Friends to Lovers (Aisle Bound) Read online

  Fast was no problem. The only thing that might slow her down was indecision over which flowers to pluck from the well-stocked cooler. Without a bride’s preferences to guide her. Daphne preferred to take her time when designing. So many options with so many lovely blooms. But they’d used speed rounds on Flower Power before. Thanks to Gib’s homework, they’d prepared for this eventuality. He’d hammered home the importance of going with her gut. Ivy was right. In the seats or not, Gib was steadying. And she’d be grateful. Right up until she clunked him over the head with the giant trophy for acting like an idiot.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Love is like a beautiful rose, it takes time and patience before it fully blossoms

  ~ Anonymous

  Gib slammed through the condo like a man possessed. He’d changed his tie three times. Changed his suit for a sport coat and slacks. How the hell was he supposed to dress to support the love of his life? Especially as he couldn’t let slip that three-little-word detail to Daphne. Since leaving her shop, he’d barely been able to function. As if making the heart-wrenching decision to leave her had sapped him of all mental powers.

  He’d completely forgotten the weekly update with the events manager. Told his London realtor to let two perfectly good properties slide because he couldn’t decide between living in Chelsea or Hyde Park. Left his gloves God knows where. Not in his coat pocket. Not in his briefcase. As he upended the sofa cushions, Gib glanced at his watch. Late enough that he’d have to skip meeting everyone at the shop and go straight to the competition.

  He patted his breast pocket to be sure Daphne’s card, at least, was where it belonged. Writing it had taken four attempts and kept him up until almost dawn. But at least when she read it, she’d know how proud he was. How much faith he had in her creativity and her designs. That to him, she’d always be the best florist in the country, hands down. Gib hoped it would be just the ego boost she needed to power through her fear of the cameras.

  A knock sent him sprinting to the door. Milo must’ve warned them he was running late, and they’d swung by to pick him up. Gib snatched his coat off the rack. “I can’t find my blasted gloves,” he yelled through the door. Might as well try to fend off his misery by messing with Ben a little. “Ivy, you’ll have to sit on my lap. Let me put my hands in your pockets to stay warm.” He threw open the door. Not to Ivy. Not even to Ben. But to the little brother he hadn’t see in almost ten years.

  “Sounds like quite the plan,” said Gerald. He looked taller. Finally caught up to stand even with Gib. Filled out from the way his face puffed. Hard to tell much more beneath the layers of winter gear. But it was still like looking in a slightly distorted mirror. One that shaved off a few years and lightened his hair to the color of ash wood.

  Gib’s mind whirled with a hundred thoughts. A pang of joy rose up at seeing the brother he’d always loved. Almost immediately followed by the remembrance that the same man attempted to send Gib to rot in a jail cell in his place. Love clashed with bitterness, hurt, anger, sadness. How to reconcile those emotions? Of course, if he’d figured that out, Gib wouldn’t have set up shop on an entirely separate continent to avoid Gerald. He flailed at the most obvious question. “What are you doing here?”

  “In America? Or on your doorstep?”

  “Either, I suppose.”

  “I’m freezing my bum off. Going to invite me in out of the cold?”

  Gib hesitated. Just for a moment, but he knew from Gerald’s thinned lips that he had noticed. “Of course.” As his brother crossed the threshold, Gib clapped an awkward arm around his shoulder. “Good to see you. I’m afraid you caught me off guard. I’m on my way out.”

  “Gibson. I’ve flown across the Atlantic to see you after how many years? Surely, whatever pressing engagement to wine and dine your latest bird can wait.”

  Not really. Nor did Gib think he could quickly sum up the importance of a reality television show competition. And he certainly wasn’t going to try and summarize his on-the-rocks relationship with the only woman he’d ever truly loved. Better to sit down for ten minutes, find out what the hell was going on with Gerald and then shove off to the show. Gib took his brother’s hat, coat, scarf and gloves. Checked his watch one more time. “Have a seat.”

  “I’d love a cup of tea. What they served on the airplane was revolting.”

