by Cindy Dees
He felt terrible hearing her panic and relief. Good Lord willing, he’d never scare her like this again. “I’m fine. I’ll be home in about an hour. There was something I had to take care of.”
A pause. “Can you talk to me about it?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. But it’s handled. No worries.” At least he hoped there was nothing to worry about. The P.I. he’d spoken to in Boston had been confident he could find everything that had ever existed on one Nick Cass prior to six years ago. If the man had ever actually existed, Nick would know all about him in a few days.
The cab delivered him to the mansion’s front door in closer to two hours than one—there’d been an accident and traffic was hellish. As he stepped inside, Adam shouted a greeting that warmed Nick all the way to his soul. Laura held herself to a walk as she came to greet him, but she squeezed him so tightly it hurt and he thought he felt a sob shake her momentarily.
“I’m sorry, darling. I knew you’d want to go with me, but I had to take care of a piece of old business on my own.”
Her muffled voice rose from his chest. “Did you kill anyone?”
“No,” he laughed.
“Are we okay?”
His arms tightened convulsively around her. “That’s the whole idea. I love you and the children more than life.” They stood locked together like they’d never let go of each other for a long time. Finally, he murmured, “Am I forgiven?”
“Of course. I could never stay mad at you. If you say you had to do something, then you had to do it. If you can’t talk about it with me, there’s a good reason for that, too. And if you say you love me, I believe you.”
He tilted her chin up to kiss her. “I am, without question, the luckiest man on Earth to have you.”
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him back. “And don’t you ever forget it,” she murmured.
“Never.” Their lips met, and the passion that always simmered between them boiled over immediately. His mouth slanted across hers, and she clung to him eagerly.
“Eeyew! Gross!” Adam exclaimed from the steps above them.
Nick lifted his mouth away from Laura’s and smiled up at his son. “For now, you hold on to that thought, young man. But trust me. In a few years, girls won’t be nearly so disgusting.”
“But Mommy’s not a girl. She’s a…mommy.”
Laura laughed in Nick’s arms. “Gee, thanks, kid.” She scooped up Adam and swung him around until they were all laughing.
And just like that, life was back to the way it was supposed to be. As Nick followed his family toward the kitchen, he experienced an overwhelming sensation of having dodged a bullet.
The sensation lasted exactly one hour. That was when Carter Tatum called to inform him that he was to appear at a pre-trial hearing in three days’ time. Three days for the private investigator to give him enough ammunition to hold off a pack of sharks out to tear him to pieces. It was almost enough to make him reconsider enlisting Laura’s prodigious skill with computers to help him research his Nick Cass identity.
Almost. But not quite.
Laura understood Nick’s nervousness as his first encounter with AbaCo’s lawyers loomed only a few hours away. But there was something else going on with him. He kept checking his cell phone like he was expecting a message, and the longer it didn’t come, the more tense he was quietly becoming. It took knowing him exceedingly well to see the signs of his stress—the tightness around his eyes, the absent quality to some of his comments, the very occasional twitch of a thumb. She had to give Nick credit. He had amazing self-discipline to give away so little as a limousine whisked the two of them toward Washington, D.C.
His self-control held through the hearing, but he wasn’t put on the witness stand and grilled, either. The legal proceeding mostly consisted of motions and technical arguments between the lawyers. As far as she could tell, they were wrangling over the rules of engagement for the trial to come. All in all, it was rather anticlimactic.
The hearing was adjourned, and Nick joined her in the aisle, looping an arm over her shoulder as they stepped outside…
…into a barrage of lights and microphones and shouted questions.
Nick reared back hard beside her, going board stiff. The Tatum team of attorneys leaped forward to intercept the phalanx of reporters, but it was too late. The press had spotted Nick. The story of his kidnapping and rescue had made a brief sensation last year, but thanks to his inability at the time to give interviews and put a poster-boy face to the story, it had faded quickly.
Unfortunately, the media had put two and two together, and they wanted the scoop on the miracle man now. Laura was half-blinded by flashing lights exploding at them from all directions. Good thing she was completely out of her old line of work. One media assault like this would’ve blown her cover permanently.
Nick swore quietly beside her. To the lawyers, he said tersely, “Get us out of here. Now.”
The Tatum support team hustled her and Nick down the front steps and into the waiting limousine. He collapsed on the plush upholstery, swearing steadily under his breath in what sounded like Greek. What was up with that?
The car door closed, and silence descended around them.
He yanked out his cell phone and punched in a number. She caught only the first few digits—617 area code. Boston?
“It’s Nick Cass,” said into the device tersely. “What have you got for me?”
He listened in silence for a long time, his jaw clenching tighter with each passing minute. And then he finally ordered, “Keep looking.”
“Who was that?” Laura asked as he put away his phone.
He looked up at her grimly. It was like staring into the eyes of a total stranger. Cold shock washed over her. Who was this man sitting beside her? She couldn’t ever recall seeing that expression of irritation or determination in his gaze before.
He answered tightly, “That was my past.”
