Her gaze fused with Ryan’s. “How many words?”
“Try to keep it under seven hundred fifty for each time frame.”
She handed him back the schedule. “Give me the contact data on Dr. Cole, and I’ll set up an appointment with him.”
What the editor did not know was that she had the numbers to Tyler’s home phone, cell phone, and pager. She’d been to the man’s house not once but twice. She’d eaten at his table, slept in his bed, and found herself falling in love with him despite her resolve not to get involved.
Pressing a button on his computer, the Herald’s editor in chief scrolled through a listing of names, printing out the data he’d collected on Dr. Tyler Cole. He handed her the single sheet of paper.
She picked up a phone on one of the desks, dialing the number to the Hillsboro Women’s Health Clinic, asking to speak to Dr. Cole after she’d identified herself as a reporter from the Hillsboro Herald. The woman who answered the call identified herself as Ms. Lincoln, informed Dana Dr. Cole was out of the state and wasn’t expected to return until the end of the week. Dana left her name and number and a message he call her upon his return.
She schooled her expression not to reveal her uneasiness. When she and Tyler parted the night before, he’d promised to call her after office hours Monday evening. She hoped his absence wasn’t the result of a family emergency.
Folding the paper, she put it in her purse, gathered the back issues, thanked Ryan, and walked out of the office. It was only the first day, but she knew she’d made an ally in Ryan Vance. He would be able to confirm or deny most or all of her findings, and she prayed she would uncover the truth before her leave expired.
Fifteen
It was early Tuesday evening when Tyler was finally able to dial the area code and then Dana’s telephone number; he sighed in relief when hearing her voice come through the earpiece. He’d left Hillsboro, Mississippi, within two hours of receiving a call from a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company requesting his presence at an FDA hearing on the approval of a controversial drug deemed safe for pregnant and lactating women.
He’d been waiting for the call for several months, but was told the hearing had been postponed until late summer. Once the call had come through, Imogene Lincoln was given the task of calling patients and rescheduling appointments. A part-time OB-GYN and a physician’s assistant were called in to cover Tyler’s cases for the week, with a possibility his stay in Washington would be extended an additional week.
“I have a message you called.” His soft voice was filled with repressed laughter. “I take it you miss me.”
Dana laughed. “I don’t think so, Dr. Cole. I didn’t know you had such an inflated ego.”
It was Tyler’s turn to laugh. “Never with you, Miss Nichols.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Georgetown. I’m staying with a cousin. I’m here for a weeklong FDA hearing. Hold on a minute.”
Teresa Kirkland toddled across the room, his watch clasped tightly in her chubby little fist. Tyler moved off his chair, picked her up, and eased his watch from her fingers. Teresa shrieked an ear-piercing scream while squirming to free herself from her godfather’s firm grip. Holding her under an arm in a football carry, Tyler placed the curly-haired little girl in a playpen filled with stuff animals and soft toys. She stared up at him, electric-green eyes wide with uncertainty. Her lower lip quivered, her eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry. Sighing audibly, she reached for a faded terry-cloth rabbit, pressed it against her coal-black hair, rolled over on her side, and closed her eyes.
It was Tyler’s turn to sigh as he returned to his telephone call with Dana. Teresa usually put up quite a commotion when placed in the playpen. Since she’d begun walking on her own she’d exhibited an uncanny sense of independence. She did not want to be held or confined.
“What are you doing, babysitting?” Dana asked when he came back to the phone.
“I told my cousins I’d look after their daughter while they went out to dinner. Jolene warned me not to let Teresa out of her playpen, but I felt sorry for her, so I let her hang out with me. Her mother says Teresa has a habit of flushing things down the toilet. Every bathroom door in the house has to remain closed whenever the toilet bandit is on the loose.”
“How old is she?”
“She just celebrated her first birthday. She’s incredibly beautiful and very, very bright. I know I sound biased, but she does happen to be my goddaughter.”
