Loe raamatut: «One Heir...Or Two?»

One

Van slipped the ring into his breast pocket and snapped the lid closed on the jeweler’s box in his hand. The very large near-flawless white diamond was precisely what Dani would expect when he asked her to marry him at lunch today.

He knew that wasn’t all she was expecting. He cast an eye over the merger documents on his desk. The amalgamation of Dani’s family business, Matthews Electronics, and his DM Security would be a match made in corporate heaven. It only made sense to carry their relationship from the boardroom into the bedroom. They were kindred spirits—both focused on their business targets, both leading professional, uncluttered lives and neither of them wanting the burden of parenthood. Neither of them expected—or particularly wanted—passionate love and romance. But they’d share respect, attraction and compatible interests—and what more could he want than that? Yep, life was pretty much perfect for the boy who grew up never feeling like he belonged anywhere, and this ring would help seal the deal.

A subtle ping on his computer screen alerted him to a message from Reception. Using his Bluetooth earpiece, he connected to Anita—his dragon at the gate, as the rest of the staff called her.

“There’s a woman here to see you, Mr. Murphy. She doesn’t have an appointment but she is most insistent.”

He could hear the disapproval in every syllable of Anita’s perfect diction. Despite himself, Van felt a smile tug at his lips.

“Does the woman have a name?” he prompted. Clearly his receptionist was flustered, a reaction infrequent enough to amuse him. It was unlike her not to give him her usual shorthand summary of details that he needed to make a decision about any unexpected visitor.

“She says she’s an old friend and doesn’t need an appointment.”

A prickle of foreboding made the hairs on the back of Van’s neck stand up. That sensation had kept him alive more than once doing his tours of duty and since, in the private sector, and he wasn’t about to ignore it now.

“Get her contact details and tell her to make an appointment to come back. Thank you, Anita.”

A lot could be learned from a name and contact details, especially by a man with his resources. Just before he clicked off the call, he heard a slight commotion in the background.

“No,” he heard Anita say very firmly. “I most definitely will not hold—”

Then all he heard was a scuffling sound. He frowned. What on earth was going on? He didn’t have to wait long to find out. The commotion he’d heard in his earpiece was very definitely coming toward him down the corridor. Van gritted his teeth in frustration. His was a specialized international security company. How secure was it really if someone could walk in off the street and cause this much of a ruckus? He was up and moving from his chair before he even completed the thought, but before he could reach the door to his office, it swung open and a woman swept in. In that split second, every notion, even the breath in his lungs, stalled right where it was.

Kayla Porter.

Damn.

The last time he’d seen her, five years ago, she’d been curled up asleep on the sofa bed of the substandard apartment she’d shared with her late sister. The bed they’d shared for a few intense, incredibly hot hours before he’d pulled himself away.

Kayla stopped in her tracks the moment her eyes lit on him. Five years since he’d last seen her and she hadn’t changed a bit. Still dressed like an escapee hippie from the sixties and still with the long flowing blond hair. He could even remember the scent of the shampoo she’d used back then. Something herbal and sweet and essentially Kayla. The memory was visceral and hit him hard.

“Good to see you again, Van,” she said in that husky “come to bed” voice of hers as she took a few steps into his office.

Her eyes flicked over him, from the top of his head and his precisely mussed, expensive haircut to the tips of his highly polished handmade shoes. She smiled.

“I see you can take the man out of the army but you can’t quite take the army out of the man, right?” she commented with a nod to his gleaming footwear.

No, she hadn’t changed. Still with the flip attitude. Still thinking she was welcome wherever she went and that people would pretty much forgive her anything.

“I take it you’re the one upsetting my receptionist? You couldn’t have made an appointment?”

The second the words were out of his mouth and he saw the surprised hurt reflected in her clear blue gaze, he wished he’d thought before speaking. But that was how it always was with Kayla. She brought out the worst in him. Always had, even when they were kids growing up next door to one another. Granted, she was four years younger than Van and her sister, Sienna, and her nuisance factor had correlated with the age difference. But it hadn’t gotten any easier to deal with her once they’d grown up. Somehow, she always put him on edge, made him feel out of control. And that was why, after their one-night stand, he’d walked away and never looked back. Even though it made him ashamed of himself whenever he thought of it—or remembered how before Sienna had died, he’d promised her he’d always look out for Kayla.

The past always had a habit of biting you in the ass.

