Secret Heiress, Secret Baby
Secret Heiress, Secret Baby
Emily McKay
The secret heiress is back…with a little secret that changes everything.As the long lost heiress in a notoriously scandalous family, Meg Lathem has always kept her distance. But now her daughter needs lifesaving surgery, so Meg asks for support—either from the child’s unscrupulous father, Grant Sheppard, or the dreaded Cains themselves.Grant had an agenda when he first bedded Meg—revenge against her birth father. But now, confronted by news that he’s a daddy himself, Grant finds his feelings for Meg run deep. Can he convince Meg he’s there for her this time, and protect her from the Cain legacy even as she claims it?
Grant was hit again by that powerful urge to pull her to him.
To kiss her again. To taste her one last time.
Instead he pulled her just an inch closer, stared into her eyes and whispered. “You’re a Cain now. You can afford to stay anywhere you damn well want to.”
She met his gaze head-on. It was different than it had been at the gala, when they were surrounded by people, when the lights were low and the music romantic. There, he’d almost believed she really was a Cain. Almost believed she wasn’t the woman he’d once known.
But here, in this crummy motel, under the harsh cheap lights, here he couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t pretend.
This was Meg. His Meg.
With her alabaster skin and her Cain-blue eyes.
She glared at him defiantly. “I am a Cain. I have always been a Cain. And this is where I want to stay.”
His gaze dropped to her lips, and for a moment the urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming. Would she still taste like cinnamon and sugar? Would she still melt against him?
* * *
Secret Heiress, Secret Baby is part of the At Cain’s Command series: Three brothers must find their illegitimate sister … or forfeit a fortune
Secret Heiress,
Secret Baby
Emily McKay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
EMILY McKAY has been reading romance novels since she was eleven years old. Her first romance came free. She has been reading and loving romance novels ever since. She lives in Texas with her geeky husband, her two kids and too many pets. Her debut novel, Baby, Be Mine, was a RITA
Award finalist for Best First Book and Best Short Contemporary. She was also a 2009 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award nominee for Series Romance. To learn more, visit her website, www.emilymckay.com (http://www.emilymckay.com).
For my dear son, you may very well be the most charming man I know, and I don’t think I’m being partial either.
Contents
Cover (#ud3634d50-322a-50df-bddb-ceb159666cb1)
Excerpt (#u96ef468d-cef7-57d6-a70d-82e23dd5f146)
Title Page (#u03da0fa5-fb4f-5910-bd79-24154c2d2f65)
About the Author (#u068addc6-2e75-5c24-a015-c0c36f9dc071)
Dedication (#u1de61024-0702-5735-83c9-7634bb728398)
Prologue (#uee69284b-0329-5ecd-8828-2daf6fa2d873)
One (#u19604f01-cf64-5938-ac38-e747711606c2)
Two (#u5691ce1e-bbaa-56b6-8bfc-abdc1e7545d4)
Three (#u947ac353-f87a-59cf-84ce-41a257a77b90)
Four (#u9e9b4fa6-437e-55d3-8cab-751e88c0510e)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
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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)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_2c5069d5-7947-524c-8787-5cebbe97354a)
After a mere three weeks of sleeping next to Meg Lathem, Grant Sheppard knew she was gone the instant he woke up. She liked to sleep curled against his side, one leg draped over his hips, her head resting on his shoulder. Of course, waking up at three or four in the morning only to find her puttering around the kitchen was normal.
He stumbled out of bed, pulled on the jeans he’d left draped over the rocking chair in the corner and went to find her.
In a house this size, it didn’t take long. Her two-bedroom bungalow just a few blocks off the square in Victoria, Texas, was the house she’d grown up in. For a man like Grant, who’d grown up among the wealthy elite of Houston, this small town not far from the coast didn’t hold much appeal. He had come here—and stayed here—for Meg.
She was baking again and the smell—a combination of toasted nuts and caramelized sugar—was divine.
That scent alone would have lured him out of bed.
He paused when he got to the kitchen, propping his shoulder against the doorway and watching her. Her inky-black Bettie Page hair was pulled up into a ponytail that bobbed enticingly as she moved. She’d thrown on a nightgown—something skimpy and sheer that hit her just below the curve of her butt. She’d put on an apron over that. Her feet were bare, her nails painted navy blue. The tattoo on the back of her leg peeked out from under the hem of her nightie when she bent over. She was sexier than a girl in a pinup calendar and every swish of her hem and wiggle of her ass made him ache with the need to claim her.
Between the retro kitchen and Meg’s vintage style, he might have thought he’d traveled back in time to the forties. Only the blue nail polish and the tattoo ruined the illusion. That and the blowtorch she’d just lit up.
He knew better than to sneak up behind her while she was working. Instead, he just stood there and enjoyed the view, waiting as she skimmed the bright blue flame over the top of a pie’s meringue, singeing the tips of the curlicues a golden brown. When she straightened and flicked the blowtorch off, he walked into the room.
“What’d you create this time?”
She shot a playful look over her shoulder. “I thought I heard you back there leering at me.” Then she winked, cocking her hip slightly to show off her stupendous curves.
“And here I thought I was waiting patiently.”
She turned around, her ponytail flicking over her shoulder. She held out a hand as if displaying the pie on the counter. “May I present my newest creation? Toasted-hazelnut graham cracker crust. Dark chocolate pudding. Toasted-marshmallow meringue topping. I’m calling it s’more pie.”
He faked a groan of anguish. “And I have to wait until the shop opens to try it.”
She grinned, stepping aside to reveal a second, tiny pie. “You know I’d never serve a pie at the shop that I hadn’t tested. Just give me a second to toast the—”
But he didn’t give her a second. He’d waited long enough. He strode across the room, slipped his hands under the hem of her nightgown to cup her—hello!—bare ass. Her flesh was firm and warm in his hands and he only had to lift her a few inches off the ground for the apex of her thighs to graze against his throbbing erection. She arched, rubbing herself against him. Then he lifted her higher and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He backed her up half a step and let her ass rest on the counter behind her.
When he kissed her she tasted like sinful dark chocolate and meringue so sweet it was almost too much.
That was Meg all over. An irresistible combination of sinful and sweet. And always, almost too much.
Her hands found his zipper and eased it down, slipping into his jeans to free him. She wrapped nimble fingers around him and gave first one then a second long slow tug before she positioned him right between her lips. She rubbed herself against him, stroking the folds of her sensitive flesh first with the head of his penis and then—as she eased herself down his length—with her own fingers. She was desperate and needy and came almost before he did.
That was Meg all over. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen and she met him, passion for passion. She was almost too good to be true.
He wondered if she thought the same about him.
* * *
Later—a hot shower and a warm pie later—they were back in bed. She was almost drifting off to sleep as he traced the bared arc of her back, when he asked, “Why s’more pie?”
She sighed, nuzzled closer and muttered, “Because those are all the ingredients of s’mores, dummy.”
“No. I meant what made you think of s’mores?”
She was quiet for a minute, and her breathing became so even and relaxed, he thought she’d probably fallen back asleep, when she said, “I don’t know. Something about this—this thing between us—it feels like being at summer camp, don’t you think?”
He chuckled. “Trust me. I did not do this at summer camp.”
She gave his arm a swat. “No, silly. I mean it feels perfect but ephemeral. Like the last days of summer camp.”
He sucked in a breath and held it, waiting to see what else she’d say. Because that was it, right there. The perfect moment. The moment he’d been angling for these past few weeks. It doesn’t have to be ephemeral. Come back to Houston with me. Marry me.
It would have worked. She’d have fallen for it, just as she’d fallen for him.
But he didn’t say it. He couldn’t force the words out.
A moment later she said, “My grandpa used to make the best s’mores.”
“I thought all s’mores were the same.”
She seemed not to notice how stiff and formal he sounded.
“No, silly. The perfect s’more depends on the perfect toasted marshmallow. And Grandpa could roast ’em with the best. He was so patient.” She was silent for several beats, and then added, “I wish you could have met him. You’d have loved him.” And then came the kicker. “And he’d have loved you.”
“I doubt that.” He muttered the words, but she still heard them.
She pushed herself up on her elbow and looked down at him, her gaze still sleepy but firm. “No. He would have loved you. You’re a good man, Grant Sheppard.”
She pressed a kiss to his lips before settling back onto his shoulder.
An hour later, once she was deeply asleep, he got dressed and slipped out of her house. As he drove through Victoria for the last time, he could still taste her kisses and her pie on his lips.
Yeah, she believed he was a good guy. That had been his plan all along: find Hollister Cain’s missing daughter, make her fall in love with him, marry her and gain control of just enough of Cain Enterprises to drive the company into the ground.
It wasn’t the plan of a nice guy. It was the plan of an asshole bent on personal revenge at any cost. Yeah, he could live with that. He was a bastard. He knew it.
The problem wasn’t even that she didn’t know it. The problem was, when she looked at him like that, he wanted her to be right. He wanted to be the man she thought he was. And that kind of weakness was completely unacceptable.
As he drove out of town, he started working on a new plan.
One (#ulink_b9db7fa4-e879-5ea4-bdb0-9a58e0e995b6)
Just over two years later
Meg Lathem sat in her dusty, beat-up Chevy, cursing the blazing Texas sun, the crowded streets of downtown Houston and her tiny bladder.
She should have stopped at that Dairy Queen in Bay City to pee. Yes, she’d still be nervous as hell about seeing Grant Sheppard again after all this time, but at least she’d have a Dilly Bar to soothe the pain.
Instead, all she had was dry mouth and the beginning stages of an ulcer.
She chewed on her lip for a second. Then dug around in her purse for her lip balm. Instead, she found her cherry bomb lipstick, which she wore to finish up extra-long days when she needed a bit of sass and sex appeal to coast until the bakery closed. Today, she needed neither sass nor sex appeal. She needed sensibility and reason.
She shoved the lipstick back in her purse, slung the strap over her shoulder and was climbing from the car just as her phone rang.
If it had been any number other than her friend Janine’s she would have let it roll over to voice mail. However, Janine—who usually helped manage the bakery—was watching Meg’s daughter, Pearl, while Meg took this little jaunt to Houston, so she slid back into the car and shut out the noise of Houston traffic. She answered it with, “Is Pearl okay?”
“Pearl’s fine, honey. She’s happier than the cherry on a hot-fudge sundae.”
The knot of anxiety in her chest loosened a smidge. “Then why are you calling?”
“You done it yet?”
“It’s a two-hour drive from Victoria. No, I haven’t done it yet. I just got here.”
“Liar. You never met a speed limit sign you didn’t love to mock. I bet you made it there thirty minutes ago and have been sitting outside his office making calf eyes at the words Sheppard Bank and Trust scrawled above the door.”
“Am not.” Meg glanced at her watch. She’d only been here for twenty-two minutes. And the words Sheppard Bank and Trust were not above the door. They were slapped on the outside of the building near the forty-second floor in ten-foot-tall letters. And she hadn’t been making calf eyes at them so much as scowling. “I do not feel that way about Grant Sheppard anymore and you know it. That man is a lying, cheating sack of—”
“You don’t have to do this,” Janine said quietly.
“I know.” She brought her hand up to her forehead and rubbed, pressing her thumb near the crest of her eye socket where the tension seemed to be drilling into her skull.
“We can find another way.”
“I know,” she said again. Except there was no other way. Her daughter needed heart surgery. Meg just couldn’t afford to pay the insurance deductible and keep the bakery open. And if the bakery closed, then she’d be out of a job and really wouldn’t be able to meet the deductible. The good people of Victoria had all banded together to do a fund-raiser for Pearl. The whole town had come together. It had been the most heartwarming, amazing day.
But they’d only raised nine thousand dollars. She needed almost fifty thousand for the surgery alone. Everyone she knew, everyone who loved and cared for Pearl, had banded together and dug as deep as they could. And it would only cover a fifth of the cost.
And even if she could somehow scrape together the money for this deductible, there was physical therapy. And more appointments down the road. And more specialists. More, more and more things to spend money on. Money she just didn’t have. But Pearl’s father had the money. Hell, money was his business.
Wasn’t it only fair that he paid?
He was Pearl’s father.
Going to him wasn’t begging. It was only right.
But it would be so much easier if he already knew he had a daughter.
“Honey,” Janine said, finally breaking the long silence. “Stop rubbing that spot above your eye. You know how sensitive your skin is and if you’re going to see Grant Sheppard after all these years, you don’t want to look all splotchy.”
Meg jerked her hand away from her face and quickly flipped down the mirror. Crap. She did look all splotchy.
Then she snapped it closed. No, this was good. Splotchy was just fine. Humbling, even. A nice reminder that their relationship was never going to be sexual again. Never.
“Now, go get ’em, tiger. You can do this!”
Janine hung up then, not waiting for Meg to voice the doubts roiling in her gut.
“Right,” Meg muttered. “Go get ’em.”
She clambered out of the car and started crossing the street. Sheppard Bank and Trust opened up to a plaza with sprawling oaks, a trio of fountains and plenty of outdoor seating. The last of the lunch crowd was still enjoying the nice weather and even though Houston wasn’t a town that got a lot of foot traffic, Meg had to weave around people as she reached the sidewalk.
She was still on the other side of the plaza when the big glass doors of the Sheppard Bank and Trust building opened and Grant Sheppard stepped out into the midafternoon sun. Her steps automatically slowed. A car honked somewhere, prompting her to dash the rest of the way across the street.
Suddenly she had tunnel vision. It was as if she could see only him and no one else. It had been over two years since she’d seen him. He looked good. Just as tall and fit as ever. His sandy hair was a little long. A little disheveled. A little renegade for this conservative town. But his suit was strictly business. It toed the line. His mouth still curled in that half smile. The smile that made a woman want to do naughty things to his lips.
The smile that made women stupid.
She gave her head a little shake and reminded herself—it wasn’t just that it had been more than two years since she’d seen him, it was more than two years since he’d sneaked out of her bed in the middle of the night and disappeared without a trace.
Yeah, there was a difference, and she’d do well to remember it.
She hardened her heart and put a damper on her hormones before she took a step toward him. But as her tunnel vision eased up, she saw the woman standing beside him—a willowy blonde, almost as tall as he was. Even though she was thin, there was a softness to her body that was only emphasized by the protective hand he held at the woman’s back. There was an intimacy to their posture that spoke of affection and familiarity. A warning bell went off in Meg’s head.
