The Rival's Heir

Three

Way to make friends and influence people. Judah watched the Duchess step toward the elevator, cursing when the doors closed on a froth of fabric. She was gone, and he should be glad.

Should being the operative word.

She’d just reamed him but instead of getting pissed he’d just been turned on... But, in his defense, she was smokin’.

She was also gone.

Judah shook his head. Well, that was that. Looking down at the little girl he held, he watched as her eyes fluttered closed and her mouth softened. She did look like him, Judah admitted. Then again, he and Jake both took after their dad and no one ever suspected that they were half siblings and not full blood brothers.

Judah thought he’d been the only casualty of Jake and Carla’s illicit weekend spent together in his apartment but no, they always went a step further than necessary. Why light a Roman candle when you could detonate a bomb?

Judah felt the back of his throat burn. A year and a half had passed; how could the double betrayal still hurt so damn much? He ran his knuckle over Jac’s flower-soft cheek. His pain, the fiery anger, he realized, wasn’t only for him but also for Jacquetta. This little human, this doll-faced child, deserved better than two dysfunctional cretins as parents.

Judah used his free hand to pull his phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and scroll through his contact list. He hadn’t dialed this number in so long, he hoped it was still operational.

The phone buzzed, beeped and started to ring.

Keep your cool, keep your cool...

“Judah, baby.”

Her growly, sexy voice raised nothing more than red-hot anger. “What the hell, Carla? A baby? Are you insane?”

“I know it’s a bit of a surprise, but I need you to take her for a while so I can finish this project.”

“Let me think about that...” Judah replied, trying his utmost to keep his voice low. “No. A thousand times no! This isn’t happening.”

“It is.” Carla’s voice turned hard. “Either you or your brother have to take her until I decide I want her back.”

“Then call Jake, for God’s sake! He’s her father, not me! And don’t you think one of you should’ve let me know I have a niece?”

“You made it very clear to both of us that you’d washed your hands of us.”

“You talk as if I didn’t find you naked in my bed, in a position I still can’t get out of my head. Then you spilled the ugly details of our breakup to distract the press from finding out you were cheating on me with my much younger brother while I dealt with the mess Jake created.”

Why had he even mentioned the past? Carla didn’t care then, and she didn’t care now.

“Call Rossi back or get Jake to come get his daughter,” he said. “She. Is. Not. My. Problem.”

“Do you think it would be wise of me to leave Jac with Jake? He’s an addict with a felony record, thanks to you. He’s not daddy material.”

“Carla, you can’t just dump a baby on me like she’s a UPS parcel!” Okay, he’d borrowed that from the Duchess, but it applied. God, what had he seen in Carla? Oh, yeah, the sex had been phenomenal but like Turkish delight, she was best taken in small doses. “Come and get her, Carla.”

“No,” Carla replied. “I need some time. Just hear me out, please?”

He shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, but his silence gave her room to speak.

“I have a new job, Bertolli is composing an opera and I am the lead character.”

“Yeah, I heard. You are being cast against type.”

“You are not the first to notice that. There have been a lot of insinuations already, about my past, you, my relationship with Bertolli.”

“Which is?”

Carla didn’t answer, which meant there was a very good chance she was sleeping with Bertolli. She was playing with fire. If word got out that she was sleeping with one of Italy’s most conservative, outwardly faithful men, the country’s favorite composer—a national treasure!—she would be labeled a sinful temptress and the press would eat her alive.

Judah walked to the end of the hallway and placed his hand on the floor-to-ceiling window. He looked down at the bustling streets of downtown Boston below, resting his forehead on the cool glass.

“There was a story recently, suggesting you are not her father. I cannot take the chance of the world finding out that Jake is Jacquetta’s father and not you. It was enough of a scandal that I had a baby out of wedlock but if they find out about my liaison with Jake—”

“Affair.”

“If they find out about Jake, that he is your brother and a heroin addict, that I had his baby not yours, the story will be on the front page of every tabloid from here to China. It will be a scandal and my contract with the new production says I have to remain scandal-free.”

His heart bled. None of this had anything to do with him. Jake and Carla had had sex in Judah’s bed and now they had to deal with the consequences of their actions. He was in no way responsible for them or the fruit of their loins.

Judah glanced down at the little girl and ignored the tiny lump in his throat.

She could’ve been his...

