Kitabı oku: «The Reluctant Heiress»

“Nothing in my life, nothing,” Jillian stressed, “is the same any more.”

She’d thought Ben would understand. He’d seemed so understanding of everything else.

“I even look different. The Kendrick women are tall and blonde and poised and self-confident, but I’m short, brunette, and so… not.”

Reaching out, Ben grabbed her wrist. “Trust me,” he insisted, as his eyes shifted from her mouth to the skin exposed by the vee of her top. “The last thing you ever need to worry about is how you compare to your half-sisters.”

Beneath his fingers, Jillian felt her pulse give a betraying little leap. Too aware of his big body, she took a step back, turned away.

“You don’t need to humour me, Ben. That’s not what I want from you.”

When she met his glance, his smile was gone.

“I’m not humouring you, Jillian. I meant exactly what I said.” His blue eyes narrowed as he cautiously searched her face. “Now that you’ve mentioned it, what do you want from me?”

CHRISTINE FLYNN

admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships – especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women – is fascinating.

Dear Reader,

The bulletin board above my desk is a mess. The green bamboo backing that I thought looked better than plain cork is barely visible. It’s covered with reminders, schedules and little bits of inspiration. That inspiration includes an 8x10 of an incredibly hunky guy – the hero for my work in progress – and dozens of quotes. Some of those quotations make me smile. Most make me think. One inspired this story.

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.”— Attributed to Karen Kaiser Clark

We know we can’t always control what happens to us. And sometimes it takes us a while to realise that our response to a situation is as important as the change itself. Change can be difficult. Growth can be a struggle. That’s why my first response to a crisis is to head for anything chocolate…and take it from there.

Love,

Christine

The Reluctant Heiress

CHRISTINE FLYNN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Prologue

Jillian Hadley always waited until September to make her New Year’s resolutions. Where the rest of the world planned new beginnings on January first, she waited for the start of the new school year to compile her annual list of the faults she would fix, habits she would break and objectives she would pursue.

She wasn’t rebelling against convention, though she definitely marched to her own drummer. She wasn’t asserting herself, either. The little quirk affected no one but herself. The independent streak she’d been raised to protect simply found the timing more logical. A new school year was a fresh start in itself. January came in the middle of it.

As had become her habit, she’d turned on the television in the living room for company the minute she’d walked into the cozy little duplex she called home. Accompanied by a persuasive male voice promising her better gas mileage, she lugged the luggage she’d taken on her trip into her bedroom, flipped on the overhead light to illuminate the purely feminine space and tossed her suitcase and carry-on bag onto her white eyelet-covered bed.

Only once in her eight years of teaching had she returned to Thomas Jefferson Elementary without her usual, lengthy list of items geared toward self-improvement. That had been last year; her very own personal year from hell. It had actually been closer to eighteen months, but there were details she preferred to overlook about that time as she unzipped her suitcase and started to unpack.

Within three months, her mom had become seriously ill, her now ex-fiancé had informed her that he had no intention of marrying her and her mom had died. It seemed as if bad news had simply been heaped on worse to the point where numbness had become a constant state of being. She hadn’t even realized how much of a fog she’d drifted in until the pain and numbness had finally, mercifully begun to dull over the past summer.

She lifted a slightly squashed, pale-pink orchid lei from atop a stack of shorts and tank tops. As of now, as of that very moment, she was declaring that horrible time officially over. Done. Finished. The loss of her mom, she would feel forever. Beth Hadley had been her friend, her champion and the strongest woman she’d ever known. Eric Chandler, she had long since concluded, she could easily survive without.

It was her awareness of how completely she was over the man she’d once thought she would grow old with—and the realization that her biological clock hadn’t stopped running just because the rest of her life had gone on hold—that led straight to her first resolution.

