The Inheritance

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Your head won’t do me much good without the rest of you,” she informed him crisply. She’d gotten him to say yes, why wasn’t the tension in her body leaving? “I’m staying at the Chamberlain Hotel.” The accommodations were spartan and limited, but clean, which was all she required. Living the corporate high life had gotten her better rooms, but had made antacids a permanent part of her daily diet. “Room 503.”

  He made a mental note of the name and number. “All right. I’ll call you once I get the details ironed out.”

  With that, she found herself being ushered out the front door.

  She didn’t bother with the hot shower she’d promised herself, and put off ordering from room service until she’d put in the all-important call to her employer.

  Slipping her shoes off, Greer rubbed her feet as she listened to the ringing of the phone on the other end. Mrs. Maitland had given her the number to her home phone, telling her to call any time she had news.

  It pleased Greer to have news.

  “Hello?”

  Greer recognized Megan’s voice immediately. Soft, but with an unmistakable authoritative ring.

  “Mrs. Maitland, this is Greer. Your nephew will be happy to come to the reunion. He has to see to a few things first. Once they’re taken care of, he’ll be returning with me to Austin.” She bit her lower lip, then added, “He’s excited about meeting you.”

  All right, so it was a lie, but what did it hurt to make Mrs. Maitland feel as if Rafe cared about discovering a lost branch of the family? Greer argued with her conscience. There was no doubt in her mind that once he met the woman, Rafe Maitland would be singularly impressed with his aunt.

  Megan’s warm laugh filled the telephone receiver. “Wonderful. I knew I could count on you, Greer. I hope it wasn’t too difficult for you.”

  Greer knew what Megan was referring to. She’d heard that the matriarch and her family had had dealings with Rafe’s older sister, Janelle. All that had taken place before she’d come to work for Mrs. Maitland, but according to some people who were in a position to know, Rafe’s sister had caused a great deal of damage. She’d kidnapped Megan’s grandson and had her own husband pose as Megan’s long lost firstborn, Connor, to try to swindle her out of some of her fortune. It was only natural for Megan to be concerned about what the other members of that branch of the family might be like. But it was a testimony to her large heart that she was willing to give them all a chance, anyway.

  Provided Greer could locate Luke and Laura.

  Well, she’d succeeded in locating Rafe, all right. Big time. Greer looked down at the ring on her finger. No matter how she moved it, it caught the light, scattering it into warm rainbows. Hypnotizing her.

  “No, no trouble,” she murmured.

  The knots in her stomach refused to loosen, even though she was alone in her room. Thinking of Rafe Maitland only succeeded in tightening them.

  Chapter 4

  Megan replaced the receiver in the telephone cradle on the table beside her and smiled to herself.

  It was going well.

  She’d been right to give the assignment to Greer, even though the young woman had only been with her for a short while. Greer Lawford was a rare gem, loyal, dedicated and resourceful. And, from all appearances, selfless. Megan hoped it was true. The incident with Janelle and the treachery that had almost been the undoing of them all had temporarily shaken Megan’s faith in her ability to read people.

  Megan shrugged the thought away. Other than her near-fatal error with Janelle, she’d generally had a knack for trusting the right people.

  Except for one other time.

  A distant sadness traced its spidery fingertips over her as she remembered. Megan shook her head. That had been a devastating mistake, too. But at seventeen she’d been starry-eyed, young and foolish, certainly not the woman she was today. And, she supposed, that mistake had served its purpose. It had laid the foundation of the person she was to become.

  Why was she even thinking about that long-ago, ill-fated romance at a time like this? Everything was going well in her life. All her children were close by, happy and beginning families of their own. The clinic was thriving and she was mending long broken fences by bringing Janelle’s siblings into the fold. This wasn’t a time for sad thoughts, only happy ones.

  Rising from her chair, Megan deliberately redirected her mood. She crossed to the wall of fine, old leather-bound books behind her. The house was quiet, the noise and myriad details of the day behind her, and she felt like reading something entertaining tonight. Something not too taxing.

  Perhaps a mystery, she mused, drifting over to another section of the bookcase that contained more current, popular reading material.

  She didn’t hear the light rap on the door until it was followed by a louder knock. Turning around to glance over her shoulder, she saw the tall, thin figure standing in the doorway. Harold.

  In the family’s employ for more than four decades, the man still stood like a freshly minted West Point cadet, she thought with a smile. Over the years, she’d come to think of him more as an eccentric old uncle than her butler.

  He cleared his throat politely. “I’m sorry to be intruding, Mrs. Maitland.”

  “You never intrude, Harold, you’re as much a part of this old place as I am.” She noted that the man’s sallow face appeared to be more somber than usual. “Is there something wrong?” That was the trouble with paradise, William had once told her. Every so often, serpents appeared at the gate, looking to get in. She would have thought that, at least for this year, they’d seen their quota of snakes.

  “There’s someone to see you, ma’am.”

  She couldn’t gauge from the old man’s tone whether she would welcome her visitor or not. “Who is it?”

  Harold squared his shoulders. “He wouldn’t say, ma’am.”

