Wanted: One Mommy

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  JACK’S WORDS REVERBERATED in Caroline’s head like a silent alarm.

  He’d been sitting here with her when he had an engagement of some sort with another woman downtown? Jack’s voice faded as Caroline walked into the living room, found her flip-flops and slid them on. Just because they’d made love recklessly earlier today did not mean they were exclusive, or might be in the future. And now that their lovemaking had gotten him back in the game…so to speak…who knew how many women were lined up, waiting to be bedded? She’d been sitting here, acting like they were on their way to becoming a couple, just because they’d hit the sheets. How presumptuous was that? Betrayal—especially from an intimate—could come when you least expected it.

  Jack’s voice sounded behind her. “She’s coming here. And I’d like you to stay.”

  His audacity knew no bounds. Caroline picked up her carryall-style briefcase and slung it over her shoulder. “Funny, I never figured you for the kinky type.”

  Jack merely frowned at Caroline’s attempt at a joke. “Laura’s a private investigator. I hired her to check out Dutch.”

  Relief warred with the disappointment inside her. She had thought—hoped, anyway—that Jack had seen how fruitless and wrong it was and given up on trying to delay his mother’s nuptials to Dutch.

  Caroline set her briefcase back down and propped her hands on her hips. She angled her chin at him, asked incredulously, “And that info is supposed to make me respect you more?”

  The frown lines on either side of Jack’s mouth deepened. “It’s supposed to let you know that I trust you enough to allow you to hear what Laura has to say.”

  She liked the idea Jack trusted her. She did not like that she was now being put in a position where she betrayed Patrice’s and Dutch’s trust, both of whom had shown her nothing but kindness. Not to mention what it would do to her professional reputation if word ever got out she’d had anything at all to do with Jack’s activities behind the scenes. “I really don’t want to be in the middle of a family contretemps.”

  He appeared just as disappointed in her, as she was in him. “Aren’t you the least bit concerned that you might be helping my mother arrange her downfall via an ill-advised dream wedding to a smooth-talking scoundrel?”

  The doorbell rang. “That was fast.”

  Jack shrugged. “Laura was just around the corner when she called.” He gave her a steady, assessing look. “So. Are you going to go? Or stay?”

  Chapter Eight

  It was a test, Jack knew, and one he hadn’t expected to give. But now that the moment was here, he had to discover the truth about who Caroline was. Because if Caroline could ignore the danger signs facing another woman in order to pursue her own goals, if Caroline could do everything possible to lead that other woman to the brink of financial and emotional disaster without a second thought, then she wasn’t the woman for him.

  Caroline studied Jack as the doorbell rang again.

  “I’ll stay,” she said finally. “But only because I want to see and hear you proved wrong about all this.”

  Jack wished that would be the case. Every instinct he had told him otherwise. Dutch was concealing something. And that secret was motivating the rush wedding. Up until now, Jack had thought, or hoped, his mother had been completely in the dark. The fact his mom had relayed a message through Caroline today regarding her absence indicated she wanted to avoid direct questions from Jack. And that was not like her.

  Of course, until now his mother had not had anything to hide, either, Jack realized. With a frown, Jack introduced Caroline to the private investigator while the two women sized each other up. Although they were both about the same age and successful professionals, neither looked happy about the other’s presence.

  “You sure you want to do this in front of Caroline?” Laura Tillman asked.

  Jack locked eyes with Caroline. “She’s aware of my suspicions regarding the situation,” he said.

  “Okay, then.” Laura sat down in a chair and opened up the file in her lap. “It was my understanding that since Dutch has been in Fort Worth that he has been residing here with you and your daughter and your mother. Is that correct?”

  Jack nodded.

  Laura continued consulting her notes. “He hasn’t stayed anywhere else?”

  Jack tensed, not sure where this was leading. “No. Not a single night.”

  “Were you or your mother aware he had leased a furnished one-bedroom unit in Trinity Towers, the luxury high-rise apartment building just off Sundance Square, for the entire two months you indicated that he has been in Fort Worth?”

  Jack’s gut sank. He had expected something like this, when he’d accidentally overheard Dutch leaving a message for another woman over the phone. “Is he having an affair?”

  “That, I don’t know. There’s no doorman. And most of the tenants are young professionals who work elsewhere during the day, and party late into the night.”

  This, Jack thought, did not sound good. “What about my mother?” he asked tersely.

  Laura relayed reluctantly, “Her name isn’t on the lease.”

  “Has she been seen there?”

  “Not by anyone I questioned, but again, most of the neighbors spend very little time in their residences.”

  “There could be a logical explanation for all this,” Caroline interjected.

  Laura and Jack turned to look at her. Caroline lifted an indolent hand.

  “Maybe Dutch just wanted his own space. He had no idea how it would be to live here with you and your mother in the time before the wedding. It could have been a complete bust.”

  Instinct told Jack it wasn’t that simple. “There has to be another reason why Dutch rented an apartment my mother appears not to know anything about.”