This year, she decided, hanging the lei over a post of her four-poster bed, if Coach Gunderson asked her out again, she would go. He was a nice guy. A little bald, but nice. And heaven knew how hard it was to find a decent guy anymore. One that wasn’t married, involved or gay, anyway. She would also avoid the doughnuts in the teachers’ lounge, learn to play the guitar she’d bought four years ago, and seriously consider getting her long, impossibly curly hair straightened. If she was feeling particularly adventurous, she might also get the unmanageable mass cut and dyed some color other than the uninspiring shade of plain old dark brown that it was.

The reemerged optimist in her could practically feel all manner of change coming on. Her vacation—a major, much-needed splurge—was now officially over. Other than the lei and a bunch of little paper drink umbrellas, all she had left of those ten days on Maui was a hibiscus-print sarong she’d probably never wear, the postcards and photo books she’d brought back to share with her students and the great tan she’d acquired because she’d kept forgetting to reapply sunscreen.

It didn’t matter that her vacation was now nothing but a memory. She felt none of the letdown she would have experienced even a few weeks ago at returning to her ordinary, rather predictable life. Even tired from eleven hours in the air, three plane changes and interminable waits in airports, she found herself looking forward to the new school year, to meeting her new students, to putting her resolutions to work. She didn’t even mind that before she could go to bed, she needed to do laundry so she could wash the top she wanted to wear to school tomorrow.

In the interests of time, she dumped the remaining contents of the suitcase into her laundry basket and headed for the washer and dryer behind the louvered doors in her kitchen. Thinking she should check the messages on her blinking answering machine, she’d just passed the assortment of herbs and a fern she’d left in water in her sink when the disembodied male voice on the evening news brought her to a halt.

With her heart beating a little too rapidly, she turned to the television opposite the sofa dividing the area in half.

“…affair early in my marriage. That affair took place more than thirty years ago and resulted in a daughter I didn’t know I had until she approached me after her mother’s death last year. The photographs taken by Bradley Ashworth were of that meeting. As you know, Bradley was married to my youngest daughter, Tess. When Tess told him she wanted a divorce to escape his mental and physical abuse, he told her I was having an affair and used those photographs to blackmail her into silence.”

On the screen, a distinguished-looking, silver-haired gentleman spoke in solemn tones from behind a bank of microphones. His sharp gray eyes peered intently toward his audience of millions.

With her pulse beating in her ears, Jillian tried to concentrate on the man’s words. He was saying that to protect her family’s relationships and reputation, his daughter Tess had allowed the world to believe what Ashworth had claimed; that she had left him because she’d become bored with marriage and wanted other men.

Jillian remembered the scandal that had erupted when the beautiful Tess Kendrick had taken her young son and left the country last year. At the time, Jillian had thought the woman the epitome of spoiled self-indulgence. Because of the relentless media coverage, so had everyone else. Beyond that recollection, though, little else about the woman and what was being said to clear her name computed just then.

The entire nation knew the man on the screen. The powerful former senator was one of the richest men in the country. As a young man, he had charmed a princess into giving up a kingdom to marry him and he, his glamorous wife and their four pampered and privileged offspring had been treated by the press as America’s royalty ever since.

Jillian had grown up with the media stories about their fairy-tale lives right along with everyone else. In high school, she and her girlfriends had devoured everything printed about the family, especially the girls. Ashley had been younger than Jillian by only a couple of years. Tess, by maybe two more. They had worn designer clothes and ball gowns. They’d attended the best private schools, had bodyguards, servants, staff. They’d spent summers in their royal grandmother’s tiny European kingdom of Luzandria. Their older brothers were gorgeous. The girls themselves had grown up to be as stunning as their mother, the elegant ash blonde the cameras now revealed to be sitting supportively at William Kendrick’s side.

Jillian’s heartbeats turned to sickening thuds. Her mom had been the only person she knew who seemed to ignore everything about the Kendricks and their celebrity. She’d never heard her comment on any of the magazine or news articles about any member of their family. If Jillian brought them to her attention with some publication’s picture of the girls all decked out for a charity ball or riding horses on their fabulous estate in Camelot, Virginia, her only remark would be a seemingly preoccupied “how nice,” or something equally innocuous before changing the subject entirely.

