Secret Heiress, Secret Baby

Grant was hit again by that powerful urge to pull her to him.

To kiss her again. To taste her one last time.

Instead he pulled her just an inch closer, stared into her eyes and whispered. “You’re a Cain now. You can afford to stay anywhere you damn well want to.”

She met his gaze head-on. It was different than it had been at the gala, when they were surrounded by people, when the lights were low and the music romantic. There, he’d almost believed she really was a Cain. Almost believed she wasn’t the woman he’d once known.

But here, in this crummy motel, under the harsh cheap lights, here he couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t pretend.

This was Meg. His Meg.

With her alabaster skin and her Cain-blue eyes.

She glared at him defiantly. “I am a Cain. I have always been a Cain. And this is where I want to stay.”

His gaze dropped to her lips, and for a moment the urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming. Would she still taste like cinnamon and sugar? Would she still melt against him?

* * *

Secret Heiress, Secret Baby is part of the At Cain’s Command series: Three brothers must find their illegitimate sister … or forfeit a fortune

Secret Heiress,

Secret Baby

Emily McKay

www.millsandboon.co.uk

EMILY McKAY has been reading romance novels since she was eleven years old. Her first romance came free. She has been reading and loving romance novels ever since. She lives in Texas with her geeky husband, her two kids and too many pets. Her debut novel, Baby, Be Mine, was a RITA^® Award finalist for Best First Book and Best Short Contemporary. She was also a 2009 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award nominee for Series Romance. To learn more, visit her website, www.emilymckay.com.

For my dear son, you may very well be the most charming man I know, and I don’t think I’m being partial either.

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

After a mere three weeks of sleeping next to Meg Lathem, Grant Sheppard knew she was gone the instant he woke up. She liked to sleep curled against his side, one leg draped over his hips, her head resting on his shoulder. Of course, waking up at three or four in the morning only to find her puttering around the kitchen was normal.

He stumbled out of bed, pulled on the jeans he’d left draped over the rocking chair in the corner and went to find her.

In a house this size, it didn’t take long. Her two-bedroom bungalow just a few blocks off the square in Victoria, Texas, was the house she’d grown up in. For a man like Grant, who’d grown up among the wealthy elite of Houston, this small town not far from the coast didn’t hold much appeal. He had come here—and stayed here—for Meg.

She was baking again and the smell—a combination of toasted nuts and caramelized sugar—was divine.

That scent alone would have lured him out of bed.

He paused when he got to the kitchen, propping his shoulder against the doorway and watching her. Her inky-black Bettie Page hair was pulled up into a ponytail that bobbed enticingly as she moved. She’d thrown on a nightgown—something skimpy and sheer that hit her just below the curve of her butt. She’d put on an apron over that. Her feet were bare, her nails painted navy blue. The tattoo on the back of her leg peeked out from under the hem of her nightie when she bent over. She was sexier than a girl in a pinup calendar and every swish of her hem and wiggle of her ass made him ache with the need to claim her.

Between the retro kitchen and Meg’s vintage style, he might have thought he’d traveled back in time to the forties. Only the blue nail polish and the tattoo ruined the illusion. That and the blowtorch she’d just lit up.

He knew better than to sneak up behind her while she was working. Instead, he just stood there and enjoyed the view, waiting as she skimmed the bright blue flame over the top of a pie’s meringue, singeing the tips of the curlicues a golden brown. When she straightened and flicked the blowtorch off, he walked into the room.

“What’d you create this time?”

She shot a playful look over her shoulder. “I thought I heard you back there leering at me.” Then she winked, cocking her hip slightly to show off her stupendous curves.

“And here I thought I was waiting patiently.”

She turned around, her ponytail flicking over her shoulder. She held out a hand as if displaying the pie on the counter. “May I present my newest creation? Toasted-hazelnut graham cracker crust. Dark chocolate pudding. Toasted-marshmallow meringue topping. I’m calling it s’more pie.”

He faked a groan of anguish. “And I have to wait until the shop opens to try it.”

She grinned, stepping aside to reveal a second, tiny pie. “You know I’d never serve a pie at the shop that I hadn’t tested. Just give me a second to toast the—”

But he didn’t give her a second. He’d waited long enough. He strode across the room, slipped his hands under the hem of her nightgown to cup her—hello!—bare ass. Her flesh was firm and warm in his hands and he only had to lift her a few inches off the ground for the apex of her thighs to graze against his throbbing erection. She arched, rubbing herself against him. Then he lifted her higher and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He backed her up half a step and let her ass rest on the counter behind her.

