by Heidi Betts
Mouth set in a mulish slant, she mumbled, “This is extortion, you know.”
He raised a brow and resisted the urge to chuckle. “I’d hardly call it that.”
“What would you call it, then?”
“Fatherhood,” he replied. “I’m simply exerting my parental rights. You remember what those are, don’t you? They’re what you denied me for the past year while you kept Danny to yourself.”
He hadn’t meant to let his bitterness over the past slip out, but he could tell by her expression that she’d heard it loud and clear.
“I’m not letting you take Danny anywhere without me,” she said stubbornly.
Her implication being that if he insisted on taking Danny home to visit his family, she would be going along, however reluctantly.
“If you can be ready by tomorrow, we’ll leave around noon.”
“I’m not sure I can be ready quite that early.”
Marc tipped his head and gave a short nod. “Fine, make it one o’clock, then.”
The last thing Vanessa wanted to do was leave Summerville and the nice, tidy life she’d built for herself to return to the lion’s den that was Keller Manor. It might have been only temporary—very temporary, if Marc’s promise held true—but whether it was five days or only one, every minute was bound to feel like an eternity.
Which was why she didn’t rush when it came to packing for herself and Danny. She took her time discussing her absence with Aunt Helen and setting up a couple of extra employees to cover for her, wanting to make sure The Sugar Shack really would run smoothly while she was away.
Then she actually solicited Marc’s help in gathering everything they would need to take Danny on even a short trip. She was pretty sure he had no idea just how involved traveling with a baby could be.
While she decided about which of her own items and outfits to pack, she put him in charge of gathering up Danny’s clothes and toys. Making sure they had enough diapers and wipes, bottles and formula. Blankets, booties, hats, infant sunscreen and more.
Vanessa kept thinking up new things to add to the list, hiding her amusement when Marc would begin to grumble and reminding him that returning to Pittsburgh was his idea. They could skip all of the fuss and muss, if he’d only agree to let her—and Danny—stay in Summerville.
Each time the topic came up, however, any mention of canceling the trip or of his going without them simply caused his jaw to go taut, and he would silently return to collecting Danny’s things or securing the safety seat in the back of his Mercedes.
By one the next day—because try as she might, she hadn’t been able to postpone any longer—they were standing on the curb, ready to leave. Danny was in his car seat, kicking his legs and gumming his very own set of brightly colored plastic keys, while Marc waited near the front passenger door. A few feet farther along the sidewalk, Vanessa and Aunt Helen stood hand in hand.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” her aunt asked in a hushed voice.
Oh, she was very sure she didn’t. But she couldn’t say that. Partly because she’d grudgingly agreed to go and partly because she didn’t want Aunt Helen to worry about her.
“I’m sure,” she lied, even though her fingers were chilled inside her aunt’s solid grip. “It will be fine. Marc just wants to introduce Danny to his family and take care of some business with the company. We’ll be back by the end of the week.”
Aunt Helen raised a brow. “I hope so. Don’t let them drag you down again, darling,” she added softly. “You know what it did to you last time, living under that roof. Don’t let it happen again.”
A lump formed in Vanessa’s throat, so large, she could barely swallow. Pulling her aunt close, she hugged her tightly and waited until she thought she could speak.
“I won’t,” she promised, blinking back tears.
When she could finally bring herself to pull away from her aunt’s embrace, she turned toward Marc and the waiting car. Though she knew he was eager to get on the road, his expression gave away nothing of his inner thoughts or feelings.
“Ready to go?” he asked in an even tone.
Since her throat was still tight with emotion, she could only nod before climbing into the front seat. Once her legs were tucked safely inside, he closed the door for her and she reached for the safety belt while he moved around to the driver’s side.
Flipping down the visor, she used the tiny rectangular mirror to make sure Danny was still okay, doing her best to ignore Marc’s sudden, overpowering presence as he slipped behind the wheel.
How could she have forgotten how small cars were? Even given the roominess of his sleek, black Mercedes with its supple, tan leather interior, it suddenly felt as though all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the air, making it hard for her to draw a breath.
After fastening his own seat belt, Marc turned the key in the ignition and the engine purred to life. Rather than pull right out, though, as she’d expected, they simply sat there for a moment. So long, in fact, that she turned her head to look at him.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, thinking that perhaps they’d forgotten something. Although how that could even be possible, she didn’t know. They’d packed just about everything but the kitchen sink, as the overstuffed trunk and half-stuffed backseat could attest.
“I know you don’t want to do this,” he said, his moss-green eyes glittering into hers. “But it’s going to be all right.”
She held his gaze for a moment, feeling that lump in her throat—which had finally started to recede—swell up again. Then she nodded before turning her attention back to the view straight in front of her.
But what she was really thinking was, Famous last words. Because she didn’t think there was any way that this little visit to Marc’s family could possibly be anything less than a complete disaster.
Twelve
Unfortunately, the drive to Pittsburgh flew by much more quickly than Vanessa would have liked. Before she knew it, they were pulling up the long, oak-lined drive to Keller Manor.
