The Tycoon's Instant Daughter
Christine Rimmer
Mills & Boon Silhouette
Cut from the same rawhide as his infamous father, Cord Stockwell was ruthless in business–and love. So when social worker Hannah Miller claimed that three-month-old Becky was Cord's progeny, he struck a deal that brought baby and Hannah into his opulent home. The wealthy bachelor soon set his sights on something he wanted more of…the sexy temporary nanny! Still, Hannah insisted she had zero interest in intimacy–but her passion-filled kisses betrayed her. And Cord would not be denied. He'd darned well marry Hannah to keep the upper hand…!
If the walls of Stockwell Mansion could talk…
The stories we could tell! To describe the Stockwell family dynasty as merely “interesting” is like calling this forty-room showplace “a house.” Just wouldn’t do the truth justice, now, would it? So let’s talk about truth, shall we? Something that has been in short supply at times around here. Caine Stockwell, the dynasty’s mean-spirited patriarch, has told some Texas-sized whoppers. But why should we spill his dirty little secrets when he’s about to do it himself? Good thing the Stockwells have plenty of mansion insurance, because his confession could shake the shingles off this place!
Now brace yourself for this one! Caine’s son, playboy tycoon Cord Stockwell, has just received some soul-shocking news. He’s a father—and baby has come to Stockwell Mansion to roost. And by the fiery look in Cord’s eyes, the sweet-’n-irresistible nanny he’s temporarily hired might be staying for a very long time…say, until little Becky finishes college. Actually, forever sounds like a better idea, don’t you think?
The Tycoon’s Instant Daughter
Christine Rimmer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Gail Chasan, my favorite editor in the whole world, because she always senses when something’s missing—and she never fixes what ain’t broke.
CHRISTINE RIMMER
Since the publication of her first romance in 1987, New York Times bestselling author Christine Rimmer has written over thirty-five novels for Silhouette Books. A reader favorite, Christine has seen her stories consistently appear on the Waldenbooks and USA Today bestseller lists. She has won the Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer’s Choice Award, and has been nominated twice for the Romance Writers of America’s coveted RITA Award and four times for Romantic Times Magazine’s Series Storyteller of the Year. Christine lives in Oklahoma with her husband, younger son and two very contented cats, Tom and Ed.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Chapter One
The social worker clutched the baby in her arms just a fraction tighter. “Mr. Stockwell, I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t leave Becky here under these conditions.”
Cord Stockwell held on to his temper. “These conditions?” he repeated in his softest, most reasonable tone. Those who knew him best always had sense enough to proceed with care when he spoke so quietly. They knew that such a tone meant he wouldn’t be speaking quietly for long. “Tell me. Exactly what is wrong with these conditions?” He lifted an eyebrow and waited, letting the big room around them speak for itself.
In the past five days, he’d had the room and the bedroom adjoining it completely redone. Now, rainbow murals arched across the sunny yellow walls. Brightly colored rugs dotted the hardwood floor. A rocking horse waited in the corner and big bins filled to the brim with toys were everywhere, along with an impressive array of stuffed animals. From teddy bears to baby dolls, the room had everything a little girl could ask for.
Cord added, still excruciatingly reasonable, “I went to considerable effort and expense to put all this together.”
The social worker parsed out a pained little smile. “I can see that. And it’s very nice. But—”
“But? I don’t want any ‘buts’ out of you. I did every last thing you said I had to do—including hiring a nanny. Are you telling me it’s my fault that the woman called this morning and said she wouldn’t be able to take the job, after all?”
The pained smile got more so. “Of course it’s not your fault. I never said it was. But the fact remains, you have no nanny. And in your particular situation, without appropriate child care, you aren’t prepared to provide the kind of round-the-clock attention that Becky needs.” The woman’s tone, so preachy and know-it-all, would have done a Yankee proud. It thoroughly contradicted her down-home Reba McEntire twang. She’d grown up in some tiny town in Oklahoma; Cord would be willing to bet his considerable fortune on that.
He swore under his breath. An Okie social worker with a Yankee attitude. Did it get any worse?
Right then, the baby girl let out one of those little, gurgly cooing sounds that babies are always making. The social worker glanced down and met the baby’s wide eyes—eyes the exact same shade of blue as the ones Cord saw when he looked in the mirror. The woman’s tight expression loosened up. For a split second, as she smiled at the baby, she looked sweet and soft and pretty enough to make Cord forget how completely fed up he was with her.
Too bad a split second never lasts all that long.
She faced off against him once more, her mouth instantly pinching up tight as a noose around the neck of a hanged man. “A three-month-old baby is a full-time job. And you can’t expect to be able to take care of Becky all on your own. As you explained to me yourself, you’ve got your hands full runnin’ the Stockwell businesses, now that your father is ill. You’re going to need help, and plenty of it.”
Ill. Now there was a namby-pamby word for it if he ever heard one. Caine Stockwell was way beyond “ill.” He was flat out dying. Of cancer. It was an ugly way to go. And Caine, mean as a stepped-on sidewinder in the best of times, was going down kicking and screaming all the way.
Cord tried again. “I told you. The Stockwell International offices are here, in Stockwell Mansion, right below us, on the first floor. I’ll be available to Becky whenever she needs me. I’ll find another nanny soon. And until I do, we’ve got help running out our ears around here anyway.” Stockwell Mansion was a Dallas area landmark, the biggest house in the county of Grandview, forty Texas-size rooms in imposing Georgian style. It took a Texas-size staff to run the place. “One of the housekeepers can—”
“No, Mr. Stockwell,” she interrupted him without so much as a by-your-leave. “One of the housekeepers can’t. Becky deserves lovin’, attentive care, not just someone willin’ to look in on her now and then. And I intend—”
That did it. Cord’s temper got away from him. “I don’t give a good damn what you intend! That baby is—”
“—gonna start cryin’ if you don’t keep your voice down.” Now the damn woman had her chin poked out. She was giving him her best Yankee-style glare. “And would you kindly stop your swearing, as well.”
Fine. He would keep his voice down. He wouldn’t swear. Much. He suggested with measured care, “Listen. I want you to carry Becky into her bedroom, lay her down in her crib and then step across the hall with me.”
She glared all the harder. “And why on earth would I want to go and do that?”
“So we can discuss this more…freely.”
She made a snorting sound. “I don’t think so, Mr. Stockwell. There is nothin’ to discuss here.” She had one of those big, flowered diaper bags hooked over her shoulder. She hoisted it higher. “I’ll take Becky home now and when you’ve solved the nanny problem you can—”
“Just where the hell is this home you’re taking my daughter to?”
She flinched, just barely, a reaction so small a less observant man would have missed it. But Cord Stockwell saw it, and took note of it. For the first time in their irritating association, he had gotten under Ms. Hannah Miller’s skin. He wondered exactly what nerve he’d hit.
She tried to brazen it out. “Mr. Stockwell, as you very well know, paternity has not yet been medically established. Until the test results come back from the lab in San Diego, the state of Texas can’t be completely certain that Becky is—”
“Come on. That’s my baby, and we both know it.”
Why me? Cord thought. Why of all the damn Child Protective Services workers in the giant state of Texas, did his baby girl have to draw this one? The woman was impossible. She had all the evidence she needed, for pity’s sake. Marnie Lott, Becky’s mother, who had died suddenly two weeks ago, had put Cord’s name on Becky’s birth certificate in the space reserved for the father. Why Marnie never bothered to let Cord know he was going to be a daddy was a mystery to him. But the dates matched. Cord’s brief affair with Marnie had occurred almost exactly a year before—nine months prior to Becky’s birth. And timing aside, all anyone had to do was look at her. If Becky wasn’t a Stockwell, then neither was Cord.
Was Cord prepared for fatherhood? Hell, no. And he doubted that he’d ever be. But Becky was his. A Stock-well. Down the generations, the oil-rich Stockwells of Grandview, Texas, had been called hard-hearted, grasping, backstabbing and cold-blooded. But their worst enemies wouldn’t argue on one point: a Stockwell took care of his own.
The social worker made a sniffing sound. “Maybe Becky is your daughter. Maybe she’s not. The lab results will confirm or disprove your claim.”
“My claim?” Cord grunted. “Let’s cut through the bull here, Ms. Miller. That damn paternity test is no more than a formality. Becky’s mine. And I will provide for her. I’ll see that she has the best of everything. She’ll go to the best schools. She’ll never know what it is to do without. There are a lot of babies in this world who have a hell of lot less—nanny or no nanny. So it seems to me that the state of Texas ought to be just tickled pink over my claim.”
