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“And you found out about this a few days ago?” Harper frowned. “Aren’t you moving a little quick? I would think you’d both want to protect yourselves before getting married.”
“You haven’t seen the way JT looks at her,” Scarlett interjected. “I don’t think that man has the patience to last any longer.”
To Violet’s intense dismay, she felt her cheeks heating again. “It’s not like that between us,” she protested. “And we signed an agreement that we’d walk away with what we came into the marriage with. Really, it’s just a business deal. A marriage in name only.”
“How long do think that’s going to last?” Scarlett’s lips wore a lusty smile. “The two of you share the same house night after night. Him just down the hall? I give you a week tops before you crack. JT...” She cocked her head and considered. “Maybe three days.”
“We’re not going to live together,” Violet explained, growing lightheaded as she remembered how hard it had been to fall asleep the previous night after kissing JT. But in the future there would be no more such kisses, passion-drenched or otherwise. They’d both agreed on that.
“You’re not?” Scarlett looked scandalized at the thought.
“Lots of married couple don’t,” Harper said. “My parents being one of them.”
And their marital separation was what had led to Ross’s numerous affairs and the two daughters he’d never acknowledged. Or maybe his affairs had led to his estrangement from his wife. Violet had never asked Harper what she thought. As close as the three girls had become in the last five years, some topics remained uncomfortable.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Harper continued. “I mean, how well do you know JT?”
“Not as well as she’s going to get to know him,” Scarlett put in slyly.
Violet shot her a repressive look. “I don’t know how to explain it, but he feels like family. I know until recently that Tiberius refused to have anything to do with him, but he talked so much about his sister and what life was like for JT as a kid, I feel as if I know him.” She regarded each of her sisters, trying to gauge if she was making sense.
“I get how sometimes you can feel as if you know a person even though you’ve never met,” Harper said, a note of tension in her voice. “But often the reality is very different and you have to be careful.”
Was Harper referring to JT or her own problems with celebrity chef Ashton Croft, whose latest restaurant was supposed to have opened in Harper’s Fontaine Ciel hotel two weeks earlier? The charismatic executive chef-turned-television sensation was unconventional and passionate about food and adventure. Since starting negotiations with Harper for the restaurant, he’d been a thorn in her side with one outrageous demand after another.
Violet suspected her sister had been a Chef Ashton fan long before the restaurant deal. Harper’s DVR was filled with Croft’s television series, The Culinary Wanderer, in which he traveled around the world in search of the perfect meal. Why such an adventurous wanderer appealed to someone as methodical and strategic as Harper, Violet would never understand.
“I’ll admit that what I know of JT is already proving incomplete.” Violet considered what she’d learned over breakfast. He’d opened up to give her a glimpse into his past. A happy moment in what she suspected was a turbulent childhood. “But I don’t think he has any intention of cheating me.” And any heartbreak that happened would be because she’d let it.
Harper shook her head. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I,” Violet muttered. “So do I.”
* * *
JT should have known that letting Violet’s optimism rub off on him was reckless, but he’d been seduced by her earnest smiles and luminous brown eyes. Now, with a tumbler of excellent scotch on his knee, he allowed his gaze to drift around his cousin’s mahogany-paneled study and tried not to let his disappointment show.
“Sorry, JT.” Brent looked as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. “My dad sold the shares to Preston five months ago. You’re welcome to the hundred I received on my eighteenth birthday.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather you remain a stockholder and help me convince the rest of the family that my dad’s management isn’t doing the company any favors.” No wonder Tiberius hadn’t created a file on Brent’s father. What was the point when the shares were already lost? “Any idea why your father sold the shares to my dad? It’s not as if the two of them got along.”
