Claiming His Secret Heir. Joanne Rock
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was going to fake amnesia to find out what he had to say about her disappearance. She had to know for sure if her father had been lying to her about her husband.
“I’m honestly not sure.” She allowed all the doubts and fears of the last months to come through in her voice. That much was not an act. “We’ll have to ask him because...” She bit her lip and blinked back the swell of emotion before she spilled out a lie that was crucial to getting the answers she needed for her child. “I don’t remember.”
* * *
“What did you just say?” Damon McNeill pressed the pause button on the video he’d been watching on the big screen in the downstairs media room.
He’d asked not to be disturbed while he watched a hacker’s demonstration of how to unlock the security on the software Damon’s company was bringing to market in the spring. The hacker had found legitimate issues Damon’s technical team would need to patch. If he asked his own staff to troubleshoot, he would have gotten thirty-page reports that gave him the all-clear to go into production. Ask a twenty-two-year-old who busted complex digital coding for the thrills and the cash? He got results in forty-eight hours.
Except he’d have to rewind the video to the start now, because he couldn’t keep his focus on the demonstration when he was getting calls from the housekeeping service. Damn it. He’d only hired outside help to get the house ready to put on the market since he didn’t want to keep the place he’d barely set foot in since construction had finished a year ago.
Caroline had loved their Los Altos Hills home, spending weeks with the architect to get the design just right. And yet she’d disappeared from the property mere hours after setting foot in it for the first time after it was completed. That was more than enough reason for him to want the house gone from his life forever.
“Mr. McNeill, there’s a woman at the gate.” The head of the maid service had arrived this morning to personally oversee the housecleaning and stage photos for the Realtor. “She says she’s your wife.”
The phone slid from his hand, dropping halfway down to the chair before Damon slapped at it, stopping the descent by pinning the cell to his chest.
He went motionless, holding the device in place while keeping his heart in his rib cage at the same time.
What. The. Hell.
“What kind of joke is this?” He knew Caroline couldn’t be out there. He’d hired private investigators to find her. He’d paid a ransom to someone claiming to have kidnapped her. He’d searched half the world for her himself, convinced something had happened to her even though her wealthy and powerful father insisted Caroline had simply found Damon unsuitable and no longer wished to be married.
Stephan Degraff had said Caroline wished to travel and was entitled to her privacy, a story that was upheld by the occasional hits on her credit card. An apartment rented briefly in Prague. A used car purchased in Kiev.
Damon had never bought it.
He shot to his feet.
“No joke, sir.” The housekeeper’s voice was cool and modulated, as if she’d grown accustomed to disagreeable clients long ago. “She has a marriage certificate with your name on it and she looks like the photograph I’m staring at over the mantel. Shall we open the gate?”
Caroline on his doorstep after her father insisted she’d seen the error of her ways in marrying Damon and had walked out on him for good? Not damn well likely.
“I’ll be right there.” Damon was already charging toward the door. He shoved his way through with one shoulder. “Find the number for the local police, in case we need to send this crackpot a message about what happens to people who play pranks like impersonating my wife.”
Cold fury roared through him. Caroline had been gone for ten and a half months. He’d chased false leads all over Europe, tracking withdrawals from her bank account and use of her credit card, trying to find her. All the while her father insisted she’d left her marriage and wished to be left alone. But then a ransom note had shown up weeks later, which he saw as proof she’d been kidnapped. But the police had never believed the kidnapping theory, insistent the ransom note was sent by someone who took advantage of her disappearance by demanding cash for her safe return.
Damon had gladly paid, transferring money to an offshore account on the appointed day. He’d never heard from the so-called kidnappers again.
Pounding his way up the stairs to the main floor, he couldn’t wait to see who would have the nerve to pull a prank like this. He barreled through the handcrafted double doors that had delayed their move-in date by two weeks and stalked down the stone walkway covered in dried leaves that led to a fountain imported from India.
He hated all of it. And he rarely had an outlet for any of the fury that had seethed in him for weeks—fury that was a welcome change from the old fears for Caroline, the guilt that he hadn’t done more to find her and the stark sense of loss...
Holy. Hell.
He stopped on the stone driveway leading down to the wrought iron gate.
A woman stood outside the heavy bars, her fingers clutching the filigree that surrounded the house number in the center of the entrance. She was the right height. Even from this distance, he could recognize those dark brown eyes. The delectably full lips. The hair that had once been sun-streaked blond was now a shade of honey gold and pinned back in a way that showed hollows under cheeks formerly rounded with good health. Her frame was thinner. Her skin paler. And her expression was wary, lacking the vibrant self-confidence of the capable businesswoman he remembered.
Yet there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind.
Caroline Degraff had blindsided him the first time they met, igniting an incendiary passion that made him overlook every need for caution. Her father coveted Damon’s company, but it didn’t matter. Stephan Degraff had sent his smart, exquisite daughter to spy on Damon’s operation, possibly to undermine him and oust him from his own company. But who cared? Damon would have given up everything—everything—to have Caroline.
Just when he’d thought he’d won her forever, after a honeymoon so beautiful that it hurt to recall, Caroline had vanished. She took her wallet and her car, a bag of clothes and a few prescription pills, all signs that, according to the cops, meant she left of her own volition. Her powerful father had convinced the police his daughter was entitled to her privacy and that she would file for divorce in her own time. The fact that Caroline left behind her wedding ring seemed to support the theory. Local law enforcement refused to file a missing person report, leaving Damon on his own to locate her. He’d been advised by multiple private investigators and the police not to talk to the media, so he hadn’t. A story had been leaked to the press at one point, but her father had forced the news outlet to print a retraction. His lone effort to reach out to the public—discreetly asking for any information about her from the employees who had worked with them both at Transparent—had resulted in that ransom note.
Yet he never saw Caroline again.
Until now.
It occurred to him he’d stopped moving toward her. That he’d been staring at her like he’d seen a ghost for long, drawn-out moments, his head flooding with memories while his fingers ached with the need to touch her and see if she was real.
“Caroline.” He forced himself into motion again, even though he had no idea what to say. Had she left him? Was she here for that divorce her father promised she would one day demand?
She backed up a step from the gate as he neared. She wore jeans with threadbare knees and faded thighs that hugged her subtle curves. A gray wool sweater with fat toggle buttons kept the chill out; the temperature was in the midfifties, with a cold breeze blowing off the bay. She wore no makeup, her face looking younger even as the expression in her eyes seemed far older than he remembered. She looked wary. Cautious.
And, if he read her expression correctly...confused. She appeared bewildered by his appearance even though she was the one who had shown up on his doorstep.