Of course, she had the classic comeback for that. “Money,” she said, “is not all that a baby needs. A child also needs—”
He cut her off before she could get rolling. “Don’t go there, Ms. Miller. Don’t even get started in that direction. I’ve filled out your forms and answered your thousand and one way-too-personal questions. I’ve driven halfway across the county to meet you at that damn clinic so a nurse could stick a cotton swab in my mouth for the DNA test. I’ve set up the nursery you said I had to have. I’ve hired a nanny. She just never came to work. But it’s not a big deal. As I’ve told you, I can manage without her until I replace her. Any other social worker would be more than satisfied that I’m ready and willing to be a father to my child. The question is, Ms. Miller, why aren’t you?”
She gulped. The action gave him great satisfaction. Oh, yeah. He had her on the run now. “I’ve told you, I only want what’s best for—”
“Didn’t I ask if we could cut the bull? Let’s get down to what’s really going on here. Let’s get down to how you plain don’t like me.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I—”
“You don’t like me and you don’t approve of me.”
“Well, uh, I—”
“I can see it in those eyes of yours. I can hear it in your voice. You’ve been reading the National Tattler and Inside Scoop magazine and you know what they say about me. I like women. I like them tall and I like them gorgeous—but I never like them for long.”
“I did not—”
“Sure you did. And that’s okay. It’s only the truth. And my reputation as a ladies’ man has got nothing at all to do with the fact that that baby is mine and I will take care of her.”
Ms. Miller’s face had flushed a burning red. “No. Now, you wait a minute. You wait just a minute. If you can’t provide a stable, loving home for Becky, if you are gonna be out winin’ and dinin’ an endless string of women with whom you never intend to build a meaningful relationship, well, then, I do not see how I can bring myself to leave Becky in—”
“So I’m right.” He gave her a slow, self-satisfied smile. “You don’t approve of me—and you still haven’t answered my first question.”
“Uh. What question was that?”
“Where are you taking my baby if and when you leave this house?”
She opened her mouth. And then she shut it. And then she gulped for the second time.
At last, with an embarrassed reluctance he found particularly pleasurable, she was forced to admit, “I’m licensed for foster care. Becky has been staying with me for the past several days.”
It all made sense to Cord then. He allowed an agonized beat of silence to elapse before echoing quietly, “She’s staying with you.”
Hannah Miller drew her shoulders back and aimed her chin a notch higher. “Yes.”
Cord couldn’t help but gloat—just a little. “You know, I’ll bet that doesn’t leave a lot of time for your other cases. I mean, given that a three-month-old baby is—how did you put it? A full-time job, I think you said, a full-time job requiring round-the-clock attention.”
Those leaf-green eyes shifted away, but only briefly. Then she forced herself to look straight at him again. “I’m providin’ what Becky needs. I had some vacation time coming and I took it. She is getting round-the-clock attention, I promise you that.”
He delivered the telling blow, but he did it gently, in a softer voice than he’d used up till then. “Ms. Miller, you’ve let yourself get personally involved with my baby.”
She blinked, her mouth went trembly. Cord enjoyed the sight more than he should have. “I…no. I—”
“The nanny isn’t the issue here. The way I see it, the issue is twofold. You don’t like me—and you don’t want to let Becky go.”
“No. I mean, yes…” She was really flustered now, her cheeks flaming pink, her eyes wide and vulnerable. “I mean, whether or not I, personally, like you isn’t the issue at all. And as for Becky, well, of course I love taking care of her. But I only want what’s best for her. I only want—”
He moved a step closer, hiding his smile when she had to steel herself from shrinking back. And then he spoke, his voice low and gentle and utterly unyielding. “Take the baby into her room and put her in her crib. There’s a monitor in there. Turn it on and bring the receiver back in here with you.” He reached out. She stiffened. But then she saw what he meant to do. She actually aided him, shifting the baby to one arm for a moment, as he slid the strap of the diaper bag off her shoulder and set the thing on the floor. “Do it now,” he added, even more softly than before.
For the first time in the twelve days he’d known the woman, she obeyed. She headed for the door a few feet away and vanished through it. A moment later, she reappeared—minus the baby, carrying the receiver.
He gave her a smile. She did not smile back.
“Now,” he said. “Come with me.”
Across the hall from the nursery, in his private sitting room, Cord gestured at a leather wing chair. “Have a seat.”
Hannah Miller obeyed for the second time, perching right at the edge of the chair, tipping her head to the side a little, so she reminded him of a nervous bird, ready to take to the air at the slightest provocation. She still had the receiving half of the baby monitor clutched in her hand.
“Here.” Cord took the device from her and set it on the marble-topped table at her elbow. “Relax. Drink?”
She frowned, then coughed, fisting her hand and placing it delicately against her mouth. “No. Thank you.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
At the liquor cart in the corner, he took his sweet time dropping ice cubes into a glass and pulling the crystal stopper out of a whiskey decanter. He poured himself a shot, reconsidered and splashed in enough to make it a double. Then he restoppered the decanter and looked at Ms. Miller again as he swirled the amber drink, ice cubes clinking in the process. He knocked back a sip. It warmed his throat, hot velvet, going down. Ms. Miller remained absolutely still on the edge of her chair, eyes wide and wounded, watching him—and waiting for whatever grim information he had to impart.
Cord sipped from his drink for a second time. The woman didn’t fool him. She might look scared as a lost lamb at the moment—ever since he’d figured out she’d let herself get too attached to his little girl. But she was no lamb. She was a thoroughly exasperating creature who had made him jump through hoops to get what belonged to him. She was bossy and she wanted things done her way. Not his kind of woman at all.
But that shouldn’t pose a problem. He didn’t intend to date her or take her to bed. What he did intend to do was to see that his daughter got the best care available. And the woman showed a definite aptitude in that department.
“I’ve just come to a realization, Ms. Miller,” he finally said.
She turned her head, but only enough so that she was facing him straight on. And she waited some more. He found he liked that: her silence, the fact that she didn’t make some eager, hopeful little yes-person noise.
He said, “It occurred to me about a minute and a half ago that you and I want the same thing.”
He paused—mostly to see if she’d lose her nerve and warble out, “What’s that?”
She didn’t. She went on waiting, looking apprehensive, but unbowed.
So he told her, “We both want what’s best for Becky.”
She opened her mouth a fraction—then closed it over whatever words she might have said. He knew, of course, what those words would have been. Something short. And skeptical: Oh, really? or I doubt that.
“It may come as a surprise to you,” he said with ironic good humor, “but I want my daughter to have loving and devoted care every bit as much as you do.”
She was looking at him sideways again. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. Hell if he’d confess it, but he was pretty nervous about the whole idea of being a father. His own mother, Madelyn, had died when he and his twin, Rafe, were only four years old.
And his father was and always had been a coldhearted, verbally abusive SOB. It wasn’t as if Cord—or Rafe, or their older brother, Jack, or their sister, Kate, for that matter—had known much in the “love and devotion” department when they were growing up.
But Becky could have better. Cord had seen it in the look on Hannah Miller’s face when she stared down at his daughter. Becky would get all the love any child could ever want from a woman who gazed at her like that.
He swirled his ice cubes again—and made his offer. “Becky needs a nanny. And you don’t want to let her go. So my question is, why should you? I’ll pay you fifty thousand a year, plus the best benefits package Stockwell International has to offer, if you’ll give up your job at Child Protective Services and come to work for me taking care of my daughter.”
Chapter Two
Through a sheer effort of will, Hannah Waynette Miller kept her mouth from dropping wide-open.
She was stunned. Yep. That was the word for it. Stunned. Astonished. Astounded and amazed.
By Mr. Cord Stockwell, of all people.
He wanted her to be Becky’s nanny?
She’d been sure the man disliked her. And she had told herself she didn’t care. After all, she understood his kind. He was a rich man with a rich man’s ingrained belief that the rest of the world existed for his comfort and convenience.
Well, Hannah Miller cared no more for what a man like that believed than she did for what he thought of her. Since that first day she had called him to tell him about Becky, she had never once put forth the slightest effort to make things comfortable for him—let alone convenient. For Becky’s sake, she had stood her ground against him. She had been determined to make sure that Becky got a real home, a home with love and attention and patience and hope in it. Of course, she always tried to make sure of those things for all of the children assigned to her care.
But she’d tried even harder with Becky. Too hard, maybe…
She hated to admit it, but the man had been right on that one little point.
She was much too attached to Becky, all out of proportion really, and she knew that. Hannah also knew she had to let go of the adorable blue-eyed darling and get on with her life. She had planned to do just that: to make certain Cord Stockwell found a loving nanny, one who would provide the intangibles that all his money could not buy. And then Hannah Miller had meant to be on her way—to return only if the paternity test she’d insisted he take proved he wasn’t Becky’s father, after all.
Cord Stockwell was waiting for an answer, standing there so tall and commanding on the other side of the beautifully appointed room, holding his glass of fine whiskey and looking at her with an amused expression on his too-handsome face.