She had stopped in her tracks, almost unaware of the other people filtering past her. She knew—even before the other woman turned around—what she was going to see. The woman would be beautiful and sophisticated and classy. Everything Meg was not.
She would also be pregnant.
Meg was so sure that when the woman actually turned so Meg could see her, Meg didn’t comprehend what she was seeing.
Beauty—check. Sophisticated—check. But not pregnant. No. Worse.
The woman was holding a baby. A beautiful, healthy, bubbling baby. A “perfect” baby.
Grant Sheppard’s beautiful socialite wife had given him a perfect, healthy baby.
Whereas the daughter he shared with Meg had Down syndrome and an atrial septal defect in her heart.
Meg never, ever thought of Pearl as being lesser. Yes, the tiny hole in her heart meant she had health problems that sometimes terrified Meg. But Pearl was perfect in her own way.
But would Grant see that? Would he realize how amazing Pearl was? Would she be able to protect Pearl if he didn’t?
And beneath her basic mother’s need to protect her child lingered some other, more complicated emotion.
Just the slightest twinge of envy that had nothing to do with the baby or with Pearl, but with the woman who appeared to be Grant’s wife.
Meg didn’t want to be that perfect blonde woman. She didn’t want her wealth or her hair or her wardrobe or her baby—whose heart probably didn’t have a hole in it. She loved her own bank account, hair, clothes and baby. She didn’t want anything that other woman had. But for the first time, she realized that part of her might still want Grant. And that scared the piss out of her.
How could she go talk to Grant now?
The answer was, she couldn’t. Not while she still had any other options.
Instead, she would do the one thing she’d promised herself she’d never do. The thing she’d promised her mother and her grandfather she’d never do. She’d go see her father. She’d make a deal with the devil himself.
* * *
As luck would have it, the devil himself—aka Hollister Cain—lived a short drive from downtown in the prestigious River Oaks neighborhood. Nestled in among the homes of former presidents, deposed foreign princes and excessive country-music stars was her father’s massive antebellum mansion.
Thanks to Google Maps Street View, she knew the mansion by sight even though she’d never been there. For that matter, thanks to Google Images she knew her father by sight, too. She had never met him either.
No, she was Hollister’s illegitimate daughter. Twenty-six-odd years ago, he had seduced—and then abandoned—her mother, not only because he was a heartless bastard, but for calculated professional gain. Hollister’s treatment had led to her mother’s slow but steady emotional unraveling.
As a result, Meg had been raised by her grandfather. All her life, she’d known the truth about Hollister and her mother, so she’d naturally assumed that Hollister knew about her too and had just never bothered to claim his daughter. Which was fine by her. Just fine.
She certainly didn’t need them or their money or the misery it would bring to her life.
Except now she did need it.
Of course, there was a chance Hollister would flat out refuse to acknowledge her. After all, Hollister was too much of a bastard to open his wallet willingly. Then lawyers would have to get involved. There would be genetic testing and all kinds of nastiness. But in the end, she was Hollister’s daughter and there was nothing he could do about it.
But she didn’t think it would come to that, because she knew secrets about Hollister’s past that he wouldn’t want getting out. She had proof of illegal things he’d done that would destroy the Cain family name. In his dealings with her family, he’d broken the law, and she had no problem letting him be judged in the court of public opinion. If he proved difficult, she would make whatever threats she needed to make.
So in her fairy-tale version, her reunion with her father would go down like this: she’d walk in, she’d announce who she was, he’d write her a check for a couple hundred grand, she’d sign some papers promising never to ask for more and she’d be back home with Pearl by the end of the week. What could be simpler than a little blackmail among family?
Still, she wasn’t used to making threats like this. And two hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money. That was the number she’d ultimately decided she needed. Fifty grand to cover the surgery and another three times that much to cover anything else Pearl needed in the future. It was an arbitrary number and—hopefully—a little high. But this was a one-time thing. She had no intention of ever coming to Hollister for money again. This was her one chance to take the money and run.
Which probably explained the knots in her tummy as she stared out her grimy car windshield at the mansion across the street. Surely it had nothing to do with the memory, still so fresh in her mind, of Grant’s hand low on the waist of that lovely blonde goddess.
Her phone buzzed and vibrated on the passenger seat. She ignored it as she climbed from the car. Janine had been calling her approximately every fifteen minutes for the past hour. No doubt wanting an update on how her “meeting” with Grant had gone. Meg didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d chickened out. She would call Janine after she’d talked to her father.
She marched across the street and up the seemingly endless path, across a veritable sea of lush Saint Augustine grass, to the front porch. Before she could second-guess herself, she punched the doorbell. And then counted every second as it ticked by.
No one on the other side of that door mattered to her. Not at all.
Still, she’d been on her own a long time. And she was about to meet someone from her family. Maybe even her father.
Or maybe just someone who worked for her family.
Did the Cains have...servants?
Would there be a butler or something?
Or would—?
Then the door was opening and instead of her father, or even a servant, Meg was faced with a blonde woman with near-perfect features, a willowy athletic body and a faint bump at her belly. Portia Calahan. Dalton Cain’s ex-wife. So, Meg’s own ex-sister-in-law.
Meg would have recognized any of the Cains—thanks to their prominent position in Houston society and Google—but Portia she had actually met the first time she’d come to Houston, right after she’d learned Pearl would need surgery. She’d considered asking for financial help and then dismissed the idea just as quickly. She’d thought she’d slipped under everyone’s radar.
For a moment, they just stared at one another. Then Meg said, “What are you doing here?” at the same time Portia said, “It’s you!”
Portia seemed to sway on her feet and her eyes rolled back. Her legs went out from under her. Meg lurched forward, dropping her purse, and caught Portia just as she crumpled to the ground.
Though Portia was thin, she was a lot taller than Meg. Meg, too, collapsed under Portia’s weight and they both went down.
“Help!” Meg tried to control their fall, but she simply couldn’t support Portia’s weight. All she could do was try to lower Portia slowly as she muttered, “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”
Not just because Portia had fainted, nearly hurting herself and crushing Meg, but because Portia was not supposed to be here! Portia wasn’t part of the Cain family anymore. And Portia had obviously remembered meeting her.
For a moment, Meg considered bolting, trying to contact her father another day. Trying to get the money some other way. But she was out of time and she had no other way to get the money. And already footsteps were pounding across the tile floor toward them.
She looked up to see five more people crossing the foyer: two women and three men.
The men she all recognized. Her brothers. Dalton and Griffin Cain and Cooper Larson. If she had to guess, she’d say the two women were Laney and Sydney, her sisters-in-law.
To Meg’s surprise, it was Cooper who quickened his pace and crouched down beside Portia. He gently cradled her head and shoulders, and Meg wiggled out from underneath her.
“She fainted,” she said quickly. “I tried to catch her.”
“Thanks,” Cooper said, before muttering a curse under his breath. “She’s going to be pissed.”
“I tried to catch her!” Meg insisted again, scrambling back.
“Not at you,” he said gently. “About fainting. It’s the second time this week. She hates when it happens.”
The red-haired woman—Sydney, if Meg remembered correctly from the pictures she’d seen in the society column of the Houston Chronicle—knelt beside Cooper and rested her hand on his arm. “Is she going to be okay?”
He nodded, but his smile didn’t hide his concern. “The doctor says it happens to a lot of women in the first trimester.”
Sydney looked up at Meg. “Thanks for catching— oh my gosh.”
“Wait. What?” Meg asked, scooting farther away. Her gaze darted from Sydney to Cooper and then to the three people still standing. “I didn’t—”
But when her gaze met Dalton’s, he muttered a low “damn.”
Now they were all staring at her. As in, she’d-grown-an-extra-head-or-two staring at her. Or, they-somehow-knew-she-was-here-to-blackmail-their-father staring at her.
Meg automatically got to her feet and held out her hands, palms out. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” Yet.
The other woman, Laney—who had long dark hair and resembled a modern-day Snow White—sent a chiding look at the others. “For goodness’ sake, you’re scaring her.” Then she stepped forward, smiling. “No one thinks you did anything to hurt Portia. We’re glad you were here to catch her. Aren’t we?” She gave Dalton’s elbow a little nudge.
He stepped forward too. “Yes, absolutely.”
Meg looked warily from one sibling to the next. Gratitude for stopping Portia’s fall did not explain their behavior. Panic edged in under her confusion. She took a step back toward the door. “You know, I think I’m going to go.”
As one, Dalton, Laney, Griffin and Sydney took steps toward her as a chorus of protests echoed through the room.
Okay. This was getting weird.
She took a few more steps back toward the door. “I...um...”
“You can’t leave,” pleaded Laney. The rest of them stopped still in their tracks, as if Meg was some sort of spooked deer.
Great. She couldn’t leave. She had unwittingly made some rich pregnant woman faint and now they were trying to keep her contained so they could call the police or something. Okay, that was probably a bit paranoid.
Portia must have been slowly coming to, because she made a groaning noise and pushed herself up onto her elbows.
“Why can’t I leave?” Meg asked hesitantly.
“Not again.” Portia looked around the room, blinking. “Did I miss anything?”
Cooper cradled her shoulders, gently brushing her hair out of her eyes. “You weren’t out that long.”
Laney took advantage of the distraction by stepping forward to clutch Meg’s hand. “You can’t leave because you’re Hollister’s missing daughter. You’re their sister!”
“I know I’m their sister. How do they know it?”
Again, everyone turned to look at her and said, “You know?”
Two (#ulink_f32edb39-45f6-5b30-94f6-940fd8bfcbbf)
Thirty minutes later—after Meg had nearly fainted, herself—the Cains finally lured her from the foyer into an elegant office in one of the front rooms. Dalton had poured drinks all around. Everyone else he knew well enough that he hadn’t needed to ask what they wanted, but when he got to her, he shot her a look, his eyebrows raised in silent question.
“Just water, please.” She needed to keep her wits about her. If there was one thing her mother had taught her, it was that rich people were all venomous snakes and the Cains were the worst. Like coral snakes. More deadly than rattlesnakes and twice as aggressive.
Once Dalton handed her the glass of water, he gestured toward a wingback chair, but she didn’t sit down. Portia and Sydney were seated on the sofa opposite the chair. Laney was in another wingback chair beside it with Dalton standing behind her. The other two men were scattered around the room. The last thing she wanted was to be sitting in the hot spot.
“Okay, tell me again why you think I’m your sister.”
Again it was Portia who answered. “Your eyes, obviously.”
“My eyes?”
“You have the Cain blue eyes.” Griffin pointed to one of his own eyes. Then he winked at her. “Very unique. All the Cains have them.”
“You assume I’m your sister just because my eyes are blue? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! There have to be millions of people with blue eyes.”
“Something like five million people have blue eyes, actually.” Everyone turned to look at Portia. She shrugged. “I looked it up. The point is, eyes your exact color are unique.”
“But not a reason to assume I’m a Cain.”
Dalton leaned over to brace his elbows on the back of his wife’s chair. “But you are, in fact, a Cain. Aren’t you?”
She looked down at her glass of water and gave it a jiggle to move the ice around. “What if I am?”
“Then we’ve been looking for you.”
“And,” Portia added, “I think you’ve been poking around getting information about us, too.”
For a second, Portia held Meg’s gaze, before Meg looked back down at her water. Portia was right, of course. When she’d been in Houston a year ago, Meg had just wanted to get a feel for the Cains. She’d needed to gauge just how desperate she’d need to be before she went to them for money. She had even met Portia—introduced herself using a fake name, of course—and had a conversation with her. She’d been so sure that Portia hadn’t suspected anything!
She forced her gaze back up to Portia’s. She didn’t say anything—didn’t reveal that they’d met before—but there was a light of triumph in the other woman’s gaze.
After several moments of silence, Laney and Sydney exchanged a worried look. Then Sydney spoke up. “Do you know why we’ve been looking for you?”
“No.” All her life, she’d been told that her father had abandoned her and her mother and that no one in the Cain family wanted them. She couldn’t imagine how they could have been looking for her when she lived in the same town where she’d been born, less than five miles from the courthouse where Hollister had married her mother. “There’s no reason for anyone to be looking for me. I haven’t exactly been hiding.”
There was another tense moment as the Cains all looked at one another as if they were trying to decide who would be the best one to break the bad news to her.
Laney leaned forward. Okay, Snow White it was.
“I don’t know if you know this, but Hollister’s health has been declining for the past several years.”
“If he recently died, don’t feel like you have to break it to me gently.” The father she’d never even met dying mere days before she finally decided to contact him? Yeah. That sounded about right. Not that she minded not meeting him, but it seemed unlikely that anyone else would care about her blackmail demands.
“Oh, no, Hollister is still alive,” Laney reassured her. “But a few years ago, when he was at his worst and we were all sure he was going to pass, he received a letter.” Laney paused and the Cains exchanged more awkward glances before Dalton gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “The letter was sent anonymously from a woman claiming to be your mother. She explained that she had born him a daughter many years ago and that she had purposely kept it from him to protect the girl. To protect you. But that she wanted him to go to his grave knowing that he could never get his hands on you. She was taunting him.”
Meg frowned. “My mother couldn’t have sent that letter. She died when I was a child.” Plenty of people in her life hated Hollister, but none hated him enough to track his health obsessively just to drop that bombshell when he was on his deathbed. “I don’t know anyone who would have done that. You don’t think I did it, do you? Because—”
“No,” Dalton said quickly. “We’re not worried about that. The woman who wrote the letter knew Hollister well enough to know it would drive him crazy—the fact that he had a daughter who was forever beyond his reach. So he set a challenge for the three of us.” Dalton gestured to indicate his brothers. “Whichever one of us found you and brought you back into the fold would get his entire estate. If no one found you before he died, everything would go to the state.”
“Excuse me?” For a long moment, that was all she could say. She couldn’t even think clearly enough to process what he’d said, let alone to comment. Hollister was worth...well, she didn’t know the precise numbers, but it was a buttload of money. Hundreds of millions at least. Finally she said, “What kind of—” she barely restrained herself from using the word asshole “—man sets up a crazy landgrab like that among his sons?”
Dalton just nodded. Griffin smiled grimly.
Cooper actually chuckled. “Yeah, exactly. Way to encourage sibling bonding, right?”
Except when she looked around the room, they did seem to be close. There wasn’t even a glimmer of animosity among them.
“You seem to be getting along awfully well when there’s so much money at stake.”
