by Fiona Brand
She needed to tell Damon the truth today.
Zara showered and dressed in an ice-blue dress that made the most of her tan. Humming beneath her breath, she sat at the exquisite antique dressing table to do her hair. As she coiled the heavy, glossy strands into a knot on top of her head and began sliding in pins, she couldn’t help noticing that she looked different. She had heard women speak of glowing when they were in love. She was glowing. Her eyes were alight, her skin radiant, her mouth softly curved.
She applied minimal makeup, fitted earrings and did a final check of her appearance. She had a floppy-brimmed hat to wear, but at the last minute decided she was over the hat idea. She dragged a pair of large sunglasses out of her handbag instead. Good! With the sunglasses hiding her eyes and her cheekbones, she barely recognized herself.
She checked her watch. Damon wouldn’t be long. If she was going to visit Petra’s grave, see her mother’s lawyer, then go to the bank to see what, exactly, Petra had stashed in the safe-deposit box—if anything—she needed to hurry.
She bought an armful of pretty flowers from a street vendor, then took a taxi to the local cemetery, which was situated on the windblown side of a hill overlooking the sea. Finding Petra’s grave was easy, because she was buried near the ancient stone chapel, right beside Zara’s father. Chest tight, her throat locked, Zara gently laid the flowers down. She hadn’t quite known how she was going to feel, but there was a wild beauty about the hillside and the stone cross of the chapel etched against blue sky, a curious sense of peace and closure.
A few minutes later, the taxi delivered her to the address on the last letter she had received from her mother’s legal firm. The white limestone building was situated on one of the steep, narrow streets that were a feature of Medinos.
She stepped out of the glaring heat of the sun into the inky well of shade offered by the foyer. She stopped by the front desk, and the receptionist, who was on a call, put the phone down. Before she could show Zara to Takis’s office, a plump, balding man with a rumpled suit stepped out of a door.
The receptionist spoke in rapid Medinian. Zara heard her own name and realized she was looking at her mother’s lawyer.
Takis stared at her for a long moment. “You do not look like your mother.”
Tell me about it. “Nevertheless, I am Petra Hunt’s daughter.”
He held his door open with discernible reluctance. Jaw set, Zara walked into the small, rather messy office.
“Please, take a seat. What can I do for you?”
“I would like to view my mother’s file.”
“You know she signed the prenuptial—”
“I’m not worried about that.” She attempted a smooth smile. “It’s the offer by the McCall estate that I’m really interested in.”
Takis frowned. “I don’t understand. I sent you a copy—”
“I burned it.”
There was a moment of taut silence. Takis walked to a wall of files, searched for what seemed an age before pulling out a folder. The chair behind his desk squeaked as he sat down. He flipped open the file, turned it around and pushed it across the desk toward her.
Zara skimmed the document, turned a page and froze. Damon’s signature seemed to leap off the page. When she had originally received the offer, she hadn’t paid much attention to the signature. Since then, a part of her had hoped it hadn’t been Damon who had signed it, that it actually had been some faceless lawyer.
“May I have a copy of this?”
Minutes later, still feeling numb because Damon had been the architect of that horrible offer after all, Zara strolled down the steep street and into the bustling center of Medinos. The midday heat poured down as she crossed at a busy intersection, thronged with holidaymakers, but she barely noticed the swarms of brightly colored tourists.
Feeling suddenly thirsty, she stopped at a small café and bought one of Medinos’s signature drinks, an enticing cordial of plum and lemon poured over shaved ice that quickly dissolved in the heat.
The bank her mother had used was easy enough to find. An entirely new tension hummed through her as she took in the high-vaulted ceilings, plaster frescoes and elegant marble floor. A pretty bank clerk directed her to an office that opened off the reception area. A trim, darkly suited clerk checked Zara’s ID and the copy of Petra’s will she had brought with her before escorting her down an echoing corridor. He entered a code into a thoroughly modern keypad and waited for her to precede him into another room.
A guard seated at a desk asked to see her key. He took note of the number and disappeared into an adjacent room. Seconds later, he appeared with a key, then opened a steel door into the vault and indicated she follow him. Zara watched as he unlocked a steel compartment and pulled out a long, narrow steel box, which he laid on a small table. Nodding politely, he withdrew, leaving her in privacy to unlock the box.
Out of nowhere, her heart began to pound.
When her mother had died, Zara had been thousands of miles away and had not had the funds to get back for the funeral. A model friend of her mother’s had packed up Petra’s things and freighted them to Zara. Opening those boxes and sorting through her mother’s clothes and personal effects had been the only ritual left to her. That was possibly why she was now unbearably aware that the last time this safe-deposit box had been opened, it had been by her mother.
Petra had stood in this same sterile room while she placed whatever it was that she had held most precious in the narrow steel box. Emotion swelled in Zara’s chest—a sudden, powerful sense of connection with the mother she had lost, emotions she had avoided because losing Petra had cut the ground from under her. Despite their differences they had always been a pair—two against the world.