No, he didn’t want kids; he never had. He remembered having to change Jake’s diapers, night after night rocking him to sleep because their parents were out on the town or simply out of town. For six years, he’d been Jake’s primary caregiver, the adult in the house. He’d bought Jake clothes, made him meals, packed his school lunches. As a twelve-year-old child himself, Judah had stepped up to the plate and taken on responsibility for another human being—because his father and stepmother were useless—and Judah had promised himself that he would never again put himself in that position.

After a pregnancy scare in his early twenties, he’d wanted a vasectomy, to take the issue off the table permanently. But the doctor refused, telling Judah he was too young, he might still change his mind. Furious, Judah had vowed to find another doctor, but then his career took off and he’d never found the time to go back.

But he would. When he stopped being a monk, he’d find another doctor. He was thirty-five, he hadn’t changed his mind in ten years and he wouldn’t be refused again. As a child, he’d raised his baby brother and he didn’t want to raise another child.

A scholarship to college had been his exit out of that life and he still felt guilty for leaving six-year-old Jake behind. Despite Judah’s attempts to keep tabs on his brother from afar, Jake was smoking weed by thirteen, fully addicted and boosting cars to feed his habit by sixteen. By eighteen, he was in juvie.

Never again would Judah put himself in the position of having to choose between his future and his obligations. So, no kids. And after a few relationships that went nowhere and Car Crash Carla, no commitment.

To anyone.

Ever.

Judah sucked in a calming breath. “I’m at the Sheraton, downtown Boston. Presidential suite. Get Rossi back here.”

Carla pulled in a deep, ragged breath. “I tried to call him just before you called but his phone is off.”

Judah gripped the bridge of his nose and cursed. “Make a plan, Carla.”

Carla thought for a minute. “I’ll call an agency, hire a nanny. They can send someone.”

God, she was going to ask a stranger to pick up Jac? Now that was exactly the type of dick move his father and stepmother would’ve pulled. Judah felt the burn of intense anger. “No, Carla. You will come and get her. Yourself. Personally.”

“I can’t. It’s just not possible.” Carla spluttered her reply, making it sound like he’d asked her to become a nun.

“Jacquetta is your daughter, so you come and get her. It’s not up for negotiation”

Carla finally ran out of expletives. “I’ll come but I need some time.”

“You’ve got a day. Be here in twenty-four hours or I’m going to be the one calling the tabloids, Carla.”

“Judah, no! I am in Como, it will take more time than that.”

“You should’ve thought about that when you played pass-the-parcel with your daughter,” Judah said, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “Hurry up, Carla. The clock is ticking.”

Judah disconnected the call and banged the face of his phone against his forehead. He released his own series of curses and looked down to see Jac sending him a wide-eyed look. “Your mom is something else, kid.”

Jac blinked once, then again and then she smiled, revealing a gorgeous dimple and pink gums. Man, she was cute. And despite being passed from person to person, remarkably sanguine.

“So, I guess it’s you and me for the next twenty-four hours.”

Jac waved her pudgy arms in the air and kicked her legs.

“Glad you are on board with that program. It’s been a while since I made bottles or changed diapers so if you can try not to be hungry or need a change in the next day or so, I’d be grateful.”

Jac sent him what he was sure was a get-real look.

Judah walked her back to where the stroller stood, dropped her bag into the storage compartment and strapped her in. It had been years and years since he’d been in charge of anyone under two feet tall but he still instinctively knew what he was doing.

He could look after this child for a day. A day wasn’t so long. Not when he compared it to looking after his brother day in and day out for six or so years.

This time around he was an adult and he had a voice. And he’d damn well use it.

After work the next afternoon, Darby sat down on the deep purple sofa in the showroom of Winston and Brogan and tucked a bright yellow cushion behind her back. While she loved color, and frequently approved of Jules’s interior design choices, she simply did not like the industry’s current obsession with eggplant. But Winston and Brogan were cutting-edge designers and they always reflected what was hot.

DJ squeezed Darby’s shoulder before sitting down next to her, the diamond on the ring finger of her left hand so big Darby was sure she could see it from space. Jules’s emerald was just as large, as valuable, as impressive. Darby’s future brothers-in-law—one by law and both by love—were crazy about Jules and DJ respectively. Darby was happy they’d found their soul mates.

Hers was probably stuck up a tree or had been run over by an out-of-control bus. Or maybe there wasn’t a man who would put up with a determined, driven, stubborn, type-A personality with fertility issues.

