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Claiming His Secret Heir
Joanne Rock
Secrets, lies and love will come to the surface!Damon McNeill’s wife has returned a year after leaving him – but between her amnesia and the baby boy she’s cradling, he’s suddenly unsure of what really happened. Will he untangle the deception surrounding her disappearance in time to salvage their marriage?


Can he win back his wife?
When Caroline McNeill shows up outside her husband’s mansion, she claims to have no memory of the past year...or their passion-filled honeymoon. But faking amnesia is the only way Caroline can find out if Damon was behind her abduction. She needs to trust him—a man she craves but still barely knows—before she can tell him about their infant son. Did the Silicon Valley mogul merely marry to claim an inheritance then dispose of her? Or is what they share real and forever?
Holy. Hell.
Damon stopped on the stone driveway leading down to the wrought iron gate.
A woman stood outside the heavy bars, her fingers clutching the filigree that surrounded the house number in the center of the entrance. She was the right height. Even from this distance, he could recognize those dark brown eyes. The delectably full lips. The hair that had once been sun-streaked blond was now a shade of honey-gold pinned back in a way that showed hollows under cheeks formerly rounded with good health. Her frame was thinner. Her skin paler. And her expression was wary, lacking the vibrant self-confidence of the capable businesswoman he remembered.
Yet there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind.
“Caroline.”
He forced himself into motion again, even though he had no idea what he would say to his long-lost wife.
* * *
Claiming His Secret Heir
is part of the McNeill Magnates trilogy:
Those McNeill men just have a way with women.
Claiming His Secret Heir
Joanne Rock


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Four-time RITA® Award nominee JOANNE ROCK has penned over seventy stories for Mills & Boon. An optimist by nature and a perpetual seeker of silver linings, Joanne finds romance fits her life outlook perfectly—love is worth fighting for. A former Golden Heart® Award recipient, she has won numerous awards for her stories. Learn more about Joanne’s imaginative Muse by visiting her website, www.joannerock.com (http://www.joannerock.com), or following @joannerock6 (https://twitter.com/JoanneRock6) on Twitter.
To you. Yes, you, my reader.
Thank you for choosing this book to read,
and for spending some of your valuable time
with me. Whether you’re reading one of
my stories for the first time, or you’ve read
many of my books over the years,
I appreciate you more than I can say.
I hope our shared love of romance brings
us together again down the road.
Contents
Cover (#u8736648b-dc42-5f36-bb9b-bec79fbf564d)
Back Cover Text (#u0c7bb914-5b12-559e-b1db-cb580007e892)
Introduction (#u4b5a0b48-3d77-5ef2-8a09-5b9b3c57a740)
Title Page (#uab78d8b3-71de-5911-85f3-297a3c37395e)
About the Author (#udb6612cf-14ea-58e0-9466-cd5441311c22)
Dedication (#ud596d61b-ca2a-5359-8b2d-9776ee240af6)
One (#u7418345a-1134-5086-9285-4594b5983ba0)
Two (#u274f5365-ac23-5345-95ff-49bcf057b290)
Three (#u3df6efd9-4f35-570a-aa9f-d20452a6f6a5)
Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#u46b1e0a7-ce94-5be4-980c-9a765e873b49)
Steeling herself against the January chill, Caroline Degraff stood outside the gates of the Los Altos Hills mansion that would have been hers and wondered how to get in.
Her grip tightened on the wrought iron fence separating her from the French château-style home she’d helped to design but never lived in. Caroline guessed that she would already be visible on the property’s security footage. Too late to turn back now from this crazy idea to show up unannounced.
Prepared to deceive the husband she’d once loved.
But she had to know the truth about the powerful man on the other side of this imposing enclosure dotted with motion-detecting cameras. The man she’d married eleven months ago but hadn’t seen since their honeymoon, tech company mogul Damon McNeill. Her father, a well-known investor in Silicon Valley projects, had hated Damon even before the marriage. He’d sent Caroline into Damon’s California-based social media software business, Transparent, as an entrepreneur in residence—a common practice in tech start-ups that could benefit from an outside business perspective—in the hope she’d find weaknesses Damon’s investors could use to oust him from the CEO position. Except Caroline had fallen in love with Damon rather than give her father the scathing scouting report he’d craved.
She hadn’t known until that time in her life how cold and manipulative her father could be. He’d called Caroline a traitor and refused to attend the wedding, preventing anyone else in her family from doing so, as well. That had hurt her deeply, but she’d been so in love with Damon, it hadn’t mattered. The weeks they’d spent together in Italy for their honeymoon had been the happiest days of her life.
Then she’d travelled briefly to London on her own after the honeymoon. From there things got fuzzy in her mind. She remembered she’d argued with Damon on the phone because she’d seen her father while she was in London. But she also remembered returning to this very house overlooking San Francisco Bay. She’d never even seen Damon that day, and she’d been trying not to notice too many details of their new, custom-built home so they could enjoy it together when he got home from work. Then, while she’d been staring out over the Bay, she’d heard him enter the house.
Only it hadn’t been him. After that, her memories of the ordeal were totally blurry. But she knew that day had been the beginning of a months-long nightmare. She’d been kidnapped and held for a ransom Damon never paid. He’d never informed her father at all. He hadn’t even reported her as missing; the story was absent from all the news sites she’d scoured online.
Grinding her teeth together, she felt the old signs of fear and claustrophobia, the racing heart and cold sweats. These were the physical symptoms of panic attacks she’d been working for weeks to overcome with the help of a good therapist. She still wasn’t able to shake the effect of weeks spent scared and alone, captive in a remote village somewhere on the Baja Peninsula, with guards who treated her humanely enough, but never let her forget that they would kidnap one of her younger siblings, too, if she didn’t do as she was told.
Thoughts of Damon rescuing her had gotten her through the nights. Along with the comforting knowledge of their child growing inside her. A child she hadn’t even been able to tell him about before the abduction.
“Ma’am?” A young man called to her through the wrought iron fence, making Caroline jump back from the scrolled gate. “Can I help you? Is the call button acting up out there or is the main house not answering?”
Her heart thumped so fast and so hard she couldn’t speak for a moment. Everything felt frozen while her pulse rate skyrocketed and the guy with a man-bun, and carrying a pair of gardening clippers, came closer.
Who would ever believe she had graduated with honors from a prestigious East Coast business program when she couldn’t even find her tongue to answer a simple question? Who would guess she’d helped her investor father to make millions on the two other tech start-ups she’d recommended he buy, back before her life fell apart?
These days, Caroline didn’t even trust her memory of what happened yesterday, let alone last year. She’d been drugged a few times during her captivity with roofie-style pills that made past events fuzzy. Between that and vicious bouts of morning sickness, her health had been in serious decline by the time her captors rowed her out to a remote island and left her stocked with enough food for a month, unguarded and alone. Thankfully, the drugs hadn’t harmed her baby, but she’d been too ill to try looking for help. When she’d regained enough strength to do so, just two months before her due date, a fisherman had found her and contacted her father.
“Ma’am?” The gardener tossed aside a handful of dead roses and set down his heavy trimmer. With just a tee on, he seemed oblivious to the chill in the air. “If you go around to the back entrance, I can let you in the service gate.”
Caroline swallowed down the panic as she remembered her therapist’s affirming words. You are strong and capable. Trust your instincts.