Hannah knew what that answer should be: Thank you, but no. As much as she might wish it to be otherwise, as much as she had longed in the past seven lonely years for another chance, Becky was not her baby girl.
On the other hand, Hannah had no doubt that Becky did need her.
Cord Stockwell might be sexy as sin itself—he stood over six feet tall and he was possessed of lean hips, shoulders that went on for days and truly arresting deep blue eyes. An aura of excitement surrounded him. Even Hannah, who certainly ought to know better, couldn’t help but feel the power of his presence every time she was forced to deal with him. And on top of the sex appeal and the charisma, he did have pots of money, money he was willing to lavish on Becky.
But did he know how to love and raise a sweet little girl? Hannah seriously doubted it.
Cord Stockwell sipped from his drink again. “Well?”
Right then, the telephone on one of the inlaid side tables buzzed.
Cord set his drink on the liquor cart. “Excuse me.”
He strode to the phone, noting before he got there that it was his father’s private line that had rung. He punched in the line and picked up. “What is it?”
“Mr. Stockwell, I’m sorry to bother you.” It was a male voice with a slight Scandinavian accent, the voice of one of the nurses who attended his father round-the-clock—the big blond one named Gunderson. “But, sir, your father is insisting…”
In the background, Cord could hear the hoarse commands. “Get him in here. Get my boy in here. Now!”
The nurse reported the obvious. “He demands to see you, sir.”
The cracked, rough voice shouted louder, “Now, I said. Are you deaf? Tell him to get in here on the double.”
“I’m so sorry, sir.” Nurse Gunderson made excuses in Cord’s ear. “But right now, our problem is that he refuses to take his medication until you—”
“Get me Cord now!” the old man shouted.
A woman’s voice—the other nurse—spoke up then.
“No. Please put that down, Mr. Stock—”
Whatever it was, Caine must have thrown it. Cord heard what sounded like breaking glass.
The nurse on the other end of the line released a sigh. “Sir, maybe you should—”
“Try to keep him from hurting himself,” Cord said. “I’ll be right there.” Cord set the phone back in its cradle and started for the door. “Something’s come up.” He said as he strode past the wing chair where the social worker sat staring at him. “I’m afraid I have to deal with it now. I won’t be long. You can think about my offer.”
The door closed behind him before Hannah could say a word.
Cord could hear his father barking orders as he entered the old man’s private sitting room.
“I don’t need you poking me with needles. I can still swallow a damn pill if I need one. And right now, I don’t need one. Not till I talk to my son, you hear me?”
One of the maids had joined Cord in the central hallway and followed him into the room. She carried a broom and a long-handled dustpan—probably under orders to clean up whatever mess Caine had created in his rage. The maid cringed when she heard the old man shouting.
“Don’t worry,” Cord said. “He’s not yelling at you.”
“Cord?” Cancer might be eating Caine Stockwell alive, but his hearing remained as acute as ever. “Cord, that you?”
Cord stepped through the wide arch that framed his father’s oppressively opulent bedchamber—a replica, Caine always claimed, of Napoleon I’s bedroom at the Château de Fontainebleau, the magnificent hunting lodge of sixteen and seventeenth century French royalty. The room, like the antechamber through which Cord had entered, boasted gilt medallions in classical motifs adorning the walls, a massive crystal and gold chandelier overhead and gilded furniture upholstered in carmine-and-green brocade. The huge velvet-draped bed, shipped from France a decade ago, was the room’s crowning glory. And it stood empty. Caine would no longer trust the body that had betrayed him not to soil the dazzling stamped velvet bed coverings.
The room, in spite of its overbearing beauty, smelled musty and strangely sweet. Like sickness. Like encroaching death. The velvet curtains had been drawn closed against the hot Texas sun outside.
“Here. Here to me.” Caine, who lay in a hospital bed in the center of the room, hit the mattress with one claw-like clenched fist, a gesture reminiscent of one summoning a dog.
Though Cord had always been his father’s favored son, there had been a time when such a gesture would have had him turning on his heel and striding from the room, Caine’s curses echoing in his ears. But that time had passed. In recent months, Cord had learned what pity was—and learning that had made it possible for him to put his considerable pride aside.
He approached the bed. Gunderson and the other nurse, a statuesque redhead, fell back to lurk near the rim of equipment—an oxygen tank, footed metal trays on wheels, an IV drip and the like—that waited several feet beyond where Caine Stockwell lay. The maid dropped to her knees and began picking up the pieces of a shattered antique vase, as well as a number of long-stemmed blood-red roses, which lay scattered across the gold-embroidered rug.
“Everyone out,” Caine commanded. “You two.” He flung out an emaciated arm at the nurses. “And you!” he shouted at the cowering maid.
Cord nodded at the others and instructed quietly, “Go ahead. I’ll buzz you in a few minutes.”
Caine’s bed had been adjusted to a semisitting position. He lurched forward, as if he intended to leap upright and chase the others from the room. But then he only fell back with a groan. “Just get them out. Get them out now.”
The three required no further encouragement. The maid jumped to her feet and scurried off, not even pausing to pick up her broom and dustpan, which lay where she’d dropped them, among the roses and broken china on the gold-embellished hand-stitched rug. The two nurses followed right behind.
Caine waited until he heard the outer door close. Then he patted the bed again, this time more gently. “Here,” he said, his voice now a low rasp. “Here.”
Cord did what his father wanted, taking a minute to lower the metal rail so there would be room for him.
“Have to tell you…” Caine coughed, a spongy, rheumy sound. “No more drugs. Until I tell you…” Caine coughed again. This time the cough brought on wheezing.
“Got to tell…” He wheezed some more. “Have to say…”
Cord got up, but only to pour a glass of water. He brought it back to the bed, sat again and helped his father to drink, sliding a hand gently behind his head, feeling the heat and the dryness, the thin, wild wisps of hair. All white now, what was left of it. Once it had been the same deep almost-black color as Cord’s hair was now. Dark, dark brown, and thick, with the same touch of gray at the temples.
But no more.
Caine’s red-rimmed blue eyes glittered, sliding out of focus, vacant suddenly, shining—but empty. Cord carefully lowered the old man’s head back to the pillow. Caine’s eyelids drifted shut over those empty eyes. A ragged sigh escaped him, and a thread of saliva gleamed at the corner of his mouth.
Cord waited. In a minute, he’d rise, set the glass aside and sit in one of the ridiculously beautiful gilded chairs to wait a little longer. Soon it would be time to ring for the nurses again.
Caine moaned. Cord sat still as a held breath, staring at the wasted specter that had once been his father. The old man had grown so weak the past few weeks. The skin of his face looked too tight, stretched thin across the bones. At his neck, though, it hung in dry wattles.
Cord glanced at his Rolex: 2:22. He’d give it five minutes and then—
His father’s skeletal hand closed over his wrist, the grip surprising in its strength. “You listening?” The blue eyes blinked open. “You hear?”
Gently Cord peeled the bony fingers away. “I’m listening. Talk.”
“More water.”
Cord helped him to drink again. This time Caine drained the glass.
“Enough?”
“That’s all.”
Cord rose once more to put the glass on one of the metal trays. He came back to the bed and sat for the third time.
Dark brows, grown long and grizzled now, drew together across the bridge of the hawklike nose. “I lie here,” Caine whispered, his voice like old paper, tearing. “Sleeping. Puking. Messing myself. I hate it. You know that?”
Cord said nothing. What was there to say?
“Sure, you know. You understand me.” Caine laughed, a crackling sound, like twigs rubbing together in a sudden harsh wind. “You and me, cut from the same piece of high-quality rawhide…” The eyes drifted shut again and Caine coughed some more.
Then he lay still—but not for long. After a moment, he began tossing his head on the pillow, like a man trying to wake from a very bad dream. “I think about that baby,” he muttered. “Lying here. Sick unto death. That baby haunts me.”
Cord frowned. He must mean Becky.
For the last five or six years, Caine had taken to accusing his children, collectively and individually, of failing to do their part to extend the family line. So Cord had mentioned Becky to Caine about a week before, thinking it might ease the mind of the old tyrant to know he had at least one grandchild, after all. At the time, his father had only shrugged.
“You sure this baby is yours?” Caine had demanded. And when Cord had nodded, Caine had said, “Then it’s a Stockwell. Bring it home. And raise it up right.” And that had been the end of that conversation.
Apparently, though, Becky had stuck in Caine’s confused mind. Maybe he wanted reassurance that Cord had done what needed doing.
“The baby’s fine,” Cord said. “She’s here, right now. In her crib in the new nursery.”
Caine sat bolt upright. “Here? She’s here. A girl. It was a girl?”
