A Billionaire and a Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

He was. Until now. If he put a name to it, if he defined what was going on between them, he’d have to go. And he didn’t want to. “Some things defy labeling.”

  Everything on the stove was going according to plan. She let the pots fend for themselves for the moment and crossed to him. “Like me?”

  He smiled, caressing her face. Was it him, or did she just keep getting more beautiful every time he saw her? “Like you.”

  It took effort not to sigh with contentment. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It was meant as one.” He was more in danger of boiling over than the pot of spaghetti. Taking a breath, he backed off. “So, what else would you like me to do besides open up the bottle of wine?”

  Everything was almost ready. She had a little time. “You could try priming the cook a little more.”

  He set his glass of wine on the counter beside hers. “And just how do I do that?”

  “You’re a very intelligent man.” Her eyes smiled up into his. “You figure it out.”

  Sin-Jin took her into his arms. “How’s this?”

  The smile spread from her eyes to her lips. “Keep going, you’re on the right trail.”

  Was he? he wondered as he kissed her. Or was he going deeper and deeper into the woods, about to get as lost as his father and mother always had.

  For now, Sin-Jin shut his mind down and let his emotions take over. There was time enough later to sort it all out.

  “You know, I was also planning on taking you dancing.” Rinsing off another dish, he handed it to her. Sherry placed it into the dishwasher.

  That was the last of them. After shutting the dishwasher door, she switched it on. It hummed to life. Sherry stepped away from the appliance, raising her voice to be heard about the noise. “You sound as if that’s not possible anymore.”

  It was still early enough to go out, but there was another obstacle. “Don’t you have to get a sitter for the baby?”

  “Why?” Her look was innocent, teasing.

  She was up to something, but he played along. “Well, we’re not about to go out and leave Johnny alone.”

  “We’re not about to go out at all,” she informed him mysteriously.

  “But didn’t you just say—”

  He was really so straitlaced, she loved teasing him. “I said we can still go dancing. It’s only as far away as the next source of music. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who dances to some inner tune he hears.”

  He shook his head. “The only thing I hear is you.”

  “We can change that.”

  Taking hold of his hand, Sherry drew Sin-Jin into the living room. She’d had this in mind all along. Everything had already been prepared before he arrived.

  She pressed a button on her home entertainment unit and the air was suddenly filled with soft, bluesy music. Turning around, she presented herself to him. “You can ask me to dance now.”

  He laughed, inclining his head. “May I have this dance?”

  She affected a Southern drawl as she fanned herself and fluttered her lashes. “Well, I seem to have this space open on my dance card, sir, so I suppose it’ll be all right just this once, even if you did wait till the last minute to ask.”

  Taking her hand in his, he pressed his other hand to the small of her back and began to dance to the slow song. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “There’s been some talk,” she allowed, still in character, “but I don’t pay them no mind.”

  Looking up at him, their eyes met for a moment, and things were said silently that could not be said aloud. Smiling, she laid her head against his shoulder and let her mind drift away with the music.

  “This is nice,” he said, his breath tingling the back of her neck.

  She looked up at him, her heart swelling. “Yes, I know.”

  Sin-Jin stopped dancing and kissed her.

  He stayed the night, as she knew he would. Just as he had the other nights that he had come to take her out. And when the lovemaking was over and she lay beside him in the dark, she listened to his even breathing and thought about things.

  In a distant corner of her mind, she knew she was playing with fire, allowing herself to feel things for a man who might be out of her life tomorrow, or if not tomorrow, then the day after. But it was as if she had no say in the matter. Things were happening inside her that were beyond her control.

  Everything was finite and an end was coming. Knowing that it was didn’t prepare her any more than lecturing to herself did.

  So for the time being, she went on pretending that she was just another woman who was falling in love and that he was just another man, knowing that both were false.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “For a generous man, you certainly are hard to find, John Fletcher,” Sherry murmured.

  She was sitting in her home office, frowning at her computer screen. Several feet away from her, Johnny was quietly sleeping in the bassinet that Owen had given her. Johnny had turned out to be the best baby ever, sleeping long periods of time and waking with a sunny disposition, but right now her mind wasn’t on her son. It was on the mystery stacked up before her.

  She had on her desk documentation of the charitable contributions that John Fletcher had made over the past nine years. Even without resorting to a calculator, she could see that they came to quite an overwhelming sum. Whoever this John Fletcher was, he was obviously generous to a fault. Someone like that would need to keep his identity a secret to prevent the onslaught of everyone with a hard-luck story.

  Confounded by what she wasn’t finding on the computer, Sherry leafed through the contributions, looking for a clue, something to go on that would take her farther than nowhere.

  Was it some kind of a coincidence that the contributions began one year from the day that Sin-Jin had emerged to take over and rename Adair Industries? Or that the checks made to the charities all passed through the same bank that handled both the Adair Industries accounts and Sin-Jin’s private ones?

  This would lead someone to believe that John Fletcher was somehow connected to Adair Industries, especially since Sin-Jin had been using the man’s cabin that fateful weekend she’d given birth to Johnny.

