by Elise Faber
“What?” I opened the cardstock cover and my heart sank. “How could . . .?”
“I know.” Cecilia touched my arm. “And I know that you have a lot happening.” Her eyes drifted down to my stomach even though neither Jordan nor I had mentioned the baby to her or Hunter. Hell, as far as I knew, he hadn’t even told his father.
Heather knew, of course, because of the whole sleeping-on-day-one-of-my-new-job situation. Yet she hadn’t mentioned it to me.
But Cecilia, a women who barely knew me, had picked up on it.
She smiled. “I’d love it if you two could take Hunter. He worships Jordan and he adores you. He deserves more—” She shook her head. “He deserves more than just a nanny.”
“Hey.” I turned to face her fully and though I wasn’t the most touchy-feely person, especially with people I didn’t know all that well, I hugged Cecilia tightly. We hadn’t spent years together, but I felt like I knew her heart.
And that heart was pure.
“Hunter is lucky to have you.”
She sniffed and pulled back, glancing up at the ceiling and blinking rapidly. “I’m scared,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t be. I need to be strong for him. But I’m petrified.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “But we’re going to pretend otherwise. Deal?”
Cecilia nodded, blew out a long, slow breath. “Deal.”
“And,” I said, as a few nurses pushed through the double doors and began walking toward our little group, “when Hunter becomes an official part of our family, I hope you will too.”
Her jaw dropped open and she looked at me, dumbstruck. But she didn’t get a chance to respond because Hunter ran over, grabbed both of our hands, and began tugging us forward.
“Come on, CeCe and Abby. Today I get to become a superhero!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I checked over the organ myself,” the lead doctor said. “Everything looks perfect so we’ll begin prepping Hunter for the surgery and get him feeling better.”
Hunter was in bed, his little body dwarfed by a white hospital gown covered with pouncing tigers.
The image fit him.
Launching himself forward for a chance at the future.
“Do you think my new heart will be working by tomorrow?” Hunter asked. “Because I’d like to have it in time for me to turn eight.”
“Is it your birthday tomorrow?” the nurse asked, placing a blood pressure cuff on his upper arm.
“Uh-huh,” he said around the thermometer.
“Well, if the doctor okays it tomorrow, I’ll save you a celebratory Jell-O.” She noted a few items on the chart.
“I love Jell-O!”
“Great!” She fist bumped him. “What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Cherry!”
“Done,” she said. “I’m going to mark one in the fridge with your name on it right now.”
“Yay!” Hunter bounced on the bed. “That’s awesome.”
“What do you say?” Cecilia prompted.
“Thank you!” Hunter called as the nurse moved toward the door.
She smiled, waving her goodbye.
The doctor walked over to Hunter and began talking to him, explaining what was going to happen in vague, kid-friendly terms. Ten minutes later, and after answering about a hundred questions from Hunter, he left with a promise that the anesthesiologist would be in soon.
I watched from the corner as Jordan and Cecilia sat and joked with Hunter, not wanting to intrude.
I probably should have gone to the waiting room, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off Hunter until the last possible moment.
And when he asked me to come over and hold his hand so the nurse could start his IV, I knew that little boy owned me, whether he was aware of it or not. His whimpers of pain, the tears in his eyes, all of them slayed me.
Thankfully, the procedure was quick and within minutes, the anesthesiologist was in the room, giving Hunter a medication that made him drowsy.
A few moments later he was being wheeled away, a piece of my heart rolling alongside him.
“How is he?” Heather asked from the doorway of my office the next morning.
I winced. “In some pain,” I said, honestly. Watching him hurt was probably the worst thing I’d experienced in my life to date. “But the doctors said that everything went perfectly.”
She came in and closed the door. “Did you want to take some time off to be with him?”
My eyes flew up, surprised.
“You’ve been a mess today. Unfocused. Out of sorts.”
My stomach clenched. “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure I don’t—”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I get it. I’m worried too, and the kid isn’t mine.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that. Hunter’s not my—I mean it’s just you don’t have to—”
“Abby.” She smiled. “Hunter is Jordan’s, and Jordan is yours. So Hunter is yours.”
“Is this some sort of if X equals Y and Y equals Z then X equals Z nonsense?”
She groaned, dropping into a chair in front of my desk. “Stop. You’re bringing back horrible memories of algebra class.”
“You’re incredible with numbers,” I reminded her.
“Yes. With real numbers. It’s the alphanumeric ones that get me every time.”
I laughed then sobered. “I want to be with Hunter, but I also want to make sure I do this project right. It means so much to Jordan. I don’t want to be the one who—”
“Screws it up?” Heather asked, rather unhelpfully if you asked me.
“Yes. That,” I said, grimacing.
“So keep working,” she said. “Just do it remotely.”
“What?”
