Forgotten Father (4 page)

“Good idea,” Donovan said. “Here, my dear, try one
of these muffins.”

Accepting the baked treat, she reflected on the
prickliness between the two men. She was accustomed to dealing with
people in the way of her business, getting hostile spouses and
contentious business partners to agree on decor. Acting as a
mediator had become second nature to her. But something about this
situation didn’t feel quite right.

If she didn’t know from working with Donovan how
much he loved his grandson and, in turn, how much he knew his
grandson cared for him, she’d have thought the two had a generally
conflicted relationship. That or Mitchell was being deliberately
difficult.

She couldn’t think why this would be true.

Thankfully, Donovan seemed unperturbed by the
awkwardness at the breakfast table.

“Have you had a chance to look around The Cedars?”
he demanded of Mitchell, after a few minutes of eating in silence.
“Lanie’s work in the main rooms is fabulous. And the guestrooms.
Each one with its own individual look. She’s slaved over this
place. Directed her crew like a seasoned pro and handled every
detail. Lavished attention on the place as if it were her own.”

The older man beamed at her.

“Yes, I’m sure she’s a pro,” Mitchell said, his
voice level as he lifted his glass of orange juice. “I can see the
improvements, here and there.”

“Improvements?” his grandfather echoed the mild word
in disbelief. “The place has never looked better. Lanie’s a miracle
worker. She deserves three times what I paid her.”

Mitchell smiled at no one in particular, the effort
cold.

Looking at him in surprise, she wondered if he
really was upset with her for teasing him. Should she have stayed
and introduced herself formally this morning? Woken up naked with
the man and offered to shake his hand?

The thought tickled her irreverent sense of the
ridiculous. Feeling mischievous, she slipped her foot out of her
sandal and carefully stretched it beneath the table, finding
Mitchell’s calf.

With her gaze carefully lowered to the table, she
lightly stroked her bare foot along his leg

“Yes, my room was—“ Mitchell broke off in
mid-sentence.

She could feel his stare, heating the skin of her
face.

Delanie smiled at him demurely. Tickling his calf
again, she restrained herself from batting her eyelashes at him
like a silly moonstruck teenager. There was only so much a
too-serious, seriously sexy man could take, after all.

“Yes,” Mitchell said again, “my room was fine.”

“I hope you found the bed comfortable,” Delanie
cooed, giving into the urge to provoke him a little.

“Very
comfortable,” Mitchell said, the bite
back in his voice.

She smiled down at her plate, well satisfied at the
results of her tweaking. He definitely needed loosening up, her
knight.

The rest of the meal seemed to take forever, Delanie
ate three more strawberries and part of a cheese blintz before
giving up on food and allowing her fingers to knot together in her
lap. Impatience ate at her, instead. She wanted to be alone with
him, wanted to at last say all the things that lovers had to say
between them. Wanted to hear him scold her for teasing him when he
couldn’t really respond.

Whatever was bothering Mitchell, they’d work it
out.

Donovan talked all the way through the interminable
meal and they listened, she and Mitchell, each seeming to wait
until the moment they were again alone.

Watching her lover out of the corner of her eye,
Delanie noted the tension around his mouth and the crisp way he
enunciated his words.

He felt the strain as greatly as did she.
Soon,
she promised herself,
soon we can be alone.

And he’d kiss her again, she knew, make her swoon
with passion in his arms.

To her relief, one of Donovan’s managers appeared at
the older man’s shoulder after half an hour and whispered something
in his ear about an old friend of his who was leaving The Cedars
early.

“Of course, I’ll come see him off,” Donovan said
jovially, tossing down his napkin. “I’ll catch up with you two
youngsters later. Go on and finish you meal. I want you to get to
know each other. I’ve got more plans—

He broke off, “But that’ll wait till later.”

Getting up, Donovan hurried off.

Delanie pleated her napkin, her gaze lowered to her
lap, her every nerve stretched, her eagerness to get him alone
nearly choking her. But she made herself sit there, fighting the
urge to haul him onto the breakfast table and kiss him for all he
was worth.

