She turned to include Rocket. “I realize it’s unkind to speak ill of the dead, but you might as well know up front that my father wasn’t a nice man. He liked nothing more than to toy with people, and from what I’ve gathered, none of the guests attending his little soiree the night he was killed had a clue if they’d still have a job come Monday morning. I’m not just talking about the employees of the company he’d taken over, either. No one could afford to relax around him. He was just as apt to can his own people as the ones from his new acquisition, if for no other reason than to provide himself a moment’s entertainment.”
“And here I thought my old man was the daddy of dys-function.” John had been watching the interaction between the two women with fascination, knowing they had no idea how revealing it was. But it was time for a more straightforward approach. He needed to start directing the conversation to where he wanted it to go.
It was clear the women weren’t overly fond of each other, and turning to DeeDee, he decided she couldn’t be more than a year or two older than Victoria—who, if he remembered correctly, would be about thirty-one now. As Victoria’s new stepmama, that had to make for some friction. He’d bet the main source of dissension, though, was the fact that you’d have to search hard to find two more dissimilar women. Even way back when, he’d understood that Tori wasn’t one of the party girls he was accustomed to picking up in bars. So when she’d allowed him to do exactly that, he’d noted her relative inexperience, then simply felt grateful to whatever karma had thrown him in her path at the exact moment she’d decided to cut loose.
DeeDee, on the other hand, had the look of a woman who knew her way around a wet T-shirt contest. Not that you could always go by appearances, he admitted, remembering when his friend Zach had first met the woman who’d become his wife. Still, there was an indefinable aura about DeeDee that said she knew the score, and at the very least, she struck him as the quintessential trophy wife.
He favored her with his most charming grin. “You have a point,” he said. “A homicide detective will always look first within the family for his suspect. Hell, any cop will be happy to tell you that nine times out of ten the victim is killed by someone he knew.”
Something about the smug look she shot Victoria rubbed him the wrong way, but he wasn’t stepping into the middle of that brouhaha. As a man, he knew better than to get between two women with opposing points of view. As a professional, he didn’t get involved in his clients’ lives, period, or anyone else’s who might be connected to a case. As far as he was concerned, in fact, the two of them could dive right into a knockdown drag-out fight, and he’d simply pull up a chair and enjoy the show. Especially if the ripping of clothing was involved.
He glanced at Tori’s svelte little sheath, then at her patrician nose poking ceiling-ward, and swallowed a snort. Sure, Ace, that’s likely to happen. Turning his attention back to DeeDee, he added, “Of course they generally look at the spouse first, since that’s who most often inherits the lion’s share of money.”
She curled her lip at him. “Lets me out, then. I signed a prenup that said if Ford divorced me or died for any reason during the first three years, I’d get bupkis—or next to it, at any rate. He was my golden goose, pal—it was in my best interests to keep him healthy.”
John glanced at Tori, who nodded. “He had all his wives sign the same prenuptial agreement, and it was set up in such a way that they only received a truly generous bequest if they lasted ten years.” She shrugged. “The only one who ever came close to lasting that long was my mother, but she died just before my eighth birthday.”
A shaft of light found its way through the shutters and shone directly in her eyes. It highlighted the gold flecks around her pupils, and he was irritated that seeing them gave him the urge to cut her a little slack and not pursue the next logical line of questioning. He gave her a flat stare to compensate. “So I’m guessing you and your brother inherited the bulk of Daddy’s fortune then.”
When she narrowed her eyes, he had a feeling it wasn’t against the light. But she said without inflection, “Yes. And before you ask, I was living in London when he died, and I’ve already told you that Jared couldn’t have done it.”
Hit men could be hired as easily from London as anywhere else, and John never trusted in the goodness of young men he hadn’t met. Since he had a hankering for this case, however, he knew better than to say so. He might be one of the best at locating missing teens, but he was by no means the only investigator qualified for the job, and his prior relationship with Tori was more likely a strike against him than anything that would work to his benefit.
