“He was. Marco was his son.”
“Are you saying he’s Angel’s dad?”
He nodded. “Before Sapphie became Magnus’s wife, she was married to Carlucci junior for a short time. Unhappily.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“That’s… What do you mean, the Wynter family is going to love me?” She turned in the car seat to face him. “I doubt there’ll ever be a reason for me to meet any of them.”
Knox gave her another glance. At least she had some color in her cheeks now. Even though it was only because of arguing with him. He could work with that. “I’m sure you’ll meet a few of them in the next few months,” he dismissed. “But you’ll meet all of them en masse at the wedding.”
Ellie startled. “What wedding?”
One look at the apprehension on her face and Knox knew he had to change his answer from what he had originally intended, and quickly.
Ellie looked absolutely terrified that he might be talking about their wedding. Which he had been. Maybe not for next week or even next month, but sometime not too far in the future.
But it was obviously much too soon for Ellie to even think beyond the next few days, let alone to consider marrying him.
“My friend Declan Quinn is marrying his beloved Fawn in London next month,” Knox told her instead. “I would really like it if you came with me as my plus one.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“You want me to come to London with you and attend your friend’s wedding?” Ellie repeated as they rode up in the elevator to Knox’s apartment.
It had taken until now for her to be able to answer him.
Because she had been too busy regrouping after she had almost made the mistake of thinking Knox was talking about their wedding when he’d said that was the occasion when she would meet the Wynter family!
How embarrassing a mistake would that have been?
And stupid.
Of course, Knox didn’t want to marry her. He barely knew her. She barely knew him.
Oh, there was definitely a fierce physical attraction between them, but that’s all it was.
All?
Ellie was finding it more and more difficult to even breathe when she was in his company.
“As my plus one,” Knox confirmed.
“You already said that,” she dismissed as she followed him out of the elevator straight into what was obviously the two floors of his penthouse apartment. “We’ve only just met. What would your friends think if I came to London with you to attend your friend’s wedding? Knox?” she called after him as he started to climb the spiral staircase to the floor above. He was carrying her small suitcase but had left the box containing the ingredients for making their dinner on the breakfast bar. “We were in the middle of a conversation!”
He turned to look over the iron banister at the top of the stairs. “I’ll be back down in a couple of minutes. In the meantime, make yourself at home.”
Ellie gave Knox’s broad shoulders and back one last frustrated glare as he disappeared from view. She turned that disgruntled frown onto examining where Knox lived.
She had thought her own apartment was pretty high-end, but this was on a whole other level. Open plan downstairs, consisting of a modern black-and-white kitchen and breakfast bar area, along with a huge lounge area with an open fireplace on one wall and floor-to-ceiling windows on another. The furniture was all modern, also black and white to match the kitchen. There were two hallways leading off the sitting room, but Ellie doubted they led to bedrooms when Knox had taken her suitcase up the stairs.
Speaking of which, she wanted her suitcase to come back down those stairs. She had been too stunned still to put up a fight when Knox parked in the private underground car park beneath this building. She’d automatically gotten out of the vehicle once Knox had come round and opened her door for her. He’d then taken her luggage from the trunk.
She had still been trying to gather her thoughts after Knox had spoken so casually about her going to London with him to attend his friend’s wedding.
Admittedly, she had never been to England, and it was a place she really wanted to visit. But she’d known Knox for less than a week. A week that, for many reasons, had been a fraught and emotional one for her.