by Laurie Paige
Sex?
There was definitely a sizzle between them. Meg didn’t know how far it had gone. Hope and Collin were mature and attractive people.
Love?
Maybe.
But it was never going to have a chance to grow and develop, the way things stood between the families.
In her car, Meg started the engine, and for one moment hesitated before putting the car in gear and driving off. Instead of turning toward her cottage, she drove south of town. She knew Jordan had a home bordering the new golfing community Baxter Development had built. She was going to stick her nose in somebody else’s business, but so what? All he could do was whack it off.
On this wry note, she turned into the impressive driveway and parked on the circular drive in front of the house. Lights were on. He must be home.
She hopped out and rang the doorbell before her courage ran out. She’d just decided to leave when the door swung open. A scowling face greeted her. Jordan’s eyes took on a puzzled expression as he gazed past her as if to see if Hope was also there.
“Hello,” she said more cordially and calmly than she felt. “Uh, may I come in?”
Her words seemed to prod him into graciousness. “Of course,” he said. He peered behind her into the night. “Are you alone?”
“Yes. Hope is staying with Gabe. My little boy,” she added. “I had a wedding reception to cover tonight. My assistant was busy.”
She realized she was chattering and shut up. Anger overcame the case of nerves as she recalled Hope’s eyes while the younger woman bathed Gabe. Such despair in her friend, and this man was the cause, or at least a good part of it. She squared her shoulders.
“I was just relaxing in the library. Join me,” Jordan invited. He gestured for her to come in.
Meg had been in elegant homes. She’d seen gilt and marble and fine art tastefully displayed. But she’d never been in Jordan Baxter’s home. “This is lovely,” she said sincerely, gazing at floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
“It’s a replica of one my wife did for me when we lived in New York. She had excellent taste.”
“Exquisite,” Meg agreed.
The oak floors gleamed. An Oriental rug of ruby red and a soft misty shade of green on a golden-beige background outlined a conversation grouping of morocco chairs and sofas. Black granite, glinting with golden flecks, detailed the fireplace and a desktop. It was repeated in pedestals that supported American West art pieces.
“What would you like to drink? Brandy? Sherry? Wine?”
“Sherry,” she said.
He brought the drink to her in a stemmed ruby-colored glass. A pattern of flowers and vines was hand-cut into the crystal so that the leaves and petals were clear glass. She studied it appreciatively before taking a sip.
“Very good,” she murmured.
His smile was dry. “What brings you to my humble abode at this time of night?”
“Your daughter.”
The smile disappeared. “Hope,” he said, a note of disapproval—or disappointment?—in his voice.
Meg resented the tone. “Hope is one of the smartest, most honorable people I’ve ever met. She’s also loving and kind. And desperately unhappy.”
Jordan’s expression hardened. “She has reason to be unhappy,” was his reply.
“Because of Collin Kincaid, yes. But he isn’t the direct cause. You are.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Or that it concerns me.” He lifted a brandy snifter and swirled the liquor, his manner cold and distant.
Meg sipped the sherry and thought of the desolation in Hope’s eyes. “So you care nothing for your daughter’s happiness, or that your obsession with revenge on the Kincaids is destroying her life.”
“Destroying her life? A bit dramatic, wouldn’t you say?”
“No,” she said staunchly. “She’s in love with Collin, or she could be, but she can’t acknowledge it because of you. Because of her loyalty to you.”
He flashed her a furious glance. “My daughter might have been overwhelmed by the Kincaid charm, but she isn’t in love with the Kincaid grandson. As for revenge, as you so succinctly describe it, my case against the Kincaid trustees really isn’t any of your business.”
“I know,” she admitted. “I came here on an impulse that I’ll probably regret tomorrow. But I don’t at this moment.” She gave him a challenging grin.
He looked taken aback.
“Hope told me something of what was going on with your suit after the local TV news reported on the Nighthawk case developments. You’re using Hope for your own purposes. She’s caught between her love for you and her love for Collin—”
“She is not in love with Kincaid!” Jordan broke in, his temper boiling over.
