His Illegitimate Heir

by Sarah M. Anderson

  But even just thinking about going to Chadwick felt wrong. She wasn’t six, running to her father to tattle. She was a grown woman. She’d gotten herself into this mess and she had to get herself out of it.

  The worst part was, Zeb had been right. There was something between them. There had been since the very first moment she had walked into his office and locked eyes with him. There was chemistry and raw sexual attraction and the sex was amazing. And when he was doing everything right, he was practically...perfect.

  But when he wasn’t perfect, he really wasn’t perfect.

  Instead of going back to her apartment, Casey found herself heading toward her father’s small ranch house in Brentwood. She’d grown up in this little house, and at one time, it had seemed like a mansion to her. She hadn’t ever wanted to live in a real mansion. She didn’t need to be surrounded by all the trappings of luxury—and she also did not need a diamond that probably cost more than a year’s salary on her finger.

  Instead, she wanted what she’d had growing up. A father who doted on her, who taught her how to do things like change a tire and throw a baseball and brew beer. A father who protected her.

  She hadn’t grown up with all the luxuries that money could buy. But she’d been happy. Was it wrong to want that? Was it wrong to demand that?

  No. It wasn’t. So that wasn’t the right question.

  The bigger question was, could she demand that of Zeb?

  She was happy to see that the lights were on at home. Sometimes a girl needed her father. She walked in the house, feeling a little bit like a teenager who had stayed out past curfew and was about to get in trouble. “Daddy?”

  “In the kitchen,” he called back.

  Casey smiled at that. Any other parent who was in the kitchen might reasonably be expected to be cooking. But not Carl Johnson. She knew without even seeing it that he had something taken apart on the kitchen table—a lamp or doorbell, something.

  True to form, a chandelier was sitting in the middle of the table, wires strung everywhere.

  The chandelier was a piece of work—cut crystal prisms caught the light and made it look like the room was glowing. It belonged in a mansion like Zeb’s. Here, in her father’s house, it looked horribly out of place. She knew the feeling.

  It was such a comforting thing, sitting at this table while her father tinkered with this or that. Casey slid into her old seat. “How are you doing, Daddy?”

  “Pretty good. How are you?” He looked at her and paused. “Honey? Is everything okay?”

  No. Things were not all right and she wasn’t sure how to fix them. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

  He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Are you in trouble? You know I don’t like you living in that apartment by yourself. There’s still plenty of room for you here.”

  She smiled weakly at him. “It’s not that. But I... I did something stupid and now I think I’ve messed everything up.”

  “Does this have something to do with work?” When Casey didn’t reply immediately, her dad pressed on. “This is about your new boss?”

  There was no good way to say this. “Yeah, it does. I’m... I’m pregnant.”

  Her father stiffened, his grip on her shoulder tight before he quickly released her. “Them Beaumonts—I never did trust them. Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

  Casey slumped forward, head in her hands and her elbows on the table. “No, it’s not like that, Dad. I like him. He likes me. But I’m not sure that that’s going to be enough.” She looked at her father. He looked skeptical. “He asked me to marry him.”

  Her father sat straight up. “He did? Well, I guess that’s the right thing to do—better than what his old man would’ve done.” There was a long pause during which Casey went back to slumping against her hands. “Do you want to get married? Because you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, honey.”

  “I don’t know what to do. When he asked me, he made it clear that he expected me to quit my job and stay home and be a mother full-time.” She sighed. It wasn’t only that, though.

  No, the thing that really bothered her had been the implication that she, Casey Johnson, wasn’t good enough to be the mother to his child as she was. Instead, she needed to become someone else. The perfect mother. And what the hell did she know about mothering? Nothing. She’d never had one.

  “And that’s not what I want. I fought hard to get my job, Dad. And I like brewing beer. I don’t want to throw that all away because of one mistake. But if I don’t marry him, how am I going to keep working at the brewery?” Her father opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “And no, I don’t think asking Chadwick for a job is the best solution, either. I have no desire to be the rope in Beaumont tug-of-war.”

  They sat quietly for a few moments, but it wasn’t long until her father had picked up a few pieces of wire. He began stripping them in an absentminded sort of way. “This guy—”

  “Zeb. Zeb Richards.”

  Another piece of copper shone in the light. “This Zeb—he’s one of them Beaumont bastards, right?” Casey nodded. “And he offered to marry you so his kid wouldn’t be a bastard like he was?”

  “Yeah. I just... I just don’t want that to be the only reason. I mean, I can see he’s trying to do the right thing, but if I get married, I’d kind of like it to be for love.”

  Her dad nodded and continued to strip the wire. “I wish your mom were here,” he said in an offhand way. “I don’t know what to tell you, honey. But I will say this. Your mom and I got married because we had to.”

  “What?” Casey shot straight up in her chair and stared at him. Her father was blushing. Oh, Lord.

  “I never told you about this, because it didn’t seem right. We’d been dating around and she got pregnant and I asked her to marry me. I hadn’t before then, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to settle down, but with you on the way, I grew up—fast.”