Jillian had simply thought that the lives of the rich and famous held no interest at all for her very practical, hardworking mom. At least, she had until two days before her mom had died.

That was when she’d finally told Jillian who her father was.

She was the illegitimate daughter the man on the screen was talking about. And he had promised he would tell no one she existed.

His somber image gave way to a reporter who looked properly grave himself as he proceeded to recap what William had just said about Tess Kendrick having been abused by her ex-husband, then blackmailed into silence with supposedly incriminating pictures of William and an unidentified woman.

It barely registered to Jillian that she had been mistaken for William’s lover. She barely even noticed that her name hadn’t been mentioned. All that mattered was that William Kendrick had just broken his word to her.

The basket of laundry had slid from her arms, bits of pale neutrals and pastels now scattered over beige carpet. She had met him only once. Grief, resentment and a whole host of bitter and unidentified emotions had driven her to seek him out a few weeks after her mom’s death. As ambivalent as she had felt about him, and because she’d had no desire to become tabloid fodder herself, she’d made it unquestionably clear that she didn’t want their relationship made public. As quickly as he had agreed, she’d felt certain he hadn’t wanted that, either, if for no other reason than to avoid the scandal such news would create. He had promised her—promised—that he would tell no one other than his wife that she existed.

She pressed her fingers to her mouth, realized she was shaking. She wasn’t sure if she felt sick, furious or numb as the newscaster began to speculate about who—and where—the daughter from his affair might be. All she knew for certain was that her mother had never stopped loving William Kendrick. The admission had come with nearly her dying breath. Yet, as much as Jillian loved and respected the woman who had held her head high and raised her illegitimate daughter alone, Jillian couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything remotely resembling affection for the man who had fathered her. Because her mother had shied from involvement with any other man, she suspected that he had hurt her badly. And now he had betrayed Jillian herself.

The change she’d felt coming on minutes ago no longer seemed welcome at all. As she watched the image on the screen cut to archive footage of Tess and Bradley, then to William as a young senator to capitalize on the dual scandals coming to light, what she’d felt now was more like the beginning of a nightmare.

Chapter One

Ben Garrett did his best work under pressure. He thrived on challenges, deadlines and delivering the impossible. Obstacles were nothing more than hurdles to be jumped, shifted or removed as he saw fit. But the part of the game he loved best was developing strategies to alter or influence the public’s perception, and he always played the game to win.

His clients paid him handsomely to see that he did.

The hard muscles of his athletic frame shifted beneath his tailored three-piece suit as he moved from the unanswered front door to the side gate of the modest beige duplex in the working-class suburb Hayden, Pennsylvania. The toylike, earth-green Volkswagen he recognized as Jillian Hadley’s sat parked under the carport that belonged to her unit. It was a good bet that she was around there somewhere.

Ben’s specialty was media relations for The Garrett Group’s high-profile clients; Washington, D.C.’ s movers and shakers, and the rich and famous—or infamous—who wanted their images enhanced, subdued or altered completely. In the fifteen years since he’d earned his MBA from Yale, he’d also earned a reputation in those rarefied circles as the expert at damage control. That ability was why his father, the senior partner in their prestigious public relations firm, and William Kendrick, his father’s close friend and a longtime client, had both insisted that he handle Miss Hadley himself.

The good news was that he would get to her before the press descended on her like vultures on carrion. The bad news was that the information he’d been given about William’s newly disclosed daughter left him little to work with. All he knew about Jillian Hadley was that she taught grade school, that her sole meeting with William had not gone well and that no one had been able to reach her to warn her about yesterday’s press conference. What concerned him most, though, what concerned them all for that matter, was that she was a potential powder keg in the scandal that had broken twenty-four hours ago.

