The Playboy's Office Romance

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Because already, he had stirred up something in her that felt too much like old hopes and forgotten dreams, like the life she had not chosen. She didn’t want to reevaluate the choices she had made, nor feel regret for the choices she hadn’t made. And she did not want to have to defend either one. But she knew that would be what he asked her to do.

  She’d known from the beginning of this misbegotten romance that Bryce would eventually break her heart.

  It just hadn’t ever once occurred to her he’d use Cal to do it.

  SHE MANAGED to avoid the confrontation for over a week, but two days before Shelly was due to fly in, spend the weekend and fly back with Cal, Bryce caught Lara alone in her office with no last-minute Oops gotta go excuses and no inspired distractions left. She was glad to see him, despite a certain ache around her heart that was ever-present since their excursion to the beach at Watch Hill. She’d kept him at a distance this past week, used every alibi she could think of to postpone the inevitable, had interrupted him any time she felt he was about to open the discussion, had become adept at inventing loopholes in her schedule.

  And Bryce had allowed her to get by with it. For whatever reason, he hadn’t pressed her, hadn’t pushed. Maybe he’d been afraid of the consequences, too.

  Until now. Even before she slipped off the reading glasses, Lara could see clearly the determination in his jawline, the courage-under-fire set of his shoulders. This time there would be no escape. She laid down her pencil, ready.

  “When is Cal leaving?”

  Asked and answered, but she gave the information again anyway. “Shelly will get in day after tomorrow and they’ll go back together on Sunday.”

  “You could have used the company plane and taken him yourself.”

  “Not a good use of Braddock Industries resources,” she said with a reasonable smile.

  “It would be a long flight back with only the pilots for company.”

  She knew what he was doing and stuck to her story. “My being allowed to use the Lear jet for personal business isn’t fair to the employees who are never offered that privilege.”

  “Life isn’t fair.” He leaned against the door-jamb, casually, as if tension wasn’t stalking them both like a ravenous predator. “Especially not for Cal.”

  Don’t do this, she pleaded silently. “No,” she agreed. “Not for Cal.” Then, because she couldn’t stand to wait for him to say the words, to accuse her, however tacitly, of not caring what happened to her nephew, she blurted out angrily, “I can’t keep him with me, Bryce. You must see that.”

  He didn’t…or wouldn’t. “I see you need to believe that, Lara. Just as I need to believe you could keep him if you wanted to.”

  “You think I should sacrifice everything to make a home for him? Give up everything I’ve worked so hard to get? And you have no idea how hard I’ve worked, Bryce. No idea what I’ve already given up.”

  “You’re right, Lara. I don’t know. For days now, I’ve been telling myself the world isn’t a perfect place and that a lot of kids don’t have even half the advantages your nephew has right now.” He shrugged. “But I’ve fallen in love with Cal…and I want him to have more. I want to give him more. I want to watch him grow up and share in his life. I want to share in yours, too, Lara. I want to love you. I need to do that. I need for you to let me do that.”

  She shook her head, unable to see playboy Bryce settling into a one-woman relationship, much less one with the added complication of a child. “What are you thinking, Bryce? That you can simply move in with me and Cal? That we’ll build sand castles, run carpools, go to PTA meetings and coach Little League baseball?” She couldn’t believe he’d thought this through. “Even if you can put yourself in that picture, Bryce, I can’t. It’s not who I am. It’s not anyone I’ll ever be.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a taut half smile. “You’d make one heck of a T-ball coach.” The attempt to ease the tension fell short and he came away from the door, walked around the edge of the desk and grasped the arms of her chair, bringing himself down to her eye level. “I don’t know what our family portrait would look like, Lara. I never thought this would be the thing I’d want more than any other. But I know we can do this for Cal. Together, we can do it right. I know we can.”

  “Do it right? If I knew how to do it right, my brother wouldn’t be a world-class loser and my sisters wouldn’t still be wondering what they’ll be when they grow up. When my mother died, the role of caregiver fell to me and I did a lousy job. Raising children is a life’s work, a monumental undertaking, and I am not screwing up Cal’s life any worse than it already is, thank you very much for the opportunity.”

  “Everything comes down to that one basic equation for you, doesn’t it, Lara? The fear that you might fail. The belief that if you can’t control the outcome, it’s better not to make the attempt.”

  Her heart pulsed out a rhythm of anger and truth. “That isn’t fair, Bryce, and you know it.”

  “I’m pleading for my life here, Lara. And yours. And Cal’s.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, tried to find the strength to believe he meant that, and wasn’t simply caught up in her family’s sorry drama. “One day you’ll look back and thank me for saying this.”

  He met her gaze, wounded already, but waiting for the coup de grâce.

  “My nephew has a family. We’re not much, but we’re what he has. You can’t save him, Bryce. All the best intentions in the world—and I’m sure at this moment, you do have the very best of intentions—aren’t good enough to put Cal’s Humpty-Dumpty life back together again as if it had never been broken apart. Shelly and Jen aren’t the ideal custodians for a four-year-old boy, but they’re willing to make the sacrifices. I can help out financially. My dad isn’t a great role model, but he is a decent grandpa. For Cal, that’s as good as it can get.”

