An Heiress to Remember

by Maya Rodale

  Detective Hyde was operating in disguise in the store. It gave Beatrice peace of mind to know that someone was handling this so that she could handle everything else.

  “Beatrice, it could be more than that.”

  “Nonsense. We are just women. We are just shopping.”

  “We both know there is no just about it. Think of what you represent, Beatrice.”

  “That again.” She rolled her eyes.

  Beatrice the Beacon. Hold her up and shine a light and make an example of her.

  Like she wasn’t a living breathing woman who just wanted an occupation that engaged her mind during the day and a man who engaged her body at night.

  “Think of who stands to benefit if you were . . . scared off. Because, Beatrice, you have made the business vibrant and profitable again.”

  She couldn’t say it and he was too much of a gentleman to make her. Edward. Her own brother. He had sufficient motive. But he was locked away at a sanitarium in Long Island. Wasn’t he?

  If it wasn’t Edward, it could be any one of the ego-wounded former employees of the old incarnation of Goodwin’s. Mr. Stevens, for example. It could be any number of men who were not hired in favor of women.

  It could be any of the other department store owners—Macy, Fields, Wanamaker—who were jealous of her success and her prominence on The White List, which had overnight altered where Manhattan’s women shopped.

  “You are also, day by day, empowering a multitude of women. Beatrice, you are changing the game. And not everyone wants to change the game.”

  Not like him. Dalton rose to the occasion of her challenge like he was born for it, like it was a shock to the heart he needed to stay alive, like it was his idea of a good time to try harder. She was the bucket of water on everyone’s fire, but to him she was the fuel that made the flames go higher.

  She could almost love him for it.

  Maybe she was even on the verge of really feeling something like love for this man who had once upon a time wanted to destroy her and was now helping her scrub rude words off the walls, even after their lovemaking had been interrupted.

  The thought of love made her forget, for a second, that she was supposed to be scared.

  “Too many people want to scare me off,” she said. “Pity it won’t work.”

  “They’ll keep trying until it does,” he said. Then he reached for her hand. “Let me protect you.”

  She laughed, and the sound echoed in the hall.

  “Stay with me,” he persisted. “You’ll be safe at my home instead of vulnerable at your town house, where it’s just you and your mother.”

  “For one thing, my mother is a dragon. For another, we have servants and locks, too.”

  “I’ll escort you to and from the store each day, then.”

  “What? No! Good God, Dalton. I’m a grown woman, a divorcée. I don’t need a chaperone.”

  She started to walk away, toward the exit.

  “You need someone to protect you.”

  “If that were true, I would hire someone. I would hire a band of lady pirates to surround me with pistols, swords, and devastating wit.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? But I know some already.”

  “Beatrice, let’s be serious. Let’s be reasonable.”

  Oh, that was not to be borne. Beatrice stopped suddenly and whirled around to face him.

  “Are you going to tell me to be calm next? Because you are saying the most offensive, ridiculous things a man could say to a woman. Be serious. Be reasonable. Be calm. As if I’m ridiculous, foolish, and hysterical. Is that what you think of me, Dalton?”

  “No. You’re the smartest, fiercest woman I know. But you are also being foolish and stubborn about this. Someone has been attacking you and your store and everything you represent. That only spells danger and I need you to be safe. Because I’m falling in love with you, Beatrice. All over again.”

  “Don’t do this. Don’t make love feel like a cage.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Dalton’s Department Store

  The next day

  Dalton’s, the department store, had an exquisite offering of fine jewelry on display and available for purchase. Dalton, the man, was considering it.

  “Why are you looking at the diamond rings?” Connor asked warily.

  “Well, I’m either going to start a new trend of men wearing diamond rings or I’m about to propose. One of the two. I’ll let you guess.”

  Connor gave a low whistle. “That’s one way of winning her store.”

