Crazy About The Boss

HEARING his sister’s voice always made Jack feel like that eighteen-year-old who’d left home in disgrace.

How bloody stupid was that? He was Jack Valentine of Valentine Ventures, the reckless genius who had challenged conventional wisdom and made a fortune. And she was asking him to come home again.

Jack squeezed the phone until his fingers ached. “It’s been twelve years, Emma. That’s a lot of Christmases. Why should I come home for this one?”

“Do you have something better to do?” she said, her soft, cultured voice dripping with irritation.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. It was almost as if she knew he had no plans at all. “Anything’s better than that.”

“It’s time, Jack.”

He heard London in her voice. Americans loved the accent. But he heard silk and steel in the soft, firm tone that tapped into an accumulation of loneliness he hadn’t realized was there.

Swiveling his chair around, he stared out his office window and concentrated on the New York skyline instead. It was dark, but across the city lights dotted the windows in the tall buildings. Out there someone was staring at his window and coveting this office with its expensive art, plush carpet, fine furniture and the latest electronics. Standing on the street they were cold and scared and staring, wondering what it felt like to have everything you ever wanted.

He knew because twelve years ago this city was where he’d run and he’d once been down there with nothing. He’d looked up and vowed that one day he’d own the whole damn building. Screw-ups didn’t grow up to be millionaires, but he had.

“It has been twelve years, after all. Are you listening, Jack?”

“Yes. And what I hear is that something’s wrong. What is it, Em?”

There was a big sigh from the other end of the line. “All right. There is a problem here. The business is in trouble. We need your help.”

The precious business Robert Valentine prized above everything? Good. It was about time the womanizing bastard paid for his sins where it hurt him most. “I’m not sure why I should care.”

“Because no matter how stubborn you insist on being, you’re still part of this family.” This time censure mixed with the steel in her voice.

“Did he put you up to this?”

“No.” Another big sigh. “Jack, what happened between the two of you?”

Jack had protected his mother. And it had cost him.

“It doesn’t matter any more, Em.”

The unladylike snort on the other end of the line told him his sister was probably rolling her pale blue eyes in disgust as she fiddled with a strand of curly light brown hair. The vivid image made him miss her.

“I hear in your voice that it still does matter,” she said quietly.

“You’re wrong. Now, if that’s all—” He turned away from the window and leaned back in his chair.

“It’s not,” she snapped. “We need you, Jack. Your job is investing in companies. The family business needs money and quite literally you’re our only hope to keep it going.”

“Lots of investors would love to get their hands on a piece of the action.”

“But they wouldn’t be family. And none of us want to give a non-Valentine a piece of the action because you don’t turn your back on family. It simply isn’t right.”

Even if family turned their backs on him? he wondered. “They’ll survive, Em.”

“I wish I could be as sure.” Sadness shaded her voice. “As you said—it’s been a dozen years. Twelve seems like a good round number to make peace. Tis the season. Peace on earth. Charity begins at home and all that.”

“I’m not feeling charitable.” Jack rested his elbows on his cluttered desk.

“Neither am I.” Frustration laced with anger making her tone more clipped. “You disappeared,” she blurted out. “Dad wouldn’t discuss it and Mum was fragile. I was sixteen when you left me with the whole mess. Big brothers are supposed to take care of their little sisters.”

Little sister knew how to stick the knife in and twist. He’d loved her. Hell, he still loved her.

“I had no choice, Em. I had to leave.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you abandoned me, but you did what you needed to, I guess. Now I need something from you.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “I got married, Jack.”

It took him two beats to pull himself out of the past. His little sister was a married woman? He hadn’t heard. “Congratulations. Who’s the lucky man?”

“He was a prince—”

“Of course he’d be a prince of a guy,” he teased.

She laughed, a happy sound, so different from a few moments ago. “No, Sebastian was actually crowned King of Meridia.”

Meridia. Jack knew it was a small European country and recalled something in the news recently about a scandal in the line of succession. “I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s very important to me that you meet him.”

“Look, Emma—”

“I’ve never asked you for anything,” she interrupted, her voice firm. “But I want this and, quite frankly, I think you owe me, Jack. Come for Christmas. The usual place for the family toast. I’ll be expecting you.”

Before he could decline again, the line went dead. Jack let out a long breath as he replaced the phone. His little sister married a king?

And he’d missed it.

That made him wonder what else he’d missed. But Emma had never told him that she’d felt abandoned. And she hadn’t ever asked him for anything. Until now.

“Jack, you’re out of your mind.” His associate, Maddie Ford, walked into his office without looking up from the proposal he’d given her earlier. “You can’t seriously want to put money into this. It’s crazy. It’s risky. And so like you it makes me want to shake you until your teeth rattle.”

She kept talking, but he was only half listening to blonde, blue-eyed, brainy Maddie. His sensible and down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is Maddie. In the two years since he’d brought her into his company, she’d become more his partner than his assistant. He’d come to rely on her sound judgment. For better or worse she’d become the voice in his head.

She was also the only stunningly beautiful woman he’d never hit on. And he planned to keep it that way because the women who gave in to him were here today and gone tomorrow. Sometimes they were gone in the same day. He wouldn’t do anything to lose Maddie because he needed her around, although what he had in mind wasn’t business related. The thing was, he hadn’t made a fortune by not listening to his gut and it was telling him now to take her with him to meet Emma’s husband.

When she stopped talking to catch a breath he said, “How do you feel about Christmas in London?”

CHAPTER ONE

London—Christmas Day

“I SUPPOSE millionaires have problems, too.”

Maddie Ford waited for a reaction from the bachelor millionaire in the town car beside her and Jack Valentine didn’t disappoint.