“Is Mr. McNeill home?” She had to see Damon. To learn for herself if he’d only married her to win a favorable review of his company for the sake of the investors. Was it just to cling to his CEO position for another year and keep control of Transparent?
Had her charismatic husband duped her completely, even going so far as to marry her for profit?
Or had her father been feeding her lies from the day he’d quietly brought her back to one of the family homes in Vancouver to deliver her baby? Damon had made it impossible for her to contact him directly—his cell phone was disconnected and he wasn’t responding to emails. Calls to his office weren’t returned, although she had been too afraid to leave her real name, worried her father would find out she’d gone behind his back and contacted her husband. All along, her father had insisted Damon wanted nothing to do with her, and her internet searches seemed to support that. Her father had shown her a tabloid article that speculated about how Damon’s grandfather had recently required his heirs be married for one year to inherit a portion of the McNeill legacy. Caroline hadn’t even known Damon was related to those McNeills, one of the richest families in New York, but now she wondered if their marriage had been purely for business reasons.
But she’d certainly discovered a few disconcerting clues in the last two weeks that made her think her father could be manipulating her. Transparent had a board meeting one week from now, and she wanted to learn the truth before her father maneuvered Damon out of his CEO position.
“I think Mr. McNeill is here today, but you need an appointment to see him.” The gardener peered at her curiously, perhaps wondering why any guest of a multimillionaire tech genius would show up at the gate with no vehicle and dressed more like domestic help.
She’d debated her strategy until she felt ill about it. But there was no other way. Damon had abandoned the cell number she had for him and wasn’t responding to her other attempts to contact him. He hadn’t launched a public search for her or filed a missing person report. If it was just about her and their marriage—maybe Caroline would simply walk away and start over.
But she had their six-week-old son to think about. And if there was any chance that what she and Damon had shared was real, she needed to understand what happened. Why he was carrying on his life as if she’d never existed.
“He’ll want to see me.” She hoped. She didn’t have to fake the nervous tremble of her fingers as she fumbled in the back pocket of faded jeans and removed the tattered piece of paper her sister had found hidden in their father’s den. “I want to ask him about this.”
The document looked like it had gone through the washer and dryer a few times. Or maybe it had fallen into the Pacific with her once, when she’d tried to escape her captors. Caroline genuinely didn’t remember. She’d suffered amnesia during the ordeal, but her memories were coming back.
Not that Damon McNeill needed to know.
“A marriage certificate?” Squinting at the washed-out ink, the gardener scratched the spot under the man-bun, shifting the dark hair side-to-side. “For Mr. McNeill?”
“I’m Caroline Degraff.” She pointed to the name on the second line, trying to recapture the sense of shock she’d felt when her sister first showed her the paper.
She hadn’t recalled the marriage for weeks after her father rescued her, yet he’d never mentioned it until she confronted him. He’d tried to keep her isolated from her family so she wouldn’t learn the truth. Her mother was dead, her younger brothers at boarding school and her sister had been at university in the States. What else had he kept from her about her marriage? About Damon? Her therapist had gently suggested that Caroline had been subjected to gaslighting.
The gardener’s gaze flicked up from the paper. “You’re Mr. McNeill’s wife?”
Her throat went dry. She remembered enough about Damon to know he might never forgive her for this deception she had planned. But if he’d been the one tricking her into romance in the first place, what would it matter?
She was going to fake amnesia to find out what he had to say about her disappearance. She had to know for sure if her father had been lying to her about her husband.
“I’m honestly not sure.” She allowed all the doubts and fears of the last months to come through in her voice. That much was not an act. “We’ll have to ask him because...” She bit her lip and blinked back the swell of emotion before she spilled out a lie that was crucial to getting the answers she needed for her child. “I don’t remember.”
* * *
“What did you just say?” Damon McNeill pressed the pause button on the video he’d been watching on the big screen in the downstairs media room.
He’d asked not to be disturbed while he watched a hacker’s demonstration of how to unlock the security on the software Damon’s company was bringing to market in the spring. The hacker had found legitimate issues Damon’s technical team would need to patch. If he asked his own staff to troubleshoot, he would have gotten thirty-page reports that gave him the all-clear to go into production. Ask a twenty-two-year-old who busted complex digital coding for the thrills and the cash? He got results in forty-eight hours.
Except he’d have to rewind the video to the start now, because he couldn’t keep his focus on the demonstration when he was getting calls from the housekeeping service. Damn it. He’d only hired outside help to get the house ready to put on the market since he didn’t want to keep the place he’d barely set foot in since construction had finished a year ago.
Caroline had loved their Los Altos Hills home, spending weeks with the architect to get the design just right. And yet she’d disappeared from the property mere hours after setting foot in it for the first time after it was completed. That was more than enough reason for him to want the house gone from his life forever.
“Mr. McNeill, there’s a woman at the gate.” The head of the maid service had arrived this morning to personally oversee the housecleaning and stage photos for the Realtor. “She says she’s your wife.”
The phone slid from his hand, dropping halfway down to the chair before Damon slapped at it, stopping the descent by pinning the cell to his chest.
He went motionless, holding the device in place while keeping his heart in his rib cage at the same time.
What. The. Hell.
“What kind of joke is this?” He knew Caroline couldn’t be out there. He’d hired private investigators to find her. He’d paid a ransom to someone claiming to have kidnapped her. He’d searched half the world for her himself, convinced something had happened to her even though her wealthy and powerful father insisted Caroline had simply found Damon unsuitable and no longer wished to be married.
Stephan Degraff had said Caroline wished to travel and was entitled to her privacy, a story that was upheld by the occasional hits on her credit card. An apartment rented briefly in Prague. A used car purchased in Kiev.
Damon had never bought it.
He shot to his feet.
“No joke, sir.” The housekeeper’s voice was cool and modulated, as if she’d grown accustomed to disagreeable clients long ago. “She has a marriage certificate with your name on it and she looks like the photograph I’m staring at over the mantel. Shall we open the gate?”
Caroline on his doorstep after her father insisted she’d seen the error of her ways in marrying Damon and had walked out on him for good? Not damn well likely.
“I’ll be right there.” Damon was already charging toward the door. He shoved his way through with one shoulder. “Find the number for the local police, in case we need to send this crackpot a message about what happens to people who play pranks like impersonating my wife.”
Cold fury roared through him. Caroline had been gone for ten and a half months. He’d chased false leads all over Europe, tracking withdrawals from her bank account and use of her credit card, trying to find her. All the while her father insisted she’d left her marriage and wished to be left alone. But then a ransom note had shown up weeks later, which he saw as proof she’d been kidnapped. But the police had never believed the kidnapping theory, insistent the ransom note was sent by someone who took advantage of her disappearance by demanding cash for her safe return.
Damon had gladly paid, transferring money to an offshore account on the appointed day. He’d never heard from the so-called kidnappers again.
Pounding his way up the stairs to the main floor, he couldn’t wait to see who would have the nerve to pull a prank like this. He barreled through the handcrafted double doors that had delayed their move-in date by two weeks and stalked down the stone walkway covered in dried leaves that led to a fountain imported from India.
He hated all of it. And he rarely had an outlet for any of the fury that had seethed in him for weeks—fury that was a welcome change from the old fears for Caroline, the guilt that he hadn’t done more to find her and the stark sense of loss...
Holy. Hell.
He stopped on the stone driveway leading down to the wrought iron gate.