When he kissed her she tasted like sinful dark chocolate and meringue so sweet it was almost too much.

That was Meg all over. An irresistible combination of sinful and sweet. And always, almost too much.

Her hands found his zipper and eased it down, slipping into his jeans to free him. She wrapped nimble fingers around him and gave first one then a second long slow tug before she positioned him right between her lips. She rubbed herself against him, stroking the folds of her sensitive flesh first with the head of his penis and then—as she eased herself down his length—with her own fingers. She was desperate and needy and came almost before he did.

That was Meg all over. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen and she met him, passion for passion. She was almost too good to be true.

He wondered if she thought the same about him.

* * *

Later—a hot shower and a warm pie later—they were back in bed. She was almost drifting off to sleep as he traced the bared arc of her back, when he asked, “Why s’more pie?”

She sighed, nuzzled closer and muttered, “Because those are all the ingredients of s’mores, dummy.”

“No. I meant what made you think of s’mores?”

She was quiet for a minute, and her breathing became so even and relaxed, he thought she’d probably fallen back asleep, when she said, “I don’t know. Something about this—this thing between us—it feels like being at summer camp, don’t you think?”

He chuckled. “Trust me. I did not do this at summer camp.”

She gave his arm a swat. “No, silly. I mean it feels perfect but ephemeral. Like the last days of summer camp.”

He sucked in a breath and held it, waiting to see what else she’d say. Because that was it, right there. The perfect moment. The moment he’d been angling for these past few weeks. It doesn’t have to be ephemeral. Come back to Houston with me. Marry me.

It would have worked. She’d have fallen for it, just as she’d fallen for him.

But he didn’t say it. He couldn’t force the words out.

A moment later she said, “My grandpa used to make the best s’mores.”

“I thought all s’mores were the same.”

She seemed not to notice how stiff and formal he sounded.

“No, silly. The perfect s’more depends on the perfect toasted marshmallow. And Grandpa could roast ’em with the best. He was so patient.” She was silent for several beats, and then added, “I wish you could have met him. You’d have loved him.” And then came the kicker. “And he’d have loved you.”

“I doubt that.” He muttered the words, but she still heard them.

She pushed herself up on her elbow and looked down at him, her gaze still sleepy but firm. “No. He would have loved you. You’re a good man, Grant Sheppard.”

She pressed a kiss to his lips before settling back onto his shoulder.

An hour later, once she was deeply asleep, he got dressed and slipped out of her house. As he drove through Victoria for the last time, he could still taste her kisses and her pie on his lips.

Yeah, she believed he was a good guy. That had been his plan all along: find Hollister Cain’s missing daughter, make her fall in love with him, marry her and gain control of just enough of Cain Enterprises to drive the company into the ground.

It wasn’t the plan of a nice guy. It was the plan of an asshole bent on personal revenge at any cost. Yeah, he could live with that. He was a bastard. He knew it.

The problem wasn’t even that she didn’t know it. The problem was, when she looked at him like that, he wanted her to be right. He wanted to be the man she thought he was. And that kind of weakness was completely unacceptable.

As he drove out of town, he started working on a new plan.

One

Just over two years later

Meg Lathem sat in her dusty, beat-up Chevy, cursing the blazing Texas sun, the crowded streets of downtown Houston and her tiny bladder.

She should have stopped at that Dairy Queen in Bay City to pee. Yes, she’d still be nervous as hell about seeing Grant Sheppard again after all this time, but at least she’d have a Dilly Bar to soothe the pain.

Instead, all she had was dry mouth and the beginning stages of an ulcer.

She chewed on her lip for a second. Then dug around in her purse for her lip balm. Instead, she found her cherry bomb lipstick, which she wore to finish up extra-long days when she needed a bit of sass and sex appeal to coast until the bakery closed. Today, she needed neither sass nor sex appeal. She needed sensibility and reason.

She shoved the lipstick back in her purse, slung the strap over her shoulder and was climbing from the car just as her phone rang.

If it had been any number other than her friend Janine’s she would have let it roll over to voice mail. However, Janine—who usually helped manage the bakery—was watching Meg’s daughter, Pearl, while Meg took this little jaunt to Houston, so she slid back into the car and shut out the noise of Houston traffic. She answered it with, “Is Pearl okay?”

“Pearl’s fine, honey. She’s happier than the cherry on a hot-fudge sundae.”

The knot of anxiety in her chest loosened a smidge. “Then why are you calling?”

“You done it yet?”

“It’s a two-hour drive from Victoria. No, I haven’t done it yet. I just got here.”

