Читать книгу Claiming His Secret Heir - Joanne Rock - Страница 9
ОглавлениеTo keep her guilty conscience at bay, Caroline sank deeper into the thick cushions of the hanging daybed on the second-floor patio and thought about her son—her whole reason for lying her way into Damon’s home.
Lucas was safe with her sister, Victoria, in a carriage house Caroline had rented for them nearby. She’d paid in cash and used a fake name to ensure their father wouldn’t find them. She’d timed their trip to coincide with his business visit to Singapore, but she doubted their absence had remained a secret past the first forty-eight hours, which meant he could be learning about their defection anytime now. Would he guess that Caroline had run straight to Damon in Los Altos Hills? Would he be worried about their safety and send the police?
She had no idea, but she knew Lucas and Victoria would be safer in the carriage house than with her. Victoria swore that their father had purposely tried to keep her from seeing Caroline while she was recovering from her ordeal. Her version of events since Caroline’s return—so different from her father’s—had been the impetus to see Damon for herself. To find out if he loved her or if he’d only married her for expediency’s sake.
Still, she found it difficult to accept that her father coveted Transparent so badly that he would use her as a pawn. She’d been kidnapped, after all. How could Damon have kept that a secret from her family? Her father would have reported her missing if he’d known, but he said that her bills—cell phone, car payments, the mortgage on a small apartment she maintained in Manhattan—were being paid consistently, even during the times when she’d been a captive.
How was that possible? Someone was lying to her, or else she really was going crazy.
Caroline stared into the leaping flames in the stone fireplace and tried to relax before Damon returned. He’d started the blaze to ward off the late afternoon chill as the sun set over San Francisco Bay in the distance. The view was beautiful and the patio heater nearby sent bonus warmth her way. As if the blankets she burrowed under weren’t enough. Damon had dragged half the linen closet outdoors when she professed a desire to sit on the patio, extending her the courtesy he might give an invalid.
Which made sense, considering he thought she was suffering from amnesia. And she still did suffer from it, of course. Just not to the degree she pretended.
While she waited for him to return with their dinner, she closed her eyes and reminded herself this was absolutely necessary. She couldn’t think of any other way to find out if he had only wed her for material gain, or if he’d genuinely cared for her. And she refused to introduce him to Lucas until she knew for sure. For now, all she knew for certain was that her husband hadn’t come for her when she’d been kidnapped. Her captors said he didn’t pay the ransom and didn’t want her back. While she had no reason to trust them whatsoever, her father’s version of events supported this.
He’d sworn he hadn’t known she was missing until that fisherman discovered her. But something didn’t add up, and she knew her father would lie to further his own ends—of course he would. He hadn’t even breathed Damon’s name in his house when she’d still been confused about her ordeal and couldn’t remember who the father of her child was. How could her dad do that? He’d always been manipulative, relentlessly steering Caroline in the direction he wanted. But she’d drawn the line at allowing him to tell her who she could—and could not—marry.
She would learn all she could in the next two days, and then she would tell Damon the truth. Two days was her limit for being apart from Lucas. But if there was a chance she and Damon could have a future together, she would introduce him to Lucas personally and maybe they could be a family. If it turned out that Damon had never loved her and married her for self-serving purposes?
She would hire a lawyer and sue for full custody through formal channels. She had her own money, accounts solely in her name. She’d changed all the passwords on them last week after discovering someone might have accessed them to pay her bills while she’d been held captive. If necessary, she would hire a financial investigator to help her track what happened there. But her balances were still healthy from her years of nonstop work before she’d met Damon. And right now, she cared far more about her personal affairs than her bottom line.
“Caroline?” Damon asked quietly from the opposite end of the patio, a tray of food in his hands. He must have come up the outdoor stairs; she’d been so caught up in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard. She would need to be more careful, more on guard in the future.
He waited there now, balancing the heavy, domed silver platter. With his dark brown hair and deep blue eyes, her husband shared the features of his equally handsome brothers she’d met at their wedding. Damon was slightly taller than Jager and Gabe, though, his six-foot-three frame well-proportioned. And whereas his younger brother, Gabe, possessed an easygoing nature that made him quick to smile, Damon was serious, often pensive and intense. More like his driven older brother, Jager, who managed the brothers’ businesses while Damon and Gabe both tended to follow their passions. Damon had always been deeply passionate about his work, he could lose track of the hours spent on business, and he told her once that she was the only woman who’d ever intrigued him enough to get him to spend time away from his company.
He’d had the same effect on her, enticing her out of her office to savor a sunny day or breathe in a cool breeze off the Santa Cruz Mountains.
