The Tycoon's Instant Daughter

If the walls of Stockwell Mansion could talk…

The stories we could tell! To describe the Stockwell family dynasty as merely “interesting” is like calling this forty-room showplace “a house.” Just wouldn’t do the truth justice, now, would it? So let’s talk about truth, shall we? Something that has been in short supply at times around here. Caine Stockwell, the dynasty’s mean-spirited patriarch, has told some Texas-sized whoppers. But why should we spill his dirty little secrets when he’s about to do it himself? Good thing the Stockwells have plenty of mansion insurance, because his confession could shake the shingles off this place!

Now brace yourself for this one! Caine’s son, playboy tycoon Cord Stockwell, has just received some soul-shocking news. He’s a father—and baby has come to Stockwell Mansion to roost. And by the fiery look in Cord’s eyes, the sweet-’n-irresistible nanny he’s temporarily hired might be staying for a very long time…say, until little Becky finishes college. Actually, forever sounds like a better idea, don’t you think?

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Gail Chasan, my favorite editor in the whole world, because she always senses when something’s missing—and she never fixes what ain’t broke.

CHRISTINE RIMMER

Since the publication of her first romance in 1987, New York Times bestselling author Christine Rimmer has written over thirty-five novels for Silhouette Books. A reader favorite, Christine has seen her stories consistently appear on the Waldenbooks and USA Today bestseller lists. She has won the Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer’s Choice Award, and has been nominated twice for the Romance Writers of America’s coveted RITA Award and four times for Romantic Times Magazine’s Series Storyteller of the Year. Christine lives in Oklahoma with her husband, younger son and two very contented cats, Tom and Ed.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Chapter One

The social worker clutched the baby in her arms just a fraction tighter. “Mr. Stockwell, I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t leave Becky here under these conditions.”

Cord Stockwell held on to his temper. “These conditions?” he repeated in his softest, most reasonable tone. Those who knew him best always had sense enough to proceed with care when he spoke so quietly. They knew that such a tone meant he wouldn’t be speaking quietly for long. “Tell me. Exactly what is wrong with these conditions?” He lifted an eyebrow and waited, letting the big room around them speak for itself.

In the past five days, he’d had the room and the bedroom adjoining it completely redone. Now, rainbow murals arched across the sunny yellow walls. Brightly colored rugs dotted the hardwood floor. A rocking horse waited in the corner and big bins filled to the brim with toys were everywhere, along with an impressive array of stuffed animals. From teddy bears to baby dolls, the room had everything a little girl could ask for.

Cord added, still excruciatingly reasonable, “I went to considerable effort and expense to put all this together.”

The social worker parsed out a pained little smile. “I can see that. And it’s very nice. But—”

“But? I don’t want any ‘buts’ out of you. I did every last thing you said I had to do—including hiring a nanny. Are you telling me it’s my fault that the woman called this morning and said she wouldn’t be able to take the job, after all?”

The pained smile got more so. “Of course it’s not your fault. I never said it was. But the fact remains, you have no nanny. And in your particular situation, without appropriate child care, you aren’t prepared to provide the kind of round-the-clock attention that Becky needs.” The woman’s tone, so preachy and know-it-all, would have done a Yankee proud. It thoroughly contradicted her down-home Reba McEntire twang. She’d grown up in some tiny town in Oklahoma; Cord would be willing to bet his considerable fortune on that.

He swore under his breath. An Okie social worker with a Yankee attitude. Did it get any worse?

Right then, the baby girl let out one of those little, gurgly cooing sounds that babies are always making. The social worker glanced down and met the baby’s wide eyes—eyes the exact same shade of blue as the ones Cord saw when he looked in the mirror. The woman’s tight expression loosened up. For a split second, as she smiled at the baby, she looked sweet and soft and pretty enough to make Cord forget how completely fed up he was with her.

Too bad a split second never lasts all that long.