  Dalton stilled. He had moved so far beyond his old ideas of revenge and ownership and destruction; he hadn’t realized no one else knew the transformation that had taken place in his head and heart. He had one thought and one thought only: keeping Beatrice safe.

  Hence this diamond ring that would declare to one and all that she was a woman with all his power at her back. This ring held the promise of nights in his bed, where he could make love to her and know that she was safe, breathing softly and sleeping peacefully beside him.

  With this ring, they would no longer be enemies, or lovers only by night. With this ring they could belong to each other and he would succeed at this feeling he’d been chasing all these years.

  “This is not about revenge at all,” he said. “I no longer want Goodwin’s, the store.”

  “Really. No more revenge? No more competition? Our mad quest for the past sixteen years is over?” Connor was skeptical, which was understandable, maybe even angry. Dalton hadn’t been around as much recently (because Beatrice) and hadn’t been sharing the intimate personal details of his romance (because Beatrice). But Beatrice would understand, wouldn’t she?

  “Really and truly,” Dalton replied. “I want no part of her store. I only want to be with her.”

  Goodwin’s Department Store

  An hour later

  Beatrice was concluding her interview with Detective Hyde about the string of unusual, ahem, activity that had been plaguing the store. There was a myriad of petty intrusions: broken lock on the staff door, the toys in the children’s department strewn about the room, men’s ties wrapped around the mouths of female mannequins. There was also the matter of the smashed mirrors, the trashed reading room, and those awful words painted across her office door last night, which Beatrice was informing the detective about. She’d been working late. She let the detective assume she was alone.

  Detective Hyde was taking notes, her lips pressed in a firm line of disapproval. She would find who was behind this vandalism and she would bring the full force of the law down on him. She was so self-assured that Beatrice felt immediate relief. See—she didn’t need to trade her freedom to Dalton for safety!

  Speak of the devil—she looked up to see Dalton. In her office. In daylight.

  Her heart did flip-flop things just the sight of him.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said.

  “Come in, Dalton. Detective Hyde and I were just concluding.”

  She watched him observe Detective Hyde. She was the last woman Beatrice would want to meet in a dark alley; she was on the taller side, with a lean but muscled build, a wonderfully forgettable face that let her get away with anything. She was dressed in the attire of a cleaning woman, as it allowed her to operate in disguise and unnoticed in the store at any and all hours.

  “Good morning, Detective Hyde. I’m glad to see you are investigating the matter.”

  “Matters,” the detective corrected. And then she turned on him. “Where were you last night?”

  Darn if Dalton didn’t blush to have this stout matron, dressed in the uniform of a Goodwin’s cleaning woman, demand to know what he’d been doing last night, where, with whom.

  Beatrice laughed nervously and said, “It wasn’t him, Detective.”

  The detective looked at them both and said, “I see.”

  Beatrice blushed.

  “I suppose he knows about last night’s vandalism?”


  “He does.”

  “Who the devil would do such a thing?” Dalton wanted to know.

  Detective Hyde shrugged. “I’m guessing the same person who did all the other things.”

  Beatrice saw him doing the math: the reading room destruction, the vandalization of her office door when he was here with her, the mirrors. And more still. She hadn’t told him about the other little things. Not between their idle chatter and passionate kisses.

  “Yes, Beatrice mentioned there were more. But I suspect she neglected to inform me of the full extent of the trouble.”

  “Just a few things,” she said with a shrug. Because she could see the conclusion that he was coming to and she didn’t like it one bit.

  “You’re in danger,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

  “Not particularly,” Beatrice replied.

  But Inspector Hyde said, “Maybe.”

  Beatrice watched the sudden transformation in Dalton as it sunk in. His eyes darkened, jaw tightened. And she saw him stand up taller, push his chest out, and do all the things men did to make themselves seem larger than life and intimidating.

  It made her think of the duke, after she dared to stand up to him.

  It made her feel like shrinking, in a misguided act of self-preservation.