  Gib headed for the kitchen. “International travel isn’t for the faint of heart.” Were they really discussing tea? Their big reunion kicking off with a review of the weak, oversteeped plonk served at thirty thousand feet? No. Time to shake off his shock and get down to it. He put on the kettle. Checked his watch again. Turned off the stove. Filled a mug and jammed it into the microwave instead. Gib refused to let Daphne down by not showing up. If he had any hope of making it to the show, he’d have to hustle this along. “What made you decide to pay me a visit?”

  “A favor.”

  Gib froze, one hand in the tea tin. That couldn’t be right. After maintaining only sporadic contact, mostly through their grandfather, his brother wouldn’t actually have the brass balls to start in with Gib for a fucking favor. Would he? “Pardon?”

  “I flew out here to ask you to come home with me.”

  Coincidence? That his past would chase him down to return to England the same month Cavendish all but deported him? Doubtful. He shoved the tin back into the cupboard. No tea. No more politely meaningless chatter. Gib was about ten seconds from flattening Gerald to the wall with a hand at his throat and demanding answers. He settled for stalking over to his brother, getting an inch from his face.

  “Drop the act,” Gib demanded. “You tell me everything, right now. Don’t bother to sugarcoat it. Don’t beat around the bush. Be straight with me or I’ll throw you out so fast your balls will bounce up into your throat when you land.”

  Gerald had the good sense to quake backward a few steps. “All right.” He smoothed his thin, navy tie. “I pulled a few strings to get you reassigned to London. You’re supposed to be on your way back. Except nobody’s received confirmation that you’ll be on a plane in two days. So I trekked out here to get it all sorted.”

  Yet again, Gib was torn. Go with utter shock or mind-searing anger? No. It just wasn’t possible. Castellan Compagnie was a huge corporation. They’d implemented a sweeping HR policy. Gerald, a reprobate who considered work beneath his status and partied away his days, couldn’t be responsible for that sort of multinational restructuring. “How, exactly, did you get me reassigned?”

  “I needed you back at home. But you don’t write, you don’t call...” He trailed off into a weak laugh.

  “Don’t,” snapped Gib. “Don’t joke. Don’t fucking presume to toy with me.”

  “Living here’s certainly roughened your edges.” Gerald held up his hands when Gib charged forward, pinning him to the refrigerator with a shoulder to the chest. Fear and surprise flickered in his pale blue eyes. “Sorry. I know the wife of one of the Castellan directors.”

  Gib pulled back a little. “Know? As in you’re old-school chums? You decided to catch up over a spot of tea and she agreed, as a lark, to redefine employment in a company she doesn’t even work for?”

  “Fine,” he huffed. “I’m sleeping with her.”

  Classy as ever. “There’s so little on your résumé that you’re trying to pad it by adding adulterer as a title?”

  Gerald sneered down his nose. “Like you’ve never shagged someone else’s piece of ass.”

  “No. I haven’t.” It was his own personal line in the sand, one he’d never crossed. Marriage might never have been on his to-do list. Not until Daphne, at least. Not that it mattered now, with him an ocean away from the woman he wanted to wake up next to for the rest of his life. But he’d always respected the hell out of people who chose to make that commitment. Sure, he’d been approached by more than one antsy-for-action
wife. And politely declined. Gib refused to participate in the breakup of a relationship. He didn’t need that on his conscience. And he’d found it to be much less hassle to scoop them up after a divorce. Divorcées tended to be quite desperate.

  “Claudette’s in an open marriage, anyway. The French are very broad-minded about that sort of thing. She knows I’m in a spot of trouble. It was actually her idea. Her husband’s new to Castellan. Needed to take a stand on something to get noticed right from the start. This policy was as good for him as it was for me.”

  Disgusted, Gib dropped his arm and gave Gerald some breathing room. It certainly explained the out-of-the-blue announcement from Goudreau. On a business level, at least. Not on a how-the-hell-can-you-fuck-with-people’s-lives level. “It never occurred to you that I might not appreciate this change in plans? Having my career, my life disrupted without so much as a by your leave? That I might see this as yet another horrible betrayal on your part?”