Griffin shrugged. “We decided early on it was better to share information and split the money. Four ways, obviously. Besides, you’ve been pretty hard to find, given that we had zero information to go on.”
“Except now that you’ve come to us—” Griffin looked around the room “—I guess we need to come up with a new plan. Should we give her the bigger share?”
“Wait, what? Her who? Her me?”
Laney smiled. “Obviously they were always planning on giving a quarter of the estate to you.”
Panic shot through her and Meg lurched to her feet. Even though she didn’t know exactly how many hundreds of millions Hollister was worth, it was a lot. Any way she looked at it, a quarter of a lot of millions was a lot of millions.
She held up her hands, palms out, and started backing toward the door. “I don’t want any of Hollister’s money.” Okay. That wasn’t true. “I only want a tiny bit of money.”
Laney stood up too and pulled out the Snow-White-coaxing-the-forest-creatures voice. “You seem upset by this news. Maybe you should sit down.”
Sit down? Sitting down, with all the Cains staring at her, was the last thing she wanted to do. What she wanted to do was bolt from the room, hop back into her sensible Chevy and get the hell out of Dodge.
But with panic racing through her veins, she suddenly felt as light-headed as Portia had looked right before she’d fainted. That thought alone was enough to get Meg back in her chair. She wasn’t a fainter. She never had been. Not even when she’d been pregnant. Not even when she’d been pregnant and working twelve-hour days at the bakery.
Nope. Not her.
She was tough. She wasn’t a skittish purebred like Portia. She was strictly blue-collar, working stock.
She was not meant to be rich.
Rich people were assholes. Everything in her upbringing and her life had taught her that.
As her thoughts raced, she drew breath after breath into her lungs, desperate to find a way out of this. She had come here expecting to do a little light blackmailing and that...well, that was disconcerting enough. She hadn’t expected things to get so out of control so quickly.
And then she slowly became aware that at some point she’d sat down and was cradling her head in her hands. When she looked up, it was to see all six of the Cains staring at her in total surprise.
Yeah. Clearly, they weren’t used to people who were afraid of money.
It was Sydney who spoke first. “You know that Hollister is your father. But you seem surprised that anyone else knows or believes that you’re Hollister’s. And you don’t seem to want the inheritance that is rightfully yours.”
“I don’t!” she said quickly. Thanks to the helpful pages of the Houston Chronicle, she’d seen what their lives were like. She was smart enough to know that kind of money came with strings a mile long and as strong as Teflon-coated titanium. She didn’t want any part of that.
“Then why did you come?”
“I came because I need money.”
Dalton gave her an impatient look. “You do realize that the inheritance from Hollister is worth a lot of money, right?”
“I’m poor, I’m not an idiot.” She stood and marched over to the windows, staring unseeingly at the pristinely manicured lawns. From the corner of her eye, she might have seen Griffin punch Dalton in the arm. “I don’t want an inheritance from Hollister. And I don’t need money in two years or five years or wherever Hollister dies and the estate goes through probate. I need money now.”
“How much?” asked one of the guys—she didn’t know their voices well enough to know which one.
She glanced over her shoulder to see who had asked, and was surprised to see all three of the men reaching for their wallets. As if they’d just whip out two hundred thousand dollars in small bills.
“About two hundred thousand.” She automatically rattled off the number she’d settled on to cover all of Pearl’s expenses.
“For what?” asked Dalton after only a brief moment of silence.
“That’s something I’ll discuss with Hollister. When the time comes.” This was getting her nowhere. “Now, if you could just tell me where I can find him...”
Griffin stepped forward. “He’s not here now. He just left for Vail. But when you meet him for the first time, one of us should be with you.”
“So you can claim you found me and secure your inheritance?” she asked archly. Why the hell couldn’t she have come to Houston on a day when Hollister was at home? It would have been so much easier dealing with one greedy bastard instead of six.
“Actually,” Sydney said, “I think Griffin was offering more to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection from a dying seventy-year-old man.” At least, she assumed she didn’t. She was picturing Hollister as fairly weak, since they’d just described him as being on his deathbed. On the other hand, she was planning on blackmailing him. Which would probably piss him off.
“My father—” Griffin paused to gesture to her. “Our father isn’t a very nice man.”
“Yeah. I know that. I think I can handle anything he can dish out.”
But again, before she could make it to the door, Dalton stopped her. “If you think Hollister is just going to hand over two hundred thousand dollars, you’re wrong. He’s going to make it as hard on you as possible. Because that’s his MO.”
Meg hesitated. Dalton could well be right. And she was prepared for that. She had never expected this to be easy.
She must not have had a very good poker face, because apparently her nerves showed in her expression.
“Why do you need the money?” Dalton asked.
She stiffened. “That’s none of your business.”
“Are you in trouble? Is it for something illegal?”
“No!” Indignant, she leapt to her feet.
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you,” Dalton said. “I want to help.”
Her gut reaction was eye-rolling suspicion and she didn’t bother to hide it. “Right. Because the Cains are known for their altruism.”
“Okay,” he admitted with a wry smile. “I think we can work something out that will help both of us. If you can stick around for a few days, do things our way, get Hollister to acknowledge you and change his will, then I can get you the two hundred thousand dollars. Free and clear, on top of whatever you inherit from Hollister when the time comes.”
Two hundred grand? The Cains must really be worried about losing control of that stock.
“And you can just come up with two hundred thousand dollars?” she asked, mostly to buy herself time to think.
Dalton shrugged. “Give me seventy-two hours and I can give you a hundred thousand in cash.”
“Same here,” Griffin said.
“Yeah, sure,” Cooper added.
“So there you have it. You agree to stay long enough to prove to Hollister that you are, in fact, the daughter he’s been looking for and you can have the money in three days. But you stick around after you get the money. You stay until we have a new will that no one can contest. Deal?” Dalton held out his hand.
She just stood there, staring at it. A handshake was still legally binding in Texas, after all. She had to be sure.
“If Hollister has been looking for me, why are you so worried about him believing I’m his daughter?”
They all looked at Dalton again, as if they were trying to decide how much to say.
Finally Dalton sighed, ducking his head slightly as he spoke. “Hollister’s behavior has been erratic the last few years. The fact that he set up this challenge proves that. We’ll all feel a lot better when his will is nailed down.”
Okay, so they were worried about their own skins. At least that was a motive she could believe and understand.
A guaranteed two hundred thousand dollars sounded a lot better than facing Hollister with blackmail demands and hoping she didn’t blink first.
On the flip side, it meant staying in Houston. At least three days. Maybe longer.
Janine, she knew, would be happy taking care of Pearl. But God...several days away from Pearl? On the other hand, it was a few days and it was only a two-hour drive. So she could make it back to Victoria if something serious came up.
She just needed to avoid Grant while she was in Houston. But how hard could that be? Houston was a city of more than two million people. All she had to do was lay low and stay out of his way while this was going on. Easy as pie, right? And she made pies for a living.
She held out her hand to Dalton. She’d come here expecting to make a deal with the devil and instead she was making one with the devil’s son.
“Deal,” she agreed.
* * *
This was so not her idea of laying low.
Meg stood in the doorway of the Kimball Hotel’s grand ballroom, staring out at the two hundred or so people who made up the glitterati of Houston society. The Children’s Hope Foundation’s annual fund-raiser was one of the premier social events in the city. The average net worth in this room probably exceeded the GDP of most developing nations. Of course, she was there to bring down the average. Or at least, she would be if she could bring herself to step into the room.
At her side, Sydney gave her elbow a squeeze. “You got this. Come on, into the lion’s den.”
“Aren’t they going to announce me or something?”
“I think they only do that in England.”
“Okay.” Meg blew out a breath, rubbed her palms down her borrowed dress, took one wobbly step forward in her borrowed heels and then abruptly stopped and turned around. Sydney and Griffin closed ranks on either side of her and turned her back around. “This is a horrible idea!” she protested.
“It’s a fantastic idea!” Sydney muttered as she and Griffin steered her into the room. “Portia and Caro have been cochairing this event for years. It’s their party. So when Portia introduces you as Hollister’s long-lost daughter, no one will argue with her. When Caro welcomes you with open arms, it will seal the deal.”
“Wait,” Meg said. “Am I supposed to know who Caro is?”
“She’s Hollister’s ex-wife,” Portia explained. “They divorced over a year ago. Things have been rocky for her, because Hollister tried to destroy her in the divorce, but she’s back on her feet again and holds a lot of sway in this town.”
Griffin added, “By the time Hollister gets back into town from his trip to Vail, the results of the genetic testing we did yesterday will be back from the lab. We’ll have proof that you are our sister. Hollister will have to accept the results. You’ll have the money from us by Monday.”
“Right. By Monday. What could go wrong?”
For starters, she could trip and fall or generally make an idiot of herself. But that, that would just be small potatoes. No, her deepest fear involved running into Grant Sheppard.
That would be a total disaster.
She had tried to get Portia to show her the guest list—back when Portia had first proposed this plan—but Portia had dismissed her concerns, declaring, “Don’t freak yourself out about the guest list. Yes, there are a few big names. Some politicians, a couple of sports stars. But it’s nothing to worry about. No one scary will be there. And we’ll be by your side the whole time.”
That had been Meg’s mantra ever since. No one scary. No one scary. No one scary.
Of course, their definition of scary might differ from hers. Mostly because she hadn’t yet worked up the courage to tell them she’d had an affair with their4 business rival.
But surely Grant wouldn’t come to this event. Yes, it was big, but why on earth would he come to a ball that was always chaired by a Cain?
As one, Meg, Sydney and Griffin moved through the room. With Griffin always introducing her as a valued member of the family, combined with Sydney’s easygoing manner, the evening began to take on a surreal quality. At some point someone handed her a glass of champagne. And then another.
A lot of strategy had gone into planning who would bring Meg to the party and when everyone would arrive. Portia, Cooper and Caro had arrived at the party hours before the event actually began. Dalton had argued that he should bring Meg because now that Hollister didn’t get out into society often, Dalton was ostensibly the head of the family. Griffin had countered that the consensus in Houston society was that Dalton was a brilliant businessman, but as Griffin had teased, “A cold and heartless robot.”
“Your point?” Dalton had asked with an icily arched brow.
“That I should bring her,” Griffin had answered easily. “That way, she’ll meet a lot of people before you and Laney even show up. That way, everyone will be watching. Everyone will be waiting to see what happens when you and Laney walk in. Since everyone knows you’re a heartless bastard, when you greet her, smiling warmly, the sight of you displaying actual human emotion will convince everyone she must be our long-lost sister.”
Meg had tried to protest that the plan was overelaborate. There were too many elements. Too many things that could go wrong. But no one seemed to listen to her. And what did she know, really? She knew cakes and pies. Sweets and coffees. She knew that if you had more than three flavor profiles, you overwhelmed the palate, but that didn’t mean she knew jack about...this. She didn’t even have a word in her vocabulary for these kinds of social machinations.
All she could do was smile politely, try to remember names and avoid talking about...well, everything. Chances were good everyone she met thought she was a little bit stupid. Which was fine. She could live with that. All she needed to do was get through the next few days without incident and without running into Grant.
Quite honestly, she never wanted to see him or his beautiful wife again. She was still too angry over how he’d treated her. Too indignant. Too hurt. And—admittedly—too vulnerable to him.
Around the time someone handed her a third glass of champagne, Dalton and Laney walked in. They navigated the crowded ballroom more easily than anyone else, almost as if the crowd was parting to let them through. Just as Portia had predicted, everyone was turning to watch. Right on cue, Portia and Caro also converged on Meg. A united front.
Even though she’d known these people only two days, even though she didn’t fully trust them and probably never would, she felt weirdly comforted by their presence.
She had no illusions about the permanence of their affection, but for tonight, they had her back. Before all of Houston society, they’d rallied around her.
In this moment, it truly seemed as if all of Houston society was there and watching. Laney stepped forward and pulled her into a hug at the same moment that Dalton greeted Portia, hugging the woman who was his ex-wife and current sister-in-law with genuine affection, before turning to Meg and hugging her as well.
For the first time in her life, she felt as if she truly had a brother.
And that’s when it happened.
That’s when Grant Sheppard walked into the room.
Three (#ulink_10838bb8-3ca9-5c04-aca4-dbe9d36e8731)
Grant Sheppard hated this stuff. Obviously, he wanted children to have hope. He just didn’t see why a bunch of rich bastards needed to spend fifty thousand dollars to throw a party that would ultimate raise only seventy-five thousand dollars. It didn’t make financial sense, and was a damn annoying way to spend an evening.
Besides that, the Children’s Hope Foundation annual gala was inevitably overrun by Cains. Which was both one more thing to hate and the only reason he actually bothered to come. There were plenty of stupid charity events he avoided altogether. He came to this one because he didn’t want anyone imagining they scared him away.
Though generally he did avoid them. Ostensibly because of the decades-old rivalry between the two families. But he had a more personal reason: he couldn’t ever see one of the Cains without thinking of Meg. Sweet Meg. The only woman he’d ever even come close to loving.
Meg, who tasted like sugar and smelled like spices and who—for one brief moment—had held his heart in her hands. Meg, who most likely hated him for running out on her in the middle of the night. And who would hate him even more if she knew the truth...
No, he didn’t let himself think about Meg very often. Loving Meg was just one more reason to hate the Cains, even though she was one of them.
The rivalry between the Cains and the Sheppards had been going on for nearly twenty years, ever since Hollister had edged Russell Sheppard out of the business their fathers had started. There were some things a man never recovered from. Being screwed over by your best friend, your business partner, your mentor...that was one of them. And Grant’s father had never recovered. Oh, he’d stumbled along for another decade, but he’d never been the same.
For all intents and purposes, Hollister Cain had destroyed Russell Sheppard. And Grant had vowed to do the same to Hollister and all of his family in return. After years of carefully orchestrated moves, Grant was so close to bringing down Cain Enterprises, he could almost taste it.
Which of course was one more reason he’d come here tonight. Five of the seven board members should be here. All men and women he knew socially and professionally. Soon he would make his move against Cain Enterprises and when he did, he’d need them on his side.
He moved deeper into the room, heading straight for the bar. He didn’t drink much, typically. His father’s alcoholism had been pretty unappealing to watch. Still, having a drink in his hand gave him something to do while he navigated this shark tank.
The bartender had just handed him his Patron, when a stunning brunette sidled up to him.
“Becca.” He smiled and nodded to greet her.