“If you’re finished,” Mitchell said, a moment later,
“perhaps we can walk down to the lake.”

She looked up at him quickly, her gaze colliding
with his, darkly blue and unreadable. Behind the calm exterior,
however, she sensed turbulence. He wasn’t used to having a lover
play with him, that much was obvious.

Remembering everything they’d shared in the heated
darkness hours earlier, she found herself feeling nervous as she
murmured agreement and rose from her chair.

Was he pleased to have found her so easily after she
snuck away this morning?

Surely, yes. The thought didn’t even bear
consideration.

They walked through the open French doors, just as
they had the night before, only this time there were no stolen
kisses on the veranda, no hot blue eyes devouring her.

Glancing over at him as they walked down the steps
to the lawn, Delanie calmed the puzzlement in her chest. He was
acting oddly quiet. Still, this was all new to Mitchell, she
reminded herself. He’d probably never expected to fall in love like
this—head, heart and soul in one clean swoop.

On the other hand, she’d been expecting him her
whole life.

They walked down the sloping green lawn toward the
bath house and the aqua pool situated at the lake shore. Walking
next to each other, neither said anything, the crunch of the
immaculate lawn beneath their feet the only sound to mingle with
the morning birdsong.

“Mitchell!” she said, turning toward him as his name
burst out of her as they crossed the lawn, her impatience getting
the better of her.

“We’re almost there,” he responded implacably,
gesturing to the empty terrace around the pool. “Let’s talk where
we’ll have some privacy.”

Walking beside him with excitement tingling in every
cell, she said nothing else as they traversed the pool patio and
went down a set of steps that led to a picturesque boardwalk along
the very edge of the small lake.

Stopping there where they were completely alone,
Mitchell turned toward her as he leaned against the white wood
railing.

The breeze off the lake came up, flirting around
them and Delanie waited for him to speak, her heart jumping in her
chest.

Something told her that Mitchell needed to take
charge.

A moment later, he turned toward her abruptly, his
cold blue gaze slamming into hers.

“You’re not getting a penny out of me. I’m not
paying you off.”

“What?” she gasped, shock reverberating through
her.

“This game you’ve been playing,” he gestured toward
The Cedars. “I’m not letting you get away with a cent more than
you’ve already seduced out of Donovan.”

“Are you kidding?” Delanie demanded in
disbelief.

“No.” The eyes that had devoured her hungrily last
night now sent a blast of artic chill down her spine.

She stared at him, the world tilting in front of her
eyes. Reaching for the railing to steady herself, she felt as if
she might actually fall down.

“I never seduced anything out of Donovan,” she
whispered a disbelieving protest.

“If you get off on screwing a man forty-five years
older than you, fine,” Mitchell said, disgust and disinterest
echoing in the words, “Go get yourself another pigeon. After last
night, Donovan Riese is off-limits to you.”

She looked at him in shock, hardly able to think
over the thundering in her head. “You actually think I’m
sleeping with Donovan?”

She clutched at the railing, the wood biting into
her fingers.

Mitchell’s mouth quirked into an ugly smile. “Don’t
bother denying it, Lanie. I saw the tender hand-holding at
breakfast. You were a pro at handling Donovan, and I know my
grandfather. For the past six months, he’s talked of nothing, but
you and this damned resort. Mostly, you. I know you’ve been trying
to get him to marry you from the start.”

“I haven’t!” she cried. “He’s been a friend. Nothing
but a good friend.”

“What ever you call it, it’s done. He’s worth
millions,” Mitchell told her with chilly contempt. “I’m sure that
was enough for you to overlook the obvious drawbacks to being the
mistress of a man old enough to be your grandfather. But it’s
through. I want you to pack your stuff and leave—now.”

“I’ve never slept with Donovan!” she insisted
desperately, unwilling to let him believe so badly of her. “He
wouldn’t—I wouldn’t—“

Slicing an impatient hand through the air, Mitchell
said, “
Save it
! I came up here this weekend specifically to
deal with this situation and buy you off—“

“Mitchell, I haven’t slept with your
grandfather!”

