The Reluctant Heir Read online

  “So, your father’s sole instructions were to find me and give me that.”

  “Yes.” He held the envelope out again.

  None of this made sense. She’d never said anything. Never tried to see Carter. Ripped up the damn check his father had given her as a payoff, but there’s no way the elder and famously impulsive Mr. Jameson had waited all these months to send Carter to try to pay her off again. Something else was happening here.

  A terrible thought floated through her mind, freezing her to the spot by the door. “Is he with you?”

  “My father?” Carter shook his head. “He’s not even in the country, as far as I know. He and the new wife live in Tortola. Since I haven’t heard from him in a few weeks, I’m assuming he’s back there.”

  She noticed Carter didn’t sound upset about living that many miles apart. The family dysfunction was his business, but she did have a few seconds of silent celebration at the thought of being some distance away from Carter’s father. “Good.”

  Carter eyed her, his gaze assessing her, as he leaned against the wall next to the window. “I’m guessing whatever happened between you two was bad.”

  “The good news is you’ve done your duty. Daddy asked you to visit me and you did. Mission accomplished.” It was time for Carter to leave. She needed to make plans, figure out where she went from here.

  “I still have the envelope, so I’m not convinced we’ve resolved anything.”

  “The reality is I’m not related to the man, so I don’t have to do what he wants.”

  Carter made a noise that sounded a bit like huh before he started talking. “Any chance you’re going to fill in the blanks and tell me what all of this is about?”

  No way would she give up her small advantage by sharing anything she knew. “Hey, stud. You came to see me.”

  “I guess shy little Hanna is all grown-up now.”

  She reached out and opened the door. “And she’s done with this conversation.”

  He pushed off from the wall and took the few steps that put him in front of her. “You know this isn’t over, right?”

  Her hand tightened on the doorknob. “Sure feels like it.”

  His smile returned as he nodded. “Goodbye for now, Hanna.”

  Then he was in the hall and she slammed the door behind him. Her heart hammered in her chest as she tried to drag in enough air to breathe. She gulped and panted as she fell against the door, letting her back slide down when her knees gave out and she fell to the floor in a boneless heap.

  “Now what?”

  * * *

  Carter walked out of the lobby and stepped into the cold upstate New York evening. Winter fell early and heavy here. There was talk of snow in the forecast and he wanted to be long gone before it arrived.

  It was a little after five. The sun had set and clouds filled the darkening sky. He zipped his jacket to block some of the biting October wind. He glanced up at Hanna’s window and saw a peek of light behind the drawn curtains blocking his view inside.

  She might not want to reminisce with him, but he possessed some vivid memories of her. Shy and pretty. She’d been a teenager on his family’s Virginia estate and had hidden behind her older, more outgoing sister. The Wilde girls. Back then he’d thought of himself and Hanna as friends. It wasn’t until he was older that he’d realized he’d held the sisters at a distance. He’d all but ignored Hanna, treating her as the child of the “help” and nothing more, just as his father insisted.

  Carter shook his head, hating the reminder of his past and who he’d once been. The same history he’d run from and gotten dragged back into when his brother called him home, asking for help. Now Carter was the one who needed assistance. At the very least, a little information. He couldn’t do much more without that.

  He grabbed his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and called Jackson Richards, the real hub of information at Jameson Industries and one of the few people in the world Carter actually liked and trusted.

  “Hey, I need your help.”

  “Nothing new there. You still working on your top-secret mission for your dad?”

  Carter decided to ignore the question as he listened to Jackson typing in the background. “Ready for the list?”

  “Wait, don’t you have an assistant?”

  “I don’t actually work at the company. I’m happy staying on the Virginia property, far away from the family business.”

  Carter’s preference for the Virginia countryside was a fact his father had once used to drive a wedge between Carter and his brothers. They were the business-minded ones. He was the disappointment. Carter had heard the refrain so often it rang in his ears even now.

  He’d come back to the D.C. area expecting to check in on his brothers and help out with their ongoing fight with their dad about governing interest in the business, then go again. When that didn’t happen he’d settled in to the Virginia estate. It was a small act of defiance against his father, who had kicked him out of that same property almost a year ago and told him never to come back.

  But now he needed some intel. “No one is as good at this stuff as you are.”

  “Flattery won’t work.” Jackson cleared his throat. “For the record, expensive liquor will.”

  “Done. As soon as I get back, I’ll come by with a bottle.” Carter moved out of the glare of the streetlight and leaned against the brick wall of Hanna’s apartment building. Cars buzzed by and people moved around him on the sidewalk, likely on their way to the bars and restaurants two blocks over. “I need all the information you can get me on Hanna and Gena Wilde. Sisters. Their dad used to work for our family at our Virginia estate.”

  “Do you know what you sound like when you say estate like that?”

  “I have an idea.” Carter glanced at his watch and made a quick decision. “You have three hours to gather intel.”