Heather rolled her eyes. “You’re already doing it anyway.” Her brows went up at my expression. “Don’t think I’ve haven’t seen how frequently you log in to the server from home. Plus, that’s going to be how you work when the baby gets here, isn’t it? Think of it as a trial run.”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“You are going to keep working here after the baby, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes,” I stumbled out. “I mean I’d planned to, I just hadn’t thought that far ahead and—”
“Good. I’ll plan it for you.” Heather grinned. “I kind of like doing that, if you hadn’t noticed.”
I snorted. “Yeah. I think I managed to pick up on that.”
“Okay, great. It’s settled then. Pack up and get out of here.” She stood. “I don’t want to see you until Hunter is home from the hospital.”
“Heather?” I asked as she turned to the door.
She stopped, rotating back to face me.
“Thanks.”
Her lips twitched and she shrugged. “Don’t know if you know this, kid, but I kind of like you.”
“Somehow I like you too.” She laughed and started out again.
I stopped her. Again.
Because something she’d said had triggered alarm bells in my mind.
“Before you go, can you tell me how often, exactly, I’ve been logging into the secure server?”
Chapter Thirty
Jordan read the press release with a mixture of growing horror and extreme fury.
This is why he’d gotten rid of his cell phone in the first place.
What he’d thought was going to be an innocent—or very naughty, he liked both options—text message from the woman he loved had turned into something far more sinister.
He glanced over at the hospital bed where Hunter slept. It had been a week since the surgery, a week of seeing Hunter for small slices of time, of trading places with Cecilia and Abby so that one of them was always in the waiting room in case Hunter might need them. In fact, Abby had spent so much time in the waiting room that she had her own desk. Or rather, the nurses had encouraged her to rearrange a table and chair next to a plug so she could work remotely.
And now he wondered what exactly she’d been workin
g on.
Fuck. Jordan sucked in a breath, blew it out slowly, and focused on Hunter. This wasn’t about work or betrayals. This was about a little boy who had spent most of the past week sedated or sleeping. He’d been moved from the cardiac intensive care unit to a room in the general cardiac ward the night before. Though it was an improvement, his nephew still had a long journey ahead of him.
A soft knock on the door drew his gaze from Hunter. He tore his gaze away and saw the nurse who was on shift, Rebecca, standing in the door. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Visiting hours are over.”
“Okay.” He crossed to Hunter, pressed a kiss to his forehead. “’Night, buddy.”
His nephew stirred slightly but didn’t wake.
“He’s doing well,” Rebecca said, shutting the door behind her.
“Yeah, he is,” Jordan agreed. He slipped his phone into his pocket, but the device might as well have been burning a hole in the fabric after what he’d read on it.
“Your girlfriend is in the waiting room,” Rebecca said with a smile. “Sally tucked a blanket around her because she’d fallen asleep. She’s tuckered out.”
His heart pulsed as he thanked the nurse and asked him to pass on the gesture to the charge nurse, Sally. He’d seen the hours Abby had been pulling, knew that she was working hard for Hunter and wanting to be there for him. He also knew that she was the most golden-hearted person he’d ever met.
It didn’t make sense.
Why would she sell out RoboTech?
Why, after all of the hours she’d spent on design, would she give the information to RoboTech’s number one enemy?
To Roberts Enterprises.
She wouldn’t.
Abby didn’t have any love lost for her father, and she’d been damn loyal to Jordan, to Heather, to Rich.
She wouldn’t betray him.
He pushed through the double doors that led out into in the waiting room, holding on to the notion.
Please let that thought be the correct one.
Abby was curled up in a chair, laptop perched on her knees. The screen was black, but she shifted, her fingers brushing the mouse pad. A document came to life, a spreadsheet with rows and rows of information.
Jordan frowned, snagging the laptop before it hit the floor when she moved again, unconsciously seeking a more comfortable position in the uncompromising wooden chair.
Several lines were highlighted in yellow, and a column on the far right was titled “Me” and filled with periodic “Xs.”
Other lines were highlighted in red. And still more in blue, with question marks corresponding in the “Me” column.
He studied the rest of the sheet, trying to make sense of the information. It was mostly numbers: time stamps, length of time, IP addresses.
“Jordan?” Abby asked, her voice hesitant.
He lowered the laptop and stared at her. “What’s this?”
Her face went pale and his gut clenched. Dammit, had he been wrong?
“Jordan—” she began. “It’s not like you’re thinking. I—uh—well. It’s complicated . . .”
His stomach sank further and further with each stumbling word.
“—my father, he said—”
Jordan shut his eyes. Breathed. Then opened them.
Of course.
“I need to go.” He dropped the laptop onto the chair next to her and walked away.
“Jordan!”
Footsteps echoed down the tile floor.
“Wait.”
He yanked open the door to the stairs and rushed down. His feelings were a tangled knot. He didn’t know how to coax them free. Abby couldn’t have—
His feet stopped at the bottom of the first flight.
But she hadn’t denied anything. She hadn’t—
No. He shook his head. This wasn’t the time to draw out motivations. He needed to sleep. He needed to think.
