by Laurie Paige
“Yes, he has several now. They all came through at once. He drove me crazy chewing on everything. It was worse than having a puppy.”
When Jordan laughed, she did, too. And that surprised her—that she was laughing with this man she disliked for his insensitive treatment of his daughter.
“What are you doing here?” she asked while Gabe rinsed his mouth with a lot of noisy spitting.
“Damned if I know,” Jordan said.
That was the truth. He didn’t know why he’d stopped here at this tiny cottage that would fit inside his library and entrance hall. He followed Meg as she went into the boy’s bedroom and watched as she tucked her son into pajamas. She glanced at him, her eyes frankly perplexed, but settled into a rocking chair and proceeded to read a story.
The child nearly fell asleep and made no protest when she laid him in the crib. Something caught in Jordan’s chest when she bent forward and kissed her son.
The boy—Gabe, that was his name—grabbed his mother’s hair and pulled her forward until they rubbed noses, then he grinned and closed his eyes as he yawned, the picture of a tired but happy child after a busy day of discovery in a safe and wonderful world.
Jordan swallowed against a tightness in his throat. He vividly recalled Hope as a baby. She’d wanted no one but him to tuck her in at night and had screamed until he’d rocked her and sang silly songs so she could go to sleep.
A long time ago. A long, long time…
Meg motioned him to follow her. She closed the door and led the way down the hall to the kitchen. “Would you like a piece of pineapple upside-down cake?” she asked politely.
An impulse, too strong to ignore, came over him. Like the one that had prompted him to stop at her cottage. He shook his head and moved forward. Her eyes opened wide in shock as he bent to her mouth. “This will do,” he said huskily and kissed her.
He felt the tremor run through her. He thought it was from her, but it could have been from him. He didn’t know and suddenly he didn’t care.
The kiss deepened as she responded instead of shoving him away and socking him as he’d half expected. He slid his arms around her as her tongue met his in a sweet caress, and stepped closer, gathering her in and experiencing her warmth all the way down his chest, abdomen and thighs.
He shuddered as hunger washed through him. She rubbed his shoulders, then his neck and the back of his head. It had been a long time since a woman had touched him with that kind of tenderness. As if he needed comforting.
It confused him. It made him angry. It soothed him to his soul.
“Damn you,” he muttered, and clung to her.
“Shh,” Meg said, feeling the loneliness in this man who was tormented by the past and a boy’s dreams that had never stood a chance of coming true. She understood all that about him in a flash of insight that startled her as much as his sudden appearance.
And the sudden kiss.
When the embrace gentled, she pulled away from him. “Let’s have some coffee, and then we’ll talk.”
Jordan sensed the questions she didn’t ask. He was grateful for small favors. He didn’t know the answers.
“Cream?” Meg asked her unexpected visitor.
“Uh, no, black is fine.”
They sat at the small pine table with its colorful place mats of pink and green. The crowd of flowering plants on the windowsill seemed to watch as they took their places. The silence between them was comfortable, she found.
“I’m worried about Hope,” he said finally.
“Yes,” she agreed. She, too, had noticed the reserve drawing tighter around her friend. Only with Gabe did Hope open up completely, or as much as she could.
“Do you think she’s in love with the Kincaid grandson?” he asked bluntly.
“Yes.”
He frowned fiercely. “Damn.”
Meg smiled in sympathy, understanding much in the one word. “Men want things to be simple. You, for instance, want revenge on the Kincaids. Simple. Except it isn’t. The present Kincaids aren’t the source of your troubles. Neither was Jeremiah. Your uncle lost the ranch, Mr. Baxter, not Jeremiah. He was simply the vulture that settled in and fed off the Baxter troubles.”
Jordan lifted his coffee cup, gesturing toward her as he did. “Don’t spare my feelings,” he said with more than a smidgen of sarcastic humor in the words. “Just tell me what you truly think. And call me Jordan. I think we know each other well enough for that.”
She met his gaze levelly. He was a handsome man, forty-seven to her thirty-six. His eyes were gray but without the blue tints that softened his daughter’s eyes to smoky shades. His body was lean, hard and muscular. She liked the fact that his wealth hadn’t made him complacent and indulgent toward himself.
His concern for Hope indicated there was a softer side to his nature. His gentleness with Gabe confirmed it.
“Jordan,” she said, repeating the name, acknowledging the attraction between them. She met his gaze candidly. There was interest in those depths. She felt the awakening inside her. It had been a long time since she’d wanted a man, either in her bed or otherwise.
Otherwise? As in a relationship?
A sense of wonder and alarm spread through her. “What is going on?” she asked. When he raised his eyebrows, she added, “Between us.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I even like it. However, I think you’re the key to my daughter right now. She’s closed me out.”
He paused, and Meg sensed the sadness in him.
“She closed me out a long time ago,” he amended. “But maybe I closed her out first. There were so many business decisions to make…”
He let the thought trail off into silence. Meg sipped the coffee and let him think on the past.
“She was a wonderful child,” he continued after a while. “Sunny-natured, a smile for everyone.”
“But especially for her daddy?” Meg coaxed.