  “You’re in danger,” Dalton said again. “You need to leave here, immediately. We’ll hire some additional security for the store and you, though it would be for the best if you stayed home. Safe.”

  “Don’t do that.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “Please don’t do that high-handed hero thing where you stomp around and declare you must protect me at all costs and you use it as an excuse to lock me in your bedroom. I will not be shut away at home. Again.”

  “I wasn’t going to do that.”

  She opened her eyes and gave him A Look. He’d literally just said he would do that.

  “All right, I was about to do that. You have to admit it wouldn’t be the worst way to spend a few days.” He gave her a rakish smile that promised more of last night, and Detective Hyde saw and made A Look. And now this was turning into a scene. Now Detective Hyde would know that she was romancing the enemy.

  She might doubt Beatrice’s commitment to the store, to the cause.

  “Dalton . . .”

  “How about I get you a pistol instead?”

  “I want no part of guns or weaponry.”

  “But I need you to be safe. I need to ensure that nothing bad will happen to you.” And the need and wanting in his voice was plain and her heart ached because it was happening. The thing she was so afraid of: entanglement. Only this time it wouldn’t be just a legal and monetary deal involving boatloads of lawyers. It was his heart and hers, their bodies, and the pleasures they shared last night. It was his fear. It would tie her up all the same and it scared her even more.

  So it was with some trepidation that she asked, “What brings you here during regular business hours? Surely not this.”

  “Good afternoon to you, too.”

  “Good afternoon. But really—is there a business matter we need to discuss?”

  “No. Yes. I do have a proposal of sorts. If we might have a moment alone?”

  “Absolutely,” Detective Hyde replied. “I have an urgent matter of the utmost importance that requires my immediate attention that is also nothing to be concerned about at all whatsoever.”

  Beatrice closed her eyes for just a second of respite and when she opened them, Dalton was down on one knee before her, holding out a blue velvet box with a giant, pear-shaped diamond ring. This was a ring that made no whispered suggestions but bold declarations. This was a ring that would be heavy to wear.

  “Beatrice, will you marry me?”

  “No. Of course not. Why would you even ask?”

  “With this ring, no one will trouble you. With this ring, the world will know that you have me to protect you. To cherish you. I can’t lose you again, Beatrice. We have something that transcends years and continents and circumstances. Because you and I are uniquely suited to understand each other. We share passion and purpose. And we are good together, Beatrice. You know it as well as I. Dare I say, we even belong together?”

  “I cannot, Dalton. I told you that. I told you that the other night, before . . .”

  “You also said I could try to change your mind.”

  “There have been moments where I have thought maybe. But now you’re here in my office, distracting me, demanding decisions and commitments, and saying I should go home and wait just to be safe. In other words, that I should shut myself away and flit around the castle. Well, I’ve done that already, and it’s the last thing I want to do. So now I’m thinking . . . no.”

  “What if there is a child?” Dalton challenged. “I know you’re not afraid of a scandal, but it’s not fair to inflict it upon an unborn child.”

  “A noble, thoughtful, and decent sentiment that I do agree with. If there would be a child. But there will not be. And I know there will not be because I have taken precautions.”

  “You have taken precautions.”

  “Yes. They’re not infallible but it’s something.” Beatrice sighed. “If only there was a pill one could just swallow and be assured there was no risk of conceiving.”

  “Indeed,” Dalton said, rising to his feet with the grace and ease of a jungle cat. Even rejected, he was powerful and graceful and she wanted him.

  But not enough.

  “Assuming my precautions worked, there won’t be a child and as such, there is no need to marry. And don’t try to scare me into a match by mentioning a scandal should anyone find out about us. To say nothing of this scaremongering to make me wed you out of desperate need for safety.”