Jules placed a cup of tea on the white coffee table between them before taking the seat to DJ’s left. DJ squeezed Darby’s hand. “Sorry you didn’t get the Grantham-Ford project, Darbs.”

Darby forced a shrug. She hated to lose, even if it was to a Pritzker Prize winner. “It wasn’t a surprise that Huntley got it. They’d be fools to pass up his design. It was magnificent.”

So was Huntley, for a cold, hard jerk bucket.

Jules linked her hands around her knee. “And have they announced who will be his liaison between Huntley and Associates and the Grantham-Ford Foundation?”

Every architect in the city wanted a shot to work with Huntley, to be at his beck and call. Everybody but Darby. She’d seen the measure of the man last night and she was less than impressed.

“Don’t care. It’s an intern position and I’m not interested.” She took the stack of paper DJ handed her and smiled. Financials. A discussion, then her dividend check. Yay.

DJ tapped the end of her pen against the stack of papers in her lap and cleared her throat. “Let’s go through the financials first. Let’s ignore page one and two and go straight to page three.”

Darby flipped to the right page and saw the column detailing income and expenses. Compared to Jules’s interior design income for the past six months, the architectural side of the business—Darby’s side of the business—was trailing Jules’s contribution by half. Up until this year, they’d been equal contributors, with DJ running the finances. It had been the perfect triangle, but now it looked like Darby’s side was collapsing.

She took the check DJ handed her and looked at the total. Then she looked at DJ, wondering if she’d left off a zero.

“This is it?”

“Yes.”

Well, hell.

DJ leaned forward, her eyes sober. “It wasn’t a great quarter, it’s tough out there. The interior design had a boost in income thanks to Noah employing Jules to do yacht interiors, and you had small jobs but nothing that brought in big money.”

Darby stared at her check, her mind spinning. This check didn’t come close to what she needed to pay for IVF. She’d have to put her buildings up for sale immediately, take what she could get for them. She might not even clear her costs, but it would free up the money. Any way she looked at it, she was moving backward, not forward. Dammit.

“There are other factors that contributed to a less than stellar year, Darby.”

“Like?” Darby demanded.

“The rent on this building went up significantly—”

“We agreed we needed to be here, that this was the best place for us to be,” Darby countered. “And that was only a ten percent increase.” She skimmed the lines, looking for other anomalies. “The real reason we aren’t growing is because I didn’t bring in enough income.”

The proof was there, in black and white. She hadn’t been an equal contributor. She’d failed.

Darby didn’t like to fail.

“I’ll make it up to you. This next quarter, you’ll see.” She felt the need to apologize again. “I’m so sorry. You guys have worked so hard and I didn’t pull my weight.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Jules muttered before sending her twin a hard look. “Can I hand you a hair shirt? Would that make you feel better?”

“But—”

“Who bankrolled this business, Darby?” Jules demanded, not giving Darby a chance to answer. “You did. You bought and fixed up that cottage and the profit you made paid our expenses for the first six months. Thanks to you, we didn’t have to borrow money from Mom or Levi or a bank.”

“The cost of renting the warehouse, the additional staff we’ve had to take on because we’ve expanded have all contributed to the drop in profits,” DJ explained. “It’s normal, Darby.”

Darby looked at the profit-loss line and winced. “It’s shocking.”

DJ rolled her eyes. “You are such an overachiever, Darby. We can afford one less than stellar quarter. We still made a small profit.”

But not enough, not nearly enough. From now on, Darby would be all over every project she could find. She’d work longer hours, take in as much work as she could. She had to make up the shortfall, and that meant doubling her income. She needed work, and lots of it.

“Oh, God, she’s got that crazy look in her eye,” Jules said. “You just flicked her competitive switch.” She leaned forward, blue eyes pinning Darby to the seat. “We’re in this together, Darby, so stop thinking this is your problem to solve. This is not a competition.”

It was a refrain she’d heard all her life: you’re too competitive, Darby. You can’t treat anything as fun, Darby. You don’t have to win at everything, Darby.

What no one understood was that being competitive was the way she was made. She couldn’t remember a time when winning wasn’t her goal.

One of her earliest memories was being on the playground, wanting to be the girl who could run the fastest, jump the longest, swing the highest. She excelled at all sports, was one of the most popular girls in school. She could remember dreading the results of tests, needing to achieve better grades than, well, everyone. Her report cards were all As and when she got her first C, in college, she’d been devastated.

