Page 17 of Second Time Around
“I hope you’ll enjoy it.” He bent his head to rub the back of his neck in an unhappy gesture.
“You don’t have to go,” she said, wishing she had the guts to offer to massage his neck herself. Touching the warm, vulnerable skin there would be heaven.
“What?” His head snapped back up.
“Tell your mother you’re sick or there’s an urgent business matter you have to deal with.”
His gaze felt heavy on her for a long moment before he shook his head, forcing a smile. “My apologies,” he said. “I’m being a bad host.” He flipped open one of the limo’s compartments and pulled out the champagne. Dom Pérignon, of course. “May I pour you some?”
“Tempting, but I think I should be sober, at least when I arrive.” She would need to keep her wits about her in order to fit in with Will’s crowd.
“You may regret that.” He slotted the bottle back into the compartment with a sigh. “Fortunately, if you change your mind, you can get drunk quickly once you’re there.”
“Is it really that awful?” Kyra had a hard time imagining that the brilliantly successful man beside her would be intimidated by anyone, even his controlling parents.
“Awful? No. Arion Farm is a beautiful place. The trees will be flowering. There will be foals cavorting in the fields. Champagne will flow like water.” He gestured out the window. “The sun is shining, as per my mother’s request to the Almighty.”
“Not the farm. I know you love that.” Back at Brunell, when he’d casually mentioned hiding in the stables or getting lost in the privet maze, she’d thought of his childhood home as a sort of enchanted castle.“Your family. Even though you didn’t go into law, your father can’t argue with your success.”
“My father is a lawyer. He can argue with anything.”
“What about your mother?” Will had seemed to have fewer issues with her when he was in college.
“Mother is like a steady drip of water on a stone. She never raises her voice, but she wears you down.” He shifted on his seat. “Schuyler will be there, too.”
“Your sister? Didn’t she take the pressure off you by becoming a lawyer herself?”
He rubbed the back of his neck again. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ve got a whole helicopter ride.”
He snorted. “It would take longer than even the round-trip to explain all the warped twists and turns of my family.”
“Well, I’ll listen if you want to talk.”Maybe venting would help him relax.
He shifted on the seat so he was facing her. “You always listened.”
“You fascinated me. Like an alien from another planet.” Kyra let her gaze travel over the golden hair that waved back from his high forehead, the straight, sharp lines of his nose and jaw, and the concentrated hue of his eyes. Today he seemed even more foreign and unreachable. She shook her head. “Even your clothes were exotic.”
He glanced down at his green pencil-striped shirt and khaki trousers. “Not exactly haute couture.”
“No, it’s haute Connecticut. And I’m from low Pennsylvania.” And his long, elegant body made his outfit look like it was custom-tailored.
She wondered now if he’d opened up to her in college because their worlds didn’t intersect. He didn’t have to worry about her spilling his secrets to someone who mattered. She’d even wondered then, if on that final humiliating night, he’d escorted her out of the frat house not to protect her but to keep her away from his friends.
The limousine eased to a stop. “We’re at the heliport, sir,” the chauffeur said through the intercom.
Will climbed out and ducked his head and shoulders back in to hold out his hand, his broad palm and long fingers offering support and temptation. She laid her own palm against his and he closed his fingers firmly around it.
As she stepped onto the macadam of the heliport, a blast of wind and noise made her flinch. A chopper was just taking off, its rotors beating the air at high speed.
Will turned his body to shelter her from the buffeting of the din and the stinging, grit-laden air. The gallantry of the gesture made her insides go quivery. As soon as that chopper was out over the Hudson River, Will stepped back, leaving her exposed to the dangers of the world once again. Or so it felt.
He grasped her elbow to steer her toward a glossy forest-green helicopter with Cronus Holdings and two crossed ears of corn painted on the side in gold. She’d discovered through Google that Cronus was the holding company that encompassed all of Will’s enterprises, of which there were many besides Ceres.
“Hello, Roxy, nice day for flying.” Will greeted a slim woman wearing black trousers, a white blouse with a pilot’s epaulets, and mirrored sunglasses, who was inspecting something underneath the copter.
Roxy straightened. “Smooth as glass, so no fun at all.”