She faced off against him once more, her mouth instantly pinching up tight as a noose around the neck of a hanged man. “A three-month-old baby is a full-time job. And you can’t expect to be able to take care of Becky all on your own. As you explained to me yourself, you’ve got your hands full runnin’ the Stockwell businesses, now that your father is ill. You’re going to need help, and plenty of it.”

Ill. Now there was a namby-pamby word for it if he ever heard one. Caine Stockwell was way beyond “ill.” He was flat out dying. Of cancer. It was an ugly way to go. And Caine, mean as a stepped-on sidewinder in the best of times, was going down kicking and screaming all the way.

Cord tried again. “I told you. The Stockwell International offices are here, in Stockwell Mansion, right below us, on the first floor. I’ll be available to Becky whenever she needs me. I’ll find another nanny soon. And until I do, we’ve got help running out our ears around here anyway.” Stockwell Mansion was a Dallas area landmark, the biggest house in the county of Grandview, forty Texas-size rooms in imposing Georgian style. It took a Texas-size staff to run the place. “One of the housekeepers can—”

“No, Mr. Stockwell,” she interrupted him without so much as a by-your-leave. “One of the housekeepers can’t. Becky deserves lovin’, attentive care, not just someone willin’ to look in on her now and then. And I intend—”

That did it. Cord’s temper got away from him. “I don’t give a good damn what you intend! That baby is—”

“—gonna start cryin’ if you don’t keep your voice down.” Now the damn woman had her chin poked out. She was giving him her best Yankee-style glare. “And would you kindly stop your swearing, as well.”

Fine. He would keep his voice down. He wouldn’t swear. Much. He suggested with measured care, “Listen. I want you to carry Becky into her bedroom, lay her down in her crib and then step across the hall with me.”

She glared all the harder. “And why on earth would I want to go and do that?”

“So we can discuss this more…freely.”

She made a snorting sound. “I don’t think so, Mr. Stockwell. There is nothin’ to discuss here.” She had one of those big, flowered diaper bags hooked over her shoulder. She hoisted it higher. “I’ll take Becky home now and when you’ve solved the nanny problem you can—”

“Just where the hell is this home you’re taking my daughter to?”

She flinched, just barely, a reaction so small a less observant man would have missed it. But Cord Stockwell saw it, and took note of it. For the first time in their irritating association, he had gotten under Ms. Hannah Miller’s skin. He wondered exactly what nerve he’d hit.

She tried to brazen it out. “Mr. Stockwell, as you very well know, paternity has not yet been medically established. Until the test results come back from the lab in San Diego, the state of Texas can’t be completely certain that Becky is—”

“Come on. That’s my baby, and we both know it.”

Why me? Cord thought. Why of all the damn Child Protective Services workers in the giant state of Texas, did his baby girl have to draw this one? The woman was impossible. She had all the evidence she needed, for pity’s sake. Marnie Lott, Becky’s mother, who had died suddenly two weeks ago, had put Cord’s name on Becky’s birth certificate in the space reserved for the father. Why Marnie never bothered to let Cord know he was going to be a daddy was a mystery to him. But the dates matched. Cord’s brief affair with Marnie had occurred almost exactly a year before—nine months prior to Becky’s birth. And timing aside, all anyone had to do was look at her. If Becky wasn’t a Stockwell, then neither was Cord.

Was Cord prepared for fatherhood? Hell, no. And he doubted that he’d ever be. But Becky was his. A Stock-well. Down the generations, the oil-rich Stockwells of Grandview, Texas, had been called hard-hearted, grasping, backstabbing and cold-blooded. But their worst enemies wouldn’t argue on one point: a Stockwell took care of his own.

The social worker made a sniffing sound. “Maybe Becky is your daughter. Maybe she’s not. The lab results will confirm or disprove your claim.”

“My claim?” Cord grunted. “Let’s cut through the bull here, Ms. Miller. That damn paternity test is no more than a formality. Becky’s mine. And I will provide for her. I’ll see that she has the best of everything. She’ll go to the best schools. She’ll never know what it is to do without. There are a lot of babies in this world who have a hell of lot less—nanny or no nanny. So it seems to me that the state of Texas ought to be just tickled pink over my claim.”

