Daring Dylan (The Billionaire Brotherhood Book 2) (3 page)

“Never
heard of her.” Dylan remained slouched against the armoire, only slightly
relieved to hear that Karen Hammond wasn’t involved in the scam. Not at first
glance, anyway.

“Does she
claim she slept with Dad before or after he married Mother?” Natalie asked.

“After, of
course.” Dylan didn’t hesitate to make the guess. “It wouldn’t be scandalous or
noteworthy otherwise.”

“Actually,
the woman hasn’t claimed anything,” the attorney said. “She lived in East
Langden but disappeared exactly one week before your father’s death.”

“Curious
timing,” Natalie murmured.

Hair stood
up on the back of Dylan’s neck. Neither the family nor the authorities had ever
been satisfied that all the facts had been uncovered regarding Matthew
Bradford’s drowning twenty-five years earlier. Now, a new wrinkle added to the
mysterious circumstances.

“What steps
have you taken to discredit this lie?” Natalie asked.

“We hired a
detective.” Lawrence dipped his chin and looked at the trio over his reading
glasses. “The investigation has been inconclusive, I’m sorry to say.”

“Have you asked
Uncle Arthur about it?” Their father’s younger brother would be the obvious
source of information.

“Your
mother wanted to hold off on that, but I’m afraid we can’t put it off much
longer. The matter has suddenly become more urgent.”

“Why?”

“With her death,
the young man is no longer prepared to wait. If there’s no word from the
Bradford family before the foundation awards ceremony on July first, he says
he’ll take his story to the press.”

“But that’s
only five weeks away.” An uncharacteristic curse escaped his sister’s lips.
“Normally, I’d say let the jerk do his worst. But I don’t want the awards
diminished because of some disgruntled nutcase.”

The old man
nodded. “The negative publicity would certainly tarnish the event’s image.”

“Has he
requested DNA testing?” A slow anger at the bastard’s audacity scalded its way
through Dylan’s stomach.

“Ultimately,
I believe that’s what he’s after, but no papers have been filed.” Lawrence
blinked. “If you wish to lay the matter to rest, the request could come from
the Bradford family.”

“No.” Dylan
rejected the idea with a slash of his hand.

“Why not?”
Natalie asked. “That might be the quickest way to disprove the accusation.”

“That would
imply we’re entertaining the possibility of a link between this man and our father.
I think it’s too soon for that. Let’s make him produce something more
substantial than a ‘rumor’ before we give him what he wants.”

“I agree,”
Linc offered. “If you don’t insist on hard evidence, you’d be laying the
groundwork for anyone out there with blue eyes and big feet to claim a
relationship.”

A familiar
expression of Bradford stubbornness stole across Natalie’s face. “What could be
more decisive evidence than a DNA test?”

“Mother
asked me to protect and honor our father’s good name. I didn’t know this threat
existed, but she wouldn’t want me to allow the first schemer to come along to
muddy Dad’s reputation within a week of her death.”

“You’re
pretending to be reasonable, but you’re seething inside,” Natalie observed.
“That’s never a good sign.”

Because she
was right, Dylan ignored the comment. The discontent that had dogged him
lately, combined with the sorrow and helplessness over his mother’s death, now
coalesced into a plan. Propelled by his mother’s last request of him, along
with his own desire to preserve his father’s reputation, adrenaline shot
through him. He shook off the emotional and physical lethargy that lingered
after the inactive weeks spent at his mother’s side.

“Let’s see
the detective’s report.” He loosened his tie and reached for the folder.

Natalie
studied him. “What are you cooking up?”

He
understood her dread that his restlessness would lead him into trouble, but he
also knew she’d chafe at being sidelined by her pregnancy. The two of them had
raced neck-and-neck in their quest for adventure most of their lives. But now,
her focus had narrowed to her own little family. Just as it should. Dylan would
handle of the bigger picture. “Maybe I should take a look over my East Langden
property.”

Her
eyebrows flew up to her hairline. “When?”

“The sooner
the better. Apparently, we don’t have much time.”

“Tell me
what you’re planning,” she said, still skeptical.

I owe her the truth
. They weren’t children
anymore, and this wasn’t a prank. He told himself that this was something he
had to do. For his parents and for himself. For Natalie and her children. “I’m
going to do my damnedest to blow Clayton Harris’s claim sky high.”

On a back
road in Maine, Gracie O’Donnell’s spirits sank as her twelve-year-old Ford lost
speed. An unexpected and impatient SUV roared up behind her, honked and sped
around, as she steered her elderly, but previously dependable, car off the
road. Before the vehicle ground to a complete halt, the odometer hit just shy
of two-hundred-thousand miles. She shut off the engine and restarted it, but
the Taurus refused to move another inch.

“What?” she
muttered to the pile of metal and chrome. “You can’t make it three more miles
to Liberty House?”

Earlier,
she’d notified her grandmother that a six-year-old’s ruptured appendix had
delayed her departure from Hartford. But with rush-hour traffic, her revised
time of arrival at her grandparents’ East Langden bed and breakfast had come
and gone. And now this.

Just her
luck. It was dark and late, and her cell phone was out of juice. Not that it
got anything better than spotty reception on these back roads even when fully
charged. She should have guessed that after one of the most excruciating weeks
of her life, if something else could go wrong, it would.

But things could be worse
. It wasn’t far to
Gran’s. She could walk if she had to, dark or not. But first, she’d check under
the hood.