  Gerald shrugged. “It was the only way to guarantee your return home. I knew politely asking you wouldn’t do any good.”

  True. His likely reaction would’ve been to laugh. Dismiss it as a joke. “Why? Why do you care where I live, after all these years?”

  “Father’s remarrying.”

  And the surprises just kept on coming. Gib walked out of the kitchen, right to the antique server in the dining room where they kept all the liquor. Pulled out the first bottle and poured himself two fingers of whatever it was and threw it back in a fast gulp. Wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Was anyone going to tell me that he and Mum got divorced?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Gerald hovered behind a chair. Probably trying to keep the entire table between himself and Gib. “It all happened rather of a sudden. About six months ago.”

  “I see.” But he didn’t. And even though the separation from his family was by his choice, Gib suddenly felt left out. Alone. Saddened more than he thought possible at yet another chasm yawning between him and his parents.

  “Father started up with Clare Hastings. Daughter of the Earl of Falmouth. She plays at managing an art gallery in Notting Hill. Everyone knows she was using it to look for a husband. Father discovered he liked having a pretty young thing fawning over him. Left Mum and moved in with her. They’re to be married soon.”

  “I suppose my invitation got lost in the mail,” Gib said, hollowly. Wondered if his soon-to-be-stepmother might be young enough to be his sister.

  Gerald let out an aggrieved sigh. “He’s acting like a complete git. Kicked me out of both the London town house and the castle.”

  Did he even hear himself? Whining about no longer sponging off the parents in their multiple houses? Definitely what Milo called a first-world problem. “You’re his favorite. Why’d he show you the door? Christ, you didn’t hit on Clare, did you?”

  He drummed his fingers. Flicked them restlessly over the curve at the head of the table. “We had words.”

  “Obviously.” Gib refilled his glass. Decided not to be a complete bastard and filled one for Gerald, too. He slid it across the table and sank into a chair. Hoped that the connection between having his job in Chicago taken away and their father’s apparent midlife crisis would reveal itself soon.

  “Thanks.” Gerald tapped the gold rim of the glass, but didn’t take a sip. “He tried for the umpteenth time to get me to gear up for a run for Parliament. According to him, there are so many scandals in politics nowadays, the spots on my record are old enough to be overlooked.”

  None of this ranked as news. None of it explained anything. Gib was running out of patience. And time. Daphne expected him to be in the audience, cheering her on. It was the last thing he could do for her. “Why don’t you? Let Father and his cronies set you up with a nice seat in the House of Lords. They don’t make you wear wigs anymore. Buy yourself a nice bowler,” he suggested. “You’d fit right in.”

  Gerald flattened his palms, straightened his elbows as if preparing to launch into a lecture from a podium. “It’s not right.”

  That might be the truly most shocking thing Gerald had said so far. “Since when are you overly burdened by the concepts of right and wrong?”

  “You mean because my life is one endless string of house parties and drinking? Well, it was. But not anymore.” He pushed the tumbler back across the table toward Gib. “I’ve been sober for nine months.”

  Aha. That was the most shocking thing to fall from his brother’s lips. It had been a long time coming. For just a moment, Gib could overlook all the ugliness between them and be genuinely proud of Gerald’s accomplishment. Maybe, with this new leaf, there was hope for them yet. He lifted his glass in a toast. “Good for you.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it, that Father kicked me out after I cleaned up my act?” Gerald gave a humorless chuckle. “It takes everything I have to stay on the straight and narrow. I can’t bloody well be responsible for an entire constituency.”

  Not only sober, but also with a more mature outlook, apparently. Gib’s respect began to rise. “What made you do it?”

  He tipped an imaginary cap. “You did.”

  Riiiiight. “You mean from when I yelled at you to stop the drugs and the drinking before you killed yourself—that message finally sank in after ten years?”

  Gerald shook his head. A shock of hair flopped onto his forehead. “I quit the drugs right away. Well, I didn’t really have any choice but to dry out when I was in prison.”