“Yes,” Cord said soothingly, guiding his father back down to the pillow. “A girl. Remember, I told you all about her? She’s three months old. Her name is—”
“Three months! Do you think I’m an idiot? You think the cancer has left me no wits at all?” Caine sputtered and coughed. “It’s almost thirty years now, since they left, that mealymouthed witch your mother and my turn-coat twin. That baby’s no baby anymore. It would be grown now. All grown up.”
Cord suppressed a weary sigh. The red-rimmed blue eyes were looking into the past now, through a very dark glass. Sometimes lately, the old man’s mind rearranged the facts. Caine would imagine that his wife, Madelyn Johnson Stockwell, hadn’t died in a boating accident on Stockwell Pond with Caine’s twin, Brandon, after all. Caine would swear the two had run off together instead.
But this about the baby was new.
Caine fisted the sheets, his bony knuckles going white as the linen they crushed. Then he struck out, wildly, hitting Cord a glancing blow. The old man wore no rings. His fingers had shrunk too much; a ring would slide right off. But his yellowed nails needed trimming. One of them sliced a thin, stinging line along Cord’s jaw. Cord pulled back sharply and touched the tiny wound. His finger came away dotted with crimson.
“It was mine,” Caine ranted, his eyes closed now, the lids quivering, his head whipping back and forth against the pillow. “I tried. Tried to take care of it. Is it my fault she never would take the money?”
None of it made any sense to Cord. His mother and his uncle were long dead. And the only baby he knew about lay in a crib in another wing of the mansion, dreaming whatever a baby might dream of.
A baby.
His daughter.
The irony struck him. Someday, would he be the one ranting in a hospital bed, while his grown daughter sat patiently at his side?
It seemed impossible, that such a tiny, helpless creature as his baby girl would ever sit upright beside her father and watch as he died.
And why? Why would she perform such a grim duty anyway?
For love?
Cord almost smiled. He did not think it was love that he felt for his father. It was something darker, something more complex. Something with anger in it, and hurt—and maybe just a touch of reluctant respect.
No, he did not love Caine. But he did feel a duty to him, and he pitied him, pitied the bitter, half-crazed shadow of himself that Caine had become.
So he sat on the edge of his father’s bed and let the old man flail his withered arms at him, striking him repeatedly, shouting more addled nonsense about Cord’s long-dead mother and his uncle Brandon and a baby that Caine didn’t seem to realize had never existed.
“Whatever your mother did, that baby was a Stockwell. Remember. We are Stockwells. We take care of our own. And I know her. She had a thousand reasons to hate me. But still, no matter what I said, I knew…deep down, I knew she was true to me. That baby…that baby was mine.”
Cord took another series of sharp blows, to the shoulder, across the neck, to the center of his chest. By then, he decided it was time to buzz for the nurses.
His father needed calming. And Cord himself had to get back to his own quarters and finish up his negotiations with Becky’s nanny-to-be.
After Cord left her, Hannah sat very still for several long moments.
What to do? How to answer?
Her heart’s desire—to stay with Becky.
Her mind’s wise instruction—to let Becky go. Now, though it would break her heart in two to do it.
She could get over a broken heart. She had done that more than once already in her twenty-five years of life.
But oh, if she lingered, it could only get worse. With every day, every hour, every minute that passed, she would love Becky more. And the risk would be greater, the pain a thousand times more terrible, if for some reason, she had to let Becky go.
And that could happen, so very easily. Cord Stockwell was a rich man. And the rich—at least in Hannah’s sad experience—were different. They broke rules. They broke hearts. They broke agreements. And they thought that their money gave them the right to run right over everyone else getting things their way.
Hannah sat up straighter.
Wait a minute, she thought. Just a cotton-pickin’ minute here.
This was not seven years ago and she was a grown woman now, not some lost little orphan looking for love where she shouldn’t be. And Cord Stockwell may have been too rich and too good-looking and too lucky with the ladies for her peace of mind, but he did seem, sincerely, to want to do right by Becky.
Her peace of mind was not the issue here. Neither was her foolish heart.
The issue was, what was right for Becky.
And she would make her decision based on that and that alone.
Right then, Hannah heard Becky cry. One short, insistent yelp came through the receiver on the table beside her.
A silence followed, but a brief one. In a moment, Becky started to wail. She was hungry.
Or she needed changing.
Or comforting.
Whatever.
Hannah rose to go to her.
Gunderson and the redheaded nurse reappeared a moment or two after Cord buzzed for them.
Cord was holding his father by then, an embrace that was actually an attempt to keep the sick man from harming himself. “More morphine,” he said. “And it will have to be by injection. Get it ready. Now.”
In his arms, Caine thrashed. “Didn’t I? Didn’t I keep my promise? Raised the bastard as my own…”
Gunderson glanced at his watch. “He had his last dose at—”
Caine raved right over him. “You witch…I loved you. Always loved you. All those others…nothing, damn it. Never. No one. Only you. But you…I know you loved him. Always. You never stopped. So I only wanted…to wipe out the taste of you.”
Cord held his struggling father close and glared at the nurses. “Get it ready, I said.”
The redhead filled the syringe. Cord held Caine still as she administered the dose.
Caine gasped. “Cold. Cold. Sinking…down…”
Within seconds, the old man went lax. Gently Cord laid him back against the pillow. A rank sigh escaped him and then he was still.
Cord rose from the bed. “Can you two take care of him now?”
“Of course, sir,” said Gunderson.
The redhead nodded.
“Trim his fingernails, will you?” Cord commanded as he strode toward the door. “He cut me, they’re so long.”
Behind him, both nurses made sounds in the affirmative.
In the hall, he found the maid he had sent away earlier. She hovered near the door to his father’s rooms, brown eyes huge with apprehension.
“It’s all right,” he said gently. “Go on in and finish up. He won’t bother you. He’s sleeping now.”
The maid dipped her head. “Sí. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Cord.”
He returned to his private sitting room to find that Hannah Miller wasn’t there.
His first reaction was a hot burst of fury. The little upstart had dared to take his daughter and leave.
But then, over the baby monitor, he heard it: the soft sound of a woman’s voice, sweet and only a little off-key, humming a lullaby.
He found her in the baby’s bedroom, which had robin’s-egg-blue walls, white furniture and a border near the ceiling of twinkling stars and smiling moons.
She sat in the white wicker rocker. She’d pulled up the shade of the window a few feet away to let in the afternoon light. She rocked slowly while she hummed, cradling his daughter and feeding her a bottle.
The woman’s hair had both auburn and gold highlights, just slight hints of red and blond in the chestnut waves that fell to her shoulders. The curve of her cheek, as she bent over his daughter, looked pale as milk, soft as the petals of a white rose.
At first, she didn’t see him. She had left the door open. And he entered quietly, listening as he came, for the soft sound of her lullaby, for the slight creaking of the rocking chair.
He stood there, in the doorway, watching the light on her hair, the curve of her arm as she cradled his child.
He felt the strangest sensation right then. A warmth down inside himself, a tiny bud of something.
It might have been hope.
But no.
More likely, it was only weary relief. The peace here, in his daughter’s blue bedroom, was a thousand miles removed from the Napoleonic horror of his father’s sickroom. And the little Okie’s tongue could be sharp, but right now, she wasn’t using it. Right now, she sounded damn sweet, humming and rocking away, a dreamy smile on her lips, as his child contentedly sucked at her bottle.
Naturally such a sight would soothe him, after what had just transpired in his father’s room.
Hannah looked up. The humming stopped, the rocking chair stilled. He heard her quick, surprised intake of breath.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She shrugged. And then she actually granted him a smile. “This girl was hungry.”
Damn. She was a pretty woman when she smiled.
He demanded, more gruffly than he intended to, “Have you made up your mind?”
She didn’t seem bothered by his gruffness at all. She looked down at Becky again, said in a dreamy voice to match the expression on her face, “I have.” She looked his way again, frowned. “You’ve cut yourself.”
He touched the scratch on his jaw, where the beads of blood had dried now. “It’s nothing.”
“Don’t rub it. You’ll start it bleeding again—here.” She produced a tissue from her sleeve and held it out.
“Blot it real gentle.”
He stared at the tissue dangling from her slender hand.
And, out of nowhere, an old memory popped to the surface of his mind and bobbed there, clear as a bubble made of glass.
Outside, in back, on the wide sweep of lawn between the house and the formal gardens. High summer. And ice cream. Vanilla with fudge syrup. He’d had a big bowl of it.
His mother had worn white—all white. Her blue eyes were shining and her dark brown hair tumbled in soft waves down her back. She had laughed. And she’d pulled a handkerchief from her white sleeve. “Cord, honey, you’ve got chocolate all over your little face. Come here to Mama. Let me clean you up….”