  Bryce took in a long, slow breath and pushed to his feet, leaving Lara’s chair quivering with his sudden departure. “You’re wrong, Lara. About what you have to offer and about what a lost little boy really needs. You’ve lied to yourself for so long about what you need and about what you can hope to have, that you can’t see the truth when it’s standing right in front of you.”

  Her throat closed, her heart begged her to reconsider, but she found her voice and denied his claim. “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be, Bryce. On Sunday, Cal is going to California with his Aunt Shelly. That’s the way it has to be. No matter what kind of fantasy you’ve built up in your mind so you can hear Cal call you, Uncle.”

  Bryce paused in the doorway, his back to her, his hand braced against the frame as if he needed the support of solid wood. “My fantasy never had anything to do with being called, Uncle. My hope, what you didn’t give me the chance to say, was that you would call me, husband, and Cal would call me, Daddy.”

  LARA’S HOUSE had never felt so empty.

  Two weeks and two long weekends since Cal’s departure, and still the silence was louder than any distraction she could improvise. She missed her nephew terribly. She missed Bryce even more, if that was possible. Seeing him at the office was worse than not seeing him at all. Since he’d walked out of her office that day, there’d been only the necessary contact between a CEO and his senior VP. No personal comments, no teasing remarks, no scintillating looks, no tantalizing touch. Just the routine “business as usual” business.

  “So, Lara,” she asked herself on a daily basis. “What’s worse than sleeping with your boss?” And the answer always came back, “Not sleeping with him.”

  She brought work home. She traveled to construction sites in Atlanta and all over New England. She called Cal every day, promised to take him to Disneyland when she visited in the fall, quizzed her sister about every facet of their life in California, looking for clues that something, anything, might be wrong. And all she thought about were the words Bryce had said to her.

  You’ve lied to yourself for so long…

  T
here was truth in that, she admitted. She’d pushed her needs aside, pretended the life she’d made was the life she wanted and that there was no room in it for love.

  Everything comes down to the fear that you might fail…

  She struggled with that one, but finally, reluctantly concluded he was right about that, too. The risks she took were almost always calculated ones, with outcomes she could either influence or predict. Until Bryce had come along and dared her to risk loving him, she hadn’t taken any truly scary chances at all.

  I love you.

  Talk about fear. The idea that Bryce Braddock might actually be in love with her was only slightly less terrifying than the idea that she was irrevocably in love with him. He didn’t have a great track record on commitment. What if he loved her and left her? How could she survive? The possibility of a lifelong heartbreak was such a huge risk that she had dismissed, out of hand, his only attempt to tell her he loved her.

  He had been right about so many things…and now it was too late to admit she was wrong.

  Husband.

  Daddy.

  The two words seemed somehow all entangled now with the way she felt about Bryce. They were mixed in with the love she knew she’d feel for him until her dying day. He had forced her to face the truth about herself, had offered her the future she so dearly desired, had risked—and received—rejection for his brave attempt to save her and her nephew.

  But she didn’t need to be saved. She needed to save someone else. Cal, for one. Her sisters, for another. It was wrong to insist they be the ones to make the daily sacrifices as some sort of repayment to her. The circumstances that had plagued the Richmond family were no more their fault than hers. She had the means to care for Calvin. And the desire to do so. While she might be a total failure at mothering one lost little boy, there was a chance she might not fail at all. It was, for Cal’s sake and for her own, a risk she needed to take.

  And Bryce had given her the courage to try.

  Even if he rejected her, he deserved to know that she loved him and that in all her life she had never wanted anything so much as she wanted to call him, husband.

  BRYCE PUSHED BACK his chair with a sudden, jerky motion and walked to the bar to mix himself a drink.

  “You’re about as cheerful as a cat in a laundry chute.” Archer set aside his book and eyed his middle grandson’s gloomy profile. “And not a whole lot quieter. Last time I looked, this was the library.”

  “Sorry, Grandfather. I’ll go to another room and let you read your book in peace.”

  “I think I might prefer a little less peace if you’d like to tell me what’s been on your mind lately.”

  Bryce picked up the cocktail and came to sit across from Archer in one of the two wingback chairs. “Things are going good at the office,” he said, sitting back, casual-like, as if he hadn’t been brooding over something—or someone—for at least a couple of weeks.

  But Archer had time. “I’ve heard nothing but good reports about your management style, Bryce. I must tell you how pleased I am at how you’ve taken on this responsibility, as if you were born to do it.”

  He swirled the liquor in his glass, his expression conveying his pleasure in the compliment. “Who knew I could handle Adam’s job without breaking a sweat?”

  “Adam, maybe, for one. Your father, for another.” Archer smiled. “And your grandmother always said you had it in you to run the whole damn world, if you put your mind to it.”

  Bryce laughed. “She was quite a cheerleader for all of us, wasn’t she?”

  For a moment, Archer lost himself in the memories of his Janey. Sometimes, lately, the memories seemed more real to him than the little realities of his every day. “Grandmother is very proud of you, son,” he told Bryce. “As am I.”

