasn’t until thirty years ago that my grandfather was able to repurchase the Le Noble in New York.” One of the chain’s crown jewels, a five-diamond property near Grand Central Station.
“I had high tea there once.”
