The Inheritance

by Marie Ferrarella

  “More to the point,” she said to Blossom, “who sent you?”

  Believing that discretion was the better part of valor, Blossom was deliberately vague.

  “I’m a reporter,” she began with the air of someone who was ready to roll right over any protest.

  Greer continued to take her cue from the expression on Rafe’s face. Though he’d only told her summarily that he had no idea where any of his family was, he hadn’t made any particular comment about his older brother or the latter’s whereabouts. That a reporter was trying to pump them for information in an utterly unsubtle manner only meant that there was some reason for Luke Maitland’s being singled out.

  Greer felt that people deserved their privacy, most of all those who were in the limelight. And, like it or not, because of his family ties, ties she was partially responsible for unearthing, Rafe was now in the limelight. She owed him this.

  Her voice was slightly frosty as she told Blossom, “I believe the official statement is ‘No comment.’”

  The expression on the other woman’s face was shrewd. “What’s the unofficial one?”

  “Same thing,” Greer fired off.

  “Is there any truth to the rumor that he’s in the witness protection program because he was a witness to the assassination of Senator—?” Blossom didn’t get a chance to finish.

  “Sorry, Ms. Woodward, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to stick by ‘no comment.’” Hooking her hand through the woman’s arm, Greer abruptly drew Blossom over to the open doorway.

  “But you do know where he is?” Blossom pressed Rafe even as she was being hustled out of the office.

  “What do you think?” was all Greer enigmatically answered before she shut the door in the woman’s face. Greer heard the latter loudly protest her ousting, citing freedom of the press and the First Amendment. “I’d seriously think about leaving now, Ms. Woodward, unless you’d like to be strong-armed by our security guards and escorted off the premises.”

  There was no reply. As she listened, Greer heard the sound of retreating footsteps.

  Done.

  Leaning against the door for a moment, Greer glanced at Rafe and saw that he was studying her and looked vaguely amused. “What?”

  He’d been right. You really couldn’t judge a book by its cover, he thought. “You can be a real ball of fire when you want to be, can’t you?”

  The light in his eyes warmed her. “It’s my job to screen these kinds of annoyances and stop them before they get in the faces of the people who…”

  Her voice trailed off as Greer realized that she wasn’t entirely making any sense or even sure what she was saying. But that was his fault. He was looking at her like that again. As if she was pretty. As if she was desirable. She wished he’d stop.

  She wished he’d keep on doing that forever.

  She figured only the first wish was doable.

  Struggling for a degree of composure, she pointed out, “You’re smiling. Why?”

  He was smiling because he got a kick out of the way she seemed to shed her uncertain demeanor and suddenly became a defender, but he decided that saying any more on the subject would only embarrass her further.

  “Nothing, it’s just that I finally met someone with a name sillier than yours.” He shook his head. “Greer, Blossom. Doesn’t anyone out here have a normal name?”

  She’d never really cared for her name, but it was the only thing that was actually hers. Even her last name didn’t belong to her. It belonged to some actor who had been famous in the forties and fifties. She’d selected it late one night while watching an old movie on television when she was seventeen.

  “Normal,” Greer echoed. “You mean like Hannah or Sara?”

  Rafe inclined his head, playing along. “For starters. Fine, upstanding names.”

  She wasn’t about to argue the point. They had been the first names that had popped into her head. They’d belonged to two girls who had been with her at the orphanage. Two girls who had gotten adopted while she hadn’t. She’d hated Sara and Hannah.

  Returning to her desk, she began to straighten the already tidy objects on its surface just to have something to do with her hands.

  “Well, I don’t know about ‘Blossom,’ but I’m lucky my mother didn’t just call me ‘hey you,’ or tag a number to me.”

  Compassion stirred within him. He hadn’t meant to drag up any painful memories for her, he’d only been trying to tease her.

  “Sorry, I guess I stuck my foot in it, didn’t I?” He tried to shift the mood. “And after you were so feisty and all.”

  It was a silly word. Why did it make her feel like preening? She couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips. “Feisty, me?”

  He liked watching the way a smile seemed to light up her whole face.

  “Feisty, you,” Rafe emphasized. “Weren’t you listening? I was.” He’d been sure that the other woman was about to steamroll right over her. That Greer had not only stood up to her but pushed her out of the office had been a complete surprise. “What I heard was pretty damn good. But you were too easy on her.”

  She knew he meant that she should have called Security immediately and had the woman forcibly removed. Greer shrugged. “Maybe. But she has to make a living, too, I guess.”

  That was no excuse in his book. “She could try doing something respectable instead of invading people’s lives.” Rafe rocked back on his heels for a minute, studying her face. In his experience, there was nothing more curious than a woman who’d been given just a small scrap of information to tantalize her, yet Greer had said nothing. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

  Greer tucked the folders she’d been pretending to peruse between the two cherubic bookends that resided on her desk. “Ask you what?”

  The reporter had been hot to know where his brother was. He had no idea what she was talking about when she’d mentioned the witness protection program. Probably just a figment of the woman’s imagination. Still, Greer didn’t know for certain if he knew anything or not. Any other woman would have been prodding him by now.