  But if there was a connection, where was the man? It was as if he was in hiding. There were no payroll checks made out to him and no history of his ever having worked for Adair Industries in any capacity. Except for his deep pockets and his cabin, he was, for all intents and purposes, an invisible man.

  Because of his connection to Sin-Jin and because of the timing of that first check, she arbitrarily placed the phantom man in an age range approximately five years younger to five years older than Sin-Jin and had begun her search there. With the aid of Rusty’s friend, she tapped into restricted databases, wading through social security files of men with that name born in that particular decade.

  Weeding through the various John Fletchers one by one was a tedious process that led her to premature obituaries, improbable locations, county jails and dead ends that defied breaching.

  The men she actually did locate just didn’t fit the profile. After talking to them or their spouses for a few minutes, Sherry instinctively knew she’d come across yet another wrong John Fletcher.

  She sat back in her chair, sipping coffee that had long since grown cold and trying to piece together what she had so far—which was next to nothing.

  So who the hell was he? she thought in utter frustration.

  Johnny began to stir. “Motherhood first,” she announced to no one and went to see to her son.

  He needed changing, feeding and a little bonding. So did she, she thought. Sin-Jin was out of town for the day and wouldn’t be back until morning. She tried not to miss him too much. And tried not to feel too guilty over what she was doing.

  Since it was late, she put Johnny down for what she hoped was a good part of the night and then came downstairs to shut down her computer. On a whim, promising herself that this was the last one she was going to try
, she keyed in John Fletcher and searched through the Nevada phone books. There was none. It didn’t surprise her. But when she went to the birth and death records, she discovered that there had been a John Fletcher born in the Lake Tahoe region.

  As Sherry remembered a panoramic framed photograph of the Lake Tahoe region on the mantel of Fletcher’s cabin, excitement began to hum through her.

  Scanning the death records, she found nothing. Working forward from his birth, she couldn’t find any record of him after the age of eighteen. Nothing at all. It was as if the earth had just swallowed him up. She knew how many homicides went unsolved each year, how many missing persons were destined to remain that way forever. She might never be able to find this particular John Fletcher. She told herself to let it go.

  But if this John Fletcher had no history after eighteen, where were the checks coming from? He had to be the right John Fletcher.

  She was getting punchy, she thought, but she had nothing else, and something in her gut told her she might be on to something. At the very least, it gave her something to explore.

  Adrenaline was pumping through her veins. Ignoring the fact that it was getting late, she reached for the telephone and dialed her parents.

  Her mother answered on the third ring, just before the answering machine kicked in.

  “Mom, it’s Sherry—”

  “Well, of course it is, dear. No one else calls me Mom.”

  “Right.” She tried not to sound impatient. “Would you mind staying with Johnny for the day tomorrow?”

  Sheila laughed. “That’s like asking a chocoholic if they’d mind visiting Hershey, PA. Of course I wouldn’t mind. Why?” Her tone ripened with interest. “Is Sin-Jin taking you somewhere?”

  Sherry smiled enigmatically to herself as she looked at the information on the computer monitor. “In a manner of speaking.”

  After boarding an early-morning plane for the Lake Tahoe region and renting a car, Sherry had driven to the town she’d discovered yesterday—Hathaway, Nevada. Because nothing else occurred to her, she began with the high schools. There were three in the area and she’d struck out with two of them.

  Paydirt came with the third.

  The woman sitting behind the desk that guarded the principal’s office had informed her that Dr. Grace Rafferty was out of town, not due back until the following week. Desperate, Sherry had played a long shot, giving her credentials and telling the woman she was attempting to find a John Fletcher. The woman’s face had lit up immediately. “That delightful young man just sent the school a handsome bequest. And when Dr. Rafferty offered to draw up a petition to have the school named after him, he declined. Imagine that.”

  Money. The key that tied everything together. He had to be the right John Fletcher. She needed to nurture this along. The woman, she decided, looked old enough to have been here when Fletcher graduated. “By any chance, do you remember John Fletcher?”

  The woman’s features softened considerably. “Why, yes, I remember John Fletcher. Outstanding student. Outstanding. But very quiet. Kept to himself a great deal.” She shook her head. “Not a thing like his parents.”

  Sherry almost felt giddy. She was actually finally getting somewhere. “His parents?” It was hard to curb her eagerness. “Are they still alive?”

  The woman, Mrs. Sellers, considered the question. “I imagine so. They’re long gone from the area, of course. Given their lifestyles, they were hardly ever here at all, even when they did live here.”

  Sherry could feel her lead slipping through her fingers. “But you made it sound as if John was a student here for a longer period of time.”

  “He was. Times were that he was the only one in the house, aside from the servants, of course. If you ask me,” the woman confided, lowering her voice, “they were the ones who raised him, not his parents. They were in and out of his life like tourists on a holiday. I strongly suspect the only one who had a lasting effect on John Fletcher was Mrs. Farley.”

  Sherry felt as if she’d just opened a door that led to The Twilight Zone. It seemed like just too much of a coincidence. “Who?”

  “Mrs. Farley. Edna Farley. Finest English teacher we ever had.” The woman leaned forward confidentially. “Not like this new crop we’ve been getting.” The woman looked genuinely saddened as she added, “Mrs. Farley retired several years ago.”

