He let a slow smile curl his lips. “Whatever I want.”
She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. He had rendered the great Grace Winchester speechless. That was a first. And it gave him more satisfaction than he’d ever imagined it could.
“It was a joke,” Roman said. “I just want to talk.”
“But I don’t want to talk to you,” she replied, glancing nervously toward her father. Would Sutton really do that to her? Knowing Roman and Gracie’s complicated past, would he really force her to speak with him?
“I’ll give you fifteen minutes with her,” Sutton said, cementing in Roman’s mind what a bastard the man really was, selling out his own daughter.
Gracie gasped and said, “Daddy!”
She looked to Roman with pleading eyes.
“Forty-five,” Roman said, ignoring her.
“Twenty,” Sutton countered without missing a beat.
Un-freaking-believable.
Grace just stood there, her mouth hanging open, as if she couldn’t believe this exchange was really happening. That she was being bartered like property.
“Thirty and not a minute less,” Roman told Sutton. “And that’s my final offer. Otherwise, you’re on your own, old man.”
Knowing how vain Sutton was, the “old man” comment had to stick in his craw, but he never let it show. He considered it for less than ten seconds before he said, “We have a deal.”
Wow, the man truly had no scruples or decency. Gracie had offered to help, but considering her wide-eyed stare, Roman doubted this was what she had in mind. The question was, would she really do it?
Maybe Sutton had no scruples, but Roman did. “What do you say, Grace? Thirty minutes to catch up?”
Roman could see that she wanted to say no. But Sutton broke into a coughing spasm that paled his skin and stole his breath, and Grace winced.
She laid a hand on her father’s shoulder until the spasm ceased then said gently, “Of course I’ll do it.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Roman said. “But I can’t promise that Graham and Brooks will cooperate.”
“If anyone can get them to agree, you can,” Sutton said.
An actual compliment? Wonders never ceased.
Roman turned to Grace and grinned, and the patience and compassion she showed her father evaporated before his eyes. He could feel the tension and her hatred for him radiating from every pore. And he deserved it for his boorish behavior, but if this was the only way to get Gracie to talk to him, so be it.
“When would you like your thirty minutes?” she said through clenched teeth.
“Right now works for me,” he said with a grin, feeling smug about the whole situation. He hadn’t been looking forward to his meeting with Sutton and had originally told him no. It had taken some convincing to change his mind and now he was glad he had. And if Sutton thought that having his daughter there would soften Roman up, he was wrong.
Well, maybe not totally wrong.
He had half suspected the old man would pull something like this, but when Roman saw Gracie standing there in her father’s office it was still a shock.
“We can talk in the library,” Gracie said stiffly, her back ramrod straight as she spun around and led him out of the room, her entire being vibrating with anger and hatred for him.
Considering what her family had been through recently, who could blame her? But she had it all wrong this time. And she owed him a chance to explain his role in the recent scandal involving her family. How it was not his intention, or even his fault, that her family was caught up in scandal.
Not this time anyway.
Her spiked heels clicked against the marble floor as she led him to the library, where they used to spend many a Sunday morning stretched out on the sofa in the sunshine, their bodies intertwined, reading the paper. Back when they were dating, of course, when she was in college and still lived at her father’s estate. Roman had been fresh out of college and working his first job as a fledgling private investigator, quickly moving up the ranks of the firm.
But he had been too smug and gung ho for his own good and consequently had made the biggest mistake of his life. He’d begun investigating officials and politicians with suspected ties to the mob and Sutton’s name had come up. Gracie, who had been interning at Elite Industries at the time, was implicated in making some computer files disappear and helping Sutton launder money. Roman had confronted her and she’d sworn that it wasn’t true, that her father would never work with the mob and she certainly wouldn’t do anything illegal. He had wanted to believe her, but he was young and stupid and the evidence had looked so overwhelming that he hadn’t trusted her. By the time he had realized his mistake, it was too late.
And he’d paid for it.
The pain and anguish in her eyes as she’d berated him for his betrayal were almost more than he could take. And he had deserved each and every harsh word. He would have done anything to take it back. To go back in time and relive the past. But knowing she would never forgive him, that he didn’t even deserve her forgiveness, Roman hadn’t even tried to apologize. He’d ruined his career and made more than a few enemies in the mob. For his own safety he’d had to leave town.
After denying his military roots for so long, and with nowhere else to go, he’d joined the army and started a new life for himself. Started over. But his capture, and torture, and resulting PTSD, had brought to a close that phase of his life, as well.
Once again he had pulled himself up and started over, never accepting for a second that he would be anything but successful. His former training in black ops and status as a war hero had brought in the business at first, but his impeccable performance and record of success in solving cases had kept the customers calling. The firm had grown to proportions and experienced a level of success that even he hadn’t imagined.
And this time, when it came to Gracie and her family, he’d done nothing wrong. He’d been doing his job, and doing it well.
Gracie ushered him into the library and shut the doors behind them. It looked just as it had seven years ago. In fact, nothing of the Winchester estate that he’d seen so far today had changed at all.
Roman strolled to the huge bay window that looked out over the grounds. Mostly bare trees swung testily in the cool wind blowing off the lake, their colorful leaves fluttering to the lawn, where workers hurried to gather them up.
“So what is this all about?” Gracie asked from behind him. He turned to her and she did not look happy. And her mood wasn’t likely to improve.
“As I said, I just want to talk.”
She folded her arms and glared at him. “What if I don’t want to talk to you?”
Didn’t seem like she had much of a choice. He slowly and deliberately crossed the room to where she stood, his eyes never leaving her face, and stopped in front of her at a distance that was probably just a bit too close for her comfort. So that she had to look up to meet his eye. Even in her gargantuan heels.
“Sweetheart, all you have to do is listen.”
It took a lot to make Grace Winchester squirm, but he was sure he had her panties in a twist right now, but she held her ground. Her confidence and competence had fascinated Roman from the day they were introduced by a mutual friend in college. She had been young and pretty, sharp as a whip, ridiculously smart and motivated, and he had been instantly drawn to her. The first time he talked to her, he could see that she felt it too—that tug.
He had always been a practical, logical person, but there had been nothing logical about his feelings for this woman he had barely known at the time. She had turned