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“I won’t?” With a spin that made Nick laugh and Abby clutch her heart in terror, James flipped her around and knelt down in a single motion, only to catch her gently upon his knee. “Try me, you beast. I’ll have you dragged through London in chains!”
“Not in chains!” Her hands flew to her mouth to cover a theatrical gasp, in a well-rehearsed game I sensed the two had played many times before. “I want to stay!”
“To stay?” He lifted one eyebrow appraisingly, looking her up and down. “Well, I suppose I could be persuaded.”
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him promptly on the cheek, soliciting a beaming smile that he was quick to hide. My heart melted on the spot, and even the stoic Ferdie dabbed a handkerchief to his eyes. Nick and Abby merely shook their heads and grinned.
“Are you persuaded now?” she squeaked, still on her toes. “Can I stay?”
“May I,” he corrected.
“May I stay?”
He scrutinized her before lowering his fingertips to the floor and displaying a dangerous little smile. “Actually, perhaps you should. As it turns out, I’m a little hungry.”
She shrieked again as he sprang forward to tackle her. He caught her shirt in his teeth and shook it back and forth with a predatory growl. It was, without a doubt, the cutest thing I’d ever seen, and the little girl was so beside herself that I thought she might actually pass out just from laughing so hard. James shook her like a lion would, growling, kissing, tickling, and biting all the while, until her screams for mercy finally enticed him to gently lower her to the floor.
“I missed you, kid.” He kissed her on the cheek as she swayed dizzily, her cherub face still red from being upside down. “I’ve thought about you every day.”
“I missed you too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck for a giant hug, then spied me standing over his shoulder. “I met your special friend.”
“My special...” He glanced around, then laughed when he spotted me. “Yeah, my special friend. What do you think of her? She’s pretty, right?”
Arabella nodded swiftly but kept a territorial arm around his neck the entire time, staring at me with a hint of dislike. “Is she your girlfriend, Uncle James?”
Abby laughed softly as I turned a million shades of red.
“My girlfriend?!” James feigned shock as he tossed a secret wink above her golden curls. “You know you’re the only girl in my life.”
It’s official. I’m never going to get an answer to that question.
Arabella beamed with pride and flashed a rather friendly smile before taking his hand and tugging him back to his feet. “Then will you sit by me at dinner?”
“Where else would I sit?”
The two shared a conspiratorial grin before Abby stepped forward and clapped her hands briskly. “On that note,” she said, “why don’t you give your Uncle James a second to catch his breath and clean up before we sit down to eat?”
In a blur of golden hair, the girl sprinted up the stairs to one of the guest bathrooms. I was sure she had her own stash of things at every grand estate in London, but halfway there, she suddenly paused and looked back down through the slats in the bannister.
“Uncle James?”
He glanced up and froze, his hand on its way to hold mine. “Yeah, honey?”
A strangely solemn look flickered across her face as she stared down into the parlor. “I’m sorry Grandpa Ben died.”
There was a sudden silence as every adult in the room bowed our heads. James remained frozen and was momentarily speechless, so I slipped my hand comfortingly into his.
“Yeah, sweetie, me too,” he finally mustered.
Chapter 6
CONSIDERING THE CIRCUMSTANCES that had brought us all together, dinner that night was a rather lighthearted affair. The shock soon gave way to acceptance, and in that acceptance, those who knew Benjamin Cross were able to find at least a little relief. It was difficult to see such a great man trapped in an ailing, incapable body, and at least now, that pain was gone. The struggle was over, and Ben and his loved ones were finally free.
Hilarious stories were swapped, tales and fond remembrances of Ben at his finest, anecdotes that any reporter in the world would have killed to get their microphones on. Most revolved around James and Nick getting into some sort of outrageous situation and Ben flying halfway across the world to bail them out. Whether it was a disciplinary hearing at boarding school for stealing the dean’s car, being stranded in a remote African desert without passports, or finding themselves incarcerated in a Bolivian prison for “conduct unbefitting a gentleman,” Ben always came through as their knight in shining armor.
“What will happen now?” Arabella asked as she sat on a stack of phone books, elbow-deep in spaghetti. “What about Grandpa’s big company, if he isn’t there to run it?”
I snorted into my wine glass, but Nick just folded his hands innocently upon the table.
