Return of the Secret Heir

He smiled. “Okay, I don’t think this changes anything. Just let me know if he makes any further contact.”

“I will,” Pia said and headed back out the door. Regardless of what JT may think, there would be no further contact to report.

That night, Pia knelt on the carpet in front of her bedroom cupboard, struggling to fill her lungs. She reached to the back—the box was in the far corner where she’d put it after moving in only eighteen months ago—behind the tightly bound rolls of felt and bags of netting. Out of sight but never completely out of mind.

Gently, she brought it forward, her heart jumping erratically, then sat back against the wall, the box on her lap unopened. It was just an ordinary shoe box, tied with a narrow red ribbon. Nothing more unusual than many women probably had pushed to the back of their cupboard, but the contents were far from ordinary.

She gripped the end of the ribbon between trembling fingers, yet hesitated. What good would it do to delve back into painful memories? Just because JT Hartley came calling unannounced, opening old wounds and sending her world off balance, didn’t mean she had to exacerbate the situation. But her fingers tugged and the ribbon fell away. She closed her eyes as she removed the lid, fortifying herself, then opened them and looked down.

There, lying on the top, was a photo of a seventeen-year-old JT, grinning crookedly around the tiny scar above his lip, his eyes full of the devil, his arm wrapped around a sixteen-year-old version of her. His body, encased in a carelessly rumpled black T-shirt, wasn’t as filled out as she suspected the one under the suit today had been. But the boy in the photo was her first love, her first lover, more dear to her than anyone or anything had ever been … except the other person remembered in this box.

The back of her eyes prickled with emotion. She looked so young. So naively happy, thinking they had the world at their feet. So often since then she’d wished for that same belief in the world, in herself, in another person.

But she and JT had lived in a false world of their own creation.

A second tattered-edged photo was behind the first—the two of them with his mother, Theresa Hartley. Theresa had welcomed her into their small family with wide open arms, and because Pia’s own mother had never been particularly maternal, Pia had adored having a loving mother figure. Theresa had been the one thing Pia had salvaged from the devastation of her breakup with JT—she and Theresa still met for lunch once or twice a year, a ritual Pia treasured.

She flicked the photos aside, gently sorting past dried wildflowers and other tokens of seventeen-year-old JT’s love, until she came to what she was looking for, the memories that haunted her dreams.

An unused pair of pink booties, a well-thumbed baby name book with a corner turned down on the B page, and a grainy ultrasound picture. She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment against their power. Not much to remember a human life, but this little person had never drawn breath, so there hadn’t been much to leave behind.

Except a mother’s unending love.

Brianna.

A soft, purring body appeared out of nowhere and climbed into Pia’s lap. She hadn’t heard Winston approach, but she was grateful for his warmth in this moment. For his living vitality. She held him as tightly as he’d allow.

She remembered the look on JT’s face when she’d told him she was pregnant—he’d been over the moon and begun planning how he would support the three of them. They would have become a family.

As she clutched the booties to her chest, holding tight, the phone rang. She desperately wanted to leave it to ring out just this once, but her more important clients had her private number and she was so close to making partner that she couldn’t afford to let anything slip by. She pinched the bridge of her nose, gulped in some air, then reached up to her bag where she’d thrown it on her bed and pulled out her cell.

“Pia Baxter.”

“Pia,” a deep voice said, sending shivers of decadent remembrance through her body. She clutched tighter to the booties once meant for this man’s baby. A call from JT Hartley was the very last thing she needed while she felt vulnerable. While she could see the ultrasound of the life they’d created together.

“Are you there?” he asked when she didn’t respond.

She swallowed. “How did you get my number?”

“You’d be surprised how resourceful I can be when I set my mind to it.”

Actually, not much surprised her about this man at all. “First a visit and now a call. Must be my lucky day.”

He chuckled. “Still got your smart mouth, I see.”

She carefully put the booties back in the box and replaced the lid, shutting the door to their past. “Why are you calling?”

“You didn’t answer my question at the office.”

She turned her mind back to when—only hours ago—he’d sauntered back into her life. She could barely remember anything other than those vibrant green eyes fringed by long, dark lashes and his crooked smile, let alone an unanswered question. “You’ll need to remind me.”

“I asked for your assurance that you won’t prejudice Warner’s sons against me, even unintentionally through your own bias, during this challenge.”

She frowned. She hadn’t thought that question had needed an answer. That he’d know her better than that. “Why would I be prejudiced?”

There was a pause on the line. “Things didn’t end so well between us,” he said, the brashness not as strong in his voice.

“JT, regardless of what you might think, I don’t bear you any ill will. Besides, I’m a professional and I’ll carry out my duties as executor thoroughly, regardless of my personal feelings.”

Her ethics demanded no less. She had her obligations to the firm’s clients, and if Warner Bramson really was JT’s father, the last thing she’d want was to create more obstacles for JT. She would stay neutral, and simply carry out her duties.

“Then meet with me,” he said, voice pure temptation. “Now. Tonight.”

A shiver rippled across her skin. Meet with him again? “No.”

“Why not?”

Because you’re a danger to my equilibrium. Because you bring out the worst in me and I’ve worked far too hard to become the person I want to be. Because seeing you brings up memories of our baby and I can’t handle any more right now. But she wouldn’t risk letting him inside her head by telling him any of that.

She rubbed the heel of her hand over her eyes, trying to erase the memories he’d already evoked. “Because there’s no reason to meet.”

“We need to set some ground rules so we’re on the same page during this situation. Meet me once and I’ll leave you alone.”

She sighed. There was a logic to that. She had a few ground rules of her own, starting with no unannounced visits to her office. Make that no visits to her office at all. Her bid to make partner of the firm needed no surprises, no new connections between her and JT Hartley.

Still, was it worth the risk of seeing him alone? Would Ted Howard understand that one more contact might be in the best interests of keeping her distance? She let out a breath. “JT …”

“Just once, princess,” he said, voice as smooth as warm caramel.

Her heart clenched tight as a fist. When she’d been sixteen, she’d loved the way he’d called her princess—reverentially, tenderly. Now she was a grown woman and he was a virtual stranger, his saying it that way—and making everything inside her melt a little—was too much, too intimate. Another entry for the list of ground rules.

Maybe they did need to meet just once….

Dislodging Winston from her lap, she shoved the shoe box to the back of the cupboard, then leaned back against the wall. “Where?”

“Your office or mine. Your choice.”

Low key would be best while she decided what she’d tell Ted Howard about this. If JT came back to her office, word would spread around the firm that she’d again met with the claimant to the estate she was responsible for without the will’s beneficiaries’ permission. The same possibility was there if she went to his office because it was in a prominent building downtown—a place she’d always avoided. She silently groaned. Only one option presented itself to keep this private.

“My apartment in half an hour.” She gave him the address, knowing she’d regret it later. Hell, she regretted it now.

“I’ll be there.”

“This is a onetime deal, JT,” she said, then disconnected and thumped her head back on the wall behind her.

She’d agreed to let the devil into her home.

Two