“So she was a real princess,” Brendan murmured, correcting himself.
“She was also a reporter,” the other man said, his focus on Brendan, his dark eyes narrowed with suspicion.
It had taken Brendan four years to gain the small amount of trust and acceptance that he had from these men. He had been a stranger to them when he’d taken over the business he’d inherited from his late father. And these men didn’t trust strangers.
Hell, they didn’t trust anyone.
The man asked, “When did you learn that?”
Learn that Josie Jessup had betrayed him? That she’d just been using him to get another exposé for her father’s media outlets?
Anger coursed through him and he clenched his jaw. His eyes must have also telegraphed that rage, for the men across the booth from him leaned back now as if trying to get away. Or to reassure themselves that they were armed, too.
“I found out Josie Jessup was a reporter,” Brendan said, “right before she died.”
* * *
I
T’S TOO GREAT
a risk...
She hadn’t been able to reach her handler, the former U.S. marshal who had faked Josie’s death and relocated her. But she didn’t need to speak to Charlotte Green to know what she would have told her.
It’s too great a risk...
After nearly being killed for real almost four years ago, Josie knew how much danger she would be in were anyone to discover that she was still alive. She hadn’t tried to call Charlotte again. She’d had no intention of listening to her anyway.
Josie stood outside her father’s private hospital room, one hand pressed against the door. Coming here was indeed a risk, but the greater risk was that her father would die without her seeing him again.
Without him seeing her again. And...
Her hand that was not pressed against the door held another hand. Pudgy little fingers wriggled in her grasp. “Mommy, what we doin’ here?”
Josie didn’t have to ask herself that question. She knew that, no matter what the risk, she needed to be here. She needed to introduce her father to his grandson. “We’re here to see your grandpa,” she said.
“Grampa?” The three-year-old’s little brow furrowed in confusion. He had probably heard the word before but never in reference to any relation of his. It had always been only the two of them. “I have a grampa?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “But he lives far away so we didn’t get to see him before now.”
“Far away,” he agreed with a nod and a yawn. He had slept through most of the long drive from northwestern Michigan to Chicago; his soft snoring had kept her awake and amused. His bright red curls were matted from his booster seat, and there was a trace of drool that had run from the corner of his mouth across his freckled cheek.
CJ glanced nervously around the wide corridor as if just now realizing where he was. He hadn’t awakened until the elevator ride up to her father’s floor. Then with protests that he wasn’t a baby but a big boy now, he had wriggled out of her arms. “Does Grampa live here?”
“No,” she said. “This is a hospital.”
The little boy shuddered in revulsion. His low pain threshold for immunizations had given him a deep aversion to all things medical. He lowered his already soft voice to a fearful whisper. “Is—is Grampa sick?”
She whispered, too, so that nobody overheard them. A few hospital workers, men dressed in scrubs, lingered outside a room a few doors down from her father’s. “He’s hurt.”
So where were the police or the security guards? Why was no one protecting him?
Because nobody cared about her father the way she did. Because she had been declared dead, he had no other next of kin. And as powerful and intimidating a man as he was, he had no genuine friends, either. His durable power of attorney was probably held by his lawyer. She’d claimed to be from his office when she’d called to find out her father’s room number.
“Did he falled off his bike?” CJ asked.
“Something like that.” She couldn’t tell her son what had really happened, that her father had been assaulted in the parking garage of his condominium complex. Usually the security was very high there. No one got through the gate unless they lived in the building. Not only was it supposed to be safe, but it was his home. Yet someone had attacked him, striking him with something—a baseball bat or a pipe. His broken arm and bruised shoulder might not hurt him so badly if the assault hadn’t also brought on a heart attack.
Would her showing up here as if from the dead bring on another one? Maybe that inner voice of hers, which sounded a hell of a lot like Charlotte’s even though she hadn’t talked to the woman, was right. The risk was too great.
“We shoulda brought him ice cream,” CJ said. “Ice cream makes you feel all better.”
