Portia jerked to face her sister. Dizzie smiled serenely and gave a slight nod.
Holy shit. That was something he hadn’t seen coming.
Apparently neither had Portia. He hoped he’d have a chance after this to talk to her about it, to see how she was taking the news.
But he couldn’t deal with that right now. He had a meeting to facilitate.
“Ms. Tremaine, Mrs. St. John, I’d like to introduce you to Mrs. Iduna Solveig, CEO of the Solveig Consortium and her husband, Mr. Agnarr Solveig.”
Grim-faced nods from both sides of the table.
“Now that we all know each other, shall we get down to business?”
Chapter26
Portia looked around the room.She took in the security present—six Solveig guards—and smiled quietly to herself. Apparently the Solveigs thought they needed to be protected from big bad Portia Tremaine.
Of course, they could also be planning to do away with her here. Her thumb ran over the simple silver band on her index finger. It was a sleekly designed panic button. Sure, her team might not make it into the room in time, but it meant she—and Dizzie—weren’t completely alone.
Dizzie, who was now married to Portia’s best friend. That had been a shock. Mrs. Solveig had yet to say anything, even a generic greeting. Portia thought she’d seen a flicker of disapproval on the other woman’s face but it had been gone too quickly. If she had problems with Killian, well, she could fuck right off. No one got to disparage him in her presence.
Her gaze drifted to the other people in the room. Mrs. Solveig looked more matronly than Portia would expect from a company CEO. She wasn’t photographed very often, so Portia wasn’t sure if it was her usual look or a ploy for sympathy. Agnarr Solveig looked like any other old, white male in the corporate world. She’d dealt with plenty of those in her career.
She lingered on Aleks for just a moment longer than was probably prudent. He looked quite handsome in his suit. It was a stormy gray and his shirt brought out the blue in his eyes. After the introductions, he’d taken a seat toward the middle of the table, slightly closer to the Solveig CEO than Dizzie. But just slightly. She filed that piece of information away.
“Well,” Dizzie said. “What did you want to meet about?” Not subtle at all, but Portia understood the other woman’s impatience. Being summoned tended to irritate Portia too.
Under the table, she nudged Dizzie with the tip of her shoe.
“We... it’s just... we wanted so much to meet you.” Mrs. Solveig’s voice trembled. “You look so much like our daughter Anna.”
“That was my mother’s name?” Dizzie’s tone was softer this time.
Mrs. Solveig gasped. “You didn’t know her name?”
Dizzie shrugged as if it didn’t mean much to her. “No, I didn’t know anything about my parents until this year.”
Portia winced. For the first time, she thought about what it must have been like to grow up in the Tremaine orphanage, not knowing anything about your parents. Portia’s mom had died when Portia was young and she still missed her every damn day.
“That’s your fault,” Mrs. Solveig hissed at Portia. “You and your bastard of a father.”
“I had nothing to do with Dizzie’s parentage,” Portia said coolly. “I found out after she did.”
The other woman glared across the table. Her husband put a restraining hand on her forearm.
“I’m sorry you didn’t know your mother, Dizzie. May I call you that?” he asked.
Dizzie nodded stiffly.
“She was the light of our life. The baby of the family. When she ran away and then,” he paused and dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief, “when she died, it left a hole in our family. If only we’d known about you.”
“Why didn’t you?” Dizzie asked. Her voice was tight.
Portia didn’t know her well enough to gauge how this reunion was affecting her.
“Know about you?” He took a deep breath. “We received a box of ashes and a form letter. She’d been identified by her DNA and they were sending her back to us. We didn’t get a body to bury, just a box.” His voice broke.
“From the Tremaine medical facility! Some low-level tech had more compassion than your father!” Mrs. Solveig lashed out.
