The Tycoon's Instant Daughter

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.