HOT-BLOODED HERO

by Donna Sterling

  *

  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

  *

  *

  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  “Don’t bother trying to contest the will, Cole. The court will uphold it. The stipulation your father added is legal and binding.”

  Cole Westcott responded to his attorney’s pronouncement with a soft, fluent curse into the cell phone. Sinking deeper into the lounge chair on the hot, sunny deck of his yacht, he squinted through his sunglasses into the Carolina blue sky above the Intracoastal Waterway. His father had obviously lost his mind before he’d died. All those years of cutting-edge business schemes, hundred-proof cocktails and gorgeous women competing for his attention had finally warped the old man’s brain.

  He cast a wry glance at the double martini on the table beside him and the three topless beauties sunbathing on the lower deck with his business associate. He supposed there were worse ways of warping one’s brain.

  “Damn it, Henry,” he uttered into the receiver, “are you saying that I’ll actually have to marry a stranger?”

  The attorney who had served his family for forty-some years replied in his cultured southern tones, “If you want to inherit Westcott Hall, the townhouse, the businesses, the real estate holdings, the boats, the stocks, the bonds and the cash, then … yes. You’ll have to marry in accordance with your father’s will.”

  Cole cursed again. He’d spent his life building up the Westcott businesses and increasing the family holdings. As his widowed father’s only offspring, he’d never questioned the fact that he’d inherit the businesses as well as the capital. He certainly hadn’t doubted that he’d inherit Westcott Hall, the waterfront home in Beaufort or the house in Charleston, all of which had been in his family for over a century. He’d spent a lot of his personal time and money renovating them. “There has to be a way around it.”

  “There isn’t. If you don’t satisfy the codicil to your father’s will within six months of his death, his ex-wives will inherit everything. And you’ve already wasted a month of that time trying to find a way around it.”

  Cole hissed out a frustrated breath. He knew without a doubt that his father hadn’t wanted his ex-wives to inherit. He’d used that threat to force Cole’s hand. It was a damn effective threat. Even if he hadn’t stood to lose so much personally, Cole hated to think of the Westcott legacy torn apart by the old man’s ex-wives.

  None of the glamorous blondes his father had married had remained with him longer than a few months. They’d each collected a cool million or so in divorce settlements and never looked back. Until now, of course. The prospect of inheriting millions upon millions had united the three ex-wives. They’d banded together and hired a high-powered attorney. Cole knew he’d better act quickly or he’d lose everything.

  “Read the stipulation to me again, Henry.”

  Obligingly the lawyer read, “‘My son, Cole Westcott, shall fully satisfy the stipulations contained in Addendum A within six months of my death.’” After a pause, he said, “Of course, Addendum A contains the curse.”

  Cole closed his eyes in a pained wince. That had been the root of all this trouble—the so-called curse his father had found in an old family bible a couple of weeks before his death. How could he have possibly believed such nonsense?

  “Until I learned about this curse, son,” his usually well-balanced father had rasped from his hospital bed, “I thought I was just one of those people who was unlucky in love. But now I realize that I’ve been victimized. So were my parents, my brothers, my grandparents and their parents.”

  Cole had tried to make him see how ridiculous that idea was, but his father vehemently believed it.

  “I was married to your mother for less than a year when she died in a plane crash … in her lover’s private jet. She was running off with him,” his father had ranted. “My mother left my father, too. My grandmother killed my grandfather by hitting him over the head with a whiskey bottle. All my brothers were either abandoned by their spouses, widowed or completely shunned by the opposite sex.” Sullenly, he added, “I should have known a McCrary was behind it all. It’s the curse, I’m telling you.”

  Cole had begun to understand. Rather than facing the fact that Westcott men simply didn’t have whatever it took to sustain a long-term relationship, the old man found it easier to blame the McCrarys. Realizing that common sense wouldn’t make him see reason, Cole resorted to a tactic that couldn’t fail to sway him—or so he’d thought. “You can’t really want me to marry a McCrary.”

