Demanding His Brother's Heirs

“We can’t deny that there’s chemistry.

“Or maybe I’m misreading the signals?”

“You’re not misreading anything,” Jason said.

Holly looked up at him, putting her mouth mere inches from his. Was she trying to drive him crazy? Or did it just come naturally?

“I think we’ll agree that anything beyond friendship would be a bad idea,” she said, so close he could feel the heat of her breath on his lips.

It took everything in him not to kiss her. To keep his libido in check. The only thing giving him the will to resist was the drowsy child lying limp in his arms. He was a much-needed buffer. “Are you always this brutally honest?”

“If we have any hope of making this work, if the boys and I are going to live under your roof, we have to be honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts a little.”

Holly was still watching him, waiting for a response. If she wanted honesty, that was what he would give her. “The truth is, I really want to kiss you.”

* * *

Demanding His Brother’s Heirs is part of Mills & Boon® Desire™’s No.1 bestselling series, Billionaires and Babies: Powerful men…. wrapped around their babies’ little fingers

Demanding His Brother’s Heirs

Michelle Celmer

MICHELLE CELMER is a bestselling author of more than thirty books. When she’s not writing, she likes to spend time with her husband, kids, grandchildren and a menagerie of animals.

Michelle loves to hear from readers. Like her on Facebook or write her at PO Box 300, Clawson, MI 48017, USA.

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To new beginnings

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Extract

Copyright

One

Holly Shay didn’t believe in signs.

But as she tossed Devon’s and Marshall’s dirty clothes on top of the hamper, her wedding band, loose after she’d dropped the last of her baby weight, slipped off her finger and went flying across the room. Two carats of flawless princess-cut diamonds hit the wall at high velocity, leaving a dimple in the paint, and landed with a clunk on the nursery floor.

Maybe someone was trying to tell her something. That it was time to take it off. At this point she didn’t have much choice.

The idea of hocking the ring broke her heart, but she had only a few weeks to find a new apartment. She had no job and not a penny to her name. Only after Jeremy’s death last month had she learned of the considerable debt he’d sunk them into over the course of their ten-month marriage. She would be paying off his debts for many years to come.

But that’s what addicts did, or so she had been told. If she had only known she could have helped him. It still astounded her that she had been so blind. She’d known deep down that something wasn’t quite right with him. She’d assumed it was the stress of having twin infants. A new marriage—especially the shotgun variety—was a challenge in itself, but toss a high-risk pregnancy, then fragile preemies into the mix and things could get dicey. The boys had been born a month early and had had to spend nearly two weeks in the NICU. When they finally had come home it had been with machines to monitor their breathing and heart rate. It had taken a toll on them both.

But it wasn’t until after Jeremy overdosed that she’d put the pieces of the puzzle together. Only then did she recognize the signs. She had been stupidly and irresponsibly blinded by love, by the fantasy of the perfect family she had always dreamed of having. When would she learn that for some people the happily-ever-after would never come? It just wasn’t in the game plan.

It could have been so much worse. Holly had lost both her parents when she was a child, but she had been one of the lucky ones. Orphaned ten-year-olds typically were difficult to place in the foster care system, but she had been taken in by a really nice couple with two other foster kids. There never had been much money, but the essentials always had been covered. She’d had a hot meal every night, decent clothes on her back and someone to help with her homework. And though she and her foster siblings all lived at opposite ends of the country now, and her foster parents had retired to Florida, they still emailed and texted on a semi-regular basis. But it wasn’t the same as having a real family.

The last pinkish whispers of dusk filtered through the blinds as Holly gazed down into the matching cribs at her sleeping sons. An overwhelming feeling of love filled the chambers of her heart. She’d never known it was possible to feel such an intense connection to another person. She would hands down give her life for them.

They would be three months old tomorrow, meaning Jeremy had been gone almost a month now. It broke her heart that they would never know their father. Her marriage to Jeremy hadn’t been perfect, or easy, but the good relationships never were. She just hadn’t realized how imperfect it actually had been.

Was it better that he had died now rather than in a year or two? Had not knowing him spared the twins undue heartache? Or would they go through life with a hole in their hearts that never would be filled?

Could you miss someone you’d never known?

Holly remembered all too well what it had been like after her parents died. She had learned to cope, but it was the sort of thing a person never really got over. It was always in the back of her mind. The unfairness of it. The deep feeling of emptiness. Knowing that she was truly alone. But now that she had the boys, she would never be alone again.

She walked across the room to where the ring had landed and bent over to pick it up. It had always felt clunky and heavy on her hand. Too big and flashy. That was Jeremy’s taste, not hers. She would have been content with one carat or less. He’d refused to tell her what it cost, but it must have been thousands. Tens of thousands, even. Hopefully it was worth at least half that much used.