“If she’s all you say, then you have a right to be biased.”
He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. Interacting with Teresa April Kirkland had evoked a deep yearning for fatherhood. He wanted children. He’d even settle for one child. The desire to father a child was strange, foreign, despite the number of babies he’d delivered since he’d become a doctor. Every child he’d assisted in bringing into the word he deemed a miracle. The entire cycle of conception, confinement, and birth was a miracle.
And he knew who he wanted to carry his babies—Dana Nichols!
“I’m sorry I left without contacting you. I got a call before just before midnight, telling me I was to come to D.C. for a ten A.M. meeting.”
“There’s nothing worse than a last-minute meeting.”
“I agree. These hearings were planned sometime ago, but I hadn’t expected them to convene at this time. Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be all right, Tyler?”
“You called my office.”
She told him Ryan Vance had hired her on a part-time basis to work for the Herald, and that the editor had assigned her to interview him for the Hillsboro: Then and Now feature column.
Tyler’s smile was dazzling. She had gotten a job with the Hillsboro newspaper. Maybe, just maybe, she would change her mind and remain in Hillsboro permanently.
He’d always shied away from interviews, preferring to let his work speak for him. But Dana was different. He was falling in love—no—he was in love with her. And because he was he would agree to do anything for her.
“How soon would you want to conduct the interview?”
“As soon as possible. Your segment is scheduled to run in three weeks.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be here more than a week. However, if I’m not back by the weekend, then I’ll call you and give you the interview over the phone.”
“Thank you, Tyler.”
“No. Thank you, Dana.”
There was a pause. “For what?”
“For being you.”
“Tyler, don’t—”
“Don’t what?” he interrupted. “Don’t love you? Well, it’s a little too late for that because I do love you. I am in love with you. It’s taken two days away from Hillsboro and you for me to come to that conclusion. The night we went to Three J’s I told you I was a very patient man. Well, I lied, Dana. Right now I don’t have a great deal of patience. In fact, I have nada!
“The moment I set foot on Hillsboro soil again, I’m coming for you, Dana Nichols. Don’t say you haven’t been warned, because I intend to court, woo, seduce, entice, pursue, lure, and tempt you in agreeing to sharing my life and our future.”
There was a full thirty seconds of silence before Dana’s sultry voice came through the wire again. “You’re a crazy man, Tyler Cole.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, chuckling softly. “Crazy about you.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, baby.”
Tyler ended the call, his heart beating loudly in his chest. He’d opened up to a woman, stripped himself bare emotionally, and she’d called him crazy.
Well, dammit! He was crazy because he was in love, in love for the first time in his life. And whatever he had to go through to get Dana to share his life, he’d do.
Tyler remembered a plaque Martin Cole had hanging on a wall in his office when he was a young boy that read: I’m going to have a piece of everything I want. Some of if may not work out, but I’m still going
to have a piece of it anyway.
When Tyler asked his father about the inscription, Martin explained that his everything had become his wife—the mother of his children, not the family conglomerate, ColeDiz International, Ltd.
He smiled at Teresa, sleeping peacefully with her head resting on her stuffed toy. He’d thought medicine was his everything until he met Dana. Now she was his everything.
Tyler sat with his cousin Michael in a room off the kitchen in the Kirklands’ expanded Georgetown home. Renovations were close to completion. A newly installed breezeway connected the house to a two-story guest cottage, and the rear of the house was expanded up and out for three additional bedrooms and two baths.
“I could’ve saved myself a lot of time and money if I hadn’t demolished the house when I first purchased this property,” said Michael.
Tyler smiled, his dark gaze fusing with his first cousin’s light-green eyes, the color a startling contrast in a rich gold-brown face made even darker by the summer sun. Michael’s last name may have been Kirkland, but he was still a Cole. His father, Joshua, was the late Samuel Cole’s illegitimate son. Tall, dark, slender, and intellectually gifted, Michael had become an integral component in the most prominent African-American family in the United States.