“Grant,” she murmured as she rose on her toes to brush a discreet kiss across his cheek and briefly press her body to his. “How are you?”
“Same as always,” he said gently.
They had dated briefly a few years ago, before she realized he wasn’t interested in marriage. Now she was married to a sixty-three-year-old oil magnate. One of Cain Enterprises’ board members, as a matter of fact. Which worked nicely in Grant’s favor, since he got along well with the man.
“I have gossip for you,” she said.
“You know I’m not interested in gossip.”
“This is about the Cains. And even though you’ll hear it soon enough, I desperately want to be the first one to share it with you.” She jutted out her lip. “Please.”
Grant glanced across the room and saw Becca’s husband deep in conversation with one of Houston’s congressmen. He turned his attention back to Becca. “You look like you need a drink.”
She smiled, clearly delighted that she’d snagged his attention as he headed off to the bar. Five minutes later, he returned with a glass of pinot grigio. Becca actually preferred tequila but never drank it in public. At least, not at this kind of event. Like him, Becca had grown up on the fringes of Houston society. Just rich enough to be included but not rich enough to be an equal. Both of their families had once been old money, but had fallen on hard times. They’d stayed in the social loop, but at the bottom of the pecking order. In so many ways, Becca was his equal. He’d clawed his way back to wealth with ruthless business practices. She’d done it with an advantageous marriage. Neither was particularly proud of their means or motives, but they understood one another. Years ago, he’d thought he and Becca would have been a match made in heaven if they hadn’t both been too ambitious to settle for someone as low on the social pecking order as they themselves were. Though, obviously, neither of them was pining away for the other. They were both doing just fine on their own. Which was another reason Becca was perfect for him. There was a lot to be said for a woman he could walk away from without missing.
She took a sip of her drink and smiled blandly. “Thank you.”
“And now your news?”
“Do you remember the rumors I told you a few years ago about Hollister losing his marbles when he found out he had a daughter?”
“Of course. He threatened to disinherit all three of his sons unless one of them found her and brought her back to the family.”
“Exactly.” Becca tapped her hand against his arm, her eyes lighting up with delight. “Which was great news for you. The rumors have gone a long way to destabilizing Cain Enterprises. It doesn’t help that Dalton resigned as president and Griffin had to take over.”
“Though Griffin has been more competent as president than anyone could have predicted,” Grant admitted begrudgingly.
“The point is, Hollister is unstable and losing touch with reality.”
“Which I’ve known for years.”
“But that may change, and soon.” She leaned forward and whispered. “If you’re going to make your move against Cain Enterprises, you need to do it now.”
“Why?” The longer rumors circulated about Hollister’s poor health and poorer business decisions, the better it would be for Grant.
“Because they found the missing Cain heiress.”
For an instant, his heart froze in his chest. Then it started thudding again, slowly. “No. They didn’t.”
He was sure they hadn’t found her. There was no way they could have found her without his hearing about it first.
Those rumors about Hollister having a daughter had spurred his own search for her. Because he had access to his own father’s business and personal records from about the time the heiress would have been born, Grant had managed to track Meg down early in the game. He may have initially planned to use her against the Cains, but all that had changed when he’d started to fall for her.
Even though he’d walked away, he felt... proprietary. He’d kept an eye on her. After all, Sheppard Bank and Trust had two locations in Victoria, one of them right across the square from her pie shop. Both the bank manager and the security guards had been told to keep an eye out for anyone from the Cain family—ostensibly because of fears about corporate espionage. Surely he would have heard if the Cain family had been within a hundred yards of Meg and her little pie shop.
He knew the Cains and he knew Meg. Was it really so bad that he wanted to protect her from them?
“Yes, they did.” Becca grinned, her gaze lit with malicious glee. “In fact, she’s here tonight.” Becca nodded in the direction of the dance floor. “Right over there. She was dancing with Dalton the last time I saw her. See for yourself.”
“She’s here tonight?”
“The whole family is here for her introduction to society.” Becca flicked her hair over her shoulder, feigning disinterest. “A little premature, I think. Apparently they just found her this week. And I’d swear that dress she has on is one Portia wore two years ago.”
Becca kept talking, but Grant stopped listening. Instead, he gazed over the heads of the crowd, trying to get a look at the woman Becca was talking about.
It wasn’t Meg. He knew that much. It just couldn’t be.
But—it occurred to him for the first time since he’d left Victoria over two years ago—there might be another heiress somewhere. It was entirely possible that Hollister had fathered more than one bastard daughter he didn’t know about. It was possible the Cains had found some other girl who was still Hollister’s.
They weren’t stupid enough to try to pass off some random woman as his daughter. Not when genetic testing was affordable and the results could be had practically overnight. But there might actually be more than one daughter.
He took a long sip of his tequila and considered. For the past two years, he’d played the long game. He’d planned on the Cains being so involved in this search that he could quietly buy up stock and wait for the company to be rocky enough that he could step in and simply take over. If Hollister died first and disinherited his sons, so much the better.
It had not played out as he’d planned. Hollister was too stubborn to die and Griffin too competent to run Cain Enterprises into the ground.
Still, Grant now owned a healthy chunk of the company. He’d swayed at least three of the seven board members to his side. He almost had it.
And now this.
Some mystery woman messing up his plans.
He excused himself from Becca and started making his way across the room, determined to see just who the Cains had dug up, consoling himself with this one thought: whoever she was, at least their machinations wouldn’t hurt Meg.
No matter what happened, no matter how this went down—no matter how he took down Cain Enterprises—at least Meg wouldn’t be caught in the cross fire.
Then the crowd parted and he could see the dance floor. He spotted Dalton moving across the floor with a tiny woman in his arms. Her hair, swept up into an elaborate topknot, was dyed a shade of auburn just a little too brassy to be natural. It had one streak of black running through it.
Then Dalton twirled the woman around and Grant got a look at her face.
Shit.
They’d found his Meg.
* * *
Meg was stuck at this interminable party for at least another hour. That’s what Portia had told her when Meg demanded to know how much longer she had to stand around like some sort of trophy waiting to be handed off to the winner.
“At ten o’clock the silent auction ends and the live auction begins. That will wrap up by eleven and then there’s another two hours of music. You can slip out maybe by 10:10 or so, if Griffin and Sydney are ready to go.”
She had begged. They would be ready. But first she had to get through the next hour without catching Grant’s eye. She didn’t know how exactly she was supposed to do that, when the Cains had orchestrated this entire evening so that everyone in the room would be talking about her.
And no matter where she stood or whom she talked to, she couldn’t shut off her awareness that Grant was in the same room. She tried not to look for him, but every time she glanced around the room, there he was. With a series of women, each more beautiful than the next, it seemed. She kept an eye out for lovely blonde mother of his child but didn’t see that woman anywhere. Maybe he’d come without her. Which seemed like a real asshole move. Right up his alley then.
There was one woman in particular with whom he spent the most time talking. She had long brown hair and the body of a model.
When Meg couldn’t take another moment of talking to strangers, she practically begged Dalton to dance with her.
“Dalton? Dance?” Griffin had scoffed. “If you want to dance, I’ll dance with you.”
Before she could shoot a pleading look at Dalton, he held out his hand. “No. I’ll do it.”
A moment later, they were dancing to some staid waltz she didn’t recognize. She breathed deeply, letting go of some of the tension in her shoulders.
After a moment, Dalton asked, “Why didn’t you want to dance with Griffin? He is the better dancer.”
“He would have wanted to talk,” she admitted.
“I take it you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
Dalton nodded briefly and then said nothing for a while, either because he knew she wanted silence or because he did, she couldn’t quite tell. Either way, she was grateful for it. And for the illusion of invisibility that dancing with him gave her. All three of her brothers were tall; surely no one could see her at all when she was hiding behind Dalton.
But then, after what felt like only a few minutes, someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?”
At the sound of the man’s voice, everything inside her shuddered to a halt. For an instant, she let her eyes drift closed, pretending that she really could disappear. Even when she opened them, she couldn’t force herself to look at him.
Dalton guided her just to the edge of the dance floor. “Actually, I do mind,” he said to Grant. But he’d stopped dancing and had turned to face the interloper.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Grant said smoothly, ignoring Dalton’s rudeness. “You’ve found your missing sister.”
Finally, she made herself meet his gaze. And he was looking directly at her, despite the pretense he made of talking to Dalton. But there was no recognition in his eyes. No surprise or question. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he didn’t recognize her. But there was no way in hell that could be true.
“We have,” Dalton said. He increased the pressure at her back. “Meg Lathem, this is Grant Sheppard, CEO of Sheppard Bank and Trust.”
“Pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand to shake hers.
Anger kindled inside her at the sight of his hand extended like that. As if they didn’t know one another at all. As if he hadn’t spent countless nights in her bed. As if he hadn’t been deep inside her.
She forced herself to hold out her own hand, braced herself for the impact of feeling his skin against hers for the first time in years.
Much like his tone, his touch was cold and impersonal. “Welcome to Houston.”
Dalton, supportive and kind, still had his hand at her back. She smiled brightly. “Thanks, but this isn’t my first time here.”
His familiar lips twisted in something that was maybe supposed to be a smile. “The band is starting another song. Do you want to dance?”
She was tempted to refuse, but there were so many people watching and she couldn’t help thinking this was a test somehow. She would never fit in this world. The world of the Cains and the Sheppards. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that.
But for Pearl’s sake she needed to at least convince them that she was a Cain.
No Cain had ever been intimidated by anyone or anything. Certainly not a Sheppard.
“You don’t have to,” Dalton said softly.
“No.” She smiled brightly. “I’d love to.”
She pushed aside her doubts and fears. She pushed aside all her concerns about Pearl and what she might be doing right now. She even pushed aside the memory from a few days ago of Grant standing outside the Sheppard building with his hand on the waist of the beautiful blonde woman. And the one from just a few moments ago of him standing beside the bar with the brunette.
The man was a hound dog.
She was lucky to have him out of her life and as far away from Pearl as possible. And for the first time in years, she felt relief—genuine relief—that he’d left her in her middle of night and broken her heart. Without hesitation, she stepped into his arms and he whirled her out onto the dance floor. And as long she remembered what a hound dog he was, she wouldn’t have to think about how good his arms felt.
“So, Mr. Sheppard, do you enjoy your work in banking?” she asked blandly to keep her hormones distracted.
He stared at her for a second, before increasing the pressure of the hand at her back, pulling her ever so slightly closer. “Is that how we’re going to play this?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re going to pretend you don’t even know me?”
She pulled away, not out of his arms entirely, but enough to put a little more distance between them. “I don’t even know you.”
“Meg,” he murmured, dropping his voice to barely a whisper.
“Don’t,” she said fiercely. “Don’t act like you have the right to say my name in that way.”
“What way?”
“That sexy, intimate way,” she said. His lips curved in a hint of a smile—as if he’d taken it as a compliment—and she had the urge to slap him. She didn’t think she’d ever slapped anyone, but she wanted to slap him because he looked so damn confident. As if her words had told him exactly how strongly she still responded to him. As if he knew exactly what was going on in her head, when the truth was, she hardly knew, herself. “Don’t act like you know me. You don’t.”
“I—”
“I am a completely different person than I was then.” She laughed as the irony of her words hit her. “Of course, you’re not exactly the guy I thought I was falling in love with either. But then again, you never were, were you?”
Something dark and pained flashed through his eyes, giving her the feeling that he had a lot he wanted to say. “It’s not in either of our best interests to talk about this here.”
“Why? Because your girlfriend might see us or because your wife might hear about it later?”
“My wife? What’s that supposed to mean?” But then he shook his head, as though he didn’t really want her to answer.
Not that she particularly wanted to talk about it, either. Bringing up the girlfriend and the wife was a huge mistake. It made her seem as if she was still nursing her affection for him. And it potentially revealed that she’d basically been stalking him last week.
Thankfully, the song was coming to an end. In the lull between songs, she stepped away from him abruptly, forcing him to drop his arms. “Thank you for the dance, Mr. Grant. It’s been particularly illuminating.”
“Wait,” he said, reaching out to grasp her arm. “We can’t talk here, but we do need to talk. Can I take you to brunch tomorrow? Dinner? Something.”
“You’re asking me on a date?” Hysterical laughter nearly bubbled up inside her and it was all she could do to control it.
“No,” he said seriously, not sensing how close she was to losing it. “Not a date. A conversation.”
“No. I’m not getting brunch with you. Or dinner. I wouldn’t so much as share a handful of breath mints with you.”
He pulled his hand back, tucking it in his pocket, but he didn’t turn away from her. He just stood there, looking oddly forlorn on the edge of the dance floor. “There are things we need to talk about.”
Aware that they were attracting attention, she stepped just a little closer so no one would overhear her. “You are a lying, cheating bastard. I have nothing to say to you. And there’s nothing you could say to me that I would want to hear.”
She didn’t give him a chance to answer. She knew all too well how charming he could be when he set his mind to it.
But as she walked back across the ballroom to the spot where her family congregated, she wondered if she’d been lying to herself as well as to him.
There were so many things she should be telling him. When she’d first made the decision not to tell him about the baby, it had seemed so logical. So cut-and-dried. Now? Now she wasn’t so sure.
Worse still, part of her did want to know what he had to say. Part of her would never stop wondering why he’d left.
Four (#ulink_5be10cae-b409-5f81-b949-ea326ccfc0db)
Cursing under his breath, Grant watched Meg walk away.
What the hell was she doing here?
What. The. Hell.
He had done everything in his power to keep the Cains from finding her. The information from his father that he’d used to find her—he’d buried that deep. He’d made sure no one, not even his stepmother, could find it. Plus, he’d made sure that if the Cains ever did find her, he’d know about it within a matter of hours. She was not supposed to turn up with the Cains at a major social event and catch him by surprise. That was not how this was supposed to go down.
So what the hell had gone wrong?
Becca slithered up next to him, put her hand and head on his shoulder and watched Meg walk away. Then she glanced up at him from under her lashes. “I get the impression that didn’t go the way you wanted it to.”
“Intuitive, as always,” he said dryly.
She gave his shoulder a sympathetic rub. “I guess Hollister’s millions of shares of Cain Enterprises stock are going to stay in the Cain family after all.”