A woman stood outside the heavy bars, her fingers clutching the filigree that surrounded the house number in the center of the entrance. She was the right height. Even from this distance, he could recognize those dark brown eyes. The delectably full lips. The hair that had once been sun-streaked blond was now a shade of honey gold and pinned back in a way that showed hollows under cheeks formerly rounded with good health. Her frame was thinner. Her skin paler. And her expression was wary, lacking the vibrant self-confidence of the capable businesswoman he remembered.
Yet there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind.
Caroline Degraff had blindsided him the first time they met, igniting an incendiary passion that made him overlook every need for caution. Her father coveted Damon’s company, but it didn’t matter. Stephan Degraff had sent his smart, exquisite daughter to spy on Damon’s operation, possibly to undermine him and oust him from his own company. But who cared? Damon would have given up everything—everything—to have Caroline.
Just when he’d thought he’d won her forever, after a honeymoon so beautiful that it hurt to recall, Caroline had vanished. She took her wallet and her car, a bag of clothes and a few prescription pills, all signs that, according to the cops, meant she left of her own volition. Her powerful father had convinced the police his daughter was entitled to her privacy and that she would file for divorce in her own time. The fact that Caroline left behind her wedding ring seemed to support the theory. Local law enforcement refused to file a missing person report, leaving Damon on his own to locate her. He’d been advised by multiple private investigators and the police not to talk to the media, so he hadn’t. A story had been leaked to the press at one point, but her father had forced the news outlet to print a retraction. His lone effort to reach out to the public—discreetly asking for any information about her from the employees who had worked with them both at Transparent—had resulted in that ransom note.
Yet he never saw Caroline again.
Until now.
It occurred to him he’d stopped moving toward her. That he’d been staring at her like he’d seen a ghost for long, drawn-out moments, his head flooding with memories while his fingers ached with the need to touch her and see if she was real.
“Caroline.” He forced himself into motion again, even though he had no idea what to say. Had she left him? Was she here for that divorce her father promised she would one day demand?
She backed up a step from the gate as he neared. She wore jeans with threadbare knees and faded thighs that hugged her subtle curves. A gray wool sweater with fat toggle buttons kept the chill out; the temperature was in the midfifties, with a cold breeze blowing off the bay. She wore no makeup, her face looking younger even as the expression in her eyes seemed far older than he remembered. She looked wary. Cautious.
And, if he read her expression correctly...confused. She appeared bewildered by his appearance even though she was the one who had shown up on his doorstep.
“Damon McNeill?” she asked, her arched eyebrows knitting together as she pursed her lips.
Just what the hell was she asking him? He noticed that one of the guys on the landscaping crew was hovering nearby, a crinkled piece of paper in his hand.
Damon pressed a button on his phone to open the electric gate and stared down the gardener while the bars slid silently to one side. “You can leave now. Water the roses or whatever.”
“Sure thing.” The guy nodded fast and seemed grateful for an excuse to leave, but first he ambled closer and handed Damon the faded, worn paper. “She said she found this.”
Damon would have stuffed it in a back pocket to focus on Caroline, but the gold seal in one corner caught his eye.
Their marriage certificate.
“I don’t understand.” He moved closer to the wife who had once held his heart. The woman who now stared at him like a stranger. “Why did you bring this?”
His pulse pounded hard. He braced himself to hear the words he dreaded. The news that she wanted to end their marriage legally. Forever.
Alone on the private road that led to the mansion, she stuffed her hands in the pockets of the oversized sweater she wore, the fabric hugging her body tighter at the movement.
There’d been a time when he would have picked her up off her feet and wrapped her in both arms. Even not knowing where she’d been, what had happened or why she’d come back now, Damon still wanted to kiss her more than he wanted explanations. Something about her body language, so hesitant, restrained him.
“You’re Damon.” She seemed to seek confirmation, her brown eyes flecked with gold scanning his face, as if calculating the sum of his features. “I saw your photo online, but you look so much like your brother. Cameron.”
Half brother, he silently corrected her while his brain tried to make meaning out of the nonsensical words.
“It’s been less than a year since you saw me last. Do I look so different now?” He’d kissed her for long minutes in the airport in Florence, hating to part from her after the honeymoon. Their home in Los Altos Hills—this house—hadn’t been completed yet. So she’d gone to see a friend in London while he flew back to the States for business that couldn’t wait. Business he’d come to regret sorely in the last ten months, especially since they’d argued during the time they’d been apart and he’d always wondered if that had been the reason she left.
As it turned out, she hadn’t just been seeing her friend, after all. She’d gone to the UK to make amends with her father, who would give anything to take control of Transparent. Stephan Degraff’s plans to oust Damon were about to come to a head one week from now at the final board meeting before the product launched.
Had Caroline been helping her father take over Damon’s company from the start?
“I don’t remember.” Her eyes were haunted. Scared. Unsure. “I’ve been in Mexico. With amnesia. I remembered my name two months ago, but it’s taken time to recall more than that.” She glanced up and away from him. Shut her eyes for a long moment before she began again. “I’ve had this paper ever since I woke up in a fishing village on the Baja Peninsula. But at the time, I didn’t even know that name was mine.”
Damon could not have been more stunned if she’d been the ghost he’d first imagined. Amnesia? A bracing gust of wind sucked the breath right out of him.
“You don’t remember me? Us?” He tried to envision what this meant for them. Behind him, he heard the sprinkler system switch on.
“Nothing.” She shook her head slowly, a wave of her honey-gold hair bumping her cheek. “I looked you up online weeks ago, but I’ve been scared to come because there was...no mention of me being missing. No photos of us together.” She lifted her shoulders in an awkward shrug. “I thought maybe the marriage certificate was fake. Or that we divorced and you’d moved on—”
“No.” He’d been living in a state of suspended animation without her. Hell, he couldn’t call it “living” at all. He’d spent his time chasing leads about her all over the globe, incapable of “respecting her privacy” the way her father had demanded. “I’ve searched everywhere for you.”
He wanted answers about where she’d been. If she’d been kidnapped or if she’d left him of her own free will. His private investigators had spent endless hours chasing down fake leads for her whereabouts—it was as if she’d wanted to purposely disappear, or someone had spent significant time making it look that way.
He still had her wedding rings that she’d left behind.
But he remembered reading somewhere that chasing memories wasn’t good for an amnesia victim. And didn’t the fact that she was suffering from amnesia suggest she’d been through a trauma already? The need to protect her—to make sure nothing else hurt her—overrode everything else. He needed to keep her safe and get her healthy.
And, selfishly, he couldn’t help but see her return as a second chance.
If she’d left him, she didn’t remember.
Once she was well and whole again, Damon had a chance to rewrite history. To show her they could be good together again.
To win her back.
“I don’t know where I’ve been. My memories should come back in time.” She pulled a hand from her sweater pocket and smoothed aside the wave of hair that brushed her cheek. For a moment, he could see the old Caroline in the gesture. The vibrant, flirtatious woman who had captivated him the moment she strode into his office, demanding a position on his team. “But until they do, I’m not sure where to go. I’ve been at a shelter the last two nights.”
The idea appalled him. How long had they been in the same state while he’d been lost in alternating bouts of grief and bitterness, not knowing what had happened to her?
“You were right to come home.” He stepped closer, careful to give her space but needing to touch her.
She flinched and backed up a step, reminding him that they might be married but they were still essentially strangers in her mind.
