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“I got an email yesterday from someone calling themselves Maverick. Sent me a picture of my daughter.”
“How did you know she was yours?”
He gave her a cool look. “She was wearing the princess heart necklace I once gave you.”
Isabelle sighed a little and closed her eyes briefly. “She loves that necklace.” Caro had appropriated the plastic piece of jewelry, and seeing it on her daughter helped Belle push the memory of receiving it from Wes into the background.
“You liked it once too, as I remember.”
Her gaze shot up to his. “I used to like a lot of things.”
Nodding at that jab, Wes said, “The same person who sent me the picture also let me know my Twitter account had been hacked. Whoever it was gave me a new handle. Real catchy. Deadbeatdad.”
“Oh, God.”
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” He shook his head again. “That new hashtag went viral so fast my IT department couldn’t contain it. Before long, reporters were calling, digging for information. Then Teddy Bradford at PlayCo called a press conference to announce the merger we had planned was now up in the air because, apparently,” he muttered darkly, “I’m too unsavory a character to be aligned with his family values company.”
“Oh, no...” Isabelle’s mind was racing. Press conferences. Reporters. Wes Jackson was big news. Not just because of his toy company, but because he was rich, handsome, a larger-than-life Texas tycoon who made news wherever he went. And with the interest in him, that meant that his personal life was fodder for stories. Reporters would be combing through Wes’s past. They would find Caroline. They would do stories, take pictures and, in general, open her life up to the world. This was fast becoming a nightmare.
“The media’s been hounding me since this broke. I’ve got Robin fielding calls—she’ll stonewall them for as long as she can.”
Wes’s assistant was fierce enough to hold the hordes at bay—but it wouldn’t last. They would eventually find her. Find Caroline. But even as threads of panic unwound and spiraled through her veins, Isabelle was already trying to figure out ways to protect her daughter from the inevitable media onslaught.
“So.” Wes got her attention again. “More lies. You’re not Isabelle Gray. Your real last name is Graystone. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that. Isabelle Gray didn’t leave much of a mark on the world—but while typing in the name you gave me, up popped Isabelle Graystone. And a picture of you. So yeah. Surprised. Even more surprised to find out your family is all over the business world. As in Graystone shipping. Graystone hotels. Graystone every damn thing.
“You didn’t tell me you were rich. Didn’t tell me your family has their fingers into every known pie in the damn country. You didn’t even tell me your damn name. You lied,” he continued wryly. “But then, you seem to be pretty good at that.”
She flushed in spite of everything as she watched his gaze slide around the room before turning back to her. Fine, she had lied. But she’d done what she’d had to, so she wouldn’t apologize for it. And while that thought settled firmly into her brain, Isabelle ignored the niggle of guilt that continued to ping inside her.
“Why’d you hide who you were when you were working for me?”
Isabelle blew out a breath and said, “Because I wanted to be hired for me, for what I could do. Not because of who my family is.”
Irritation, then grudging respect flashed across his face. “Okay. I can give you that one.”
“Well,” she said, sarcasm dripping in her tone. “Thank you so much.”
He went on as if she hadn’t said a word. “But once you had the job, you kept up the lie.” His eyes narrowed on her. “When we were sleeping together, you were still lying to me.”
“Only about my name.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and held on. “I couldn’t tell you my real name without admitting that I’d lied to get the job.”
“A series of lies, then,” he mused darkly. “And the hits just keep on coming.”
“Why are you even here, Wes?” She was on marked time here and she knew it. Though it felt as if time was crawling past, she and Wes had already been talking for at least ten minutes. Caroline could come into the room any second. And Isabelle wasn’t ready to have that conversation with her little girl.
“You can even ask me that?” he said, astonishment clear in his tone. “I just found out I’m a father. I’m here to see my daughter.”
Damn it. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Didn’t think you’d like it.” He nodded sharply. “Good thing it’s not up to you.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” Isabelle said, lifting her chin to meet his quiet fury with some of her own.
