Royal Heir

WILL CLOSED his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept without visions of exploding boats tearing him from sleep. Days, maybe. His eyes felt gritty, as though he’d been caught in a sandstorm. His arm throbbed where the car had thumped him. His hip no doubt sported a black-and-blue mark the size of a salad plate.

And he was hungry. For the first time in days, he was hungry.

“When’s the last time you saw Nicole?” he asked. They were just exiting the freeway, Julia driving fast. He found her impatience reassuring.

She didn’t answer.

He’d been thinking about Julia ever since he’d learned his child was to be given to her, handed over by Nicole’s directive. He’d tried to recall what Nicole had said about her cousin. “Mousy and shy” were the terms Nicole had most often used when describing Julia.

He sneaked a look at Julia’s profile. No, she wasn’t flashy like Nicole. It didn’t look as though she spent a lot of time pouting or posturing, either. She came across as a loner. From the first moment he’d spied her in the airport, he’d recognized in her the same aura of isolation he carried inside himself.

Mousy? No. Her brown hair was windblown but luxuriant, her dark eyes intelligent, her tall frame athletic but curvy. She wore her blue jeans like a second skin, and the suppleness of the sable leather jacket set off her hair and eyes while mimicking the smooth texture of her skin.

His hand drifted to the bandage on his arm—her white scarf—ruined now by his blood. Well, no wonder Nicole wrote her cousin off as little more than a babysitter for those times when Leo became an inconvenience. His wife had been a tad egotistical. She seldom picked up on nuances, either, and wouldn’t have differentiated shyness from restraint.

“Two weeks before you were reported dead,” Julia said.

It took him a second to realize she was answering his question.

“Nicole called to ask me if she could leave Leo with me for a weekend. But I was working and I said no.”

Her voice choked up on the last word. He was beginning to understand that Leo’s plight was personal to her. He hadn’t understood how close she’d become to his son.

Okay. Nicole had wanted a weekend free. Out of town, out of state, for that matter. A lover’s tryst with a man whose face and position were too well known to stay close to home while romancing a woman other than his wife? Would Nicole’s chief of police boyfriend come along or would they have met somewhere? He said, “Did she ever bring any friends to your house when she brought Leo over?”

“Friends?”

“Men,” he said.

She darted him a glance and then turned her concentration back to the road. “No,” she said.

“Does it surprise you to hear she had a boyfriend?”

“No,” she said, not looking at him this time. “Tell me why you pretended you were dead and why you let Leo leave Washington.”

He had known this was coming. He’d prepared a few lies. But now, sitting in the dark car, too tired to dissimilate, he chose the truth. “I’m pretty sure Nicole set up my supposed accident. I got a call from a woman claiming to have compromising pictures of my wife and her husband. She said she’d hired a private eye to get them. Told me they were mine for the taking.”

“Why didn’t the woman use them herself?”

“She said she was afraid of her husband. Claimed he was the chief of police. She told me to meet her at a restaurant across the river. The fastest way there was on my boat so I took it. Only someone who knew me well would know that’s what I would do.”

“Nicole, for instance.”

“Of the people interested in our small world of problems, only Nicole. Anyway, I was living on the boat by then so all my papers, everything I valued besides my son, were aboard.”

“And it exploded?”

“It was hit by another boat going like a bat out of hell. I got off in the nick of time. The newspaper the next day said that human remains were found were are being tested for DNA to see which boater they belong to, me or the nameless other guy. Contrary to what television leads us to believe, the testing can take a while. A small speedboat was reported stolen from a nearby marina. Recovered wreckage confirmed that it was the boat that hit mine.”

“But you don’t think it was an accident?”

“No.”

“Why?”

He thought for a moment. “It came right at me. I turned on every light and still it came. The next day I called the chief of police’s house. A servant informed me that the chief’s wife was in the hospital following childbirth complications. Had been for several days. Hard to picture her calling me from a hospital bed, then sneaking out to rendezvous at a restaurant across the river. I don’t doubt the affair. I just doubt the pictures and the setup.”

“So you determined Nicole must have been behind it?”

“Who else? I didn’t want her or the boyfriend to know they weren’t successful. A man in that position has serious clout. I’m just an architect, a relative unknown. I thought if I was declared dead, I could uncover some kind of evidence that would prove Nicole and her lover guilty of attempted murder. Then I could use that proof to gain custody of Leo.”

“But before all that could happen, Nicole drove off the side of the highway and crashed into a tree.”

“Yes. With Leo in the car. It’s a miracle he wasn’t hurt. By the time I found out she was dead, Leo was in protective custody. How could I prove who I was without sounding like a nutcase? How could I tell the authorities my story, including the chief’s part in it without endangering my chances of ever recovering my boy?

“In the end, I decided it would be best to let Leo come to you. It would give me time to reestablish my identity before approaching you. But I had to make sure he got here safe and sound and that you were…capable…of watching him.” He paused for a second. The truth was that he’d been afraid Julia was a carbon copy of Nicole. He’d had to make sure she was willing to take on a child for even a few weeks, as well as be responsible enough not to do him harm. He added, “I thought if you were halfway reasonable, I could talk to you about this and we could work something out.”

His voice trailed off. He didn’t know what else to say. Everything so far made him sound like an idiot.

“That’s why you were at the airport? Just to watch me take custody of Leo?”

“Yes.”

Her voice took on an impatient tone as she added, “Then did you see the imposter? The woman pretending to be me? A tall man in a gray raincoat?”

He shook his head. “I was late. I got there after you. I recognized Nicole’s lawyer so I had to stay out of his line of vision. The panic on your face when you turned to catch me staring at you just about tore my gut open.”

She cast him a quick glance. Even in the dim light, he caught the sparkle in her eyes that suggested pooling tears.

Julia’s hand strayed to her face where he presumed she brushed away the tears. Damn, her raw emotions touched him more than he liked. She was a grown-up. Her past and her problems were not his concern.

“Where do you think Leo is?” she asked at last.

“I think he’s with my aunt,” he said.

This earned him a longer glance, which she jerked away only because she needed to watch the road. As she guided the car around a corner, she almost whispered, “Why would your aunt steal your son in such an elaborate ruse?”

“Fiona Chastain is sophisticated and wealthy and she hated Nicole’s guts. The feeling was mutual.”

“So that’s why I was chosen as guardian and not your aunt.”

“I can’t imagine the words the two of them must have exchanged after my supposed death. I’m betting Aunt Fiona caught wind of Nicole’s decision to provide for Leo in the event of her death and over-reacted. She’s got lots of connections. I think she put this elaborate hoax into operation as soon as she learned she’d been bypassed as Leo’s guardian. I checked the airline schedules. There was a flight leaving for Spokane just minutes after you think you spotted Leo and his abductors in the elevator. My aunt happens to have relocated to Spokane.”

“But I would have been happy to share Leo with your aunt,” Julia said. “I would have loved knowing he had more family—”

“My aunt wouldn’t see things that way,” he said. Picking the next words with care, he added, “She’s very…controlling.”

“What did you mean that he was in no danger except for disappearing?”