  Harold never forgot the face of anyone who entered the house, so this had to be someone new. Yet there was something in his tone that felt disturbing. Only one way to find out. So much for snatching a little private time, she thought, looking wistfully at the books to her left.

  It suddenly occurred to her that whoever was looking for admittance might be embarrassed about giving their name. That was often the case with the young girls who sought her out here. They came to the house because they wanted to enter the clinic but had no money and thought that if they appealed to her privately, she wouldn’t turn them away.

  You’d think by now that everyone would know that no one was ever turned away from Maitland Maternity, Megan thought. That was why the clinic existed in the first place, to give troubled girls a place to go. That it had eventually turned out to be a trendy place where celebrities came to have their babies was just a whimsical, fortuitous turn of fate. The celebrity patients enabled the clinic to treat the girls who couldn’t pay.

  “Show the mystery person in,” she told Harold.

  She could see that he didn’t appear happy about the instruction. Harold thought she was much too lax about her personal security.

  As might be expected, his next words were “Perhaps you’d like me to call Mr. Blake.” Hugh Blake was the steadfast family lawyer and lifelong friend she had come to treasure.

  “Why?” Her mouth turned up humorously. “Am I being sued?”

  Harold looked appalled at the very suggestion. “No, ma’am, but—”

  She was quick to end his discomfort. “Show whoever it is in, Harold. I don’t need a white knight standing by my side every time someone comes to call.” That was the way she’d begun to think of Hugh lately, as a white knight ready to defend her at the slightest hint of trouble. She had to admit that she did rather like the idea. “And if I do, I’ll call you,” she promised gently.

  Harold seemed to grow an inch before her. “Very well, ma’am.”

  Such a funny little man, she mused as he withdrew from the room. She turned back to her search for a book to read. Funny, but highly indispensable. She didn’t know where they would h
ave been without Harold all these years.

  “Hello, Megan.”

  The moment before she heard him, she’d felt that something within the room had suddenly changed. The air, her surroundings, something.

  When he spoke, it was to nudge forth a memory buried deep in the distant past.

  Turning around, Megan was hardly conscious of breathing. There, just several feet away from her, was someone who suddenly erased more than forty-six years from her life in a heartbeat. Erased it and turned her into a flustered, seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood. Womanhood she had explored so willingly with him.

  Clyde.

  Clyde Mitchum.

  The man who had left her pregnant and alone so many years ago. Connor’s father. Older, yes, but it was still unmistakably him. She would have recognized Clyde anywhere.

  She’d thought he was dead.

  The book Megan was holding slipped from her numbed fingers.

  He was quick to eliminate the space between them. Kneeling before her, he quickly picked up the book. She found her heart lodged in her throat as he rose before her, his eyes keen as they delved into hers. As if in slow motion, the book was returned to her hand.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said softly. “And you’re even more beautiful than I remembered you.”

  Sand seemed to fill her mouth as she searched for her tongue. “What are you doing here?”

  “That’s easy.” His tone was low. Contrite. “I’ve come to beg your forgiveness.”

  Megan felt as if her whole world had suddenly been upended.

  “So this is the famous Maitland estate,” Rafe muttered two days later, more to himself and the baby he’d just extricated from the hastily purchased car seat than to the woman who was getting out of the driver’s side of the car and coming toward him.

  It wasn’t what he’d anticipated.

  Being raised in Las Vegas, he’d come to expect most things to be bigger than life, especially when those things belonged to people who had more money than God. Granted, the three-story building he was looking at was large, but it was also in good taste, something his mother with her showgirl background had only aspired to but never mastered.

  As they had been approaching on the driveway, Rafe had noted that the main house had a smaller building to the rear of it. Probably had made it easier for the old man when he was alive to sneak away and have his trysts, Rafe mused. His own old man hadn’t had the decency even to try to maintain a facade and hide his affairs. The last straw, he’d been told, had been when his mother had caught his father with a much younger woman in their bed one afternoon when she’d come home too early. Rafe had gathered that the indiscretion hadn’t been the first, but this time his mother had sent his father packing.

  All things considered, Rafe didn’t think much of the institution of marriage. Except for Lil and Rory, he’d never come across a couple who wouldn’t have been happier apart than together.

  Greer shut the door and realized she was clutching her keys too hard. “This is it,” she affirmed.

  She had no idea why she was feeling so nervous about his meeting Mrs. Maitland. You would have thought she was the one who was meeting a long lost member of her family, not Rafe. But for her, that would have been impossible. Her own people were dead now. That much she knew. She’d hired a private investigator to find her parents with the first money she’d earned after graduating from college. It had been her gift to herself. Not that there had been anyone else to give her anything other than the diploma she’d worked so hard to earn.

  The experience of having someone go out of their way to find her and bring her into their family was one she would have dearly loved. She wondered if Rafe appreciated how lucky he was.

  Glancing at his expression now, Greer rather doubted it.

  Rafe waited for her to round the hood of the car and join him. When she did, he looked at her significantly. “Ready?”

  It seemed an odd thing for him to say. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? After all, she is your aunt.” Bethany’s sweater had slipped off one shoulder and Greer adjusted it as she talked.

