The Tycoon's Instant Daughter

by Christine Rimmer

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  After Kate left, Hannah wondered about the bleakness in her eyes when she’d looked down at Becky dreaming in her crib. And beyond that, Cord’s sister had gone and turned down the chance to hold the baby. Hannah couldn’t understand how anyone could pass up an opportunity to have Becky in her arms.

  Kate Stockwell had a secret or two, Hannah was certain of it. And as a woman with a few sad secrets of her own, Hannah sympathized. In a sense, she did understand. In her heart. Where it counted.

  Heck. Hannah liked Cord Stockwell’s sister. And that was a pleasant surprise, given that Becky’s supposed father was such a difficult man to get along with.

  Cord ate his dinner alone in the sunroom. Kate had gone to some charity thing. Rafe, a Deputy U.S. Marshall, was on duty, transporting a federal prisoner to Washington, D.C. And their older brother, Jack—well, who knew where Jack might be? Like Cord, Rafe and Kate, Jack had his own rooms at Stockwell Mansion. But he rarely stayed in them. Jack lived all over the world, wherever new governments or old regimes were willing to pay for his highly skilled and lethal services.

  After dinner, Cord went to his office in the West Wing. He’d only meant to wrap up a few things. But as usual, there was just too damn much that couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

  He worked into the evening. He had a number of contracts to review, correspondence to go over and a stack of business proposals that needed a decision from him yesterday.

  The Stockwell empire had really begun with the oil boom of the thirties. Until then, Stockwells had been cattlemen, and not especially successful ones. It had been the land itself that had made them multimillionaires—or the black gold beneath the land, anyway.

  For decades, the name Stockwell and the word “oil” had been almost synonymous. Stockwells drilled in and profited from oil fields from the Lone Star State to the Middle East.

  When times got rough, they proceeded with care. And during the boom years, they took chances. And they prospered.

  In the eighties, when real estate became king again, Caine had seen the trend and jumped on it. And in the nineties, once Cord had graduated from UT and started working alongside his father, he had pushed even harder to diversify.

  Now, when people heard the words, Stockwell International, they still thought “oil.” But those in the know realized that the company had its fingers in a huge number of profit-making pies. Over the past few years, as he’d assumed more and more control, Cord had continued to channel investment capital wherever he saw potential. He backed shopping malls and high-tech companies just getting their start. And the projects in which he invested Stockwell capital almost always paid off and paid off well.

  At a little after ten, Cord scrawled his name on the last in the stack of correspondence his secretary had prepared for him. Then he tossed the pen aside and ran his hand down his face. It was getting late. Time to call it a night.

  Just then the phone on his desk rang—his private outside line. The caller ID window showed him a number he recognized. He hesitated before answering, thinking that he wanted to get back to his rooms, to check on his daughter—and on Ms. Miller, who by then should have been all settled in the nanny’s room off the nursery.

  The line buzzed again. He went ahead and picked up.

  “This is Cord.”

  “As if I didn’t know.” The voice was soft. Extremely feminine. And thick with innuendo.

  “Hello, Jerralyn.” Cord leaned back in his chair.

  Jerralyn Coulter was a Texas aristocrat—if there actually was such a thing. One of her great-great-great-great-grandfathers had perished at the Alamo. And her great-great-great-grandfather had been a true cattle baron. Cord and Jerralyn had been an item in the gossip columns for several weeks now. They’d hooked up at a political fund-raiser, a thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner where they’d been seated across from each other. It had started with smoldering looks and teasing banter. He’d driven her home. And spent the night in her bed.

  Jerralyn was twenty-six, an extremely beautiful and sophisticated woman. Not to mention energetic. With a very naughty mind.

  “Are you working late again?” she asked.

  “Guilty.”

  “You work too hard.”

  “I like to work.”

  “You need to play—and I could be there in twenty minutes—with a bottle of Dom Pérignon in my hand and nothing on under my sables.”

