Rachel Bailey - Return of the Secret Heir

“My newfound brothers are refusing to meet with me.” Making it difficult to acquire information he wanted. If they had evidence that their father knew of his existence, he’d lose his standing in court. It would mean his father had deliberately left him out of the will. And if that was on the cards, he wanted to know now.

Her beautiful plump lips compressed into a straight line. “Legally we can’t call them ‘your brothers’ on your say so. We have no evidence you are a son of Mr. Bramson.”

She didn’t believe him. Years ago, they’d lain in each other’s arms, trying to outdo each other with suggestions of who his father could be-a president, a mobster in witness protection, a pirate king. And now he finally knew the truth-she didn’t believe him. The knowledge hit his chest with unexpected force, but he merely raised an eyebrow. “My word holds no weight with you, Pia?”

Back when she’d been the town’s princess and he’d been a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, she’d been the only one to have faith in him. Time changed everything.

Nothing was permanent-he should never have forgotten that for an instant.

“This has nothing to do with my opinions,” she said dispassionately, but a faint blush colored her cheeks. “This is a legal matter.”

He planted both feet on the floor and leaned forward in his chair. “Given that my alleged father is dead and my alleged brothers are refusing to provide a DNA sample, then you’d have to admit it’s rather difficult for me to prove a family connection.”

“This is really a matter for you and Mr. Hendricks to discuss and address when you contest the will. Now if you’ll excuse me-” she stood “-I’m late for a scheduled meeting.”

He didn’t move a muscle. “Answer me one question and I’ll leave.”

Pia looked from him to Philip and back again. “I think I’ve said enough,” she said, her voice tightly controlled. “Any other questions, send them in writing and either my assistant or I will respond.”

“One question.” Still, he didn’t stand.

She held his gaze but made no reply-it was the closest he was going to get to assent, so he took it. “I want an assurance you won’t bias the people involved against me. Tell me that you won’t paint me in an unfair light.” Her wealthy socialite parents had called him a gold digger so many times that he wondered if she’d believed it when she broke up with him. And despite his current wealth, a reputation for that kind of personality could affect the way his brothers perceived him. “Tell me you’ll give them the chance to consider acknowledging me as a brother without biasing them. Make me a promise, princess.”

Her eyes flashed and she stood straighter. “My name is Pia. Actually, no, it’s Ms. Baxter to you. And you’ve used more than the time I had allotted you.” She pressed a button on her desk and a bespectacled man appeared at an internal door. “Arthur, please show these gentlemen out.”

Then she was gone through the same internal door. JT’s body urged him to give chase, but he knew it would be better to give her time. She’d had no warning about his arrival today-it made sense she was as rattled as he was.

He stood and nodded to Arthur. “We know the way.” Then he strode from the room, followed by his attorney who would be bursting with questions JT had no intention of answering.

Pia held herself together as she walked through the office of her assistant, Arthur, and down the hall to the women’s bathroom. She even managed to smile and exchange pleasantries with a colleague on the way, despite the sound of blood rushing in her ears.

The bathroom was empty. She went to the far cubicle, locked the door and leaned back against the cool laminate. JT Hartley had come looking for her. For close to fourteen years she’d half dreaded, half hoped for this day and now it was here, the timing couldn’t be worse. She pressed her hands over her face, trying to stem the emotional tide that was rising. The last thing she needed was a meltdown at work, especially with a potential partnership in the offing. She’d deal with the effects of JT’s reappearance later. For now, she needed to see her boss.

At the basin, she splashed cold water over her cheeks, patted them dry with a paper towel and straightened her jacket in front of the mirror. Then she headed for the senior partner’s office. She paced his reception room for five minutes while he finished a call before his secretary ushered her in.

“Pia, how can I help you?” Ted Howard asked. He pushed wire-rimmed reading glasses to the top of his salt-and-pepper hair and stretched his arms over his head.

“It’s about that matter we discussed a month ago,” she said, trying hard to stay focused on the legal implications and not letting her mind stray to how JT’s eyes had smoldered. She swallowed. “The new claimant to the Bramson will.”

“Ah, the man you once knew.”

She laced her fingers and regulated her breathing. “Yes.”

“We decided the issue was far enough in the past and not big enough to warrant your being removed from the case. Have you changed your mind?”

“No, I still want to see this case through.” She’d been the one to bring this account to the firm, and Ted had told her at the time that the other partners were impressed enough to put her in the running for a partnership if her work on the case was exemplary. Letting the case go was not an option, no matter what stunt JT pulled. “But you should know he was just here.”

Howard’s gaze sharpened. “Hartley came to your office?”

“He didn’t have an appointment and I saw him for approximately six minutes. There will be no further contact.”

“What did he want?” he asked as he pulled his glasses from his head and casually threw them onto his desk.

The same question had been in her mind during their pointless and frustrating meeting. That was, in the moments her mind had been able to operate instead of being stuck in stunned mode. “I think he was hunting for information to help his claim.”

Howard arched an eyebrow. “Did he succeed?”

“Of course not,” she said, lifting her chin.

He smiled. “Okay, I don’t think this changes anything. Just let me know if he makes any further contact.”

“I will,” Pia said and headed back out the door. Regardless of what JT may think, there would be no further contact to report.

That night, Pia knelt on the carpet in front of her bedroom cupboard, struggling to fill her lungs. She reached to the back-the box was in the far corner where she’d put it after moving in only eighteen months ago-behind the tightly bound rolls of felt and bags of netting. Out of sight but never completely out of mind.

Gently, she brought it forward, her heart jumping erratically, then sat back against the wall, the box on her lap unopened. It was just an ordinary shoe box, tied with a narrow red ribbon. Nothing more unusual than many women probably had pushed to the back of their cupboard, but the contents were far from ordinary.

She gripped the end of the ribbon between trembling fingers, yet hesitated. What good would it do to delve back into painful memories? Just because JT Hartley came calling unannounced, opening old wounds and sending her world off balance, didn’t mean she had to exacerbate the situation. But her fingers tugged and the ribbon fell away. She closed her eyes as she removed the lid, fortifying herself, then opened them and looked down.

There, lying on the top, was a photo of a seventeen-year-old JT, grinning crookedly around the tiny scar above his lip, his eyes full of the devil, his arm wrapped around a sixteen-year-old version of her. His body, encased in a carelessly rumpled black T-shirt, wasn’t as filled out as she suspected the one under the suit today had been. But the boy in the photo was her first love, her first lover, more dear to her than anyone or anything had ever been…except the other person remembered in this box.