“She is,” Meg insisted. “If you’d accept the settlement the Kincaids offered, she could admit it. That would remove the first obstacle, I think.”
“I won’t settle for less than what I was supposed to get before old Jeremiah cheated me out of my inheritance.”
Meg’s shoulders slumped. She rose. “Well, it was a long shot, but I’d hoped you would see reason. I’m going to encourage Hope to listen to her heart,” she said, being totally honest with him, “because I think you’re wrong. The Kincaids seem to be offering a fair deal. You’re the one being stubborn.”
“Who are you to talk to me this way?” he demanded, his eyes like stainless-steel daggers.
“No one,” she admitted. “Absolutely no one you need concern yourself about. But I am your daughter’s friend,” she couldn’t help but add as a parting shot.
She walked out of the house, her head high, leaving him standing in his magnificent library, aware that he was alone with all his wealthy surroundings, caught up in the past and the disappointments of his youth. She felt sorry for him.
But more so for Hope, who was paying the higher price for his lost dreams.
Meg frowned all the way home, her thoughts going at a furious pace. There must be some way she could help her friend. And maybe Jordan, too. He had to get over his obsession with revenge. For his own as well as Hope’s sake.
Thinking of a parent’s duty to a child, she sighed as guilt ate at her. She had her own problems along those lines. She knew Garrett was looking for a seventh grandson, the last bastard child sired by his son, Larry.
Furthermore, she knew Gina had traced Larry’s whereabouts to Whitehorn at the time the child was conceived. Why had Larry left that letter to indicate the possibility of another child?
That child did exist. Gabe. Her son.
She had deliberately slept with Larry Kincaid—though that wasn’t the name he’d used at the time—because she’d wanted a child and considered the handsome but shallow stranger the perfect sperm donor. He wouldn’t bother her asserting his rights as a father since he plainly didn’t care about anything but the pleasure of the moment.
That had suited her at the time. But now…what was fair to Gabe?
She didn’t want to lose her child, and she was afraid that could happen if she went to Garrett and confessed. He might go to court for custody. With the Kincaid money and influence, things might not go well for her.
Sighing, she had to admit to a tiny bit of admiration for Jordan in that he dared to take on the whole clan. She hadn’t summoned that much courage yet. The Kincaids were a formidable force in the state.
However, Collin seemed a very decent person. She’d seen caring in his eyes when he gazed at Hope. Anger, too, but that was justified in light of Hope’s refusal to see him again after that torrid weekend.
Reading between the lines when Hope alluded to the brief interlude with the rancher, Meg had concluded things were quite involved between them. The couple had shared more than a few hot kisses.
Ah, to be young and in love and miserable and elated and all those things that went with falling totally in love.
She laughed as she parked under the carport at the cottage. Right. She was so old and experienced at t
hese things. Going inside, she found Hope as she’d expected—diligently going over her legal notes.
Looking at her friend’s reddened eyes, Meg resolved again to try to help, even if she did get her nose whacked off in the process. “How was Gabe?” she asked.
“A doll as usual,” Hope replied brightly. “You should be grateful to have such a perfect child.”
“I am,” Meg said on a thoughtful note, a little ripple of fear going through her. “I truly am.”
“Meg…”
“Yes?” When Hope hesitated, Meg urged her to speak her mind. “Ask me anything. I’ll answer honestly.”
“Did you love Gabe’s father very much?”
It wasn’t the question Meg had expected. She gazed solemnly at Hope. “I didn’t love him at all. In fact, I hardly knew him. I wanted a baby.”
Hope stared, wide-eyed.
“Yes, I know. It was probably foolish of me, but I was over thirty, with my own business and money in the bank. I could support myself and a child.”
“What are you going to tell Gabe when he’s older?”
“The truth—that his father did me a favor.”
“What if the man returns?”