  “You don’t know for sure she doesn’t know,” Caroline argued. “I’m sure you don’t want to think about it, Jack, but maybe they wanted a love nest. Somewhere to have a little privacy.” The kind she and Jack had had this afternoon.

  Jack didn’t begrudge his mother a love life.

  “Or is her sex life something she would have discussed with you?”

  Jack returned Caroline’s wry glance. “Obviously not.”

  Caroline shrugged. “So maybe it was a mutual decision on their part not to tell you.”

  “I still think if my mother knew about the apartment, she would have mentioned it to me. So Dutch must be keeping this from her,” Jack said firmly.

  “So ask Dutch about it,” Caroline countered impatiently.

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” Laura cut in.

  Jack and Caroline turned to look at the private detective.

  “If there is an innocent explanation, and your mother and her fiancé find out you had Dutch investigated, hurt feelings and a possible rift in the family could result. If there is something shady going on, you’re not going to want to give Dutch a chance to cover his tracks. You’re going to want to have concrete proof before you sit down with your mother to tell her the truth.”

  Jack clasped his hands on the back of his neck. “The wedding is in less than three weeks.”

  “And that gives us plenty of time to discover what we need to know about whatever is going on in that apartment,” Laura pointed out.

  Jack trusted Laura to discover it. “What about Dutch’s background? Anything come up there?”

  “So far as I’ve been able to tell, squeaky clean. All the facts he told you about himself check out. Like your mom, he was married for nearly thirty years, lost his wife to illness, and then was single for the next decade, not dating at all until your mother came along last winter.”

  Jack understood the reticence that came after a long marriage. His mother hadn’t dated until Dutch came along, either. “And this trip to Houston? What have you been able to find out about that?”

  Jack ignored Caroline’s indignant glare.

  Laura consulted her notes. “Dutch and your mother had a quiet dinner this evening with a prominent nep
hrologist and his wife. Dutch apparently sold one of his beach houses to them a couple of years ago, and the couple is considering buying a second for investment purposes.”

  “So the evening—indeed the whole trip to Houston—could have been built around a simple sales pitch,” Jack mused, hoping that was indeed the case.

  Laura appeared to have concluded nothing yet, either way. “According to the investigator shadowing them, the conversation was, by turn, lively and serious.”

  Which again, Jack thought, could have simply been Dutch turning on the charm, and then moving to discuss numbers.

  Laura continued her report. “The evening ended early, with Dutch and your mother promising to see the other couple again early tomorrow. The men have plans to play golf on Sunday afternoon if weather and schedules permit. And then Dutch and your mother returned to their hotel, where they appeared to retire for the night.”

  That all sounded very pedestrian. So why the secrecy? Jack wondered. If they were traveling to Houston to try and sell one of Dutch’s properties and then needed to stay on for the entire weekend to seal the deal, why hadn’t they just said so? They were all businesspeople. Jack would have understood.

  They hadn’t done so, however, which meant something else—something they would prefer Jack not know—was going on there. “Did Dutch and my mother know they were being followed?” Jack felt a stab of guilt just saying that.

  Laura shook her head. “Which leads me to my next question. Do you want us to continue surveillance on them for the rest of the weekend?”

  Jack had never been one to waste time or money. And this, at least, appeared to be a path down a blind alley. “No. Call off the Houston operatives,” Jack ordered reluctantly. “But keep looking into this Fort Worth apartment, see if you can find out why Dutch leased it, and if my mother knows about it.”

  “Sure thing.” Laura handed over the information she had already gathered.

  Jack perused it, then gave it back to her for safekeeping. He showed the detective out. He returned to find Caroline ready to depart, too.

  The remote look in Caroline’s eyes was not a good sign. Jack pushed the ominous feeling aside. “You don’t have to leave,” he told her quietly.

  “I’m afraid I do,” Caroline returned.

  Jack waited, knowing there was more.

  Caroline shook her head. Her lips took on a sad curve. “You’re in the wrong here, to continue pursuing this when you know doing so will rob your mother of any happiness she is feeling right now.” She held up her hands to keep Jack from taking her into his arms. “And I can’t—won’t—be part of it.”

  “CAROLINE MIGHT BE RIGHT,” Nate Hutchinson said the next morning, when Jack told him what had transpired the night before. “There could be a simple explanation for the secret apartment.”

  While the regular security officers stepped out to allow them privacy, Jack walked Nate through the finished command center for the security team at One Trinity River Place. He demonstrated the video feed from the exterior and interior surveillance cameras on the wall of television screens.

  “Believe me, I thought about that possible scenario all night.” The uncertainty had been with Jack when he went to sleep last night, and when he woke up this morning.

  Jack showed Nate the electronic alert system for all the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. “That possibility would be easier to accept if I knew more about the sale of all Dutch’s real estate on South Padre Island.”

  Nate studied the similarly equipped system for the high-rise building’s fire alarm and sprinkler systems. “You want me to call in favors?”

  Nate’s financial services company packaged commercial real estate for investment. “Public record shows nothing amiss in Dutch’s dealings. Nor is there any other obvious reason for the liquidation of all his real estate assets, except for the reason he says, that he would like to completely retire from the property management business.”