  “Give me a little credit, Beatrice. I’m not going to shame you into a match. I’m not going to terrorize you into my arms. That’s not how I want to win.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  He held the ring awkwardly. This hunk of strong, valuable, and eternal stone, bright and shiny and awkward between them. Beatrice looked at that ring, imagined it on her finger and all the women who looked at her as a beacon seeing that she belonged to another, to a man, to her rival. Wearing his ring, promising to obey.

  She couldn’t. She simply could not.

  What would they think of her, their fiercely independent beacon, dimming her light to be with a man? Especially one who made no bones about wanting to dominate her professionally, who had said he wanted to see her lady land reduced to rubble? Who moments ago admitted wanting to stash her away in his castle?

  She just couldn’t.

  Besides she still had doubts and sneaking suspicions.

  “And besides, I cannot be certain this isn’t some ploy to get Goodwin’s.”

  “Do you really think I would propose a lifetime of holy matrimony just to get my hands on your store?” Dalton nearly shouted.

  “It’s been your burning ambition for the past sixteen years. I’m supposed to believe it just changed overnight?”

  “Not overnight. Over the course of nights and days when I realized that the reason I’ve done everything I have done is for you. I thought it was revenge, I only wanted your love. That’s my after.”

  “I’m you’re after.”

  “I hope so.”

  And it was an enormous pressure, that, to be someone else’s purpose and happiness, their nights and days. She felt overwhelmed and exhausted by it already. It was another tremendous burden for her slender shoulders.

  “I just want to be with you, Beatrice. That is all I ever wanted.”

  She was not unmoved. She was a hot-blooded woman with a head and a body he pleasured expertly last night, and a heart that did have feelings for him. Because when they were good, they were good. Because he understood her and what made her tick in a way no one else ever had or likely ever would.

  But she couldn’t go back to married life. She couldn’t give some man a say over what she did and with whom and where and why. She could
n’t give up that space in her brain to worry about him and what he might think and feel. And if they had children—

  Some would call her selfish. Beatrice didn’t care. Why couldn’t she be selfish?

  “I don’t want to give up my independence or my freedom, Dalton.”

  “I wouldn’t keep you in a cage, Beatrice. Gilded or otherwise. I’m not like him. For better or for worse.”

  “Oh, but it has already begun. Insisting I stay at your home, insisting on escorting me to and from work, insisting I do whatever you say so I can stay safe. To say nothing of the tug that I am already feeling.”

  “The tug?”

  “If we were wed, I would feel the tug to return home when I wanted to work. I would feel the tug to consider you and your feelings and us in every decision—even though I presume we would still be competitors?” She lifted one brow and he didn’t have an answer for that. “Suppose you wished for children? I don’t know that I can give that to you. But I know I would feel the tug to be home with them and not here. Dalton, I want to be here.”

  She stood here. Behind her desk. In her office. Manhattan roaring outside her window. The floors below her hummed with female voices and feminine activity. Money and ideas and goods and services changed hands. Dreams were conceived and realized. Desires stoked and satisfied. And best of all, all these women had a space that wasn’t home to just . . . be.

  It was everything she ever wanted and she had it.

  But it seemed Dalton would be the price she paid for it.

  Dalton gave a bitter laugh.

  “All the money I have earned, all the prestige I have accumulated, all the power I have gained, all the years of dawn-till-dusk work and dusk-till-dawn social climbing. All so I could be your damned hero. And it seems I have dedicated my life to all the wrong things. It seems that I’m working off an old script trying to catch up with a new woman.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. And she was sorry. “It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, Dalton. We don’t have to play by someone else’s rules. We don’t have to let anyone else dictate the terms of our happy-ever-after.”

  “You’re a magnificent woman, Beatrice. I love you, Beatrice. Because I love you, I am terrified of losing you. Because I love you, I want more than stolen moments in elevators or quick tumbles in department-store beds. I want to hear your laughter echo in my foyer. I want to go to sleep and wake up next to you in my bed. I want a home. A life. A family. I want to feel that if my thousands of employees vanished tomorrow, I would still not be alone. Don’t you want that, too?”