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Emily McKay
The secret heiress is back…with a little secret that changes everything.As the long lost heiress in a notoriously scandalous family, Meg Lathem has always kept her distance. But now her daughter needs lifesaving surgery, so Meg asks for support—either from the child’s unscrupulous father, Grant Sheppard, or the dreaded Cains themselves.Grant had an agenda when he first bedded Meg—revenge against her birth father. But now, confronted by news that he’s a daddy himself, Grant finds his feelings for Meg run deep. Can he convince Meg he’s there for her this time, and protect her from the Cain legacy even as she claims it?
Grant was hit again by that powerful urge to pull her to him.
To kiss her again. To taste her one last time.
Instead he pulled her just an inch closer, stared into her eyes and whispered. “You’re a Cain now. You can afford to stay anywhere you damn well want to.”
She met his gaze head-on. It was different than it had been at the gala, when they were surrounded by people, when the lights were low and the music romantic. There, he’d almost believed she really was a Cain. Almost believed she wasn’t the woman he’d once known.
But here, in this crummy motel, under the harsh cheap lights, here he couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t pretend.
This was Meg. His Meg.
With her alabaster skin and her Cain-blue eyes.
She glared at him defiantly. “I am a Cain. I have always been a Cain. And this is where I want to stay.”
His gaze dropped to her lips, and for a moment the urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming. Would she still taste like cinnamon and sugar? Would she still melt against him?
* * *
Secret Heiress, Secret Baby is part of the At Cain’s Command series: Three brothers must find their illegitimate sister … or forfeit a fortune
Secret Heiress,
Secret Baby
Emily McKay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
EMILY McKAY has been reading romance novels since she was eleven years old. Her first romance came free. She has been reading and loving romance novels ever since. She lives in Texas with her geeky husband, her two kids and too many pets. Her debut novel, Baby, Be Mine, was a RITA
Award finalist for Best First Book and Best Short Contemporary. She was also a 2009 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award nominee for Series Romance. To learn more, visit her website, www.emilymckay.com (http://www.emilymckay.com).
For my dear son, you may very well be the most charming man I know, and I don’t think I’m being partial either.
Contents
Cover (#ud3634d50-322a-50df-bddb-ceb159666cb1)
Excerpt (#u96ef468d-cef7-57d6-a70d-82e23dd5f146)
Title Page (#u03da0fa5-fb4f-5910-bd79-24154c2d2f65)
About the Author (#u068addc6-2e75-5c24-a015-c0c36f9dc071)
Dedication (#u1de61024-0702-5735-83c9-7634bb728398)
Prologue (#uee69284b-0329-5ecd-8828-2daf6fa2d873)
One (#u19604f01-cf64-5938-ac38-e747711606c2)
Two (#u5691ce1e-bbaa-56b6-8bfc-abdc1e7545d4)
Three (#u947ac353-f87a-59cf-84ce-41a257a77b90)
Four (#u9e9b4fa6-437e-55d3-8cab-751e88c0510e)
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)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_2c5069d5-7947-524c-8787-5cebbe97354a)
After a mere three weeks of sleeping next to Meg Lathem, Grant Sheppard knew she was gone the instant he woke up. She liked to sleep curled against his side, one leg draped over his hips, her head resting on his shoulder. Of course, waking up at three or four in the morning only to find her puttering around the kitchen was normal.
He stumbled out of bed, pulled on the jeans he’d left draped over the rocking chair in the corner and went to find her.
In a house this size, it didn’t take long. Her two-bedroom bungalow just a few blocks off the square in Victoria, Texas, was the house she’d grown up in. For a man like Grant, who’d grown up among the wealthy elite of Houston, this small town not far from the coast didn’t hold much appeal. He had come here—and stayed here—for Meg.
She was baking again and the smell—a combination of toasted nuts and caramelized sugar—was divine.
That scent alone would have lured him out of bed.
He paused when he got to the kitchen, propping his shoulder against the doorway and watching her. Her inky-black Bettie Page hair was pulled up into a ponytail that bobbed enticingly as she moved. She’d thrown on a nightgown—something skimpy and sheer that hit her just below the curve of her butt. She’d put on an apron over that. Her feet were bare, her nails painted navy blue. The tattoo on the back of her leg peeked out from under the hem of her nightie when she bent over. She was sexier than a girl in a pinup calendar and every swish of her hem and wiggle of her ass made him ache with the need to claim her.
Between the retro kitchen and Meg’s vintage style, he might have thought he’d traveled back in time to the forties. Only the blue nail polish and the tattoo ruined the illusion. That and the blowtorch she’d just lit up.
He knew better than to sneak up behind her while she was working. Instead, he just stood there and enjoyed the view, waiting as she skimmed the bright blue flame over the top of a pie’s meringue, singeing the tips of the curlicues a golden brown. When she straightened and flicked the blowtorch off, he walked into the room.
“What’d you create this time?”
She shot a playful look over her shoulder. “I thought I heard you back there leering at me.” Then she winked, cocking her hip slightly to show off her stupendous curves.
“And here I thought I was waiting patiently.”
She turned around, her ponytail flicking over her shoulder. She held out a hand as if displaying the pie on the counter. “May I present my newest creation? Toasted-hazelnut graham cracker crust. Dark chocolate pudding. Toasted-marshmallow meringue topping. I’m calling it s’more pie.”
He faked a groan of anguish. “And I have to wait until the shop opens to try it.”
She grinned, stepping aside to reveal a second, tiny pie. “You know I’d never serve a pie at the shop that I hadn’t tested. Just give me a second to toast the—”
But he didn’t give her a second. He’d waited long enough. He strode across the room, slipped his hands under the hem of her nightgown to cup her—hello!—bare ass. Her flesh was firm and warm in his hands and he only had to lift her a few inches off the ground for the apex of her thighs to graze against his throbbing erection. She arched, rubbing herself against him. Then he lifted her higher and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He backed her up half a step and let her ass rest on the counter behind her.
When he kissed her she tasted like sinful dark chocolate and meringue so sweet it was almost too much.
That was Meg all over. An irresistible combination of sinful and sweet. And always, almost too much.
Her hands found his zipper and eased it down, slipping into his jeans to free him. She wrapped nimble fingers around him and gave first one then a second long slow tug before she positioned him right between her lips. She rubbed herself against him, stroking the folds of her sensitive flesh first with the head of his penis and then—as she eased herself down his length—with her own fingers. She was desperate and needy and came almost before he did.
That was Meg all over. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen and she met him, passion for passion. She was almost too good to be true.
He wondered if she thought the same about him.
* * *
Later—a hot shower and a warm pie later—they were back in bed. She was almost drifting off to sleep as he traced the bared arc of her back, when he asked, “Why s’more pie?”
She sighed, nuzzled closer and muttered, “Because those are all the ingredients of s’mores, dummy.”
“No. I meant what made you think of s’mores?”
She was quiet for a minute, and her breathing became so even and relaxed, he thought she’d probably fallen back asleep, when she said, “I don’t know. Something about this—this thing between us—it feels like being at summer camp, don’t you think?”
He chuckled. “Trust me. I did not do this at summer camp.”
She gave his arm a swat. “No, silly. I mean it feels perfect but ephemeral. Like the last days of summer camp.”
He sucked in a breath and held it, waiting to see what else she’d say. Because that was it, right there. The perfect moment. The moment he’d been angling for these past few weeks. It doesn’t have to be ephemeral. Come back to Houston with me. Marry me.
It would have worked. She’d have fallen for it, just as she’d fallen for him.
But he didn’t say it. He couldn’t force the words out.
A moment later she said, “My grandpa used to make the best s’mores.”
“I thought all s’mores were the same.”
She seemed not to notice how stiff and formal he sounded.
“No, silly. The perfect s’more depends on the perfect toasted marshmallow. And Grandpa could roast ’em with the best. He was so patient.” She was silent for several beats, and then added, “I wish you could have met him. You’d have loved him.” And then came the kicker. “And he’d have loved you.”
“I doubt that.” He muttered the words, but she still heard them.
She pushed herself up on her elbow and looked down at him, her gaze still sleepy but firm. “No. He would have loved you. You’re a good man, Grant Sheppard.”
She pressed a kiss to his lips before settling back onto his shoulder.
An hour later, once she was deeply asleep, he got dressed and slipped out of her house. As he drove through Victoria for the last time, he could still taste her kisses and her pie on his lips.
Yeah, she believed he was a good guy. That had been his plan all along: find Hollister Cain’s missing daughter, make her fall in love with him, marry her and gain control of just enough of Cain Enterprises to drive the company into the ground.
It wasn’t the plan of a nice guy. It was the plan of an asshole bent on personal revenge at any cost. Yeah, he could live with that. He was a bastard. He knew it.
The problem wasn’t even that she didn’t know it. The problem was, when she looked at him like that, he wanted her to be right. He wanted to be the man she thought he was. And that kind of weakness was completely unacceptable.
As he drove out of town, he started working on a new plan.
One (#ulink_b9db7fa4-e879-5ea4-bdb0-9a58e0e995b6)
Just over two years later
Meg Lathem sat in her dusty, beat-up Chevy, cursing the blazing Texas sun, the crowded streets of downtown Houston and her tiny bladder.
She should have stopped at that Dairy Queen in Bay City to pee. Yes, she’d still be nervous as hell about seeing Grant Sheppard again after all this time, but at least she’d have a Dilly Bar to soothe the pain.
Instead, all she had was dry mouth and the beginning stages of an ulcer.
She chewed on her lip for a second. Then dug around in her purse for her lip balm. Instead, she found her cherry bomb lipstick, which she wore to finish up extra-long days when she needed a bit of sass and sex appeal to coast until the bakery closed. Today, she needed neither sass nor sex appeal. She needed sensibility and reason.
She shoved the lipstick back in her purse, slung the strap over her shoulder and was climbing from the car just as her phone rang.
If it had been any number other than her friend Janine’s she would have let it roll over to voice mail. However, Janine—who usually helped manage the bakery—was watching Meg’s daughter, Pearl, while Meg took this little jaunt to Houston, so she slid back into the car and shut out the noise of Houston traffic. She answered it with, “Is Pearl okay?”
“Pearl’s fine, honey. She’s happier than the cherry on a hot-fudge sundae.”
The knot of anxiety in her chest loosened a smidge. “Then why are you calling?”
“You done it yet?”
“It’s a two-hour drive from Victoria. No, I haven’t done it yet. I just got here.”
“Liar. You never met a speed limit sign you didn’t love to mock. I bet you made it there thirty minutes ago and have been sitting outside his office making calf eyes at the words Sheppard Bank and Trust scrawled above the door.”
“Am not.” Meg glanced at her watch. She’d only been here for twenty-two minutes. And the words Sheppard Bank and Trust were not above the door. They were slapped on the outside of the building near the forty-second floor in ten-foot-tall letters. And she hadn’t been making calf eyes at them so much as scowling. “I do not feel that way about Grant Sheppard anymore and you know it. That man is a lying, cheating sack of—”
“You don’t have to do this,” Janine said quietly.
“I know.” She brought her hand up to her forehead and rubbed, pressing her thumb near the crest of her eye socket where the tension seemed to be drilling into her skull.
“We can find another way.”
“I know,” she said again. Except there was no other way. Her daughter needed heart surgery. Meg just couldn’t afford to pay the insurance deductible and keep the bakery open. And if the bakery closed, then she’d be out of a job and really wouldn’t be able to meet the deductible. The good people of Victoria had all banded together to do a fund-raiser for Pearl. The whole town had come together. It had been the most heartwarming, amazing day.
But they’d only raised nine thousand dollars. She needed almost fifty thousand for the surgery alone. Everyone she knew, everyone who loved and cared for Pearl, had banded together and dug as deep as they could. And it would only cover a fifth of the cost.
And even if she could somehow scrape together the money for this deductible, there was physical therapy. And more appointments down the road. And more specialists. More, more and more things to spend money on. Money she just didn’t have. But Pearl’s father had the money. Hell, money was his business.
Wasn’t it only fair that he paid?
He was Pearl’s father.
Going to him wasn’t begging. It was only right.
But it would be so much easier if he already knew he had a daughter.
“Honey,” Janine said, finally breaking the long silence. “Stop rubbing that spot above your eye. You know how sensitive your skin is and if you’re going to see Grant Sheppard after all these years, you don’t want to look all splotchy.”
Meg jerked her hand away from her face and quickly flipped down the mirror. Crap. She did look all splotchy.
Then she snapped it closed. No, this was good. Splotchy was just fine. Humbling, even. A nice reminder that their relationship was never going to be sexual again. Never.
“Now, go get ’em, tiger. You can do this!”
Janine hung up then, not waiting for Meg to voice the doubts roiling in her gut.
“Right,” Meg muttered. “Go get ’em.”
She clambered out of the car and started crossing the street. Sheppard Bank and Trust opened up to a plaza with sprawling oaks, a trio of fountains and plenty of outdoor seating. The last of the lunch crowd was still enjoying the nice weather and even though Houston wasn’t a town that got a lot of foot traffic, Meg had to weave around people as she reached the sidewalk.
She was still on the other side of the plaza when the big glass doors of the Sheppard Bank and Trust building opened and Grant Sheppard stepped out into the midafternoon sun. Her steps automatically slowed. A car honked somewhere, prompting her to dash the rest of the way across the street.
Suddenly she had tunnel vision. It was as if she could see only him and no one else. It had been over two years since she’d seen him. He looked good. Just as tall and fit as ever. His sandy hair was a little long. A little disheveled. A little renegade for this conservative town. But his suit was strictly business. It toed the line. His mouth still curled in that half smile. The smile that made a woman want to do naughty things to his lips.
The smile that made women stupid.
She gave her head a little shake and reminded herself—it wasn’t just that it had been more than two years since she’d seen him, it was more than two years since he’d sneaked out of her bed in the middle of the night and disappeared without a trace.
Yeah, there was a difference, and she’d do well to remember it.
She hardened her heart and put a damper on her hormones before she took a step toward him. But as her tunnel vision eased up, she saw the woman standing beside him—a willowy blonde, almost as tall as he was. Even though she was thin, there was a softness to her body that was only emphasized by the protective hand he held at the woman’s back. There was an intimacy to their posture that spoke of affection and familiarity. A warning bell went off in Meg’s head.
She had stopped in her tracks, almost unaware of the other people filtering past her. She knew—even before the other woman turned around—what she was going to see. The woman would be beautiful and sophisticated and classy. Everything Meg was not.
She would also be pregnant.
Meg was so sure that when the woman actually turned so Meg could see her, Meg didn’t comprehend what she was seeing.