“Liar. You never met a speed limit sign you didn’t love to mock. I bet you made it there thirty minutes ago and have been sitting outside his office making calf eyes at the words Sheppard Bank and Trust scrawled above the door.”

“Am not.” Meg glanced at her watch. She’d only been here for twenty-two minutes. And the words Sheppard Bank and Trust were not above the door. They were slapped on the outside of the building near the forty-second floor in ten-foot-tall letters. And she hadn’t been making calf eyes at them so much as scowling. “I do not feel that way about Grant Sheppard anymore and you know it. That man is a lying, cheating sack of—”

“You don’t have to do this,” Janine said quietly.

“I know.” She brought her hand up to her forehead and rubbed, pressing her thumb near the crest of her eye socket where the tension seemed to be drilling into her skull.

“We can find another way.”

“I know,” she said again. Except there was no other way. Her daughter needed heart surgery. Meg just couldn’t afford to pay the insurance deductible and keep the bakery open. And if the bakery closed, then she’d be out of a job and really wouldn’t be able to meet the deductible. The good people of Victoria had all banded together to do a fund-raiser for Pearl. The whole town had come together. It had been the most heartwarming, amazing day.

But they’d only raised nine thousand dollars. She needed almost fifty thousand for the surgery alone. Everyone she knew, everyone who loved and cared for Pearl, had banded together and dug as deep as they could. And it would only cover a fifth of the cost.

And even if she could somehow scrape together the money for this deductible, there was physical therapy. And more appointments down the road. And more specialists. More, more and more things to spend money on. Money she just didn’t have. But Pearl’s father had the money. Hell, money was his business.

Wasn’t it only fair that he paid?

He was Pearl’s father.

Going to him wasn’t begging. It was only right.

But it would be so much easier if he already knew he had a daughter.

“Honey,” Janine said, finally breaking the long silence. “Stop rubbing that spot above your eye. You know how sensitive your skin is and if you’re going to see Grant Sheppard after all these years, you don’t want to look all splotchy.”

Meg jerked her hand away from her face and quickly flipped down the mirror. Crap. She did look all splotchy.

Then she snapped it closed. No, this was good. Splotchy was just fine. Humbling, even. A nice reminder that their relationship was never going to be sexual again. Never.

“Now, go get ’em, tiger. You can do this!”

Janine hung up then, not waiting for Meg to voice the doubts roiling in her gut.

“Right,” Meg muttered. “Go get ’em.”

She clambered out of the car and started crossing the street. Sheppard Bank and Trust opened up to a plaza with sprawling oaks, a trio of fountains and plenty of outdoor seating. The last of the lunch crowd was still enjoying the nice weather and even though Houston wasn’t a town that got a lot of foot traffic, Meg had to weave around people as she reached the sidewalk.

She was still on the other side of the plaza when the big glass doors of the Sheppard Bank and Trust building opened and Grant Sheppard stepped out into the midafternoon sun. Her steps automatically slowed. A car honked somewhere, prompting her to dash the rest of the way across the street.

Suddenly she had tunnel vision. It was as if she could see only him and no one else. It had been over two years since she’d seen him. He looked good. Just as tall and fit as ever. His sandy hair was a little long. A little disheveled. A little renegade for this conservative town. But his suit was strictly business. It toed the line. His mouth still curled in that half smile. The smile that made a woman want to do naughty things to his lips.

The smile that made women stupid.

She gave her head a little shake and reminded herself—it wasn’t just that it had been more than two years since she’d seen him, it was more than two years since he’d sneaked out of her bed in the middle of the night and disappeared without a trace.

Yeah, there was a difference, and she’d do well to remember it.

She hardened her heart and put a damper on her hormones before she took a step toward him. But as her tunnel vision eased up, she saw the woman standing beside him—a willowy blonde, almost as tall as he was. Even though she was thin, there was a softness to her body that was only emphasized by the protective hand he held at the woman’s back. There was an intimacy to their posture that spoke of affection and familiarity. A warning bell went off in Meg’s head.

She had stopped in her tracks, almost unaware of the other people filtering past her. She knew—even before the other woman turned around—what she was going to see. The woman would be beautiful and sophisticated and classy. Everything Meg was not.

She would also be pregnant.

Meg was so sure that when the woman actually turned so Meg could see her, Meg didn’t comprehend what she was seeing.

Beauty—check. Sophisticated—check. But not pregnant. No. Worse.

The woman was holding a baby. A beautiful, healthy, bubbling baby. A “perfect” baby.

