His Accidental Heir

She would call his counselor before saying anything to him. That call would be right after she spoke to a lawyer. She wasn’t even ready to tell her mother yet. Analise Delphine’s health was fragile and stress could aggravate it. Maresa wanted to be sure she was calm before she spoke to her mother. They’d all been in the dark for months about Trina’s pregnancy. A few more hours wouldn’t matter one way or another.

“I noticed on the dog walker’s résumé that she has experience working in a day care.” Cameron folded the paper from Trina and inserted it into an exterior pocket of the diaper bag. “And as it happens, I already walked the dog. Would you like me to text her and ask her to meet you somewhere in the hotel to give you a hand?”

Maresa couldn’t imagine what that would cost. But what were her options since she didn’t want to upset her mother? She didn’t have time to return home and give the baby to her mother even if she was sure her mother could handle the shocking news.

“That would be a great help, thank you. The caregiver can meet me in the women’s locker room by the pool in twenty minutes.” Shooting to her feet, Maresa realized she’d imposed on Cameron Holmes’s kindness for far too long. “And with that, I’ll let you and Poppy get back to your morning walk.”

“I’ll go with you. I can carry the baby gear.” He reached for the pink diaper bag, but she beat him to it.

“I’m fine. I insist.” She pasted on her best concierge smile and tried not to think about how comforting it had felt to have him by her side this morning. Now more than ever, she needed job security, which meant she couldn’t let an important guest think she made a habit of bringing her personal life to work. “Enjoy your day, Mr. Holmes.”

* * *

Enjoying his day proved impossible with visions of Maresa Delphine’s pale face circling around Cameron’s head the rest of the morning. He worked at his laptop on the private terrace off his room, distracted as hell thinking about the beautiful, efficient concierge caught off guard by a surprise that would have damn near leveled anyone else.

She’d inherited her brother’s baby. A brother who, from the sounds of it, was not in any condition to care for his child himself.

Sunlight glinted off the sea and the sounds from the beach floated up to his balcony. The noises had grown throughout the morning from a few circling gulls to the handful of vacationing families that now populated the beach. The scent of coconut sunscreen and dense floral vegetation swirled on the breeze. But the temptation of a tropical paradise didn’t distract Cam from his work nearly as much as memories of his morning with Maresa.

Shocking encounter with the baby aside, he would still have been distracted just remembering her limber arched back, her beautiful curves outlined by the light of the rising sun when he’d first broken through the dense undergrowth to find her on the private beach. Her skimpy workout gear had skimmed her hips and breasts, still tantalizing the hell out of him when he was supposed to be researching the operations hierarchy of the Carib Grand on his laptop.

But then, all that misplaced attraction got funneled into protectiveness when he’d met her sketchy former fiancé. He’d met the type before—charming enough, but completely self-serving. The guy couldn’t have come up with a kinder way to inform her of her niece’s existence?

On the plus side, Cameron had located some search results about her brother. Rafe Delphine had worked at the hotel for one month in a hire that some might view as unethical given his relationship to Maresa. But his application—though light on work history—had been approved by the hotel director on-site, so the young man must be fit for the job despite his injury in a car wreck the year before. That, too, had been an easy internet search, with local news articles reporting the crash and a couple of updates on Rafe’s condition afterward. The trauma the guy had suffered must have been harrowing for his whole family. Clearly the girlfriend had found it too much to handle.

Now, as a runner for the concierge, Rafe would be directly under Maresa’s supervision. That concerned Cameron since Maresa would have every reason in the world to keep him employed. As much as Cam empathized with her situation—all the more now that she’d discovered her brother had an heir—he couldn’t afford to ignore good business practices. He’d have to speak to the hotel director about the situation and see if they should make a change.

The ex-fiancé was next on his list of searches. Not that he wanted to pry into Maresa’s private life. Cameron was more interested in seeing how the guy connected to the Carib Grand that he’d come all the way to the hotel’s private island to pass over the baby. That seemed like an unnecessary trip unless he was staying here or worked here. Why not just give the baby to Maresa at her home in Charlotte Amalie? Why come to her place of work when it was so far out of the way?

Cam had skimmed halfway through the short search results on Jaden Torries’s portraits of people and pets before his phone buzzed with an incoming call. Poppy, snoozing in the shade of the chair under his propped feet, didn’t even stir at the sound. The dog was definitely making up for lost rest from the day before.