He nodded. “No one had ever loved me like that—without guile or question or doubt. She was the one thing in my life that came with no strings.” A frown nicked two deep creases between his eyes. He looked pensive. “Sometimes I wonder what happened to that child.”
“She’s still there,” Meg advised. “But she’s learned to be wary. Just as you did when you were young and idealistic and thought the world was there to do your bidding.”
She mused on Gabe and his confidence that he could command life to his liking. That brought her back to her main worry. She stewed on it for several minutes.
“Why the heavy sigh?” Jordan finally asked, his voice once more soft, his gaze thoughtful.
“Children,” she said. “And what’s best for them.”
“You think Collin Kincaid is best for Hope?”
She saw the worry in his eyes, which weren’t so steely, after all. “Maybe. Only they can tell for sure. And only if you step out of the way.”
His tone hardened. “You don’t expect much from a man—just revise his whole way of thinking in the blink of an eye. I’m supposed to drop everything and embrace the Kincaid grandson because he has an itch for my daughter?”
“It’s hard to know what’s best in my own life,” she admitted. “I really don’t want to be advising others on theirs. However, you did ask my opinion.”
She grinned with a certain amount of irony. After a moment he grinned back. Then, unexpectedly, they laughed.
It was the oddest thing…
Jordan entered his daughter’s office without knocking on Monday morning. The secretary had said Hope was in.
He paused after closing the door. Hope looked up. Her smile was perfunctory, her gaze wary. The smoky blue-gray of her eyes shielded her thoughts.
“You remind me of your mother,” he said. “I always thought she was one of the most beautiful women I ever met.”
“Was that why you married her?”
The cynical undertone in the question was unexpected. Jordan considered the past before answering. “She w
as quiet and refined. She had the connections I needed in the top level of New York society.”
“So you married her for money. Actually, to make money from her friends and family acquaintances.”
“No.” He thought he shouldn’t have started down this path and wondered why he felt nostalgic today. “She was a safe harbor in a turbulent world. I don’t know how I felt when we married, but when she died…”
The words were harder to say than he thought they would be. Hope watched him without a change in expression.
“When she died, I realized how much she’d come to mean to me. The loneliness was the worst thing I’d ever endured, more than having to leave the ranch when my uncle sold it. Sometimes it seemed you were the only thing that kept me sane during those first years after she was gone.”
He watched as she placed papers in a folder and closed it, then put the folder in a drawer. Her desk, like her office, was neat. Everything about her was orderly. Too much so. Regret for things he couldn’t name hit him.
Hope studied her father curiously. He seemed in an odd mood. She didn’t want to discuss the past. “Was there something you needed to see me about?”
He hesitated, then said, “Kurt says the change of venue was denied.”
“That’s correct. I really didn’t think we had much of a chance of success. However, if we lose in this round, we can go to Denver for the appeal. The Kincaids will probably file a countersuit.”
A frown that once would have upset her and sent her scurrying for ways to please him creased his forehead. She regarded him without emotion, safe behind the professional distance she’d learned in law school.
“If you’re already thinking of losing, the case is as good as lost,” he told her, anger in his tone. “Kurt says the odds are on our side, that we can present a good argument for fraud.”
Hope nodded. “That’s true, but my job as your attorney is to keep all the possibilities in mind. Nothing is a sure thing.”
“But death and taxes.”
She observed his disgruntled expression as he added the ending of the cliché. Her father was not a patient man.
“Even those can often be delayed indefinitely.” She smiled slightly. “With the help of a good doctor and a good attorney.”
Her father studied her for a long, uncomfortable minute. “I wonder if Kurt should take over. You may be too personally involved.”
The suggestion surprised and stung her to the quick. She would never compromise her work. “It’s your right to have council you’re confident in. If you’re dissatisfied, then of course you must do as you think best.”
“How serious is it between you and Kincaid?”
She stiffened at what she felt was a direct attack on her integrity. “There is nothing between Collin…any of the Kincaids…and me.”
Her father looked as if he didn’t believe her. “I had a talk with Meg on Friday night. She thinks there could be.”
Hope willed away the anger, and the rush of blood to her face, while questions hammered at her. Meg? Her father? They had talked about her and Collin?
“Does she?” she said, her tone cool and unemotional. “I have no control over what others may think.”
“I only want your happiness,” he said suddenly. “It doesn’t lie with the Kincaids. I understand the grandson was over at your place the other night.”
“I don’t have to ask who reported that bit of news. The office weasel, Kurt. Correct?”
“You’ve changed,” her father said, totally ignoring her conclusion.
She realized he’d often done that to her—ignored what he didn’t want to acknowledge. It made her feel less a person than a commodity to him. The terrible achy sadness she’d experienced of late attacked her.
“You’re no longer the reliable person I depended on,” he continued. “Has Collin Kincaid affected you this much?”
She wasn’t up to discussing Collin after the miserable weekend she’d spent. Neither did she want to bare her soul to her father. “I’m an adult. I’m responsible for my actions and well-being. I don’t need anyone—”
“Stay out of the clutches of young Kincaid,” her father advised harshly. “He’s not to be trusted.”