There hadn’t been a newspaper, television station or radio talk show in the country that hadn’t jumped on the stories about William’s youngest daughter, Tess, being blackmailed by her ex-husband, and about William’s newly revealed affair and offspring. The gossip had gone international at the speed of light. The London Daily Star had announced the Crisis in Camelot in bold type on its front page. Headlines in Paris, Rome and on the Internet had leaned toward the theme of Tess paying for the sins of her father and speculation about whether his unnamed daughter had been paid for her silence.

Since no one had any idea what Jillian might say, it was Ben’s job to keep the powder keg she represented from blowing. Part of his job, anyway. William had also been adamant that she be protected from the media for her own sake as much as to protect him and his family from any potentially damaging comments she might make.

He reached a small side gate in the white picket fence surrounding the backyard. Letting himself through, he strode past the neat, profusely blooming flowerbed at the side of the house. He had allotted himself twenty-four hours to accomplish his goal with Miss Hadley. As he absently checked the date and time on his Rolex, he hoped fervently that this aspect of the “affair situation,” as it was being referred to in the office, would go as smoothly as the press conference he’d arranged and scripted yesterday. He was in the middle of a little family crisis of his own.

He rounded the corner of the tidy little yard that looked much like the small yards on either side of it. Fruit trees and flower beds took up most of the space both sides of the duplex apparently shared. The bulk of his attention, though, settled on the slender brunette standing barefoot in the grass by a redwood picnic table.

He recognized her delicate cameo-like profile from the photos of her he’d seen yesterday. And her hair. The long, wild curls tumbled past her shoulders in a cloud of unrestrained dark silk.

In the space of seconds his glance shifted over her gentle curves. The white tank top and the khaki knee-length skirt she wore were the antithesis of the corporate, chic and designer attire worn by most the women in his sphere, the sophisticated Kendrick women included. If she was wearing makeup, he couldn’t tell. As she sensed his presence and glanced toward him, she simply looked tanned, healthy and far younger than the thirty-three years he knew her to be.

Still assessing her, he felt himself frown. He hadn’t expected her to appear so…natural. He didn’t expect how cheated he felt, either, when the smile of greeting that curved her lush mouth and lit her beautiful dark eyes died at the sight of him.

From that soft smile, she’d clearly expected him to be someone she knew. At the very least, she hadn’t expected to be faced with a total stranger.

Not wanting to alarm her by getting close enough to offer his hand, he stopped near the opposite end of the table and motioned toward the house.

“I rang your doorbell but no one answered,” he told her, explaining his presence in her backyard. “I’m Ben Garrett, Miss Hadley. William Kendrick’s public relations manager.”

Jillian’s heart gave an unfamiliar little lurch as the lean hunk of dark-haired, blue-eyed perfection in the expensively tailored suit gave her an easygoing smile. The rich, deep tones of his voice held equal notes of reserve and friendliness. So did the strong, decidedly handsome lines of his face. The combination might have struck her as rather remarkable to achieve had she considered it. As it was, she was too busy dealing with dismay at his presence to worry about his effect on her pulse.

“William said someone was coming when he called this morning.” William Kendrick had actually called her twice before that. So had his secretary. Theirs had been four of the messages waiting for her last night on her answering machine. “I’m sorry he didn’t reach you in time.”

One dark eyebrow slowly arched. “In time?”

“To tell you that coming here was unnecessary.”

She looked back to the rocks and twigs she’d gathered for her classroom’s new terrarium and began placing them in a plastic bag. The kids wouldn’t return to school for a few days. This week was for teacher preparation. Yet, rather than class sizes and curriculums, it seemed every conversation she’d had or overheard had included gossip about William Kendrick’s mystery daughter and the affair tainting what had been long regarded as his and Katherine Kendrick’s perfect marriage. Sympathy had leaned heavily toward the wronged party, the beautiful Katherine. After all, her husband had cheated on her. Worse, he’d had a child by that other woman.

That woman was her mother.

Jillian had stayed as far from those conversations as she could and tried to tune out what she couldn’t help overhear. When Carrie Teague, her teaching partner for the past two years, had noticed her lack of participation in the discussions and asked point-blank what she thought about the scandals, Jillian had offered the excuse of being too jet-lagged to care about anything but school and sleep. That comment had, mercifully, led to questions about her vacation and the uncomfortable subject had been dropped. Temporarily, anyway.

