Billionaire's Baby Promise (Mills & Boon Desire) (Billionaires and Babies, Book 79)

by Sarah M. Anderson

  It was foolish to keep hoping that no one would pay attention to Christine and her daughter. But short of calling Daniel Lee and asking what, exactly, he had in mind when he said he could protect her and Marie, she didn’t know what else to do.

  So she did nothing. She did her job and she took care of her daughter and foolishly hoped for the best.

  * * *

  “Who’s the target?”

  Daniel leveled a look at Porter Cole, the private investigator who’d done work for him in Denver on numerous occasions. Referring to Christine as a “target” grated on Daniel’s nerves. “Christine Murray.”

  Porter made it his job to know things. “What are we looking for?”

  Porter had done more than enough work for Daniel to trust him with sensitive directives. But Daniel wasn’t about to let the man know he had suddenly developed a conscience. “You’re not looking for anything about her.”

  Porter stared at him in confusion. “Then what are we doing?”

  “I have reason to believe she’s about to get a tail. I want to know who’s watching her and her daughter, when and for how long. And I want the means to get them off her tail. Outstanding warrants, whatever it takes.”

  Seeing Christine Murray in person had made everything a thousand times worse. Had he thought she was beautiful before? In person, she was so much more than that. Delicate and vulnerable—scared and mad—but underneath was a core of strength that took everything lovely about her and made her that much more attractive.

  Porter notched an eyebrow as he scanned the file on Christine. “Any particular reason?”

  “None that you need to know.” Which was a bit of posturing and Daniel knew it. Porter was a smart man, more than capable of connecting the dots. “As usual, do not engage unless there’s a threat.”

  “Contact for defense only. Got it. Anything else?” He handed the file back to Daniel.

  “No.” Daniel took the file and put it in his desk drawer, which he then locked. “Absolute secrecy, as always.”

  “As always.” Porter gave him a long look before standing and straightening his blazer, which concealed his gun. “If you don’t mind me saying, I thought you got out of politics.”

  “I did. This isn’t politics.”

  Porter smirked as he walked out of Daniel’s office and said, “You’ll be hearing from me,” as if he didn’t believe Daniel.

  For once, it was the unvarnished truth.

  What he was doing for Christine Murray—it wasn’t politics.

  It was personal.

  * * *

  Daniel waited impatiently. Normally, waiting was something he did well. He played a long game—always had. It was one of the things he’d learned at his grandfather’s knee back in Seoul, South Korea. Most people looked at the trees. A few people could stand in front of the trees and know they were looking at the forest. But they wouldn’t have any idea of how big that forest was. Daniel prided himself on knowing every tree in every acre in the never-ending forest.

  He had Christine Murray figured for one of two things. One, she would either call him in a state of blind panic the moment her face appeared on the internet again. Or two, she would disappear.

  Okay, maybe that was overstating. Because even though she had clearly been upset when he had approached her at work, she hadn’t panicked. She’d maintained her composure and even gotten in a couple of good digs at him.

  He couldn’t help it. He admired her. It felt risky, this admiration. Combined with the attraction he couldn’t quite rein in, it made Christine Murray feel dangerous. She made him want to do things that weren’t logical.

  Things like pay for private investigators to shadow her. He’d already gotten a report from Porter Cole. Porter had caught a guy trying to break into Christine’s apartment while she was at work. According to his report, Porter had acted like he was a resident of the apartment complex and scared the guy off. But both Daniel and Porter knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. Someone wanted inside Christine’s apartment, no doubt to gather evidence that could be used against her in the court of public opinion.

  Porter said there was also a woman who lingered near the child’s day care. At pick up and drop off, and when the children went out to the playground, the woman was within line of sight. Probably taking pictures of the little girl Daniel had seen in the small frame on Christine’s desk.

  The little girl had wispy light brown hair, but her eyes were almost exactly like her mother’s brilliant blue ones. Except innocent and hopeful, instead of trapped and scared.

  Christine didn’t want his help but she desperately needed it. It would be so much easier if she were willing to talk to him. They could coordinate and come up with a plan that would minimize this disruption to her and her daughter’s lives.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. At least not immediately. Daniel revised his original opinion. She would not call him in a panic the moment she became an internet story. She’d already told Brian off and then told him off. She wouldn’t be spooked by a little media coverage. She’d try to brazen it out just like she had at the bank. It was a brave choice. Stupid, but brave.

  No, Daniel wouldn’t hear from Christine when she became news. But when her daughter became news?

  That was when she would either call him or disappear.

  He figured he had a week before Clarence Murray announced his candidacy for the open US Senate seat in Missouri.

  If only his grandfather could see him now. Lee Dae-Won wouldn’t contain his disappointment at Daniel’s choices—yet again. Daniel had never been smart enough or ambitious enough or legitimate enough—and certainly never Korean enough—for his grandfather. All might have been forgiven if Daniel had married any of the dozens of acceptable Korean women his grandfather had paraded in front of him over the years and started a family to carry on the family business.