“Then he’s not getting very good value for the money
he’s given you,” Mitchell declared brutally, his gaze scraping over
her body in a way it hadn’t the night before.

“Money? What money?” she asked wildly.

“The checks he’s been giving you, the ones marked
miscellaneous
. A hundred thousand once, ten and thirty
thousand two other times.” Mitchell stood next to the railing, his
hands shoved into his pants pockets, his face hard as stone.

Delanie shook her head in desperate denial.
“Expenses. Renovating a place like this costs a huge amount of
money. Rugs, artwork. Donovan always wanted me to have enough
capital to operate, but it never
meant anything
! Nothing
like
that!
”

Mitchell’s smile grew uglier. “Don’t think I’m
stupid, Lanie. I got the preliminary report on the investigation I
ordered on you. I know about the married boyfriend in college, the
law professor who helped you set up your business and the lover
who’s restaurant went bankrupt right before you dumped him. Money’s
what motivates your ‘love’.”

“You had me investigated?” she whispered, a
desperate sense of disorientation gripping her.

“Hell, yes.” The smile on his face grew colder
still. “Never do dirty business without knowing all the dirt. Every
businessman knows that rule.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, the panic in her
chest making the words halting. “I didn’t know he,…John…was
married…the others were—you just don’t understand.”

Mitchell looked away from her, his jaw taut. “If I
didn’t understand before last night, you opened my eyes. I don’t
care what kind of game you’re playing, but you picked the wrong
man—“

“I’m not playing any game!” She reached impulsively
out to him, her hand on his arm.

He stared down at where her fingers clasped his the
sleeve of his suit coat.

Snatching her hand back as if burned, she glared up
into his arctic eyes. “How can you think these things about me?
Last night—“

“Is better left forgotten.” He bit the words out,
the abrupt enmity in his face unbearable.

“But we—“

“Copulated in the dark like animals,” Mitchell
finished, anger suddenly blazing from him. “I hope you got some
pleasure out of it, because that’s all you’ll get.”

“What do you think I wanted out of it?” she demanded
in desperation and anger.

“I imagine, it seemed like the perfect plan to you,”
he sneered, hostility crackling in the air between them. “You’re
boffing the old man, coaxing thousands of dollars out of him,
wheedling half-ownership of The Cedars away from the family—“

“What!” she gasped. “I didn’t!”

“—
I’m sure a wedding was the next
objective.”

Delanie shook her head, dazed. The air seemed too
thick to breathe, the sun too bright on her face.

“But you took a misstep last night, Lanie. If you
thought to blackmail me into agreeing to your marriage to
Donovan—“

“How would sleeping with you accomplish that?” she
cried.

Mitchell looked at her as if she were a worm under
his shoe. “By threatening to tell your sweetheart that his grandson
knowingly poached on his territory and sampled your wares.
Seduced
you.”

“My God! I would never—I’m
not
his
territory.”

“Not anymore,” Mitchell agreed, the words venomous.
“The minute you directed your come-hither smile in my direction,
you messed up in a major way. I didn’t know your name, but you knew
who I was last night, didn’t you? You heard me talking to Artie,
heard him call me by name.”

“Yes,…I knew.” Her hesitant admission came out soft,
bruised almost by the onslaught.

“You knowingly encouraged me, invited me out to the
veranda and begged me to ‘take you’.”

Delanie flinched, his brutal recitation taking a
cherished moment and smearing it in the mud.

“So now, I not only know that you’re a
conscienceless, amoral gold digger, you’re also as faithless as a
cat. You won’t ever be loyal to your old goat of a boyfriend, will
you? Even if he does have millions for you to steal. Just now at
breakfast with him sitting beside you, you were playing footsie
with me. With your boyfriend right there!”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” she fired back, the edges
of her vision growing fuzzy.

“Then why do you let him put his arm around you and
call you ‘sweetheart.’ Why are you taking his money?” Mitchell
demanded.

Delanie fought to retain consciousness, clinging to
the rail to keep from collapsing. “Did Donovan
tell
you
we’re sleeping together?”