“Mr. Stockwell?” The social worker was staring at him, a crease of worry etching itself between her smooth chestnut brows. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he said curtly. “I’m fine.” He stepped up close and took the tissue from her, just to stop her from holding it out. And he blotted his jaw, as she’d told him to do. The tissue came away with two bright red spots on it.
“There.” He tipped it briefly toward her so she could see.
“Nothing, as I told you.”
She made a low, considering noise, as if she didn’t agree, but could see no benefit in arguing the point.
He thought of his father, once so proud and strong, now weak and wasted, striking out, prone more and more frequently to episodes like the one today as death closed in on him. Maybe Ms. Miller was right. It meant a lot more than nothing, this tiny scratch on his jaw.
He tucked the tissue into the pocket of his slacks. “I’m still waiting for your answer.” He couldn’t resist adding, “You seem to enjoy that—making me wait.”
He assumed she’d take offense. She was always so prickly. But no. She only smiled again, that smile that transformed her. “I’m sorry you think that. Of course, it’s not even a tiny bit true.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Fair enough.”
Becky pulled away from the bottle then, and yawned wide and loudly. Cord watched his daughter, wondering how such a tiny mouth could stretch so big.
“Here.” Ms. Miller tucked the empty bottle into the flowered bag on the other side of the rocker. “You can burp her.” She found a cloth diaper in the bag and held it toward him, the same as she had that damn tissue a minute ago. “Put this on your shoulder. I’d hate to see you get spit-up on that beautiful shirt.”
He scowled, thinking, I’m Cord Stockwell. I don’t do burping.
“Take the diaper,” she said.
So he took it.
“Put it on your shoulder.”
He did that, too.
She gathered the baby close and rose from the rocker.
Cord backed up.
“Come on,” she dared to taunt him. “It’s a skill you’ll have to develop sooner or later.”
“How about later?”
“How about now?”
What the hell choice did he have? He held out his arms and she put his baby in them.
“Good,” she said. “Cradle her head. That’s right. Now gently, onto the shoulder…”
Becky sighed when he lifted her and laid her against his chest. He could feel her little knees, pressing into him. She smelled of milk and baby lotion. And her hair was soft as the down on a day-old chick. She made a gurgling sound. And then she let out one hell of Texas-size burp.
“Excellent,” intoned Ms. Miller.
He gave her a look over the dark fuzz on Becky’s head.
“I’m so relieved you approve—and are you coming to work for me, or not?”
She nodded. “I am. Temporarily.”
He patted Becky’s tiny back—gently. She was so small. It was like patting a kitten. “What does that mean, temporarily?”
“It means I’m going home now to pack up a few things and arrange for a neighbor to water my houseplants. Then I’ll stay here, in the nanny’s room, for a few days, or however long it takes to find you some quality live-in child care.”
She would work for him. But not for long. Strange how he disliked the idea of her leaving. She was an exasperating female, but a damn worthy adversary, too. He could respect that. “Why don’t you just take the job yourself? You’re exactly the kind of nanny Becky needs. And I can guess what a social worker makes. Not near what I’m willing to pay.”
Was that sadness he saw in those green eyes of hers? “Thanks for the offer, but no.”
He stroked Becky’s dark head and wanted to ask, “Why not?” But he held back the question. It was none of his business. And he doubted she would tell him anyway.
He inquired with ironic good humor, “I take it you’re going to be interviewing nannies for my daughter.”
“If that’s all right with you, yes. I would like to do that.”
“If that’s all right with me? Ms. Miller, you sound downright agreeable.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts, Mr. Stockwell.”
“Ms. Miller, I intend to do just that.”
Chapter Three
It was a little after seven that evening and Hannah was just putting the last of her clothes into the maple bureau of the nanny’s room when the tap came on the door to the hall.
“It’s open,” she called.
A slim, dark-haired woman poked her head in. “Hi. I’m Kate. Cord’s little sister—and Becky’s aunt.” Kate Stockwell smiled. She had a great smile. It lit up her fine-boned face. “You’re Hannah, right?”
Hannah nodded. “Come on in.”
“I’m not interrupting?”
“Nope. I just finished unpacking.” Hannah turned to the bed, on which her ancient hard-sided suitcase lay open. With both hands, she levered it closed and pressed the latches. Then she grabbed the handle, lugged it to the floor and dragged it into the closet.
When she turned back to the room, Cord’s sister was standing near the bed. She was dressed for evening, her dark hair swept up, a little chain of diamonds dangling from each ear. Her dress was a simple cobalt-blue cocktail-length silk sheath that had probably cost a fortune at Neiman-Marcus. The dress brought out the blue of her eyes—eyes that watched Hannah with undisguised curiosity.
“Cord told me this afternoon that you’d be moving in for a while. You’re not what I expected.” Smoothing her dress beneath her, Kate Stockwell sat on the edge of the bed. “Then again, I’m not sure exactly what I expected.”
Hannah frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, I have to confess, Cord has mentioned you once or twice in the past several days. I mean, that you’re Becky’s caseworker with Child Protective Services. And that you’re, um…”
Hannah did understand then. She laughed. “You are being so tactful. I think what you mean is that your brother didn’t have too many nice things to say about me.”
Kate’s gaze slid away. “Well…”
Hannah said with cautious honesty, “Your brother and I don’t always agree, I’m afraid. He’s a very determined man.”
Kate met Hannah’s eyes again. “And you’re pretty determined yourself, right?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Kate was grinning now. “But you know, even if you two have had some disagreements, he seems pleased with the idea of your taking care of Becky.”
“It’s only for a few days—until I find the right nanny.”
“Yes. I know. That’s what Cord said.”
Hannah still hovered by the closet door, feeling unsure. Her instincts told her that with this woman she could skip right on into “girlfriend” mode—but then that seemed inappropriate. She would no doubt be wiser to respect the usual professional boundaries between herself and a relative of one of her charges.
Kate looked confused. “What did I do?”
Hannah hesitated, still unsure how best to proceed.
And Kate caught on. “I get it. You don’t know how to treat me—and I’ll bet my brother’s been giving you his Lord of the Manor routine. He does that. You’ll get used to it. Underneath, he’s a sweetheart, I swear to you. And the rest of us do our level best to act like normal human beings.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Well, I suppose I should clarify that. Most of the rest of us act like normal human beings.”
Hannah wondered which Stockwell didn’t fall in the “normal human being” category.
Kate didn’t enlighten her. She sighed. “I’m rambling. But my point is, I meant it when I asked you to call me Kate.”
Hannah looked into those blue eyes—so much like Becky’s eyes, really—and decided to go ahead and follow her instincts. “All right. Kate, then.” She left off hovering by the closet door to take the hand Cord’s sister offered.
“And I don’t have to call you Ms. Miller, do I?”
“Please. Just Hannah is great. You came to see Becky, I’ll bet.”
Kate nodded. “I can’t believe it. Cord has a daughter. And I’m an aunt—but maybe she’s sleeping. If she is, just tell me the best time and I’ll come back.”
“I put her down about an hour ago. We could go check on her—and just sneak back out if she’s asleep. What do you say?”
Kate stood. “I’d love it.”
Hannah led the way through the door that joined the nanny’s room to the play area of the nursery—and the darkened baby’s bedroom beyond that.
Becky was asleep, lying on her back, her black lashes like tiny perfect fans against her plump cheeks. The two women stood over the crib. Hannah stared down at Becky, smiling like a fool, just grateful to be allowed to care for her for the brief few days to come. She heard a small sound from Kate—a sigh, she thought.
But when she glanced over at the other woman, what she saw made her want to cry out in sympathy. Such sadness. Such…despair, the eyes far away and lost, the soft mouth bleak and twisted.
Hannah couldn’t stop herself. She reached out, touched Kate’s slender arm. Kate shivered.
Hannah wanted to offer comfort—and to her, the greatest comfort in the world was cradling Becky against her heart. “Here. Hold her…” Hannah formed the words without giving them sound, already reaching for the sleeping child.
Kate caught her arm, mouthed, “Next time.”
Hannah froze, mimed, “Are you sure?”
And Kate nodded, her delicate chin set. She gestured toward the door to the playroom, signaling that she was ready to go.
What else could Hannah do? She followed Kate out.
Back in the nanny’s room, Kate said that she had to be on her way. “I’ll be back, tomorrow, though, and see if I can catch that little darling awake.” Her voice sounded brittle now, and way too bright.
“Tomorrow,” Hannah promised, “we’ll just wake her up if she’s sleeping.”
“Oh, no. She needs her sleep—and I’m sure you enjoy the break whenever she gives it to you. Tell you what, next time I’ll buzz you first.”
“Buzz me?”
Kate pointed at the phone on the nightstand. Hannah had been purposely avoiding confronting the thing, though the housekeeper, Mrs. Hightower, had briefly described its operation when she had ushered Hannah into the room an hour before. The darn thing looked as complicated as a switchboard.
