Page 8 of In Bed with Her Billionaire Bodyguard

Silence met her statement. She knew his relationship with their grandfather was strained in a way that hers wasn’t, but she’d never understood why.

‘There’s...nothing I can do from here,’ Nate admitted, sounding defeated.

‘You can get better, Nate. That’s all I want,’ she insisted truthfully.

He ended the call without a reply and the silence rang loudly in her head. She knew her twin brother as well as she knew herself. And she knew how hard he was finding his body’s slow recovery from the life-threatening aneurism that had nearly stolen his life. And renewed anger that Simon and Johnson had taken advantage of that weakness fired her blood.

As the car arrived at the family estate, she didn’t see the grand sweeping drive, the ancient stone fountain in the centre, three majestic horses lit from beneath. She didn’t even give Luc directions as to where to wait or park. Her focus was solely on getting to her grandfather, hoping he could tell her what was going on.

Her heels crunched on gravel, then on stone steps, then on parquet flooring and then on the wooden floor, clipping at a pace that kept time with her racing pulse. She ignored the greeting of Mrs Conwary, the housekeeper she had known for as long as she’d been alive, and her husband, the butler, who waited outside her grandfather’s office as if he’d expected her.

She caught his gaze from the other side of the hallway and he nodded, saying, ‘You can go in, ma’am.’

She didn’t pause on the threshold, didn’t knock, didn’t do any of the things she would usually have done when visiting the grandfather who stood on ceremony above all else.

He was standing behind his desk, looking out of the window into the darkness. The fire in the fireplace flickered and the lighting was subtle and soft.

‘Grandfather.’

‘You made good time from London,’ he observed without turning around.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Hope asked, finally giving voice to the question that had run in her head on a loop since the announcement.

‘Because I don’t do favours for family.’

No. Hope knew that first-hand. Her grandfather believed that the hard way was the only way.

‘Simon knew,’ she replied.

‘If he did, it didn’t come from me,’ was her grandfather’s clipped response.

Hope bit back the breath aching in her chest. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this way.’

‘Of course it wasn’t. It was supposed to be your father.’

The slap of his words was a shock and she inhaled through the pain. But it was a pain she saw reflected in his eyes as he turned to face her.

‘I don’t play favourites, Hope. I can’t. Becausetheywon’t.’

She clenched her teeth against the harsh love he’d always shown her, Nate and presumably even Simon. She knew he was talking about the shareholders. The board. She knew he was talking about more than a job or a role—their inheritance.

‘What kind of guardian would I have been if I’d mollycoddled you and given you special treatment?’

‘Special?’ she huffed out scornfully. ‘Any kind of treatment would have been preferable to—’

‘Do you want it?’ her grandfather demanded, cutting off her unexpected emotional response.

‘What?’

‘The CEO position.’

‘It wassupposedto be Nate.’

‘Well, that’s not going to happen now, is it? You can’t sit on the fence any more, Hope. If you want it, do something about it. If not? Make peace with the fact that Simon is going to get it.’

Luca rubbed his hands together and breathed out a cloudy stream of breath. He prowled back and forth beside the car in the way he’d not been able to do earlier, outside Harcourts. He was used to being much more active than this, and not being able to work off the excess energy wasn’t helping his mood.

Yeah, right. You keep telling yourself that.

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