“He won’t. He died shortly after our, uh, interlude. I thought at the time it simplified things. Now I’m not so sure.” Her shrug was rueful. “Well, we all live with our decisions, wise or not.”
“Yes,” Hope agreed.
“You’ll have your family someday,” Meg assured her friend for no reason except she’d always believed goodness should be rewarded just for being.
Hope shook her head. She smiled, but it was sad and resigned and hopeless. “Not me,” she said.
“Listen to your heart,” Meg advised, and wasn’t at all sure which of the two of them she meant.
Eight
“Into the lion’s den,” Collin remarked to Garrett.
His grandfather’s wry smile reflected the way he felt upon arriving at the Baxter Development Corporation’s offices. Ross Garrison, their attorney, pulled into a parking space next to them.
Wayne Kincaid and Sterling McCallum were next. Clint Calloway was the last of their group. The three men, along with the attorney, were trustees of the Kincaid holdings for Jenny McCallum.
Wayne, the legitimate son, and Clint, another Kincaid bastard, were entitled to part of their father’s wealth, but both men had declined, wanting nothing from a man who had never been a decent parent to either of them. Or to little Jenny, their half sister, whom the whole town doted on. The kid was a trooper.
What a messy lot humans were, Collin thought as the men greeted each other and headed for the conference room where Baxter and his attorney had agreed to meet with them. Face-to-face, his grandfather thought they could get Jordan to agree to a settlement. Collin had his doubts.
Jordan’s secretary met them in the impressive lobby with its native plants and Western art. “This way,” she invited pleasantly, and led them to the elevator and the conference room on the executive floor.
All was quiet elegance up there. Mahogany Row, as some employees called it, was an appropriate term. Gleaming wood, expensive carpet, gilt lettering on each corporate officer’s door. No raised voices. Very impressive, Collin scoffed.
They were shown into the conference room and served coffee by the secretary. She offered various pastries, which everyone declined, then left them.
A minute later the door opened. Collin’s heart went into overdrive. Jordan entered first, the leading point of a triangle with Hope and another guy flanking him.
“Gentlemen,” Jordan said by way of greeting. He didn’t offer to shake hands but went to the head of the gleaming table immediately. Hope sat to his right. The other attorney, Kurt somebody, Collin vaguely recalled, took the chair to the left.
“Morning, Baxter,” Garrett said affably. “I think you know everyone on this end of the table. I don’t know the young fella with you, though.”
“Kurt Peters, my attorney…one of my attorneys,” he corrected with a glance at his daughter.
Anger spread through Collin at the slight to Hope. She was the primary attorney on the case and had done most of the work. He quelled the impulse to say something to this effect and let his gaze feast upon the woman who’d occupied all his dreams and much of his waking thoughts of late.
She wore a gray suit with a blue-gray blouse that crisscrossed over her breasts. A simple gold chain and gold earrings were her only jewelry besides an expensive watch that had probably cost as much as his pickup. A gift from her father, no doubt.
Looking beyond her icy calm, he noted circles under her eyes and two tiny frown lines over the bridge of her nose that makeup didn’t quite conceal. She’d been burning the midnight oil.
A picture of her dressed in nothing but a smile and a towel wrapped around her hair came to him. He nearly groaned out loud and thought of cold things—icebergs, the Arctic, the river in springtime.
Her smoky gaze met his.
For a second he saw, or imagined he saw, yearning and loneliness mixed in those depths. Then it was gone. She nodded without smiling and looked back at her papers. Their weekend might never have been.
Recalling the hours of their intense lovemaking nearly made him groan a second time. She’d been a perfect lover—passionate and responsive, innovative and playful. He witnessed no traces of that woman in the attorney facing him across the chasm of the conference table. That fact caused a strange ache to echo inside him. He forcefully shut off the feeling and concentrated on the problems at hand.
“Since I called the meeting,” Garrett said, “I’ll start. I guess I want to know why you refused our offer,” he said directly to Jordan. “What exactly is it that you want?”