Instead of sliding the ring back on her finger, she slipped it into the front pocket of her jeans. The landlord had taken pity on her and given her an entire month rent-free to get her affairs in order and find an affordable place. She couldn’t put it off any longer. Tomorrow morning she would load the boys in the stroller and take a trip to the jewelers to see what she could get for the ring. She’d run the scenario through her head a million times, and the outcome was always the same. She needed money, and the ring was the only thing she had left of any worth. She didn’t even own a car. Which made hauling twins around a challenge.

The only question now was, even if she had the money to get a new apartment, would anyone give her a lease? The credit cards Jeremy had opened in her name were all maxed out and in default, and until she could arrange for some sort of child care, getting a job would be next to impossible. She had no family to help her, no friends willing to take on the task of twins full time, and conventional day care for two infants would be astronomically expensive.

In her chest she felt a tightness, a knot of despair that made it hard to breathe. She’d been through difficult times in the past, but never had she felt this hopeless, this sense of impending doom.

She peered into the cribs one last time, smiling when her gaze settled on the boys’ sweet angelic faces. Then she turned on the baby monitor and backed out of the nursery, quietly shutting the door behind her.

She and Jeremy had seriously discussed moving but they’d never gotten the chance. Her morning sickness had been so bad the first four months Holly had spent half her time in bed, and the other half hanging over the commode. In her fifth month, just as she had begun to feel like a human being again, she had gone into premature labor. They’d stopped it just in time, but from that day on she’d been on strict bed rest. It hadn’t been easy, but they’d managed. At least, she’d thought they had.

Jeremy had promised her that after the boys were born they would start looking for a house. He’d thought they would buy a fixer-upper in a small cozy town upstate. A place they could make their own. Now she knew that with all of Jeremy’s debt, no bank ever would have given them a mortgage. Jeremy must have known it, too.

She felt torn between missing him and wanting to sock him in the nose for not being honest with her. Whatever their problems, they could have worked them out. Why hadn’t he just talked to her? It was no secret he’d had trust issues, but they had run deeper than she’d realized. A foster kid himself, Jeremy hadn’t been as lucky. He hadn’t talked about his past much, but she knew he’d been in the system most of his life, bounced around between group homes and foster homes until he’d ventured out on his own at sixteen. Clearly his past had scarred him more than she’d ever imagined. As his wife she should have known. She should have seen what was happening, right? She could have saved him.

The question was had he wanted to be saved?

She stepped into her bedroom and switched on the light. Their neatly made king-size bed mocked her from across the room. She hadn’t slept in it since she’d found Jeremy there. Other than straightening the covers, she hadn’t touched it at all. She’d been avoiding the bedroom in general, only going in to grab her clothes, and only because there was no place else in the apartment to store them. She’d been sleeping on an air mattress that she’d first put in the nursery, and recently moved into the living room next to the sofa.

She looked around the room and sighed. She used to love this apartment. Now she could barely wait to leave. Since his death being here felt...wrong. It never would be a home again without Jeremy. His whole life, everything he’d owned in the world, was in that apartment. She was torn between wanting to keep it all and the need for a fresh start.

She grabbed her pajamas and pulled the door closed behind her as she stepped into the hall. It was barely eight o’clock, but these days she slept when the boys slept. That wouldn’t be possible when she got a job.

She collapsed onto the sofa, letting her head fall back and her eyes slip closed. She must have gone out instantly, and when she roused to the sound of a knock at the door, it was nearly nine-thirty.

She assumed the visitor was her neighbor Sara from across the hall, who often stopped by after work to chat, so Holly didn’t bother checking the peephole. She wasn’t exactly in the mood for company, but it would be rude not to say hello.

She pulled open the door, but it wasn’t Sara, after all. A man stood there, and though he was facing away, looking down the hall toward the stairs, something about him seemed eerily familiar. Something about the tall, solid build and broad shoulders. The thick, coarse black hair that swirled into a cowlick at the left side of his crown, and the stubborn little tuft that wanted to stand up straight. He would always have to use extra gel—

Her breath caught in her lungs and her heart took a downward dive to the pit of her belly. Oh, God. Whoever this man was, from the back he looked exactly like Jeremy. Except for the clothes. He wore a suit, and Holly had worked in retail long enough to recognize a custom fit when she saw one. The closest Jeremy had ever come to wearing a suit, custom or otherwise, had been dress slacks and a blazer, and then only because she’d forbade him from wearing jeans to the wedding of a good friend. And she’d had to go out and buy the stuff for him.