“You didn’t know that you’d end up a married man with children,” Tyler said.
Michael nodded. “You’re right about that. Living in an expanded twenty-five-hundred-square-foot carriage house suited me just fine. Even with the original three bedrooms, it would’ve been okay for Jolene and me, but with one baby and another on the way, it was beginning to feel cramped. And every time Emily, Chris, and their three kids, and Salem, Sara, and their three showed up at the same time, this place looked like a love-in with two, sometimes three, in a bed.”
Tyler chuckled. “When I heard you grumbling about space, I decided to have a house designed with more space than I actually needed. Thirty acres, four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a three-suite guest house should more than work for me.”
“Damn, primo,” Michael swore softly, “What are you expecting? A battalion?”
“Not quite that many. You know for yourself how it is when the entire family gets together. Give the Coles, Kirklands, Lassiters, and the Delgados a few more years and they’ll be able to fill a soccer stadium. Aaron told me Clayborne’s thinking about proposing marriage to a fellow med student once they graduate.”
A slight frown furrowed Michael’s forehead. “How old is Clay?”
“He turned twenty-three in May.”
Michael shook his head. “You better talk to your godson-nephew, primo. Twenty-three is a little young for marriage, especially if they’re both faced with residencies and internships. That’s a lot of pressure for a young couple to go through without trying to keep a marriage afloat.”
Tyler held up his hands. “I’m out of that discussion. Somehow Regina isn’t as upset by the news as Aaron. Meanwhile, I thought it would’ve been the reverse.”
Moving from a chair to the love seat where Tyler lay sprawled with his feet resting on a matching ottoman, Michael said quietly in Spanish, “This is off the record. And if I hear my words back, I’m going to plead the Fifth. Jolene said your sister told her that she’s looking forward to becoming a grandmother, so she’s in favor of Clayborne proposing marriage.”
Tyler’s jaw dropped. “No!”
“Sí, primo.”
“Por Dios!” Tyler groaned, crossing himself. “Regina’s only going to be fifty-one in July. What’s the rush?”
“I don’t know the answer to that one and I don’t want to know. My father always told me that it’s much safer not to try and figure out what makes a woman who she is. You accept her and roll with it. Speaking of rolling, what’s up with you? I know you didn’t build that mansion to roam around it by yourself.”
Averting his head, Tyler stared at the water flowing from a large indoor fountain in a corner of the Japanese tearoom. “I believe I’ve found someone to share it with me.”
Michael’s eyes widened until his dark-green irises were visible. “Tell me about her.”
Tyler told him everything about Dana, from the time he’d rescued her from mentally disturbed Leon, to treating her burned hand, and to their seeking shelter from the killer tornado, leaving nothing out. He also disclosed her reason for returning to Hillsboro.
“So, she’s the one you want to help with her investigation?” Tyler nodded. “I put in a call to Merrick Grayslake, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. There are times when he disappears for several months, and then he’ll show up at my door without warning. He still frightens the hell out of Jolene, so I’ve asked that he call before dropping by.”
Tyler tried recalling when he’d heard the name before Michael said he would contact him on behalf of Dana. “Didn’t he come to your wedding?”
“Yes.”
“Tall, thin. Kind of sinister-looking, with gray eyes.”
“He’s the one.”
Tyler remembered there was something both intriguing and menacing about the man who’d had all or most of the single women at the wedding reception flirting with him.
“So …” Whatever Michael was going to say was preempted by the soft chiming of the phone on a low table in a corner. Moving quickly, he picked it up before it rang a second time. After dinner, Jolene and Teresa had retired for bed, while he and Tyler cleaned up the kitchen.
“Hello.” His laser-green eyes crinkled as he flashed a wide grin. “Bon soir, ma belle.”
Tyler sat smiling, knowing his cousin was speaking to his sister Arianna. Michael, fluent in at least six languages, always addressed Arianna in French.