“We all have our own private lines,” Kate explained.
“It’s a big house and we can’t go running from one end of it to the other every time we need to ask each other some simple little question. Cord is line two—that one buzzes both in his office downstairs and in his private rooms. I’m line four. And the new nursery is…” She craned toward the phone. “Ah. Cord’s had it all set up. Thirteen.”
Hannah pulled a face. “My lucky number.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“In the few days I’ll be here? I doubt it.”
“The outside lines are on the right. Just punch one of them if you want to make a regular call.”
“Will do.”
“I really have to go.” A wry smile twisted Kate’s mouth. “I’m due at one of those endless charity dinners. It is for a good cause, though. Raising money for learning-impaired children.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“It’s a deal.”
After Kate left, Hannah wondered about the bleakness in her eyes when she’d looked down at Becky dreaming in her crib. And beyond that, Cord’s sister had gone and turned down the chance to hold the baby. Hannah couldn’t understand how anyone could pass up an opportunity to have Becky in her arms.
Kate Stockwell had a secret or two, Hannah was certain of it. And as a woman with a few sad secrets of her own, Hannah sympathized. In a sense, she did understand. In her heart. Where it counted.
Heck. Hannah liked Cord Stockwell’s sister. And that was a pleasant surprise, given that Becky’s supposed father was such a difficult man to get along with.
Cord ate his dinner alone in the sunroom. Kate had gone to some charity thing. Rafe, a Deputy U.S. Marshall, was on duty, transporting a federal prisoner to Washington, D.C. And their older brother, Jack—well, who knew where Jack might be? Like Cord, Rafe and Kate, Jack had his own rooms at Stockwell Mansion. But he rarely stayed in them. Jack lived all over the world, wherever new governments or old regimes were willing to pay for his highly skilled and lethal services.
After dinner, Cord went to his office in the West Wing. He’d only meant to wrap up a few things. But as usual, there was just too damn much that couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
He worked into the evening. He had a number of contracts to review, correspondence to go over and a stack of business proposals that needed a decision from him yesterday.
The Stockwell empire had really begun with the oil boom of the thirties. Until then, Stockwells had been cattlemen, and not especially successful ones. It had been the land itself that had made them multimillionaires—or the black gold beneath the land, anyway.
For decades, the name Stockwell and the word “oil” had been almost synonymous. Stockwells drilled in and profited from oil fields from the Lone Star State to the Middle East.
When times got rough, they proceeded with care. And during the boom years, they took chances. And they prospered.
In the eighties, when real estate became king again, Caine had seen the trend and jumped on it. And in the nineties, once Cord had graduated from UT and started working alongside his father, he had pushed even harder to diversify.
Now, when people heard the words, Stockwell International, they still thought “oil.” But those in the know realized that the company had its fingers in a huge number of profit-making pies. Over the past few years, as he’d assumed more and more control, Cord had continued to channel investment capital wherever he saw potential. He backed shopping malls and high-tech companies just getting their start. And the projects in which he invested Stockwell capital almost always paid off and paid off well.
At a little after ten, Cord scrawled his name on the last in the stack of correspondence his secretary had prepared for him. Then he tossed the pen aside and ran his hand down his face. It was getting late. Time to call it a night.
Just then the phone on his desk rang—his private outside line. The caller ID window showed him a number he recognized. He hesitated before answering, thinking that he wanted to get back to his rooms, to check on his daughter—and on Ms. Miller, who by then should have been all settled in the nanny’s room off the nursery.
The line buzzed again. He went ahead and picked up.
“This is Cord.”
“As if I didn’t know.” The voice was soft. Extremely feminine. And thick with innuendo.
“Hello, Jerralyn.” Cord leaned back in his chair.
Jerralyn Coulter was a Texas aristocrat—if there actually was such a thing. One of her great-great-great-great-grandfathers had perished at the Alamo. And her great-great-great-grandfather had been a true cattle baron. Cord and Jerralyn had been an item in the gossip columns for several weeks now. They’d hooked up at a political fund-raiser, a thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner where they’d been seated across from each other. It had started with smoldering looks and teasing banter. He’d driven her home. And spent the night in her bed.
Jerralyn was twenty-six, an extremely beautiful and sophisticated woman. Not to mention energetic. With a very naughty mind.
“Are you working late again?” she asked.
“Guilty.”
“You work too hard.”
“I like to work.”
“You need to play—and I could be there in twenty minutes—with a bottle of Dom Pérignon in my hand and nothing on under my sables.”
He laughed at that. “How can you wear sable? I thought you told me you were an animal rights activist.”
“I was speaking figuratively.”
“About the rights of animals?”
“No, about the sables.”
“You are tempting,” he said, still thinking of Becky, of the irritating Ms. Miller, of the way she hadn’t seemed irritating at all, sitting in the white wicker rocker, her brown hair falling soft and thick along her cheek.
“And you are preoccupied.” Jerralyn pretended to pout. “I could be hurt.”
Cord blinked, rubbed his eyes. “Don’t be. Later in the week?”
“Oh, all right. But at least turn the light off now and get out of that office. Workaholics are not sexy.”
He promised her again that he was through for the night, and then said goodbye.
Emma Hightower, who had been the head housekeeper at Stockwell Mansion for well over a decade now, appeared in the doorway as Cord was turning off the lights. As always, she looked serious and sincere in her concern for his comfort. “Just making my last rounds. Is there anything else I can get for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”
“No, thank you, Emma. I’m fine. Did Ms. Miller get moved in all right?”
“Yes. She’s all settled.”
“You saw that she was fed?”
“I had dinner sent up to her room at seven-thirty, which seemed a good time for her, tonight anyway. By then, I assumed, she would have had sufficient opportunity to unpack her belongings. Consuela picked up the tray an hour later.”
“And did Ms. Miller eat her vegetables?” he teased, hoping, as he’d hoped for years and years, to catch a hint of a grin on Emma’s long, serious face.
“Yes,” Emma said, serious as ever. “She seems to have a fine appetite.”
“Good. It wouldn’t do to have a picky eater for a nanny.”
A slight crease appeared between Emma’s thin brows, but she apparently decided that Cord’s remark required no comment from her. She asked, “Would you like me to send a snack up for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”
“No, Emma. Thanks.”
She went out and he followed, pausing to lock up the offices behind him. When he turned back to the wide hallway, Emma Hightower had disappeared.
Cord took the West stairway to the second floor, and his rooms, which were also in the West Wing, above the suite of offices. He passed up the door to his own bedroom, at the end of the wing, and proceeded straight to the room with the robin’s-egg-blue walls, where his daughter should, by all rights, be asleep in her crib.
He paused before the closed door, listening—for a baby’s cry, or possibly a woman’s soft lullaby. But all he heard was silence.
Carefully, hardly realizing he was holding his breath, Cord turned the brass knob and slowly pushed open the door. The room was dark, the shades drawn against the moon outside. He tiptoed in, across the soft blue rug that in the daylight showed a pattern of swirling stars.
Yes. She was there. Sound asleep. He stood very still. After a minute, as the silence stretched out, he realized he could hear her breathing in tiny, even sighs.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw her more clearly, her round baby cheeks, her fat little mouth, that soft dark hair and the stubborn little chin.
All Stockwell. Yes.
He felt something tighten inside his chest.
All Stockwell.
Mine.
So strange. He’d never seen himself as a father. In all likelihood, he wasn’t going to be a very good one. He worked hard and he played harder, and he left the joys of family for other men. He was too much like the old man who lay dying at the other end of the house, and he knew it, to be any good as a husband. Pity the poor woman who might have married him. He would have made her life a misery, because he’d betray a wife eventually. Monogamy just plain wasn’t in him.
However, he’d always tried to be responsible, in his own way. He liked women. Plural. Well, not several at once. But a lot of them, one at a time. And while he was liking them, he’d always been damn careful not to get one of them pregnant. But apparently, with Marnie Lott—whose face, he felt a little ashamed to admit, he could hardly remember—he hadn’t been quite careful enough.
And now there was Becky.
The more he got used to her, the more he looked at her and burped her and held her in his arms, the more he thought that having her was just fine.
Perfect, really.
He’d done his bit toward perpetuating the family line. And he hadn’t had to get married and ruin some poor woman’s life to do it.
Becky made a small, cooing sound. But she didn’t wake. She cooed again, and rubbed her tiny lips together, then turned her head with a sigh toward the wall.
Cord stayed very still. He didn’t want to wake her, really. She might start crying and then Ms. Miller would come flying in here, shooting him narrow-eyed looks—and then probably deciding it was time he learned to do more than burping. He’d end up changing a diaper or something equally unsettling. He knew that woman. And he understood the kinds of things she was going to start expecting him to do.