  She gaped at him. “I had no idea, Dad.”

  “I didn’t want you to think you were a mistake, honey. Because you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” His eyes shone and he cleared his throat a few times—all while still stripping wire. “Anyway, that first year—that was rough. We had to learn how to talk to each other, how to live together. But you were born, and suddenly, everything about us just made more sense. And then when the accident came...” He shuddered. “The reason I’m telling you this,” he went on in a more serious voice, as if he hadn’t just announced that she was a surprise, “is that sometimes love comes a little later. If you guys like each other and you both want this kid, maybe you should think about it.” He put down his wire trimmers and rested a hand on hers. “The most important thing is that you two talk to each other.”

  She felt awful because, well, there hadn’t been a lot of talk. She’d gone over to his place tonight to do just that, and instead, they’d fallen into bed.

  The one time she had sat down and had a conversation with the man had been at the ball game. She had liked him a great deal then—more than enough to bring him home with her. Maybe they could make this work.

  No matter what Zeb had said, they didn’t have to get married. Times had changed and her dad wasn’t about to bust out a shotgun to escort them down the aisle.

  She wasn’t opposed to getting married. She didn’t have anything against marriage. She just... Well, she didn’t want their marriage to be on his terms only.

  She knew who she was. She was a woman in her early thirties, unexpectedly pregnant. But she was also a huge sports fan. She could rewire a house. She brewed beer and changed her own oil.

  She was never going to be a perfect stay-at-home mom, baking cookies and wearing pearls and lunching with ladies. That wasn’t who she was.

  If Zeb wanted to marry her and raise their child as a family, then not only did he have to accept
that she was going to do things differently, but he was going to have to support her. Encourage her.

  That did not mean taking her job away under the pretext of taking care of her. That meant helping her find a way to work at the job she loved and raise a happy, healthy child.

  She wanted it all.

  And by God, it was all or nothing.

  But men—even men as powerful as Zebadiah Richards—were not mind readers. She knew that. Hell, she was living that.

  She needed to tell him what she wanted. Without falling into bed with him and without it devolving into awkward awfulness.

  “I sure am sorry, honey,” her dad went on. “I’d love to be a grandfather—but I hate that this has put you in an awkward position.” He gave her fingers a squeeze. “You know that, no matter what you decide, I’ll be here to back you up.”

  She leaned in to her dad’s shoulder and he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. “I know, Daddy. I appreciate it.”

  “Tell you what,” Dad said when she straightened up. “Tomorrow’s Friday, right? And the Rockies play a game at three. Why don’t you play hooky tomorrow? Stay here with me tonight. We’ll make a day of it.”

  She knew that this was not a solution in any way, shape or form. At some point, she was going to have to sit down with Zeb and hash out what, exactly, they were going to do.

  Soon. Next week, she’d be an adult again. She would deal with this unexpected pregnancy with maturity and wisdom. Eventually, she needed to talk with Zeb.

  But for right now, she needed to be the girl she’d always been.

  Sometimes, fathers did know best.

  Fifteen

  “Where is she?”

  The man Zeb had stopped—middle-aged, potbellied... He knew that he’d been introduced to this man before. Larry? Lance? Something like that. It wasn’t important.

  What was important was finding Casey.

  “She’s not here,” the man said, his chins wobbling dangerously.

  Zeb supposed he should be thankful that, since Casey was one of exactly two women in the production department, everyone knew which “she” he was talking about.

  “Yes, I can see that. What I want to know,” he said slowly and carefully, which caused all the blood to drain out of the guy’s face, “is where she is now.”

  It wasn’t fair to terrorize employees like this, but dammit, Zeb needed to talk to Casey. She had stormed out of his house last night and by the time he’d gotten dressed, she had disappeared. She hadn’t been at her apartment—the security guy said he hadn’t seen her. In desperation, Zeb had even stopped by the brewery, just to make sure she wasn’t tinkering with her brews. But the place had been quiet and the night shift swore she hadn’t been in.

  Her office was just as dark this morning. He didn’t know where she was and he was past worrying and headed straight for full-on panic.

  Which meant that he was currently scaring the hell out of one of his employees. He stared at the man, willing himself not to shake the guy. “Well?”

  “She said she wouldn’t be in today.”

  Zeb took a deep breath and forced himself to remain calm. “Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  He must not have been doing a good job at the whole “calm” thing, because his employee backed up another step. “Sometimes she takes off in the afternoon to go to a game. With her dad. But you wouldn’t fire her for that, right?” The man straightened his shoulders and approximated a stern look. “I don’t think you should.”

  The game. Of course—why hadn’t Zeb thought of that? She had season tickets, right? She’d be at the game. The relief was so strong it almost buckled his knees.

  “No, I’m not going to fire her,” he assured the guy. “Thanks for the tip, though. And keep up the good work.”

