The Marriage Agenda: The Marriage Conspiracy / The Billionaire's Baby Plan

“So when Jonas Bravo and his wife showed up at your office…”

“They told me about the baby, Jonas’s younger brother. And I told them I didn’t know anything about any baby, and neither had my mother. I asked them to leave. And they did.”

“Okay. But I don’t see what—”

“I left out a few details, when I told you about it—like the fact that Jonas said he believed I was the baby.”

Joleen’s mouth felt dry. She picked up her ice water and knocked back a big gulp. “Wait a minute. Jonas Bravo said that you were the kidnapped baby?”

“Right.”

“The kidnapped baby who was Jonas’s brother?”

Dekker was nodding at her. “Jonas said he believed that I had been kidnapped by ‘our’ uncle, Blake Bravo, for revenge against Blake’s own brother, Jonas’s father.”

“Revenge? Why?”

“That’s a whole other story. Evidently, Blake was a real shady character, had been disinherited. He blamed his brother for it. So he came up with this scheme to kidnap his younger nephew and hold the baby for ransom. He had an accomplice, according to Jonas.”

“Not…Lorraine?”

“Yes. Lorraine.”

Joleen had that feeling again, the one she’d had in her father’s study when Robert Atwood had told her he would take her child from her: that feeling of stark unreality—the absolute certainty this couldn’t be real. “This is crazy. Lorraine was your mother. We all know that.”

“Not according to Jonas Bravo. He told me that the woman I’d always believed to be my mother had helped Blake Bravo kidnap me. That Blake had demanded—and got—two million dollars worth of diamonds as a ransom.”

“Two million? Whoa. The Bravos must have had plenty of money.”

“They did. And they still do. Jonas manages the Bravo holdings. He’s an excellent businessman. They call him the Bravo Billionaire.”

Joleen took another swallow of ice water. “They?”

“The newspapers, the scandal sheets. Bravo is an important name in Los Angeles.” Dekker was watching her. He waited till she set her glass down again before he said, “So Blake got the diamonds—but he never returned the baby he had kidnapped. He and Lorraine disappeared, along with that baby, never to be seen or heard from again.”

“The baby that was…you?” It all seemed so incredible.

“Right. That’s what Jonas claimed.”

“And you denied it.”

“Yes. I said it wasn’t true and I asked him and Emma to leave. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the things that he’d said. I remembered my mother’s diary.”

This was more news to Joleen. “Lorraine left a diary?”

“Yes. She asked me not to read it until she was gone. I put it away. And I never read it. I guess I just didn’t want to deal with what I would find in there. But after Jonas and his wife paid me that visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I dug it out of her things.”

“And?”

“It contained her confession. She verified everything Jonas had told me. That she helped kidnap me as a baby and that she—well, she decided she wanted to keep me. She couldn’t have kids of her own. She wrote that, from the moment she lifted me out of my crib, the night that they took me from the Bravo mansion, she knew she would never give me up. In the end, after several months of moving around, living under various aliases, Blake set her up with a new identity. And a house.”

“The house…next door?”

“You got it.”

“So that means Jonas Bravo…”

“Is my brother.”

“And you took off for L.A. on Wednesday because—”

“As soon as I read what Lorraine wrote, I felt I had to go looking for him, to tell him what I’d found.”

“Oh, Dekker.” She reached across the distance between them and brushed his arm with her fingertips. “I’ll bet you couldn’t get there fast enough.”

His white teeth flashed in the darkness as he gave her a smile. “I knew you’d understand.”

“I do. I just…well, I can hardly believe it. You have a brother.…” Which was wonderful, really. Finding out he had more family, to Joleen’s mind, would be nothing but good for Dekker.

The part about Lorraine, though. That was just terrible. And so hard to accept.

Lorraine Smith had been a quiet woman, and a little bit shy, a person who tended to fade into the background in a crowd. Joleen had always thought of her as gentle. And good at heart.

Incredible, Joleen thought. Impossible.

Lorraine was not Dekker’s mama, after all. Lorraine was a kidnapper, and Dekker was the baby that she stole.

She said, “I do wish you’d explained all this earlier. I got pretty worried. I thought all kinds of things, that you might be in danger…”

“I wasn’t in danger. I just couldn’t talk about it. Not then, when I first found out.”

“I am not blaming you, Dekker. You did what you had to do. And that was to contact your brother and to share with him what you found.”

“Which brings us around to the situation with Robert Atwood.”

The quick shift in subject surprised her. For a few minutes there, with all this shocking news Dekker was laying on her, she’d actually forgotten Bobby’s father and the threat he presented to Sam. “Wait a minute. What does your being Jonas Bravo’s brother have to do with Robert Atwood?”

“Remember earlier I told you that money would be no problem?”

“Oh, Dekker, don’t start with that again. I appreciate your offerin’ to help out that way. It means so much that you would, but I told you, I cannot allow you to—”

“Jo, I’m a rich man now.”

Her mouth was open, since he’d cut her off in the middle of a sentence. She shut it, then opened it again to say, “Huh?”

“The Bravos never gave up on the idea that I might be alive somewhere. Arrangements were made for me, a huge trust set aside, just in case I might someday show up again.”

His words made her head spin. “Arrangements…a huge trust?”