She just needed time. Something he was more than happy to give her since he was determined to help her remember how happy they’d been together before that one stupid argument. And, hell, if she hadn’t been happy, he’d make her remember something better than that.
“You belong here, Caroline,” he assured her. “Always.”
Two (#u46b1e0a7-ce94-5be4-980c-9a765e873b49)
To keep her guilty conscience at bay, Caroline sank deeper into the thick cushions of the hanging daybed on the second-floor patio and thought about her son—her whole reason for lying her way into Damon’s home.
Lucas was safe with her sister, Victoria, in a carriage house Caroline had rented for them nearby. She’d paid in cash and used a fake name to ensure their father wouldn’t find them. She’d timed their trip to coincide with his business visit to Singapore, but she doubted their absence had remained a secret past the first forty-eight hours, which meant he could be learning about their defection anytime now. Would he guess that Caroline had run straight to Damon in Los Altos Hills? Would he be worried about their safety and send the police?
She had no idea, but she knew Lucas and Victoria would be safer in the carriage house than with her. Victoria swore that their father had purposely tried to keep her from seeing Caroline while she was recovering from her ordeal. Her version of events since Caroline’s return—so different from her father’s—had been the impetus to see Damon for herself. To find out if he loved her or if he’d only married her for expediency’s sake.
Still, she found it difficult to accept that her father coveted Transparent so badly that he would use her as a pawn. She’d been kidnapped, after all. How could Damon have kept that a secret from her family? Her father would have reported her missing if he’d known, but he said that her bills—cell phone, car payments, the mortgage on a small apartment she maintained in Manhattan—were being paid consistently, even during the times when she’d been a captive.
How was that possible? Someone was lying to her, or else she really was going crazy.
Caroline stared into the leaping flames in the stone fireplace and tried to relax before Damon returned. He’d started the blaze to ward off the late afternoon chill as the sun set over San Francisco Bay in the distance. The view was beautiful and the patio heater nearby sent bonus warmth her way. As if the blankets she burrowed under weren’t enough. Damon had dragged half the linen closet outdoors when she professed a desire to sit on the patio, extending her the courtesy he might give an invalid.
Which made sense, considering he thought she was suffering from amnesia. And she still did suffer from it, of course. Just not to the degree she pretended.
While she waited for him to return with their dinner, she closed her eyes and reminded herself this was absolutely necessary. She couldn’t think of any other way to find out if he had only wed her for material gain, or if he’d genuinely cared for her. And she refused to introduce him to Lucas until she knew for sure. For now, all she knew for certain was that her husband hadn’t come for her when she’d been kidnapped. Her captors said he didn’t pay the ransom and didn’t want her back. While she had no reason to trust them whatsoever, her father’s version of events supported this.
He’d sworn he hadn’t known she was missing until that fisherman discovered her. But something didn’t add up, and she knew her father would lie to further his own ends—of course he would. He hadn’t even breathed Damon’s name in his house when she’d still been confused about her ordeal and couldn’t remember who the father of her child was. How could her dad do that? He’d always been manipulative, relentlessly steering Caroline in the direction he wanted. But she’d drawn the line at allowing him to tell her who she could—and could not—marry.
She would learn all she could in the next two days, and then she would tell Damon the truth. Two days was her limit for being apart from Lucas. But if there was a chance she and Damon could have a future together, she would introduce him to Lucas personally and maybe they could be a family. If it turned out that Damon had never loved her and married her for self-serving purposes?
She would hire a lawyer and sue for full custody through formal channels. She had her own money, accounts solely in her name. She’d changed all the passwords on them last week after discovering someone might have accessed them to pay her bills while she’d been held captive. If necessary, she would hire a financial investigator to help her track what happened there. But her balances were still healthy from her years of nonstop work before she’d met Damon. And right now, she cared far more about her personal affairs than her bottom line.
“Caroline?” Damon asked quietly from the opposite end of the patio, a tray of food in his hands. He must have come up the outdoor stairs; she’d been so caught up in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard. She would need to be more careful, more on guard in the future.
He waited there now, balancing the heavy, domed silver platter. With his dark brown hair and deep blue eyes, her husband shared the features of his equally handsome brothers she’d met at their wedding. Damon was slightly taller than Jager and Gabe, though, his six-foot-three frame well-proportioned. And whereas his younger brother, Gabe, possessed an easygoing nature that made him quick to smile, Damon was serious, often pensive and intense. More like his driven older brother, Jager, who managed the brothers’ businesses while Damon and Gabe both tended to follow their passions. Damon had always been deeply passionate about his work, he could lose track of the hours spent on business, and he told her once that she was the only woman who’d ever intrigued him enough to get him to spend time away from his company.
He’d had the same effect on her, enticing her out of her office to savor a sunny day or breathe in a cool breeze off the Santa Cruz Mountains.
“Yes?” She straightened from her slouch, propping herself higher on the back pillows so they could share the daybed like a sofa.
A spark arced and popped from the stone fireplace.
“Just checking to make sure you hadn’t fallen asleep.” He headed her way with the tray, settling it on the low tile table nearby. He’d changed from his earlier cargos and tee to a lightweight black wool sweater and gray trousers. The winds off the bay were chilly now that the sun had gone down. “Are you sure you’ll be warm enough out here?” He checked the setting on the patio heater and held his broad palms out to test the temperature. “We can take dinner inside, if you prefer.”
“This is perfect, actually.” She remembered those early days of recovering her memory when she had grounded herself in the everyday, simple things to anchor her. Enjoying the feel of a warm bath. Stroking the furry back of her sister’s cat, Socrates. “I saw a physician about the amnesia in Mexico and she said that surrounding myself with the familiar will help me to recover my memories.” Caroline smoothed a hand over the cashmere blanket that Damon had given her earlier, her heart picking up pace as she prepared to dig for information. “I’ll bet I spent a lot of time on this swing.”
Damon settled on the edge of the cushion beside her, the warmth of his sudden nearness making her senses come alive. She’d forgotten the way he smelled—the musk and spice of his aftershave that sent a flood of pleasurable memories to her brain. Of shared kisses. Incredible sex. Orgasms. Curling into his side afterward and having him stroke her back until she fell asleep.
Her body tingled at just the thoughts.
“None.” His blunt response was so at odds with everything she was feeling—the word as stark as his expression. “This house was still being built while we were on our honeymoon in Florence and the Tuscan countryside. We never spent any time here.”
She held her breath, waiting for him to say something about the day she’d been abducted. The only day she’d ever stepped inside the completed house. The events of that afternoon were still fuzzy in her mind. Her father had insisted she was planning to leave Damon that day, but she couldn’t remember why.
When he continued, however, his attention had returned to the tray of food. “I’ve only been in town for a few days myself, so I’m afraid the meal offerings aren’t as extensive as I would have hoped for your return.” He tugged off the silver dome and set it on the stone patio, revealing two empty plates and a cold cut platter. “I called for a grocery delivery and a catered meal for later, but for now, this is the complete contents of the refrigerator.”
“The turkey looks good.” She leaned forward to make half a sandwich for herself, but Damon politely waved her away.
“Let me.” He cut open a small roll and stabbed two slices of meat with the knife. “For months, I would have given anything for the chance to do something for you. See you. Touch you. Bring you dinner.”
She swallowed back the knot of emotions his words tangled inside her. What she wouldn’t have given to have him there when she’d been scared and alone on that island in Mexico, too ill from her pregnancy to even walk outside and look for a neighboring village.