Glimpsing his oldest brother’s private number, Cam hit the button to connect the call. “Talk to me.”

“Hello to you, too.” Quinn’s voice came through along with the sounds of Manhattan in the background—horns honking, brakes squealing, a shrill whistle and a few shouts above the hum of humanity indicating he must be on the street. “I wanted to give you a heads-up I just bought a sea plane.”

“Nice, bro, But there’s no way you’ll get clearance to land in the Hudson with that thing.” Cameron scrolled to a gallery of Torries’s work and was decidedly unimpressed.

Not that he was an expert. But as a supporter of the arts in Manhattan for all his adult life, he felt reasonably sure Maresa’s ex was a poser. Then again, maybe he just didn’t like a guy who’d once commanded the concierge’s attention.

“The aircraft isn’t for me,” Quinn informed him. “It’s for you. I figured it would be easier than a chopper to get from one island to another while you’re investigating the Carib Grand and checking out the relatives.”

Cam shoved aside his laptop and straightened. “Seriously? You bought a seaplane for my two-week stay?”

As a McNeill, he’d grown up with wealth, yes. He’d even expanded his holdings with the success of the gaming development company he’d started in college. But damn. He limited himself to spending within reason.

“The Carib Grand is the start of our Caribbean expansion, and if it goes well, we’ll be spending a lot of time and effort developing the McNeill brand in the islands and South America. We have a plane available in the Mediterranean. Why not keep something accessible on this side of the Atlantic?”

“Right.” Cam’s jaw flexed at the thought of how much was riding on smoothing things out at the Carib Grand. A poor bottom line wasn’t going to help the expansion program. “Good thinking.”

“Besides, I have the feeling we’ll be seeing our half brothers in Martinique a whole lot more now that Gramps is determined to bring them into the fold.” Quinn sounded as grim about that prospect as Cameron felt. “So the plane might be useful for all of us as we try to...contain the situation.”

Quinn wanted to keep their half siblings out of Manhattan and out of the family business as much as Cameron did. They’d worked too hard to hand over their company to people who’d never lifted a finger to grow McNeill Resorts.

“Ah.” Cam stood to stretch his legs, surprised to realize it was almost noon according to the slim dive watch he’d worn for his morning laps. “But since I’m on the front line meeting them, I’m going to leave it up to you or Ian to be the diplomatic peacemakers.”

Quinn only half smothered a laugh. “No one expected you of all people to be the diplomat. Dad’s still recovering from the punch you gave him last week when he dropped the I-have-another-family bombshell on us.”

Definitely not one of his finer moments. “It seemed like he could have broached the topic with some more tact.”

“No kidding. I kept waiting for Sofia to break the engagement after the latest family soap opera.” The background noise on Quinn’s call faded. “Look, Cam, I just arrived at Lincoln Center to take her out to lunch. I’ll text you the contact details for a local pilot.”

Cam grinned at the thought of his stodgy older brother so head over heels for his ballerina fiancée. The same ballerina fiancée Cam had impulsively proposed to last winter when a matchmaker set them up. But even if Cam and Sofia hadn’t worked out, the meeting had been a stroke of luck for Quinn, who’d promptly stepped in to woo the dancer.

“Thanks. And give our girl a kiss from me, okay?” It was too fun to resist needling Quinn. Especially since Cameron was two thousand miles away from a retaliatory beat-down.

A string of curses peppered his ear before Quinn growled, “It’s not too late to take the plane back.”

“Sorry.” Cameron wasn’t sorry. He was genuinely happy for his brother. “I’ll let you know if the faux McNeills are every bit as awful as we imagine.”

Disconnecting the call, Cameron texted a message to the dog groomer to give Poppy some primp time. He’d use that window of freedom to follow up on a few leads around the Carib Grand. He wanted to find out what the hotel director thought about Rafe Delphine, for one thing. The director was the only person on-site who knew Cameron’s true identity and mission at the hotel. Aldo Ricci had been successful at McNeill properties in the Mediterranean and Malcolm McNeill had personally appointed the guy to make the expansion program a success.

With the McNeill patriarch’s health so uncertain, Cameron wanted to respect his grandfather’s choices. All the more so since he still hadn’t married the way his granddad wanted.

Cameron would start by speaking to his grandfather’s personally chosen manager. Cam had a lot of questions about the day-to-day operations and a few key personnel. Most especially the hotel’s new concierge, who kept too many secrets behind her beautiful and efficient facade.

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