“Yes?” She straightened from her slouch, propping herself higher on the back pillows so they could share the daybed like a sofa.
A spark arced and popped from the stone fireplace.
“Just checking to make sure you hadn’t fallen asleep.” He headed her way with the tray, settling it on the low tile table nearby. He’d changed from his earlier cargos and tee to a lightweight black wool sweater and gray trousers. The winds off the bay were chilly now that the sun had gone down. “Are you sure you’ll be warm enough out here?” He checked the setting on the patio heater and held his broad palms out to test the temperature. “We can take dinner inside, if you prefer.”
“This is perfect, actually.” She remembered those early days of recovering her memory when she had grounded herself in the everyday, simple things to anchor her. Enjoying the feel of a warm bath. Stroking the furry back of her sister’s cat, Socrates. “I saw a physician about the amnesia in Mexico and she said that surrounding myself with the familiar will help me to recover my memories.” Caroline smoothed a hand over the cashmere blanket that Damon had given her earlier, her heart picking up pace as she prepared to dig for information. “I’ll bet I spent a lot of time on this swing.”
Damon settled on the edge of the cushion beside her, the warmth of his sudden nearness making her senses come alive. She’d forgotten the way he smelled—the musk and spice of his aftershave that sent a flood of pleasurable memories to her brain. Of shared kisses. Incredible sex. Orgasms. Curling into his side afterward and having him stroke her back until she fell asleep.
Her body tingled at just the thoughts.
“None.” His blunt response was so at odds with everything she was feeling—the word as stark as his expression. “This house was still being built while we were on our honeymoon in Florence and the Tuscan countryside. We never spent any time here.”
She held her breath, waiting for him to say something about the day she’d been abducted. The only day she’d ever stepped inside the completed house. The events of that afternoon were still fuzzy in her mind. Her father had insisted she was planning to leave Damon that day, but she couldn’t remember why.
When he continued, however, his attention had returned to the tray of food. “I’ve only been in town for a few days myself, so I’m afraid the meal offerings aren’t as extensive as I would have hoped for your return.” He tugged off the silver dome and set it on the stone patio, revealing two empty plates and a cold cut platter. “I called for a grocery delivery and a catered meal for later, but for now, this is the complete contents of the refrigerator.”
“The turkey looks good.” She leaned forward to make half a sandwich for herself, but Damon politely waved her away.
“Let me.” He cut open a small roll and stabbed two slices of meat with the knife. “For months, I would have given anything for the chance to do something for you. See you. Touch you. Bring you dinner.”
She swallowed back the knot of emotions his words tangled inside her. What she wouldn’t have given to have him there when she’d been scared and alone on that island in Mexico, too ill from her pregnancy to even walk outside and look for a neighboring village.
“What did you think happened to me?” She couldn’t help the rasp of her voice that betrayed the pain she kept hidden inside. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I mean, as I told you, there is nothing about me being missing online.”
It was as though she’d simply ceased to exist after their wedding.
He set down the plate with her sandwich on the coffee table before settling his hand on her knee through the blanket. It was the first time he’d touched her since she arrived and it affected her as much as she had feared it might.
“Are you sure you want to talk about this now? So soon after arriving?” He caressed her knee with his thumb through the thick layers of cashmere and wool, the intimacy seeming so easy and natural for him.
As if he truly cared about her.
“I have driven myself crazy trying to piece together the past on my own. I’m hoping you’ll help me fill in some of the blanks in a way that will be less stressful.”
His blue eyes locked on hers in the firelight, searching.
Could he read her better than she realized? Did he have any inkling that she might not be telling him the whole truth? Never in her life had she felt so unsure of herself as she had these last few months. She used to be so steady and self-assured. Now, everything her father had told her about her past contradicted what she had believed about it.
“I definitely don’t want to add to the stress of remembering.” Damon returned to the tray and finished making her turkey sandwich, which he passed over before pouring her a drink—water with a twist of lemon. “I did a quick scan online about amnesia recovery while the housekeeper put together the meal, and it said that the senses can sometimes trigger memories more easily. Hearing a song or smelling something familiar can help, like your physician said.”
Thinking about the flood of memories from the scent of his aftershave, Caroline would say the doctor had been spot on.
“If I never lived here, maybe there’s nothing to be gained by me staying here.” She had allotted two days to solving the mystery of Damon. She couldn’t afford to waste time. “Is there somewhere else that might be more meaningful?”