  He laughed at that. “How can you wear sable? I thought you told me you were an animal rights activist.”

  “I was speaking figuratively.”

  “About the rights of animals?”

  “No, about the sables.”

  “You are tempting,” he said, still thinking of Becky, of the irritating Ms. Miller, of the way she hadn’t seemed irritating at all, sitting in the white wicker rocker, her brown hair falling soft and thick along her cheek.

  “And you are preoccupied.” Jerralyn pretended to pout. “I could be hurt.”

  Cord blinked, rubbed his eyes. “Don’t be. Later in the week?”

  “Oh, all right. But at least turn the light off now and get out of that office. Workaholics are not sexy.”

  He promised her again that he was through for the night, and then said goodbye.

  Emma Hightower, who had been the head housekeeper at Stockwell Mansion for well over a decade now, appeared in the doorway as Cord was turning off the lights. As always, she looked serious and sincere in her concern for his comfort. “Just making my last rounds. Is there anything else I can get for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”

  “No, thank you, Emma. I’m fine. Did Ms. Miller get moved in all right?”

  “Yes. She’s all settled.”

  “You saw that she was fed?”

  “I had dinner sent up to her room at seven-thirty, which seemed a good time for her, tonight anyway. By then, I assumed, she would have had sufficient opportunity to unpack her belongings. Consuela picked up the tray an hour later.”

  “And did Ms. Miller eat her vegetables?” he teased, hoping, as he’d hoped for years and years, to catch a hint of a grin on Emma’s long, serious face.

  “Yes,” Emma said, serious as ever. “She seems to have a fine appetite.”

  “Good. It wouldn’t do to have a picky eater for a nanny.”

  A slight crease appeared between Emma’s thin brows, but she apparently decided that Cord’s remark required no comment from her. She asked, “Would you like me to send a snack up for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”

  “No, Emma. Thanks.”

  She went out and he followed, pausing to lock up the offices behind him. When he turned back to the wide hallway, Emma Hightower had disappeared.

  Cord took the West stairway to the second floor, and his rooms, which were also in the West Wing, above the suite of offices. He passed up the door to his own bedroom, at the end of the wing, and proceeded straight to the room with the robin’s-egg-blue walls, where his daughter should, by all rights, be asleep in her crib.

  He paused before the closed door, listening—for a baby’s cry, or possibly a woman’s soft lullaby. But all he heard was silence.

  Carefully, hardly realizing he was holding his breath, Cord turned the brass knob and slowly pushed open the door. The room was dark, the shades drawn against the moon outside. He tiptoed in, across the soft blue rug that in the daylight showed a pattern of swirling stars.

  Yes. She was there. Sound asleep. He stood very still. After a minute, as the silence stretched out, he realized he could hear her breathing in tiny, even sighs.

  As his eyes adjusted, he saw her more clearly, her round baby cheeks, her fat little mouth, that soft dark hair and the stubborn little chin.

  All Stockwell. Yes.

  He felt something tighten inside his chest.

  All Stockwell.

  Mine.

  So strange. He’d never seen himself as a father. In all likelihood, he wasn’t going to be a very good on
e. He worked hard and he played harder, and he left the joys of family for other men. He was too much like the old man who lay dying at the other end of the house, and he knew it, to be any good as a husband. Pity the poor woman who might have married him. He would have made her life a misery, because he’d betray a wife eventually. Monogamy just plain wasn’t in him.

  However, he’d always tried to be responsible, in his own way. He liked women. Plural. Well, not several at once. But a lot of them, one at a time. And while he was liking them, he’d always been damn careful not to get one of them pregnant. But apparently, with Marnie Lott—whose face, he felt a little ashamed to admit, he could hardly remember—he hadn’t been quite careful enough.

  And now there was Becky.

  The more he got used to her, the more he looked at her and burped her and held her in his arms, the more he thought that having her was just fine.

  Perfect, really.

