For The Sake Of His Heir

“I’m taking the next available flight.” Her fingers stilled on the phone as she scrolled through screens, her dark eyes meeting his. “That is, I hope you understand I’ll need some emergency time away from work.”

“Of course, that’s a given.” He didn’t want her to worry about her job. Although selfishly, he hoped her family wouldn’t somehow convince her to relocate to New York. He wanted her to return to Martinique eventually since this was his permanent home. He hadn’t realized how much he looked forward to working with her every day until he considered the proposition of not seeing her cutting fresh blooms for the lobby desk each morning. “Your position here is secure.”

“Thank you.” She nodded, long bangs catching on the thick fringe of her eyelashes. “I need to pack in case I can catch something on stand-by tonight.” Backing toward the door, she shoved the letter in her pocket. Her cargo pants momentarily pulled tight across her hips.

What was the matter with him that he noticed all the wrong things on a day she needed his friendship? She’d been a rock in his world. He wouldn’t allow her to deal with this family emergency on her own when she was clearly upset.

“Don’t fly stand-by.” He wanted to help her. She never asked for anything and worked hard every day to make the hotel a more beautiful place. She’d been a source of laughter and escape during the hellish weeks after his separation from Theresa.

And he couldn’t let her go this way.

“Gabe, I have to.” The passion—the vehemence—in her voice surprised him; he’d never heard her use that tone. “She’s hurt. Someone hurt her. She’s eighty years old and she gave me everything I have.”

Just like that, he knew he wasn’t going to let her go alone. Not when it was this important to her and she was so upset.

“And you shouldn’t figure all of this out on your own when you’re so distracted and worried.” He didn’t want her driving when she was still shaking. Or hiring a car from the airport that would take her the long way to Brooklyn because she was too rattled to notice. “I was planning to go to New York anyhow.” It made far more sense for them to go together. “I’ll take you there myself on my family’s jet. Tonight.”

“You can’t do that.” She lifted her arms in the air, exasperated. A long section of dark hair escaped the ponytail to tease against her cheek and she blew it aside impatiently. “You have a son to think about. You can’t disrupt Jason’s schedule to fly at the last minute.”

Brianne gave the boy a tender look, her expression visibly softening as she stroked the back of her knuckle along the baby’s arm.

Through the window Gabe spotted Camille, Jason’s caregiver, walking up the planked path. He was glad she was back so he could focus on convincing Brianne to travel with him.

“My grandfather has been trying to entice my brothers and me to spend time in Manhattan for months,” he explained, pulling Jason out of his high chair and giving the boy a kiss on his head. “I can move up my departure date. My half brother Cam gave me the number of a local pilot who can have a flight plan filed with an hour’s notice. If you want to go to New York tonight, I’ll call him to take us. It will be faster than navigating the airport crush.”

As Camille entered, he passed her the boy and asked her to pack the child’s clothes for a two-week trip. He planned to stay longer than that, but would buy more things once they were settled. Camille cooed at Jason and gave Gabe a nod to indicate she’d heard him while he ushered Brianne out of the kitchen and into the afternoon sun outside.

“Gabe, I could never begin to repay you—”

“Why would you have to?” he interrupted, unwilling to let her think in those terms. “I told you, I need to be in New York anyhow so it makes sense for us to travel together. I owe you more than I’ve paid you, Brianne, if it comes right down to it. But you never hear me complain when you work long hours and contribute more to this place than anyone else. Now it’s your turn to accept something extra from me.”

She seemed to weigh this, her lips pursing as she visibly wrestled with the idea of arguing. But in the end, she put up both her hands in surrender.

“You know what? For Nana Rose, I’m just going to say thank you and go pack.”

“Good.” He nodded, already making a mental to-do list, starting with booking the plane and contacting the nanny who would be making the trip with them. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got our flight time confirmed. After we land, we can share a car from the airport, so count on me to bring you straight to your grandmother’s doorstep.”

“Fine.” Her jaw tightened. “That is, thank you.”

As she retreated, he wanted to offer more. To suggest additional ways he could help out since she might be facing more medical bills and travel arrangements where her grandmother was concerned. But he didn’t want to push his luck with his proud and prickly landscape designer. He had a whole plane ride to talk to her and convince her to let him give her a hand moving her beloved relative back to Martinique. He and Brianne made such a good team at work. Why couldn’t they carry that into their personal lives, especially when they were both going through some tough transitions?

The idea held a whole lot of appeal. Maybe that should have troubled him given that he’d just emerged from a disastrous marriage and divorce. Instead, he felt an undeniable pull of awareness that had been absent from his life ever since his wife was two months pregnant and had announced she was leaving him.

Two (#u9945bf98-7f25-52d8-b020-e0731532b2bf)

Brianne paced outside her cabin in front of the huge strangler fig that listed to one side after years of leaning with the prevailing winds. Suitcase haphazardly packed and ready to go on her tiny wooden porch, she forced herself to take a deep breath while she waited for Gabe to pick her up. Dusk was just settling over the island, casting the resort in shades of pink and peach. Her cabin was already dark from the shadows cast by the wide branches of the tree.

Kneeling down, she scraped a few leaves off the plaque she’d placed there last fall, a final gift bequeathed to her from Nana’s friend Carol, who had brought Brianne to this place fourteen years ago as a smart-mouthed preteen. Carol had run out of her retirement funds by the end, her final years in a nursing home having depleted her account. But she’d left the plaque for Brianne, a wrought-iron piece with a Chinese proverb in raised letters reading, “When the root is deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.”