But what the hell—when in doubt, project confidence, he always said. Besides, it wasn’t as if he actually believed she’d put a contract out on her old man. No, the woman he’d met this afternoon was more likely to freeze a man to death.
Seeing DeeDee watching the two of them as if this were improvisational theater, he leveled a look on her. “Would you excuse us, Mrs. Hamilton? My client’s paying by the hour and I’d like to get down to business with her.”
“I just bet you would,” she murmured, but then spun on her stiletto heels and sashayed out as blithely as she’d entered.
The moment the door shut behind her, he pinned his best no-nonsense look on Victoria. “Okay, look, I plan to look for your brother regardless, but I’d still like to know why you believe he’s incapable of violence. There’s probably not a person in the world who doesn’t have the capacity for it, given the right circumstances.”
“I simply can’t visualize what those circumstances would ever be in Jared’s case,” she said. “He’s scared to death of spiders, for heaven’s sake, yet he’s still the type of guy who’d perform a catch and release if one got in the house. Now, me, I’d rather see the damn thing dead.”
He remembered. She’d climbed up his back once, screaming Kill it! Kill it! in his ear when a hapless daddy longlegs had shown the poor judgement to venture across their bedroom floor in Pensacola. Irritably shoving the memory away, he focused on the facts. “Yet he’s been in quite a bit of trouble, if I understand correctly.”
“It’s true he’s been expelled from several schools. But always for things like drinking, or smoking or not knowing when to stow his attitude.” She leaned forward in her chair as if she could compel his understanding through sheer physical intensity. “When he was little, he was always running up to Father saying ‘Watch this! Watch this!’ All he ever wanted was the tiniest bit of his daddy’s attention, and his expulsions were just a continuation of the same. They were a way to get Father to pay him a little regard, if only in a negative way.”
“Tell me who his friends are.”
Victoria sat back. “That’s one of those good news/bad news things,” she said. “He has a habit of falling in with the malcontents, which as you can probably imagine contributes considerably to his problems. The good news is, he didn’t do that this time. Since there were only a few months remaining in the semester when he was bounced from his last school, Father decided to enroll him locally to finish out the year. Jared joined a baseball team, discovered he really liked the sport, and actually met a couple of nice kids on the team. The bad news, though, is that whenever he told me anything about them, he only referred to them as Dan and Dave.”
“That’s okay, just give me the name of the school.” He’d contact the coach and go from there.
She told him, and he was keying the information into her file when the office door opened once again. Brows furrowing, he glanced up. Now what?
A little girl with a long, wild, tangle of baby-fine brown hair that was held off her face by sparkling butterfly barrettes stood in the doorway. Casting him an intrigued glance, she ran over to Victoria. “Hullo, Mummy,” she said in a clear British accent, leaning into her. “Nanny Helen told me a ’tective was here to find Uncle Jared.”
Mummy? John felt his jaw drop as he watched Victoria wrap an arm around the little girl and hug her close. She w
as a mother?
“Yes, that’s true,” Victoria said. “So you really should run along, sweetie, and I’ll come see you just as soon as we’re finished.”
That “something” he’d heard earlier was back in her voice and he narrowed his eyes on Victoria. What the hell was it? Alarm? Wariness? He couldn’t quite pin it down.
“But, Mummy, I want to say hello.”
There was an instant of dead silence. Then Victoria succumbed to her manners. “Very well. Sweetheart, this is Mr. Miglionni. He’s the private detective Nanny Helen was telling you about. John, this is my daughter, Esme.”
His experience with little girls—or any kids her age, for that matter—was nil. But what the hell, a female was a female and John bestowed his warmest smile upon the little girl. “Nice to meet you, Esme. Love your butterflies.”
Her little hand went up to touch one of her barrettes in an ageless feminine gesture. “Thank you. My mummy bought them at Harrods.” A pleased smile curved her rosebud mouth and she stared at him with big eyes as dark as his own.