  “I’m glad. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you how appreciative I am of the home you and Grandmother made for me. Adam and Peter, too. It’s only recently that I’ve come to realize the sacrifices you two must have made in order to raise three boisterous grandsons. It couldn’t have been easy.”

  “Believe me, Bryce, having the three of you here was never a sacrifice. You kept us young, long past the time when we were.”

  “Do you think we would have had good lives if someone else had been the one to take us in and guide us to adulthood?”

  “Life is good, no matter how it comes.” Archer probed a little deeper. “What’s got you thinking about these hypothetical what ifs and what might have beens?”

  Bryce gave a little shrug. “Lara Richmond. Her nephew was living with her for a while, but now he’s with her sisters in California.”

  “No parents?”

  “Two, but not even one worthy of the name.”

  “And that bothers you for this little boy? For Lara’s nephew?”

  Bryce looked Archer in the eyes. “Yes. It bothers me a great deal.”

  “And does it bother Lara?”

  “Not enough.” Bryce stood again, the restlessness forcing him out of the chair. “I wanted to marry her, Grandfather. I love her. I wanted to give Cal a real home.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t want a marriage predicated on your relationship with her nephew. If that was her objection to your offer, Bryce, she was very right to refuse it.”

  “She never even let me make the offer.”

  “Why not?”

  He frowned, set his untouched drink on the bar, and returned to the chair. “She thinks I’m the kind of guy who breaks a commitment the minute the next beautiful babe walks by.”

  “And are you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then prove it to her.”

  “How?”

  Archer smiled. “With some women, it takes a lifetime.”

  Bryce sighed. “That would be Lara.”

  “You’ve never been one to turn from a challenge, Bryce. Maybe you just need to drop anchor and let her know you’re not sailing without her.”

  “She doesn’t love me.”

  “Nonsense,” Archer said forcefully. “And I’m confident your grandmother would say the same if she were here. If this is the woman you want, and your heart tells you she’s the one, then you’re wasting your time sitting here, talking to me.”

  Abbott, with the invisible efficiency of an excellent butler, cleared his throat in the doorway. “A phone call for you, Mr. Bryce. A Ms. Richmond.”

  Bryce’s expression came alive with hope. “I’ll take it in here, Abbott, thank you. Maybe she’s come to her senses and finally realized she’s crazy in love with me,” he said to Archer.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest,” Archer replied, picking up his book again as Bryce moved to the phone.

  “Lara,” he said and just from the tone of his voice, Archer knew this was the one. But from there the silence thundered through the library, causing Archer to look up in concern.

  “Call your sister and insist she inform the police,” Bryce said with fierce authority. “Then go to the hangar. I’ll meet you there. And don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  Bryce dropped the phone into the cradle and looked across to meet Archer’s questioning gaze. “Cal’s father has taken off with him again. Same scenario as before. The man’s a complete fool. I’d like to take him out for a sail, strap him to the anchor and drop him overboard somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.” But instead, Bryce picked up the phone again and dialed out.

  “Nell? Find Allen and tell him I need information about terminating parental rights. Tell him to find out everything he can about California adoption laws and to contact anyone he knows who might be able to cut some red tape for us. Call the pilots and ask them to stand by for immediate departure. Lara and I are going to get her nephew.” He paused. “That’s right, Nell, again. But this is the last time. Believe me, this will be the very last time.”

  Archer watched his grandson set aside his anger in favor of action, and had never been prouder of the boy. Ilsa had worked yet another miracle by making one
of her intuitive connections. Loving Lara had provided Bryce the springboard he needed to become the man his grandmother had always believed he could be. In Heaven right now, Janey must be busting her buttons.

  Chapter Twelve

  Derrick Richmond wasn’t a bad man, and Bryce believed him when he said he had never intended any harm. But that didn’t mean no harm had been done. Cal, while physically fine after this second adventure with his bonehead father, had suffered the kind of uncertainty and confusion that could cause emotional problems for years to come. And as long as Derrick was allowed to drift in and out of the boy’s life and abscond with the child when it seemed like a fun way to get everyone’s attention, Cal would continue to suffer.

  But Bryce was putting an end to that right now. He’d wanted Lara to press charges when they’d found the pair holed up in a shoddy hotel not fifteen miles from where they’d been discovered the last time. But angry as she was, Lara wouldn’t be persuaded that any good purpose could be served by criminalizing her brother’s gross stupidity. The present custody arrangement was loose, at best, and without an official complaint, the police had no grounds for arrest. Once Bryce had spent a little time with Lara’s father, too, he realized the family was on a shaky foundation as it was, and Lara was right not to create further division.

  So now, he and Lara and her brother were gathered in the plush offices of Barney, Blake and Wilson, Attorneys at Law, meeting with Joseph Barney, senior partner and legal expert on family law in California. “This, Mr. Richmond, will petition the court to terminate your legal relationship with your son and open the way for your sister to adopt him. You will need to appear before the Judge to confirm your intent at a future date and time set by the Court.” Mr. Barney indicated the line. “But now, if you’ll sign here, please…and here.”

  Derrick signed without a murmur of protest.