Funny, she’d thought about what this moment might be like over the years. How she would handle it if and when Wes discovered he had a child. She’d wondered if he’d even care. Well, that question had been answered. At least, partially. He cared. But what was it that bothered him most? That he had a child he didn’t know? Or that Isabelle had lied to him? At the moment, it didn’t matter.
“You don’t want to fight me on this, Belle.” He took a step closer and stopped. “She’s my daughter, isn’t she?”
No point in trying to deny it, since once he saw Caroline, all doubts would disappear. The girl looked so much like her dad, it was remarkable. “Yes.”
He nodded, as if absorbing a blow. “Thanks for not lying about it this time.”
“Wes...”
“I have the right to meet her. To get to know her. To let her know me.” He stalked to the fireplace, laid one hand on the mantel and stared into the flames. “What does she know about me?” He turned his head to look at her. “What did you tell her?”
His eyes were gleaming, his jaw was set and every line of his body radiated tension and barely controlled anger.
“I told her that her father couldn’t be with us but that he loved her.”
He snorted. “Well, thanks for that much, anyway.”
“It wasn’t for your benefit,” she said flatly. “I don’t want my daughter guessing that her father didn’t want her.”
“I would have,” he argued, pushing away from the mantel to face her again. “If I’d known.”
“Easy enough to say now.”
“Well, I guess we’ll never know if things would have been different, will we?” he said tightly. “But from here on out, Belle, things are going to change. I’m not going anywhere. I’m in this. She’s mine and I want to be part of her life.”
Isabelle was so caught up in the tension strung between them, she almost didn’t notice Caroline walk quietly into the room to stand beside her. Her first instinct was to stand in front of her. To somehow hide the little girl from the father who had finally found her. But it was far too late for that.
Instantly, Wes’s gaze dropped to the girl, and his features softened, the ice melted from his eyes and a look of wonder crossed his face briefly. Of course he could see the resemblance. Isabelle saw it every time she looked at her daughter. She was a tiny, feminine version of Wes Jackson and there was just no way he could miss it.
“Hi,” he said, his voice filled with a warmth that had been lacking since the moment he arrived.
“Hi,” Caroline said, as her fingers flew. “Who are you?”
Before he could say anything, Isabelle said, “This is Mr. Jackson, sweetie. He’s just leaving in a minute.”
He shot her one quick, hard look, as Isabelle dropped one hand protectively on her daughter’s shoulder.
“We’re not done talking.” His gaze was hard and cold, his voice hardly more than a hush of sound.
“I guess not,” she said, then looked down at her baby girl. Using her hands as well as her voice, she said, “I heard Edna’s car pull into the driveway a minute ago. Why don’t you go help her with the groceries? Then you can go upstairs and play while Mommy talks to the man.”
“What about the ice cream?” Caro asked.
“Later,” she signed. Sighing a little, she watched Caroline smile and wave at Wes before turning to head back to the kitchen.
Once the little girl had hurried out of the room, Wes looked at Isabelle. “She’s deaf?”
“Good catch,” she said and instantly regretted the sarcasm. No point in antagonizing the man any further than he already was. “Yes. She has progressive hearing loss.”
“And what does that mean exactly? For her?”
“That’s a long conversation better suited to another time,” Isabelle said, in no mood whatsoever to get into this with Wes right this minute.
She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his features went even icier. “Fine. We’ll put that aside for now.” He lowered his voice. “You should have told me. About her. About everything.”
Fresh guilt rushed through her like floodwaters spilling over a dam, but she fought it back. Yes, she remembered what it had been like to discover that Caroline was losing her hearing. The panic. The fear. The completely helpless feelings that had swamped her for days. Now she could look into Wes’s eyes and see the same reactions she’d once lived through. He had been hit with a lot of information in a very short time, and if it had been her, she probably wouldn’t have been as controlled as he was managing to be.
For some reason, that really irritated her.