Grant Sheppard’s beautiful socialite wife had given him a perfect, healthy baby.

Whereas the daughter he shared with Meg had Down syndrome and an atrial septal defect in her heart.

Meg never, ever thought of Pearl as being lesser. Yes, the tiny hole in her heart meant she had health problems that sometimes terrified Meg. But Pearl was perfect in her own way.

But would Grant see that? Would he realize how amazing Pearl was? Would she be able to protect Pearl if he didn’t?

And beneath her basic mother’s need to protect her child lingered some other, more complicated emotion.

Just the slightest twinge of envy that had nothing to do with the baby or with Pearl, but with the woman who appeared to be Grant’s wife.

Meg didn’t want to be that perfect blonde woman. She didn’t want her wealth or her hair or her wardrobe or her baby—whose heart probably didn’t have a hole in it. She loved her own bank account, hair, clothes and baby. She didn’t want anything that other woman had. But for the first time, she realized that part of her might still want Grant. And that scared the piss out of her.

How could she go talk to Grant now?

The answer was, she couldn’t. Not while she still had any other options.

Instead, she would do the one thing she’d promised herself she’d never do. The thing she’d promised her mother and her grandfather she’d never do. She’d go see her father. She’d make a deal with the devil himself.

* * *

As luck would have it, the devil himself—aka Hollister Cain—lived a short drive from downtown in the prestigious River Oaks neighborhood. Nestled in among the homes of former presidents, deposed foreign princes and excessive country-music stars was her father’s massive antebellum mansion.

Thanks to Google Maps Street View, she knew the mansion by sight even though she’d never been there. For that matter, thanks to Google Images she knew her father by sight, too. She had never met him either.

No, she was Hollister’s illegitimate daughter. Twenty-six-odd years ago, he had seduced—and then abandoned—her mother, not only because he was a heartless bastard, but for calculated professional gain. Hollister’s treatment had led to her mother’s slow but steady emotional unraveling.

As a result, Meg had been raised by her grandfather. All her life, she’d known the truth about Hollister and her mother, so she’d naturally assumed that Hollister knew about her too and had just never bothered to claim his daughter. Which was fine by her. Just fine.

She certainly didn’t need them or their money or the misery it would bring to her life.

Except now she did need it.

Of course, there was a chance Hollister would flat out refuse to acknowledge her. After all, Hollister was too much of a bastard to open his wallet willingly. Then lawyers would have to get involved. There would be genetic testing and all kinds of nastiness. But in the end, she was Hollister’s daughter and there was nothing he could do about it.

But she didn’t think it would come to that, because she knew secrets about Hollister’s past that he wouldn’t want getting out. She had proof of illegal things he’d done that would destroy the Cain family name. In his dealings with her family, he’d broken the law, and she had no problem letting him be judged in the court of public opinion. If he proved difficult, she would make whatever threats she needed to make.

So in her fairy-tale version, her reunion with her father would go down like this: she’d walk in, she’d announce who she was, he’d write her a check for a couple hundred grand, she’d sign some papers promising never to ask for more and she’d be back home with Pearl by the end of the week. What could be simpler than a little blackmail among family?

Still, she wasn’t used to making threats like this. And two hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money. That was the number she’d ultimately decided she needed. Fifty grand to cover the surgery and another three times that much to cover anything else Pearl needed in the future. It was an arbitrary number and—hopefully—a little high. But this was a one-time thing. She had no intention of ever coming to Hollister for money again. This was her one chance to take the money and run.

Which probably explained the knots in her tummy as she stared out her grimy car windshield at the mansion across the street. Surely it had nothing to do with the memory, still so fresh in her mind, of Grant’s hand low on the waist of that lovely blonde goddess.

Her phone buzzed and vibrated on the passenger seat. She ignored it as she climbed from the car. Janine had been calling her approximately every fifteen minutes for the past hour. No doubt wanting an update on how her “meeting” with Grant had gone. Meg didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d chickened out. She would call Janine after she’d talked to her father.

She marched across the street and up the seemingly endless path, across a veritable sea of lush Saint Augustine grass, to the front porch. Before she could second-guess herself, she punched the doorbell. And then counted every second as it ticked by.

No one on the other side of that door mattered to her. Not at all.

Still, she’d been on her own a long time. And she was about to meet someone from her family. Maybe even her father.

Or maybe just someone who worked for her family.

Did the Cains have...servants?

Would there be a butler or something?

Or would—?

Then the door was opening and instead of her father, or even a servant, Meg was faced with a blonde woman with near-perfect features, a willowy athletic body and a faint bump at her belly. Portia Calahan. Dalton Cain’s ex-wife. So, Meg’s own ex-sister-in-law.