Nibbling on her sandwich, she watched him make another for himself, the muscles in his forearm shifting and flexing as he reached for cheese slices and fresh tomato. She’d fallen for him hard and fast the first time—getting engaged after knowing him for only six weeks and marrying him a month after that. She needed to be more cautious now, to learn all she could about him.
“You lived in a hotel when you first came to town to research Transparent. I had a smaller house close to the company in Mountain View.” He leaned back against the cushions lining the daybed swing, keeping a foot on the patio floor to anchor them.
Caroline was grateful both for the darkness and Damon’s focus on keeping the daybed from rocking, which took his attention away from her while her face flamed with memories of time spent at his place. How many nights had she languished in his bed there before their wedding? They’d made love in virtually every room. Also, the sauna. The pool house...
She didn’t dare ask him about that home. Her voice might betray her.
“Did we have dates anywhere significant? Special?” She frowned, trying to remember how it felt to have no frame of reference for conversations about the past. When her amnesia had been at its worst, she’d asked questions constantly. “Or maybe we should visit the business, if that’s how we met.”
Would seeing her office help? They’d worked in the same building.
But she needed to be careful. Damon was a very smart man. Brilliant, even. She’d been fascinated by his mind and his innovative ideas for Transparent even before they’d met. One misstep in her ruse could ruin her cover story for being here.
“We went hiking in the Santa Cruz Mountains once.” He studied her with a clear blue gaze that missed nothing. “And you were fixated on the Winchester Mystery House for a while. We had picnics in the gardens while you kept an eye out for ghosts.”
His unexpected choice of memories touched her. Those outings were such brief pockets of time they’d spent together compared to the long hours they’d invested in his business and, later, trying to deal with her father.
Her driven, focused father would have hated that she’d gone ghost-hunting. Did he know she’d ever done something like that?
“Do you remember?” Damon asked suddenly, making her realize she’d been quiet a beat too long, thinking about how thoroughly her father had schooled her to think like him, to fill her days with work the way he did.
“No.” She shook her head quickly, returning her gaze to her plate. “I’m just surprised to imagine myself ghost-watching. It hardly sounds like the hobby of a businesswoman.”
She’d been a different person with Damon, though. Their courtship had been a revelation. It hadn’t just been about love. It had been about play. Fun. Laughter.
Things she hadn’t really taken the time to savor in a life full of goals set ever higher ever since childhood, from violin recitals to debate team championships to achieving perfect test scores. Then, after graduating from college, it had been about obtaining a lucrative position in a New York financial firm before joining her father’s company. Her father had trained her to focus on work relentlessly, while Damon wasn’t afraid to enjoy himself.
“I think you liked the diversion of something whimsical after the stress of long days at the office.” He took a bite of his sandwich and seemed to reconsider the answer. “Then again, maybe you were just trying to give me a diversion after the long days at the office. We never did see any ghosts.”
And his sense of whimsy had faded, she recalled, toward the end of their honeymoon when her father had urged her to come to London to help him with a takeover of a UK company. She’d been excited for the chance to end the standoff with him. Damon had been stunned she would even consider it. In the end, she’d told him she would head to London anyhow to see a friend and at least meet with her father. It had been an unhappy way to wind up their romantic Italy trip.
But could it have really been the end of their marriage?
“Then let’s try again.” She still hoped their son could one day see the more lighthearted, loving side of Damon. Provided it ever existed outside her hopeful imagination. “Let’s go back to a place with happy memories.”
* * *
The next day, with Caroline in the passenger seat of his white Land Rover, Damon pulled into the Los Trancos Preserve in the mountains above Palo Alto. The woods were close to the house, easy to access from the home they’d built together.
It seemed like a million years ago now. Their dating. Their marriage. Even her disappearance. Last night, after she went to bed, he had reopened his old investigation notes from those frantic first few months she’d been gone. He’d taken his time reading over everything again, looking for new clues now that he knew she’d been in Mexico. All of the evidence he’d found on her whereabouts had led him to believe she was in Europe. She’d deposited money in her account in London and used an ATM card in Prague, Paris and Venice. Her credit card had been used for a room in a Barcelona hotel, but when his PI had shown her picture around the place, no one on staff recognized her.
Had someone been impersonating her? At the time, he’d guessed she wanted to disappear and had paid someone well to cover her tracks. Whatever the case, it was as much a mystery as ever. While he was inside the house retrieving food for Caroline, he’d also messaged the PI his half brothers had used to find him when he’d been traveling Europe looking for her on his own. At the time, he had ditched his cell phone so as not to be distracted with work calls or requests from his family to return home. He’d bought a burner and focused on following Caroline’s trail, but he’d come up empty handed.