“What did you think happened to me?” She couldn’t help the rasp of her voice that betrayed the pain she kept hidden inside. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I mean, as I told you, there is nothing about me being missing online.”
It was as though she’d simply ceased to exist after their wedding.
He set down the plate with her sandwich on the coffee table before settling his hand on her knee through the blanket. It was the first time he’d touched her since she arrived and it affected her as much as she had feared it might.
“Are you sure you want to talk about this now? So soon after arriving?” He caressed her knee with his thumb through the thick layers of cashmere and wool, the intimacy seeming so easy and natural for him.
As if he truly cared about her.
“I have driven myself crazy trying to piece together the past on my own. I’m hoping you’ll help me fill in some of the blanks in a way that will be less stressful.”
His blue eyes locked on hers in the firelight, searching.
Could he read her better than she realized? Did he have any inkling that she might not be telling him the whole truth? Never in her life had she felt so unsure of herself as she had these last few months. She used to be so steady and self-assured. Now, everything her father had told her about her past contradicted what she had believed about it.
“I definitely don’t want to add to the stress of remembering.” Damon returned to the tray and finished making her turkey sandwich, which he passed over before pouring her a drink—water with a twist of lemon. “I did a quick scan online about amnesia recovery while the housekeeper put together the meal, and it said that the senses can sometimes trigger memories more easily. Hearing a song or smelling something familiar can help, like your physician said.”
Thinking about the flood of memories from the scent of his aftershave, Caroline would say the doctor had been spot on.
“If I never lived here, maybe there’s nothing to be gained by me staying here.” She had allotted two days to solving the mystery of Damon. She couldn’t afford to waste time. “Is there somewhere else that might be more meaningful?”
Nibbling on her sandwich, she watched him make another for himself, the muscles in his forearm shifting and flexing as he reached for cheese slices and fresh tomato. She’d fallen for him hard and fast the first time—getting engaged after knowing him for only six weeks and marrying him a month after that. She needed to be more cautious now, to learn all she could about him.
“You lived in a hotel when you first came to town to research Transparent. I had a smaller house close to the company in Mountain View.” He leaned back against the cushions lining the daybed swing, keeping a foot on the patio floor to anchor them.
Caroline was grateful both for the darkness and Damon’s focus on keeping the daybed from rocking, which took his attention away from her while her face flamed with memories of time spent at his place. How many nights had she languished in his bed there before their wedding? They’d made love in virtually every room. Also, the sauna. The pool house...
She didn’t dare ask him about that home. Her voice might betray her.
“Did we have dates anywhere significant? Special?” She frowned, trying to remember how it felt to have no frame of reference for conversations about the past. When her amnesia had been at its worst, she’d asked questions constantly. “Or maybe we should visit the business, if that’s how we met.”
Would seeing her office help? They’d worked in the same building.
But she needed to be careful. Damon was a very smart man. Brilliant, even. She’d been fascinated by his mind and his innovative ideas for Transparent even before they’d met. One misstep in her ruse could ruin her cover story for being here.
“We went hiking in the Santa Cruz Mountains once.” He studied her with a clear blue gaze that missed nothing. “And you were fixated on the Winchester Mystery House for a while. We had picnics in the gardens while you kept an eye out for ghosts.”
His unexpected choice of memories touched her. Those outings were such brief pockets of time they’d spent together compared to the long hours they’d invested in his business and, later, trying to deal with her father.
Her driven, focused father would have hated that she’d gone ghost-hunting. Did he know she’d ever done something like that?
“Do you remember?” Damon asked suddenly, making her realize she’d been quiet a beat too long, thinking about how thoroughly her father had schooled her to think like him, to fill her days with work the way he did.
“No.” She shook her head quickly, returning her gaze to her plate. “I’m just surprised to imagine myself ghost-watching. It hardly sounds like the hobby of a businesswoman.”
She’d been a different person with Damon, though. Their courtship had been a revelation. It hadn’t just been about love. It had been about play. Fun. Laughter.
Things she hadn’t really taken the time to savor in a life full of goals set ever higher ever since childhood, from violin recitals to debate team championships to achieving perfect test scores. Then, after graduating from college, it had been about obtaining a lucrative position in a New York financial firm before joining her father’s company. Her father had trained her to focus on work relentlessly, while Damon wasn’t afraid to enjoy himself.
“I think you liked the diversion of something whimsical after the stress of long days at the office.” He took a bite of his sandwich and seemed to reconsider the answer. “Then again, maybe you were just trying to give me a diversion after the long days at the office. We never did see any ghosts.”
And his sense of whimsy had faded, she recalled, toward the end of their honeymoon when her father had urged her to come to London to help him with a takeover of a UK company. She’d been excited for the chance to end the standoff with him. Damon had been stunned she would even consider it. In the end, she’d told him she would head to London anyhow to see a friend and at least meet with her father. It had been an unhappy way to wind up their romantic Italy trip.
But could it have really been the end of their marriage?
“Then let’s try again.” She still hoped their son could one day see the more lighthearted, loving side of Damon. Provided it ever existed outside her hopeful imagination. “Let’s go back to a place with happy memories.”
* * *
The next day, with Caroline in the passenger seat of his white Land Rover, Damon pulled into the Los Trancos Preserve in the mountains above Palo Alto. The woods were close to the house, easy to access from the home they’d built together.
It seemed like a million years ago now. Their dating. Their marriage. Even her disappearance. Last night, after she went to bed, he had reopened his old investigation notes from those frantic first few months she’d been gone. He’d taken his time reading over everything again, looking for new clues now that he knew she’d been in Mexico. All of the evidence he’d found on her whereabouts had led him to believe she was in Europe. She’d deposited money in her account in London and used an ATM card in Prague, Paris and Venice. Her credit card had been used for a room in a Barcelona hotel, but when his PI had shown her picture around the place, no one on staff recognized her.
Had someone been impersonating her? At the time, he’d guessed she wanted to disappear and had paid someone well to cover her tracks. Whatever the case, it was as much a mystery as ever. While he was inside the house retrieving food for Caroline, he’d also messaged the PI his half brothers had used to find him when he’d been traveling Europe looking for her on his own. At the time, he had ditched his cell phone so as not to be distracted with work calls or requests from his family to return home. He’d bought a burner and focused on following Caroline’s trail, but he’d come up empty handed.
Bentley, the investigator who had located Damon when Jager and Gabe got fed up with his disappearing act, was excellent. But unfortunately, he’d been hired by a branch of Damon’s family he would rather forget. Damon’s father, Liam, had left their mother when they were kids and Damon, Jager, and Gabe had no use for the guy. But recently, their grandfather, Malcolm McNeill, had made it his mission to reunite all of his grandchildren, even the illegitimate branch. Damon might not have much use for all the new blood relatives in his life, and most especially not his father, but he could appreciate the value of a good PI. Maybe Bentley would figure out what a whole team of investigators had failed to the first time around.
Just what the hell had happened to his wife?
Talking about the good times with her last night had felt surreal, like the experiences had happened to someone else. He’d been trying so damn hard to forget her, and now? She’d forgotten all about him instead.
If that meant she forgot all about her bastard of a father, Damon didn’t mind the sacrifice one bit. He hoped the subject of Stephan Degraff wouldn’t surface between them today since Damon knew he wouldn’t be able to scrounge a single positive thing to say about the guy who was still fighting to take control of Transparent. Her father was on a mission to turn the rest of the investors against Damon so they could pull in a more experienced CEO to run the company.