“I’m sorry—” he started again, moving toward her. “You’re here now. What can I do for you?”

He tried not to look too closely at where a rapid pulse beat at the base of her throat, because if he did, he’d remember just how silky soft her skin had been beneath his tongue, remember just how she’d tasted. A flush of desire heated his blood but he pushed back, hard. He wasn’t that man anymore. Not driven by emotional and physical need. No, he’d finally learned to control himself and his behavior. Learned not to act on impulse. Learned to weigh and consider and recognize when a situation was just risky or out-and-out dangerous. And for some reason his senses were screaming red alert right now.

Another sound from the corridor outside filtered into his office. A sound that made Kayla turn, a look of dismay on her face.

She moved toward him, her hands outstretched. “Van, I need to talk to you about something important. I really need your help. I—”

Anita arrived in the doorway looking totally nonplussed, and no wonder, because she had a baby in her arms. A baby? Van looked from his flustered receptionist to the strand of pearls clutched in a chubby fist and thrust in a gummy drooling mouth, and then to Kayla again.

“Yours, I presume?” he asked.

And then the baby looked up from her prize and he was struck instantly by the eyes that caught his. Eyes that were identical to the ones that reflected back at him every morning in the mirror.

“Yours, too, to be precise,” Kayla said, softly, finding her voice again.

* * *

Kayla could see Van’s mind casting back to that one night they’d shared after Sienna’s funeral, gauging the age of the baby, doing the math and coming up with numbers that made no sense at all. The baby began to fret and she moved forward to take her from her very reluctant minder. If Kayla’s sitter hadn’t fallen through...well, if her sitter hadn’t up and left her with no notice, her baby girl wouldn’t be here at all.

“Come on, Sienna. We’ll have none of that. Let the nice lady’s necklace go.”

“Sienna?”

Van’s attention, locked for the past minute on the baby, now transferred to her.

“She’s named for her mother. Appropriate, don’t you think?”

Van gave her another hard look, leaving her in no doubt she was in for a grilling. He’d never actually said what he’d done in the Special Forces but she had no doubt that interrogation had probably been on an extensive list of lethal skills.

“Her mother? Sienna?”

Kayla turned to the receptionist, who still hovered in the doorway. “Thank you, I think we’ll be fine now.”

The woman looked from Kayla to Van and back again. Van seemed to come to attention.

“Yes, thank you, Anita. Could you please call Dani and tell her I’ll be delayed for lunch today. Perhaps we can reschedule for dinner instead.”

“Yes, sir, right away. Are you sure about...?” Anita gestured vaguely toward Kayla and the baby.

“I think I can handle them,” he said firmly.

His eyes remained locked on Kayla’s—silently demanding an explanation. At his words, Kayla couldn’t help but feel a tingle run down her spine. Part anticipation, part fear, part sensual memory. But Van had made it perfectly clear when he’d left her without a note or a word since that he was very definitely not interested in her. She shored up her defenses and clutched Sienna to her a little more tightly, earning a surprised squawk from her little girl. Again, she wished she hadn’t had to bring her precious child into this meeting. If she’d had any other choice, she’d have taken it.

As soon as the door closed, Van spoke.

“Kayla, why are you here?”

She drew in a deep breath. “Like I said, I need your help.”

“And a phone call wouldn’t do?”

It stung to hear him sound so dismissive, but it served to strengthen her resolve. “No, it wouldn’t. Last time we saw each other—” Her mouth dried and she swallowed to moisten it. She began again, more resolutely this time. “After Sienna’s funeral, you said to call you if I needed anything.”

“And I meant it. But, Kayla, even you have to realize that you can’t just waltz into my place of business and expect to see me straightaway.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s really important—otherwise I wouldn’t have...”

Darn, she should just come right out with it. She looked up at him and saw a stranger. Gone was the boy next door—the one who’d received more beatings from his father than he’d ever earned, the one who’d allowed her sister to befriend him and bring him into their home, the one who as a teenager had gotten her out of more scrapes than she could remember. Gone was the soldier, gone was the passionate lover who had rocked her entire world. In his place stood a cold, controlled and distant individual. A man so unfamiliar to her now that she began to wonder if she’d ever really known him at all.

“Is it to do with her?” He gestured toward the baby.

“In a way, yes. Do you want to hold her?”

Without waiting for an answer, Kayla crossed the short distance between them and held Sienna out to her father. It should have been a beautiful moment but Van looked alternately horrified and annoyed as he instinctively put his hands out to receive his daughter.