  He’d done his bit toward perpetuating the family line. And he hadn’t had to get married and ruin some poor woman’s life to do it.

  Becky made a small, cooing sound. But she didn’t wake. She cooed again, and rubbed her tiny lips together, then turned her head with a sigh toward the wall.

  Cord stayed very still. He didn’t want to wake her, really. She might start crying and then Ms. Miller would come flying in here, shooting him narrow-eyed looks—and then probably deciding it was time he learned to do more than burping. He’d end up changing a diaper or something equally unsettling. He knew that woman. And he understood the kinds of things she was going to start expecting him to do.

  But Becky’s eyes stayed shut. He watched the gentle rising and falling of her tiny chest and realized she wasn’t going to wake up, after all.

  He was just about to tiptoe out when he heard a faint sound—the creaking of a chair, perhaps, or the squeak of a floorboard. He looked up, through the open door to the playroom and beyond.

  A sliver of golden light shown beneath the closed door to the nanny’s room.

  Ms. Miller was still awake.

  Should that surprise him? It was only ten-thirty. No real reason she should necessarily have been sleeping.

  Except, maybe, that he pictured her as someone who went to bed at twilight and rose before dawn.

  He pictured her in a white cotton nightgown, with little bits of lace in small ruffled rows, at the cuffs and around the neck. The kind of nightgown a young girl would wear, so modest, covering everything—unless she just happened to stand in front of a lamp.

  And then a man would be able to see it all: soft, secret curves sweetly outlined, and a tempting dark shadow in the V where her thighs joined…

  Cord shook his head—hard.

  What the hell? Was it possible he’d just had a sexual fantasy concerning Ms. Miller?

  No. Not a fantasy. An erotic image, that was all. A quick flash on the screen of his overactive imagination, more proof of the unflagging persistence of his libido.

  It meant nothing. He started to turn again.

  But then he noticed the shadows. He could see them, moving across the floor. She was walking around in there.

  Why?

  Oh, for pity’s sake, Stockwell, he thought in disgust. It’s her room. She has a damn right to walk around in it whenever she wants.

  But was she all right? Was something disturbing her? Was there something she needed, something he’d forgotten to make certain that she had?

  She was his guest, after all, until she found her own replacement. At least, he supposed he should consider her a guest, since they’d never actually agreed on what he would pay her.

  Now that he thought about it, what he would pay her was something they needed to agree on. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. She didn’t make a lot of money in the first place. She was also giving up her own vacation time to take care of his little girl and interview nannies for him. She deserved to be paid for it, and he intended to make certain she got what she deserved.

  In several long strides, he covered the distance between his daughter’s crib and the nanny’s door. Leaving himself no opportunity to pause and reconsider, he knocked quickly, three sharp raps.

  For a moment, after he knocked, there was silence. A thoroughly nerve-racking dead quiet. And then, at last, she pulled open the door.

  Almost, he groaned.

  He could not believe what his eyes were showing him.

  Chapter Four

  Cord looked down, to collect his scattered wits.

  Her feet were bare. They were very nice feet. Pale and long, with pretty toes.

  No polish. Uh-uh. No polish for Ms. Miller.

  He couldn’t resist. He let his gaze wander upward, taking in the white nightgown—white cotton, yes. Exactly. With the lamp behind her, he could see the outline of her ankles and the lower swell of a pair of surprisingly strong-looking calves.

  But no more.

  She hadn’t followed his fantasy—correction, erotic image—to the letter, after all. She also wore a robe. A green one, of some indeterminate light fabric, over the white gown.

  He imagined stepping forward and removing that robe.

  But he didn’t. He stayed right where he was—on the playroom side of her bedroom door.

  Hannah clutched her nightgown at the neck and looked up into her employer’s handsome face. “What is it, Mr. Stockwell?”

  He cleared his throat. “Ms. Miller, we haven’t discussed how much I’ll be paying you.”

