Catherine Mann - His Heir, Her Honour / Meddling With A Millionaire - His Heir, Her Honour

Lilah stumbled on the curb.

It couldn’t be….

But a closer look confirmed her suspicion. None other than Nancy Wolcott, Carlos’s supposedly “ex” girlfriend, waited at the airport entrance.

Holy hell.

Wincing, Carlos scrubbed his bristly jaw. What was Nancy Wolcott doing here at the private airport?

And clearly waving at them.

Her presence didn’t make sense. He had made himself clear, in a polite fashion. They were both adults. She’d seemed to understand. Yes, she’d seemed disappointed and expressed regret, but not overly so.

He took the offered umbrella from the chauffer and slid under alongside Lilah. Her gasp let him know she’d seen the woman too and was none too happy. The timing couldn’t have been worse. All the progress he’d made on the ride over was blasted to bits now. His body was still strung taut with desire and images of how easy it would have been to lean Lilah back on the leather seats….

He cut the thought short and focused on the mess at hand. Planting a hand on the small of Lilah’s back, he steered her with him, toward the airport entrance. Toward the waiting train wreck.

“Yoo-hoo,” Nancy called, her waving intensifying, raindrops sliding from the umbrella faster in her animation. “Over here!”

He shot a quick assessing glance at Lilah and found her lips thin and tight with irritation, her boots clicking in a snappy fast pace he recognized as angry. He’d heard the same stomping rhythm before as she left a particularly frustrating board meeting. Now was not the time to ponder the reason he knew her well enough to read the mood of her footsteps.

Stopping beside Nancy, Carlos reined in his own frustration over the woman’s surprise arrival.

Nancy’s smile widened. “What perfect timing. I’m so glad I caught you before you left, Carlos.”

Lilah stayed silent, but Carlos had different plans. There were important details to learn before he sent Nancy on her way. “How did you know to come here? And what time?”

“It’s not a state secret, is it? I just wanted to tell you goodbye.” She stared at Lilah curiously, closing her umbrella slowly and shaking it dry. “I didn’t realize the two of you would be traveling together. You didn’t tell me that yesterday, Carlos.”

Blown away by the way she’d shown up here when he’d made it clear yesterday they both needed to go their separate ways, he wondered how he could have misread Nancy. Not that he’d really known her well when he asked her out.

What had made him gravitate to Nancy so soon after his time with Lilah? On the surface, the women were total opposites in many ways. Which made him wonder if perhaps he’d chosen Nancy for just that reason.

Had that one night he’d shared with Lilah sent him running scared? That possibility rocked his world in a way it would take some serious time to process.

Carlos stepped aside for the pair of businessmen passing. “Nancy, quite frankly, I prefer to keep details of my travels low-key and private.”

“Of course.” The woman nodded quickly, clutching her shiny red umbrella closer. “I only want to speak to you alone for a few minutes, you know, about what we discussed at the hospital before you left.” She glanced at Lilah pointedly.

Before Carlos could insist she stay, Lilah hitched her purse higher on her shoulder and said, “I need to make some work calls. If you’ll excuse me.”

“No. Don’t go.” He clasped Lilah’s arm while keeping the other, unpredictable woman clearly in his sights. Who knew what she might do next? “Nancy, I’m sorry, but let’s not make this awkward for anyone. There’s nothing more to say. I believe I covered everything yesterday.”

He kept his voice firm and no-nonsense while working not to be outright cruel. But she needed to understand there could be nothing more.

Nancy’s face froze, her grin turning brittle. “You’re right. I apologize for wanting to send you off on a nicer note.” Her icy smile included Lilah now. “Have a safe business trip.”

Tomato umbrella swooping up and sending a fresh shower of water outward, Nancy raced out into the parking lot toward her hatchback. Regret bit at him that he hadn’t handled things better with her the day before. He hadn’t meant to be a coldhearted bastard, but … damn. Maybe he should have thought of that before they’d dated.

Annoyed with himself and with Nancy, Carlos watched to make sure she got into her car and left. Once her car cleared the parking lot, he turned to Lilah again.

Frowning, she swept water from her wool coat and the hem of her cashmere dress. “Have many more groupies waiting to waylay us before we board?”

Instinctively, he reached for his phone. “I’m more concerned with how she found out we’re here and how much more she knows about our travel plans.”

A call to his family’s security team was in order. As much as he wanted to launch his quest to seduce Lilah, nothing could take precedence over her safety. Once they were secured on the plane, he would turn his attention to discovering how Nancy Wolcott unearthed his travel itinerary and just how much she knew.

Jet engines humming softly, Lilah unbuckled from her seat for a better view out the window at the night sky. Anything to distract her from what she really wanted to study. Carlos, reclined and sleeping an arm stretch away, kept stealing her attention.

Before they’d even left the ground, he’d been working his phone assigning some security team—apparently he kept one on retainer?—to figure out how Nancy had tracked them to the airport. A security team, for crying out loud. Once his “people” had been given their marching orders, Carlos had fallen asleep in a blink, a skill he’d picked up catching catnaps during long shifts at the hospital.

How could he look so familiar but seem so different out of their medical realm? She wasn’t a millionaire, but she was financially secure in her own right. She’d also grown up with her fair share of glitz due to her father’s connections to the Hollywood scene—although he’d been known to live beyond his means, which led to a feast-and-famine lifestyle for his family.

Still, even her own experience of brushing elbows with the rich and famous hadn’t come close to the scope of influence she was only just beginning to see Carlos wielded. While she couldn’t deny Carlos attracted her physically, she refused to be swayed by the wealth of his world of secretive itineraries, plush limousines and private jets. And a very determined female radiologist whose behavior bordered on stalking.

Lilah gripped the leather armrests tighter. Seeing Nancy Wolcott waiting and waving had provided a hefty reminder for how little she knew about Carlos. And how important it was to gauge her moves carefully.

She looked away from the starkly handsome man snoozing across from her and turned her attention to the sleeping world of tiny lights below. If only things were as straightforward as they’d once been with Carlos, just a few shorts months ago before that fateful Christmas fundraiser. Back during a time when she’d been able to rein in her wayward attraction to the brooding surgeon who haunted her dreams.

Carlos didn’t believe dreams came only in black-and-white. His always felt far more vivid than that as the real world mixed with the slumber sphere. Perhaps because he’d slept lightly for as long as he could remember.

As a child, he’d been taught to stay on guard against threats to him as heir to the throne. Then he’d been denied REM sleep by the claws of pain recovering from the shooting. And, finally, he’d needed to stay on alert for his patients.

Right now, his dream mixed with the recycled plane oxygen blending the scent of Lilah with some kind of pine air freshener … taking him back to that night at the hospital fundraiser nearly three months ago….