But he couldn’t walk away. Dammit. It wasn’t that easy.
Jordan couldn’t walk away from Abby.
The door at the top of the stairs flew open, and Abby ran through. Her eyes were wild and there were tears on her cheeks. She’d left the computer, her purse, everything behind.
And that was the moment he knew for sure.
She’d left it all behind.
For him.
“I didn’t!” She gasped out, sliding to a stop at the top of the stairs. “That was what I was trying to say. Someone was logging in under my name, accessing Hunter’s project. Heather and I have been tracking it since last week.” Abby sank to the top step, sighing as she put her hand in her hands. “But I didn’t expect that my own father would try to betray me.”
Jordan walked up the steps and sat next to her. “Your father hates my family.”
“Why?” Abby asked, glancing up at him. “I don’t understand how hate could turn him against his own daughter. I didn’t want to believe it. Then I saw the press release and knew . . .” One tear slid down her cheek. “What could make him do that to me?”
Jordan brushed a hair back from her face and told her, “My father seduced your mother.”
She rolled her eyes and he blinked, surprised.
“It’s true.”
“I don’t doubt it. Just know that my mother had more affairs than a tabloid queen. If my father tried to ruin all the other men in her life, he wouldn’t have time to actually run a business.”
Jordan put his hands up. “I don’t pretend to understand it, all I know is that after my mom died, they were . . . close.”
“Gross.”
He winced. “Yeah.”
Abby sucked in a breath then released it. “I didn’t betray you,” she whispered.
“I know.”
Her eyes went to his. “You do?”
He nodded. “I admit, I freaked for a second, but”—he reached for her hand—“I know you, sweetheart. I was coming back when you barreled through that door like a charging bull.”
She glared, but her lips were twitching. “I’m going to let the bovine joke slip for now, but know that in a few more months that’ll get you throat punched.”
He laughed, wrapped his arms around her. “I love you, Abigail Roberts.”
She dropped her forehead to his shoulder and hugged him back. “I love you too, Thor, God of Thunder.” A pause. “And your hammer.”
Right there in the hospital stairwell, two days before Christmas, he tugged Abby into his lap and kissed her.
And when she told him about the trap she and Heather had laid to trip up the corporate spies, he kissed her again.
Then once more, just for good measure.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jordan was asleep beside me, sprawled amongst the pillows and comforter, but I was wide awake, my laptop open and at the ready. I just needed to click the button that would upload the final layer to the trap.
I could only hope they would take the bait.
That my father would take the bait.
Christmas Eve and I was trying to screw over dear old Dad. Now that was the spirit of the season.
Not that he hadn’t tried to screw me over first.
Which was the part I didn’t understand. Why bother with such a small project when Roberts Enterprises had so much already? It was a nothing product for RoboTech as it was, quite literally Jordan’s pet project for Hunter.
So why would my father bother taking it on?
The only reason I could comprehend was revenge.
Ruining a company’s reputation for little more than revenge. It wasn’t like I could say this was the first time I’d heard that particular notion.
It’s just that I thought my father was better than that.
Sighing, I closed the laptop and picked up my phone, texting Heather to let her know the final trap was planted.
I was giving the family of my father’s greatest enemy enough material to blackmail him for years. And I was doing it without a second thought.
Because I trusted Heather and Jordan.
Because this all needed to stop.
Because, dammit, I had to believe my father might have a slice of good in him. Despite my childhood, despite the bullying attitude, despite the neglect and distance and disapproval.
My dad had to love me.
Right?
I went into the bathroom and closed the door, leaning back against it for a moment before I turned on the taps to fill the big tub. We were staying at the nicest hotel in town, which happened to be located just a few blocks from the hospital. It was a convenient location and though I’d argued with Jordan about the unnecessary expense of reserving the Presidential Suite, considering we were hardly in it, I was feeling the tub right in that moment.
There were perks to dating a billionaire.
I filled the bath with warm—not hot—water and stripped down. I was just about to step in when my phone rang.
Thinking it was Heather, I answered without looking at the caller ID.
Big mistake.
“Abigail.”
My father.
“Hi, Dad.” I was proud of myself. My voice was steady.
“What have you done?” he hissed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, wondering if he’d come clean and admit to screwing with his daughter’s career for ego or revenge or whatever. I wondered if he’d finally tell me why I meant less to him than my brother.
“I should have known,” he said, completely obliterating the last bit of hope I’d held for him, “that you would do something like this.”
I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around myself. “Something like what, Dad?”
“Don’t call me that,” he spat. “As if I’d want someone like you to—”
My fingers clenched on the towel. “Call you what?” I whispered, but it was apparently enough to cut through his tirade.
“I’m not your father, Abigail,” he said, voice icy cold. “I may have given you my name, but I’ve never acted like a father to you. God knows you should have gotten a fucking clue.”
I swallowed. “What are you saying?”
“Little idiot,” he snapped. “I’m telling you that I am not your father.”