She’d barely completed the thought when the man turned, and as she saw his face, her world shifted violently. Staring back at her were eyes as familiar as her own, and though she could see his lips moving, his voice sounded muffled and distant, as if someone had stuffed cotton in her ears. Her vision blurred around the edges, then folded in on itself.

It couldn’t be, she told herself. Either she was dreaming or having a complete psychotic break. Because this man didn’t just look like her dead husband.

He was Jeremy.

* * *

Before Jason Cavanaugh could inquire as to the identity of the attractive blonde who’d opened the door to the apartment his lawyer claimed had been his brother’s, the color leached from her face. Then her eyes went wide and rolled back into her head. He watched helplessly as she crumpled to the floor, her head barely missing the door frame as she went down.

He sighed and mumbled a curse. His prowess with women was legendary, but even he’d never had one fall to his feet in a dead faint.

As an identical twin, this wouldn’t be the first time someone had mistaken him for his brother. Though he had never gotten this reaction before. Angry words, yes, and once he’d even had a drink thrown in his face. He could only imagine what Jeremy had done to this poor girl. Had he charged up all her credit cards and then bailed on her? Slept with her best friend? Or her mother? Or her best friend’s mother?

When it came to Jeremy the possibilities were endless. But all Jason wanted was to fetch his brother’s belongings, if they hadn’t been disposed of already, and head back upstate. He didn’t know if there was anything worth keeping, and he wasn’t normally the sentimental type, but he had so little left of his brother. Five years ago, after Jeremy had been through another wasted stint in rehab, their father had had enough. He’d disowned Jeremy, disinherited him and purged their home of anything that reminded him of his troubled son. For all the good it had done. And though he knew it was irrational, deep down Jason still blamed himself for Jeremy’s downward spiral. Against his father’s wishes, Jason had even set up a monthly allowance for his brother, who had no means to support himself. Maybe that had been a mistake, too.

Jason knelt beside the woman, whom he was guessing couldn’t be more than twenty-two or three, and touched her cheek. It was warm and it seemed the color was returning to her face. Long brown hair with reddish highlights fanned out around her head and her T-shirt rode up exposing an inch or so of her stomach, making him feel like a voyeur.

“Hey.” He gave her shoulder a gentle nudge and she mumbled incoherently. “Wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open, big and blue and full of confusion as they focused on his face. “What happened?”

“You passed out,” he said, offering his hand. “Can you sit up?”

“I think so.” She grabbed on, her eyes glued to his face, containing a look caught somewhere between shock and horror. He gave her a gentle boost and though she wobbled a little, squeezing his hand to keep her balance, she managed to stay upright.

“Got it?” he asked.

She nodded and let go, still transfixed. “You look just like him. Except...” She reached up to touch his left brow, grazing it with the tips of her fingers. Her touch was so light it was almost provocative. “No scar.”

“No scar,” he responded.

She blinked several times, then yanked her hand back, as if just realizing that she was touching a total stranger. “I’m sorry. I just...”

“It’s okay.” However or wherever Jeremy had gotten the scar, it must have occurred in the past five years. Since the day they were born, it had been next to impossible to tell them apart. They were truly identical in every way.

Well, almost every way.

“Jeremy never told you that he had an identical twin?”

She shook her head, appearing dazed and very confused. “He told me that he didn’t have any family.”

Jason was living proof that he had.

“He lied to me,” she said, still shaking her head in disbelief. She looked up at Jason, and in her eyes he could see anger and hurt and a whole lot of confusion. “Why would he do that?”

Jason had asked himself that same question a million times. His brother was dead, and Jason was still cleaning up his messes. He would make amends on Jeremy’s behalf. As he had done so many times in the past.

“Maybe I could come in and we could talk,” he said, as it was a little awkward crouched down, half in, half out of the apartment. They clearly needed to get a dialogue going so he could assess the damage. However Jeremy had wronged this woman, Jason would fix it.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

He rose to his feet and held out a hand to help her. “Need a boost?”

She nodded and, clinging firmly to his hand, slowly rose. She was taller than he’d expected. Maybe five-seven or -eight, putting her at his chin level. She was also excessively thin to the point of looking gaunt, with dark hollows under her eyes.

Jason felt a twinge of reservation. Was she strung out and in need of a fix? Had she supplied drugs to his brother, or had it been the other way around?

Whoa. Wait a minute.

He took a mental step back. He didn’t know anything about this woman. It wasn’t fair to assume she was into drugs just because his brother had been. That would be guilt by association, of which he himself had been a victim.

She wobbled slightly and he gripped her forearm with his other hand to steady her. “Take it slow.”

