Claiming His Secret Heir

“I think you liked the diversion of something whimsical after the stress of long days at the office.” He took a bite of his sandwich and seemed to reconsider the answer. “Then again, maybe you were just trying to give me a diversion after the long days at the office. We never did see any ghosts.”

And his sense of whimsy had faded, she recalled, toward the end of their honeymoon when her father had urged her to come to London to help him with a takeover of a UK company. She’d been excited for the chance to end the standoff with him. Damon had been stunned she would even consider it. In the end, she’d told him she would head to London anyhow to see a friend and at least meet with her father. It had been an unhappy way to wind up their romantic Italy trip.

But could it have really been the end of their marriage?

“Then let’s try again.” She still hoped their son could one day see the more lighthearted, loving side of Damon. Provided it ever existed outside her hopeful imagination. “Let’s go back to a place with happy memories.”

* * *

The next day, with Caroline in the passenger seat of his white Land Rover, Damon pulled into the Los Trancos Preserve in the mountains above Palo Alto. The woods were close to the house, easy to access from the home they’d built together.

It seemed like a million years ago now. Their dating. Their marriage. Even her disappearance. Last night, after she went to bed, he had reopened his old investigation notes from those frantic first few months she’d been gone. He’d taken his time reading over everything again, looking for new clues now that he knew she’d been in Mexico. All of the evidence he’d found on her whereabouts had led him to believe she was in Europe. She’d deposited money in her account in London and used an ATM card in Prague, Paris and Venice. Her credit card had been used for a room in a Barcelona hotel, but when his PI had shown her picture around the place, no one on staff recognized her.

Had someone been impersonating her? At the time, he’d guessed she wanted to disappear and had paid someone well to cover her tracks. Whatever the case, it was as much a mystery as ever. While he was inside the house retrieving food for Caroline, he’d also messaged the PI his half brothers had used to find him when he’d been traveling Europe looking for her on his own. At the time, he had ditched his cell phone so as not to be distracted with work calls or requests from his family to return home. He’d bought a burner and focused on following Caroline’s trail, but he’d come up empty handed.

Bentley, the investigator who had located Damon when Jager and Gabe got fed up with his disappearing act, was excellent. But unfortunately, he’d been hired by a branch of Damon’s family he would rather forget. Damon’s father, Liam, had left their mother when they were kids and Damon, Jager, and Gabe had no use for the guy. But recently, their grandfather, Malcolm McNeill, had made it his mission to reunite all of his grandchildren, even the illegitimate branch. Damon might not have much use for all the new blood relatives in his life, and most especially not his father, but he could appreciate the value of a good PI. Maybe Bentley would figure out what a whole team of investigators had failed to the first time around.

Just what the hell had happened to his wife?

Talking about the good times with her last night had felt surreal, like the experiences had happened to someone else. He’d been trying so damn hard to forget her, and now? She’d forgotten all about him instead.

If that meant she forgot all about her bastard of a father, Damon didn’t mind the sacrifice one bit. He hoped the subject of Stephan Degraff wouldn’t surface between them today since Damon knew he wouldn’t be able to scrounge a single positive thing to say about the guy who was still fighting to take control of Transparent. Her father was on a mission to turn the rest of the investors against Damon so they could pull in a more experienced CEO to run the company.

Over his dead body.

“Are you sure you feel up to this?” Damon asked Caroline as he switched off the Land Rover. “We could always go for a Sunday drive instead.”

She was as beautiful as ever, but her pale skin and thinner frame made her seem frailer somehow. Or maybe it was simply because he knew she’d suffered a trauma that had given her amnesia. He didn’t want her to exhaust herself. He’d suggested she call a doctor first thing this morning, wanting to know what a professional had to say about her condition, but she’d been adamant she was well enough. When he hadn’t backed down, she’d conceded to a visit tomorrow if they could have one day together first.

He’d been hard pressed to argue. He was having a tough time just letting her out of his sight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

“I’ll be fine.” She gave him a smile that threw caution to the wind. He remembered it from when they’d climbed the bell tower in Florence and she’d challenged him to see who could scale the four-hundred-some steps faster. “The fresh air and exercise will be good for me.”

He still wanted to wrap her in cotton and keep watch over her for days, but he nodded.

Leaving the picnic basket in the back, he locked his door before stalking around to her side and helping her down. He only touched her briefly, putting his hand on her forearm to steady her while she hopped out, but it reminded him how long it had been since he’d touched a woman. Touched her. Even when he’d thought she was never coming back, he hadn’t consoled himself with someone else. In his mind, he’d still been married.