  “Glad something did the trick.” Gib pushed out of his seat. The announcement of his sobriety had earned Gerald a mug of tea. Just one, though. He pulled the still-hot water from the microwave and dunked in a bag of Earl Grey. With a jerk of his head, indicated that Gerald should follow him into the living room.

  “Last spring, I took a fancy to fence again. Remember that summer we spent charging the haystacks at the manor with our swords?”

  Gib gave merely a curt nod. He didn’t want to be dragged down memory lane.

  “My sponsor suggested I needed to find a hobby. Start exercising as a way to do something positive for my body. This felt like killing two birds with one stone. I went up to the attic to find our old épées. Instead, I found a scrapbook. Mum kept it, hidden in a trunk. Full of magazine and newspaper articles from America.” Gerald perched on the edge of the detestable white chair.

  Gib, on the other hand, sank into the sofa and kicked his legs out onto the coffee table. Folded his arms behind his head. Might as well be comfortable while Gerald droned on with the earnest fervor of the newly reformed. “Of what?”

  “Every time a movie star or head of state stayed at the Cavendish Grand Chicago, she’d clip it. Highlight your name if it was mentioned. Write little notes along the margin. Things like Gibson’s first South American president.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair. Pulled on his earlobe. “She always called me her favorite. But deep down, even thousands of miles away, you still mattered so much to her. I figured it was time I mattered.”

  The joke was on him. Gib didn’t matter at all to his parents. They’d chosen Gerald over him from the day they let the doctors go prospecting for a bit of Gib’s liver without so much as a by your leave. “Bully for you.”

  “Father’s having another baby. With Clare.”

  On complete overload now, Gib barely registered that shocker. “Bully for him.”

  Gerald got up, moved to sit right next to Gib. “I want you to talk him out of marrying her.”

  This was the reason his life had been upended? Because Gerald didn’t like a potential stepmother? Once again, he’d put his own needs above Gib’s. And damn the consequences. Guess the introspection inherent in getting on the wagon only went so far. “Who am I to avert the course of true love?”

  “Bollocks to that.” Gerald slammed his hand on the coffee table. “The only thing he loves are the blow jobs she gives
him.”

  Gib planted his tongue into his cheek. “Must be slightly more to it than that, or she wouldn’t be pregnant.”

  “Very funny.” Gerald braced his palms on his thighs, leaned forward. “Gibson, I need you back in London. Back to dining with Father at the club. Popping in to take him to lunch. Work your way back into his good graces.”

  “Can’t go back to something that never existed in the first place.”

  He waved away Gib’s objection. “Rubbish. Father’s stubborn. Holds a grudge. But I’m sure he’s missed you all this time. You’re the eldest. His heir. If you make the first move to reconcile, he’ll fall in line.”

  “All this just to get your bedroom back?”

  “While that would certainly be nice, I’ve a far bigger task for you. If you stop him from marrying that woman, then the new baby won’t be in line to inherit any of the family fortune.”

  Whatever kernel of respect Gerald had gained with that touching story of his journey to sobriety evaporated faster than boiling water on a subzero morning. “Seriously. You have it in for a fetus? For God’s sake, I’ve never heard of anything so wholly self-serving.”

  “Nonsense.” Gerald cuffed him lightly on the shoulder “This affects you, too. We two have to stick together. Protect what’s rightfully ours.”

  Titles and money were the last things Gib cared about getting from his father. Ironically, probably the only things he ever would receive. “Do you think I’m sitting around, hoarding pennies, waiting for Father to die? I’ve my own revenue from the estate. Bloody sheep and alfalfa and crofters.”

  “Now that you mention it, could I stay there for a bit?” Gerald’s tone was overly casual. As if asking for nothing more than another cup of tea. “At the manor?”

  He needed space. To put actual, physical space between he and his brother. Or else Gib might give in to impulse, haul off and smack the supercilious smirk off his face. Was Gerald really that clueless? He expected Gib to say, sure, bro, you got my visa yanked, let’s have a sleepover?