Beauty—check. Sophisticated—check. But not pregnant. No. Worse.
The woman was holding a baby. A beautiful, healthy, bubbling baby. A “perfect” baby.
Grant Sheppard’s beautiful socialite wife had given him a perfect, healthy baby.
Whereas the daughter he shared with Meg had Down syndrome and an atrial septal defect in her heart.
Meg never, ever thought of Pearl as being lesser. Yes, the tiny hole in her heart meant she had health problems that sometimes terrified Meg. But Pearl was perfect in her own way.
But would Grant see that? Would he realize how amazing Pearl was? Would she be able to protect Pearl if he didn’t?
And beneath her basic mother’s need to protect her child lingered some other, more complicated emotion.
Just the slightest twinge of envy that had nothing to do with the baby or with Pearl, but with the woman who appeared to be Grant’s wife.
Meg didn’t want to be that perfect blonde woman. She didn’t want her wealth or her hair or her wardrobe or her baby—whose heart probably didn’t have a hole in it. She loved her own bank account, hair, clothes and baby. She didn’t want anything that other woman had. But for the first time, she realized that part of her might still want Grant. And that scared the piss out of her.
How could she go talk to Grant now?
The answer was, she couldn’t. Not while she still had any other options.
Instead, she would do the one thing she’d promised herself she’d never do. The thing she’d promised her mother and her grandfather she’d never do. She’d go see her father. She’d make a deal with the devil himself.
* * *
As luck would have it, the devil himself—aka Hollister Cain—lived a short drive from downtown in the prestigious River Oaks neighborhood. Nestled in among the homes of former presidents, deposed foreign princes and excessive country-music stars was her father’s massive antebellum mansion.
Thanks to Google Maps Street View, she knew the mansion by sight even though she’d never been there. For that matter, thanks to Google Images she knew her father by sight, too. She had never met him either.
No, she was Hollister’s illegitimate daughter. Twenty-six-odd years ago, he had seduced—and then abandoned—her mother, not only because he was a heartless bastard, but for calculated professional gain. Hollister’s treatment had led to her mother’s slow but steady emotional unraveling.
As a result, Meg had been raised by her grandfather. All her life, she’d known the truth about Hollister and her mother, so she’d naturally assumed that Hollister knew about her too and had just never bothered to claim his daughter. Which was fine by her. Just fine.
She certainly didn’t need them or their money or the misery it would bring to her life.
Except now she did need it.
Of course, there was a chance Hollister would flat out refuse to acknowledge her. After all, Hollister was too much of a bastard to open his wallet willingly. Then lawyers would have to get involved. There would be genetic testing and all kinds of nastiness. But in the end, she was Hollister’s daughter and there was nothing he could do about it.
But she didn’t think it would come to that, because she knew secrets about Hollister’s past that he wouldn’t want getting out. She had proof of illegal things he’d done that would destroy the Cain family name. In his dealings with her family, he’d broken the law, and she had no problem letting him be judged in the court of public opinion. If he proved difficult, she would make whatever threats she needed to make.
So in her fairy-tale version, her reunion with her father would go down like this: she’d walk in, she’d announce who she was, he’d write her a check for a couple hundred grand, she’d sign some papers promising never to ask for more and she’d be back home with Pearl by the end of the week. What could be simpler than a little blackmail among family?
Still, she wasn’t used to making threats like this. And two hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money. That was the number she’d ultimately decided she needed. Fifty grand to cover the surgery and another three times that much to cover anything else Pearl needed in the future. It was an arbitrary number and—hopefully—a little high. But this was a one-time thing. She had no intention of ever coming to Hollister for money again. This was her one chance to take the money and run.
Which probably explained the knots in her tummy as she stared out her grimy car windshield at the mansion across the street. Surely it had nothing to do with the memory, still so fresh in her mind, of Grant’s hand low on the waist of that lovely blonde goddess.
Her phone buzzed and vibrated on the passenger seat. She ignored it as she climbed from the car. Janine had been calling her approximately every fifteen minutes for the past hour. No doubt wanting an update on how her “meeting” with Grant had gone. Meg didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d chickened out. She would call Janine after she’d talked to her father.
She marched across the street and up the seemingly endless path, across a veritable sea of lush Saint Augustine grass, to the front porch. Before she could second-guess herself, she punched the doorbell. And then counted every second as it ticked by.
No one on the other side of that door mattered to her. Not at all.
Still, she’d been on her own a long time. And she was about to meet someone from her family. Maybe even her father.
Or maybe just someone who worked for her family.
Did the Cains have...servants?
Would there be a butler or something?
Or would—?
Then the door was opening and instead of her father, or even a servant, Meg was faced with a blonde woman with near-perfect features, a willowy athletic body and a faint bump at her belly. Portia Calahan. Dalton Cain’s ex-wife. So, Meg’s own ex-sister-in-law.
Meg would have recognized any of the Cains—thanks to their prominent position in Houston society and Google—but Portia she had actually met the first time she’d come to Houston, right after she’d learned Pearl would need surgery. She’d considered asking for financial help and then dismissed the idea just as quickly. She’d thought she’d slipped under everyone’s radar.
For a moment, they just stared at one another. Then Meg said, “What are you doing here?” at the same time Portia said, “It’s you!”
Portia seemed to sway on her feet and her eyes rolled back. Her legs went out from under her. Meg lurched forward, dropping her purse, and caught Portia just as she crumpled to the ground.
Though Portia was thin, she was a lot taller than Meg. Meg, too, collapsed under Portia’s weight and they both went down.
“Help!” Meg tried to control their fall, but she simply couldn’t support Portia’s weight. All she could do was try to lower Portia slowly as she muttered, “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”
Not just because Portia had fainted, nearly hurting herself and crushing Meg, but because Portia was not supposed to be here! Portia wasn’t part of the Cain family anymore. And Portia had obviously remembered meeting her.
For a moment, Meg considered bolting, trying to contact her father another day. Trying to get the money some other way. But she was out of time and she had no other way to get the money. And already footsteps were pounding across the tile floor toward them.
She looked up to see five more people crossing the foyer: two women and three men.
The men she all recognized. Her brothers. Dalton and Griffin Cain and Cooper Larson. If she had to guess, she’d say the two women were Laney and Sydney, her sisters-in-law.
To Meg’s surprise, it was Cooper who quickened his pace and crouched down beside Portia. He gently cradled her head and shoulders, and Meg wiggled out from underneath her.
“She fainted,” she said quickly. “I tried to catch her.”
“Thanks,” Cooper said, before muttering a curse under his breath. “She’s going to be pissed.”
“I tried to catch her!” Meg insisted again, scrambling back.
“Not at you,” he said gently. “About fainting. It’s the second time this week. She hates when it happens.”
The red-haired woman—Sydney, if Meg remembered correctly from the pictures she’d seen in the society column of the Houston Chronicle—knelt beside Cooper and rested her hand on his arm. “Is she going to be okay?”
He nodded, but his smile didn’t hide his concern. “The doctor says it happens to a lot of women in the first trimester.”
Sydney looked up at Meg. “Thanks for catching— oh my gosh.”
“Wait. What?” Meg asked, scooting farther away. Her gaze darted from Sydney to Cooper and then to the three people still standing. “I didn’t—”
But when her gaze met Dalton’s, he muttered a low “damn.”
Now they were all staring at her. As in, she’d-grown-an-extra-head-or-two staring at her. Or, they-somehow-knew-she-was-here-to-blackmail-their-father staring at her.
Meg automatically got to her feet and held out her hands, palms out. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” Yet.
The other woman, Laney—who had long dark hair and resembled a modern-day Snow White—sent a chiding look at the others. “For goodness’ sake, you’re scaring her.” Then she stepped forward, smiling. “No one thinks you did anything to hurt Portia. We’re glad you were here to catch her. Aren’t we?” She gave Dalton’s elbow a little nudge.
He stepped forward too. “Yes, absolutely.”
Meg looked warily from one sibling to the next. Gratitude for stopping Portia’s fall did not explain their behavior. Panic edged in under her confusion. She took a step back toward the door. “You know, I think I’m going to go.”
As one, Dalton, Laney, Griffin and Sydney took steps toward her as a chorus of protests echoed through the room.
Okay. This was getting weird.
She took a few more steps back toward the door. “I...um...”
“You can’t leave,” pleaded Laney. The rest of them stopped still in their tracks, as if Meg was some sort of spooked deer.
Great. She couldn’t leave. She had unwittingly made some rich pregnant woman faint and now they were trying to keep her contained so they could call the police or something. Okay, that was probably a bit paranoid.
Portia must have been slowly coming to, because she made a groaning noise and pushed herself up onto her elbows.
“Why can’t I leave?” Meg asked hesitantly.
“Not again.” Portia looked around the room, blinking. “Did I miss anything?”
Cooper cradled her shoulders, gently brushing her hair out of her eyes. “You weren’t out that long.”
Laney took advantage of the distraction by stepping forward to clutch Meg’s hand. “You can’t leave because you’re Hollister’s missing daughter. You’re their sister!”
“I know I’m their sister. How do they know it?”
Again, everyone turned to look at her and said, “You know?”
Two (#ulink_f32edb39-45f6-5b30-94f6-940fd8bfcbbf)
Thirty minutes later—after Meg had nearly fainted, herself—the Cains finally lured her from the foyer into an elegant office in one of the front rooms. Dalton had poured drinks all around. Everyone else he knew well enough that he hadn’t needed to ask what they wanted, but when he got to her, he shot her a look, his eyebrows raised in silent question.
“Just water, please.” She needed to keep her wits about her. If there was one thing her mother had taught her, it was that rich people were all venomous snakes and the Cains were the worst. Like coral snakes. More deadly than rattlesnakes and twice as aggressive.
Once Dalton handed her the glass of water, he gestured toward a wingback chair, but she didn’t sit down. Portia and Sydney were seated on the sofa opposite the chair. Laney was in another wingback chair beside it with Dalton standing behind her. The other two men were scattered around the room. The last thing she wanted was to be sitting in the hot spot.
“Okay, tell me again why you think I’m your sister.”
Again it was Portia who answered. “Your eyes, obviously.”
“My eyes?”
“You have the Cain blue eyes.” Griffin pointed to one of his own eyes. Then he winked at her. “Very unique. All the Cains have them.”
“You assume I’m your sister just because my eyes are blue? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! There have to be millions of people with blue eyes.”
“Something like five million people have blue eyes, actually.” Everyone turned to look at Portia. She shrugged. “I looked it up. The point is, eyes your exact color are unique.”
“But not a reason to assume I’m a Cain.”
Dalton leaned over to brace his elbows on the back of his wife’s chair. “But you are, in fact, a Cain. Aren’t you?”
She looked down at her glass of water and gave it a jiggle to move the ice around. “What if I am?”
“Then we’ve been looking for you.”
“And,” Portia added, “I think you’ve been poking around getting information about us, too.”
For a second, Portia held Meg’s gaze, before Meg looked back down at her water. Portia was right, of course. When she’d been in Houston a year ago, Meg had just wanted to get a feel for the Cains. She’d needed to gauge just how desperate she’d need to be before she went to them for money. She had even met Portia—introduced herself using a fake name, of course—and had a conversation with her. She’d been so sure that Portia hadn’t suspected anything!
She forced her gaze back up to Portia’s. She didn’t say anything—didn’t reveal that they’d met before—but there was a light of triumph in the other woman’s gaze.
After several moments of silence, Laney and Sydney exchanged a worried look. Then Sydney spoke up. “Do you know why we’ve been looking for you?”
“No.” All her life, she’d been told that her father had abandoned her and her mother and that no one in the Cain family wanted them. She couldn’t imagine how they could have been looking for her when she lived in the same town where she’d been born, less than five miles from the courthouse where Hollister had married her mother. “There’s no reason for anyone to be looking for me. I haven’t exactly been hiding.”
There was another tense moment as the Cains all looked at one another as if they were trying to decide who would be the best one to break the bad news to her.
Laney leaned forward. Okay, Snow White it was.
“I don’t know if you know this, but Hollister’s health has been declining for the past several years.”
“If he recently died, don’t feel like you have to break it to me gently.” The father she’d never even met dying mere days before she finally decided to contact him? Yeah. That sounded about right. Not that she minded not meeting him, but it seemed unlikely that anyone else would care about her blackmail demands.
“Oh, no, Hollister is still alive,” Laney reassured her. “But a few years ago, when he was at his worst and we were all sure he was going to pass, he received a letter.” Laney paused and the Cains exchanged more awkward glances before Dalton gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “The letter was sent anonymously from a woman claiming to be your mother. She explained that she had born him a daughter many years ago and that she had purposely kept it from him to protect the girl. To protect you. But that she wanted him to go to his grave knowing that he could never get his hands on you. She was taunting him.”
Meg frowned. “My mother couldn’t have sent that letter. She died when I was a child.” Plenty of people in her life hated Hollister, but none hated him enough to track his health obsessively just to drop that bombshell when he was on his deathbed. “I don’t know anyone who would have done that. You don’t think I did it, do you? Because—”
“No,” Dalton said quickly. “We’re not worried about that. The woman who wrote the letter knew Hollister well enough to know it would drive him crazy—the fact that he had a daughter who was forever beyond his reach. So he set a challenge for the three of us.” Dalton gestured to indicate his brothers. “Whichever one of us found you and brought you back into the fold would get his entire estate. If no one found you before he died, everything would go to the state.”
“Excuse me?” For a long moment, that was all she could say. She couldn’t even think clearly enough to process what he’d said, let alone to comment. Hollister was worth...well, she didn’t know the precise numbers, but it was a buttload of money. Hundreds of millions at least. Finally she said, “What kind of—” she barely restrained herself from using the word asshole “—man sets up a crazy landgrab like that among his sons?”
Dalton just nodded. Griffin smiled grimly.
Cooper actually chuckled. “Yeah, exactly. Way to encourage sibling bonding, right?”
Except when she looked around the room, they did seem to be close. There wasn’t even a glimmer of animosity among them.
“You seem to be getting along awfully well when there’s so much money at stake.”
Griffin shrugged. “We decided early on it was better to share information and split the money. Four ways, obviously. Besides, you’ve been pretty hard to find, given that we had zero information to go on.”
“Except now that you’ve come to us—” Griffin looked around the room “—I guess we need to come up with a new plan. Should we give her the bigger share?”
“Wait, what? Her who? Her me?”
Laney smiled. “Obviously they were always planning on giving a quarter of the estate to you.”
