Undercover Princess

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Mom, I know all you really want is for me to be happy, but don’t play matchmaker anymore. Give me a break, all right?”

  His mother sighed, her concern completely real this time. “I’m afraid if I give you that break you want so badly, you’ll lock yourself in your office and never come out. Helena was the one who died, Trey. Not you. I know you loved her, but—”

  Trey gestured toward the house. “It’s late. I better get inside.”

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “I’m getting too personal, aren’t I? You better run away.”

  He headed down the path. “Good night, mother.”

  “Give kisses to Anastacia and Douglas for me,” she called after him.

  “I will,” he promised. And for the first time in a long time, he could imagine actually being able to pass on his mother’s kisses to his children. For the first time in a long time, he was making plans to extract himself from the safety of his office, to have dinner, regularly, with his kids.

  His mother was wrong. He’d already unlocked the door to his office. He was ready to come out and rejoin the world. He just wanted to do it slowly. Surely. He wanted to get his kids back before he reclaimed the whirlwind social life that Helena had loved so much. And he was going to get his kids back. Thanks to Kathy Wind and—

  A light was on in his office.

  He frowned. That was odd.

  As his mother’s car pulled away, he hurried inside.

  Exactly how had Helena Sutherland died?

  Suddenly, Stacy had said. Violently.

  It was definitely time for Katherine to find out. And while the far too well-behaved princess never would have the chutzpah to approach Trey Sutherland and ask, brave Kathy Wind, in her blue jeans and turtleneck, had exactly what it would take.

  She would ask him tomorrow, she decided. She would leave a note on his desk tonight, asking him to set aside some time for them to talk. He’d told her he would be out during dinner tomorrow night, too. She’d let him know in that same note that she’d even be willing to meet with him late at night, after he got home, if that were the only option.

  Unless, of course, he wasn’t planning on coming home.

  She thought of Diana St. Vincent, of how close the woman had stood to Trey, of the possessive way she’d swept her hands across his broad shoulders and chest.

  No, it was most likely that tonight would be the night Trey wouldn’t come home.

  Katherine would word the note carefully, giving him several options as to when they could talk.

  But they would talk. And while Princess Katherine might have been too polite to look a man in the eye and inquire as to how his wife died, Kathy Wind had no such limitations, and no fear.

  Yes, Katherine was finding out that Kathy Wind wasn’t afraid of much. Right now, as a matter of fact, she was in the process of boldly searching Trey’s office for any clues as to Bill Lewis’s whereabouts.

  Katherine had figured that as long as Trey was out for the evening and the kids were snug in their beds, she might as well check to see if Bill had called in over the past few days. Provided, of course, that Trey kept a record of things such as phone calls, and provided that Bill had called while Trey was at home, not at his office downtown.

  And as long as she was in Trey’s home office, she checked out his Rolodex, found Bill Lewis’s address and phone number. It matched the one she’d already had for Bill. No surprises there.

  She glanced at the files that were out on the top of Trey’s desk. There seemed to be nothing personal. Just information about Sutherland-Lewis’s current clients, projects being worked on, a personnel file for one Bruce Baxter, one of Trey’s employees, that she quickly closed after seeing what looked to be an extremely dreadful evaluation, including the words termination recommended. There were no files on Trey’s desk to give her even the smallest hint as to where Bill Lewis might have gone.

  She found a pile of pink phone message slips, and quickly riffled through them. Trey’s mother had called him here at his home office and left messages on his machine three times over the past few days, but there was no mention of his business partner.

  She spun in a slow circle as she gazed around the room.

  Trey had a number of file cabinets that lined the far wall of his office. She approached them, feeling as if opening the drawers might be going just a bit too far, but curious just the same. Did he keep any personal information in there, or were the files within purely work-related?

  She opened the top drawer, immediately feeling guilty and evil. But the files were similar to the ones on his desk. All projects or clients. Nothing personal. And nothing at all about Bill Lewis.

  The second drawer was the same, as were the others.

  She closed them with her hip, turning to look back at the office. It was much too clean. There were no piles of papers, no stacks of handwritten notes, no piece of paper labeled “Bill’s phone number in the Bahamas” stuck to a corkboard.

  Okay, so maybe being a superspy wasn’t so easy. Maybe James Bond didn’t just break into an office and have the information he was searching for conveniently pinned to the wall. Maybe he knew where to look while she didn’t.

  She went back to Trey’s desk, and sat down in his chair and tried to think like James Bond. There was always the possibility that the information she was looking for wasn’t here. And if that were the case, not even Mr. Bond himself could have found it.

  She tried the desk drawers. The top one was locked. The center drawer held pencils and pens, a stapler, rubber bands, a pack of breath mints, and a tiny plastic toy dinosaur, its fiercely bared teeth made far less menacing by the fact that it was entirely bright-orange and lying rather impotently on its side. It made her smile, though. Who would have thought intensely business-minded, workaholic Trey Sutherland would keep a plastic dinosaur in his desk drawer?

  Katherine closed both the drawer and her eyes and sat, letting her head rest against the comfortable leather of Trey’s very cushy desk chair. It reclined slightly, and she sighed, breathing in the lingering scent of the man’s delicious-smelling cologne.