  Though Cole himself had never paid much attention to the animosity between the two families, his father had always been an avowed McCrary hater, as his own father and grandfather had been. Nothing had pleased them more than besting their archrivals. And they’d been good at it.

  “Hell no, I don’t want you to marry a McCrary,” his father had growled, “but I believe it’s necessary—at least for a while. The curse doesn’t say how long the marriage has to last. I’d say at least four or five months. That’s a respectable time for a marriage nowadays, wouldn’t you say?”

  Cole had almost laughed at that. Three of his father’s marriages had lasted about that long.

  “When I die, son, you become ‘Westcott of Westcott Hall.’ You’ll be the one named in the curse. Your happiness will depend on your satisfying its terms. Your cousins, aunts, uncles, and future generations of Westcotts will depend on it, too.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Read it for yourself.” His father had shoved the old yellowed bible into Cole’s hands and pointed to the scribbling on the inside cover. Although the curse was written in some unrecognizable language, an interpretation and explanation had been neatly printed beside it.

  The trouble, it seemed, had begun in 1825 when a McCrary daughter became pregnant by a Westcott son. The heads of both families—rivals in the shipping business—had refused to allow a marriage between them. The woman was pressured into marrying someone else, and in her grief and rage, she lost the baby. With the help of her Guklah maid’s magic, she cursed both families. She wrote the hex in two bibles and sent one to the heads of both households, the McCrarys and the Westcotts.

  “A sad story, Dad, but that’s all it is,” Cole had insisted. “A story.”

  His father had narrowed his eyes. “What about you? You’re thirty-one years old and none of your relationships have lasted long enough to write home about.”

  Cole had shrugged, ignoring the discomfort caused by the observation. “Too many women in the world to settle for just one.” It was the truth. Yet he couldn’t deny to himself that a peculiar restlessness had replaced the thrill. Maybe the game had become too easy; the bounty too plentiful.

  The thought brought to mind the giggling models awaiting him on the sundeck below. Reaching for his martini, he muttered into the phone, “Read the damn curse to me again, Henry.”

  “You, Westcott of Westcott Hall, must marry the daughter of your McCrary neighbor. Until the Westcotts and McCrarys are so united, you and your family shall reap only loneliness and heartbreak.”

  Ah. Loneliness. He couldn’t deny that one. As the motherless child of a busy father, Cole couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t been dogged by loneliness. Even as an adult, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling for long. Perhaps it had become so deeply ingrained that nothing would ever rid him of it.

  That prospect didn’t bother him all that much. In fact, he preferred the familiar old loneliness to the smothering effect of a long-term relationship. His longest-running affairs had somehow increased his sense of isolation until he’d clamored for room to breathe.

  He damn sure wouldn’t attribute his wandering eye and taste for variety to the curse
, though. “I can’t believe my father took this nonsense seriously,” he grumbled into the phone.

  “Whether the curse is real or not,” replied Henry, “your father’s will is very real. You’ll have to satisfy its terms or lose everything.”

  Cole glumly admitted he was right. With a nod at his guests who called to him from the lower deck of the yacht, he asked Henry, “Do I have to be physically present at the wedding, or can we do it by proxy?”

  “I’d suggest you attend—and make every effort to give the appearance of an actual marriage.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You and your, er, wife should live together.”

  “Live together?” He’d been hoping for a quick, impersonal paperwork transaction. “For how long?”

  “That’s a gray area, legally speaking. But I’d advise you to marry as soon as possible and remain married, cohabiting in your primary legal residence as husband and wife, for the remainder of the six-month period.”

  “So approximately five months?”

  “I’d strongly advise it. Your father’s ex-wives will have their attorney looking for ways to invalidate the marriage. They have a lot to gain if you fail to satisfy the conditions of the will.”

