Harlequin Desire September 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: ClaimedMaid for a MagnateOnly on His Terms

by Tracy Wolff

  Ignoring, for now, that neither her red-and-yellow plaid pants nor her red short-sleeved blouse had pockets—and even if they did, no way could she stuff a Louis Quatorze buffet into one—Gracie frowned at Harrison. When they’d parted ways last night, they’d been on pretty good terms. In spite of some of the weirdness that had arced between them at the party, they’d eventually fallen into a reasonably comfortable fellowship that had lasted all the way through the ride home.

  This morning, though, he seemed to want to return to the antagonism she’d thought had vanished. Or at least diminished to the point where he had stopped thinking of her as a thief. She took a step backward, removing herself from his grasp, and frowned harder. Not as easy to do as it should have been, because he looked even yummier than usual in casual dark-wash jeans and a white oxford shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

  Instead of rising to the bait he was so clearly dangling in front of her, she said, “And good morning to you, too.”

  He deflated a little at her greeting. But he didn’t wish her a good-morning in return. Instead, he told her, “The servants get the weekend off. Everyone’s on their own for breakfast.”

  “Which isn’t a problem,” she said, “except that I don’t know where the kitchen is.”

  He tilted his head in the direction she’d been headed. “You were on the right track. It’s this way.”

  Gracie may have been on the right track, she thought as she followed him through a warren of rooms, but if he hadn’t shown up when he did, they would have had to send a search-and-rescue team after her. It struck her again as she absorbed her grand surroundings just how rich Harry had been, just how much he’d turned his back on when he ran away to Cincinnati and just how out-of-place the man she’d known would have been in these surroundings.

  Even the kitchen reeked of excess, massive as it was with state-of-the-art appliances—some of them things Gracie didn’t recognize even with her restaurant experience.

  “Coffee,” she said, hoping the word sounded more like a desire than a demand, thinking it came off more as a decree. “Um, I mean, if you’ll tell me where it is, I’ll make it.”

  “I set it up last night. Just push the button.”

  She looked around for a Mr. Coffee, and then reminded herself she was in the home of a billionaire, so switched gears for a Bonavita or Bunn. But she didn’t see one of those, either. When Harrison noted her confusion, he pointed behind her. She turned, but all she saw was something that looked like a giant chrome insect. She looked at him again, her expression puzzled.

  “The Kees van der Westen?” he said helpfully.

  Well, he probably thought it was helpful. To Gracie, a Kees van der Westen sounded like something that should be hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When she continued to gaze at him in stumped silence, he moved past her to the big metal bug, placed a coffee cup beneath one of its limbs, and pushed a button. Immediately, the machine began to hum, and a beautiful stream of fragrant mahogany brew began to stream into the cup.

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s more impressive than the espresso machine we have at Café Destiné.” Then, because she hadn’t had her coffee yet so couldn’t be held responsible for her indiscretion, she asked, “How much did that set you back?”

  Harrison didn’t seem to think the question odd, however. He just shrugged and said. “I don’t know. Six or seven thousand, I think.”

  She couldn’t help how her mouth dropped open at that. “Seven thousand dollars? For a coffeemaker?”

  “Well, it does espresso and cappuccino, too,” he said. “Besides, you get what you pay for.”

  “You know what else you can get for seven thousand dollars?” she asked, telling herself it was still because she hadn’t had her coffee, but knowing more that it was because she wanted to prove a point.

  He thought for a minute. “Not a lot, really.”

  “There are some cities where seven thousand dollars will pay for two years of community college,” she said. “What you think of as a coffeemaker is a higher education for some people.”

  His expression went inscrutable again. “Imagine that.”

  “I don’t have to imagine it,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of research. Do you have any idea how many lives your father’s fourteen billion dollars will change? Any concept at all? Do you even know what one billion dollars could buy?”

  Instead of waiting for him to answer, she continued, “One billion dollars can send more than twenty-five thousand kids to a public university for four years. Twenty-five thousand! A billion dollars can put two million laptops in public schools. A billion dollars can buy decent housing for six thousand families in some places. A billion dollars can run seven thousand shelters for battered women for a year. You add up how many lives would be improved. And that’s only the first four billion.”

  Harrison’s expression remained fixed, but something flickered in his eyes that made her think she was getting through to him.

  So she added, “Your father’s money can bring libraries to communities that don’t have one. It can put musical instruments in schools that can’t afford them. It can build playgrounds in neighborhoods that are covered with asphalt. It can send kids to camp. It can build health clinics. It can fill food banks. Maybe that was why Harry changed his mind late in life about what he wanted to do with his money. So he’d be remembered for changing the world, one human life at a time.”

  At this, Harrison’s expression finally changed. Though not exactly for the better. “And what about his family?” he asked. “Did my father have to completely shut us out? You keep talking about him as if he were this paragon of altruism in Cincinnati, conveniently forgetting about how he turned his back on his family here. Not just me and my mother, but my half sisters and their mothers, too. My father spent his life here taking whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it, often from people he claimed to love. Now he wants to give it all back to strangers? Where’s the logic in that? Where’s the commitment? Where’s the obligation? Where’s the... Dammit, where’s the love?”