Panic shot through her and Meg lurched to her feet. Even though she didn’t know exactly how many hundreds of millions Hollister was worth, it was a lot. Any way she looked at it, a quarter of a lot of millions was a lot of millions.
She held up her hands, palms out, and started backing toward the door. “I don’t want any of Hollister’s money.” Okay. That wasn’t true. “I only want a tiny bit of money.”
Laney stood up too and pulled out the Snow-White-coaxing-the-forest-creatures voice. “You seem upset by this news. Maybe you should sit down.”
Sit down? Sitting down, with all the Cains staring at her, was the last thing she wanted to do. What she wanted to do was bolt from the room, hop back into her sensible Chevy and get the hell out of Dodge.
But with panic racing through her veins, she suddenly felt as light-headed as Portia had looked right before she’d fainted. That thought alone was enough to get Meg back in her chair. She wasn’t a fainter. She never had been. Not even when she’d been pregnant. Not even when she’d been pregnant and working twelve-hour days at the bakery.
Nope. Not her.
She was tough. She wasn’t a skittish purebred like Portia. She was strictly blue-collar, working stock.
She was not meant to be rich.
Rich people were assholes. Everything in her upbringing and her life had taught her that.
As her thoughts raced, she drew breath after breath into her lungs, desperate to find a way out of this. She had come here expecting to do a little light blackmailing and that...well, that was disconcerting enough. She hadn’t expected things to get so out of control so quickly.
And then she slowly became aware that at some point she’d sat down and was cradling her head in her hands. When she looked up, it was to see all six of the Cains staring at her in total surprise.
Yeah. Clearly, they weren’t used to people who were afraid of money.
It was Sydney who spoke first. “You know that Hollister is your father. But you seem surprised that anyone else knows or believes that you’re Hollister’s. And you don’t seem to want the inheritance that is rightfully yours.”
“I don’t!” she said quickly. Thanks to the helpful pages of the Houston Chronicle, she’d seen what their lives were like. She was smart enough to know that kind of money came with strings a mile long and as strong as Teflon-coated titanium. She didn’t want any part of that.
“Then why did you come?”
“I came because I need money.”
Dalton gave her an impatient look. “You do realize that the inheritance from Hollister is worth a lot of money, right?”
“I’m poor, I’m not an idiot.” She stood and marched over to the windows, staring unseeingly at the pristinely manicured lawns. From the corner of her eye, she might have seen Griffin punch Dalton in the arm. “I don’t want an inheritance from Hollister. And I don’t need money in two years or five years or wherever Hollister dies and the estate goes through probate. I need money now.”
“How much?” asked one of the guys—she didn’t know their voices well enough to know which one.
She glanced over her shoulder to see who had asked, and was surprised to see all three of the men reaching for their wallets. As if they’d just whip out two hundred thousand dollars in small bills.
“About two hundred thousand.” She automatically rattled off the number she’d settled on to cover all of Pearl’s expenses.
“For what?” asked Dalton after only a brief moment of silence.
“That’s something I’ll discuss with Hollister. When the time comes.” This was getting her nowhere. “Now, if you could just tell me where I can find him...”
Griffin stepped forward. “He’s not here now. He just left for Vail. But when you meet him for the first time, one of us should be with you.”
“So you can claim you found me and secure your inheritance?” she asked archly. Why the hell couldn’t she have come to Houston on a day when Hollister was at home? It would have been so much easier dealing with one greedy bastard instead of six.
“Actually,” Sydney said, “I think Griffin was offering more to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection from a dying seventy-year-old man.” At least, she assumed she didn’t. She was picturing Hollister as fairly weak, since they’d just described him as being on his deathbed. On the other hand, she was planning on blackmailing him. Which would probably piss him off.
“My father—” Griffin paused to gesture to her. “Our father isn’t a very nice man.”
“Yeah. I know that. I think I can handle anything he can dish out.”
But again, before she could make it to the door, Dalton stopped her. “If you think Hollister is just going to hand over two hundred thousand dollars, you’re wrong. He’s going to make it as hard on you as possible. Because that’s his MO.”
Meg hesitated. Dalton could well be right. And she was prepared for that. She had never expected this to be easy.
She must not have had a very good poker face, because apparently her nerves showed in her expression.
“Why do you need the money?” Dalton asked.
She stiffened. “That’s none of your business.”
“Are you in trouble? Is it for something illegal?”
“No!” Indignant, she leapt to her feet.
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you,” Dalton said. “I want to help.”
Her gut reaction was eye-rolling suspicion and she didn’t bother to hide it. “Right. Because the Cains are known for their altruism.”
“Okay,” he admitted with a wry smile. “I think we can work something out that will help both of us. If you can stick around for a few days, do things our way, get Hollister to acknowledge you and change his will, then I can get you the two hundred thousand dollars. Free and clear, on top of whatever you inherit from Hollister when the time comes.”
Two hundred grand? The Cains must really be worried about losing control of that stock.
“And you can just come up with two hundred thousand dollars?” she asked, mostly to buy herself time to think.
Dalton shrugged. “Give me seventy-two hours and I can give you a hundred thousand in cash.”
“Same here,” Griffin said.
“Yeah, sure,” Cooper added.
“So there you have it. You agree to stay long enough to prove to Hollister that you are, in fact, the daughter he’s been looking for and you can have the money in three days. But you stick around after you get the money. You stay until we have a new will that no one can contest. Deal?” Dalton held out his hand.
She just stood there, staring at it. A handshake was still legally binding in Texas, after all. She had to be sure.
“If Hollister has been looking for me, why are you so worried about him believing I’m his daughter?”
They all looked at Dalton again, as if they were trying to decide how much to say.
Finally Dalton sighed, ducking his head slightly as he spoke. “Hollister’s behavior has been erratic the last few years. The fact that he set up this challenge proves that. We’ll all feel a lot better when his will is nailed down.”
Okay, so they were worried about their own skins. At least that was a motive she could believe and understand.
A guaranteed two hundred thousand dollars sounded a lot better than facing Hollister with blackmail demands and hoping she didn’t blink first.
On the flip side, it meant staying in Houston. At least three days. Maybe longer.
Janine, she knew, would be happy taking care of Pearl. But God...several days away from Pearl? On the other hand, it was a few days and it was only a two-hour drive. So she could make it back to Victoria if something serious came up.
She just needed to avoid Grant while she was in Houston. But how hard could that be? Houston was a city of more than two million people. All she had to do was lay low and stay out of his way while this was going on. Easy as pie, right? And she made pies for a living.
She held out her hand to Dalton. She’d come here expecting to make a deal with the devil and instead she was making one with the devil’s son.
“Deal,” she agreed.
* * *
This was so not her idea of laying low.
Meg stood in the doorway of the Kimball Hotel’s grand ballroom, staring out at the two hundred or so people who made up the glitterati of Houston society. The Children’s Hope Foundation’s annual fund-raiser was one of the premier social events in the city. The average net worth in this room probably exceeded the GDP of most developing nations. Of course, she was there to bring down the average. Or at least, she would be if she could bring herself to step into the room.
At her side, Sydney gave her elbow a squeeze. “You got this. Come on, into the lion’s den.”
“Aren’t they going to announce me or something?”
“I think they only do that in England.”
“Okay.” Meg blew out a breath, rubbed her palms down her borrowed dress, took one wobbly step forward in her borrowed heels and then abruptly stopped and turned around. Sydney and Griffin closed ranks on either side of her and turned her back around. “This is a horrible idea!” she protested.
“It’s a fantastic idea!” Sydney muttered as she and Griffin steered her into the room. “Portia and Caro have been cochairing this event for years. It’s their party. So when Portia introduces you as Hollister’s long-lost daughter, no one will argue with her. When Caro welcomes you with open arms, it will seal the deal.”
“Wait,” Meg said. “Am I supposed to know who Caro is?”
“She’s Hollister’s ex-wife,” Portia explained. “They divorced over a year ago. Things have been rocky for her, because Hollister tried to destroy her in the divorce, but she’s back on her feet again and holds a lot of sway in this town.”
Griffin added, “By the time Hollister gets back into town from his trip to Vail, the results of the genetic testing we did yesterday will be back from the lab. We’ll have proof that you are our sister. Hollister will have to accept the results. You’ll have the money from us by Monday.”
“Right. By Monday. What could go wrong?”
For starters, she could trip and fall or generally make an idiot of herself. But that, that would just be small potatoes. No, her deepest fear involved running into Grant Sheppard.
That would be a total disaster.
She had tried to get Portia to show her the guest list—back when Portia had first proposed this plan—but Portia had dismissed her concerns, declaring, “Don’t freak yourself out about the guest list. Yes, there are a few big names. Some politicians, a couple of sports stars. But it’s nothing to worry about. No one scary will be there. And we’ll be by your side the whole time.”
That had been Meg’s mantra ever since. No one scary. No one scary. No one scary.
Of course, their definition of scary might differ from hers. Mostly because she hadn’t yet worked up the courage to tell them she’d had an affair with their4 business rival.
But surely Grant wouldn’t come to this event. Yes, it was big, but why on earth would he come to a ball that was always chaired by a Cain?
As one, Meg, Sydney and Griffin moved through the room. With Griffin always introducing her as a valued member of the family, combined with Sydney’s easygoing manner, the evening began to take on a surreal quality. At some point someone handed her a glass of champagne. And then another.
A lot of strategy had gone into planning who would bring Meg to the party and when everyone would arrive. Portia, Cooper and Caro had arrived at the party hours before the event actually began. Dalton had argued that he should bring Meg because now that Hollister didn’t get out into society often, Dalton was ostensibly the head of the family. Griffin had countered that the consensus in Houston society was that Dalton was a brilliant businessman, but as Griffin had teased, “A cold and heartless robot.”
“Your point?” Dalton had asked with an icily arched brow.
“That I should bring her,” Griffin had answered easily. “That way, she’ll meet a lot of people before you and Laney even show up. That way, everyone will be watching. Everyone will be waiting to see what happens when you and Laney walk in. Since everyone knows you’re a heartless bastard, when you greet her, smiling warmly, the sight of you displaying actual human emotion will convince everyone she must be our long-lost sister.”
Meg had tried to protest that the plan was overelaborate. There were too many elements. Too many things that could go wrong. But no one seemed to listen to her. And what did she know, really? She knew cakes and pies. Sweets and coffees. She knew that if you had more than three flavor profiles, you overwhelmed the palate, but that didn’t mean she knew jack about...this. She didn’t even have a word in her vocabulary for these kinds of social machinations.
All she could do was smile politely, try to remember names and avoid talking about...well, everything. Chances were good everyone she met thought she was a little bit stupid. Which was fine. She could live with that. All she needed to do was get through the next few days without incident and without running into Grant.
Quite honestly, she never wanted to see him or his beautiful wife again. She was still too angry over how he’d treated her. Too indignant. Too hurt. And—admittedly—too vulnerable to him.
Around the time someone handed her a third glass of champagne, Dalton and Laney walked in. They navigated the crowded ballroom more easily than anyone else, almost as if the crowd was parting to let them through. Just as Portia had predicted, everyone was turning to watch. Right on cue, Portia and Caro also converged on Meg. A united front.
Even though she’d known these people only two days, even though she didn’t fully trust them and probably never would, she felt weirdly comforted by their presence.
She had no illusions about the permanence of their affection, but for tonight, they had her back. Before all of Houston society, they’d rallied around her.
In this moment, it truly seemed as if all of Houston society was there and watching. Laney stepped forward and pulled her into a hug at the same moment that Dalton greeted Portia, hugging the woman who was his ex-wife and current sister-in-law with genuine affection, before turning to Meg and hugging her as well.
For the first time in her life, she felt as if she truly had a brother.
And that’s when it happened.
That’s when Grant Sheppard walked into the room.
Three (#ulink_10838bb8-3ca9-5c04-aca4-dbe9d36e8731)
Grant Sheppard hated this stuff. Obviously, he wanted children to have hope. He just didn’t see why a bunch of rich bastards needed to spend fifty thousand dollars to throw a party that would ultimate raise only seventy-five thousand dollars. It didn’t make financial sense, and was a damn annoying way to spend an evening.
Besides that, the Children’s Hope Foundation annual gala was inevitably overrun by Cains. Which was both one more thing to hate and the only reason he actually bothered to come. There were plenty of stupid charity events he avoided altogether. He came to this one because he didn’t want anyone imagining they scared him away.
Though generally he did avoid them. Ostensibly because of the decades-old rivalry between the two families. But he had a more personal reason: he couldn’t ever see one of the Cains without thinking of Meg. Sweet Meg. The only woman he’d ever even come close to loving.
Meg, who tasted like sugar and smelled like spices and who—for one brief moment—had held his heart in her hands. Meg, who most likely hated him for running out on her in the middle of the night. And who would hate him even more if she knew the truth...
No, he didn’t let himself think about Meg very often. Loving Meg was just one more reason to hate the Cains, even though she was one of them.
The rivalry between the Cains and the Sheppards had been going on for nearly twenty years, ever since Hollister had edged Russell Sheppard out of the business their fathers had started. There were some things a man never recovered from. Being screwed over by your best friend, your business partner, your mentor...that was one of them. And Grant’s father had never recovered. Oh, he’d stumbled along for another decade, but he’d never been the same.
For all intents and purposes, Hollister Cain had destroyed Russell Sheppard. And Grant had vowed to do the same to Hollister and all of his family in return. After years of carefully orchestrated moves, Grant was so close to bringing down Cain Enterprises, he could almost taste it.
Which of course was one more reason he’d come here tonight. Five of the seven board members should be here. All men and women he knew socially and professionally. Soon he would make his move against Cain Enterprises and when he did, he’d need them on his side.
He moved deeper into the room, heading straight for the bar. He didn’t drink much, typically. His father’s alcoholism had been pretty unappealing to watch. Still, having a drink in his hand gave him something to do while he navigated this shark tank.
The bartender had just handed him his Patron, when a stunning brunette sidled up to him.
“Becca.” He smiled and nodded to greet her.
“Grant,” she murmured as she rose on her toes to brush a discreet kiss across his cheek and briefly press her body to his. “How are you?”
“Same as always,” he said gently.
They had dated briefly a few years ago, before she realized he wasn’t interested in marriage. Now she was married to a sixty-three-year-old oil magnate. One of Cain Enterprises’ board members, as a matter of fact. Which worked nicely in Grant’s favor, since he got along well with the man.