His stomach began to churn as a sudden suspicion splintered through him. Holy shit. Oh, holy, fuckin’ shit. It couldn’t be. Could it?
Hell, no. They’d used protection.
Which any fool knows is never one hundred percent fail-safe. He took a deep breath and got an iron grip on his emotions. “Harrods, huh? That’s a department store in London, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You look like you’re nearly grown up. Got your driver’s license yet?”
She giggled. “No, silly. I’m only five and a quarter years old.”
“Ah. I guess that is a little young.” The hot roil in his gut had turned to ice. He might not be the world’s greatest mathematician, but he could sure as hell add two plus two and arrive at the right answer. Especially when you factored in the kid’s eyes. Although it took every ounce of his self-control, he managed to keep the easy smile plastered on his kisser until the little girl skipped out of the room. But it dropped the instant the door closed behind her, and he swung to pin Victoria in place with furious eyes.
“You’ve got some explaining to do, lady.”
CHAPTER THREE
DAMN! VICTORIA’S HEART pounded in her chest, and to her disgust every last drop of moisture in her mouth had turned to dust. Damn, damn, damn! She’d feared this exact situation ever since discovering her private investigator’s identity, and for a moment all she could do was stare at Rocket while a pool of churning acid tried to eat a hole in her stomach. But drawing on a lifetime of displaying composure even when it was the last thing she felt, she sucked in a quiet breath and leveled a gaze on him. “For what exactly do you believe I owe you an explanation?”
“Don’t pull that ice princess crap on me, Tori. You know damn well what this is about.” He took a step that left him towering over her and Victoria swallowed dryly at the banked rage she saw burning in his eyes. “Esme. I want to know who that little girl belongs to and I want to know now.”
“Me.” A healthy surge of anger roared through her and her back snapped straighter than a yardstick even as her heart settled down to a more manageable tempo. Tilting her chin up at him, she met his furious gaze head-on. “Esme belongs to me. She’s my daughter.”
“And mine,” he snarled. “A not-so-minor little detail I never would have known about if I hadn’t come here today.”
She might have categorically denied his parentage if she’d just had a moment to think things through. After all, they’d religiously used condoms that week. But over the course of the current past two weeks, her father had been murdered, her brother had disappeared and she’d packed up and moved everything she owned from one side of the world to the other. Add to that the father of her child dropping into her life from out of the blue and her mind had turned to chop suey. Besides, what was the point? She had a feeling he knew that her fling with him had been unusual enough. She’d sustained too many shocks and was worn to a nub—she simply didn’t have the wherewithal to pull off the pretense that she’d gone straight from his bed to someone else’s.
Still, his gall made her gape and she had to snap her sagging jaw shut. “You’ll have to excuse me, Rocket, or John, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days, if I find your self-righteousness just a little hard to swallow. How do you suggest I should have informed you—sent a letter to the U.S. Marine Corps addressed to Rocket, last name unknown? And tell me, during the two months it took me to see beyond the fact we’d used protection to realize my flu-that-wouldn’t-go-away was actually the first stages of pregnancy, where were you? Sleeping with other women you knew only by their first names? Regaling your buddies with all the details of our time together?”
“No. Dammit, Tori, I never said a word to anyone.”
Ignoring the little surge of satisfaction she got from hearing him deny the charge, she clung grimly to her indignation. “Why not—that was your usual MO, wasn’t it? The night we met, one of your buddies made a point of warning me you liked to kiss and tell. That you were real big on sharing the particulars with your friends, right down to the last moan.” And the thought of him sharing the specifics of their time together had chewed on her for months after she’d cut and run.
“Oh, let me guess—Bantam, right? The same guy who tried everything in his arsenal to get you to leave with him instead?” Hands thrust in his pockets, Rocket stared at her for a moment before essaying a curt shrug. “Still, it’s true enough. That was my MO…until you.”