Quelling the onrush of resentment, she met her father’s eyes calmly. “He says the same of you. He says the tapes of him and his grandfather were doctored. It would be bad enough if the court found you’d put a wiretap on someone. To also find you’d doctored the tapes to suit your purpose would put your entire case in a very questionable light.”
Expecting a quick denial, Hope was troubled when Jordan shifted uncomfortably and didn’t meet her eyes.
“Did you doctor the tapes?” she asked bluntly.
“No,” he said quickly.
Too quickly? Confusion scattered her thoughts. She’d never doubted her father…until lately. Now her life was one big question mark. She trusted no one, not even herself.
“It’s a fine day when my daughter questions my word over that of a Kincaid,” he said with a snort.
“I’m your attorney,” she corrected sharply. “If I’m to represent you effectively, then I have to have a good idea of what I’ll be facing in court. Illegal wiretapping isn’t something I can justify to the judge.”
He nodded. “It won’t come to that. The trustees will back off. The Baxter place will be ours.”
“Yours,” she corrected. “I want no part of it.”
He looked stunned at this announcement. “You’re my heir,” he reminded her.
“Judging by Emma’s experience, the Baxter legacy hasn’t been much of an asset.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that to her father. From his expression, he found it hard to digest, too.
He stood and glared at her. “She sold her heritage when she married one of the Kincaid bastards.”
“He was the only person who believed in her innocence. She loves him.” Hope defended Emma’s choice.
“If you chose the Kincaid grandson over your family, I’ll write you out of my will. I’ll disown you—”
She stood, too. “I don’t need either the Baxter or the Kincaid name to earn my place in the world.”
Trembling, she held her ground and returned his disbelieving glare with enforced calm. A tempest of emotion stormed through his eyes—anger, of course, and betrayal, plus others too rapid to read. For an eternity between one breath and another, they stared at each other.
When he strode out, she pressed her palms on the desk and breathed slowly and deeply. Her world—the one that she’d always thought was safe—was splitting into pieces, and she didn’t know how to put them together again. She turned toward the window with the thought of escaping or running away, something she’d never considered in her life.
The blue of the sky reminded her of blue eyes that had met her gaze levelly.
I’ll wait, Collin had said.
She had thought she could never accept that promise. Now she wasn’t sure….
“It’s a simple question,” Jordan said. “Did you doctor the tape you gave me of Kincaid and his grandson?”
Kurt Peters smiled. Jordan realized how bland that white-toothed smile was, outlined by twin rows of perfectly aligned teeth. It irritated him.
“Let me rephrase the question. Did you make any changes whatsoever to the original conversation?”
The smile didn’t falter. “I edited them somewhat. For clarity,” the younger man admitted.
Jordan had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “’Them,’” he repeated. “Plural. You recorded more than one conversation and put them together to make one.”
The smile disappeared. Kurt’s expression became very earnest, sort of perplexed, as if he couldn’t figure out what he was being accused of, if anything.
“The context was the same,” he said. “I would never alter that.” The smile reappeared. “There was no need to. Collin Kincaid laid out his plans pretty clearly, I thought. Should I destroy the tape, sir? If it’s making you uncomforta
ble… Maybe it’s best if Hope doesn’t hear it. If she’s involved with Kincaid…”
Jordan studied the corporate attorney. Kurt’s eyes met his candidly. No guile there. Jordan sighed. “No, no, she’s not involved. Destroy the tape, or tapes, as the case may be. There’s nothing we can use in them.”
“Yes, sir,” Kurt said. “Consider it done.”
“Good. Shall we meet for lunch? Tell Hope I’d like her to join us. I want to go over the case.”
“Right.”
Satisfied, Jordan returned to his office. He liked to use an element of surprise when he confronted people. Kurt hadn’t blinked an eye at his accusation of altering the taped telephone conversations. The sharp young attorney had been puzzled, but he’d been straightforward about “editing” the tape.
For a second Jordan wondered where Kurt had gotten the idea of wiretapping in the first place. Another thought occurred to him: what other lines had the man tapped in on?
He shook his head and picked up the telephone when it rang. He was getting more and more paranoid about trusting people as the lawsuit dragged on. He even questioned his own motives these days.
That was Meg’s fault. Women made a man soft, distracted him from his quest….
“Calm down. There’s nothing that can be traced to you. What’s the motive?” Lexine snapped impatiently to Audra.
She glared at the girl from behind the Plexiglas partition. The warden wouldn’t let her use the private reception room anymore. That privilege was for “model” prisoners.
Lexine sighed. Okay, so she’d lost her temper and thrown a bowl of stew at another prisoner, so what? She was under a lot of stress these days what with propping up Audra all the time and trying to figure out what to do since Emma—that ungrateful brat!—had gotten off the hook.
“The Indian has already been tried and convicted by the whole town,” she continued.
“He’s a doctor,” Audra countered. “Some of the other physicians and nurses are speaking out for him. His patients are, too.”
“He’s already admitted to being the father of the baby as well as being on the scene to deliver it.”