Of course, she had the classic comeback for that. “Money,” she said, “is not all that a baby needs. A child also needs—”

He cut her off before she could get rolling. “Don’t go there, Ms. Miller. Don’t even get started in that direction. I’ve filled out your forms and answered your thousand and one way-too-personal questions. I’ve driven halfway across the county to meet you at that damn clinic so a nurse could stick a cotton swab in my mouth for the DNA test. I’ve set up the nursery you said I had to have. I’ve hired a nanny. She just never came to work. But it’s not a big deal. As I’ve told you, I can manage without her until I replace her. Any other social worker would be more than satisfied that I’m ready and willing to be a father to my child. The question is, Ms. Miller, why aren’t you?”

She gulped. The action gave him great satisfaction. Oh, yeah. He had her on the run now. “I’ve told you, I only want what’s best for—”

“Didn’t I ask if we could cut the bull? Let’s get down to what’s really going on here. Let’s get down to how you plain don’t like me.”

“I never said—”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I—”

“You don’t like me and you don’t approve of me.”

“Well, uh, I—”

“I can see it in those eyes of yours. I can hear it in your voice. You’ve been reading the National Tattler and Inside Scoop magazine and you know what they say about me. I like women. I like them tall and I like them gorgeous—but I never like them for long.”

“I did not—”

“Sure you did. And that’s okay. It’s only the truth. And my reputation as a ladies’ man has got nothing at all to do with the fact that that baby is mine and I will take care of her.”

Ms. Miller’s face had flushed a burning red. “No. Now, you wait a minute. You wait just a minute. If you can’t provide a stable, loving home for Becky, if you are gonna be out winin’ and dinin’ an endless string of women with whom you never intend to build a meaningful relationship, well, then, I do not see how I can bring myself to leave Becky in—”

“So I’m right.” He gave her a slow, self-satisfied smile. “You don’t approve of me—and you still haven’t answered my first question.”

“Uh. What question was that?”

“Where are you taking my baby if and when you leave this house?”

She opened her mouth. And then she shut it. And then she gulped for the second time.

At last, with an embarrassed reluctance he found particularly pleasurable, she was forced to admit, “I’m licensed for foster care. Becky has been staying with me for the past several days.”

It all made sense to Cord then. He allowed an agonized beat of silence to elapse before echoing quietly, “She’s staying with you.”

Hannah Miller drew her shoulders back and aimed her chin a notch higher. “Yes.”

Cord couldn’t help but gloat—just a little. “You know, I’ll bet that doesn’t leave a lot of time for your other cases. I mean, given that a three-month-old baby is—how did you put it? A full-time job, I think you said, a full-time job requiring round-the-clock attention.”

Those leaf-green eyes shifted away, but only briefly. Then she forced herself to look straight at him again. “I’m providin’ what Becky needs. I had some vacation time coming and I took it. She is getting round-the-clock attention, I promise you that.”

He delivered the telling blow, but he did it gently, in a softer voice than he’d used up till then. “Ms. Miller, you’ve let yourself get personally involved with my baby.”

She blinked, her mouth went trembly. Cord enjoyed the sight more than he should have. “I…no. I—”

“The nanny isn’t the issue here. The way I see it, the issue is twofold. You don’t like me—and you don’t want to let Becky go.”

“No. I mean, yes…” She was really flustered now, her cheeks flaming pink, her eyes wide and vulnerable. “I mean, whether or not I, personally, like you isn’t the issue at all. And as for Becky, well, of course I love taking care of her. But I only want what’s best for her. I only want—”

He moved a step closer, hiding his smile when she had to steel herself from shrinking back. And then he spoke, his voice low and gentle and utterly unyielding. “Take the baby into her room and put her in her crib. There’s a monitor in there. Turn it on and bring the receiver back in here with you.” He reached out. She stiffened. But then she saw what he meant to do. She actually aided him, shifting the baby to one arm for a moment, as he slid the strap of the diaper bag off her shoulder and set the thing on the floor. “Do it now,” he added, even more softly than before.