“There, see? She’s not that bad, is she?”

For a second Sienna seemed as though she’d cry and looked back at Kayla, her lip starting to wobble. Kayla forced herself to smile at her baby girl and make an encouraging sound. It seemed to work because Sienna turned her attention back to the man holding her—one dimpled little hand gripping the lapel of his suit jacket, the other reaching up for his mouth. Kayla stifled a giggle at the look on Van’s face. You’d have thought she just handed him a live grenade.

There was a knock at the door to his office and an exquisitely groomed woman walked in without waiting for Van’s response.

“Sorry to bother you, Donovan, but I was already in the parking garage downstairs when Anita called, so I thought—”

She stopped dead in her tracks as she looked at first Kayla, then Van holding a baby.

“I see you’re busy. I’m so sorry. I’ll come back later.”

“No, Dani, wait. Please.”

Van thrust the baby back to Kayla, eliciting a howl of disapproval from Sienna. “Don’t say anything,” he growled quietly at Kayla before moving to the other woman’s side.

Kayla rolled her eyes at him, then faced the new arrival and, juggling Sienna on one hip, put out her free hand. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Kayla. My sister and I grew up with Van.”

The woman moved to accept Kayla’s proffered hand. “Dani Matthews,” she said smoothly but not without directing a speaking look Van’s way.

The look Van shot Kayla could have cut through steel.

“If you’ll excuse us a moment,” Van said to Dani, waiting for her nod of acceptance.

Polished and unflappable, she inclined her head in the most fluid of actions, the movement making the perfectly blunt-edged cut of her hair swoosh forward a moment before reassuming its almost regimental perfection with not a strand out of place. Kayla found herself fascinated by it. How was that even possible with the humidity of a regular San Francisco fog? Her own hair was a perpetual tousle of long blond waves no matter what she did with it.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Take your time,” she replied with a charming curve of her lips, but Kayla could see her eyes remained full of questions.

Without wasting another second, Van took Kayla by her upper arm and steered her out of his office and toward Reception. She made a sound of protest but he ignored it until he’d shown her into a small conference room and the door behind them was closed.

“No more beating around the bush, Kayla. I want answers from you and they had better be good.”

“Van, I wasn’t kidding around. I really need your help.”

Sienna whimpered a little and Kayla smoothed her hand over the baby’s head nervously. Suddenly this didn’t seem like a good idea after all. But she’d thought and thought and she hadn’t been able to come up with any other way she could raise the money she needed.

“What’s wrong with her?” Van demanded, the roughness of his voice making Sienna’s whimper grow louder.

“She’s hungry, and in a strange place. This is messing with her routine. I’m sorry. The timing of this is all out of whack, isn’t it? I should have thought this out a bit better.”

Even now her breasts tingled with that full heavy warning that accompanied nursing.

“You think? But when has that ever stopped you?” he muttered.

She ignored his question. “Five years ago you offered to be there when I needed someone. Did you mean what you said?”

She had to hope that his offer still held. Without it, she had nothing and no one and her plans for the future, her promise to her sister, would all be shattered.

Van flashed a glance at his wristwatch. A Breitling with more whizzes and bangs on it than her food processor, she noted, unimpressed. But his action was a reminder for her, as well. Time was fleeting.

He flung her another look of irritation. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean. How about you explain it to me. You’ve got ten minutes, max.”

“Thank you.”

She moved forward and put her hand on his chest. Even through his suit she could feel the heat that poured from his body, feel the muscled perfection of his chest beneath the expertly tailored fabric. Against her will, her body began to react—her heart rate kicking up a beat, her senses that much more focused. He stared down at her hand and then back at her. She felt a rush of color stain her cheeks and let her hand drop.

* * *

Kayla’s innate ability to push his buttons hadn’t lessened with the time and distance between them. He reined in his impatience and directed her to sit down. The baby fussed again, tugging at Kayla’s top. Mesmerized, he watched as Kayla lifted her blouse and did something with her bra, exposing one breast and guiding her nipple to the baby’s mouth. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a woman breast-feeding and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but he couldn’t help the fascination that poured through him at the sight.

His child—the child he’d never believed would be born—being nurtured, here, right in front of him. Her birth shouldn’t have happened, not with her biological mother dead these five years. But that was one puzzle he didn’t need her to piece together for him. He remembered agreeing to be a donor for Sienna so that she could have embryos stored before starting cancer treatment. The logistics of how this little girl could be his baby and Sienna’s were perfectly clear. What he didn’t know was why—why had Kayla carried his child?