Still dazed and looking pale, she said, “Maybe I should sit down.”

“That’s probably not a bad idea.” She teetered on long slender legs encased in distressed, figure-hugging denim as he helped her to the sofa several feet away. That was when he saw the mostly empty baby bottles on the coffee table.

Jesus. His brother had sunk low enough to prey on a single mother? She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

The idea made Jason sick to his stomach.

He sat on the edge of the coffee table across from her, close enough to catch her if she passed out again. “Have you known Jeremy long?”

“A little over a year.”

“And you two were...involved?”

She frowned. “He didn’t tell you that he was married?”

Married? Jeremy? That was truly a shock. “No, he didn’t. I haven’t talked to my brother in more than five years. Since our father cut him off.”

“Then you don’t know about the boys.”

“Boys?”

“Our sons. Devon and Marshall.”

Two

If Jason hadn’t already been sitting, the news would have knocked him off his feet. As it was, he felt as if someone had stolen the breath from his lungs.

He’d come here hoping to find a personal memento that would remind him of his brother. An article of clothing, maybe a photograph or two.

Never in his wildest dreams had he expected to find offspring. “My brother had children?”

“Twins.”

“How old?”

“Nearly three months.”

Oh, Jeremy, what have you done? “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“So the boys have a real family? Aunts and uncles and cousins?”

She looked so hopeful he hated to burst her bubble. From the shadows under her eyes, and her painfully thin appearance, he was guessing life hadn’t been kind to her lately. “We have distant relatives in the UK, but I’m the only one of our immediate family left.”

“Oh. I don’t have family, either, so I thought...” Her obvious disappointment tugged his heartstrings. But then she took a deep breath and forced a smile. Maybe she wasn’t as fragile as she appeared. “But they do have you to tell them about their father. You probably knew Jeremy better than anyone.”

Most of the time he felt as if he hadn’t known Jeremy at all. Not since they’d been kids at least. “What exactly did he tell you about our family?”

“He told me that he had no family. He said he was orphaned as a toddler and grew up in the foster system.”

Foster system? Nothing could have been further from the truth. But that was typical for Jeremy.

Jason tamped down the anger building inside him. “What else did he tell you?”

“That he was sick as a child, and because of his illness no one wanted him.”

Jason’s hackles stood at attention. “Did he say what sort of illness he had?”

“Cancer. He always feared it would come back.”

Jason ground his teeth and tried to keep his cool.

“Jeremy did not have cancer. Nor did he grow up in foster care.”

They had been raised by their biological parents in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan. There was little he and his brother wanted that they hadn’t received. Maybe that had been part of the problem. Jeremy had never had to work for anything.

“He lied to me?” she asked, looking so pale and dumbfounded he worried she might pass out again. “Why?”

“Because that’s what Jeremy does.” He paused and corrected himself. “Or did.”

A flash of pain crossed her face, and he felt like a jerk for being so insensitive. She obviously had cared deeply for his brother. But if their marriage was anything like his brother’s past romantic relationships, this poor woman didn’t know the real Jeremy. “They determined that it was an accidental overdose?”

Teeth wedged into her plump lower lip, she nodded. Her voice was unsteady when she said, “It was a lethal mix of prescription medication.”

Jeremy would ingest just about anything that gave him a buzz, but prescription meds had always been his drugs of choice.

“You don’t look surprised,” she said.

“His addiction was the reason our father cut him off. The arrests, the months he spent in rehab... Nothing helped. He didn’t know what else to do.” Their father had exhausted every connection he had to keep Jeremy out of jail, when incarceration might have been the best thing for him.

“Why didn’t I see it?” she asked, and in her eyes Jason saw a pain, a confusion, that he knew all too well.

“He was good at hiding it.”

“At first I thought he was sleeping.” Her eyes welled and she inhaled sharply, blinking back the tears. “They tried to revive him, but it was too late.”

“There was nothing you could have done. I know it’s difficult, but please don’t blame yourself.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“No, it’s not.” The way Jeremy behaved was in fact partly due to Jason, and he would never let himself forget that. Although, parallel with the pain of Jeremy’s death flowed the relief that he would never hurt anyone again. He wouldn’t be around to break his wife’s heart. His children would be spared the pain of watching their father self-destruct. His wife was young and pretty, so it was unlikely she would stay single for long. Though the idea of another man raising his brother’s children burned like a knife in his side. If anyone was going to take on the responsibility of raising Jeremy’s kids, it would be Jason.

He opened his mouth to address her and realized he didn’t even know her name. Nor had he told her his. “In all the excitement we weren’t properly introduced,” he said.