“Leave it…” Bran’s voice gurgled a warning. The only time she’d ever seen him this emotional was when he got off the phone with his father. “This isn’t your business.”
“Of course it’s our business.” With his arms crossed and shoulders squared, Cole faced Branson. “You’re one quarter of Phantom Enterprises. You’re risking everything, marrying this woman we don’t even know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Branson retorted. “She’ll sign a prenup. And we don’t need to discuss this in front of Stephanie. She has nothing to do with my personal life.”
His careless words hurt more than she expected, and her anger flared again. “I’m afraid he’s right, guys. He didn’t even bother to tell me they were serious, much less on the verge of engagement and marriage.”
The three stared at Bran like he had an extra head. Jarrett was the first to recover. “You didn’t even tell your PA? Branson, you really are a jerk-wad, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t have the chance.” He sounded even more desperate to convince his friends than her. “I have my reasons, but I can’t talk about it right now.”
Carina chose that moment to glide through the door in five-inch spike heels, with the grace of a ballet dancer en pointe. “Darling… everyone’s been looking for you.”
A deep crease between his brows, Branson turned his head toward his friends and muttered from the corner of his mouth. “Are you coming with me or not?”
“What do you think?” came Finn’s glib reply.
Branson marched to the door, snatching his fiancée’s arm as he went. Pausing, he glared their direction with such ferocity in his steel blue eyes Steph could’ve sworn he actually saw his friends’ smug expressions. He flipped off the light switch and slammed the door, the thud echoing from the library shelves as her eyes once again adjusted to the dim moonlight filtering into the room.
Jarrett let out a low whistle. “Whew! Bran’s ticked off, isn’t he?”
“Yep,” Cole agreed. “Most fun we’ve had since the last Star Wars premiere.”
“Maybe even better,” said Finn.
CHAPTER 2
Branson woke in a foul mood. No surprise. It was Sunday—Stephanie’s only day off. And today, of all days, he needed to talk to her. His friends had grilled her for at least forty-five minutes, and he had to find out what she told them. More importantly, he worried what secrets his friends might have revealed about his past.
He gave himself a mental kick. He should’ve known it was a trick when all three of his Phantom Enterprise partners told him they weren’t coming to the annual gala. He was furious they’d found a way to gain access to Stephanie, though he wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so determined to keep them apart.
“Where are my socks and shoes?” Bran snapped, leaning from his perch on the bench at the foot of his bed to grope on the floor.
“As always, your shoes are on the shoe rack in your closet, and your socks are in your second dresser drawer,” Fordham replied, in an unperturbed tone.
“Stephanie always lays them out for me,” he complained.
“Ms. Caldwell indulges your laziness. I do not. You’re a grown man, perfectly capable of fetching your own socks and shoes.”
“I can’t be sure what color they are.” He let a petulant tone creep into his voice. “Someone could’ve put them in the wrong compartments.”
Fordham wasn’t buying it. “As you only allow Stephanie and me to put them away, you’ve the same odds, whether you’re trusting us to sort them properly or fetch them for you.”
“Remind me again, Fordham, what do I pay you to do?”
“To listen to your endless complaints, I suppose, and then remind you you’re a man and not a child. Let me know when you’re ready to forgo your tantrums. I’m certainly prepared to retire at any moment when you admit I’m no longer needed.”
“No.” Bran ground his molars together. “You know I still need you. I don’t do well with change. I need consistency.”
“So you said the last fifteen times we hired a personal assistant,” Fordham said with a yawn. If he looked as bored as he sounded he would be lying flat on his back, the gray hairs trembling on his chin as he snored. Not that Bran had seen his gray hair, but Fordham described it on a regular basis, saying he was too old to work. “And yet that didn’t stop you from firing each one the moment he or she did something to displease you. That is, until you hired Ms. Caldwell.” He added another vocal yawn at the end of his discourse.
“You seem more tired than usual. Are you okay?” Bran asked, only partially in jest. He didn’t like the sick feeling in his stomach at the thought of Fordham’s possible infirmity. As his primary caretaker, even before Bran’s mother passed away, Fordham had been the most constant fixture in his life since he could remember. During college and graduate school, it was Fordham who played the role of father, as his own was too busy traveling around the globe, checking on the resort properties that had made him a wealthy man.
Fordham answered, “I may have had a bit of indigestion last night—a consequence of too much of that decadent dessert concoction from the dinner. We had our own version back in the kitchens. So delicious. Though I suppose you didn’t taste it.”
Bran ignored Fordham’s jibe about his aversion to sweets and all things he considered unhealthy. “You could’ve joined the main party. It’s not like you aren’t invited every year.”
“But I’ve nothing in common with those people.” He said the word like it tasted bad.
“Because they’re rich? Privileged? Snobby?”
“Because most of your rich friends have nothing of interest going on inside their brains but to fabricate lies to impress others who, like them, have nothing of interest inside their brains.”
A hearty laugh slipped out before Bran could stop it. “Is that how you see me, too? What about Cole and Finn and Jarrett?”
“None of you four fit in with that group, and I can’t conceive why you’d want to. It was a lucky thing your friends showed up and saved Stephanie from either a slow and painful death of boredom or being skewered to death by judgmental stares.”
“I guess you were in on that surprise visit, huh? Not sure where your loyalty lies these days.”
“Your friends don’t need my help to plan their pranks. But that didn’t stop them from bragging about their success when I showed them to their rooms last night. Quizzed me about your reasons for keeping them away from Stephanie. And why you didn’t tell anyone you were getting engaged.”
“And what did you say?”
“The truth.” Fordham let his statement ride in the silence that followed, as Bran wondered at his meaning, his stomach churning.
“I thought I could trust you, Fordham.”