She waited for him to elaborate but was immensely frustrated when he didn’t. It was all she could do not to demand answers right this second. But she’d vowed when she found him to just be grateful that he was alive and accept whatever part of him he chose to share with her, no questions asked. But, darn, that was hard to stick to now!
The ride home was silent, with him lost in his thoughts, and her convincing herself to respecting his privacy. She would not turn her investigative skills on the father of her children, the man she loved with all her heart. She would trust him and take him at his word and support him. But her fingers literally itched to start typing, to dig into the internet and tap her network of resources built up over years of hunting down disappeared and deadbeat dads.
At dinner that night, she and Nick let Adam dominate the conversation with an eager description of his outing with Nanny Lisbet to Colonial Williamsburg that afternoon. Afterwards, Adam went upstairs with Lisbet to take a bath, and Laura and Nick adjourned to the family room. Nick flipped on the news.
Laura started violently as his face flashed up on the flat-screen TV at several times larger than life size. He froze on the sofa beside her.
The reporter narrated over footage from the courthouse this afternoon, recapping the story of Nick’s rescue from a container ship a year before and moving on to report in detail how federal prosecutors were going after several high-ranking AbaCo executives for their roles in Nick’s kidnapping. The reporter devolved into speculating on how high in the company the complicity reached.
Nick turned off the TV, scowling ferociously.
Laura commented soothingly, “It was an essentially accurate report. You came off completely sympathetically. You’re an innocent victim of a heinous crime. And I have to say, you’re incredibly photogenic. The public is going to love you.” She smiled. “Particularly women.”
His scowl deepened and he leaped up off the sofa to pace. He kept mumbling something under his breath that sounded like, “Not good. They’ll see me.”
“Who’ll see you?” she asked carefull
y.
When he turned to stare at her, it was like looking into the eyes of a wild creature, hunted and cornered. “Everything will be ruined,” he bit out. And with that, he stormed out of the room.
Laura eyed her laptop computer. Just a quick search. Nothing in depth. A brief check to see if something about his past would pop up. No, darn it! She headed for the gym in the basement to drown her temptation in some good old-fashioned sweat.
Nick was restless that night. To her vast disappointment, he didn’t come to bed when she did, and the clock was turning toward 4:00 a.m. when he finally slipped in beside her. His arms went around her and she snuggled into his embrace, pretending to sleep.
But as she lay there in the dark, listening to his quiet breathing, she couldn’t help but wonder who exactly she was in bed with. What in his past had him so frantic? Was he a criminal after all? Who were his enemies? What baggage clung to him? What kind of trouble was he so afraid of bringing to her doorstep? She was a former CIA field agent, for goodness’ sake. What was so bad that he didn’t think she could handle it?
She finally gave up on getting any more rest at around 6 a.m. and eased out of bed quietly so as not to wake Nick. She went to the nursery and scooped up Ellie who, orderly child that she was, was beginning to rouse exactly on time for her 6 a.m. feeding.
“Such a good baby,” Laura crooned as she sat down in the rocking chair in the family room to feed Ellie. As the baby latched on and began sucking hungrily, Laura picked up the remote control and flipped on the TV. Was Nick still the star attraction of the all news channels, or had some real story come along overnight to bump him off the airwaves?
“…reclusive billionaire Nikolas Spiros may have surfaced yesterday in a Washington, D.C. courtroom…appears to be living under a new name…rumors of kidnapping and conspiracy surround his disappearance six years ago after a mental breakdown…unable to contact his people to confirm or deny his identity…you judge for yourself.”
Laura lurched up out of the chair as a photograph of a dashing man in his early thirties was flashed up beside a still picture of Nick yesterday on the courthouse steps.
She knew that younger man very well, indeed. He’d been her lover in Paris six years ago. He was the father of her son. And the man in the other, more recent, picture was the man she lived with now, the father of her daughter. Ellie squawked as she lost her grip on breakfast, and Laura was momentarily distracted resettling the baby.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she murmured. “Mommy was just surprised.”
Although surprised hardly described the sick nausea rumbling through her gut. Nick was a Greek shipping tycoon named Nikolas Spiros? A billionaire? Why had he turned his back on all that? Why did he continue to live under this Nick Cass identity?
Her mind flashed back to Paris. To meeting Nick Cass there. He’d lied to her. He hadn’t told her who he was back then, and he was perpetuating the lie now. No wonder neither she nor her attorney had been able to learn anything about him back then. Nick Cass didn’t exist. The first stirrings of anger started low in her belly, building by steady degrees. Only Ellie’s tiny body nestled against her breast, sucking sleepily, kept her from storming up the stairs and bursting in on Nick—Nikolas—this very second and demanding the full truth and nothing but the truth.
Who in the world was he?
Chapter 5
Laura reached her desk just as the phone rang. Who on earth would be calling her at this time of morning? Alarmed, she picked up the receiver.
“Good morning, this is Shelley Hacker from The Morning News Hour. I’m calling to speak to Nikolas Spiros.”
“I’m afraid you have a wrong number.” Laura hung up fast, not giving the reporter time to ask any follow-up questions.
The phone rang again. Oh, Lord. She glanced at the caller ID: unknown caller. She picked the receiver up an inch and set it back down. The feeding frenzy had begun.