He watched Caroline take in the sights, her head turning as she studied the oak woodland and grassy knolls, the combination of forest and rolling hills scented with bay leaves and the cool, damp earth. The sun shone warmly enough for a southern California winter day, but little light penetrated the thickest patches of trees nearby.

Dressed in a dark blue running suit and a pink tee she’d found in her closet, she started toward the closest hiking trail, her new white sneakers fast on the well-worn path.

“Ready?” Her ponytail swung around her shoulder as she turned back to see him.

“Which way looks good?” he asked, curious if she had even a subconscious memory of the place.

“It seems sunniest in that direction.” She pointed toward the grassier path heading south.

He followed her, discreetly lifting branches out of her way when low boughs seemed too close to head height. For the most part, however, the trail was wide open and the preserve was quiet save for an older man taking his Dalmatian for a walk.

When they reached a high spot with a view of the Bay, Caroline dropped down to a flat rock and zipped her jacket up midway. Damon sat beside her, admiring the view from the peak, and all the time debating if he should ask her more about her ordeal or if he should focus on making new, happier memories. Before he could decide, she turned dark brown eyes his way.

“You said you searched everywhere for me.” Her voice was quiet. Serious. “Why didn’t you report me missing?”

The wind whistled through the tree branches overhead, a lonely sound that echoed through him.

Yesterday, when they’d touched on this subject, he’d been too stunned by the realization that she didn’t remember him to focus on the question. Now, he heard the hurt in her voice. The doubts underlying the question. She had hesitated to come back to him, thinking he might have “moved on.”

Which gave him no choice but to bring up her father.

He ground his teeth at the very thought of the man.

“Your father showed the police proof you’d been in touch with him. He said you’d left the marriage of your own volition and said I should respect your privacy.” He studied her expression, trying to interpret what she might be feeling at that news. “Do you remember much about him?”

“No. I’ve made progress since those first days where I didn’t recognize my own name. I can visualize my family, as well as college and the jobs I had after I graduated. But I don’t really remember anything about why I came out to Los Altos Hills. The last apartment I can recall clearly was in New York City.” She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I can remember that I worked for my father, and I have a few memories of my childhood, but not much about him personally.”

Just his luck, she hadn’t wiped out all memory of Stephan Degraff. Just of Damon.

“Then you might recall your close relationship with your father,” he ventured carefully. “How often the two of you spoke.” Stephan Degraff counted on Caroline’s business advice for his investments, calling on her anytime day or night if he had a question. The guy was relentless. Manipulative. And then, a disturbing thought occurred to Damon. “I’m surprised you didn’t go to him first if you didn’t recollect anything about me.”

“I—” She hesitated, a mixture of emotions evident in her eyes. Guilt. Worry.

“It doesn’t matter.” He covered her knee with one hand, not wishing to upset her. “I’m glad you came here.”

“But my father told the police that I left you? Was it you who called the police?”

“You texted me when your plane landed after you returned here from London.” He wasn’t going to mention the argument they’d had about the UK trip. “It didn’t make sense to me that you would contact me then, only to pack up and leave me.”

“Of course not.” She shook her head, ponytail swinging. “Unless we’d been unhappy?”

“Right after the honeymoon?” He removed his hand from her knee to withdraw his phone and tapped open the gallery of images he’d saved. “Scroll through a few of those and see if they look like pictures of unhappy people.”

She shifted positions, lowering her knees to glance over the photos of them on the Ponte Vecchio, seated at their favorite café for morning espressos, in front of the Uffizi Gallery, at the top of that bell tower they’d climbed. Most of the images were of her smiling and him kissing her cheek, but in a few of them, you could see them both grinning. Wildly in love.

Or so he thought.

“My God.” Her finger swiped faster, sending pictures spinning off the screen, one after another. “Did you show these to the police? To my father? What did they say?”

Her voice quavered. Her whole body seemed to tremble. Damn it.

“I’m sorry.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gently slid the phone from her hands. “I didn’t mean to upset you. We’ll figure it all out, okay? Just relax.”

She shook like a leaf. He couldn’t understand what, precisely, had her so troubled. But he didn’t want to rile her more.

“This is too important for me to relax.” Edging away from his touch, she shot to her feet and paced around the small lookout spot. “Would you be able to put me in touch with the officers you spoke to? The police who supposedly talked to my dad?”

“Supposedly?” Getting to his feet, he frowned. Defensive. “You don’t believe me?”

She tipped her head to one side. Thinking. “I’ve invested a lot of time struggling to piece together the past. I don’t want to worry that the perspectives I’m hearing are biased. I’d like to know what a neutral party has to say.”