  She didn’t understand his expression. It was a bewildered kind of look. And it didn’t fit at all with the arrogant, take-charge kind of man she knew him to be.

  “Um,” she said, and swallowed. “Are you all right?”

  His dark brows crunched up over that nose that belonged on a Roman coin. “All right? Of course, I’m all right. What do you mean?”

  Now he looked angry. Oh, she did not like this. Something was happening here, and she didn’t know what. “Well, it’s just that you look so—”

  “What?” He practically barked the word.

  She backed up a step. “Nothing. Never mind.” In an instinctive attempt at self-protection, she started to push the door shut.

  He stuck out his right hand and stopped it. “I told you. I want to talk about your salary.”

  She looked at his outstretched arm, at his big hand gripping the door, and then she looked back at him. “Right now?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s eleven at night.”

  He lifted his free hand and glanced at the fancy watch on his wrist. “Ten forty-two.”

  “Will you please let go of the door?”

  He did. She considered shutting it in his face. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. She kept thinking how lost he’d looked a moment ago, and, well, feeling just a tiny bit sympathetic toward him.

  Which was crazy. Cord Stockwell did not require her sympathy.

  But still, she didn’t shut the door on him. She only stood there, her fingers nervously stroking the small lace ruffle at the neck of her nightgown.

  All right, she thought. He wants to talk money. We’ll talk money. We can do that quickly. And then he can go. “Well, um. As I told you before, I’m on vacation anyway. So it isn’t really necessary for you to—”

  He swore. “Don’t give me that. I hired you to do a job. You will be paid for it.”

  “It’s only for a few—”

  “Just name a price.”

  “Okay. Fine. How about a daily rate?”

  “Good. Whatever.” He kept staring at her neck, where her hand fiddled with the lace. She made herself lower that hand, and then felt too exposed to simply drop it to her side. So she wrapped both arms around her middle and came up with a figure.

  “I’d pay more,” he said.

  “You said to name a price. I did. Accept it.”

  “Well. If you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure. We can settle up when I leave.”

  “All right, then,” he said with fin
ality.

  But then he just stood there.

  And so did she.

  After what seemed like a year, he asked, “So. You’re all right? Comfortable? Got everything you need?”

  “Yes. The room is very nice. I have no complaints at all.”

  “Good.”

  More silence. She found herself studying the strong line of his jaw, noticing, in the wash of light from the floor lamp behind her, that there were strands of silver in his dark hair—only a little, at the temples. It gave him a rather distinguished look. He was wearing the same dress shirt he’d worn that afternoon, a beautiful blue one. It had a lovely rich luster. He also wore dark slacks.

  The clothes fit him perfectly. He probably had a tailor who made them especially for him. He would require custom fitting, for those wide shoulders and powerful arms—and that deep, strong chest that tapered down to a tight, hard waist.

  They were staring at each other. And they’d been doing it for too long.

  He seemed to shake himself. “It just occurred to me…”

  “Yes?”

  “Feel free to use my sitting room across the hall for the interviews.”

  “Thank you.” Her own voice pleased her mightily right then. She sounded so self-possessed. “I will use the room, if we need a place to sit down and talk.”

  “Good then,” he said. And was quiet again.

  Suddenly he seemed to realize that he couldn’t just stand there, staring at her for the rest of the night, waiting for some other piece of information to occur to him.

  “Well. I suppose I should let you get back to…whatever it was you were doing,” he said.

  She couldn’t help grinning. He actually was rather appealing like this, kind of confused and strangely dear. She heard herself volunteer, “I was just pacing the floor, thinking up my list of qualifications for the new nanny. I’m going to put an ad in the paper and try a few of the best employment agencies. So far, I’ve come up with, ‘Dependable, loving and live-in…’ Any suggestions?”

  He smiled back at her. Oh, the man could smile. No wonder he had women dropping like flies. “How about ‘Experienced?”’

  “Good one.”