  “If I know where Luke is.”

  Greer began to shrug again, then caught herself. “I already asked you that and you said you didn’t know where any of your family was currently. There’s no reason for me to think that you were withholding information.”

  She’d said “withholding information” instead of lying. The woman knew how to tiptoe around words when she wanted to, he thought, amused. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about why someone like this Flower—”

  “Blossom,” she corrected him, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  A sudden urge to run his thumb along her smile and seal it to her lips came out of nowhere. He chose not to explore it for the time being. “Whatever—is really looking for Luke?”

  Ordinarily, she didn’t give people like Blossom any thought. To her, reporters who worked for tabloids and tabloid television were nothing less than marauders, looking for a morsel of a story and ready to ruin anyone’s life to get it. Yes, the woman had to make a living as she’d pointed out to Rafe, but Blossom Woodward, or her kind, didn’t have to do it on her time.

  “That ‘witness protection program’ angle is probably some trumped-up lead-in on her third-rate show used to get people to tune in. More than likely, it’ll be forgotten once the program gets under way.”

  Did she know the woman by reputation? Did watching that kind of program come under the heading of a guilty pleasure for Greer? His curiosity aroused, Rafe leaned a hip on the corner of her desk. “How do you know it’s third-rate?”

  “Because first-rate news programs don’t deal in shady sensationalism and I’ve got a feeling that little Miss Blossom does.”

  And, since the woman had both a face and a figure that left a lasting impression on the male mind, Greer judged that Blossom probably managed to “break” a great many stories. Whether they were true or not was another matter entirely.

  Greer w
ondered if Blossom had managed to intrigue Rafe despite what she represented. She was certainly gorgeous enough for that. Suddenly, Greer didn’t feel like discussing the woman any longer. With a knack honed across the boardroom table, she changed the topic.

  She put out her hand. “Now, let me see that summons again so I can jot down the date and arrange my calendar accordingly.”

  He pulled the envelope out of his back pocket and gave it to her. Greer made the necessary notations on her oversize desk calendar and then handed the summons back to him.

  That done, she asked, “Anything else?” and hoped she didn’t sound too eager. What she’d hoped for when she saw him in the doorway was that he’d come to take her to lunch again. Though it had only happened a few times, she’d already gotten used to taking her meals with him.

  Just as she had already gotten accustomed to having him in her life. She knew the danger in that, but it was already too late to attempt to shore up her beaches. He’d landed on them and planted his flag. If she’d had any doubts about it, the last kiss had shown her just how vulnerable she was.

  And how taken with him.

  “Yeah.” He tucked the summons into his back pocket again. “Where do I go to find R.J.?”

  She tried to hide her disappointment. “You were serious about volunteering to do security work?”

  He’d been giving the matter some thought ever since Megan had mentioned the accidents and decided that it wouldn’t hurt to help out. One job was as good as another and it might as well be something where he could do some good. Besides, if Megan was going to throw her support behind him in the custody battle, he felt as if he owed her something in return. This was small-enough a payment.

  “I was serious about going stir-crazy,” he answered. “There’re just so many games of patty-cake a man can be expected to play.”

  She grinned again. He had to be pulling her leg or exaggerating. Though she had seen him with Bethany, try as she might Greer couldn’t begin to imagine him clapping his hands and then hitting those same large, callused hands against a set of tiny ones.

  “Patty-cake?”

  He realized he’d made a tactical error in his admission and there was no way off this ice floe. He shrugged, looking off.

  “Gotta teach her something and I don’t know any good stories or games.”

  Uncomfortable, he opened the door to see if Blossom was lurking somewhere in the hallway.

  But the woman was gone.

  Leaning on the doorknob, Rafe looked back at Greer. “So, where can I find him?”

  Reluctant to have him leave, she stepped out into the hall. Very succinctly, she gave him directions to his older brother’s first-floor office. “I can take you there if you like.”

  But he shook his head. “No, you’ve got work to do.”

  “It’ll keep.”

  Her own answer surprised her. But her next train of thought surprised her even more. It wasn’t often that she gave in to impulse and Greer had never thought of herself as impetuous, but something prompted her to make a suggestion that, for all intents and purposes, was evidence that her brain had disengaged itself.

  “Rafe, I’m sure everything’s going to be fine at the hearing.” She paused to run the tip of her tongue along lips that had suddenly become very dry. She saw him silently watching her, obviously wondering where she was going with this. It was now or never. “But if you think it might help…” Her courage flagged.

  Waiting, Rafe prompted, “Yes?” when she didn’t follow up with anything.

  Damn it, she shouldn’t have started this, Greer upbraided herself. Swallowing, she had no choice but to finish.

  “If you think it might help,” she began again, “to keep Bethany, I mean, I’m willing to go through a wedding ceremony.”

  The phrasing was nothing short of awkward. He’d learned enough about Greer to know that wasn’t like her. The offer caught him completely off guard.

  “You mean marry me?”