  “Thinking about taking over as president of the company?”

  Katherine rocketed up and out of the chair as Trey closed his office door behind him. His face was expressionless. Had he been watching her for long? She surely would have noticed if he’d opened the door before she’d sat down, before she’d peeked inside his desk drawer, before she’d closed her eyes.

  Wouldn’t she have?

  “I…was going to leave you a note,” she stammered. “I wanted a chance to talk to you tomorrow and…” Oh, dear. She sounded so lame. He was going to think she was some kind of corporate spy or…or worse. A thief, perhaps. Or a blackmailer or—

  “Kind of hard to write a note with your eyes closed, isn’t it?” He crossed to the bar, untying his bow tie with one swift yank.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, moving guiltily out from behind his desk. “I shouldn’t have been sitting behind your desk. But the chair looked so comfortable and oh, it was, and I…I was exhausted and—”

  “Relax,” he said. “What do I look like, one of the three bears? I don’t mind if you sit in my chair. Hell, you can have my porridge, too, my pleasure.” He took a glass down from the cabinet. “But since I don’t have any porridge handy, how about something to drink?”

  Her heart was still hammering so loudly it seemed impossible that he couldn’t hear it. A drink, he’d asked. “Um. Yes. Please. A glass of wine—if you don’t mind.”

  He glanced at her, his tired eyes suddenly almost cuttingly sharp. “Is this a special occasion?”

  “I think,” she said, her voice still a little shaky, “since you haven’t fired me for being in your office uninvited, that it could very well be.”

  He laughed at that. Good grief, when this man laughed, he was off-the-chart handsome. And dressed in a tuxedo the way he was…It made it very hard to think like a proper superspy. In fact, Katherine had to look away for fear he’
d catch her drooling.

  “I hope since you seem to be glad I’m not going to terminate you for trespassing, that the note you were going to write wasn’t one telling me you want to quit.”

  She looked up to find that he was standing right in front of her, holding out a delicate-looking tulip-shaped glass filled with white wine. He smelled as delicious as she’d remembered.

  “Oh, of course not,” she said.

  He gave her both the wineglass and a slight, crooked smile. “Well, that’s a relief.” He gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk. “Please, sit down.”

  “I wanted to set up a time to talk to you,” she told him as she sat. It wasn’t really lying if she simply left out the fact that she’d also come here searching for any clues that would lead her to Bill Lewis, was it? She truly hated dishonesty. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon, or even…”

  She wasn’t expecting him back at all. She didn’t say the words, but Trey knew what she was thinking. He took a sip of his drink as he leaned back against his desk.

  “If there’s ever a time I don’t intend to come home at night, I’ll let you know in advance,” Trey said quietly. “But I don’t see that happening in the near future.”

  She blushed slightly—just a faint tinge of pink across her cheekbones. But she met his gaze steadily as she lifted one eyebrow. “I assume that means there’ll be no wedding plans made in the near future either, then. That’s something you might want to reassure your children about. We had…a small incident this evening.”

  A small incident. Kathy was as good with understatement as he was. “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “What did Stacy do this time?”

  Trey had guessed correctly. Stacy had been behind that proclaimed “small incident.” He could see the truth in Kathy’s eyes. She had such an open, honest face, she wouldn’t have been able to hide the truth if her life had depended on it.

  “What she did doesn’t really matter,” Kathy said evenly, diplomatically. He’d clearly startled her when he’d first come in, but now she had her control back, locked down in ultra-Mary Poppins style—gentleness as soft as down, over firmness as solid as tempered steel.

  “What matters is that Stacy’s very upset at the idea of your remarrying,” she continued. “I’m afraid she’s not particularly fond of your current lady friend. Of course, it’s not her role to dictate who you should or shouldn’t see socially, but regardless of that, it’s clear some dialogue between the two of you on this topic is needed.”

  Trey had been holding his tongue, determined not to interrupt her even though he’d wanted to badly. “Are you done?”

  Kathy blinked at him. And then she smiled. “Yes,” she said. “And thank you very much for not interrupting me.” God, she actually had dimples in her cheeks.

  “She’s not my lady friend,” he told her. “Diana, I mean. My mother’s been trying to set me up with her, but, frankly, I’m not ready for anything serious, and even if I were…” Even if he were, he would look for someone who wanted a short sexual fling, not someone lobbying for marriage. He shrugged. “There’s no chemistry. It would never work.”

  Why was he telling her that? She was the nanny, not his shrink.

  But she was nodding, in complete agreement. “There really has to be chemistry, doesn’t there? Some kind of magnetic pull that happens—even though you may not want it to.”

  The kind of pull that was making him slowly gravitate toward her, even right now when he was trying to sit absolutely still. The kind of pull that he’d felt from the first moment Kathy Wind had walked into his office and—

  Trey stopped himself. That was absurd. Yes, what he’d felt—what he was feeling right now—was a kind of chemistry, but it was all about friendship. He’d liked Kathy instantly. It had nothing whatsoever to do with sex.