Taking a deep breath, she inserted the key, turned it and opened the box. She instantly recognized the faded leather cases that held Atrides family jewelry; she had seen them often enough as a child. After lifting them out, she opened them, emotion swelling as she looked at the pretty collection of French brooches and pendants, the huge old-fashioned cameo her great-grandmother had worn with a black bombazine dress.
Her fingers brushed against a small black velvet bag. She loosened the cord and emptied the contents into the palm of her hand. Not jewelry as she had expected, but a glittering cascade of diamonds; single stones of varying sizes, all of them glowing with an expensive fire.
Once, over a glass of wine, Petra had alluded to her life savings. She hadn’t said what the savings were exactly. Zara had thought she was talking about money, but the amount in Petra’s bank accounts had been too small to qualify as savings of any sort. Now she knew that her mother had been referring to this cache of diamonds, her hedge against the hard times that would come when her looks faded.
Heart thumping, she poured the diamonds into the pouch like so much liquid fire and carefully retied the cord. Her mother hadn’t lived long enough to need the money the diamonds would bring. But Zara was certain Petra would love it that her savings would be put to good use, and not just for a deposit on a house—she would buy the whole thing.
The final items in the box were a plain white envelope, a solitaire engagement ring, a gold wedding ring worn thin over the years and a silver cross that she recognized as once belonging to her father.
Zara’s throat closed up as she extracted the jewelry that had been the intimate, personal belongings of her parents. She had wondered what had happened to her mother’s rings, which Petra was usually never without. She had assumed they had been lost in the accident somehow, or maybe misplaced by the people who had sorted through Petra’s things.
Frowning, Zara opened the last item, the envelope, and extracted a sheaf of what looked like certificates. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest as the name McCall Electrical jumped out at her. Stunned, Zara flipped through a sheaf of numbered shares in McCall Electrical. Voting shares, the shares Damon had been chasi
ng for the past year or so and which had blocked his takeover bid of the company. Shares that Tyler must have gifted to Petra and which now, technically, belonged to Zara.
With careful precision, because her fingers were shaking, she placed the certificates on the table. From her work on the McCall deal, Zara knew they represented a 10 percent chunk of McCall Electrical, which meant they were worth tens of millions of dollars.
Suddenly, her aunt Phoebe’s motives in placing Zara at Damon’s business made an even more horrible kind of sense. Her aunt must have known about the existence of the shares and their value. She had obviously hoped that if Zara got to know Damon before she found out about the shares, that she wouldn’t reject them as she’d rejected the cash offer by Damon.
“Sorry, Phoebe,” Zara muttered beneath her breath. “You should have known you were wasting your time. I wouldn’t touch these with a barge pole.”
As far as she was concerned, they belonged to Damon and Ben; she wanted no part of them. She stared at the shares, feeling suddenly utterly panicked. It was bad enough that she had to explain her true identity to Damon; having to explain the shares was too much.
First off, if she gave the shares back to Damon, he would know that her mother had had them, which would confirm his opinion of Petra and make him doubly suspicious of Zara. Second, she was almost certain that Damon would view her gesture as calculated. He was a billionaire and had already proposed marriage, so financially she would not need the shares. Whichever way she looked at it, giving the shares back to Damon herself could mean he would no longer want marriage with her, and she could not risk that.
She would have to find a way to get them back to Damon so that he would never know she’d had them all along.
Last night she had seen a glimmer of what the future could hold for them. She couldn’t bear it if he rejected her outright. She loved him, and she wanted him to love her. With the shares in her possession, more than ever, she needed to pick the right time to tell him. Although, she was beginning to wonder if such a moment existed.
Hating even to touch shares that she would rather die than accept, Zara shoved them back into the envelope. As she did so, she noticed a slip of paper. It was a note written from Tyler to Petra in a clean, slanting hand. In essence it said that because Petra had insisted on a prenuptial agreement and refused to share in his wealth and assets, he insisted she accept the shares, which were an engagement present.
Knees feeling wobbly, Zara sat down. Her spine and scalp were tingling, all the fine hairs at her nape raised, her chest tight. The words Tyler had written were straightforward and businesslike, but Tyler giving Petra stock in his firm could mean only one thing, just as Petra taking off the wedding rings Zara’s father had given her could mean only one thing.
They had been deeply in love.
Zara’s fingers closed automatically over the thin wedding band and the pretty solitaire diamond. Petra had loved Zara’s father to the point that no man had ever lived up to him. Even after his death, she had worn his rings and had never consented to wearing anyone else’s jewelry. Zara had known that, because as a child, worrying about who might replace her father, she had come to realize that as long as Petra wore her wedding ring, there would be no replacement. Every time Petra had visited her at school, or taken her away on holiday, the first thing Zara had done was check her mother’s left hand. Despite all the speculative media reports about who Petra was dating, if she was still wearing her wedding rings, that meant their small family of two was still intact.
Zara reread the note Tyler had written, and this time she noticed the date. Two days before Petra and Tyler had died.
Petra had been engaged. Her relationship had been real and valid. The shares proved that.
The shares.
Zara felt like flinging them somewhere, burning them, but she couldn’t do either thing. She was caught between a rock and a hard place, because Damon needed the shares to gain control of McCall Electrical.