  The typing stopped. “What the hell? I do have a real job, you know.”

  A fair argument but a strange anxious feeling settled inside Carter. He sensed if he didn’t talk to Hanna again soon, this time armed with information, she’d slip away. And he didn’t want to go another ten years without seeing her again.

  The wary blue eyes, almost baby blue. That wavy, shoulder-length, deep auburn hair that he ached to run his fingers through. The way her jeans balanced on her hips, giving him the tiniest glimpse of bare pale stomach as the edge of her long-sleeve T-shirt shifted around. He wanted to know more. To talk with her. To dig and see what had her on edge.

  He guessed he’d trace most of her problems right back to his father. Carter had no idea what had her spooked or what game his father was playing, but something bigger than an envelope was happening here.

  Carter took it out and studied it. No writing or clue to the contents. It was killing him not to rip it open. If he didn’t have an answer in a few days, he would. Until then, he could respect her privacy...but barely.

  Jackson sighed into the phone. “Does this have something to do with your highly problematic father?”

  “Doesn’t everything? Talk to you soon.”

  Carter hung up before Jackson could complain or swear. He glanced up at Hanna’s studio a second time. “It looks like I’m not going anywhere just yet.”

  Two

  Hanna decided to get away. Not forever. Just long enough for the Jamesons to find another target. Her job was a temporary solution anyway. She cleaned houses and businesses. Worked part-time in the coffee shop. She could take time off but she had to do it without pay, which sucked. That choice would be a financial struggle but going round and round with the Jamesons could cost her the equilibrium she’d been fighting to gain ever since her sister’s death.

  For the hundredth time, Hanna wondered if she should have just taken the money Eldrick offered her months ago to stay away from Carter. She’d tried to find Carter back then, a
nd then the stay-away letters started. Then came the bribe.

  The cash would have made rebuilding her life much easier. Saying no just made Eldrick double down on the threats of attorneys and lawsuits if she came near his family or talked about them with anyone. He thought it was her job to keep his family secrets.

  Man, she hated the Jamesons and how they turned everything upside down. Irrational or not, that hate extended to all Jamesons...even, admittedly to a lesser degree, to the one she used to stare at as he played football on the lawn with his brothers. The one who turned her into a babbling fool every time he smiled at her.

  Back then, of course. She was wiser now.

  She dunked the mop in the murky water with a bit too much force. The wheels under the bucket spun around. Before she could catch it, the bucket tumbled and smacked into the coffee counter, sending the dirty water spilling over the sides.

  Apparently, it was going to be that kind of day.

  She sighed as she balanced the mop handle against the edge of the counter and wiped her hands on her faded blue jeans. A tingle at the base of her neck had her glancing up and turning around. The shadow moved in the glass front door of Morning Grind, the coffee shop she cleaned to offset part of the cost of her rent upstairs. Her breath hitched as the face came into view.

  Carter.

  Of course it was.

  It was five in the morning and still dark outside, but she could see every inch of that amazing face. Watch his shoulders lift as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, likely trying to fight off the punishing cold that had settled in early this year, or so the locals told her.

  She should let him freeze. Let him form a big Jameson ice cube right there on the sidewalk.

  So tempting. But that would just give his father a reason to breeze into town, blaming and threatening her about something new.

  She wiped her hands on her jeans again. This time not to dry them off but to beat down the nerves jumping around inside her. A strange mix of wariness and excitement hit her the second Carter pinned her with a crooked smile.

  No wonder her sister had gotten reeled in. If the gossip site stories about him were true, a lot of women had trouble saying no to the guy.

  Maybe the whole turning-otherwise-smart-women-into-giant-puddles-of-goo thing was an inherited skill. A family trait of some sort. If so, she needed to get over the affliction and fast.

  Her hand shook as she turned the lock and opened the door a fraction. “What?”

  “You need to work on your welcoming tone.” He grumbled something under his breath before talking at normal volume again. “I was hoping you’d be a bit happier to see me this morning.”

  “Since you seem determined to stalk me, no. For the record, I’m not into that.” Or being unsure or off-kilter or vulnerable. None of those feelings worked for her, even though they all raced through her now as she tried not to notice how the wind brought a sexy rush of color to his cheeks.

  “I wanted to apologize for just dropping in on you last night.”

  Sure he did. “By dropping in on me this morning.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted even higher, showing off that arresting smile. “Now that you mention it, I guess this visit wasn’t all that well thought-out either.”

  She studied him, letting her gaze wander over that mouth before giving him full-on eye contact. The cute, self-deprecating act held a certain charm, but she knew it was just an act. No longer a carefree boy, he was a man who possessed power and money. In her experience, the Jamesons used both of those as a weapon against others.

  Then there was the more obvious problem. “How did you know where to find me at this time of the morning?”

  His mouth opened and closed twice.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m waiting.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  She knew stalling when she heard it. Heck, she excelled at that sort of thing. He couldn’t fool her. “Feel free to use words.”