“I have gossip for you,” she said.
“You know I’m not interested in gossip.”
“This is about the Cains. And even though you’ll hear it soon enough, I desperately want to be the first one to share it with you.” She jutted out her lip. “Please.”
Grant glanced across the room and saw Becca’s husband deep in conversation with one of Houston’s congressmen. He turned his attention back to Becca. “You look like you need a drink.”
She smiled, clearly delighted that she’d snagged his attention as he headed off to the bar. Five minutes later, he returned with a glass of pinot grigio. Becca actually preferred tequila but never drank it in public. At least, not at this kind of event. Like him, Becca had grown up on the fringes of Houston society. Just rich enough to be included but not rich enough to be an equal. Both of their families had once been old money, but had fallen on hard times. They’d stayed in the social loop, but at the bottom of the pecking order. In so many ways, Becca was his equal. He’d clawed his way back to wealth with ruthless business practices. She’d done it with an advantageous marriage. Neither was particularly proud of their means or motives, but they understood one another. Years ago, he’d thought he and Becca would have been a match made in heaven if they hadn’t both been too ambitious to settle for someone as low on the social pecking order as they themselves were. Though, obviously, neither of them was pining away for the other. They were both doing just fine on their own. Which was another reason Becca was perfect for him. There was a lot to be said for a woman he could walk away from without missing.
She took a sip of her drink and smiled blandly. “Thank you.”
“And now your news?”
“Do you remember the rumors I told you a few years ago about Hollister losing his marbles when he found out he had a daughter?”
“Of course. He threatened to disinherit all three of his sons unless one of them found her and brought her back to the family.”
“Exactly.” Becca tapped her hand against his arm, her eyes lighting up with delight. “Which was great news for you. The rumors have gone a long way to destabilizing Cain Enterprises. It doesn’t help that Dalton resigned as president and Griffin had to take over.”
“Though Griffin has been more competent as president than anyone could have predicted,” Grant admitted begrudgingly.
“The point is, Hollister is unstable and losing touch with reality.”
“Which I’ve known for years.”
“But that may change, and soon.” She leaned forward and whispered. “If you’re going to make your move against Cain Enterprises, you need to do it now.”
“Why?” The longer rumors circulated about Hollister’s poor health and poorer business decisions, the better it would be for Grant.
“Because they found the missing Cain heiress.”
For an instant, his heart froze in his chest. Then it started thudding again, slowly. “No. They didn’t.”
He was sure they hadn’t found her. There was no way they could have found her without his hearing about it first.
Those rumors about Hollister having a daughter had spurred his own search for her. Because he had access to his own father’s business and personal records from about the time the heiress would have been born, Grant had managed to track Meg down early in the game. He may have initially planned to use her against the Cains, but all that had changed when he’d started to fall for her.
Even though he’d walked away, he felt... proprietary. He’d kept an eye on her. After all, Sheppard Bank and Trust had two locations in Victoria, one of them right across the square from her pie shop. Both the bank manager and the security guards had been told to keep an eye out for anyone from the Cain family—ostensibly because of fears about corporate espionage. Surely he would have heard if the Cain family had been within a hundred yards of Meg and her little pie shop.
He knew the Cains and he knew Meg. Was it really so bad that he wanted to protect her from them?
“Yes, they did.” Becca grinned, her gaze lit with malicious glee. “In fact, she’s here tonight.” Becca nodded in the direction of the dance floor. “Right over there. She was dancing with Dalton the last time I saw her. See for yourself.”
“She’s here tonight?”
“The whole family is here for her introduction to society.” Becca flicked her hair over her shoulder, feigning disinterest. “A little premature, I think. Apparently they just found her this week. And I’d swear that dress she has on is one Portia wore two years ago.”
Becca kept talking, but Grant stopped listening. Instead, he gazed over the heads of the crowd, trying to get a look at the woman Becca was talking about.
It wasn’t Meg. He knew that much. It just couldn’t be.
But—it occurred to him for the first time since he’d left Victoria over two years ago—there might be another heiress somewhere. It was entirely possible that Hollister had fathered more than one bastard daughter he didn’t know about. It was possible the Cains had found some other girl who was still Hollister’s.
They weren’t stupid enough to try to pass off some random woman as his daughter. Not when genetic testing was affordable and the results could be had practically overnight. But there might actually be more than one daughter.
He took a long sip of his tequila and considered. For the past two years, he’d played the long game. He’d planned on the Cains being so involved in this search that he could quietly buy up stock and wait for the company to be rocky enough that he could step in and simply take over. If Hollister died first and disinherited his sons, so much the better.
It had not played out as he’d planned. Hollister was too stubborn to die and Griffin too competent to run Cain Enterprises into the ground.
Still, Grant now owned a healthy chunk of the company. He’d swayed at least three of the seven board members to his side. He almost had it.
And now this.
Some mystery woman messing up his plans.
He excused himself from Becca and started making his way across the room, determined to see just who the Cains had dug up, consoling himself with this one thought: whoever she was, at least their machinations wouldn’t hurt Meg.
No matter what happened, no matter how this went down—no matter how he took down Cain Enterprises—at least Meg wouldn’t be caught in the cross fire.
Then the crowd parted and he could see the dance floor. He spotted Dalton moving across the floor with a tiny woman in his arms. Her hair, swept up into an elaborate topknot, was dyed a shade of auburn just a little too brassy to be natural. It had one streak of black running through it.
Then Dalton twirled the woman around and Grant got a look at her face.
Shit.
They’d found his Meg.
* * *
Meg was stuck at this interminable party for at least another hour. That’s what Portia had told her when Meg demanded to know how much longer she had to stand around like some sort of trophy waiting to be handed off to the winner.
“At ten o’clock the silent auction ends and the live auction begins. That will wrap up by eleven and then there’s another two hours of music. You can slip out maybe by 10:10 or so, if Griffin and Sydney are ready to go.”
She had begged. They would be ready. But first she had to get through the next hour without catching Grant’s eye. She didn’t know how exactly she was supposed to do that, when the Cains had orchestrated this entire evening so that everyone in the room would be talking about her.
And no matter where she stood or whom she talked to, she couldn’t shut off her awareness that Grant was in the same room. She tried not to look for him, but every time she glanced around the room, there he was. With a series of women, each more beautiful than the next, it seemed. She kept an eye out for lovely blonde mother of his child but didn’t see that woman anywhere. Maybe he’d come without her. Which seemed like a real asshole move. Right up his alley then.
There was one woman in particular with whom he spent the most time talking. She had long brown hair and the body of a model.
When Meg couldn’t take another moment of talking to strangers, she practically begged Dalton to dance with her.
“Dalton? Dance?” Griffin had scoffed. “If you want to dance, I’ll dance with you.”
Before she could shoot a pleading look at Dalton, he held out his hand. “No. I’ll do it.”
A moment later, they were dancing to some staid waltz she didn’t recognize. She breathed deeply, letting go of some of the tension in her shoulders.
After a moment, Dalton asked, “Why didn’t you want to dance with Griffin? He is the better dancer.”
“He would have wanted to talk,” she admitted.
“I take it you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
Dalton nodded briefly and then said nothing for a while, either because he knew she wanted silence or because he did, she couldn’t quite tell. Either way, she was grateful for it. And for the illusion of invisibility that dancing with him gave her. All three of her brothers were tall; surely no one could see her at all when she was hiding behind Dalton.
But then, after what felt like only a few minutes, someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?”
At the sound of the man’s voice, everything inside her shuddered to a halt. For an instant, she let her eyes drift closed, pretending that she really could disappear. Even when she opened them, she couldn’t force herself to look at him.
Dalton guided her just to the edge of the dance floor. “Actually, I do mind,” he said to Grant. But he’d stopped dancing and had turned to face the interloper.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Grant said smoothly, ignoring Dalton’s rudeness. “You’ve found your missing sister.”
Finally, she made herself meet his gaze. And he was looking directly at her, despite the pretense he made of talking to Dalton. But there was no recognition in his eyes. No surprise or question. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he didn’t recognize her. But there was no way in hell that could be true.
“We have,” Dalton said. He increased the pressure at her back. “Meg Lathem, this is Grant Sheppard, CEO of Sheppard Bank and Trust.”
“Pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand to shake hers.
Anger kindled inside her at the sight of his hand extended like that. As if they didn’t know one another at all. As if he hadn’t spent countless nights in her bed. As if he hadn’t been deep inside her.
She forced herself to hold out her own hand, braced herself for the impact of feeling his skin against hers for the first time in years.
Much like his tone, his touch was cold and impersonal. “Welcome to Houston.”
Dalton, supportive and kind, still had his hand at her back. She smiled brightly. “Thanks, but this isn’t my first time here.”
His familiar lips twisted in something that was maybe supposed to be a smile. “The band is starting another song. Do you want to dance?”
She was tempted to refuse, but there were so many people watching and she couldn’t help thinking this was a test somehow. She would never fit in this world. The world of the Cains and the Sheppards. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that.
But for Pearl’s sake she needed to at least convince them that she was a Cain.
No Cain had ever been intimidated by anyone or anything. Certainly not a Sheppard.
“You don’t have to,” Dalton said softly.
“No.” She smiled brightly. “I’d love to.”
She pushed aside her doubts and fears. She pushed aside all her concerns about Pearl and what she might be doing right now. She even pushed aside the memory from a few days ago of Grant standing outside the Sheppard building with his hand on the waist of the beautiful blonde woman. And the one from just a few moments ago of him standing beside the bar with the brunette.
The man was a hound dog.
She was lucky to have him out of her life and as far away from Pearl as possible. And for the first time in years, she felt relief—genuine relief—that he’d left her in her middle of night and broken her heart. Without hesitation, she stepped into his arms and he whirled her out onto the dance floor. And as long she remembered what a hound dog he was, she wouldn’t have to think about how good his arms felt.
“So, Mr. Sheppard, do you enjoy your work in banking?” she asked blandly to keep her hormones distracted.
He stared at her for a second, before increasing the pressure of the hand at her back, pulling her ever so slightly closer. “Is that how we’re going to play this?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re going to pretend you don’t even know me?”
She pulled away, not out of his arms entirely, but enough to put a little more distance between them. “I don’t even know you.”
“Meg,” he murmured, dropping his voice to barely a whisper.
“Don’t,” she said fiercely. “Don’t act like you have the right to say my name in that way.”
“What way?”
“That sexy, intimate way,” she said. His lips curved in a hint of a smile—as if he’d taken it as a compliment—and she had the urge to slap him. She didn’t think she’d ever slapped anyone, but she wanted to slap him because he looked so damn confident. As if her words had told him exactly how strongly she still responded to him. As if he knew exactly what was going on in her head, when the truth was, she hardly knew, herself. “Don’t act like you know me. You don’t.”
“I—”
“I am a completely different person than I was then.” She laughed as the irony of her words hit her. “Of course, you’re not exactly the guy I thought I was falling in love with either. But then again, you never were, were you?”
Something dark and pained flashed through his eyes, giving her the feeling that he had a lot he wanted to say. “It’s not in either of our best interests to talk about this here.”
“Why? Because your girlfriend might see us or because your wife might hear about it later?”
“My wife? What’s that supposed to mean?” But then he shook his head, as though he didn’t really want her to answer.
Not that she particularly wanted to talk about it, either. Bringing up the girlfriend and the wife was a huge mistake. It made her seem as if she was still nursing her affection for him. And it potentially revealed that she’d basically been stalking him last week.
Thankfully, the song was coming to an end. In the lull between songs, she stepped away from him abruptly, forcing him to drop his arms. “Thank you for the dance, Mr. Grant. It’s been particularly illuminating.”
“Wait,” he said, reaching out to grasp her arm. “We can’t talk here, but we do need to talk. Can I take you to brunch tomorrow? Dinner? Something.”
“You’re asking me on a date?” Hysterical laughter nearly bubbled up inside her and it was all she could do to control it.
“No,” he said seriously, not sensing how close she was to losing it. “Not a date. A conversation.”
“No. I’m not getting brunch with you. Or dinner. I wouldn’t so much as share a handful of breath mints with you.”
He pulled his hand back, tucking it in his pocket, but he didn’t turn away from her. He just stood there, looking oddly forlorn on the edge of the dance floor. “There are things we need to talk about.”
Aware that they were attracting attention, she stepped just a little closer so no one would overhear her. “You are a lying, cheating bastard. I have nothing to say to you. And there’s nothing you could say to me that I would want to hear.”
She didn’t give him a chance to answer. She knew all too well how charming he could be when he set his mind to it.
But as she walked back across the ballroom to the spot where her family congregated, she wondered if she’d been lying to herself as well as to him.
There were so many things she should be telling him. When she’d first made the decision not to tell him about the baby, it had seemed so logical. So cut-and-dried. Now? Now she wasn’t so sure.
Worse still, part of her did want to know what he had to say. Part of her would never stop wondering why he’d left.
Four (#ulink_5be10cae-b409-5f81-b949-ea326ccfc0db)
Cursing under his breath, Grant watched Meg walk away.
What the hell was she doing here?
What. The. Hell.
He had done everything in his power to keep the Cains from finding her. The information from his father that he’d used to find her—he’d buried that deep. He’d made sure no one, not even his stepmother, could find it. Plus, he’d made sure that if the Cains ever did find her, he’d know about it within a matter of hours. She was not supposed to turn up with the Cains at a major social event and catch him by surprise. That was not how this was supposed to go down.
So what the hell had gone wrong?
Becca slithered up next to him, put her hand and head on his shoulder and watched Meg walk away. Then she glanced up at him from under her lashes. “I get the impression that didn’t go the way you wanted it to.”
“Intuitive, as always,” he said dryly.
She gave his shoulder a sympathetic rub. “I guess Hollister’s millions of shares of Cain Enterprises stock are going to stay in the Cain family after all.”
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Emily McKay
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The secret heiress is back…with a little secret that changes everything.As the long lost heiress in a notoriously scandalous family, Meg Lathem has always kept her distance. But now her daughter needs lifesaving surgery, so Meg asks for support—either from the child’s unscrupulous father, Grant Sheppard, or the dreaded Cains themselves.Grant had an agenda when he first bedded Meg—revenge against her birth father. But now, confronted by news that he’s a daddy himself, Grant finds his feelings for Meg run deep. Can he convince Meg he’s there for her this time, and protect her from the Cain legacy even as she claims it?