  Unable to force the words out of her mouth, struggling hard not to grow crimson because of what she’d just said, Greer could only nod her head like some puppeteer’s marionette.

  She looked scared to death that he’d take her up on that, Rafe thought. Touched by the offer, he took her hand in his. Funny how he hadn’t realized before now how delicate it felt.

  He tried to ease her fears as best he could. “Not that I’m not grateful for the offer, Greer, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

  Meaning that not even his fierce desire to hang on to Bethany would force him to make such a huge sacrifice as marrying her, she thought. Why should he? Look at him. Look at her. What had she been thinking?

  Even so, the realization that he wouldn’t want her under any circumstances stung. A great deal. She was vaguely aware of drawing her hand away. And more than vaguely aware that she suddenly wanted to lay her head down on her desk and sob her heart out.

  Because she’d always managed to get up no matter how often fate had knocked her down and robbed her of her hopes, she managed to rally. “Just thought I’d cover all the bases,” she murmured.

  He accepted the remark at face value, wondering if that was relief he saw in her eyes or something else.

  “I think they’re covered,” he assured. “Thanks for the directions.” With that, he left.

  Numbly, she ran her thumb over her engagement ring, staring at Rafe’s back as he disappeared down the hall.

  Damn it, why couldn’t she just leave well enough alone? Why did she insist, now of all times, on suddenly trying to take something further, to push her way into a place where there was a definite No Admittance sign posted along with the words “This means you, Greer” inscribed beneath it?

  Because she’d gotten carried away.

  Because like the egotistical actor who’d been created by his publicist, she’d gotten to believe her own press. In this case, the press had to do with the way both she and Rafe had been pretending to be engaged. To be in love. One of them wasn’t pretending.

  She held back a sob that was suddenly clawing at her throat. He’d kissed her while no one was watching, in an office whose door was closed. Wasn’t that supposed to mean something?

  Didn’t it?

  It didn’t.

  She was her worst enemy, finding the answer to every hopeful protest she made. All his kissing her just then meant was that Rafe had climbed into his character and felt it best to remain there so that he would be believable when others were around. If someone had walked in on the kiss just then, it would have been that much better for his case.

  The pretense, kissing her, saying nice things to her, all that meant less than nothing to him.

  But not to her.

  For her it had aroused every dormant emotion she possessed, every dormant emotion she had tried so hard to convince herself no longer existed.

  Except that they did.

  Well, that was her problem, not his, Greer told herself. One that she was determined to ignore until it went away of its own accord.

  The more pressing problem, one that she wasn’t about to ignore, was finding a way to get all of her work done or delegated so that she could be at his side when the all-important hearing took place.

  She looked down at the engagement ring on her finger. Sunlight, which shone through the window at her back, grazed it, shooting out streams of rainbows. Fascinated, she moved her hand up and down for a moment, watching the beams of light play off the walls.

  It’s only on loan, it’s not yours. Don’t get used to it.

  But she could pretend. Pretend the ring and the man were hers. Just for now. Just to be convincing.

  But did she need to be? If Mrs. Maitland was going to send her lawyer to the hearing and a statement to the effect that she fully supported Rafe in his efforts to gain custody, if Rafe had the serious backing of the head of the Maitland family, why on earth did he still need her?

  The answer was that he didn’t.

  She knew it was
just a matter of time before the same thought occurred to him, too. And then Cinderella would have to return to the hearth to tend to her daydreams.

  Greer sighed as the thought sank in.

  There’d be no castles in the sky for her, no prince waiting with open arms once the story was over. For one thing, she had no fairy godmother waiting in the wings with a magic wand to transform her from the plain woman she was into something a man like Rafe Maitland would find desirable.

  She had no business dabbling in daydreams, or any other kind of dreams, for that matter. She had no place in the “what might be.” What she had to do was stick to what she knew and was good at.

  Another sigh escaped her as she returned to reviewing her schedule for the coming month. Maybe he wouldn’t realize that he really didn’t need her until the hearing was over. She crossed her fingers as she turned the page.

  Chapter 11

  There was no answer to her knock. Wondering if something was wrong, Greer tried the doorknob and found that it gave under her hand. She hesitated for a moment, then opened the door and stepped slowly into the guesthouse.

  She didn’t ordinarily invade anyone else’s space, but then, she didn’t ordinarily feel this way, either. Ever since Rafe had come into her life, or she had come into his, depending on your view of things, she thought, her life had been slightly off kilter.

  Something kept her from calling out Rafe’s name. Instead, she quietly made her way into the living room.

  It was very early. Their flight to Nevada took off in approximately two hours, but she liked getting to the airport in plenty of time. In the interest of speed, she had offered to come and pick Rafe and Bethany up at the estate, after which the chauffeur would drive all three of them to the airport. They were to meet Hugh Blake, Mrs. Maitland’s lawyer, at the appropriate terminal and fly back for the hearing together.

  Rafe was in the living room, dressed in the suit she’d selected for him that first day when he’d met his family. He looked more handsome than anyone had a right to be, Greer thought. He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, Bethany on his lap, seemingly oblivious to the presence of anyone else in the room.