Every time he had been brave for his shots she had rewarded him with ice cream. Always shy and nervous, CJ had to fight hard to be brave. Had she passed her own fears, of discovery and danger, onto her son?
“Yes, we should have,” she agreed, and she pulled her hand away from the door. “We should do that...”
“Now?” CJ asked, his dark bluish-green eyes brightening with hope. “We gonna get ice cream now?”
“It’s too late for ice cream tonight,” she said. “But we can get some tomorrow.”
“And bring it back?”
She wasn’t sure about that. She would have to pose as the legal secretary again and learn more about her father’s condition. Just how fragile was his health?
Josie turned away from the door and from the nearly overwhelming urge to run inside and into her father’s arms—the way she always had as a child. She had hurled herself at him, secure that he would catch her.
She’d been so confident that he would always be there for her. She had never considered that he might be the one to leave—for real, for good—that he might be the one to really die. Given how young she was when her mother died, she should have understood how fragile life was. But her father wasn’t fragile. He was strong and powerful. Invincible. Or so she had always believed.
But he wasn’t. And she couldn’t risk causing him harm only to comfort herself. She stepped away from the door, but her arm jerked as her son kept his feet planted on the floor.
“I wanna see Grampa,” he said, his voice still quiet but his tone determined. Afraid to draw attention to himself, her son had never thrown a temper tantrum. He’d never even raised his voice. But he could be very stubborn when he put his mind to something. Kind of like the grandfather he’d suddenly decided he needed to meet.
“It’s late,” she reminded him. “He’ll be sleeping and we shouldn’t wake him up.”
His little brow still furrowed, he stared up at her a moment as if considering her words. Then he nodded. “Yeah, you get cranky when I wake you up.”
A laugh sputtered out of her lips. Anyone would get cranky if woken up at 5:00 a.m. to watch cartoons. “So we better make sure I get some sleep tonight.” That meant postponing the drive back and getting a hotel. But she needed to be close to the hospital...in case her father took a turn for the worse. In case he needed her.
“And after you wake up we’ll come back with ice cream?”
She hesitated before offering him a slight nod. But instead of posing as the lawyer’s assistant again, she would talk to Charlotte.
Someone else had answered the woman’s phone at the palace on the affluent island country of St. Pierre where Charlotte had gone to work as the princess’s bodyguard after leaving the U.S. Marshals. That person had assured Josie that Charlotte would be back soon to return her call. But Josie hadn’t left a message—she couldn’t trust anyone but Charlotte with her life. Or her father’s. She would talk to Charlotte and see what the former marshal could find out about Josie’s father’s condition and the attack. Then she would come back to see him.
Her son accepted her slight nod as agreement and finally moved away from the door to his grandfather’s room. “Does Grampa like ’nilla ice cream or chocolate or cookie dough or...”
The kid was an ice-cream connoisseur, his list of flavors long and impressive. And Josie’s stomach nearly growled with either hunger or nerves.
She interrupted him to ask, “Do you want to press the elevator button?”
His brow furrowing in concentration, he rose up on tiptoe and reached for the up arrow.
“No,” she said. But it was too late, he’d already pressed it. “We need the down arrow.” Before she could touch it, a hand wrapped around her wrist.
Her skin tingled and her pulse leaped in reaction. And she didn’t need to lift her head to know who had touched her. Even after more than three years, she recognized his touch. But she lifted her head and gazed up at him, at his thick black hair that was given to curl, at his deep, turquoise-green eyes that could hold such passion. Now they held utter shock and confusion.
This was the man who’d killed her, or who would have killed her had the U.S. marshal and one of her security guards not diffused the bomb that had been set inside the so-called
safe
house. They had set it off later to stage her death.
Since he had wanted her dead so badly, he was not going to be happy to find her alive and unharmed—if he recognized her now. She needed for him
not
to recognize her, as she wasn’t likely to survive his next murder attempt. Not when she was unprotected.
If only she’d listened to that inner voice...