  Just his home and everything he’d always worked for. “Guess I’d better find a McCrary bride,” he mused, resigning himself to the idea of a temporary marriage. A very temporary marriage. “I’ll have my assistant research the McCrary families and make up a list of single females.”

  “Actually, I took the liberty of having my assistant do that very thing.”

  Cole raised his brows in surprise. He then remembered that his father had left a tidy sum to the old family retainer contingent upon Cole’s satisfying the stipulations of the will. Of course Henry would be anxious for him to marry a McCrary. The bequest would allow him to retire in high style. “What did you come up with, Henry?”

  “Since the curse specifies ‘a daughter of your McCrary neighbor’—and we want to satisfy the will to the letter—I ran a check on the descendants of the original McCrary clan in the Charleston area and came up with four single women. One is eighty-three. Another is a nun. The other two are daughters of Ian McCrary.”

  A humorless laugh escaped Cole. “Ian McCrary! He hates the Westcotts as much as my father and grandfather hated him. They basically ran him out of business, didn’t they?”

  “They came close.”

  “How close?”

  “From what I’ve gathered, he’s near bankruptcy. And having tax problems.”

  “Hmm. Could be useful. He has two single daughters, you said?”

  “Yes. Kristen, who’s twenty two, and Tess, twenty eight.”

  “Tess?” Cole quirked a brow. “Tess McCrary,” he repeated musingly. “I met her once.” He’d been sixteen, which would have made her around thirteen. He and his cousins had strayed onto McCrary land when their fishing boat capsized in the river. She’d appeared from behind a tree—a skinny little redhead with a BB gun aimed at them. You’re Westcotts, aren’t you? she’d asked. They’d laughed at her fierce expression. One of his cousins uttered a wisecrack about coming to gobble up little McCrary girls. She ordered them off her property. Cole had made a move to take the gun.

  She’d put a BB in his shoulder.

  Absently he rubbed the tiny scar barely visible on his bare, sun-warmed skin. That damn BB had stung like hell. And Tess McCrary had taken off running. “I’d probably have better luck with the nun or the old lady,” he murmured, somewhat amused at the irony of the situation.

  “You’d have to make the deal extremely rewarding to entice either of Ian McCrary’s daughters, I’m sure,” agreed Henry.

  “I’ll make the offer to Kristen. I’d like to keep this deal as simple as possible.”

  After he disconnected with Henry, Cole called his assistant in Charleston and instructed him to research the financial circumstances of Ian McCrary and his family.

  Later that afternoon, his assistant called back with a report that Ian McCrary had fallen behind on certain business loans, which Cole’s wily father had managed to acquire through the bank he owned. Glad for his father’s insightful planning, Cole called an officer of that bank and instructed him to foreclose on the loans. “Demand full and immediate repayment.”

  He ordered the foreclosure with a clear conscience. After all, he meant no personal harm to the McCrarys. This was simply a matter of business.

  He had to put his prospective bride in the right frame of mind for his marriage proposal.

  *

  Tess MacCrary awoke with a start, raked a long, limp tangle of auburn hair out of her eyes and realized she’d fallen asleep at her father’s desk, in the cramped, musty office of the bridal shop, sprawled out over the account books she’d been working on.

  The account books.

  She grimaced as the morning sun brought her to full consciousness. She’d worked all through the night trying to get the books straightened out in hopes of putting her parents’ shop up for sale. But the books couldn’t be put in order. Too much data was missing. Which meant she’d have a hell of a time selling the business. Her parents, therefore, would not be able to repay the delinquent loans.

  They’d be forced to close up shop by the end of the month. And they had no other source of income.

  Anxiety clawed at Tess. How could her parents possibly retire? Having been self-employed all their lives, they were depending on their savings to see them through. But they’d already spent most of their savings on medical bills incurred because of her father’s heart attack.

  Tess moaned and buried her face in her hands. She dreaded breaking the news to her father. He’d have a fit over closing the store … and maybe another heart attack.