  His eruption stunned Gracie into silence. Not because of the eruption itself, but because she realized he was right. She’d been thinking of Harry’s fortune as an all-or-nothing behemoth, something that either went to charity or to the Sages, and neither the twain should meet. But Harry could have left something to his family. Not just to Harrison and Vivian, but to his ex-wives and other children, too. So why hadn’t he?

  “I’m sorry,” Gracie said, knowing the words were inadequate, but having no idea what else to say. She didn’t know why Harry had excluded his family from his will. Maybe he’d figured Harrison would be fine on his own and capable of taking care of Vivian. Maybe he’d assumed his divorce settlements with his exes were enough for all of them and his other children to have good lives. And probably, that was true. But he still could have left each of them something. Something to show them he remembered them, to let them know he had loved them, even if he hadn’t done that in life.

  Because one thing Gracie did know. As rough-around-the-edges and irascible as Harry could be, he had been able to love. She’d seen him express it every day. Maybe not in his words, but in his actions. He’d loved his parents and little brother once upon a time, too. And if he’d been able to love a family as fractured as his had been when he was a boy, then he must have loved Harrison and Vivian, too, even if he’d never been any good at showing it. Maybe if Harrison had known him the way Gracie did, he would be able to see that, too.

  If only she could take Harrison back in time a few years and introduce him to the version of his father she knew. If only he could see Harry in his flannel bathrobe, shuffling around his apartment in his old-man slippers and Reds cap, watering his plants, his favorite team on TV in the background, his four-alarm chili bubbling on the stove. If only he could see Harry’s patience when he taught her to fox-
trot or his compassion when he filled trays at the shelter or his gentleness showing some kid how to hold a bat.

  And that was when it hit her. There was a way she could show Harrison those things. Harry wouldn’t be there physically, of course, but he’d be there in spirit. Harrison had shown her his version of his father in New York yesterday. So why couldn’t Gracie show him her version of Harry in Cincinnati? They could fly there tomorrow and spend a couple of days. She could take Harrison to the storage unit to go through his father’s things. They could watch the Little League team Harry coached. She could show Harrison the hospital and shelter where Harry volunteered and introduce him to some of the people who knew him. She could even take him dancing at the Moondrop Ballroom.

  Harrison had never known that side of his father. Maybe if they went to Cincinnati, he’d see that Harry wasn’t the cold, rapacious man he remembered. And maybe, between the two of them, they could figure Harry out, once and for all.

  “Harrison,” she said decisively, “we need to go to Cincinnati.”

  His expression would have been the same if she had just smacked him with a big, wet fish. “Why do we need to go to Cincinnati?”

  “So you can meet Harry.”

  “You’ve already told me all about him.”

  “And you don’t seem to believe any of it.”

  He said nothing in response to that. What could he say? He didn’t believe anything she’d told him about Harry. Not really. He was the kind of person who needed to see stuff with his own eyes to be convinced.

  “I have to go back to work next week,” he said, lamely enough that Gracie knew that wasn’t the reason he was balking.

  “You can give yourself a couple more days off,” she said. “You’re the boss.”

  He said nothing again, but that only encouraged her. “Look, you took me on the Harrison Sage, Jr. tour of New York City. So now let me take you on the Harry Sagalowsky tour of Cincinnati.”

  “And did the Harrison Sage, Jr. tour change your mind about your friend Harry?” he asked.

  Gracie hesitated before replying. “Not really,” she admitted. But she quickly declared, “But it’s given me a lot to think about. It’s added a lot to my picture of Harry, and even if the things I learned don’t paint him in the greatest light, I’m still glad to have learned them. I want to do the same for your picture of Harrison, Jr.,” she added more gently. “So you’ll have more to think about, too.”

  This time, Harrison was the one to hesitate. Finally, he told her, “It won’t make any difference in the way I feel. About my father or you.”

  Something in the way he said it, though, made Gracie think he was at least willing to give it a chance. Where his father was concerned, anyway. Although maybe he meant—

  “It doesn’t matter how you feel about me,” she said before her thoughts could go any further, wishing that were true. Wondering why it wasn’t. She really shouldn’t care about how Harrison felt about her. Her only goal at the moment was to help him move past his resentment toward his father. But she couldn’t quite forget those few moments the night before when things had seemed...different between them. And she couldn’t forget the way he’d looked when she told him all the things he hadn’t known about his father’s past. Like a hurt little kid who was just trying to make sense of things and couldn’t.

  Let me help you make sense of it, Gracie silently bid him. Of your father and of me. And let me try to make sense of you, too. Because somehow, it was beginning to feel just as important for her and Harrison to understand each other as it was for them to understand Harry.

  Harrison hesitated again. Long enough this time that Gracie feared he would decline once and for all. Finally, reluctantly, he told her, “Okay. I’ll go.”

  She expelled a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “Great. How long will it take you to pack?”