Yes, she was competitive. Yes, she was driven. But, dammit, being both got results. She just had to refocus, redefine her goals. Do better, be better. Determination, her old friend, flowed through her, energizing her.

Darby Brynn Brogan had always produced the results and she would this time, too. Options, scenarios and plans buzzed through her brain.

DJ leaned her shoulder into Darby’s. “Business is about troughs and highs, Darby, everything balances out in the end. I promise that Winston and Brogan is okay. The next cycle will be a lot better.”

What if it wasn’t? What if the economy worsened? She didn’t deal in what-ifs, in maybes. She needed a plan to boost her side of the business. She needed work, a lucrative contract, and she knew one place where she could get one.

Judah Huntley had found his Boston-based architect. He just needed to be notified of the decision.

Four

After twenty-four hours of looking after Jac, Judah was hanging on to the end of his rope with his teeth. He was exhausted. He needed a shower and to sleep for a week.

Jac, he was certain, was as shattered as he was. She constantly needed to be reassured. She did this incredibly effectively, by crying incessantly. He’d changed her, fed her, held her, paced the room with her but the kid just cried.

And then she cried some more.

How had he done this as a child, a teenager? He must’ve had a guardian angel, some celestial being giving him guidance, because, God knew, the adults in the house hadn’t been interested.

Judah pushed his hand into his hair and wondered, again, where Carla was. He hadn’t managed to reach her the past twelve hours. For the first ten of those hours, he hadn’t been worried. She was in the air. But her flight landed two hours ago and she should have rocked up an hour ago. Judah tensed and reminded himself that Carla had the attention span of a three-week-old puppy. She was easily distracted and being an hour late was nothing.

She could be stuck in a traffic jam or held up at customs. There were lots of reasonable explanations for her tardiness. She would get here eventually. Late but begging him to forgive her, flashing that big smile and batting those enormous, expressive brown eyes.

He would forgive her anything if she would just take Jac and let him get some sleep.

Judah moved Jac up onto his shoulder, patted her little bottom and sighed when she let out another high-pitched wail. Why wasn’t she asleep yet?

Hearing the buzz of the hotel room phone, Judah walked across the presidential suite and lunged for the phone before remembering he was holding a baby. Cursing, he tightened his hold on Jac, shook his head when her volume control went up and barked a greeting into the phone.

“Mr. Huntley you have a visitor—”

“Send her up,” Judah muttered, banging the receiver down. He rubbed Jac’s back. “Your mommy is here, Jac. Think she can save us both?”

Jac’s wail was his answer and he nodded. “I understand your worry. But if I know your mom, she will have brought a nanny with her and you’ll be in safe hands.”

Sleep was within his grasp. He looked across the room to the open door of the bedroom, sighing at the California king-size bed made up with fine Egyptian sheets and an expensive comforter. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen and he would be facedown in blessed quiet.

He liked quiet. He liked calm. Most of all, he liked sleep.

Judah went to stand by the front door. He would stay calm, he told himself. He would just hand Jac over, not engage with his volatile ex-lover—screaming and throwing stuff was Carla’s favorite way to negotiate an argument—and then he’d lock the door behind him and strip off as he headed to his bedroom. He smelled like regurgitated milk since Jac had shown her disgust for the situation by vomiting all over his shirt. He should shower but he probably wouldn’t; his need for sleep was too strong.

At thirty-five, he was too old to go for days without sleep. He was too old for drama, full stop.

Judah yanked open the door. All thoughts about keeping his cool disappeared. “I always thought you were unbelievably self-absorbed, but this behavior is beyond where I thought you would ever go. She’s a little girl, Carla, not a doll—Jesus.”

Judah blinked once, then again before lifting his free hand to rub his bleary eyes. But when he opened his eyes again, the Duchess still stood in the doorway, her silver-gray eyes dominating her face.

Hoping against hope, Judah pulled her to the side and stuck his head into the corridor. Nope, no feisty Italian opera singer in sight. He looked down at his watch. She was now an hour and a half late.

Judah was, not to put too fine a point on it, starting to worry. He needed to start making some calls. Something about this entire situation felt wrong.

“This isn’t a good time, Duchess.”

The use of the nickname didn’t impress her, but Judah didn’t care. He was too tired to deal with an uptight blonde.

She stepped into the hallway, carefully shut the door behind her and looked at the still-crying Jac. “How long has she been upset?”

“Forever,” Judah replied wearily. “I don’t think she’s stopped crying.”

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