Bentley, the investigator who had located Damon when Jager and Gabe got fed up with his disappearing act, was excellent. But unfortunately, he’d been hired by a branch of Damon’s family he would rather forget. Damon’s father, Liam, had left their mother when they were kids and Damon, Jager, and Gabe had no use for the guy. But recently, their grandfather, Malcolm McNeill, had made it his mission to reunite all of his grandchildren, even the illegitimate branch. Damon might not have much use for all the new blood relatives in his life, and most especially not his father, but he could appreciate the value of a good PI. Maybe Bentley would figure out what a whole team of investigators had failed to the first time around.
Just what the hell had happened to his wife?
Talking about the good times with her last night had felt surreal, like the experiences had happened to someone else. He’d been trying so damn hard to forget her, and now? She’d forgotten all about him instead.
If that meant she forgot all about her bastard of a father, Damon didn’t mind the sacrifice one bit. He hoped the subject of Stephan Degraff wouldn’t surface between them today since Damon knew he wouldn’t be able to scrounge a single positive thing to say about the guy who was still fighting to take control of Transparent. Her father was on a mission to turn the rest of the investors against Damon so they could pull in a more experienced CEO to run the company.
Over his dead body.
“Are you sure you feel up to this?” Damon asked Caroline as he switched off the Land Rover. “We could always go for a Sunday drive instead.”
She was as beautiful as ever, but her pale skin and thinner frame made her seem frailer somehow. Or maybe it was simply because he knew she’d suffered a trauma that had given her amnesia. He didn’t want her to exhaust herself. He’d suggested she call a doctor first thing this morning, wanting to know what a professional had to say about her condition, but she’d been adamant she was well enough. When he hadn’t backed down, she’d conceded to a visit tomorrow if they could have one day together first.
He’d been hard pressed to argue. He was having a tough time just letting her out of his sight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
“I’ll be fine.” She gave him a smile that threw caution to the wind. He remembered it from when they’d climbed the bell tower in Florence and she’d challenged him to see who could scale the four-hundred-some steps faster. “The fresh air and exercise will be good for me.”
He still wanted to wrap her in cotton and keep watch over her for days, but he nodded.
Leaving the picnic basket in the back, he locked his door before stalking around to her side and helping her down. He only touched her briefly, putting his hand on her forearm to steady her while she hopped out, but it reminded him how long it had been since he’d touched a woman. Touched her. Even when he’d thought she was never coming back, he hadn’t consoled himself with someone else. In his mind, he’d still been married.
He watched Caroline take in the sights, her head turning as she studied the oak woodland and grassy knolls, the combination of forest and rolling hills scented with bay leaves and the cool, damp earth. The sun shone warmly enough for a southern California winter day, but little light penetrated the thickest patches of trees nearby.
Dressed in a dark blue running suit and a pink tee she’d found in her closet, she started toward the closest hiking trail, her new white sneakers fast on the well-worn path.
“Ready?” Her ponytail swung around her shoulder as she turned back to see him.
“Which way looks good?” he asked, curious if she had even a subconscious memory of the place.
“It seems sunniest in that direction.” She pointed toward the grassier path heading south.
He followed her, discreetly lifting branches out of her way when low boughs seemed too close to head height. For the most part, however, the trail was wide open and the preserve was quiet save for an older man taking his Dalmatian for a walk.
When they reached a high spot with a view of the Bay, Caroline dropped down to a flat rock and zipped her jacket up midway. Damon sat beside her, admiring the view from the peak, and all the time debating if he should ask her more about her ordeal or if he should focus on making new, happier memories. Before he could decide, she turned dark brown eyes his way.
“You said you searched everywhere for me.” Her voice was quiet. Serious. “Why didn’t you report me missing?”
The wind whistled through the tree branches overhead, a lonely sound that echoed through him.
Yesterday, when they’d touched on this subject, he’d been too stunned by the realization that she didn’t remember him to focus on the question. Now, he heard the hurt in her voice. The doubts underlying the question. She had hesitated to come back to him, thinking he might have “moved on.”
Which gave him no choice but to bring up her father.
He ground his teeth at the very thought of the man.
“Your father showed the police proof you’d been in touch with him. He said you’d left the marriage of your own volition and said I should respect your privacy.” He studied her expression, trying to interpret what she might be feeling at that news. “Do you remember much about him?”