But Becky’s eyes stayed shut. He watched the gentle rising and falling of her tiny chest and realized she wasn’t going to wake up, after all.
He was just about to tiptoe out when he heard a faint sound—the creaking of a chair, perhaps, or the squeak of a floorboard. He looked up, through the open door to the playroom and beyond.
A sliver of golden light shown beneath the closed door to the nanny’s room.
Ms. Miller was still awake.
Should that surprise him? It was only ten-thirty. No real reason she should necessarily have been sleeping.
Except, maybe, that he pictured her as someone who went to bed at twilight and rose before dawn.
He pictured her in a white cotton nightgown, with little bits of lace in small ruffled rows, at the cuffs and around the neck. The kind of nightgown a young girl would wear, so modest, covering everything—unless she just happened to stand in front of a lamp.
And then a man would be able to see it all: soft, secret curves sweetly outlined, and a tempting dark shadow in the V where her thighs joined…
Cord shook his head—hard.
What the hell? Was it possible he’d just had a sexual fantasy concerning Ms. Miller?
No. Not a fantasy. An erotic image, that was all. A quick flash on the screen of his overactive imagination, more proof of the unflagging persistence of his libido.
It meant nothing. He started to turn again.
But then he noticed the shadows. He could see them, moving across the floor. She was walking around in there.
Why?
Oh, for pity’s sake, Stockwell, he thought in disgust. It’s her room. She has a damn right to walk around in it whenever she wants.
But was she all right? Was something disturbing her? Was there something she needed, something he’d forgotten to make certain that she had?
She was his guest, after all, until she found her own replacement. At least, he supposed he should consider her a guest, since they’d never actually agreed on what he would pay her.
Now that he thought about it, what he would pay her was something they needed to agree on. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. She didn’t make a lot of money in the first place. She was also giving up her own vacation time to take care of his little girl and interview nannies for him. She deserved to be paid for it, and he intended to make certain she got what she deserved.
In several long strides, he covered the distance between his daughter’s crib and the nanny’s door. Leaving himself no opportunity to pause and reconsider, he knocked quickly, three sharp raps.
For a moment, after he knocked, there was silence. A thoroughly nerve-racking dead quiet. And then, at last, she pulled open the door.
Almost, he groaned.
He could not believe what his eyes were showing him.
Chapter Four
Cord looked down, to collect his scattered wits.
Her feet were bare. They were very nice feet. Pale and long, with pretty toes.
No polish. Uh-uh. No polish for Ms. Miller.
He couldn’t resist. He let his gaze wander upward, taking in the white nightgown—white cotton, yes. Exactly. With the lamp behind her, he could see the outline of her ankles and the lower swell of a pair of surprisingly strong-looking calves.
But no more.
She hadn’t followed his fantasy—correction, erotic image—to the letter, after all. She also wore a robe. A green one, of some indeterminate light fabric, over the white gown.
He imagined stepping forward and removing that robe.
But he didn’t. He stayed right where he was—on the playroom side of her bedroom door.
Hannah clutched her nightgown at the neck and looked up into her employer’s handsome face. “What is it, Mr. Stockwell?”
He cleared his throat. “Ms. Miller, we haven’t discussed how much I’ll be paying you.”
She didn’t understand his expression. It was a bewildered kind of look. And it didn’t fit at all with the arrogant, take-charge kind of man she knew him to be.
“Um,” she said, and swallowed. “Are you all right?”
His dark brows crunched up over that nose that belonged on a Roman coin. “All right? Of course, I’m all right. What do you mean?”
Now he looked angry. Oh, she did not like this. Something was happening here, and she didn’t know what. “Well, it’s just that you look so—”
“What?” He practically barked the word.
She backed up a step. “Nothing. Never mind.” In an instinctive attempt at self-protection, she started to push the door shut.
He stuck out his right hand and stopped it. “I told you. I want to talk about your salary.”
She looked at his outstretched arm, at his big hand gripping the door, and then she looked back at him. “Right now?”
“Why not?”
“It’s eleven at night.”
He lifted his free hand and glanced at the fancy watch on his wrist. “Ten forty-two.”
“Will you please let go of the door?”
He did. She considered shutting it in his face. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. She kept thinking how lost he’d looked a moment ago, and, well, feeling just a tiny bit sympathetic toward him.
Which was crazy. Cord Stockwell did not require her sympathy.
But still, she didn’t shut the door on him. She only stood there, her fingers nervously stroking the small lace ruffle at the neck of her nightgown.
All right, she thought. He wants to talk money. We’ll talk money. We can do that quickly. And then he can go. “Well, um. As I told you before, I’m on vacation anyway. So it isn’t really necessary for you to—”
He swore. “Don’t give me that. I hired you to do a job. You will be paid for it.”
“It’s only for a few—”
“Just name a price.”
“Okay. Fine. How about a daily rate?”
“Good. Whatever.” He kept staring at her neck, where her hand fiddled with the lace. She made herself lower that hand, and then felt too exposed to simply drop it to her side. So she wrapped both arms around her middle and came up with a figure.
“I’d pay more,” he said.
“You said to name a price. I did. Accept it.”
“Well. If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure. We can settle up when I leave.”
“All right, then,” he said with finality.
But then he just stood there.
And so did she.
After what seemed like a year, he asked, “So. You’re all right? Comfortable? Got everything you need?”
“Yes. The room is very nice. I have no complaints at all.”
“Good.”
More silence. She found herself studying the strong line of his jaw, noticing, in the wash of light from the floor lamp behind her, that there were strands of silver in his dark hair—only a little, at the temples. It gave him a rather distinguished look. He was wearing the same dress shirt he’d worn that afternoon, a beautiful blue one. It had a lovely rich luster. He also wore dark slacks.
The clothes fit him perfectly. He probably had a tailor who made them especially for him. He would require custom fitting, for those wide shoulders and powerful arms—and that deep, strong chest that tapered down to a tight, hard waist.
They were staring at each other. And they’d been doing it for too long.
He seemed to shake himself. “It just occurred to me…”
“Yes?”
“Feel free to use my sitting room across the hall for the interviews.”
“Thank you.” Her own voice pleased her mightily right then. She sounded so self-possessed. “I will use the room, if we need a place to sit down and talk.”
“Good then,” he said. And was quiet again.
Suddenly he seemed to realize that he couldn’t just stand there, staring at her for the rest of the night, waiting for some other piece of information to occur to him.
“Well. I suppose I should let you get back to…whatever it was you were doing,” he said.
She couldn’t help grinning. He actually was rather appealing like this, kind of confused and strangely dear. She heard herself volunteer, “I was just pacing the floor, thinking up my list of qualifications for the new nanny. I’m going to put an ad in the paper and try a few of the best employment agencies. So far, I’ve come up with, ‘Dependable, loving and live-in…’ Any suggestions?”
He smiled back at her. Oh, the man could smile. No wonder he had women dropping like flies. “How about ‘Experienced?”’
“Good one.”
“And ‘References Required.”’
“Oh, absolutely. I got that. I did. And I wanted to ask you, what about salary? And maybe I should know a little more about the benefits package you offer.”
He quoted a very generous figure. “As to benefits—full medical, and we have a dental plan. And an optical plan, as well. All the major holidays—or time and a half if she agrees to work a holiday. And two weeks vacation a year.”
Hannah could see that she’d have no trouble at all filling this job—good money, fine benefits and the chance to watch Becky take her first step, sound out her first word, learn to ride a bike…
What more could any woman ask for? If she didn’t watch herself, she’d end up pea-green with envy of the woman she was planning to hire.
“Anything else?” he asked. He looked kind of hopeful. And for some reason that made her want to try to think up more questions.
But how wise would that be?
“Um. No. I think that’s everything. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He kept smiling that killer smile.
But after a minute it faded.
He finally said, “All right. Good night.”
“Yes. Good—”
They both heard the cry at the same time—well, it was more of a whine, really. A small, fussy, tender little sound. They stared at each other. Hannah was holding her breath.
And she knew that he was, too.
Another whine. And then a louder one. And then an outright cry.
Hannah told him ruefully, “Someone is calling me.” She moved forward a fraction, and then hesitated. “Excuse me.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He stepped back, out of the doorway.
She brushed past him.
Cord just stood there, staring after her as her bare feet whispered across the playroom floor, the bit of snowy-white nightgown that showed beneath her robe seeming to glow in the darkness as she retreated. When she disappeared through the door to the baby’s bedroom, he bestirred himself and followed.
She was lifting Becky from the crib as he reached her side.
“She might be wet. And she’s probably hungry. I usually feed her around eleven. And she’s a good girl.” She cooed something appreciative into Becky’s tiny ear, then added, over the baby’s shoulder, “After this, she’ll most likely sleep through the rest of the night.”