“Don’t bother to call your brother because he’s here,” Michael said, switching fluidly to Spanish. “Yes, of course. We’ll see you this weekend.” He handed the cordless instrument to Tyler. “It’s Arianna.”
“Welcome home, gypsy, and congratulations on your impending motherhood.”
“Thank you, brother,” Arianna crooned softly. “It’s good to be back. I’m calling because Mom and Dad are putting together a little celebration to welcome Silah and me home, and to make an official announcement about the baby. I’m looking at the schedule Aunt Nancy’s Timothy set up for air travel. The New Mexico branch of the family will arrive Thursday afternoon. You were to be picked up Friday afternoon, but since you’re already in the Virginia area, then you will come in with Michael and his family Friday morning.”
Timothy Cole Thomas, who had assumed the presidency of a company his grandfather had begun more than half a century ago, had continued the air-travel decree set down by Samuel Claridge Cole. The family mandate that all who claimed Cole or Kirkland bloodlines were forbidden to fly on commercial airlines would mean the use of the GIV Gulfstream jet belonging to ColeDiz International, Ltd. The edict was still in effect after more than forty years, following the abduction of Tyler’s sister. Martin Diaz Cole, the family’s reigning patriarch, had stubbornly refused to lift the ban even though Regina would soon celebrate her fifty-first birthday.
“Tyler?”
“Yes, gypsy?”
“It’s good to be home.”
“It’s good to have you back.”
He hung up, experiencing a gentle peace he hadn’t felt in a very long time. His younger sister was back to stay, he was to become an uncle for the third time, his cousin’s wife was expecting another child who would continue their legacy, and he had fallen in love with a woman whom he would willingly give up everything he owned to claim.
Sixteen
Tyler, even though surrounded by family members eating, drinking, and laughing, felt alone, isolated. He’d arrived in West Palm Beach with Michael, Jolene, and Teresa early Friday morning to brilliant Florida sunshine and warm ocean breezes. They were picked up at the airport by his uncle and aunt, Joshua and Vanessa Kirkland. Half an hour later, he was reunited with aunts, uncles, and a countless number of cousins who’d had been gathering at the Col
e family estate all week.
His younger sister, Arianna Kadir, was stunningly beautiful. She was almost an exact image of their mother. She’d inherited Parris’s height, coloring, and eye color. Her eyes were a clear brown with a hint of dark green. Her athletic body was still firm, and although Arianna no longer swam competitively, she still managed to swim laps at a pool at a spa on the outskirts of Paris.
Curving an arm around her ripening waist, Tyler pressed a kiss to her short, professionally coiffed curling hair. “Do you think your husband will adjust to living in the States?”
Arianna smiled up at her brother through the lenses of her sunglasses. “Silah loves it here. Especially Florida.”
“If that’s the case, then why did it take you so long to come back?”
“Silah wanted to establish his own couture house.”
“But he could’ve done that here,” Tyler argued. “You guys have enough money to set up a couple of couture houses if you want.”
“That’s the problem, Tyler.”
“What? Money?”
“The problem is it’s my money, not Silah’s. He refuses to touch my money. We argued so much about his stubbornness that I threatened to leave him a few times. He says that if he can’t make it on his own, then he would give it up.”
“That’s foolish, Arianna.”
“It’s not so foolish when you consider his culture is very different from ours. It took a long time for me accept Silah for who he is. That’s why I waited so long to marry him.”
A label on a garment designed by Moroccan-born, French-speaking Silah Kadir had become as sought after as one from the house of Chanel. His free-flowing colorful designs claimed a definite North African influence.
“What did he say about Mom and Dad giving you guys the house in Ft. Lauderdale?”
Arianna laughed. “Surprisingly enough, he was very accepting because they told him it was a wedding gift.” She sobered quickly. “Speaking of weddings, Daddy was royally pissed when I got married without telling him. I think it all stemmed from Regina waiting until after she delivered Clay to marry Aaron. Daddy cursed a blue streak about his daughters not being traditional brides.”
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