Isabelle was willing to live with the consequences of the decision she’d made so long ago. Besides, in spite of being faced with Wes now, she was still sure that not telling him had been the right choice. “I did what I thought was right, Wes. You more than anyone should appreciate that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, please.” She laughed shortly and wished tears weren’t starting to pool behind her eyes. “You go through life making split-second decisions. You trust your gut. And you go with it. That’s all I did, and I’m not going to apologize for it now.”
He moved in on her until she swore she could feel heat radiating from his body and reaching out to hers. She caught his scent and helplessly dragged it into her lungs, savoring the taste of him even as she knew that going down this road again would lead to nothing but misery.
Besides, she reminded herself wryly, that wasn’t passion glittering in his eyes. It was fury.
“We’re not done here, Belle.”
She gulped a breath, but it didn’t help the sudden jolt to her heart. No one but Wes had ever called her Belle, and just hearing him say it again brought her back to long nights on silk sheets, wrapped in his arms. Why was it that she could still feel the rush of desire after so long? And why now, for heaven’s sake?
It had taken her years to get past those memories, to train herself to never relive them. To push her time in Texas so far back in her mind that she could almost believe it never happened. Until she looked into her baby girl’s face and saw the man she couldn’t forget.
“I can’t talk about this now. Not with Caroline here. I don’t want her—”
“Informed?” he asked. “Can’t take the chance of her finding out her father is here and wants to be with her?”
“It’s a lot to put on a little girl, Wes, and I’m not going to dump it all on her until you and I come to some sort of agreement.”
“What kind of agreement?” His tone was cautious. Suspicious.
“Like I said, not here.” She took a breath to steady herself and wasn’t even surprised when it didn’t work. How could she find her balance when staring into the aqua eyes that had haunted her dreams for years? “Once you get back to Texas, call me and we’ll talk everything out.”
A half smile curved his mouth then disappeared, leaving no trace behind. “I’m not going back to Texas. Not yet.”
“What? Why? What?” Her brain short-circuited. It was the only explanation for the way she was stumbling for words and coming up empty.
“I’ve got a room at the Swan Hollow Palace hotel,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere until I get some time with my daughter. So that agreement you want to work on? We’ll be doing it here. Up close and personal.”
Her heart was racing, and breathing was becoming an issue. As if he could read exactly what she was thinking, feeling, he gave her that cold, calculated smile again, and this time, Isabelle’s stomach sank.
“What time does she go to bed?”
“What?” God, she sounded like an idiot. “Eight o’clock. Why?”
“Because I’ll be here at eight thirty.” He headed out of the room, but paused at the threshold and looked back at her. Eyes fixed on hers he said, “Be ready to talk. I’m staying, Belle. For as long as this takes, I’m staying. I’m going to get to know my daughter. I’m going to catch up on everything I’ve missed. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
* * *
Swan Hollow, Colorado, was about thirty miles southwest of Denver and as different from that bustling city as it was possible to be. The small town was upscale but still clearly proud of its Western roots.
Tourists, skiers and snowboarders visited and shopped at the boutiques, antique stores and art galleries. Main Street was crowded with cafés, restaurants, bars and a couple of B&Bs, along with the shops. There was even a small mom-and-pop grocery store for those who didn’t want to make the drive to the city.
The buildings on Main Street were huddled close together, some with brick facades, others with wood fronts deliberately made to look weather-beaten. Tall iron streetlamps lined the sidewalks and gave the impression of old-fashioned gas lights. Baskets of winter pines with tiny white lights strung through their branches hung from every lamppost. Every parking spot along the street was taken, and hordes of people hustled along the sidewalks, moving in and out of shops, juggling bags and exhaling tiny fogs of vapor into the air.
If he were here on vacation, Wes might have been charmed by the place. As it was, though, his mind was too busy to pay much attention to his surroundings. Amazing how a man’s world could crash and burn within forty-eight hours.
The Palace hotel stood on a corner of Main Street, its brick facade, verdigris-tinged copper trim and shining windows making a hell of a statement. He’d already been told by the hotel clerk that the place had been in business since 1870. It had had plenty of face-lifts over the years, of course, but still managed to hold onto its historic character, so that stepping into the hotel was like moving into a time warp.