  Daniel had steadfastly refused to marry anyone, much less father any children. And he had refused to move to South Korea permanently and live under his grandfather’s thumb. It had driven the old man insane that his only heir had rejected the family business, Lee Enterprises.

  Daniel liked to think that, at least as a political consultant, he had made the old man proud. Lee Dae-Won hadn’t become one of the richest men in South Korea by investing wisely in real estate and electronic manufacturing. Daniel’s grandfather had gained power through manipulation, lies and outright bribery. He had trafficked in secrets and that, more than family honor or loyalty, was what Daniel had learned at his knee during summer vacations spent at the family compound in Seoul.

  He who controlled the information controlled the world.

  Daniel hated not being in control.

  He shouldn’t care about what happened to Christine or her daughter. At the very least, the basic security measures he was enacting on her behalf should relieve him of his guilt.

  It didn’t.

  Because he had to admit that he did care. He’d catch himself staring at her photo again. And that? That had nothing to do with guilt.

  He hoped she’d call him. That was all he could do. The next contact had to be hers.

  That didn’t mean there wasn’t anything else he could be doing right now, though. He scrolled through his contacts list until he found the number he was looking for.

  “Hello, Daniel,” Natalie Wesley said, answering on the second ring. “Is this a business call or not?”

  “What’s to say it’s not both?” he asked, trying to sound like he was teasing her and knowing he was failing miserably. “How are you and CJ?”

  CJ Wesley was another one of Daniel’s half brothers—another one of Hardwick Beaumont’s bastards. CJ was the one who hadn’t wanted anything to do with the Beaumont Brewery. He was a rancher up on the northeast side of Denver and he preferred his privacy. Which made it all the funnier that he had married the former television personality Natalie Baker—the same woman who had tried to expose his parentage to the world.

  Natalie was
one of the very few people who had been able to locate CJ and ascertain his identity. Plus, she’d had her own morning news show, A Good Morning With Natalie Baker, for almost a decade. She was an investigative journalist who knew how to talk to the cameras. “We’re fine. You should come up and see us. CJ is determined to get you on a horse, you know.”

  “I’ll do that sometime,” Daniel said. While of course he cared for CJ—he was fond of nearly all of his half siblings—CJ was the hardest to be around. His mother had married a good man and he’d had a good life. CJ was at ease with himself in a way that Daniel could never pull off. “I have a situation that I’m going to need your help with.”

  Natalie sighed. “The offer stands, Daniel. But what is it?”

  “What do you know about Christine Murray?”

  “Who?”

  So, over the next twenty minutes, Daniel filled her in. “Thus far, she hasn’t accepted my help. But when she does, we’ll need to do damage control.”

  “Manipulate the search rankings, plant positive news articles, maybe an interview?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got it.” There was a pause and Daniel braced for the sisterly concern. “We worry about you, you know.”

  “Why?” His health was great. He was helping to run the third-largest brewery in America and he owned a substantial share of Lee Enterprises. He owned homes in Seoul, Denver and Chicago. What was there to worry about?

  Okay, so he was a little troubled about Christine Murray and her daughter. But that wasn’t cause for alarm.

  “Daniel...” Her voice trailed off. “Never mind. I’ll look into this and get back to you if I find out anything.”

  It was strange that he felt disappointed she hadn’t said something else. Even though he had no idea what he wanted her to say. “Thanks.” He ended the call and refreshed the tab he kept open with his searches on Christine Murray. There was nothing new. Not yet, anyway.

  But there would be. Soon.

  Three

  Everything, it seemed, happened at once. One moment, Christine was just doing her job at the bank and trying not to think about the worst-case scenarios or Daniel Lee and his seemingly sincere offer of help. Or the way he filled out a suit.

  Suddenly, the alerts she had set up on web searches started piling up in her inbox. Clarence Murray had declared his candidacy for the open US Senate seat. Her phone started to ring, as if people had just been waiting for the official announcement. She was trying to read the article about her father and trying to answer the phone in her business-professional voice and saying no comment over and over again when it happened.

  Will Murray’s Granddaughter Cost Him This Election, Too?

  And there it was—the photo of her with Marie on her hip, alongside her Honda Civic. It wasn’t a good photo—clearly, it had been taken from some distance. The image was so grainy it could have been almost anyone.

  But it was her daughter. They knew where she was and they knew how to take pictures of her daughter and suddenly, Christine couldn’t bear it.

  With hands shaking, she pulled the nondescript business card out from underneath her office phone. She had wanted to throw Daniel Lee’s card away—but she’d been unable to do it. Because what he’d said had felt true, somehow.

  Would he actually help her? Or was he working an angle that she hadn’t found yet?

  Her phone rang again and this time, she recognized the voice on the other end. Brian White—the devil she didn’t want to know. “Ms. Murray,” he said, as if they were the oldest of friends. “I’m checking back in with you. As you may have heard, your father has officially declared his candidacy and I—”

  She hung up the phone. She didn’t want to hear his fake offers of help and she especially did not want to hear his thinly veiled threats.