From the messages Jillian had listened to last night, she now knew that William had made an honest effort to reach her before his broadcast, to explain what he felt he had to do. Deep down, she supposed she even understood that he’d done the only thing he could do to protect and to clear the name of his real daughter, as she thought of Tess. She had also been infinitely relieved to learn when William had called that morning that he hadn’t divulged her name or anything about her to the press. None of that changed her opinion of him, though. Her other reasons for feeling so resentful toward him remained firmly in place.

In an ideal world, she would never even have heard the Kendrick name. And Ben Garrett wouldn’t be standing in her backyard messing with her heart rate.

He hadn’t offered anything remotely resembling a goodbye. He’d done nothing but remain with his size-elevens planted firmly on the lawn studying her as a scientist might some intriguing, or unexpected, specimen he needed to identify and catalogue.

“Actually, I’m afraid my presence is necessary. Or will be.”

His too-thorough scrutiny unnerved her. Preferring that he didn’t notice how her hands were shaking, she left the sack on the table and crossed her arms. “You said you’re in public relations?”

“I am.”

“Then, honestly,” she insisted, “we really don’t have anything to discuss. I don’t deal with the public. Not in the sense you do. William said no one knows who I am,” she said, not knowing what else to call the man she refused to refer to as “my father.” “I’m perfectly happy to remain anonymous. The Kendricks have their lives. I have mine. I’d prefer it remain that way.”

Her gaze remained direct and uncompromising. Like her words, that expression spoke more of conviction than challenge. It was her body language that told him how valiantly she was trying to hide how upset she was with William and what he’d done.

It also seemed as obvious as the uneasy way her glance finally flicked from his that she lacked either the sophistication or the practice to effectively pull off that feat. Anxiety had her hugging her arms tightly enough to leave white marks on her skin.

It relieved him to know she wanted to remain unknown. She wouldn’t get her wish, but that desire meant she wasn’t interested in running out to sell her story, whatever it was, to the highest bidder. That desire, however, also gave him a new concern. All she would have to do is repeat in public what she’d just told him and the press would be all over her preference to have nothing to do with the Kendricks. As persistent as the media tended to be, they’d hound her into the ground trying to find out why.

Rubbing the side of his nose, he considered how best to help her face how complicated her life was about to get. “Things aren’t quite that simple, Miss Hadley. William didn’t tell the press who you are,” he confirmed, deciding to simply lay it all out. “But you won’t be able to avoid them. I figure you have somewhere between a couple of hours and a couple of days before reporters show up here.”

Her expression held infinite patience as she cocked her head. “If he didn’t tell anyone who I am, then how will they find me?”

“One of William’s attorneys learned this morning that a tabloid paid an undisclosed source a small fortune for copies of the photographs. The ones William refused to describe or show during his press conference,” he explained. “One of those pictures contains a shot of the two of you in what looks like an embrace…”

Confusion entered her tone. “There was no ‘embrace.’ He might have tried to put his arm around—”

“Another shows you in what looks like an argument,” he continued without pause. “Both show the two of you beside a Volkswagen with Pennsylvania plates. William said the car was yours.

“The tabloid probably already knows who you are,” he warned. “And any news editor who gets his hands on those photos will use his contacts to run those plates just like William’s attorney did.”

Confusion gave way to uneasy comprehension. “Is that how you found me?”

He shook his head, stepped closer. “We already knew you lived in Hayden. You’d told William,” he reminded her. “Locating you was just a matter of plugging your name and town into the Internet.”

“I’m on the Internet?”

“Just about everyone is,” he assured her. “Anyway,” he continued, more interested in making his point than in her apparent ignorance of what could be obtained for five bucks from the right search site, “the attorney ran your plates just to see what anyone else running them would come up with.

