Barbara Dunlop - New Arrivals - His Inherited Family - Billionaire Baby Dilemma / His Ring, Her Baby / Cowgirl Makes Three

“You’re giving demerits for style?” “You did.”

Static crackled on the baby monitor. A man’s muffled voice came over the speaker. The words were indistinct, but Devin felt her entire body go cold. The man spoke again. Steve.

She swore out loud, jumped up and shoved her chair out of the way. It clattered to the floor of the deck.

She took off running through the great room, down the hall to the foyer and the main staircase, while Lucas called out her name, rushing behind her.

She pounded up the stairs and sprinted down the hall. Then she rounded the corner to find two male staff members chatting outside Amelia’s nursery. The doors to both rooms were closed, and the men looked up in surprise at Devin’s entrance.

She quickly brushed passed them and cracked open the nursery door.

Amelia was sound asleep and completely alone.

“Is everything all right, ma’am?” one of the men asked.

“Devin?” Lucas’s voice came from the end of the hall.

Devin’s heart was pounding and her lungs drew in deep breaths. She gathered her wits. “Everything’s fine.”

Lucas marched forward.

“Can you please excuse us?” he asked the two men. They quickly withdrew.

“What the hell?” Lucas demanded, voice low. “You’re white as a ghost.”

“It’s okay,” Devin gasped. The men’s voices outside the nursery had obviously been picked up by the monitor. “What happened?”

“I thought—” she began, wondering how much to tell him. She realized she was going to sound like a hysterical idiot. But she couldn’t come up with anything to replace the truth.

“You thought what? ”

“Steve was here,” she admitted.

Lucas’s brows knit together in obvious confusion. “You thought Steve was here?”

“No,” Devin corrected. “Steve was here. Earlier. I came out of the nursery and found him in my room.”

Lucas’s brows drew together. His eyes went stormy, and his mouth thinned.

“He seemed annoyed that you’d stayed over at my place. He knew you were there all night, and—”

“Hold on a minute,” Lucas interrupted. “Did he tell you that, or did you tell him? “

“He told me.” Devin resented the implication that she’d rushed to Steve with the news. Then again, why should Lucas trust her any more than she trusted him?

She continued, suddenly wanting to get the whole story out. “Then he said he had tried to make this easy for me. I got the impression he wasn’t going to make it easy for me anymore. I didn’t know what he meant. But then I heard a man’s voice.” She paused. “On the baby monitor. And for a minute, I thought.”

“You thought Steve might harm Amelia?”

“I thought he’d come back. Beyond that, I didn’t know what to think.”

Lucas wrapped a large, warm hand over her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “Steve is not going to hurt Amelia.”

Devin nodded, but it was only to be agreeable. Her radar was up when it came to Steve. If she had her way, he’d never be near Amelia again.

“I mean, even if he would, which believe me, he wouldn’t. He’s a jerk, but he’d never go that far. We’ll increase security, Devin. We can get Amelia a bodyguard instead of a nanny if it makes you feel better.”

Devin closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.

“Okay?” he asked.

She gave a jerky nod.

His hand tightened on her shoulder, and the next thing she knew, she was being drawn into his embrace.

“It’s going to be fine,” he promised her in a gruff voice.

His arms felt wonderfully strong as they wrapped around her. His chest felt broad and solid against her cheek. And though she knew depending on Lucas was the most dangerous thing she could do, for just a moment, she let herself sink into his strength.

Lucas couldn’t bring himself to believe that Steve was a real danger to Amelia. But he was beyond furious with him for approaching and intimidating Devin. And he’d done it right here in the mansion. The man’s audacity knew no bounds.

Lucas had immediately contacted Theodore Vick, the Demarcos’ head of security and assigned extra full-time protection to Devin and Amelia. He’d also talked to Byron about Steve pulling his legal support from Devin and what it could mean. Despite his down-home manner, Byron was a shrewd strategist, with an impressive network of contacts and a gift for sleuthing out information. If anyone could ferret out Steve’s new plan, it was Byron.

Now, Byron appeared in the doorway of Lucas’s office on the lower floor of the mansion.

“Anything?” asked Lucas without preamble. He’d spent the morning trying to focus on a problem with new high-tech foreign ownership regulations in Sweden. But he hadn’t had much success forgetting about either Devin or Steve.

Byron shut the door behind him and entered the room. “Did Steve’s mama drop him on his head when he was a baby?” he asked conversationally.

Lucas wasn’t sure how to interpret that question, so he didn’t offer an answer.

“If not, she should have,” said Byron. “There is something terribly wrong with that boy.”

Lucas stood from his chair and came around the desk that was positioned at one end of the rectangular room. The sliding glass doors were open to a small patio, and Byron motioned for him to pull them shut.

Now Lucas was very curious. “What did you find out?”

“You remember this?” Byron tossed a red-labeled videotape on the square meeting table that took up one corner of the room.

“Is that the one from Granddad’s will?”

Byron gave a curt nod. “Let’s just refresh your memory a tad, shall we?” He slid the tape into the old VCR that was connected to Lucas’s television set. Then he took up the remote and gestured to the chairs around the meeting table.

“Did we miss something the first time through?” asked Lucas, lowering himself into one of the charcoal-gray, sling-back leather chairs.

“It was right there under our noses the whole time.” Byron pressed a button on the remote, and a poorly lit picture came up on the screen.

It was a younger-looking Granddad, sitting in this same office, vintage railway photos on the wall in the background.

Byron fast-forwarded through part of the tape.

“Here we go,” he said, switching the video back to Play.

Granddad’s familiar, gravelly voice came through the twin speakers. “The reason for this is that you boys need to understand the difference between work and family. This great company you’ve inherited was built on a foundation of family. Your grandmothers and great-grandmothers may not have had their names on the stationery, but they played pivotal roles in the building of what is now Pacific Robotics.” His old eyes softened. “Lucy was my rock. She was there through good times and bad, through success and failure, always believing I could do the impossible. And, you boys, you need to find your own rocks.” Granddad folded his hands on the desk and leaned toward the camera. “And if leaving my estate to a future great-grandchild gives you inspiration to get out there and look, so be it. I can live with that.”

Byron clicked a button to stop the tape.

“I don’t get it,” said Lucas, tapping the tabletop in front of him. “We’ve seen this all before. What’s the point?”

“You gotta want it,” said Byron. “Look between the lines. That’s what Steve did.”

Lucas gave his head a small shake, still not following.

“Steve and his lawyers have rustled up a set of legal precedents for videotapes being used as a preamble to a will.”

Lucas gestured to the blank screen. “Granddad only reiterated that his firstborn great-grandchild inherits.”