Meg would have recognized any of the Cains—thanks to their prominent position in Houston society and Google—but Portia she had actually met the first time she’d come to Houston, right after she’d learned Pearl would need surgery. She’d considered asking for financial help and then dismissed the idea just as quickly. She’d thought she’d slipped under everyone’s radar.

For a moment, they just stared at one another. Then Meg said, “What are you doing here?” at the same time Portia said, “It’s you!”

Portia seemed to sway on her feet and her eyes rolled back. Her legs went out from under her. Meg lurched forward, dropping her purse, and caught Portia just as she crumpled to the ground.

Though Portia was thin, she was a lot taller than Meg. Meg, too, collapsed under Portia’s weight and they both went down.

“Help!” Meg tried to control their fall, but she simply couldn’t support Portia’s weight. All she could do was try to lower Portia slowly as she muttered, “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

Not just because Portia had fainted, nearly hurting herself and crushing Meg, but because Portia was not supposed to be here! Portia wasn’t part of the Cain family anymore. And Portia had obviously remembered meeting her.

For a moment, Meg considered bolting, trying to contact her father another day. Trying to get the money some other way. But she was out of time and she had no other way to get the money. And already footsteps were pounding across the tile floor toward them.

She looked up to see five more people crossing the foyer: two women and three men.

The men she all recognized. Her brothers. Dalton and Griffin Cain and Cooper Larson. If she had to guess, she’d say the two women were Laney and Sydney, her sisters-in-law.

To Meg’s surprise, it was Cooper who quickened his pace and crouched down beside Portia. He gently cradled her head and shoulders, and Meg wiggled out from underneath her.

“She fainted,” she said quickly. “I tried to catch her.”

“Thanks,” Cooper said, before muttering a curse under his breath. “She’s going to be pissed.”

“I tried to catch her!” Meg insisted again, scrambling back.

“Not at you,” he said gently. “About fainting. It’s the second time this week. She hates when it happens.”

The red-haired woman—Sydney, if Meg remembered correctly from the pictures she’d seen in the society column of the Houston Chronicle—knelt beside Cooper and rested her hand on his arm. “Is she going to be okay?”

He nodded, but his smile didn’t hide his concern. “The doctor says it happens to a lot of women in the first trimester.”

Sydney looked up at Meg. “Thanks for catching— oh my gosh.”

“Wait. What?” Meg asked, scooting farther away. Her gaze darted from Sydney to Cooper and then to the three people still standing. “I didn’t—”

But when her gaze met Dalton’s, he muttered a low “damn.”

Now they were all staring at her. As in, she’d-grown-an-extra-head-or-two staring at her. Or, they-somehow-knew-she-was-here-to-blackmail-their-father staring at her.

Meg automatically got to her feet and held out her hands, palms out. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” Yet.

The other woman, Laney—who had long dark hair and resembled a modern-day Snow White—sent a chiding look at the others. “For goodness’ sake, you’re scaring her.” Then she stepped forward, smiling. “No one thinks you did anything to hurt Portia. We’re glad you were here to catch her. Aren’t we?” She gave Dalton’s elbow a little nudge.

He stepped forward too. “Yes, absolutely.”

Meg looked warily from one sibling to the next. Gratitude for stopping Portia’s fall did not explain their behavior. Panic edged in under her confusion. She took a step back toward the door. “You know, I think I’m going to go.”

As one, Dalton, Laney, Griffin and Sydney took steps toward her as a chorus of protests echoed through the room.

Okay. This was getting weird.

She took a few more steps back toward the door. “I...um...”

“You can’t leave,” pleaded Laney. The rest of them stopped still in their tracks, as if Meg was some sort of spooked deer.

Great. She couldn’t leave. She had unwittingly made some rich pregnant woman faint and now they were trying to keep her contained so they could call the police or something. Okay, that was probably a bit paranoid.

Portia must have been slowly coming to, because she made a groaning noise and pushed herself up onto her elbows.

“Why can’t I leave?” Meg asked hesitantly.

“Not again.” Portia looked around the room, blinking. “Did I miss anything?”

Cooper cradled her shoulders, gently brushing her hair out of her eyes. “You weren’t out that long.”

Laney took advantage of the distraction by stepping forward to clutch Meg’s hand. “You can’t leave because you’re Hollister’s missing daughter. You’re their sister!”

“I know I’m their sister. How do they know it?”

Again, everyone turned to look at her and said, “You know?”