  She did the only thing she could—she grabbed her cell phone and hurried to the ladies’ room. Daniel Lee’s card was a plain white rectangle of paper with two lines of text set directly in the middle—his name and a telephone number. She was shaking so violently that she misdialed the number twice before she finally got it right and even then, she sat for a moment on the stool in the farthest stall and wondered if she wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

  But then she thought about the headline, the one implying that a fourteen-month-old baby had the power to decide elections. The photos would only get better and the headlines would only get worse.

  She hit the button and held the phone to her ear. “This is Daniel.”

  “Um, hello. You gave me your card—”

  “Christine? Are you all right?”

  She forced herself to take a deep breath and tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. No, she was not all right. Not even close. “Hi. Um, I need to know if what you said when you talked to me last week still applies. The offer about, um, helping me and my daughter?”

  “You saw the articles?”

  Her vision began to swim and she couldn’t tell if she was about to pass out or if she was just crying again. “There’s more than one?”

  There was a long pause. “That’s not important right now. What is important is that you make sure you and your daughter are safe and that we can get together and formulate a plan.”

  It sounded good. Someone was concerned with their safety. Someone had a plan and the means of enacting it. If life were perfect, this would be the answer to her prayers.

  Life had never been perfect. “How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you didn’t write those articles or take those pictures? How do I know you’re not setting me up?”

  “You don’t.”

  Well, if that didn’t just beat all. She let out a frustrated laugh. “You’re not inspiring confidence right now.”

  “I’m being honest. You and I both know that if I told you I had nothing to do with those articles and promised you that you could trust me, it would only make you doubt me even more.”

  Darn it, he was right. But the heck of it was, she didn’t have much of a choice right now. Her options were few and far between and there was no guarantee that when she went to pick up Marie after work today there wouldn’t be a pack of people with cameras waiting for them. “Fine. But I don’t have to like it.”

  “If you liked it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Instead, you’d be holding an impromptu press conference in the bank’s parking lot. We need to meet, Christine.”

  Her stomach turned. She leaned forward, putting her head between her knees. “I don’t want you in my home. Don’t take it personally.”

  “I don’t. Besides, I’m not going to your apartment. One of the worst things that could happen would be for a strange man to be photographed entering and leaving your apartment. Similarly, you can’t come to my place. If you’re followed—and I think it’s safe to assume you will be—that’s another set of headlines that neither of us wants.”

  Okay, so he was being honest. “You want to meet in public?” Because that also seemed like a bad idea.

  “And risk more media coverage? Out of the question.”

  She honestly didn’t know if this conversation was making her feel better or worse. “So if we can’t meet in private and we can’t meet in public, how the heck are we supposed to meet?”

  “You attend the Red Rock church, correct?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you know that.”

  Red Rock was her attempt to bridge the evangelical teachings of her childhood with the faith that was in her heart. She needed a spiritual home and a nondenominational megachurch was a good place to disappear.

  Plus, they had a nice child care center. Going to Sunday services was as close as she got to a weekly break.

  “Which service do you normally attend—the nine a.m. or the ten forty-five?”

  “The later one.” This seemed like a bad idea. Meeting with a—well, she didn’t really know what to call Daniel Lee. He certainly wasn’t a friend. Maybe a spy? Finally, she
decided on associate. Meeting an associate like Daniel Lee in church seemed colossally wrong.

  But sometimes, there simply was no right option.

  “Which side of the chapel do you sit on?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know,” she snapped. Immediately, she added, “Sorry. I’m under a lot of stress right now.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. If I know which side you sit on, it’ll make it easier to find you. I don’t want it to look like you’re looking for me. I would like you to think if there is a classroom or a small alcove—an out-of-the-way place where we could chat without being conspicuous about it. Can you do that?”

  “There will be people around. Over two thousand people go to this church.”

  “We’re not hiding. We’re merely being inconspicuous.”

  Was she supposed to understand that distinction? “I sit on the far left side. It’s close to the aisle and closer to the child care center if there’s a problem. And there are a few places where we could talk with minimal interruptions.” She hoped.

  Actually, the idea of meeting in a semipublic place like the church wasn’t half-bad. She didn’t want to be alone with him. But if they were in the church, there would be people around. It was probably as safe as it was going to get.

  “Excellent. I’ll find you after the service. But don’t hesitate to call me before then if there’s something you need help with.”

  “All right.” It was Friday. Surely, she could make it through a day and a half, right?

  “Christine, I’m serious. If you see someone around who makes you uncomfortable, try to get a picture of them, then call me immediately.”

  “What are you going to do that the police couldn’t?”

  There was another pause, one that felt heavy and ominous. “I’ll see you on Sunday,” he said, completely avoiding the question. “Keep a low profile until then.”

  That made her laugh even as her eyes began to water again. “I’ve been doing that for the last year and a half. I go to work, I go grocery shopping and I go home. I do my laundry and then take care of my daughter. I don’t have wild nights on the town. I don’t take lovers. I’m the most boring person I know and see what good it’s done me?” She only realized she was shouting because her voice echoed off the tiled walls of the bathroom. “It doesn’t matter how low my profile is. I’m nothing but bait in a sea of sharks. And it’s all your fault.”