“My rightful inheritance, nothing more, nothing less,” Jordan told him with cool disdain.
Garrett studied his opponent for a long moment. “We basically offered you that. You refused it.”
Jordan’s smile was thin. “The cliff property wasn’t included.”
Collin saw the tensing of a muscle in his grandfather’s jaw, but Garrett smiled again, affably and with a touch of irony, as he held his temper.
“Son, we can’t give you what isn’t ours to give,” the older man explained. “The trustees here have agreed to include a like acreage that adjoins the old Baxter place. It’s a better piece of land—”
“Says you,” Jordan interrupted. “But that cliff face might prove to have gold or something of more value.”
Garrett looked perplexed. “There’s never been any gold found in the creek that runs along there. I don’t see what else…ah, sapphires.”
“Maybe,” was all Jordan would say.
Sterling McCallum spoke up. “Both the Kincaid and Baxter places have been prospected for over a century. There once was a sapphire mine, but it played out. A new vein was found a few years ago, but it was insignificant. If there’s anything of value left, it’s hidden well beyond modern methods of finding it.”
“Be that as it may,” Jordan said, “I still intend to have the original deeded land. I don’t think the mighty Kincaids have enough influence in the state to block my acquiring it, considering that I’m willing to pay more. I’ve put my original offer in writing. Your attorney should receive it tomorrow at the latest.”
He flicked a glance at Ross, then looked back at Garrett. His smile said he’d covered all bases and there was nothing Garrett could do. Collin wanted to knock the smile, along with the man’s teeth, down his throat.
Looking at Hope, he controlled his temper. She could have been made of stone for all the emotion she displayed. A feeling that he should do something drastic came over him. It had nothing to do with the land.
Hope needed rescuing.
It was that simple. And that complex. He had a feeling she would turn to stone if he didn’t get her away from her father and his unreasonable hatred of all that was Kincaid-related.
“What a waste,” he muttered into the silence.
>
Several pairs of eyes bore into him, including smoky blue-gray ones that hadn’t looked icy at all when they’d made love. Despair cast gloom into his soul.
“A waste of time,” he added, looking at Hope, then at his grandfather. “He doesn’t want to settle. He wants to harass us. I say we countersue.”
“On what grounds?” Kurt Peters inquired smoothly.
Collin looked at Hope.
“Slap suit,” she answered when the silence stretched to several seconds.
Kurt raised his eyebrows derisively. “You would have to prove intent on our client’s part.”
“That should be easy enough,” Collin told him.
He didn’t mention the illegal wiretapping. That had been a disclosure from Hope to him. He wouldn’t use it unless he had to. He glanced at her and saw she understood.
Jordan laughed and spoke to Garrett. “Your bastard grandsons will all be old men before they can legally live on the Kincaid place. If ever. Maybe you can arrange to have them buried there,” he said, his smile coldly victorious.
Garrett stood. “I’m sorry, men,” he said to his group. “I can see I’ve wasted your time in bringing you here.” He stared at Jordan down the long, gleaming table. “I thought face-to-face we could make sense of this mess and come to a reasonable agreement. But one has to deal with reasonable men in order to do that.”
Collin was proud of his granddad. His tone was as cool and scornful as Baxter’s had been. Baxter flushed a dark, angry red.
Ross spoke to Hope. “You should have a serious talk with your client. Our efforts at settlement won’t go unnoticed by any court in the state.”
“Don’t be surprised if the case is tried outside Montana and out of the jurisdiction of Kate Randall Walker and the rest of your cronies,” Kurt told them contemptuously.
Wayne Kincaid looked murderous. Kate and her husband Ethan were longtime personal friends of his. Sterling and Clint moved closer to him as if they thought they might have to restrain him from charging down the table and strangling the obnoxious attorney.
Hope, Collin noted, seemed appalled at the insult. She met his eyes and quickly gazed at the folder on the table in front of her. He saw her hand tighten on the folder, but she said nothing.