Unwrapping the Playboy / The Playboy's Gift: Unwrapping the Playboy

Elizabeth’s grandson.

The problem was that she didn’t know any lawyers, good or bad. Why should she? Despite three quarters of a year of law school behind her, she’d never needed one before, never knew anyone who’d needed one before, which now left her at a terrible disadvantage.

But she knew Kullen. Knew that he was good and kind and caring, so that was a start. Because he had turned out to be a lawyer and was still right here in Bedford, maybe fate was finally being kind to her.

Still, arriving ten minutes early for her appointment, Lilli sat in her small, tidy blue car in Rothchild, McDowell and Simmons’s parking lot, debating one last time the wisdom of what she was about to do. Debating, again, canceling her appointment.

She’d even pushed his office number on her keypad, her finger hovering over the send button, before she flipped her phone closed, shoved it into her purse and then got out of the car. She all but marched into the six-story building. But when she stepped into the elevator, Lilli felt not unlike a doomed soul walking the last mile. Or riding up to it, as it were.

Jonathan, think of Jonathan, she told herself. Jonathan is all that matters. You have to keep him out of that woman’s clutches. Or she’ll turn him into a carbon copy of his father.

And that, Lilli knew, would be a fate worse than death.

The elevator door opened all too quickly and she got out.

As she walked the short distance to the impressive offices of Rothchild, McDowell and Simmons, Lilli fervently prayed she was doing the right thing.

Because she was putting her son’s future—and his fate—into the hands of a man she’d walked out on all those years ago.

Chapter Two

There were days, Kullen thought, when life seemed like a reenactment of the Indianapolis 500. But instead of cars, the minutes and hours madly whizzed by him. It was all he could do to keep things remotely straight.

If he were honest, he doubted he could keep his sanity if it wasn’t for the woman his father had hired as his chief secretary so many years ago.

Selma Walker was no longer a secretary. These days, she was an administrative assistant, a title that seemed to annoy her at times, or “vex” her, as she was wont to say. She liked “calling a rose a rose,” and she was a secretary. A damn good secretary. And proud of it.

Selma was only slightly less old than the proverbial hills. A small, thin bit of a woman with unnaturally black hair, she was, despite her steamroller attitude and undisclosed age, sharp as a tack. It was Selma who kept Kullen’s—as well as everyone else’s—schedule straight. She personally filled in appointments on his desk calendar as well as, reluctantly, his computer. She really distrusted anything electronic and this included the elevator. Every morning and evening, she took the stairs.

The woman had told him more than once that she liked the feel of pen and paper and that, come a power failure—or a sunspot—everything electronic would be rendered useless. At that point, all the old-fashioned methods, heavily relying on brain power, would be called into service because the traditional methods, she maintained, were the best.

If Selma had an actual failing, other than her less than sunny disposition, it was her handwriting. Surprisingly for one of her generation, it was far worse than chicken scratch. When this was pointed out, she took umbrage, tersely saying that she could read every word. This placed her in a very small group that numbered exactly one.

Which was why, although he’d glanced at his desk calendar, Kullen wound up caught completely off guard when he heard the knock on his door and instructed the person on the other side, his new client, to come in.

Up until that point, all he’d known about the new client was that she was female and single. He’d learned to recognize what in Selma’s handwriting passed for either “Mrs.” or “Mr.” The former had one scribbled letter more. The third title, Ms., Selma refused to acknowledge or insert. To her, unmarried women were Miss, not Ms. She insisted that Ms. was an abbreviation for manuscript and wouldn’t attach it to a human being. Thus, the name he’d fleetingly looked at had no title before it.

While the client’s actual name was a mystery to him, Kullen saw no reason for concern. The name of this single female would inevitably come out during the introductions. He’d long since given up verbally dueling with Selma over her handwriting, preferring to have his wits challenged by his new client rather than his stubborn administrative assistant.

Knowing his new client’s gender and general marital status left Kullen entirely unprepared for the actual sight of that same new client when she entered.

Eight years had passed but he would have known her anywhere.

Lilli.

For the longest time, Lilli’s delicate, almost waif-like image had been stitched on his heart and even now, although shut away, it still occupied a small, darkened corner of his soul.

Surprise, joy and anger swirled around within Kullen. Along with deep confusion. Why was she here?

It took him a second to remember that regular breathing was essential to keep from keeling over, head first, onto his desk, and that he’d stopped breathing the moment he’d seen her enter.

Rising to his feet, Kullen felt as if his body didn’t quite belong to him. Felt, instead, as if this was a small segment of a recurring dream that still, on occasion, haunted him. Breaking up into tiny fragments once he was fully awake.

But he was awake now.

Wasn’t he?

“Lilli?” he whispered uncertainly.

Part of him expected the client to eye him quizzically, not recognizing the name because there was no earthly reason for this to be the woman who had bolted out of his life the night after he’d produced an engagement ring and asked her to marry him. Not only bolted, but disappeared without a trace. No one knew where she’d gone or why she’d suddenly dropped out of law school—and, for all intents and purposes, out of life.

But this was Lilli standing before him. Kullen would have bet his soul on it.

The next moment, as a small, incredibly sad smile curved her lips, his silent wager was validated and he held on to his soul a little longer.

“Hello, Kullen.” The slender blonde he’d once envisioned spending the rest of his life with stood behind the black leather, ergonomically correct chair that faced his desk, making no move to claim it. “May I sit?” she asked him in a soft, melodic voice that seemed to drift to him on an invisible cloud.

He felt as if he’d just been struck dumb. It took another long moment for him to engage his brain properly, to clamp down on the cauldron of emotions still bubbling up.

“Yes. Sit. Please.” All things considered, he was surprised his tongue still worked.

Kullen gestured toward the soft leather chair. Belatedly, he slowly sank into his own. It amazed him how, despite her rather diminutive size, Lilli seemed to fill up the room with her presence.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her, a very small part of him still fully expecting her to disappear because his mind was playing a terrible trick on him.

But it wasn’t playing a trick. Taking a deep breath, he went on automatic pilot, saying things he’d said to other clients scores of times before. Doing his best to shake off this surreal feeling that held him captive.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” he asked, nodding toward the narrow black-lacquered side table, where various necessities of life stood at the ready. “Coffee? Tea? Bottled water?”

She shook her head with each choice. “No, thank you. I’m not thirsty.”

He nodded, rigidly taking his seat again. “All right then, maybe you’ll tell me what you are,” he suggested tersely.

Kullen caught himself before he went any further. With effort, he banked down the bitterness swelling in his chest and crowding his throat. He squared his shoulders ever so imperceptively and asked the only logical question.

“What are you doing here, Lilli?”

She cut to the heart of it, because she knew he had every right to turn her away.

If he did that, she didn’t know what she would do.

Start over again, the way you did the last time.

In the years since she’d abruptly left him, Lilli had discovered that she was stronger than she’d ever believed. It was amazing how someone small and helpless depending on her could transform her. She was a survivor now.

“I’m here to ask for your help,” she said.

The simple words seemed to pierce his chest.