Over his dead body.
“Are you sure you feel up to this?” Damon asked Caroline as he switched off the Land Rover. “We could always go for a Sunday drive instead.”
She was as beautiful as ever, but her pale skin and thinner frame made her seem frailer somehow. Or maybe it was simply because he knew she’d suffered a trauma that had given her amnesia. He didn’t want her to exhaust herself. He’d suggested she call a doctor first thing this morning, wanting to know what a professional had to say about her condition, but she’d been adamant she was well enough. When he hadn’t backed down, she’d conceded to a visit tomorrow if they could have one day together first.
He’d been hard pressed to argue. He was having a tough time just letting her out of his sight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
“I’ll be fine.” She gave him a smile that threw caution to the wind. He remembered it from when they’d climbed the bell tower in Florence and she’d challenged him to see who could scale the four-hundred-some steps faster. “The fresh air and exercise will be good for me.”
He still wanted to wrap her in cotton and keep watch over her for days, but he nodded.
Leaving the picnic basket in the back, he locked his door before stalking around to her side and helping her down. He only touched her briefly, putting his hand on her forearm to steady her while she hopped out, but it reminded him how long it had been since he’d touched a woman. Touched her. Even when he’d thought she was never coming back, he hadn’t consoled himself with someone else. In his mind, he’d still been married.
He watched Caroline take in the sights, her head turning as she studied the oak woodland and grassy knolls, the combination of forest and rolling hills scented with bay leaves and the cool, damp earth. The sun shone warmly enough for a southern California winter day, but little light penetrated the thickest patches of trees nearby.
Dressed in a dark blue running suit and a pink tee she’d found in her closet, she started toward the closest hiking trail, her new white sneakers fast on the well-worn path.
“Ready?” Her ponytail swung around her shoulder as she turned back to see him.
“Which way looks good?” he asked, curious if she had even a subconscious memory of the place.
“It seems sunniest in that direction.” She pointed toward the grassier path heading south.
He followed her, discreetly lifting branches out of her way when low boughs seemed too close to head height. For the most part, however, the trail was wide open and the preserve was quiet save for an older man taking his Dalmatian for a walk.
When they reached a high spot with a view of the Bay, Caroline dropped down to a flat rock and zipped her jacket up midway. Damon sat beside her, admiring the view from the peak, and all the time debating if he should ask her more about her ordeal or if he should focus on making new, happier memories. Before he could decide, she turned dark brown eyes his way.
“You said you searched everywhere for me.” Her voice was quiet. Serious. “Why didn’t you report me missing?”
The wind whistled through the tree branches overhead, a lonely sound that echoed through him.
Yesterday, when they’d touched on this subject, he’d been too stunned by the realization that she didn’t remember him to focus on the question. Now, he heard the hurt in her voice. The doubts underlying the question. She had hesitated to come back to him, thinking he might have “moved on.”
Which gave him no choice but to bring up her father.
He ground his teeth at the very thought of the man.
“Your father showed the police proof you’d been in touch with him. He said you’d left the marriage of your own volition and said I should respect your privacy.” He studied her expression, trying to interpret what she might be feeling at that news. “Do you remember much about him?”
“No. I’ve made progress since those first days where I didn’t recognize my own name. I can visualize my family, as well as college and the jobs I had after I graduated. But I don’t really remember anything about why I came out to Los Altos Hills. The last apartment I can recall clearly was in New York City.” She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I can remember that I worked for my father, and I have a few memories of my childhood, but not much about him personally.”
Just his luck, she hadn’t wiped out all memory of Stephan Degraff. Just of Damon.
“Then you might recall your close relationship with your father,” he ventured carefully. “How often the two of you spoke.” Stephan Degraff counted on Caroline’s business advice for his investments, calling on her anytime day or night if he had a question. The guy was relentless. Manipulative. And then, a disturbing thought occurred to Damon. “I’m surprised you didn’t go to him first if you didn’t recollect anything about me.”
“I—” She hesitated, a mixture of emotions evident in her eyes. Guilt. Worry.
“It doesn’t matter.” He covered her knee with one hand, not wishing to upset her. “I’m glad you came here.”
“But my father told the police that I left you? Was it you who called the police?”
“You texted me when your plane landed after you returned here from London.” He wasn’t going to mention the argument they’d had about the UK trip. “It didn’t make sense to me that you would contact me then, only to pack up and leave me.”
“Of course not.” She shook her head, ponytail swinging. “Unless we’d been unhappy?”
“Right after the honeymoon?” He removed his hand from her knee to withdraw his phone and tapped open the gallery of images he’d saved. “Scroll through a few of those and see if they look like pictures of unhappy people.”
She shifted positions, lowering her knees to glance over the photos of them on the Ponte Vecchio, seated at their favorite café for morning espressos, in front of the Uffizi Gallery, at the top of that bell tower they’d climbed. Most of the images were of her smiling and him kissing her cheek, but in a few of them, you could see them both grinning. Wildly in love.
Or so he thought.
“My God.” Her finger swiped faster, sending pictures spinning off the screen, one after another. “Did you show these to the police? To my father? What did they say?”
Her voice quavered. Her whole body seemed to tremble. Damn it.
“I’m sorry.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gently slid the phone from her hands. “I didn’t mean to upset you. We’ll figure it all out, okay? Just relax.”
She shook like a leaf. He couldn’t understand what, precisely, had her so troubled. But he didn’t want to rile her more.
“This is too important for me to relax.” Edging away from his touch, she shot to her feet and paced around the small lookout spot. “Would you be able to put me in touch with the officers you spoke to? The police who supposedly talked to my dad?”
“Supposedly?” Getting to his feet, he frowned. Defensive. “You don’t believe me?”
She tipped her head to one side. Thinking. “I’ve invested a lot of time struggling to piece together the past. I don’t want to worry that the perspectives I’m hearing are biased. I’d like to know what a neutral party has to say.”
“Of course.” He reached for her again, needing to offer some kind of comfort when she was clearly rattled. “Caroline, it’s not good for you to be so agitated. Let’s think about something else. Something happier.”
“Why would you believe I left of my own free will if we were so happy?” With her lips pursed and her eyebrows scrunched in confusion, she stared up at him waiting for answers he didn’t have.
Okay. Answers he didn’t want to share.
“Every couple argues. When your father said you’d been contacting him regularly, I assumed I must have missed something, but you’d be home soon.” He didn’t want to delve into this now. Not when his whole purpose today had been to relive good times.
“And when months went by?” She peered up at him, frustration simmering in her clear brown eyes.
“I took solace from the knowledge that you loved me once and you’d love me again.” He dropped his palms on her shoulders, drawing her closer. Wanting her to feel the connection that still stirred inside him every time she was near. “I knew what we shared wouldn’t just disappear. I hired private investigators to find you myself.”
He could feel her swift intake of breath. A mixture of wariness and some warmer, answering emotion flared in her eyes, but she didn’t move away.
The wind stirred the leaves at their feet and whirled around them. To Damon, it felt like it was drawing them closer.
“I’d like to show you what I mean.” He teased a touch along her jaw, testing the softness of her creamy skin, breathing in the faint scent of roses.
He wanted to take his time, to soak in the feel of her, the warmth.
If she remembered nothing else, she had to remember this.
Slowly, he grazed his lips along hers, the barest brush of mouths. Of breath. He tipped his forehead to hers, standing still, waiting.