“Uh-huh.” Skepticism permeated the erstwhile agreement. “Because I was so special, I suppose. Just what kind of fool do you take me for?” She threw up a hand even as he opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t answer that. The fact that I left with you despite the warning makes me too many kinds of an idiot to list.” She could still recall the heart-pounding excitement of his company, though—remembered too clearly that feverish and dangerous feeling of being swept away by something beyond her control.
It had seemed particularly delicious because she’d come so close to passing on the Pensacola trip. Her accommodations were at the type of swinging singles resort she’d been raised to shun, so when the architectural firm she worked for presented her with a gift certificate as a thank-you for creating the design that had won them a lucrative new account, she’d fully intended to let it quietly expire. But, God, she’d been proud—not only of her work, but of the appreciation her bosses had shown her. And she’d been eager to share it with her father.
She should have known he’d blow her off. At the very least, she shouldn’t have been surprised—nothing she’d done was ever good enough for him. Once again, however, he’d managed to stagger her with his lack of affection. But this time, when he’d skipped right over her accomplishment to arrogantly proclaim that of course she wouldn’t step foot in a resort that had no more taste than to bill itself as Club Paradise, she’d rebelled.
However much the vacation may have started out as a screw-you to her dad, though, it had changed into something else entirely the minute she’d met Rocket. She’d found being with him a thrill a minute, arousing and terrifying and increasingly addictive. He’d made her feel so—
Stiffening her backbone against memories that managed to grab her by the throat even now, she pinned him with a stern look. “Don’t think my being a fool means you get to take the high road. You never made the least effort to contact me and you sure as heck never gave me any personal information when we were together that would make finding you feasible. I didn’t even know what part of the country you were stationed in. So I made the decision to keep my baby, and I battled my father’s demands that I rid myself of it before it could reflect badly on him.”
He stilled. “Your father wanted you to have an abortion?”
“Either that or marry the investment banker of his choice.”
Something savage flashed in his eyes, but just as quickly it vanished, and his expression grew remote. “Okay, so we’ve established you had no
expectation of being able to contact me when you discovered you were pregnant.” His tone contained the same cool politeness he’d used to call her ma’am earlier, but his eyes burned with the devil’s own fire, holding not the tiniest vestige of polite objectivity as they drilled into hers. “That doesn’t begin to address your failure to mention Esme or her relationship to me since I arrived.”
“Are you serious?” Staring at him, she could see that he was. “Well, what can I say, Rocket? Coming face-to-face with a man I haven’t seen in six years took me a bit by surprise.” The edge of bitterness in her own voice shocked her. Reminding herself she was an adult, she drew a deep breath, grabbed hold of her manners before they could slip-slide their way right into oblivion and exhaled quietly. “I apologize. That wasn’t civil.”
His mouth twisted. “God-frigging-forbid we should be uncivilized.”
Yes, well, not all of us have the luxury of verbalizing every thought that pops into our head. Unclenching her teeth, Victoria inquired with hard-won equanimity, “Then how about this? I have a well-adjusted little girl, and for all that I remember you as a very nice guy, I also recall that long-lasting relationships weren’t exactly your forte. I have no reason to assume that’s changed.” An edge of hardness crept into her voice and she didn’t attempt to soften it. “Frankly, I don’t care how nice you may or may not be. I will fight to the death before I’ll allow Esme to be exposed to a father who flits in and out of her life like Peter Pan.”
His eyes grew fiercer yet. “I have news for you, honey—I was never the Peter Pan type. I might have been a partier when we met, but not wanting to grow up was never the problem. Set aside the fact that I was first and foremost a Marine, which by definition is a person of credibility. I grew up rough and I grew up fast, at an age, by God, younger than most. You want to exchange resumes on responsibility? I was out dodging bullets and eating mud while you were still attending your posh little schools for pampered princesses.”
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