“What’s going on?”
Laura whirled to face Nick. “You tell me. The phone’s ringing off the hook with reporters wanting to speak with Nikolas Spiros.”
Beneath his olive complexion, Nick went a sickly shade of gray. He gritted out, “I’m Nick Cass.”
“You are now. I get that. But were you this Spiros guy at some point in your past?”
“My past is dead.”
She gritted her teeth. This was about her and the children as much as it was about him, darn it. She had a family to protect. “I understand your desire to move on. To start a new life. I really do. I support you all the way. But if you were Nikolas Spiros before, you’re going to have to deal with him sometime. What are you going to tell the media?”
“I’ll tell them nothing. It’s none of their business.”
A new hardness, or maybe an old hardness for all she knew, clung to Nick. This was not the gentle, laid-back man she’d spent the past year with. This man resembled much more a savvy, tough businessman who might run a billion-dollar shipping empire. Did she know him at all?
The phone rang again. She glanced at the caller ID and stopped herself at the last second from hanging it up. “It’s Tatum Carter. Your lawyer wants to talk to you…Nikolas.”
Nick sighed and held a hand out for the receiver.
“What the hell’s going on, Nick?”
“Tatum. Good morning. I gather you’ve seen the news?” Nick asked evenly.
“What’s this about you being some Greek billionaire? Hell, you owned AbaCo Shipping until a few years ago. What have you gotten me into?”
Ahh, the ass-covering had commenced. Nick sighed. “If you want to remove yourself from this case, I won’t stop you.”
“No, no,” Tatum quickly replied. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
Nick rolled his eyes. Greed won out, then. He took a certain comfort in knowing what made the attorney tick. And then he jolted as he realized his old, sharklike business instincts were roaring back to the fore. He didn’t want to return to this part of his life, this part of himself.
He glanced up and caught Laura staring at him in equal parts dismay and horror. He was losing her. As sure as he was standing here, she was pulling away from him—from the stranger he’d become. “I’ll call you later, Tatum.”
He hung up on the man without any further ado and sat down beside Laura on the sofa. “I lied to you in Paris.”
“I already figured that out,” she replied dryly. “Why?”
No way was he going to tell her all the things William Ward had revealed to him. There was still a chance he could keep her and the kids out of his past, and he was going to do his darnedest to make that happen. The private investigator had found nothing on any Nick Cass. So far it appeared such a man had never existed. If that held true, his new family was in the clear.
He shrugged. “I apparently created an alter ego for myself. An identity under which I could travel anonymously and unobtrusively. Nick Cass could go into a coffee shop or sit at a café and no one paid any attention to him.”
“Who were you hiding from?” Laura asked shrewdly.
“The media, I imagine. My employees, maybe. Hell, maybe an ex-lover.” He added candidly, “And myself, if I had to guess.”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“I expect you fell for Nick Cass, the regular guy, not some Greek billionaire. Knowing you and loving you the way I do now, I’ll bet I wasn’t about to risk what I had with you.”
“So you lied to me? You trusted me so little? Didn’t you think I would understand? Am I that judgmental or just that stupid?”
She didn’t raise her voice, but the anger in it was unmistakable.
“I’m sorry, Laura. I don’t remember any of it. I have no answers for you. Undoubtedly, I was wrong and should have told you everything from the start.”
She threw up her hands. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be this furious with you and not be able to be mad at you because you can’t remember doing any of it?”
He smi
led sadly. “I really am sorry.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Deal with the fallout as best as I can, and when the excitement blows over, go back to being plain old Nick Cass, the man who loves you and our kids.”
“What fallout should I expect from this revelation?”
He grimaced but forced himself to look her squarely in the eye. “I honestly don’t know. But I can tell you this. I plan to do everything in my power to keep you and the kids out of this.”
“This what?”
She was too smart for her own good, sometimes. She’d heard the evasion in his voice and put her finger exactly on the source of his discomfort. “I’ve had a gut feeling since the moment you fished me out of that box that I should let sleeping dogs lie. I feel that way more strongly than ever. It’s nothing concrete. Just a feeling.”
He reached out and took her icy hands in his. “I don’t know what’s hidden in those lost five years, I swear. But I think it’s bad, and I think it could put you and the children in danger. You’ve got to let me deal with this alone. Stay away from it, Laura.”
She stared at him, her dark gaze brimming with frustration. “No way—”
He cut her off gently. “I have to know the children are safe. You have to take care of them for me—for us—while I put my past to rest.”
Ellie must’ve sensed her mother’s tension for the infant started to fuss. He was a cad to be so relieved at being saved by a baby’s distress. Ellie, uncharacteristically, wanted no part of being soothed. Her fussing escalated to crying outright and soon to screaming. Not appreciating mommy’s stress, apparently.
Laura spared him a look that promised this conversation was not over as she left to find Lisbet.
The phone rang again. He glanced at the caller ID and jolted. William Ward. How had his former attorney found this phone number, and furthermore, why on earth was he calling it? Nick picked up the receiver quickly lest Laura take the call.
“Good morning, William.”