  He would never have an affair with his kids’ nanny—not, as his mother had put it, because it was tacky and unoriginal, but because it would be cruel and deceitful. She was so young and sweet, harboring visions of happily ever after. And he had already learned the hard way that there was no such banana in the fruit bowl of life.

  “So. What happened with Stacy?” he asked, hoping she’d tell him only because he wanted her to stay a little bit longer, not because he particularly wanted to know what awfulness his daughter had done this time. And he wanted her to stay because he liked Kathy, he reminded himself. Liked. As in both of them fully dressed and sitting three solid feet away from each other, using their mouths to make conversation. He wanted her to stay because her company was so refreshingly sweet and sincere after an evening spent with Diana St. Vincent.

  Kathy sat back in her chair. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave, and he felt himself relax a little.

  She sighed. “Stacy showed a typical thirteen-year-old’s lack of judgment and said something about wicked stepmothers to Doug without thinking it through. His reaction was a bit…stronger than she’d anticipated.”

  Trey had to smile. “When you say it like that, it sounds as if it almost happened peacefully and calmly. But I know my kids. How long did the yelling last?”

  She smiled back at him. A big smile, complete with the dimples again. “Long enough. But don’t worry. I did manage to get things back under control. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “It’s not.”

  “But it’s late, and if now’s not the best time to—”

  “Now’s great,” he said. Damn, there he went again. He did interrupt all the time. “Excuse me.”

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  He swore softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was joking. Good grief. You don’t really do it that much.”

  He sank into the chair opposite her, his legs suddenly tired. “It’s arrogant and rude.” God, when did he become arrogant and rude? What had happened to kind and considerate? Gentlemanly? Compassionate?

  He looked up at her. When he’d first entered the office, she’d told him she was exhausted. And she did look tired, slight shadows beneath her eyes. “Look, if you want to set up a time to talk tomorrow and—” He interrupted himself this time. “Damn, I’ve got that dinner meeting, so I probably won’t be back until after eleven.” He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Day after tomorrow? What’s that, Saturday? Maybe late morning?”

  “I’d love to talk now. We’re both here, and we both seem to be relatively awake.”

  “All right,” he said. “Now wins. What’s our topic of discussion?”

  She leaned forward slightly, setting her wineglass down on the edge of his desk. She’d only taken a sip or two. Clearly the special occasion had only been a little one. “Actually, I have a rather difficult question to ask you.”

  As she looked over at him, her eyes were so serious, he started to get nervous again. A question. Like maybe if she could leave before the Christmas holidays instead of sticking it out until January?

  “I would normally consider this to be none of my business,” she continued, “but I had a conversation with Stacy this evening that I found very disturbing, and if I’m going to have any chance at all of establishing a relationship with her, I think I need to know…Well, I may as well just ask.” She took a deep breath. “Exactly how did Stacy and Doug’s mother die?”

  Ah. That question. Trey knew it had to come sooner or later. He rose from the chair, turning away from the gentle, steady grayness of her eyes. “I guess you’ve heard the rumors, huh?”

  He crossed to the bar.

  “Yes. And while I think it’s important that I be aware of those rumors—because the children are surely hearing them, too—I want you to know that I don’t believe them. Not one bit.” She laughed softly. “But I guess you already know that. If I did believe them, I wouldn’t be here right now, would I?”

  Trey had already had too much to drink tonight, what with the pair of gin and tonics he’d had at the party. He poured himself a plain soda and added a double twist of lemon purel
y so that he’d have something to do with his hands.

  “Helena died of cancer. It all happened much too fast. She was diagnosed, and three months later we buried her.” He told Kathy the abbreviated, Cliffs Notes version of his family’s tragedy with his back still to her. No details, no emotion. He turned to face her. “It was devastating for the children.”

  “As it must have been for you as well,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “She had a tumor in her stomach and one in her brain, both inoperable, and painful as hell,” he found himself telling her despite his intentions to withhold the terrible details. “There were probably more, it had probably metastasized throughout her entire body, but she opted out of exploratory surgery. What was the point, right? She had a zero chance of survival.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Kathy murmured. It was funny. When most people said those words, they were simply making noise. But Kathy meant it. She was sorry. He could see it in her eyes.

  “Helena also decided not to go into a hospice,” he told her. “She wanted to be near the kids, right until the end, but even back then I wasn’t sure that was the right choice. And with hindsight, I know it wasn’t. She was in so much pain. She tried to hide it from Stacy and Doug, and it took all her energy. It was very hard for her. It was hard for the kids, too. I’m sure they didn’t understand any of it.”

  His guard was down as he gazed at Katherine, and she could see the years-old toll of his pain and grief. He was a man used to being able to fight and win despite insurmountable odds, but this had been one battle in which he hadn’t stood a chance. He looked so vulnerable, so lost, even now, and her heart broke for him.

  “She died here?” Katherine asked him softly. “At home?”

  And just like that, shutters went down. “Yeah.” He turned away, and all Katherine could think was that it must have been more awful than he could stand to think about, even years later.

  Somehow he managed to force a smile. “So. Now Stacy thinks she’s seen Helena’s ghost wandering the halls.”