Every inch of blacktop that passed beneath the Mercedes’s tires made her heart beat faster and her stomach sink lower until she started to worry she might actually be sick.
Don’t be sick, don’t be sick, don’t be sick, she told herself, taking deep, even breaths and praying the mantra would work.
Marc pulled to a stop beneath the wide porte cochere and within moments a young man was opening her door, offering a hand to help her out, then rushing to open the rear door so she could see to Danny. Marc had obviously called ahead to let the family know he—or perhaps they—would be coming.
She’d never seen this particular young man before, but then, Eleanor Keller tended to go through household staff faster than allergy sufferers went through facial tissues. Marc’s mother also liked to have someone on hand to do her every bidding at the snap of her fingers. She employed gardeners, chefs, maids, a butler, an on-site mechanic and at least one personal assistant.
How many of them Vanessa would come in contact with during her stay was left to be seen, but one thing she did know was that she would treat them a heck of a lot better than Eleanor did. She would treat them like actual human beings rather than servants or robots programmed to be seen, but not heard, and to do exactly as they were told—nothing more and nothing less.
Coming around to her side of the Mercedes, Marc popped the trunk, then tossed his keys to the kid in the short red jacket that marked him as a Keller Manor employee. It even had a gold crest of sorts embroidered over the left breast pocket.
“We aren’t traveling light,” Marc told him, one corner of his mouth twisting upward. “But it all goes in my suite.”
Vanessa opened her mouth to correct him. Marc had brought a single overnight case with him, while all the rest of the belongings filling the car were hers or Danny’s. And they definitely did not belong in Marc’s rooms.
But he apparently knew what she was about to say, because he pressed his index finger to her m
outh, effectively cutting off her disagreement.
“They go in my rooms,” he said again, so that only she could hear. “You and Danny will be staying there with me while we’re here. No arguments.”
Marc might be high-handed and controlling, but just because he said “no arguments” didn’t mean she wasn’t going to give him one. She opened her mouth again to do just that, but he covered her lips with a quick, hard kiss.
“No arguments,” he repeated a shade more sternly. “It will be better for everyone involved. Trust me on this, okay?”
She so didn’t want to. There was something deeply ingrained in her since their divorce that made her not want to trust him or listen to him or even believe a word he said.
But the fact was, she did trust him. Sharing a suite with him would be awkward and uncomfortable, but considering where this particular suite of rooms was located—inside the dreaded Keller mansion—it might actually be safer than staying in a room of her own. In addition to being quite spacious, Marc’s suite also happened to be the one they’d lived in together while they were married, so at least she would be in a familiar setting.
“Fine,” she muttered, slightly distracted by the lingering remnants of his kiss. He tasted of mint, and she could have sworn it was of the mentholated variety, because her lips were still tingling from the contact, however brief.
“Good,” he replied, looking much too pleased with himself for her peace of mind. Then he scooped Danny out of her arms, tucking him against his own chest. “Now let’s go inside and introduce our son to the rest of his family.”
At that, Vanessa’s stomach started to pitch and roll again, but Marc reached for her hand and the warmth of his fingers clasping hers was as calming as a glass of merlot. Well, almost. She was still jittery and her breathing was shallow as they stepped through the wide, white double front doors.
Built of redbrick and tall, Grecian columns, the entire mansion looked like a throwback to Gone with the Wind’s Tara—pre-Civil War destruction, of course. Secretly, however, Vanessa had always thought Marc’s mother was trying to compete with a much larger residence, like the White House. And was winning.
Just inside the main entrance, the foyer sparkled like the lobby of a grand hotel. The parquet floor had been waxed to a high gloss. The chandelier hanging overhead glittered with polish and a thousand bits of glass shaped like teardrops reflecting the light of another thousand brightly lit bulbs.
In the center of the floor, an enormous display of freshly cut flowers rested on a sizeable marble table. And behind that, a wide, curved staircase was only one of the many ways to get to the second floor and opposite wings of the house.
It all looked exactly as it had the day Vanessa had left. Even the bouquet, which was large enough to bring Seabiscuit to his knees, was the same. Oh, they were different flowers, she was sure; Eleanor had new ones delivered every morning for the entire house. But they were the same type of flowers, the same colors, the very same arrangement.
She’d been gone a year. A year in which just about everything in her life had changed substantially. But if not even the flowers in the Keller’s foyer had changed, she had little hope that anything—or anyone—else under the mansion’s million-dollar roof had.
They didn’t have coats, so the butler who had opened the door for them moved on down the long hallway to one side of the stairwell—likely to alert his mistress to their arrival. Seconds later, he returned to help the young man who was unloading the car carry their things to Marc’s suite.
A moment after they disappeared upstairs, Eleanor emerged from her favorite parlor.
“Marcus, darling,” she greeted Marc—and only Marc.
At the sound of her ex-mother-in-law’s voice, Vanessa’s heart lurched and she murmured a quick prayer asking for the strength and patience to get through this agonizing visit with the Wicked Witch of Western Pennsylvania.