  He made a strangled noise that sounded like hmm. “I’m going to be honest with you.”

  “That would be nice.” Not that she’d believe whatever he said, but it would be interesting to see what subterfuge he tried to use on her.

  He unzipped his coat, just enough for her to see the V-neck of the blue sweater underneath. “I had a friend back at the Jameson office look into you.”

  Look into? Creative word choice. “You mean, investigate me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  That was kind of her point. “So, you had one of your employees not investigate me.”

  “I don’t actually work for Jameson Industries.”

  “Uh-huh.” It was as if he didn’t know his own last name or for some reason thought the verbal gymnastics would work on her. Either way, she wasn’t buying it. “I often call up places where I don’t work and get people to scurry around, looking stuff up for me in the middle of the night.”

  “It does seem to lack credibility when you say it that way.”

  “Is there another way to say it?”

  She hated to admit that she was enjoying this steady back-and-forth that had her mind clicking.

  After months of reeling and mourning, she still kept to herself, not letting anyone she met move past the acquaintance stage and into the friend stage. Not dating. She blamed her time away from the friendship and dating pool as the reason for the adrenaline surging through her now.

  Not a new round of attraction. Nope, that could not happen.

  “I called in a favor, but that’s not the point.” He held up a hand when she started to respond. “Initially, I assumed coming here and handing you an envelope would get the job done. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, I decided I needed to know more about you.”

  She folded her arms in front of her. “Because that’s not heavy-handed at all.”

  “I wanted to know more about you. About who you are now.” With that, his eyes wandered—not far and not too obvious—but he did give her a quick once-over.

  She hated that her stomach tumbled in response. She vowed to ignore the effect seeing him after all this time still had on her. The weird bubbling giddiness, the feeling of not being good enough or pretty enough. All those sensations she’d felt as a teen still battled inside her, which she found truly ridiculous. Getting older should have made her immune to him and all those stupid insecurities.

  Guilt swamped her. He’d abandoned her sister and her own failure to stick up for Gena, to hold the line and not feel anything for him, was nothing short of a betrayal to her sister. Gena had talked about Carter leaving and his father sniffing around, trying to figure out what Carter had meant to her. She’d warned Hanna to be careful and not trust them.

  Hanna tried to hold on to all of that advice and mistrust, to funnel what had been her sister’s pain and her own frustration, into a defensive shield against Carter. To question every word he said and bury that leftover attraction down deep, but it kept bubbling back to the surface.

  Some of the lightness left his face. “You’ve changed.”

  The words and his seemingly innocent delivery had her anger spiking. Heat raged through her. After all those years of ignoring her, he pretended he had some insight into her then and now. “Did we know each other well enough for you to make that assessment?”

  “I remember the Hanna who would run around the Virginia property and get into everything. Climbing fences and trying to play on the equipment.” He shoved his hands in his dark gray jeans pockets and focused that intense stare on her.

  She didn’t flinch. “You mean the same Virginia property I wasn’t allowed to visit after my dad died?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What?”

  Years before Hanna lost her sister, she lost her father. Her parents had long been divorced but her mom had been listed as her father’s heir and tried to go to t
he cottage he lived in on the Jameson estate. Her mother never talked about what happened during the visit, but she came back with clothes and a few personal items and that was all.

  Hanna knew more existed. Her father had kept a journal. He’d been a faithful employee at the estate for decades. He’d built a life there, had friends and people who worked for him and respected him.

  He died on the job at that stupid Virginia estate and her mother had gotten excuses and two duffel bags filled with dirty shirts.

  Carter shrugged. “Okay. Visit Virginia now.”

  He seemed as surprised to have said the words as she’d been to hear them. “Sure, I’ll just use the key I don’t have and go into the house I’m not allowed to visit in the state I don’t live in.”

  “Maybe the envelope is an invitation to visit.”

  “You think after all this time your father is willing to hand over my father’s property and wrote to tell me?”

  “I can’t explain my father’s actions, but I can offer to help now. If you don’t want anything to do with him or the envelope, then deal with me. Come back to Virginia and get whatever you need.”

  Temptation tugged at her. She could go to the property and maybe get some answers to all those questions about her father’s death. About how a man so skilled could fall off a ladder and die. But that meant trusting Carter and possibly running in to Eldrick. It meant owing them, and she’d vowed never to do that.

  Breaking eye contact, Carter glanced around. His gaze moved over the tables with the chairs stacked on the tops, and the shelves of merchandise. It hesitated on the espresso machine. “You must have vacation days.”

  If he’d looked into her background, he already knew the answer. But, fine. They could play this game.

  “I’m not a full-time employee.” She lifted her chin because she was not going to hide who she was or what she did to earn a living. “I clean houses and buildings. It’s what I do so that I can eat.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “Sometimes I also take shifts here, usually nights and weekends when the college kids who work here would rather go out.”