When her fingers curled into his shoulders, her nails softly pressing through his sweater and tee, Damon’s blood surged in a heated rush. He ground his teeth against the bolt of hunger and forced himself to step back. He simply took her hands in his and caressed and kissed them.
“That proves passion is still there,” she said finally, her voice expressing the same hunger he felt. Yet she backed up another step and slid her hands away from his, tucking them into her pockets. “But what about love?”
Three (#u46b1e0a7-ce94-5be4-980c-9a765e873b49)
Late that night, safe in the master suite that Damon had wanted her to use during her stay, Caroline called her sister on a burner phone to check on Lucas.
Her Mexican captivity had been frightening and lonely, but the experience had taught her about making herself difficult to find. The men who’d held her went through cheap, pay-by-the-minute phones like candy, opening new packages of them every week. They were perfect for contacting their colleagues and not leaving a trace. When Caroline left Vancouver with her son and her sister three days ago, she’d purchased similar devices at a few different places along the way, driving almost to Montana to cross the border discreetly.
Illegally.
But since they were US citizens anyhow, she didn’t feel as guilty about that as she did about deceiving Damon. Assuming, of course, that he really did love her. Even before the toe-curling kiss he’d given her on the hiking trail, those honeymoon photos he’d shown her had gotten to her. Could that kind of happiness be faked? She knew she’d been in love with him. But the pictures had her almost believing he sincerely felt the same way for her.
Almost. And she needed to be absolutely certain.
Because if Damon was being forthright about what they’d shared and about her father’s role in not reporting her missing—that meant her dad was guilty of... She didn’t even want to think about it. If that was the case, her father had far more to answer for than simply withholding the truth about her husband.
Earlier in the evening, she’d attempted to phone the two police officers Damon had spoken to, but neither was on duty. Surely Damon had to feel confident they would back up his story if he provided their names so readily?
Her sister answered the phone on the third ring, sounding flustered or maybe scared. “Caroline? Are you okay?”
Victoria’s worry fueled her own. Caroline sat up straighter.
“I’m fine. Are you safe? Is Lucas okay?”
She could hear Victoria huff out a breath on the other end, relaxing. In the background, the laugh track from an old sitcom added an odd note to their tense greeting.
“We’re good. He’s fast asleep in the other room and I have the baby monitor right next to me so I can hear if he so much as sighs.”
A pang of longing stabbed Caroline in the chest. She wished she were holding her infant son right now, the warmth of his small body comforting her and giving her strength after this stress-filled day.
“I miss him so much. Thank you for taking care of him.” She drew a steadying breath herself, padding over to the California king–size bed to slip between the luxurious sheets. She propped herself on down pillows stacked against the leather bolster. The room’s color scheme of tans and creams was so neutral it felt like an old sepia-toned photograph. “Have you seen anyone? Heard anything?”
They’d both been worried their father would have them followed. Or he’d cut short the Singapore trip to come after them himself. It didn’t matter that they’d crossed the border in secret; Stephan Degraff would probably guess Caroline’s ultimate destination. Her father knew she was upset that he’d withheld Damon’s name from her when she’d been confused and suffering from amnesia.
At the time, her sister had been doing a semester abroad program for her degree and hadn’t been aware of what was happening. Victoria had some flexibility in her schedule this semester to work on her master’s thesis, but she was due back at Stanford by the end of the month.
“It’s been quiet. I haven’t left the carriage house and I’ve kept the blinds drawn, like we talked about. I’ve got enough diapers and formula for a whole week, I think.”
“I’ll be back long before then.” She briefly relayed to Victoria what she’d learned from Damon, ending with the news that an officer from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department was supposed to return her call in the morning.
After a long silence, Victoria let out a low whistle. “My God, Caro, I don’t even know what to say.” She swore softly. “Because if your husband is telling the truth, that means Dad is—”
“Dangerous?” She barely breathed the word, not wanting to believe it herself.
When her sister scoffed, Caroline shifted against the pillows, flipping the cream-colored sheet up higher against her red floral nightshirt.
“Dad might be controlling,” Victoria mused aloud, the laugh track still rolling from the television in the background. “Hell-bent on winning, even, but that doesn’t make him dangerous.”
Right. This was the father who’d pushed them on the swing when they were girls and used it as a fun physics lesson. The same dad who took them camping and taught them how to tell which plants were poisonous. He might have had high expectations for his daughters, but Caroline had never had reason to doubt his love.
“How could he not have been worried if Damon told him he thought I was kidnapped?” She felt like she was missing pieces of a bigger puzzle. “Why wouldn’t he have at least looked into the possibility? Was he that angry with me that I married someone he didn’t approve of?” She thought back on the last few months in her father’s house. At first, she’d been ill. But as she gained strength and her memories began returning, she’d told him she’d been abducted. “Furthermore, why didn’t he call the police when I told him what I remembered about the men who held me against my will?”
“But Damon said Dad told the cops you’d been in contact with him shortly after you were taken,” Victoria said carefully. “Maybe that’s true and you still have gaps in your memory from the drugs?”
“I do have gaps in my memory. I know that.” Frustration simmered, but how could she expect other people to believe her version of past events when she had so many doubts of her own? “But I didn’t imagine that house in Mexico or the rotating staff of guards who stood watch every day for months.”
A shiver chilled her skin and she burrowed deeper in the covers, tugging the khaki-colored duvet up over the sheet. She reached a hand out of the blankets long enough to tap the remote for the gas fireplace. The flames leaped higher inside the pale-river-stone hearth. The house was quiet and she wondered if Damon was still awake. He’d kept things light between them after their kiss, his behavior toward her solicitous, polite...caring, even. But he’d seemed determined not to revisit conversation topics that could “agitate” her and he’d reminded her over dinner that she’d promised to see a doctor tomorrow.
For the amnesia she didn’t really have. The last holes in her memory now were drug-induced and, her doctor said, might never return.
“Okay.” Victoria turned down the television on her end of the call. “But what if the gaps in your memory are bigger than you realize? What if you were a captive for weeks and not months? Isn’t there a chance Dad could be telling the truth about having contact with you at first? Maybe you just don’t remember that you left Damon—like Dad said—because it was too upsetting.”
Her chest constricted. She wasn’t sure if she resisted the idea because she still cared about her husband, or because she wanted her son to have a relationship with his father. Or both.
“Why wouldn’t I have told you if I left my husband?” Caroline asked, tracing the buttons on the fireplace remote with her thumbnail.
Victoria was her closest confidante and had been since they lost their mother to an overdose of prescription opioids five years ago. Actually, she’d been closer to Victoria since well before that, as their mother had struggled with depression for years before her death. Caroline and Damon had that loss in common; his had died when he was young. At least she’d been close with her father. Damon’s dad had stopped visiting his illegitimate sons before Damon was a teen, choosing to be a father to his offspring by his legal wife rather than Damon and his brothers.
“Just guessing, but I was buried in coursework that semester, so maybe you held off because of that.” She seemed to hesitate and for a moment Caroline heard nothing but the soft hiss of the flames in the fireplace before Victoria continued. “Or maybe you were keeping me out of it since Dad asked you to keep your distance from me when you chose to marry his business enemy.”
It was all speculation of course, since Victoria couldn’t know Caroline’s reasons any better than Caroline did. A wave of fatigue hit her.