The risk had been too great. Not just to her life but to what would become of her son once she was gone.
Would her little boy’s father take him or kill him? Either way, the child was as doomed as she was.
Chapter Two
For more than three years, her memory had haunted Brendan—her image always in his mind. This woman didn’t look like her, but she had immediately drawn his attention when he’d stepped out of the stairwell at the end of the hall. Her body was fuller and softer than Josie’s thin frame had been. And her chin-length blond bob had nothing in common with Josie’s long red hair. Yet something about her—the way she tilted her jaw, the sparkle in her eyes as she gazed down at the child—reminded him of her.
Then she’d spoken to the boy, and her soft voice had hit him like a blow to the stomach. While he might not have recognized her body or face, he could not mistake that voice as anyone’s but hers. Her voice had haunted him, too.
Before he could recover, he turned his attention to the child and reeled from another blow. With his curly red hair and bright green eyes, the child was more recognizable than the woman. Except for that shock of bright hair, he looked exactly like the few childhood photos of Brendan that his stepmother hadn’t managed to
accidentally
destroy.
He didn’t even remember closing the distance between them, didn’t remember reaching for her. But now he held her, his hand wrapped tightly around her delicate wrist.
She lifted her face to him, and he saw it now in the almond shape and silvery-green color of her eyes. What he didn’t recognize was the fear that widened those eyes and stole the color from her face.
“Josie...?”
She shook her head in denial.
She must have had some cosmetic work done, because her appearance was different. Her cheekbones weren’t as sharp, her chin not as pointy, her nose not as perfectly straight. This plastic surgeon had done the opposite of what was usually required; he’d made her perfect features imperfect—made her look less movie-star gorgeous and more natural.
Why would she have gone to such extremes to change her identity? With him, her effort was wasted. He would know her anywhere, just from the way his body reacted—tensing and tingling with attraction. And anger. But she was already afraid of him and he didn’t want to scare the child, too, so he restrained his rage over her cruel deception.
“You’re Josie Jessup.”
She shook her head again and spoke, but this time her voice was little more than a raspy whisper. “You’re mistaken. That’s not my name.”
The raspy whisper did nothing to disguise her voice, since it was how he best remembered her. A raspy whisper in his ear as they’d made love, his body thrusting into hers, hers arching to take him deep. Her nails digging into his shoulders and back as she’d screamed his name.
That was why he’d let her fool him once, why he’d let her distract him when he had needed to be focused and careful. She had seduced and manipulated him with all her loving lies. She’d only wanted to get close to him so she could get a damn story. She hadn’t realized how dangerous getting close to him really was. No matter what she’d learned, she didn’t know the truth about him. And if he had anything to say about it, she never would. He wouldn’t let her make a fool of him twice.
“If you’re not Josie Jessup, what the—” He swallowed a curse for the child’s sake. “What are you doing here?”
“We were gonna see my grampa,” the little boy answered for her, “but we didn’t wanna wake him up.”
She was the same damn liar she had always been, but at least she hadn’t corrupted the boy.
His son...
* * *
J
OSIE RESISTED THE
urge to press her palm over CJ’s mouth. It was already too late. Why was it
now
that her usually shy son chose to speak to a stranger? And, moreover, to speak the truth? But her little boy was unfailingly honest, no matter the fact that his mother couldn’t be. Especially now.
“But we got out on the wrong floor,” she said. “This isn’t where your grandfather’s room is.”
CJ shook his head. “No, we watched the numbers lighting up in the el’vator. You said number six. I know my numbers.”
Now she cursed herself for working with the three-year-old so much that he knew all his numbers and letters. “Well, it’s the wrong room.”
“You said number—”
“Shh, sweetheart, you’re tired and must not remember correctly,” she said, hoping that her son picked up the warning and the fear in her voice now. “We need to leave. It’s late. We need to get you to bed.”
But those strong masculine fingers were still wrapped tight around her wrist. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You have no right to keep me,” she said.