He walked into the lobby, with its scarlet rugs spread out across gleaming wood floors. Cream-colored walls were decorated with paintings by local artists, celebrating the town’s mining history and the splendor of the mountains that encircled Swan Hollow on three sides. The lobby was wide and warm, with wood trim, a roaring fire in the stone hearth and dark red leather sofas and chairs sprinkled around the room, encouraging people to sit and enjoy themselves. He was greeted by muted conversations and the soft chime of an elevator bell as the car arrived. The quiet, soothing atmosphere did nothing to ease the roiling tension within him.
He avoided eye contact with everyone else as he walked past the check-in desk, a long, shining slab of oak that looked as if it had been standing in that spot since the hotel first opened. Wes took the elevator to the top floor, then walked down the hall to his suite. After letting himself in, he shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it onto the dark blue couch and walked across the room to the French doors. He threw them open, stepped out onto his balcony and let the icy wind slap some damn sense into him.
January in Colorado was freezing. Probably beautiful, too, if you didn’t have too much on your mind. There was snow everywhere and the pines looked like paintings, dripping with layers of snow that bowed their branches. People streamed up and down the sidewalks, but Wes ignored all that activity and lifted his gaze to the mountains beyond the town limits. Tall enough to scrape the sky, the tips of the mountains had low-hanging gray clouds hovering over them like fog.
Wes’s hands fisted around the black iron railing in front of him, and the bite of cold gave him a hard jolt. Maybe he needed it. God knew he needed something.
He had a daughter. There was no denying the truth even if he wanted to—which he didn’t. The little girl looked so much like him, anyone would see the resemblance. His child. His little girl.
His stomach twisted into knots as the enormity of this situation hit him. He huffed out a breath and watched the cloud of it dissipate in the cold air. That beautiful little girl was his. And she was deaf.
He should have known.
He should have been a part of all of this. He might have been able to do something—anything—to help. And even if he couldn’t have, it was his right to be a part of it. To do his share of worrying. But his daughter’s mother hadn’t bothered to clue him in.
As furious as he was with Isabelle, as stunned as he was at being faced with a daughter, he couldn’t deny it wasn’t only anger he’d felt when he was in that house.
“She looks even better now than she did five years ago,” he muttered. Isabelle had always had a great body, but now, since having a child, she was softer, rounder and damn near irresistible.
Instantly, her image appeared in his mind and the grip he had on the icy railing tightened until his knuckles went white. That long, blond hair, those eyes that were caught somewhere between blue and green, the mouth that could tempt a dead man. He hadn’t seen her in five years and his body was burning for her.
“Which just goes to prove,” he mumbled, “your brain’s not getting enough of the blood flow.”
He shivered as the wind slapped at him, and he finally gave up and walked back into his suite. With everything else going on, he didn’t need a case of pneumonia. Closing the doors behind him, he went to the fireplace and flipped a switch to turn on the gas-powered flames.
It was quiet. Too damn quiet. He stared at the fire for a minute or two, then dropped onto the couch, propping his boots up on the sturdy coffee table. Late afternoon sunlight came through the windows in a pale stream, the fire burned, and his brain just shut down. He needed to think, but how the hell could he when he was distracted by his own body’s reaction to the woman who’d lied to him since the moment he met her?
“Isabelle Gray.” How had she managed to get hired under a false name? Didn’t his damn personnel department do a better job of checking résumés than that? “And she’s rich,” he exclaimed to the empty room. “Why the hell was she working for me anyway?”
But the “rich” part probably explained how she’d gotten away with changing her name to get a job. She’d been able to pay for whatever she’d needed to adopt a different name. Closing his eyes, Wes remembered the slap of shock he’d felt when looking for Isabelle Gray online only to find Isabelle Graystone. The names were enough alike that the search engine had hooked onto her real identity. Seeing her picture, reading about who she really was had been yet another shock in a day already filled with them.