“But I remember someone entering the house. And it wasn’t Damon.” She had to have been kidnapped. She remembered being frightened that day.
“You were drugged,” Victoria said softly. “There’s a reason they give benzodiazepines to patients to forget about surgery. It makes things fuzzy and confusing. Time bends. That’s not your fault, Caroline.”
Right. Her physician had said the same thing. But that didn’t make it any less scary or infuriating.
Before she could say as much, however, she heard a baby’s cry on the other end of the call. She sat up straight in bed, poised to help before reminding herself that she wasn’t in the same house as Lucas.
“Guess it’s time for the midnight bottle.” The crying quieted for a moment; Victoria must have turned down the volume on the baby monitor. “I’d better go.”
“Okay. Wish I was there.” Caroline wanted her baby with her. Always.
She hated that she had to deceive people—her father and her husband, too—just to find out who was telling her the truth.
“Soon. Be safe, Caro. And good luck.” Victoria disconnected, leaving Caroline feeling more alone than ever.
Tomorrow, she’d have to find a way to divert Damon from her doctor’s appointment. She would go in person to the police station if she didn’t hear from the officers first thing in the morning. Her future was riding on what they had to say. Because once she found out if Damon had been telling her truth, she would confront him with her own: that although she couldn’t remember if she’d left him or not, she knew without a doubt she’d been held against her will for some of the time.
Damon had been the man she’d missed then, the one person she’d yearned to see. No drugs could make her forget how much she’d loved him once. Too bad she was no closer to knowing if he’d felt the same about her. Worse, she feared that even if he had returned those feelings at one time, she might have destroyed that love forever by keeping their child a secret.
* * *
“I’ve got a simple solution for all your problems, brother,” Damon’s younger brother told him in their Skype call at dawn.
Well, dawn West Coast time. Where Gabe sat, on the back patio of the Birdsong Hotel near the McNeill family compound in Martinique, it was already late morning. Exotic birds chirped in the palms swaying behind him, the whole image like an eighties pop-art painting full of pinks and turquoise.
“My missing bride finally returns home and doesn’t remember me. Her investor father wants to kick me out of my own company. I found a glitch in the new software we’re about to launch. And our older brother is happy just to sell off everything and get out of Dodge so he can spend time with his new wife.” Damon sat in the breakfast nook off the kitchen, one of the few rooms in the gargantuan house that didn’t echo when he had a phone conversation. Also, he’d chosen this spot since it was close to the stairs from the master suite, and he needed to stick near Caroline. “Now, explain to me how you could possibly have a solution to all those problems.”
Gabe had surprised him with the call this morning after Damon texted him the night before, asking for his opinion on the potential sale of Transparent. Their older brother, Jager, wanted the sale to happen so they could start over and get out from under the pressure of investors who wanted to control the direction of the company.
Namely, Stephan Degraff.
Damon couldn’t let go yet. He was grateful to Jager for leading the company while Damon had searched for Caroline. But now he was ready to return his focus to the technology he’d developed. Technology he believed in. He wasn’t selling. And he wasn’t allowing Stephan Degraff to unseat him from the board, either.
“Go to New York,” Gabe informed him simply, spreading his arms wide as he rocked back in a purple-painted lounge chair, as if the answer was obvious. “Call on the new family relations and see if the McNeills will put their legendary money where the old man’s mouth is. Granddad says he wants us to be part of the family. Let him dust off the wallet and buy out Degraff to prove it.”
“Spoken like the baby of the family.” Damon leaned back against the leather banquette cushion and toasted Gabe with a mug of black coffee. “It doesn’t gall you even a little to go begging for a handout?”
“Who’s begging? Degraff would sell out his own kid to take over Transparent and the dude is worth a fortune. Clearly there is capital to be gained from your software idea.” Gabe shrugged, his sunglasses glinting with the reflected noontime glare. “Although, to be honest, I only invested because we’re related.”
“Generous to a fault, you are.” Damon shook his head, content to let Gabe ramble on about his assessment of “Granddad” following a recent phone call. But Damon’s thoughts lingered on something else his brother had said.
How much would Stephan Degraff “sell out” Caroline to obtain control of Transparent? What lengths would he go to?
A year ago, Damon had told himself that it didn’t matter what Stephan did because Damon’s love for Caroline surpassed everything else. But what if Stephan hadn’t just sent Caroline to Transparent for business reasons—to be Damon’s entrepreneur in residence? What if Caroline had come to get close to Damon personally, as well?
The idea was ridiculous. She was a beautiful, brilliant woman. She would have never married him solely because her father wanted to spy on Damon’s company. But the fact that she’d disappeared right after the honeymoon, coupled with the fact that she’d returned now, claiming to have no memory of the marriage, right at a sensitive time of transition for the business...
Across the kitchen, he saw the door of the master bedroom open silently. He closed his laptop with no warning to Gabe, not wanting Caroline to overhear the discussion. Damon watched her as she stepped onto the bamboo floor, her shoes in her hand, as if she wanted to make as little sound as possible. She was fully dressed in fresh clothes she must have found in the closet. A cranberry-colored purse was slung over the shoulder of a shawl sweater that swung around her knees. Her gaze was on the door.
Leaving?
“Good morning.”
He startled her so badly she dropped the shoes she’d been carrying, brown leather boots that clunked heavily to the floor. Damn it. How had he let his brother’s comment twist him around to think the worst of their relationship? He knew Caroline better than that. Didn’t he?
Shoving to his feet, he was across the room and at her side. Picking up her shoes and setting them neatly by the kitchen island, he reached to steady her arm.
“I’m sorry, Caroline.” He smoothed a touch along her shoulder, remembering the feel of her lips against his the day before. “I should have given you a warning.”
“No need.” She waved off the apology, her high ponytail brushing her shoulder when she moved away. “You live here. I’m the newcomer.” She tipped the cell phone in her hand to show him. “I’m on hold with the local police department. I’m trying to speak to the officers you mentioned yesterday.”
“I thought they were going to call you when they went on duty?” He had been with her when they’d left a message at the station the day before.
“Shift change is at seven a.m. I thought I’d try to reach them before they head out for the day.” Her attention shifted to the call and she tucked the phone against her cheek. “Yes, I’m here. I’m holding for Officer Downey.”
Damon watched her pace the kitchen, her outfit a swirl of rich colors reflected in stainless steel appliances. She must have been transferred to the officer she wanted because she gave her name and the details of why she was calling, checking notes that she pulled from her purse to read him approximate dates Damon had given her yesterday.
Having his story checked was a strange sensation. Long before he’d dreamed up the idea for Transparent, he’d been a successful businessman. In Martinique, where he and his brothers owned a marina and a historic plantation home available for private parties and corporate retreats, he had a reputation for being a fair employer and a generous contributor to local causes. In Silicon Valley, he was a man people listened to. He filled lecture halls when he spoke at prestigious universities about digital progress.
But the woman he’d given his heart to had to verify his story with the police. Was that normal for amnesia sufferers? He added it to the list of things to ask the specialist, who’d made time to see her today when he called in a favor from a friend.
For now, he distracted himself by making a fresh pot of coffee for Caroline while she quizzed the cop on the other end of the phone.
“Thank you so much,” she finally said, her brown eyes darting Damon’s way. “I appreciate knowing more about what my father said.” She seemed to hesitate as she listened to the officer. She shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. “No,” she finally said. “Not yet. But I will contact you as soon as I’m ready to come in to give a statement.”

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