Brianne had understood the message—that she needed to rely on the roots Carol had helped her to set down in Martinique, and the values that Nana had tried to impart before Brianne’s world imploded with family drama. It didn’t matter that Brianne’s mom had been a junkie who deserted the family when her dealer moved to Miami, leaving eight-year-old Brianne with a father who was allergic to work but not women. Even then, Brianne had felt like the adult in the house, forging her father’s signature on papers from school, instinctively guessing her troubles would multiply if anyone found out how often she went unsupervised.

At the time, she couldn’t have known how much worse off she’d be once her dad’s girlfriend moved in with them, bringing kids from previous relationships and a surprise half sibling, whose combined support cost far more than the toxic couple could afford. If not for free school lunches, Brianne didn’t know how she would have survived those lonely years, where no one remembered to feed her let alone buy her new shoes or check her homework. But when puberty hit, delivering feminine assets no eleven-year-old should have to contend with, she suddenly had all the wrong kinds of attention.

She shuddered at the memories, grateful to hear Gabe’s SUV tires crunch the gravel on the far side of the cabin. He’d texted her two hours ago that they could leave at 7:00 p.m., and now here he was—as promised—fifteen minutes before their scheduled departure. Because apparently on a private jet they could take off almost as soon as they buckled into the seats.

Somehow, that kind of favor seemed far more generous than the extra hours she occasionally put in at the Birdsong carefully training a vine over an arbor or watering a temperamental new planting. But for Nana’s sake, she sure wasn’t going to argue with Gabe about a lift to New York on such short notice. With her bank account, she’d be hard-pressed to afford the rest of the trip and relocating her grandmother, let alone a plane ticket. Still, although she understood the McNeill family could easily afford this kind of travel, she was touched that he wanted to bring her. That was a dangerous feeling to have about her boss, who already appealed to her on far too many levels.

Wheeling her battered duffel bag around to the driveway behind the cabin, she got there in time to see Gabe open the liftgate on the back of the dark gray Mercedes SUV. In a nod to traveling with her employer, she’d dressed in her best dark jeans and a flowy, floral blouse in bright tangerine and yellow that slid off her shoulders and made her feel pretty. Gabe, on the other hand, looked ready to escort an A-list actress to an Oscars after-party, his jacket and slim-fitting navy pants the sort of clothes that came from a tailor and not the department-store racks. Even his shirt, open at the neck, was beautiful—it was snowy white and embroidered with extra white stitching around the placket. The dark tasseled loafers were, she supposed, his effort to keep things less formal.

“Any news about your grandmother?” he asked.

“She hasn’t picked up any of my calls or returned my messages.” Brianne didn’t know if the phone was dead or the ringer was shut off, but each time she tried Nana’s number and got no answer only made her worry more.

“Did you get someone to go over to see her?”

“No.” Guilt nipped at her, and she wondered if Gabe could have managed the feat if she’d allowed him to take the task as he’d wanted. “The agency I called said it was too late in the afternoon to schedule a same-day visit. They suggested I call the police if I was worried about her safety.”

“Did you?” His blue eyes skimmed over her, making her too aware of his nearness.

Nodding, she tried not to notice how good he smelled. “I did. I wanted to find out if Nana had reported the mugging, first of all, but there’s nothing on file with the police. Then, when I asked about someone checking on her, they promised they would send a car out in the morning.”

“We’ll be there sooner than that,” he assured her. “Is this all your luggage?” He reached for the soft-sided bag and retracted the handle into the bottom before he set it in the trunk of the SUV, muscles flexing in a way that pulled the fabric of his jacket taut across his shoulders.

“That’s it.” She peered into the vehicle and saw Ms. Camille’s daughter, Nadine, sitting beside Jason’s car seat and called out a greeting before returning her attention to Gabe. “I’m not even sure what I packed. I think I just grabbed something out of each drawer and tossed it in there.”

She kept picturing the nightmarish scene of a mugger stealing from her grandmother. She hated that anyone would target someone elderly and frail.

Gabe frowned as he walked with her to the passenger side of the vehicle and opened the door for her. “You should stay with me when we get to New York. My half brother Ian invited me to use his place for the next month while he and his wife are abroad. They have a spacious five-bedroom apartment in a hotel in midtown. There’s concierge service, so if you’ve forgotten anything—”

“No, thank you.” She buckled her seat belt and leaned into the soft leather chair, hoping he would drop it. She didn’t want to be rude, but she couldn’t accept more gifts from him. Her pride wouldn’t allow it. She’d been a charity case once and knew how demoralizing it felt to need a handout. “You’re already doing enough for me.”

Turning to Nadine and Jason, she gave the baby’s chubby knee a pat to say hello. Jason tipped his head sideways against the car seat, as if he couldn’t keep it upright any longer, but smiled at her sweetly. “Gah!”

The boy was so adorable, his dark curls and blue eyes already like his father’s. She wondered if it made it easier or more difficult for Gabe that Jason didn’t favor his mother more. How could Theresa have signed away her rights to raise this precious child?

Gabe took his place behind the wheel and they began the drive inland, leaving the hotel and everything she’d worked hard for in her life.

“Do you know I haven’t been on a plane since I arrived here fourteen years ago?” She made the observation as a peace offering, hoping he’d forget about her refusal to take up residence with him in a fancy Manhattan hotel.

It was tough enough to be around him as an employee today. She wouldn’t push her luck by getting closer to him personally.

“Are you a nervous flyer?” he asked, steering around a tourist caravan pulled off to one side of the road to snap photos.

She was only nervous about sitting too close to him. His kindness and attention were quickly wearing away the boundaries she’d put up, defenses she thought were solid.

“I don’t think so.” She didn’t recall much about the long-ago journey. She’d cried most of the way, convinced her life was over. “It was a stressful trip, but only because I was being uprooted. I should have returned home long before this.”

She had plenty of reasons, none of them good enough to fully explain her complicated feelings about her family.