  Rafe frowned slightly. Megan Maitland was a stranger whether or not he knew her name and regardless of the blood flowing through her veins. All that mattered to him about the woman was that she ultimately agree to back him up when the time came.

  He’d worked out the details in his mind last night. He’d put in a couple of weeks visiting this society maven who’d suddenly become so family oriented, then return to talk to his lawyer about the unexpected change in his circumstances. Acquiring a fiancée and having his connection to the Maitlands come to light could only work in his favor. He was willing to give Megan Maitland every Christmas between now and eternity if it meant he could keep Bethany.

  In response to Greer’s question, he looked down at her left hand.

  “Oh, right, that.” How could she have forgotten about that? The weight of the ring acted as a constant reminder. It weighed even more heavily on her conscience. “Um, I thought maybe I’d hold off telling her about that for a while.”

  About to walk up to the front door, he stopped. “I’m no expert, but isn’t a woman usually excited when she gets engaged for the first time? Wouldn’t that mean that she’d want everyone to know she was engaged and not hide the fact?”

  She looked at him in surprise. Did it actually show, or was he just making a logical assumption? “How did you know I was never engaged?”

  It was a hunch, but he figured a safe one. “Just a guess,” he told her, doing his best to sound genial. Hurting her feelings, or worse, insulting her, might make her decide not to go through with this now that she had him here. He couldn’t take that chance.

  “You’re right,” she muttered. When he looked at her, raising a brow, she added, “About both things.”

  “I’ve never been engaged, either,” he told her, his voice kind.

  The revelation made her look at him in surprise. Not that he hadn’t been engaged, but that he’d sounded kind when he said it. He didn’t sound as if he was talking down to her or having fun at her expense. Given who and what he was, a man who had been around the block more than once, she would have expected him to be more abrupt or at the very least, insensitive.

  The next moment, he took her hand. Her pulse jumped.

  She looked skittish again, he thought. Like a horse that needed a firm, gentle hand to keep it in line. It was something he was good at, though he normally didn’t exercise that knack with people. “Newly engaged people tend to hold hands.”

  She forced herself to ignore the army of tiny ants that were suddenly rushing up and down the length of her arm in response to his touch.

  “If you say so,” she murmured under her breath. Her hand in his, she walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

  His black livery made the tall, aged butler appear even thinner than he was as he offered Greer a wispy smile in greeting before scrutinizing the man at her side when he opened the door.

  Like a diver about to jump off the high board, Greer took a deep breath before venturing to say a word. “Hello, Harold, Mrs. Maitland is expecting us.”

  Harold didn’t appear to be completely convinced about the “us” part, but he stepped aside as he opened the front door farther. Once they were inside, he shut it firmly behind them.

  “If you’ll wait right here, I’ll announce you.” It was not a request but an instruction.

  Rafe watched the man disappear down the marble-tiled floors and snorted at the idea of needing to be announced. Most of the people he knew could see from one end of their house to the other in one sweeping glance. There was no need to be announced by anyone.

  He felt Greer’s fingers tense in his. You would have thought she was the one being looked over, not him.

  Still holding her hand, he looked at her. She had skin like snow. Even so, it seemed a shade lighter. “What’s the matter?”

  Nervous, she ran the tip of her tongue alo
ng her lips. It didn’t help. “As you pointed out, I’ve never been engaged before.”

  “Engaged? Greer, when?”

  They both turned to see Megan Maitland sweep into the foyer. Within an instant, the surprised look on her face gave way to a wide smile that lit up her entire face. She took both of Greer’s hands in hers as if she were greeting her daughter, not her employee.

  “Darling, how wonderful for you. But who? When? You never told me there was anyone special.”

  Guilt stabbed at Greer’s chest repeatedly, making it difficult to breathe evenly.

  Don’t stutter, don’t stutter, Greer cautioned herself, afraid she would revert to an old childhood habit it had taken her years to conquer.

  “There is,” she answered evenly. “Him.” Her lips pressed together in a tight smile, she indicated Rafe with her eyes.

  Megan’s smile was warm and encompassing as it took him in. She put her hand out. “Hello, I’m Megan Maitland. I’m sorry, you caught me off guard. I was expecting to meet my nephew, not Greer’s intended…”

  Like the house, the woman was not what he expected. There were no jewels dripping from her wrists, neck and ears, no blinding rings on her hands. There was nothing ostentatious about her. She had skin almost like a young girl’s, though he knew she had to be in her early sixties. She was dressed in a conservative skirt and blouse, not the flowing caftans his mother used to favor when she stayed at home.

  Because he found the smile disarming and engaging, he looked into Megan’s eyes.

  “I’m both,” Rafe replied, taking the hand that the woman extended toward him. To his amusement, he saw surprise flash in her eyes. The next moment, it subsided. She impressed him with her control.

  “Oh.” She looked at the younger woman. “Greer, I know I told you to use any means available to get Rafe to come here, but I meant within reason. I certainly didn’t mean for you to propose to him.”

  Flustered, Greer missed the teasing note in Megan’s voice. All she heard was the concern. “I didn’t, that is—”