The witch in question was dressed in a beige skirt and jacket over a pristine white blouse, all of which likely cost more than The Sugar Shack’s monthly profits. Her hair was a perfect brownish-blond bob and her diamond jewelry—earrings, necklace, lapel pin and one ring—all matched and were no doubt very, very real. Eleanor Keller would never stoop to wearing cubic zirconia or costume jewelry, not even on an ordinary, uneventful weekday.
“Mother,” Marc returned, leaning in to peck each of the older woman’s cheeks. Bouncing Danny slightly in his arms, he added, “Meet your newest grandchild, Daniel Marcus.”
Eleanor’s pinched mouth twisted into what Vanessa suspected was meant to be a smile. “Lovely,” she intoned, not even bothering to reach out and touch the baby. She simply perused him from head to toe.
Vanessa stiffened, offended on her child’s behalf. But then Eleanor’s attention shifted to her and she knew she would soon be offended on her very own behalf.
“I don’t know what you were thinking,” Marc’s mother chastised, “keeping my son’s child from him all this time. You should have said something the moment you discovered you were pregnant. You had no right to keep a Keller heir to yourself.”
And it begins, Vanessa thought, with no sense of surprise whatsoever. She also wasn’t offended, though she knew she had every right. Probably because Eleanor’s reaction to her reappearance was exactly what she’d expected.
“Mother,” Marc snapped in a tone Vanessa had rarely, if ever, heard from him.
Vanessa turned her head to study him, stunned by the look of anger on his face.
“We discussed this when I called,” he continued. “The circumstances surrounding Danny’s birth are between Vanessa and myself. I won’t have you insulting her while we’re here. Is that understood?”
Vanessa watched with wide eyes while Eleanor’s lips flattened into a thin, unhappy line.
“Very well,” she replied. “Dinner will be served at six o’clock. I’ll leave you both to get settled. And please remember that we dress for meals in this house.”
After flicking a disdainful glance over Vanessa’s modest outfit of magenta slacks and sleeveless polka-dot blouse, Marc’s mother turned on her heel and clicked her way back across the parquet floor.
Releasing a pent-up breath, Vanessa muttered, “That went well.”
She meant it to be sarcastic, but Marc simply smiled.
“I told you so.” Hiking a drowsy Danny higher on his shoulder, he said, “Let’s go upstairs and unpack. I think Danny could use a bit of a nap, too.”
Reaching out, she brushed a hand over her son’s brown, baby-soft hair. “He shouldn’t be tired, he slept in the car.”
Marc flashed her a grin. “It didn’t take.”
She chuckled, because she couldn’t seem to help herself. This was the Marc she remembered from when they’d first started dating, first been married. Funny, kind, thoughtful…and so handsome, he took her breath away.
Warmth suffused her as he took her hand and started toward the wide stairwell. It spread from her fingertips to every other part of her body, making her tingle, and bringing up all sorts of wonderful memories.
How could being this close to Marc again feel so good, so right, when being in this house again felt so very wrong?
Marc watched Vanessa move around his suite, getting ready for dinner. Danny was sleeping in the sitting room, in a crib that had been set up at his request before their arrival.
But it was his ex-wife’s presence that had his gut clenching and his mind spinning. She looked right here. It felt right to have her here again.
He wasn’t sure he meant here as in his family’s home, though. It wasn’t about having her back at the Keller Manor, or even in his private suite under his family’s roof.
It was about having her with him, in his bedroom, no matter where that room happened to be located.
He’d missed that. Missed seeing her things spread out on top of the bureau and cluttering the bathroom vanity. Having her clothes hanging with his in the closet, the scent of her perfume lightly permeating h
is work shirts and the sheets on the bed.
He’d missed simply watching her, like this, as she moved around the room getting dressed, fixing her hair, doing her makeup or choosing which pieces of jewelry to wear.
Granted, she didn’t have as many of those things with her this time as she had when they’d been man and wife, but that didn’t keep her from falling into the same old habits or her movements from being achingly familiar. She was even wearing her favorite perfume—probably because she’d left a bottle on the dresser when she’d moved out and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of it.
Now, he was glad. He’d given it to her for their anniversary, after all. So very long ago, it seemed. But the fact that she was wearing it again, that she was here with him, and apparently still trusted him… It made him wonder if maybe they could work out their differences and give each other another chance.
“How do I look?” she asked suddenly, breaking into his thoughts.
“Beautiful,” he replied, without having to think about it, without even having to look. Though he did—long and hard. Looking at her was always a pleasure.
She was wearing a simple yellow sundress and sandals, with her hair pulled back above her ears so that her natural copper curls were even more prominent. His blood stirred in his veins, arousal pouring through him, and he licked his lips, wishing he could lick her—like a sweet, lemon-flavored popsicle.
Her eyes turned smoky and she offered him a small, sultry smile before brushing her hands down the sides of her skirt.
“Are you sure? You know what your mother is like and I didn’t really pack anything dressy. I should have remembered her rule about formal dinners.”
She paused to take a breath, then blew it out and wiped her hands on her skirt again in that same nervous gesture. “Of course, I don’t have very many formal clothes anymore, so I couldn’t have packed them even if I’d wanted to. I thought maybe some of my old clothes would still be here, but…”