He had no explanation for any of this, and checking his watch, Wes saw that he had several hours before he could go back and demand she give him the answers he needed. What was he supposed to do until then?
He dragged his cell phone out of his pocket and turned it back on. He’d had it off during his visit to Belle’s house since he hadn’t needed yet another distraction. Now, the message light blinked crazily and he scrolled through the list of missed calls.
Starting at the top, he hit speed dial and waited while his assistant’s phone rang.
“Hi, boss,” Robin said.
“Yeah, you called. Anything new?” He got up and walked to the bar in the far corner of the room. He opened the fridge, saw the complimentary cheese plate and helped himself before grabbing a beer. Twisting off the cap, he took a long drink to wash the cheese down and gave Robin his attention.
“IT department reports they’re no closer to discovering who this Maverick is or even where he sent that email from.”
“I thought they were supposed to be the best,” he complained.
“Yeah, well, IT’s pretty impressed with Maverick,” she said wryly. “Seems he bounced his signal all over hell and back, so they’re having a time pinning it down.” She took a breath and said, “You already know that email account’s been closed, so the guys here say there isn’t much hope of running him to ground.”
Perfect. He had his own computer experts and they couldn’t give him a direction to focus the fury still clawing at his throat.
“What else?” Another swallow of beer as he plopped back onto the couch and stared at the flames dancing in the hearth.
“Personnel did a deeper check on the name you gave them, and turns out Isabelle Gray’s name is really Graystone. Her family’s got holdings in pretty much everything. She’s an heiress.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know that.”
“Oh. Well, that was anticlimactic. Okay. Moving on.” She forced cheer into her voice. “On the upside, IT says the Twitter trend is dying off. Apparently you’re down to number ten today instead of number one.”
“Great.” Wes made a mental note to check with his IT guys on the status of his Twitter account when he got off the phone. What he really needed was for some celebrity to do something shocking that would be enough to push him off the stage entirely.
“And the warehouses are set up for delivery of the doll. Everything’s ready to roll out on time.”
“Good.” He set the beer on the coffee table and rubbed his eyes in a futile attempt to ease the headache pounding there. “Keep on top of this stuff, Robin, and make sure I’m in the loop.”
“Boss,” she said, “you are the loop.”
He had to smile and he was grateful for it. “Right. Did you hear from Harry today?”
“Yep, he’s on it. He’s working with PR to put a spin on all this, and when he’s got the ideas together, he says he’ll call you to discuss it.”
“Okay. Look, I’m going to be staying in Colorado for a while.”
“How long?”
“Not sure yet.” However long it took to make sure the mother of his child understood that she was living in a new reality. “You can always get me on my cell. I’m at the Swan Hollow Palace hotel—”
“Swan Hollow?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He smiled to himself again. “Weird name, but nice town from what I’ve seen.”
“Good to know. I still can’t believe you made the reservations yourself rather than let me handle it as always.”
“I was in a hurry,” Wes said and wondered why he was almost apologizing to his assistant for usurping her job.
She paused, then went on. “Fine, fine. When the final drawings on the PR campaign are turned in, I’ll overnight them to you at the hotel. If you need anything else, let me know and I’ll take care of it.”
“Robin,” he said with feeling, “you are the one bright spot in a fairly miserable couple of days.”
“Thanks, boss,” she said, and he heard the smile in her voice. “I’ll remind you of that when I want a raise.”
“I know you will,” he said and was still smiling when he hung up.
Alone again, he drank his beer, and still facing hours to kill before speaking to Isabelle again, Wes had an idea. Grabbing the remote that worked both the flat-screen television and the computer, he turned the latter on. In a few minutes, he was watching an online video to learn ASL.
American Sign Language.
Three
Wes could have walked to Isabelle’s house, since it was just outside town, but at night, the temperature dropped even farther and he figured he’d be an icicle by the time he arrived. The five-minute drive brought him to the long, winding road that stretched at least a half mile before ending in front of the stately Victorian. His headlights swept the front of the place and he took a moment to look it over.
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