  On the walk back to his office, he called up the time for the baseball game. Three o’clock—that wasn’t her taking the afternoon off. That was her taking the whole day. Had he upset her so much that she couldn’t even face him? It wasn’t like her to avoid a confrontation, after all.

  What a mess. His attempt at a marriage proposal last night had not been his best work. But then, he had no experience proposing marriage while his brain was still fogged over from an amazing climax. He didn’t have any experience in proposing marriage at all.

  That was the situation he was going to change, though. He couldn’t walk away from her. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to do that before she had realized she was pregnant. There was something about her that he couldn’t ignore. Yes, she was beautiful, and yes, she challenged him. Boy, did she challenge him. But there was more to it than that.

  His entire life had been spent trying to prove that he was someone. That he was a Beaumont, that he belonged in the business world—that he mattered, regardless of his humble origins or the color of his skin.

  And for all that Casey argued with him, she never once asked him to be anyone other than himself. She accepted him as who he was—even if who he was happened to be a man who sometimes said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

  He had made her a promise that he would take care of her, and by God, he was going to do that.

  But this time, he was going to ask her how she wanted him to take care of her. Because he should have known that telling her what to do was a bad idea.

  Ah, the seats behind hers were still available for this afternoon’s game. Zeb bought the tickets.

  He was going to do something he had never done before—he was going to take the afternoon off work.

  * * *

  “You want me to go get you some more nachos, honey?” Dad asked for the third time in a mere two innings.

  Casey looked down at the chips covered in gloppy cheese. She was only kind of pregnant—wasn’t it too soon for her stomach to be doing this many flips?

  “I’m okay.” She looked up and saw Dad staring at her. He looked so eager that she knew he needed something to do. “Really. But I could use another Sprite.” Frankly, at this point, clear soda was the only thing keeping her stomach settled.

  “I’ll be right back,” Dad said with a relieved smile, as if her problems could all be solved with more food. Men, Casey thought with another grin after he was gone.

  Whereas she had no idea what she could do to make this better. No, it wasn’t the most mature thing in the world to have skipped work today. It was just delaying the inevitable conversation that she would have to have with Zeb at some point or another.

  There had been a moment last night—the moment before the kiss—where he’d told her that he was going to take care of her. That had been what she wanted. Hadn’t that been why she’d gone to her dad after she had stormed out of Zeb’s house? Because she wanted someone to take care of her?

  But it wasn’t a fair comparison. Her father had known her for her entire life. Of course he would know what she wanted—wasn’t that why they were at this game today? It wasn’t fair for her to hope and hope and just keep on hoping, dammit, that Zeb would guess correctly. Especially not when he’d gotten so close. There was a big part of her that wanted him to take care of her.

  There was an equally big part of her that did not want to quit her job and be a stay-at-home mom. What if he couldn’t see that? He was a hard-driving businessman who wasn’t used to taking no for an answer. What if she couldn’t convince him that she would be a better mom if she could keep her job and keep doing what she loved?

  She was keeping her eye on the ball when she heard someone shuffling into the seat behind her. By instinct, she leaned forward to avoid any accidental hot dogs down the back of her neck. But as she did so, she startled as a voice came low and close to her ear. “It’s a nice afternoon for baseball, isn’t it?”

  Zeb. She would recognize his voice anywhere—deep and serious, with just a hint of play
fulness around the edge.

  “Nice enough to skip work, even,” he added when she didn’t manage to come up with a coherent response.

  Okay, now he was teasing her. She settled back in her chair, but she didn’t turn around and look at him. She didn’t want to see him in the suit and she didn’t want to see him in a T-shirt. So she kept her eyes focused on the game in front of her. “How did you find me?”

  “I asked Larry. I should’ve figured it out by myself. You weren’t at your apartment and you weren’t at work.”

  “I went home—I mean, my dad’s home.”

  “I upset you. I didn’t mean to, but I did.” He exhaled and she felt his warmth against the back of her neck. “I shouldn’t have assumed you would want to stay home. I know you and I know you’re far too ambitious to give up everything you’ve worked for just because of something like this.”

  Now she did twist around. Good Lord—he was wearing purple. A Rockies T-shirt and a Rockies hat.

  “You blend,” she said in surprise. “I didn’t think you knew how to do that.”

  “I can be taught.” One corner of his mouth curved up in a small smile—the kind of smile that sent a shiver down her back. “I’m working on doing a better job of listening.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I have to tell you, I was frantic this morning when I couldn’t find you at work. I was afraid you might quit on me and then where would I be?”

  “But that’s a problem, don’t you see? How am I going to do my job? How am I going to brew beer if I can’t drink it?”

  Zeb settled back in his seat, that half smile still firmly on his face. “One of the things I’ve learned during my tenure as CEO of the Beaumont Brewery is that my employees do not drink on the job. They may sample in small quantities, but no one is ever drunk while they’re at work—a fact which I appreciate. And I’ve also learned that I have extremely competent employees who care deeply about our brewery.”