“Explain,” he said curtly, trying to fight the sensation of awe that threatened to overwhelm him.

He hadn’t wanted to be a father—he’d immediately signed his paternity rights away. And that had been before he’d found out the truth about his own birthright. Before he’d learned that the alcoholism that had plagued his birth parents’ lives and seen him removed from their custody as a toddler could, in part at least, be hereditary. Before he’d realized he had been heading down the same path and made a decision that he would never pass that potential legacy on, ever.

“I need money. A loan.”

“That explains why you’re here now but doesn’t explain her.” He pointed at the baby. “Sienna and I had an agreement. If she couldn’t go through with embryo transfer, they’d be donated to research or—”

Destroyed. Even he couldn’t bring himself to say the word out loud. At the time it hadn’t meant all that much to him. But now, faced with living proof? It was another thing entirely.

Kayla filled the silence. “Before she died, she changed her mind. With her lawyer’s help, she amended the paperwork and donated the embryos to me so that the children she’d always wanted would still have a chance. I promised her that her dream would still come true.”

“And now you want money from me for maintenance, is that it? For a child I don’t want?”

The words hung baldly in the air between them. He’d been deliberately provocative with his phrasing and could see Kayla fighting back her instinctive response to snap back—they’d frequently rubbed each other the wrong way in the past and today was a perfect example of that. When she’d composed herself, she spoke.

“Not for maintenance for Sienna, no. You may find it hard to believe, but I didn’t enter into parenthood lightly. I saved hard, I have a job I love and she has had excellent care while I work. But things have changed and I wouldn’t be asking you for help if it wasn’t vitally important. We’ve...” She seemed to choose her next words very carefully. “We’ve suffered a bit of a setback and I just need a loan, until we’re back on our feet.”

“A loan?” He searched her face to see if she was lying. “How much?”

He reached in a pocket for his cell phone, flicked out the stylus, opened a blank memo and put the device on the table next to her. “Here, put your account details in there and I’ll get my bank to transfer the money directly to your account.”

When Kayla didn’t move to pick up the stylus, he paused.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Just like that?”

“Like what?”

“Any sum I mention. You’ll just give it to me?”

That sense of foreboding washed through him again. “What’s this about, Kayla?”

She adjusted the baby in her arms, and when she looked back up at him, he could see her eyes shimmer with tears.

“I miss her. Don’t you?” she whispered.

Van felt his gut twist in a knot. Yes, he missed her sister—she’d been his best friend growing up, after all, and it hurt to think of a world without her in it—but in many ways she was a reminder of his failures, of a past he was none too proud of. After she died, and particularly after that night with Kayla, he’d resolved to never look back, to only look forward.

“Yeah, I do,” he acknowledged. “But we have to move on, right?”

She nodded. “That’s what I’m doing. I’m moving on. I’ve made plans, very specific plans.”

Van’s spider senses were screaming. “Tell me,” he intoned cautiously.

“I’m going to have the rest of your babies, Sienna’s remaining two embryos. I was on track. I was going to space each of the pregnancies two years apart but—”

Whatever she said next was lost in the buzzing sound in his ears. Babies? Everything in him protested. Kayla’s voice finally penetrated the fog.

“—and with the clinic closing down, I can’t wait until I’ve built up my savings account to support two more individual pregnancies. Time is running out.”

A shudder of horror rippled through him. This couldn’t be happening. Not now that he knew about the awful heritage that had been passed down through generations on both sides of his family. And certainly not now that he was on the verge of expanding DM Security and merging not only with Dani Matthews’s company but with the woman herself.

Suddenly the diamond solitaire ring he had in his breast pocket felt like it was burning through the lining of his suit. He and Dani were totally on the same page on this subject. They gave to the community through their philanthropy and their skills. They had no desire to add to the world by having children. In fact, it was something they both specifically planned to avoid. Bad enough that Kayla already had one baby with his DNA. One child with a genetic predisposition for alcoholism was more than enough. But more? Being raised by a mother as flighty and unreliable as Kayla? It was a recipe for disaster.

“No,” he said emphatically.

A small frown pulled between Kayla’s brows. “No, you’re not going to loan me the money?”

“No, you’re not going to have those babies.”