ignored him. Smart woman. “What do you want to do first, Peter?”
His brother was tapping into his phone.
“PETER!” Emelia snapped the word, and his brother snapped his head up. “Sorry. Just had to reply to coach.”
“Give me that.” Emelia held out her hand. Peter just looked at her. “For the love, Peter Carlisle. You spend fifty hours a week with your coach. When you’re not with him, you’re on all the stupid training apps. Are you going to whip that thing out at the altar to check your glycemic index?”
Victor smirked. His brother saw and shot him a glare, then dropped his phone face down on the tabletop.
“Sorry, Em.”
Emelia muttered something under her breath about the World Champs and being a widow before she’d even been married. “Okay, Victor. Peter has something he would like to ask you.”
This should be good. Going by his brother’s sagging posture and shuttered expression, it could be anything. And there probably wasn’t anything that Victor wouldn’t give him, up to and including his hereditary title, if that didn’t require his death.
“Peter.” Emelia titled her head at her fiancé and raised her eyebrows.
Peter furrowed his brows and mumbled something under his breath, but Victor couldn’t make out hide nor hair of what it was.
Instead, he tipped himself back on the rear legs of his chair and waited. He wasn’t getting in the middle of whatever this was. Not for all the acreage on the estate.
“Louder, so he can hear you, darling,” Emelia said sweetly, appearing not to notice that her fiancé had about five inches and a good thirty kilos of rowing-hardened muscle on her.
Peter huffed out his breath. “Fine. Do you want to be my best man?”
There was a crash, and Victor found himself flat on his back on the kitchen tiles, staring up at the roof, air shoved out of his lungs.
Peter loomed above him, hand out. Victor clasped it, and his brother hauled him to his feet, then picked up his chair behind him and set it back on the ground with a bang.
Victor stayed on his feet, his gaze running over his brother’s tousled red hair, ginger half-beard, and unsmiling expression. “You don’t want me to be your best man. Why haven’t you asked one of the guys from the team?”
Elite rowing teams were tighter than brothers. That was the legend and the truth. Well, unless you were him and managed to ruin even those hard-forged bonds, but that was a different story for a different day.
And, not that he was a wedding planner or anything, but he was pretty sure the bridal party was supposed to be picked long before now.
“Because you’re family.” That was Emelia. “And when your parents are gone, you’re what’s left of the Carlisles. For better or worse.”
Victor instinctively raised his hand to the jagged scar that zagged down his cheek, a move that wasn’t lost on his brother.
Emelia sighed. “Sit down. Both of you.”
Victor and Peter both pulled out their chairs and sat down, eyeing each other like boxers banished to opposing corners.
“I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and I’m old enough to be the mother of my half-siblings. All I have is my cousin. And I’m not saying you have to be each other’s people—we all know that’s not going to happen anytime soon. But I do think you will both regret it if you don’t try to find some common ground. Plus …” Emelia paused before she threw in the killer blow. “You know it would mean everything to your mom.”
Peter’s shoulders dropped. “She’s right.” His admission came out gruffly. “We need to try to do better. At least for her sake.”
It was hardly a warm invitation, but it was probably the best he was going to get.
Peter lifted his head and pinned Victor with his green-eyed gaze. “Just don’t stuff it up.”
A not-so-subtle reminder that somehow he always did.
CHAPTER FOUR
Victor didn’t know what Meredith’s plan was, but he doubted most of Wyndham had been flown to New York for a swanky cocktail party.
The fourteenth-floor office of Langham & Co. overlooked the glittering lights of the Big Apple. Victor had stayed away from the US the last few years. But it could be worse. At least they weren’t in LA.
He’d chatted to a few colleagues, introduced himself to a few of the Americans. Nobody was hostile, but no one went out of their way to be friendly either. Not that he could blame them. The staff of the two companies wanted to