For the first time in the twelve days he’d known the woman, she obeyed. She headed for the door a few feet away and vanished through it. A moment later, she reappeared—minus the baby, carrying the receiver.

He gave her a smile. She did not smile back.

“Now,” he said. “Come with me.”

Across the hall from the nursery, in his private sitting room, Cord gestured at a leather wing chair. “Have a seat.”

Hannah Miller obeyed for the second time, perching right at the edge of the chair, tipping her head to the side a little, so she reminded him of a nervous bird, ready to take to the air at the slightest provocation. She still had the receiving half of the baby monitor clutched in her hand.

“Here.” Cord took the device from her and set it on the marble-topped table at her elbow. “Relax. Drink?”

She frowned, then coughed, fisting her hand and placing it delicately against her mouth. “No. Thank you.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

At the liquor cart in the corner, he took his sweet time dropping ice cubes into a glass and pulling the crystal stopper out of a whiskey decanter. He poured himself a shot, reconsidered and splashed in enough to make it a double. Then he restoppered the decanter and looked at Ms. Miller again as he swirled the amber drink, ice cubes clinking in the process. He knocked back a sip. It warmed his throat, hot velvet, going down. Ms. Miller remained absolutely still on the edge of her chair, eyes wide and wounded, watching him—and waiting for whatever grim information he had to impart.

Cord sipped from his drink for a second time. The woman didn’t fool him. She might look scared as a lost lamb at the moment—ever since he’d figured out she’d let herself get too attached to his little girl. But she was no lamb. She was a thoroughly exasperating creature who had made him jump through hoops to get what belonged to him. She was bossy and she wanted things done her way. Not his kind of woman at all.

But that shouldn’t pose a problem. He didn’t intend to date her or take her to bed. What he did intend to do was to see that his daughter got the best care available. And the woman showed a definite aptitude in that department.

“I’ve just come to a realization, Ms. Miller,” he finally said.

She turned her head, but only enough so that she was facing him straight on. And she waited some more. He found he liked that: her silence, the fact that she didn’t make some eager, hopeful little yes-person noise.

He said, “It occurred to me about a minute and a half ago that you and I want the same thing.”

He paused—mostly to see if she’d lose her nerve and warble out, “What’s that?”

She didn’t. She went on waiting, looking apprehensive, but unbowed.

So he told her, “We both want what’s best for Becky.”

She opened her mouth a fraction—then closed it over whatever words she might have said. He knew, of course, what those words would have been. Something short. And skeptical: Oh, really? or I doubt that.

“It may come as a surprise to you,” he said with ironic good humor, “but I want my daughter to have loving and devoted care every bit as much as you do.”

She was looking at him sideways again. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. Hell if he’d confess it, but he was pretty nervous about the whole idea of being a father. His own mother, Madelyn, had died when he and his twin, Rafe, were only four years old.

And his father was and always had been a coldhearted, verbally abusive SOB. It wasn’t as if Cord—or Rafe, or their older brother, Jack, or their sister, Kate, for that matter—had known much in the “love and devotion” department when they were growing up.

But Becky could have better. Cord had seen it in the look on Hannah Miller’s face when she stared down at his daughter. Becky would get all the love any child could ever want from a woman who gazed at her like that.

He swirled his ice cubes again—and made his offer. “Becky needs a nanny. And you don’t want to let her go. So my question is, why should you? I’ll pay you fifty thousand a year, plus the best benefits package Stockwell International has to offer, if you’ll give up your job at Child Protective Services and come to work for me taking care of my daughter.”

Chapter Two

Through a sheer effort of will, Hannah Waynette Miller kept her mouth from dropping wide-open.

She was stunned. Yep. That was the word for it. Stunned. Astonished. Astounded and amazed.

By Mr. Cord Stockwell, of all people.

He wanted her to be Becky’s nanny?