Feverishly, she tossed Tyler’s note onto the table while she examined the envelope itself. It was plain and white, with no writing on it. Good. She would find a way to have the shares delivered to Damon, maybe pay someone to drop them off at the concierge desk. It had to be someone she trusted, yet who couldn’t be connected to her.
Feeling like a cat on hot bricks—elated because the diamonds represented the financial security she and Rosie desperately needed, and utterly stressed at finding the missing McCall shares—she gathered everything from the table and shoved it all into her bag.
She had hoped she would recover some family jewelry today, and she had; what she hadn’t expected was for the past to rush back at her like a freight train. A past she had to explain to Damon so he wouldn’t end up hating her.
Above all, she didn’t want him to think the reason she was so attracted to him had anything to do with his money. It wasn’t true and it would never be true. What she wanted was what she had always wanted, to be loved and cherished for herself.
Pushing to her feet, she hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder and checked her watch. Anxiety made her stomach hollow when she saw how much time had passed. Almost an hour, although it had felt like a lot less.
After handing in her key because she wouldn’t be needing the box again, she made a beeline back to the main foyer of the bank. As she stepped out onto the pavement, the glare of the afternoon sun had her rummaging for her sunglasses. Sliding them onto the bridge of her nose, she hailed a cab. Relieved when the cab veered toward her, she slid into the back seat and gave the cabbie the hotel’s address, suddenly anxious to get back to Rosie.
Five minutes later, the cab stopped at the hotel entrance. After paying the fare, Zara stepped into the foyer. She stopped dead when she saw Emily, who was sitting in one of the leather chairs, watching the entrance and clearly waiting for her.
“What’s wrong?”
Emily dragged Zara toward the most secluded couch, positioned beneath a lush indoor palm right next to the elevators. “Damon’s talking to Ben.” Her face crumpled. “At first I thought Damon was okay with Ben and I being together, then Walter called, and everything changed. We had to come here because the cell phone coverage is practically nonexistent out on the coast and Walter had emailed some kind of report—”
“An investigative report.”
Emily’s face went white. “I think so, because Ben knows about Daniel now.”
Zara took the seat next to Emily. “Daniel? I thought his name was Jason.”
Emily flushed. “I guessed by now you would know too. Daniel was before Jason. He was a business partner of my father’s. My father wanted me to marry him. I liked him quite a lot—I even thought I might be in love with him—so I agreed, but then I met Jason.”
“So you pulled out of the marriage.”
She shrugged. “I fell for Jason. He could have been a pauper for all I cared.”
“But he wasn’t. He was even richer, so it made you look like you were chasing a bigger catch.”
Emily looked miserable. “I thought I’d made the right choice until Jason dumped me. Unfortunately, when it happened some columnist wrote a snarky piece about it, accusing me of bed-hopping and chasing a rich husband. I felt so humiliated, I left my job in my father’s business—”
“Changed your name and came to work for me.”
Emily flushed. “You seem so calm about this. I thought you’d be steaming mad. I thought you’d hate me.” She grimaced. “Just like Ben will. I’m pretty sure Walter will have dug up that horrible article.”
Abruptly, the fear that had been sawing at Zara ever since she’d discovered the shares died and was replaced by an odd sense of calm. If Walter had investigated Emily, then he would be investigating her, which meant she was out of time. She grimly wondered if Damon had also received a security report about her.
The last few days, her life had
been tipped upside down and spun around and, quite frankly, she was over the stress of it. She was a good person. She loved her daughter and she loved Damon and she wanted to share her life with him. But if he preferred security reports and the rubbish the media invented over her word, then she was out of options.
A painful flush suffused Emily’s face. “Damon’s very protective of Ben. I can understand why he would want to warn him off—”
“Ben’s an adult,” she said crisply. “He doesn’t need his older brother interfering in something that is none of his business.”
Emily looked startled. “I thought you’d be furious, which is why I wanted to catch you before you spoke to Damon. It was bad enough that I walked out on my job—” She fumbled in her handbag, found a tissue and blew her nose. “I’ve made a real mess of things. I don’t even know if Ben will ever let me explain—”
The elevator doors opened. Ben strode out, his face pale, his expression taut. His gaze zeroed in on Emily.
“You’re still here,” he muttered. “Thank goodness. I thought you would have run a mile.”
Emily jumped to her feet. “Why would I run?”
“Because my family’s so messed up. Why would you want to be a part of us? I’ve just heard it all. My father was a crazy, violent drunk and a womanizer who squandered the family fortune on mistresses. I was born after he died, so I never knew him, but Damon did, and he’s literally got the scars to prove it. That’s why he’s so...overprotective. He doesn’t want me falling into the same pit of snakes.” Ben grinned lopsidedly.
Emily looked devastated. “He thinks I’m a pit of snakes?”
Ben instantly clasped her upper arms and pulled her close, his expression anxious. “Baby, that came out all wrong. The pit of snakes is the out-of-control, addictive behavior Damon thinks runs in the family line, not you.”
“Phew,” Emily said, with the glimmer of a watery smile. “For a moment there I thought Damon must hate me.”
“Damon doesn’t hate anyone. He just doesn’t want me to get hurt.”