  On one of the television monitors, Nate watched the live feed of someone using the badge reader to get into the building. “But you want me to dig a little deeper than that.”

  Jack nodded, the demonstration over. Everything was operational now. All that remained of what his company had contracted to Nate’s company was the hookup of the phone and computer systems in Nate’s financial services offices. And that would be completed in the next two weeks. “There may be something going on behind the scenes—an eminent domain fight or offshore drilling implementation, for instance—that isn’t yet showing up in public records,” Jack continued. “Because he is a prominent person in the area, Dutch would be among the first to know if something like that were coming down the pike, and he might want to get out before it happened and his properties all plummeted in value.”

  “And you would be okay with that?”

  Jack hesitated. “From a business standpoint, it makes sense for Dutch to do everything he can to protect his bottom line. Morally, it’s a lot more difficult to quantify. Yes, everyone has the right to protect his or her financial interests, but is it ethical to sell someone a property at a high price when you have obtained inside information and know it will be worth half that in a year or so?”

  “It wouldn’t seem right to stick anyone with that kind of loss,” Nate theorized. “And if Dutch could do it to someone else, he could conceivably do it to your mother.”

  “That’s my fear,” Jack said.

  “I’ll make the calls and find out,” Nate promised.

  Jack gestured for the security officers to step back into the command center. “I appreciate it.”

  Jack was halfway out of the building when his cell phone rang. His pulse kicked up when he saw the caller ID screen. His spirits plummeted at the thought of having to make more decisions about something he had little interest in. “What’s up?” he asked Caroline, wondering if she was still as irked with him today as she had been last night.

  “I need a decision on the mariachi band, the traditional dancers, the DJ or band, and the dinner menu. Today, if possible.”

  Deciding not to analyze the crisp, businesslike tone of her voice, or what that might mean for the two of them, Jack looked at his watch. The last thing he wanted to do was spend his Saturday poring over meaningless details when larger problems loomed. Like how to get his mother out of this ill-advised union without hurting her feelings or her pride. “Can’t you choose?” Jack asked impatiently.

  Caroline responded professionally. “You may not be the one getting married, but technically, since you are footing the bill, you are the responsible party, Jack. Your name and signature have to be on all the contracts. For all our sakes, you need to be sure you are getting what you and your mother and Dutch want.”

  What he wanted, Jack thought, was to have met Caroline Mayer some other time, some other way, so he could pursue her the way she needed and wanted and deserved to be pursued, without all this wedding business and family drama standing between them.

  “Then let’s get it done,” Jack said, relishing the chance to see her again, for whatever reason. “I’m downtown. Where are you?”

  “My office.”

  “I’ll be right over.” Jack hung up before she could tell him no.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Jack walked into Weddings Unlimited. He was dressed in what Caroline imagined was his usual Saturday-morning attire of faded jeans, a navy pullover and running shoes. He had showered but not shaved that morning and the hint of dark beard clinging to his handsome jaw gave him a faintly piratical look. Which was not what she should be thinking, Caroline schooled herself as she ushered him into the conference room where she had set up the videos.

  “No wedding to coordinate today?” Jack asked.

  Caroline forced an officious smile. “Actually, I do have one this evening. My assistant is over at the hotel now, making sure everything is being set up properly for the reception.”

  Jack looked momentarily disappointed. Surely, Caroline thought, he hadn’t been about to ask her for
a date!

  He glanced at his watch. “How much time do we have?”

  “I have to be at the church at four.” Which meant the clock was ticking. “So we need to get started….”

  Happily, Jack was as ready to get down to business as she was. Over the next few hours, they managed to put down deposits on everything except the band or DJ. “I really am not sure which my mom and Dutch would prefer,” Jack said finally.

  “You’d rather wait until they get back from Houston?”

  Jack nodded. Understanding, Caroline stood. “Then I’ll check back with you on that early next week.”

  Wary of spending any more time alone with Jack, Caroline moved to quickly usher him out. For a moment she thought he would try and come up with a reason to linger. Then, after one last long look, he thanked her and left.

  For the rest of the weekend and well into the next week, Caroline was remarkably adept at keeping a safe distance from the handsome man bent on delaying or halting his mother’s wedding.

  By Friday, however, her many excuses had worn thin, and when Patrice called demanding to see Caroline at the home she shared with her son and granddaughter, she had no choice but to honor the request.

  Dutch was on his way out when Caroline arrived.

  He acknowledged Caroline and hugged Patrice, who wrapped her arms around her fiancé and rested her head on his chest.

  And there it was, Caroline thought, the true affection she had been waiting to see. The deep, everlasting kind that pretty much guaranteed a happy marriage.

  Slowly, the older couple drew apart. “I’ll be back in five or six hours,” Dutch assured.

  Patrice gave him another lingering glance. “I’ll be waiting,” she said with a blissful smile.

  Bounder lay alone in the front hall, a bereft expression on her pretty golden face. The E-collar was gone and so was the bandage. Caroline knelt to pet the golden retriever. “Hey, girl,” she said gently. “Your paw is looking lots better.”