Yes, he probably did. Watching him, Julie felt his rage and understood what he must be feeling. But damn it, she’d been lied to, too! “I didn’t know about this.”
“I said we’ll talk about it later.” He took her upper arm in a firm grip and led her across the room to the door. “For now, we’re going back to the party. We’ll smile for the photographers. We’ll dance and we’ll eat wedding cake and we will not let anyone else even guess that there’s something wrong. You understand?”
“I get it,” she said, and was forced to agree with him. She so didn’t need any more drama today. “More acting.”
“Exactly.”
“Fine.” It wouldn’t be easy, but with enough wine, all things were possible. “But then what?” she asked, looking up into dark brown eyes that looked as cold and empty as an abandoned well.
“When the party’s over, we head to Mexico. To get you a damn divorce so we can get married again.”
Three
T ravis checked his wristwatch for the tenth time in as many minutes, then looked up at his brothers. Adam and Jackson stood side by side, looking so much alike they might have been twins. But then, Travis knew that all three of them were carbon copies of each other. With only a year separating each of them, they’d grown up close and had gotten even closer over the years. The King brothers were a unit. So much a unit in fact, that it was nearly impossible for one of them to hide something from the others.
For example, without even looking into their eyes, he was fully aware that they knew something was up.
“The vineyard manager, Darleen, should be able to keep things running around here while I’m gone,” he said, glancing around the nearly empty garden area. The wedding and reception were over, the guests were long gone and now the catering crew was cleaning up. A veritable squad of workers was stacking the white chairs, dragging down the garlands of flowers, packing away crystal and china and whatever food was left over.
A low hum of anger still throbbed in Travis’s gut. This should have been a good day. One to celebrate the fruition of his dreams for the winery. Instead, his dream was fast becoming a nightmare.
Shaking his head, he dragged his thoughts back to the business at hand and turned his gaze back to his brothers. “But if she needs help…”
“We’ll be around,” Jackson assured him. “Well,” he corrected with a wry smile, “Adam will be. I’ve got a flight to Paris lined up.”
Jackson ran the King-Jets operation for the family. Building luxury jets and leasing them to the wealthy of the world. They had plenty of trained, experienced pilots on the books, sure, but Jackson enjoyed taking some of the runs himself. Nothing he liked better than heading out to wherever the wind blew him. The job suited him. Jackson never had been one for staying in one place too long.
“And after Paris, it’s Switzerland,” Jackson continued. “Should be gone about three weeks, so Adam’ll have to step in if Darleen needs anything.”
“I’ll be here,” Adam agreed.
“Of course you will,” Jackson said with a laugh. “According to Gina you’re never more than five feet from her and you watch her like she’s a hand grenade about to explode.”
Adam scowled at the youngest of them. “Talk trash when the woman you love is pregnant. Then we’ll see where we stand.”
“Never gonna happen,” Jackson assured him with a friendly slap on the back. Then he glanced at Travis. “Where did you say you and Julie were going on your honeymoon?”
“I didn’t,” Travis told him. “But we’re taking one of the jets to Mexico.”
“Mexico?” Adam silenced Jackson with a look. “Julie told Gina you were heading to Fiji.”
“Changed our minds,” Travis said with what he hoped was a careless shrug. He didn’t want to get in to this with his brothers. There was no time for a long, drawn-out battle and no way would they have given him anything less. Travis checked his watch again, wondered what the hell was taking Julie so long to get changed.
“This have anything to do with the French guy who crashed the party?” Jackson’s eyebrows lifted as he shoved both hands into his slacks pockets.
“Julie didn’t look too happy to see him,” Adam agreed. “I’m thinking he’s her ex?”
“Damn it.” Travis bit the curse off, low and hard. He’d hoped to just avoid all of this, since he’d rather no one knew about the blackmail. Especially his brothers. The Kings weren’t the type to bow to extortion. And he wouldn’t have gone along with it himself if he hadn’t had to buy time, as well as Frenchy’s silence. “Just had to be observant, didn’t you?”
“Actually,” Jackson mused, his features tight as he began to get the picture that something was off. “I wasn’t paying attention. It was Nathan who cued me in.”
“Great.” So it wasn’t only his immediate family that had their radar tuned in. Travis could only hope that the rest of their guests hadn’t noticed anything odd.
The trouble was, there were too many damn Kings, Travis thought. His father had been one of four brothers and those brothers had spread out and created at least three sons apiece. Now they were all running different aspects of the King dynasty. Couldn’t throw a rock in California without hitting at least one King cousin.
Nathan’s company built personal computers and made them so well and so affordable, King PCs were threatening to take over the world. “What’d he say?”
“Nothing much,” Jackson said and stepped out of the way as a catering crew member staggered past him carrying an oversized coffee urn. “Just that Julie looked like she was going to be sick and you looked like the top of your head was going to explode. Me—” he added with a sly grin “—I’m so used to seeing that expression on your face, it never registered.”
“Thanks.” Travis shook his head and ground his back teeth together. Nathan had noticed too much. “He tell this to anyone else?”
“Nope. Well, wait. Cousin Griffin and his twin Garret were there, too. So they know you were pissed. So what? You’re always pissed about something, big brother.”
He supposed that was true, but this was different and apparently, Adam sensed it. Jerking his head to the side, Travis’s oldest brother shifted farther away from the rest of the cleanup crew. Adam didn’t speak again until the three of them were standing in the shadows of the main house, surrounded by overgrown hydrangea bushes. “What’s going on, Travis? Who was that guy? And what’s he got to do with you and Julie?”