She turned for the white bureau nearby, the one with the changing pad on top. He had a feeling what was coming. And it was.
She laid the squalling baby on her back, then slid a finger down her diaper. “Yep. Time for a change.”
He considered backing up until he was out the door. But unfortunately, she spoke before he could get his legs to move.
“Come on.” She flicked on the little carousel wall lamp next to the bureau. “You need to learn how to do this. And it won’t be so tough. It’s only wet this time.” She had the nerve to grin at him.
“Maybe I should wait,” he suggested, wincing as his little girl squalled, flailing her arms and kicking her fat little legs. “I’ll give it a try sometime when she’s not squirming so much.”
“Mr. Stockwell, babies who need changing most generally are going to squirm.”
“See. There you have it.”
“Have what?”
Becky, who didn’t look nearly as cute right then as she had when she was sound asleep, kept on yowling and waving her arms and legs around. She was wearing some little yellow T-shirt thing with snaps all over the front of it.
Ms. Miller made more cooing sounds as she peeled away tabs.
“You should do it,” he said. “You’re good at it.”
“And you should learn. Come on over here.”
Hell.
He took the few steps to stand by the changing pad with her. She already had the diaper off. She pressed a lever with her foot, and tossed it into the white bin beside the bureau. Next, she reached over and pulled a couple of white squares out of a plastic container.
She held out the squares. “Here. These are baby wipes. Take them.”
He should have known better, but he did what she told him. The damn things were wet, for the love of Mike. His disgust must have shown on his face.
Ms. Miller let out a loud hoot of laughter.
Surprised the hell out of him—and Becky, too. His little girl stopped yowling to stare at the woman standing over her.
Ms. Miller had the grace to shut her mouth. “Oops,” she said. “Sorry.” She looked away—to control herself, presumably. He heard one more snicker and then she turned back to him with a straight face.
He was still holding the wet squares from the plastic container.
Ms. Miller said, “Wipe her bottom. Very gently.”
He said nothing, only shook his head and stepped closer and did what she said that he had to do.
Once that was accomplished, she had him throw away the used wipes. Then she handed him the diaper rash ointment and told him to gently rub it on. And then, she showed him how to fold a diaper into the slots on the pair of plastic pants. Finally she had him take Becky’s little feet and lift up her bottom and slide the diaper and plastic pants underneath her.
After that, it was pretty simple. He folded the sides up and pressed the Velcro tapes together.
“Now,” she said, “we’ll wrap her back up nice and cozy in this light blanket and you can hold her for a few minutes. I’ll stick a bottle in warm water. Be back in a flash.”
She was gone before he could order her to stay. A dim light went on somewhere in the playroom.
How long did it take to warm up a bottle?
Too long, more than likely.
Becky looked like she might just start crying again. So he picked her up very carefully and put her on his shoulder the way Ms. Miller had shown him before. And then he stood there, feeling like ten kinds of oafish idiot, patting her little back and listening to Ms. Miller in the other room, bustling around in there, doing whatever had to be done to get Becky’s nighttime snack ready.
Becky made a little, experimental sort of fussy sound.
He did not want her starting to yowl in his ear. Maybe if he rocked her…
Yes. That would be good. Babies liked rocking. Didn’t they?
He carried her to the rocker and carefully lowered the two of them into it. He rocked very gently, thinking that would be more soothing, though he felt just frantic enough to keep having to remind himself not to pick up speed.
Becky whined. And then she cried. She also burped. He felt that. It was a wet burp and it made a warm, soggy spot on his shirt. That was when he remembered that he should have put a diaper on his shoulder before holding a baby there.
He went on rocking.
Becky went on crying.
And finally, Ms. Miller reappeared with a bottle.
He didn’t know whether to hug her or yell at her.
She went to the rows of shelves over the changing area and got the diaper that he’d forgotten to use. And then, finally, she padded over to him on her pretty white feet. She set the bottle on the little table by the rocker.
“Here,” she said, calm and competence personified. Gently she peeled Becky off his shoulder.
He looked up at her. “What now?”
“Now you can feed her.”
He started to argue, just on principle. But then he thought that feeding her might not be near as bad as rocking her while she wailed. She’d have a bottle in her mouth, right? And that meant she’d be quiet.
So he allowed Ms. Miller to lay his daughter in his arms, then to hand him the bottle. The rest was easy. He touched the nipple to Becky’s mouth and she latched on and started sucking away.
Piece of cake.
He grinned down at her, pleased with himself, pleased with Becky—and also pleased, though he probably shouldn’t have allowed himself to be, with Ms. Miller.
“You’ve got drool on that nice blue shirt,” Ms. Miller said softly.
He smiled down at his gorgeous, hungry daughter. “Breaks of the game.”
“Here.” She bent close. She smelled warm and sweet, of woman and baby lotion and some faint, light perfume. She smoothed the diaper on his shoulder. He didn’t even realize he’d stopped rocking until she pulled away and he lost the scent of her. Slowly, cautiously, he started the chair moving back and forth again.
“When she’s done, burp her—you remember how to do that?”
He didn’t look up. It seemed safer that way.
She continued, “Then put her in the crib again. On her back. Tuck her in nice and cozy. You think you can handle that?”
He wanted to say, “Maybe not. Maybe you’d better stay…” But where the hell would that get them? She was a smart-mouthed, well-meaning social services worker from Anywhere, Oklahoma. The kind who married, settled down with one guy forever and raised a passel of kids. And he was a man with no interest in anything that had settling down in it—let alone forever.
All right. He’d admit it. She held a certain…attraction for him. He didn’t understand it, because he never dated the homey, settling-down type. Not ever. And he never went after the help. It was a cardinal rule with him.
He didn’t understand it.
But did he even need to understand it?
He realized he didn’t, since he knew it would pass. His interest in any one woman always did. It would be the same with Ms. Miller—except that, in her case, he would never lay a hand on her. She’d teach him the things he needed to know about taking care of his little girl. And she’d find her own replacement, someone steady and dependable, someone minus the leaf-green eyes and the chestnut hair, the shapely feet and the virginal but see-through white nightgown.
“Mr. Stockwell, can you handle it?”
He looked up at her then. “Where were you born, Ms. Miller?”
She hesitated, but then she did tell him. “Oologah. That’s in—”
“I know where Oologah is. Birthplace of Will Rogers. Have I got it right?” She nodded. He asked, “What did your daddy do?”
Another hesitation. Then a sigh. “He ran a gas station. I was pretty little, but I still remember those gasoline trucks pulling into our station to fill up the tanks. They had your name on the side of them. Stockwell Oil.”
“Your folks still live there, in Oologah?”
Something happened in her face, a barrier descending behind those green eyes. “No, Mr. Stockwell. They do not. And you haven’t answered my question. Do you think you can put Becky to bed by yourself?”
“Yes, Ms. Miller. I believe that I can.”
“The monitor’s on the windowsill. I’ve got the receiver in my room. Just speak up if you need me.”
He held her gaze for much longer than necessary before he answered, “Thanks. But I’m sure I can manage just fine on my own.”
She turned for the door. He glanced down at Becky. Looking at his daughter kept him from watching the bit of white gown that fell below the hem of her robe, and the outline of Ms. Miller’s calves beneath it, not to mention the unconscious invitation in her gently swaying hips as she walked away from him.
Chapter Five
Kate Stockwell called Hannah on the house line at eight the next morning. “Is she awake? I thought I’d stop in before I go down to breakfast.”
Hannah smiled. “Yes, she is.”
Not five minutes later, Kate breezed into the nursery. “Okay, I’m here. Do I get to hold her?”
Hannah passed the baby over, and Kate gathered her close. Whatever shadows Hannah had seen in those deep blue eyes the evening before had been banished, apparently, with the new day.
Kate sat in the rocker and cooed to her niece. She was wearing a silk pantsuit that must have cost more than Hannah brought home in a month. However, like her brother, Kate didn’t seem to care in the least if Becky drooled all over her designer duds.
Eventually Kate spared a glance for Hannah. “Interviewing for your replacement today?”
Hannah lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “Maybe. I should at least get the ads in the papers and call the agencies. The agencies might manage to get some applicants over here today—and they definitely will by tomorrow. I’m expecting this to go real quickly. In a few days, the new nanny will start work and I’ll be out of here.”
Kate grinned. “You said that yesterday. Are you trying to convince me…or yourself?”
“Just stating the facts.”
Kate wasn’t buying. “Don’t think you can fool me, Hannah Miller. I spend my workday digging out what’s going on beneath the surface. You love this baby. You don’t want to leave her. Ever.”
What could Hannah say? “You’re right. I love Becky. And the last thing I want is to leave her. But I will. And very soon.”
“Cord told me he asked you to take the job yourself.”
“Yes, he did.”
“So why won’t you?”
“It’s best that I go.”
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