She’d been sure the man disliked her. And she had told herself she didn’t care. After all, she understood his kind. He was a rich man with a rich man’s ingrained belief that the rest of the world existed for his comfort and convenience.

Well, Hannah Miller cared no more for what a man like that believed than she did for what he thought of her. Since that first day she had called him to tell him about Becky, she had never once put forth the slightest effort to make things comfortable for him—let alone convenient. For Becky’s sake, she had stood her ground against him. She had been determined to make sure that Becky got a real home, a home with love and attention and patience and hope in it. Of course, she always tried to make sure of those things for all of the children assigned to her care.

But she’d tried even harder with Becky. Too hard, maybe…

She hated to admit it, but the man had been right on that one little point.

She was much too attached to Becky, all out of proportion really, and she knew that. Hannah also knew she had to let go of the adorable blue-eyed darling and get on with her life. She had planned to do just that: to make certain Cord Stockwell found a loving nanny, one who would provide the intangibles that all his money could not buy. And then Hannah Miller had meant to be on her way—to return only if the paternity test she’d insisted he take proved he wasn’t Becky’s father, after all.

Cord Stockwell was waiting for an answer, standing there so tall and commanding on the other side of the beautifully appointed room, holding his glass of fine whiskey and looking at her with an amused expression on his too-handsome face.

Hannah knew what that answer should be: Thank you, but no. As much as she might wish it to be otherwise, as much as she had longed in the past seven lonely years for another chance, Becky was not her baby girl.

On the other hand, Hannah had no doubt that Becky did need her.

Cord Stockwell might be sexy as sin itself—he stood over six feet tall and he was possessed of lean hips, shoulders that went on for days and truly arresting deep blue eyes. An aura of excitement surrounded him. Even Hannah, who certainly ought to know better, couldn’t help but feel the power of his presence every time she was forced to deal with him. And on top of the sex appeal and the charisma, he did have pots of money, money he was willing to lavish on Becky.

But did he know how to love and raise a sweet little girl? Hannah seriously doubted it.

Cord Stockwell sipped from his drink again. “Well?”

Right then, the telephone on one of the inlaid side tables buzzed.

Cord set his drink on the liquor cart. “Excuse me.”

He strode to the phone, noting before he got there that it was his father’s private line that had rung. He punched in the line and picked up. “What is it?”

“Mr. Stockwell, I’m sorry to bother you.” It was a male voice with a slight Scandinavian accent, the voice of one of the nurses who attended his father round-the-clock—the big blond one named Gunderson. “But, sir, your father is insisting…”

In the background, Cord could hear the hoarse commands. “Get him in here. Get my boy in here. Now!”

The nurse reported the obvious. “He demands to see you, sir.”

The cracked, rough voice shouted louder, “Now, I said. Are you deaf? Tell him to get in here on the double.”

“I’m so sorry, sir.” Nurse Gunderson made excuses in Cord’s ear. “But right now, our problem is that he refuses to take his medication until you—”

“Get me Cord now!” the old man shouted.

A woman’s voice—the other nurse—spoke up then.

“No. Please put that down, Mr. Stock—”

Whatever it was, Caine must have thrown it. Cord heard what sounded like breaking glass.

The nurse on the other end of the line released a sigh. “Sir, maybe you should—”

“Try to keep him from hurting himself,” Cord said. “I’ll be right there.” Cord set the phone back in its cradle and started for the door. “Something’s come up.” He said as he strode past the wing chair where the social worker sat staring at him. “I’m afraid I have to deal with it now. I won’t be long. You can think about my offer.”

The door closed behind him before Hannah could say a word.

Cord could hear his father barking orders as he entered the old man’s private sitting room.

“I don’t need you poking me with needles. I can still swallow a damn pill if I need one. And right now, I don’t need one. Not till I talk to my son, you hear me?”

One of the maids had joined Cord in the central hallway and followed him into the room. She carried a broom and a long-handled dustpan—probably under orders to clean up whatever mess Caine had created in his rage. The maid cringed when she heard the old man shouting.