  Sherry felt her heartbeat accelerating. “Do you have a picture of Mrs. Farley?”

  Mrs. Sellers looked at her as if she was slightly simple. “In our yearbooks, of course.”

  The yearbook. Adrenaline kicked up another notch, hummed a John Philip Sousa march. “What year did John Fletcher graduate?”

  “Give me a minute.” Moving her chair back, she began typing on her keyboard. One screen after another opened on the monitor as she hit the appropriate keys. “There.” Turning the monitor so that Sherry could see for herself, she indicated the line in question.

  That would make him Sin-Jin’s age. Sherry tried not to sound as excited as she felt. “May I see that year’s yearbook, please?”

  “Yes, of course.” The woman rose from her desk. She was almost tiny in stature. Mrs. Sellers pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “It might take me some time to find it.”

  The search through the bookshelves in the back of the office was shorter than Sherry expected. Mrs. Sellers triumphantly placed the volume in question before Sherry on the small desk.

  “Senior photos are generally in the middle.” The telephone rang. Torn, the woman had no choice but to return to her desk, leaving Sherry alone with the yearbook.

  Sherry looked down at her hands. They were shaking as she flipped to the middle of the yearbook. Taking a deep breath, she found the Fs.

  Scanning one page, she found what she was looking for at the top of the other.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  John Fletcher could have been Sin-Jin’s younger brother.

  Or Sin-Jin at eighteen.

  Hoping against hope, she flipped to the front of the section, to the As, but there was no St. John Adair graduating that year.

  She closed the book.

  “Find him?” Mrs. Sellers asked.

  Sherry rose and crossed to the woman. “Yes, I did. I was wondering, could you look through your database and see if there was ever a student here by the name of St. John Adair? A-d-a-i-r. He would have graduated at approximately the same time.”

  Mrs. Sellers typed the name in, then shook her head. “I’m afraid we’ve never had a student by that name.”

  Yes you did, but his name was Fletcher then. “I didn’t think so,” Sherry murmured for form’s sake. She looked down at the leather-bound book in her hands. “You said there were photographs of the teaching staff in the yearbooks.”

  “Right here.” Taking the book from her, Mrs. Sellers flipped it open to the front and found the right section. She pointed to a black-and-white photograph. “There she is. Edna Farley.”

  It was Sin-Jin’s Mrs. Farley.

  She didn’t understand.

  It was obvious that Sin-Jin had changed his name, that he was this mysterious John Fletcher, but to what end? As far as she could discern after spending the day here, there were no skeletons in his closet, no unsolved crimes or murders in the town that could somehow be traced to him or to his parents. Why all the secrecy?

  She’d remained in the town the entire afternoon. Mrs. Sellers gave her directions to the Fletcher house, or rather, the Fletcher estate.

  Located on the outskirts of town, the building could have been taken for a small castle in centuries gone by. It actually had been one once. Sin-Jin’s mother had fallen in love with it on her honeymoon and his father had had it transported to the United States where it was rebuilt, stone by stone. It turned out to be the most solid thing about their lives.

  Victoria and William Fletcher were the epitome of a mismatched couple. They had little in common other than a love of the finer things in life and partying. Eventually, they di
vorced and moved on to marry others. Many others. Both products of wealthy families, John Fletcher’s parents had no vocations, no goals in life other than enjoyment. She couldn’t help wondering where Sin-Jin had fitted in all this.

  No wonder he’d taken so readily to her mother and father, she thought. Who wouldn’t after having these two as parents?

  The pair were obviously self-involved flakes, she thought as she took the commuter flight back to John Wayne Airport. Her heart ached for him, for the boy Sin-Jin had once been, living alone in that cold, gray castle.

  Was he ashamed of his parents, was that why he kept his past a secret?

  As the plane taxied down on the runway some forty-five minutes later, Sherry discovered that she had far more questions now than when she had first taken off for Tahoe this morning.

  Weary, confused and still feeling marginally guilty about what she was doing, Sherry wasn’t prepared to see Sin-Jin’s black Mercedes parked at her curb as she drove up to her house.

  Her pulse began to race. Would he be able to tell what she’d found out? She angled her rearview mirror as she came to a stop. Was it there on her face?

  She turned off the ignition. The professional thing would be to confront him, but she didn’t feel very professional right now. Just confused.

  Love did that to a person, she realized as she got out of the car and walked up to her front door.

  “There she is.” Sitting on the sofa next to Sin-Jin, Sheila twisted around to see her daughter walking in. She smiled a greeting.

  Sin-Jin rose to his feet. Sherry saw a hint of concern in his eyes. Did he suspect where she’d been? He crossed to her, kissing her lightly.

  “Hi, I tried to call you earlier, and your mother said you’d gone out.”

  She cleared her throat, offering up a smile. Damn it, you’d think an investigative reporter would be better at keeping cool under duress. “I had.”

  He heard the evasiveness in her voice. His eyebrows narrowed slightly as he studied her face. “Where did you go?”

  Desperation bred the lie. She wasn’t ready to tell him that she knew who he really was. Because she wasn’t ready to see him walk away.