  Seven

  Gracie couldn’t have ordered a better day for a baseball game. June was the kindest of the summer months in the Ohio Valley, the skies blue and perfect and the breezes warm and playful. The park where Harry’s Little League team, the Woodhaven Rockets, played had four baseball diamonds and every one of them was filled. She and Harrison had arrived early enough to find a bleacher seat in the shade, up on the very top bench, where they could see all the action. She’d instructed him to wear the team colors, so he’d complied with gray cargo shorts and a pale blue polo that made his blue, blue eyes even bluer. She’d opted for white capris and a powder-blue sleeveless shirt for herself.

  They’d arrived in Cincinnati the evening before, late enough that there hadn’t been time to do much more than say good-night and turn in. Harrison had wanted to have lunch before the game today, but Gracie told him that until she presented the league with a check from Harry’s estate, concessions were where they made most of their money for uniforms and equipment, so the least she and Harrison could do was plunk down a few bucks for a couple of hot dogs and sodas. Not to mention if Dylan Mendelson was still on the team, there might be some of his mom’s red velvet cupcakes.

  The Rockets were leading in the seventh inning four to zip, their pitcher barreling ball after ball over home plate without a single crack of the bat. If this kept up, it was going to be a no-hitter.

  “Way to go, Roxanne!” Gracie shouted to the pitcher at the end of the inning as the teams were switching places. “Keep it up, girlfriend!”

  When she sat back down, Harrison said, “That’s a girl pitching?”

  “Damn straight. Don’t sound so surprised. Girls are great ballplayers.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s that she must not have been on the team when my father coached it.”

  “Your father was the first one to recognize what a good arm she has. Making her the Rockets’ pitcher was one of the last things he did before he died.” She brightened. “Now there’s a legacy for you. Thanks to Harry, Roxanne Bailey might be the first woman to play in the Majors.”

  Judging by his expression, Harrison was doubtful. Or maybe it was his father’s actions he was doubting.

  “What?” she asked.

  He hesitated, as if he were looking for the right words. “My father never...cared much...for women.” He seemed to realize Gracie was about to object, so he held up a hand and hurried on. “Oh, he liked women. A lot. My mother would tell you he liked them too much. But he only hired them for clerical positions and never promoted any to executive. He just didn’t think women could do anything more than be pretty and type.”

  “Wow,” Gracie said. “That is so not the Harry I knew. He put up with a lot of crap from some of the dads for making Roxanne the pitcher, but he didn’t back down. And I never saw him speak to a woman any differently than he spoke to a man.”

  Harrison looked out at the field, but his expression suggested he was seeing something other than a bunch of kids playing baseball.

  “Gracie?” a woman called out from behind the bleachers. “Gracie Sumner, is that you?”

  She turned to see Sarah Denham, the mother of the Rockets’ catcher, standing below them. She, too, was dressed in the team colors, a Rockets ball cap perched backward on her head, hot dogs in each hand.

  “Hi, Sarah!” Gracie greeted her, happy to see a familiar face.

  “I thought that was you,” Sarah said. With a smile, she added, “It’s strange to see you without Harry. What are you doing back in town?”

  At the mention of Harry’s name, Harrison turned around, too, clearly interested in meeting someone else who knew his father in this world. So Gracie introduced the two of them.

  “I am so sorry for your loss,” Sarah told him. “Your father was one of the nicest men I ever met. He was so great with these kids.”

  Harrison was clearly surprised by the statement, in spite of Gracie having already told him the same thing.

  Sar
ah continued with a smile, “And his jokes! He kept these kids in stitches.”

  “My father told jokes?” Harrison asked, startled.

  “Oh, my gosh, yes,” Sarah said. “What did one mushroom say to the other mushroom?”

  Harrison smiled. “I don’t know.”

  Sarah smiled back. “You’re a fun guy. Get it? Fungi?”

  Harrison groaned. “That’s a terrible joke.”

  “I know,” Sarah agreed with a laugh. “They were all like that. The kids loved them.” She turned to Gracie. “So where are you living now?”

  Gracie’s back went up almost literally at the question. Her own past in Cincinnati was the last thing she wanted to revisit, especially in front of Harrison. “Seattle,” she said, hoping Sarah left it at that.

  But of course, she didn’t. “So far away? I mean, I knew things with Devon got bad—”

  At this, Harrison snapped his attention to Gracie.

  “—but I didn’t know you went all the way across the country,” Sarah said.

  “That’s all in the past,” Gracie said. Then she rushed to change the subject. “Hey, did Trudy bring any of her red velvet cupcakes?”

  “She did,” Sarah said. “But they’re going fast.”

  The perfect excuse to escape. “You want a cupcake?” she asked Harrison as she stood. “My treat. I’ll be right back.”

  Before he could reply, she was trundling down the bleachers toward the concession stand. And just as she tried to do whenever Devon Braun intruded into her life, she didn’t look back once.

  * * *

  Gracie hadn’t visited the self-storage unit with Harry’s things since snapping on the padlock two years ago, so she braced herself for the discovery that everything might be a little musty. And dusty. And rusty. Fortunately, both she and Harrison were dressed for such a development: he in a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a black, V-neck T-shirt, she in a pair of baggy plaid shorts and an even baggier white T-shirt. Each was armed with a box cutter, and they’d brought additional boxes in which to pack anything Harrison might want to ship back to New York right away.