“No. I’ve made progress since those first days where I didn’t recognize my own name. I can visualize my family, as well as college and the jobs I had after I graduated. But I don’t really remember anything about why I came out to Los Altos Hills. The last apartment I can recall clearly was in New York City.” She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I can remember that I worked for my father, and I have a few memories of my childhood, but not much about him personally.”
Just his luck, she hadn’t wiped out all memory of Stephan Degraff. Just of Damon.
“Then you might recall your close relationship with your father,” he ventured carefully. “How often the two of you spoke.” Stephan Degraff counted on Caroline’s business advice for his investments, calling on her anytime day or night if he had a question. The guy was relentless. Manipulative. And then, a disturbing thought occurred to Damon. “I’m surprised you didn’t go to him first if you didn’t recollect anything about me.”
“I—” She hesitated, a mixture of emotions evident in her eyes. Guilt. Worry.
“It doesn’t matter.” He covered her knee with one hand, not wishing to upset her. “I’m glad you came here.”
“But my father told the police that I left you? Was it you who called the police?”
“You texted me when your plane landed after you returned here from London.” He wasn’t going to mention the argument they’d had about the UK trip. “It didn’t make sense to me that you would contact me then, only to pack up and leave me.”
“Of course not.” She shook her head, ponytail swinging. “Unless we’d been unhappy?”
“Right after the honeymoon?” He removed his hand from her knee to withdraw his phone and tapped open the gallery of images he’d saved. “Scroll through a few of those and see if they look like pictures of unhappy people.”
She shifted positions, lowering her knees to glance over the photos of them on the Ponte Vecchio, seated at their favorite café for morning espressos, in front of the Uffizi Gallery, at the top of that bell tower they’d climbed. Most of the images were of her smiling and him kissing her cheek, but in a few of them, you could see them both grinning. Wildly in love.
Or so he thought.
“My God.” Her finger swiped faster, sending pictures spinning off the screen, one after another. “Did you show these to the police? To my father? What did they say?”
Her voice quavered. Her whole body seemed to tremble. Damn it.
“I’m sorry.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gently slid the phone from her hands. “I didn’t mean to upset you. We’ll figure it all out, okay? Just relax.”
She shook like a leaf. He couldn’t understand what, precisely, had her so troubled. But he didn’t want to rile her more.
“This is too important for me to relax.” Edging away from his touch, she shot to her feet and paced around the small lookout spot. “Would you be able to put me in touch with the officers you spoke to? The police who supposedly talked to my dad?”
“Supposedly?” Getting to his feet, he frowned. Defensive. “You don’t believe me?”
She tipped her head to one side. Thinking. “I’ve invested a lot of time struggling to piece together the past. I don’t want to worry that the perspectives I’m hearing are biased. I’d like to know what a neutral party has to say.”
“Of course.” He reached for her again, needing to offer some kind of comfort when she was clearly rattled. “Caroline, it’s not good for you to be so agitated. Let’s think about something else. Something happier.”
“Why would you believe I left of my own free will if we were so happy?” With her lips pursed and her eyebrows scrunched in confusion, she stared up at him waiting for answers he didn’t have.
Okay. Answers he didn’t want to share.
“Every couple argues. When your father said you’d been contacting him regularly, I assumed I must have missed something, but you’d be home soon.” He didn’t want to delve into this now. Not when his whole purpose today had been to relive good times.
“And when months went by?” She peered up at him, frustration simmering in her clear brown eyes.
“I took solace from the knowledge that you loved me once and you’d love me again.” He dropped his palms on her shoulders, drawing her closer. Wanting her to feel the connection that still stirred inside him every time she was near. “I knew what we shared wouldn’t just disappear. I hired private investigators to find you myself.”
He could feel her swift intake of breath. A mixture of wariness and some warmer, answering emotion flared in her eyes, but she didn’t move away.
The wind stirred the leaves at their feet and whirled around them. To Damon, it felt like it was drawing them closer.
“I’d like to show you what I mean.” He teased a touch along her jaw, testing the softness of her creamy skin, breathing in the faint scent of roses.
He wanted to take his time, to soak in the feel of her, the warmth.
If she remembered nothing else, she had to remember this.
Slowly, he grazed his lips along hers, the barest brush of mouths. Of breath. He tipped his forehead to hers, standing still, waiting.
When her fingers curled into his shoulders, her nails softly pressing through his sweater and tee, Damon’s blood surged in a heated rush. He ground his teeth against the bolt of hunger and forced himself to step back. He simply took her hands in his and caressed and kissed them.
“That proves passion is still there,” she said finally, her voice expressing the same hunger he felt. Yet she backed up another step and slid her hands away from his, tucking them into her pockets. “But what about love?”
