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And still Oti couldn’t work out whether Lukas was happy that they’d been successful in saving the Earl’s life—or not.
‘What were you talking about in that room, anyway?’ she attempted casually. She might have known Lukas wouldn’t fall for it.
‘Who says we were talking?’
‘He didn’t want me to marry you,’ she commented instead, and she thought it said a lot that he didn’t pretend not to know who she was talking about.
She tried to recall the argument between Andrew Rockman and her father that evening, wishing that she hadn’t dismissed it at the time, but little that her father did interested her. She had even less interest in what the Rockman family did.
Now her brain was beginning to whirl, throwing up snippets of old information that she’d thoug
ht the two older men would long since have forgotten about.
‘They were arguing about the past.’ She bit her lip thoughtfully. ‘A group of hotel chains and luxury boutiques that the Rockman family once owned, until they lost it all in a hostile takeover.’
It had been a successful chain but, instead of trading on the name, by all accounts it had been stripped down methodically and ruthlessly. Andrew Rockman had always claimed that it had been about more than business, that it had been personal. Some young upstart targeting him.
Now she couldn’t stop herself from asking Lukas if he had been that upstart.
‘What else do you remember?’ Lukas demanded, which wasn’t the answer Oti had been expecting, yet it was somehow more of an answer.
‘Not a lot more.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t exactly paying attention. Ten years ago I was that party girl you accused me of still being.’
She eyed him defiantly, but he didn’t offer a put-down this time. Not that it made her feel any less ashamed when she thought back to the way she’d spent her life schlepping from one luxury beach holiday to the next. From a party on some billionaire’s yacht to a celebration in Monaco. Between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, she’d played the part of the airheaded socialite only too shamefully well. She could hardly blame Lukas for thinking she was still that girl. It had been nearly a decade and yet the rest of her so-called social circle had never let her forget it.
‘And ten years ago I was that young upstart,’ Lukas ground out unexpectedly. ‘We both have a past, Octavia. The point now is to make this marriage—this business transaction—work for us. Are you prepared to do that?’
She was still reeling from her new husband’s shock revelation, her brain still trying to piece it together. It was as though she was seeing tiny sections but missing the big picture.
‘I am prepared,’ she offered at length. ‘So what now?’
‘Now we get through the next few hours and then I’ll drop you off back home. My home,’ he clarified tightly.
‘Drop me off?’ Oti frowned. ‘Where are you going?’
Her skin was starting to prickle at his unexpected change of tone as she frantically tried to work out what had just happened. He was no longer the teasing, amused Lukas of before. Now he was sharper, colder, more withdrawn. And it shouldn’t have mattered to her.
But it did.
‘I have conference calls to attend to,’ he told her coolly. ‘Work doesn’t stop just because today is my wedding day.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ she remarked, but he didn’t even crack a smile. ‘And what about me? What should I do?’
Lukas looked almost disdainful. ‘You should do...whatever it is that you do.’
And even as she told herself that she should be glad she’d just been presented with the perfect opportunity to visit Edward—the brother who she hated having to pretend had died in that accident—she was powerless to stop a sting of hurt from working its way under her skin.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘LOOK, I’VE DONE my research.’ Oti eyed her brother. ‘I’ve used every contact I could as a doctor, to really make sure, and I truly believe you’re a perfect candidate. Nerve transfer surgery has a high success rate for C5 to C6 spinal cord injuries.’
‘But it won’t make me walk again,’ Edward threw back.
It sliced right through her to hear him so uncharacteristically angry and bitter. Not that she blamed him—how could she?—but the Edward she’d known and loved had always been ready with a light-hearted quip or a joke to lighten the moment.
She missed that Edward, more than she liked to admit.
She needed her brother back. For all that their father had ever put them through, they’d always had each other. For support, for counsel, or even for simple sibling teasing. But the accident hadn’t just robbed Edward of his ability to walk or move; it had also robbed him of his sense of self.