“What they’ll get is your name and address and the name of the lien holder on your little Beetle out there. Once they know who and where you are and you’re recognized as the woman in those photos, your anonymity will be history.”

Ben’s first impression of the woman he’d been sent to guide and protect was that she was the sort of person who went through life flying under the radar. Considering her and her modest surroundings, she appeared to be a quietly attractive woman of average means, one whose life was as relatively uncomplicated as she appeared to be herself. She didn’t want the world to know her. She didn’t want notoriety or fame. From what she’d rather emphatically made clear to him, all she wanted was whatever it was she had now.

It wasn’t his fault her life was about to be upended. Yet, something about the way she struggled to mask her apprehension as she searched his face brought an unexpected twinge of sympathy. And guilt. She was looking to him for help. Just not the kind he was prepared to offer.

“The pictures were sold?” Looking as if she absolutely did not want to believe what she’d heard, she lifted her hand, pushed her fingers through the wild tangle of her incredible hair. “Who else had access to them?”

Her motions drew the soft cotton of her tank top taut below the fullness of her breasts. Ben felt his breath stall. He was already more aware than he wanted to be of the litheness of her feminine body, the delicacy of her shoulder blades, the long length of her shapely legs. He preferred women who looked refined, sophisticated, sleek. Standing barefoot in the grass with the soft, golden skin of her slender limbs exposed and her thick curls uncontrolled, she looked more like a young earth mother. He could easily see her wandering down a beach or through the woods with a dozen little kids in tow.

Still, there was no denying the quick tightening low in his gut as he met the anxiety in her eyes once more. As cynical as he’d become, the sympathy he felt for her was disconcerting enough. The last thing he wanted was the reminder of just how long he’d gone without a woman.

“Tess Kendrick’s ex-husband. Bradley Ashworth,” he said, burying his responses to her the way he did anything else he didn’t want to think about. “We suspect he sold them in retaliation for William exposing him as the louse he is.”

A little panic on her part wouldn’t have surprised him. At the very least, he expected a little more cooperation.

“They might know who I am,” she conceded, “but I don’t have to talk to them.”

“That’s not going to stop them from invading your life. That’s why I’m here,” he emphasized, needing her to grasp the gravity of the situation. “My job is to help you with the media that’s going to descend the minute they discover your identity.” And to put the proper spin on what you say, he admitted to himself. If she knew that, though, she’d only want to get rid of him that much faster. “They will arrive,” he assured her. “If not today, then tomorrow for certain. As difficult as it may be to accept, you can’t avoid any of this.”

The woman clearly had no idea how vulnerable she was. Hoping he didn’t sound impatient with her, he deliberately gentled his tone.

“William wants you to know he’s not about to leave you to the wolves. And that’s exactly what you’ll think has happened once your phone starts ringing with requests for statements and interviews.” He slowly shook his head. “This really isn’t something you want to try to handle alone.”

For a moment Jillian said nothing. She found it disconcerting enough to be face-to-face with one of her famous father’s associates. But Ben Garrett was unsettling in his own right. The man was confident to a fault, incredibly persuasive in his arguments and utterly convinced of his certainty of what was about to happen. Yet, even more disturbing than his absolute insistence was the physical impact of his presence.

He possessed the same compelling aura of authority and influence she’d sensed in William when she’d met him, only in a more elemental and infinitely more disquieting way. He stood nearly ten feet from her, yet she could almost feel the energy that radiated from him like a force field. That raw power sensitized her nerves, tugged hard at something low in her belly.

She didn’t doubt for an instant that he was a man accustomed to achieving exactly what he set out to accomplish. He was the alpha other men envied and women turned stupid for—just as her mother had done with William. But turning stupid over a total stranger wasn’t on her list of back-to-school resolutions. Nor was she about to have a stranger tell her what she should do. Especially one she strongly suspected wanted only to cover William’s tracks.

Feeling a definite need for the situation in general and this unnerving man in particular to go away, she adopted the end-of-discussion tone she used when a student was being particularly obtuse.