One Heir...Or Two?

“Kayla, why are you here?”

She drew in a deep breath. “Like I said, I need your help.”

“And a phone call wouldn’t do?”

It stung to hear him sound so dismissive, but it served to strengthen her resolve. “No, it wouldn’t. Last time we saw each other—” Her mouth dried and she swallowed to moisten it. She began again, more resolutely this time. “After Sienna’s funeral, you said to call you if I needed anything.”

“And I meant it. But, Kayla, even you have to realize that you can’t just waltz into my place of business and expect to see me straightaway.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s really important—otherwise I wouldn’t have...”

Darn, she should just come right out with it. She looked up at him and saw a stranger. Gone was the boy next door—the one who’d received more beatings from his father than he’d ever earned, the one who’d allowed her sister to befriend him and bring him into their home, the one who as a teenager had gotten her out of more scrapes than she could remember. Gone was the soldier, gone was the passionate lover who had rocked her entire world. In his place stood a cold, controlled and distant individual. A man so unfamiliar to her now that she began to wonder if she’d ever really known him at all.

“Is it to do with her?” He gestured toward the baby.

“In a way, yes. Do you want to hold her?”

Without waiting for an answer, Kayla crossed the short distance between them and held Sienna out to her father. It should have been a beautiful moment but Van looked alternately horrified and annoyed as he instinctively put his hands out to receive his daughter.

“There, see? She’s not that bad, is she?”

For a second Sienna seemed as though she’d cry and looked back at Kayla, her lip starting to wobble. Kayla forced herself to smile at her baby girl and make an encouraging sound. It seemed to work because Sienna turned her attention back to the man holding her—one dimpled little hand gripping the lapel of his suit jacket, the other reaching up for his mouth. Kayla stifled a giggle at the look on Van’s face. You’d have thought she just handed him a live grenade.

There was a knock at the door to his office and an exquisitely groomed woman walked in without waiting for Van’s response.

“Sorry to bother you, Donovan, but I was already in the parking garage downstairs when Anita called, so I thought—”

She stopped dead in her tracks as she looked at first Kayla, then Van holding a baby.

“I see you’re busy. I’m so sorry. I’ll come back later.”

“No, Dani, wait. Please.”

Van thrust the baby back to Kayla, eliciting a howl of disapproval from Sienna. “Don’t say anything,” he growled quietly at Kayla before moving to the other woman’s side.

Kayla rolled her eyes at him, then faced the new arrival and, juggling Sienna on one hip, put out her free hand. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Kayla. My sister and I grew up with Van.”

The woman moved to accept Kayla’s proffered hand. “Dani Matthews,” she said smoothly but not without directing a speaking look Van’s way.

The look Van shot Kayla could have cut through steel.

“If you’ll excuse us a moment,” Van said to Dani, waiting for her nod of acceptance.

Polished and unflappable, she inclined her head in the most fluid of actions, the movement making the perfectly blunt-edged cut of her hair swoosh forward a moment before reassuming its almost regimental perfection with not a strand out of place. Kayla found herself fascinated by it. How was that even possible with the humidity of a regular San Francisco fog? Her own hair was a perpetual tousle of long blond waves no matter what she did with it.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Take your time,” she replied with a charming curve of her lips, but Kayla could see her eyes remained full of questions.

Without wasting another second, Van took Kayla by her upper arm and steered her out of his office and toward Reception. She made a sound of protest but he ignored it until he’d shown her into a small conference room and the door behind them was closed.

“No more beating around the bush, Kayla. I want answers from you and they had better be good.”

“Van, I wasn’t kidding around. I really need your help.”

Sienna whimpered a little and Kayla smoothed her hand over the baby’s head nervously. Suddenly this didn’t seem like a good idea after all. But she’d thought and thought and she hadn’t been able to come up with any other way she could raise the money she needed.

“What’s wrong with her?” Van demanded, the roughness of his voice making Sienna’s whimper grow louder.

“She’s hungry, and in a strange place. This is messing with her routine. I’m sorry. The timing of this is all out of whack, isn’t it? I should have thought this out a bit better.”

Even now her breasts tingled with that full heavy warning that accompanied nursing.

“You think? But when has that ever stopped you?” he muttered.

She ignored his question. “Five years ago you offered to be there when I needed someone. Did you mean what you said?”

She had to hope that his offer still held. Without it, she had nothing and no one and her plans for the future, her promise to her sister, would all be shattered.

Van flashed a glance at his wristwatch. A Breitling with more whizzes and bangs on it than her food processor, she noted, unimpressed. But his action was a reminder for her, as well. Time was fleeting.

He flung her another look of irritation. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean. How about you explain it to me. You’ve got ten minutes, max.”

“Thank you.”

She moved forward and put her hand on his chest. Even through his suit she could feel the heat that poured from his body, feel the muscled perfection of his chest beneath the expertly tailored fabric. Against her will, her body began to react—her heart rate kicking up a beat, her senses that much more focused. He stared down at her hand and then back at her. She felt a rush of color stain her cheeks and let her hand drop.

* * *

Kayla’s innate ability to push his buttons hadn’t lessened with the time and distance between them. He reined in his impatience and directed her to sit down. The baby fussed again, tugging at Kayla’s top. Mesmerized, he watched as Kayla lifted her blouse and did something with her bra, exposing one breast and guiding her nipple to the baby’s mouth. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a woman breast-feeding and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but he couldn’t help the fascination that poured through him at the sight.

His child—the child he’d never believed would be born—being nurtured, here, right in front of him. Her birth shouldn’t have happened, not with her biological mother dead these five years. But that was one puzzle he didn’t need her to piece together for him. He remembered agreeing to be a donor for Sienna so that she could have embryos stored before starting cancer treatment. The logistics of how this little girl could be his baby and Sienna’s were perfectly clear. What he didn’t know was why—why had Kayla carried his child?

“Explain,” he said curtly, trying to fight the sensation of awe that threatened to overwhelm him.

He hadn’t wanted to be a father—he’d immediately signed his paternity rights away. And that had been before he’d found out the truth about his own birthright. Before he’d learned that the alcoholism that had plagued his birth parents’ lives and seen him removed from their custody as a toddler could, in part at least, be hereditary. Before he’d realized he had been heading down the same path and made a decision that he would never pass that potential legacy on, ever.

“I need money. A loan.”

“That explains why you’re here now but doesn’t explain her.” He pointed at the baby. “Sienna and I had an agreement. If she couldn’t go through with embryo transfer, they’d be donated to research or—”

Destroyed. Even he couldn’t bring himself to say the word out loud. At the time it hadn’t meant all that much to him. But now, faced with living proof? It was another thing entirely.

Kayla filled the silence. “Before she died, she changed her mind. With her lawyer’s help, she amended the paperwork and donated the embryos to me so that the children she’d always wanted would still have a chance. I promised her that her dream would still come true.”

“And now you want money from me for maintenance, is that it? For a child I don’t want?”

The words hung baldly in the air between them. He’d been deliberately provocative with his phrasing and could see Kayla fighting back her instinctive response to snap back—they’d frequently rubbed each other the wrong way in the past and today was a perfect example of that. When she’d composed herself, she spoke.