  If only she, her mother or her sister had realized sooner how much his mental acuity had been slipping, they could have prevented financial disaster. They’d known that he forgot things now and then—appointments, names, or where he put his car keys. But no one had realized that he hadn’t been keeping the books up-to-date, managing his funds correctly, filing his taxes or paying certain bills. Tess still wasn’t sure how much of that neglect had been because of memory loss.

  Pure stubborn orneriness—and maybe a little paranoia—had accounted for some of it. He said he hadn’t paid his taxes because the government was crooked. He hadn’t paid the health insurance premium because he felt they were overcharging him. And he refused to make certain loan payments because he swore that the Westcotts had bought the debt, and he’d rather die than give them a penny. According to her father, they owed him much more than the balance of the loans.

  The bank had notified them yesterday of foreclosure on three of their business loans, demanding full repayment.

  Tess wished she had the money to bail her parents out of trouble, but she’d drained her own savings on investigators in an attempt to find Phillip. She’d also taken a leave of absence from her fairly well-paying job at the university financial aid office to run the bridal shop while her mother nursed her father back to health.

  Things were indeed looking grim.

  Rising stiffly from behind the desk and stretching her cramped muscles, she glanced at the wall clock. Eight-thirty. She had an hour to drive home to the apartment she shared with her sister, shower, change, drop in at her parents’ house to check on them, and return to open the shop.

  She was surprised Kristen hadn’t called. Glancing at the desktop phone, she realized that she’d knocked the receiver off the hook some time during the night. Promptly she returned it to the cradle. Within moments, the phone rang.

  “Belles and Brides Boutique,” she greeted sleepily.

  “Tess,” came her sister’s cry, “I figured you’d worked all night. I’ve been trying to call you. You’ve got to get home right away.”

  Her sleepiness fled at the panic in Kristen’s soft, almost child-like voice. Either her father had gotten into more trouble, or something had happened between Kristen and her fia
ncé. Or … could news have come regarding Phillip? If so, it couldn’t be good news, judging from the tone of her sister’s voice. “What’s wrong, Kristen?”

  “It’s Cole Westcott. He’s coming over to talk to me. He’ll be here any minute. Something about a business proposal. I don’t want to meet him alone. I didn’t call Mama because she’d tell Daddy, and he’d be here with his rifle.”

  “What?” Tess shook her head, certain that her all-nighter must have clogged her brain. She couldn’t have heard correctly. “Kristen, you’re not making sense. It sounded like you said Cole Westcott was coming over.”

  “I did. He called me this morning, and— Oh my gosh, there’s the doorbell. I think it’s him. Come home, Tess, please!”

  The line went dead, and Tess frowned. Cole Westcott … going to her sister with a business proposal? She’d never heard of anything so ludicrous. Kristen was too busy trying to earn her degree in elementary education to get involved with business. She had been helping out on Saturdays at the bridal shop, but only in the past three weeks, since Tess had taken over the running of it.

  With a growing sense of foreboding, Tess reached for her purse and car keys. What the hell did the Westcotts have up their sleeves now? The fact that it somehow involved her sister put her on immediate alert.

  From a lifetime of hearing about their devious ploys and antics, she knew those Westcott men couldn’t be trusted—not in business, and certainly not with pretty, naïve young women like Kristen. Cole Westcott had come from a long line of scoundrels notorious for breaking hearts, creating scandals and destroying the lives of enemies. The first Westcott to land in Charleston had been a thieving, womanizing pirate. It seemed that none of his progeny had strayed too far from that path.

  Cole Westcott, alone with her sister. She had to get there.

  She locked up the shop, hurried to her car and sped through town, across the grand sweep of Cooper River Bridge to Mount Pleasant, her thoughts racing as she drove. Had Cole Westcott learned of their financial trouble and hit upon some scheme to exploit the situation? If so, how did it involve Kristen?