“You stay
here,” she told her Scottish terrier, MacDuff, as she retrieved a flashlight
from the glove box. “I don’t want you running off while I’m distracted.”

The dog
cocked his head reproachfully.

“Don’t look
at me like that.” She scratched the magic spot between his ears that turned him
into a mop of doggie adoration. “Remember how long it took to get the burrs out
of your coat when you chased that woodchuck last fall?”

As Gracie
hopped out of the car, the delicious fragrance of spruce and pine laced with an
underlying hint of salt and sea assaulted her. She inhaled deeply, and her
spirits lifted a bit just from breathing in the familiar scents of home.

While she
checked the dipstick and jiggled wires, a big fat raindrop landed on the crown
of her head. A second one plopped on her shoulder, and then a deluge of water
plastered her T-shirt to her spine like a frigid sheet of shrink-wrap. With a
perturbed squeak, she dove back into the car.

Oh, great, now what?

Walking or
waiting seemed like her only options. If she waited, it could be hours before
the rain stopped and possibly morning before anyone passed by. This road didn’t
lead anywhere except to the B&B and the long-abandoned Bradford place a
couple of miles further down. Her grandfather was in the hospital, her
grandmother didn’t drive at night, and their place wouldn’t be open to the
public until the end of the week.

She shivered
inside her wet shirt.
Okay, I’ll walk
.

It couldn’t
be helped, even though the Doggie Prince hated to get his paws wet. She groped
under the front seat to retrieve her umbrella just as unexpected headlights
approached. Hope flared. Maybe Gran had sent someone to search for her. Her
stepfather David, perhaps, or her best pal Clayton.

No. The
hulking SUV heading her way looked like the same upscale model that had passed
her earlier. Too new, too expensive, and too ostentatious to belong to anyone
from East Langden.

But if this
was her only chance to get help, she’d grab it. Gracie slipped on her jacket,
zipped it, and stuck MacDuff inside. Grabbing her keys, she leaped out of her
car, hoisted the umbrella, and planted herself at the side of the road. She blinked
her flashlight on and off so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a wandering moose.
When the vehicle skidded to a stop, she approached the driver.

The window
slid part of the way down. Even with the rain-distorted view and indirect
light, Gracie recognized the famous face that had constantly made the news in
the weeks since his mother’s death. A thatch of thick, dark blond hair fell
from a high forehead above slashing eyebrows that accentuated deep-set eyes.
One supercilious brow hooked upward.

“Trouble?”
The tinted window masked his nose and mouth.

“Yep.” She
did all she could to maintain a friendly demeanor while staring into the face
of upper-crust condescension. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“It isn’t
working.” He held up the palm-sized gadget and shook it.

Right, like that would help.

If she had
been in the city, or if the motorist had been a complete unknown, Gracie would
have asked him to drive on and call Triple A at the first opportunity. But this
wasn’t an unknown motorist and she could guess what had brought him to the
area. For Clay’s sake, she shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to interrogate a
Bradford—especially if she could get him to agree to give her a lift.

“You lost?”
she asked.

“Why would
you think that?” His irritatingly precise prep-school diction reminded her of
Baxter, her faithless ex-fiancé. Not a happy comparison.

“It’s a
good guess that if Dylan Bradford is wandering around on this road for the
first time in decades, he’s bound to be looking for something.”

His eyes narrowed.
“How do you know who I am?”

At the
sharp tone, MacDuff poked his nose out and growled. “Hush.” She gave him an
absent pat. “The bona fide Bradfords may not have graced East Langden with
their presence in over twenty years, but if one of you belches, it still makes
the local news.”

“Hmmph,” he
muttered, just this side of a snort. “What’s wrong with your car?”

“I think
it’s the transmission. Want to take a look?”

How many
jet-set playboys does it take to check a dipstick? There had to be a good punch
line in there somewhere.

His gaze
moved from her damp curls to the squirmy lump inside her jacket, passed over
the threadbare knees of her jeans, and on down to her muddy discount sneakers.

Instinctively,
she knew he wasn’t scrutinizing her the way a man sized up an attractive woman.
This was the kind of guarded assessment a cop would make before frisking a
suspect for weapons. With his history, maybe he suspected she had a hidden
microphone or camera.

Understanding
his concern didn’t keep her from fidgeting under the visual inspection. She
tilted her umbrella back to allow him a clear view of her face. The gesture
sent rain dripping down her neck. She shimmied her shoulders to halt the icy
trickle dribbling down her spine.

“If you’ll
give me a lift to my grandparents’, I can make sure you get to your cabin.” A
flash of lightning and boom of thunder accentuated the offer. “It’s not out of
your way.”

Maybe he
recognized her for the honest person she was. Maybe he took pity on her
predicament, or maybe he was blessed with a more helpful disposition than she
supposed. For whatever reason, just as she began to think he’d leave her to her
fate, he shrugged. “Hop in.”

“I thought
you’d never ask.” She grinned to soften the sarcasm, then splashed her way
around the upscale car without giving him time to rethink the offer.

In her
haste, the umbrella caught on the door. The time it took her to wrestle it
closed allowed the cold and damp to invade the vehicle like an invisible wet
blanket. Finally, she managed to settle into the seat with even less grace than
usual.

The
leathery new-car scent and the aroma of expensive cologne reminded Gracie of
Baxter again. The reminder made her feel less ashamed than she should about
tracking mud all over his spanking clean floor mats.

“Which
way?” Dylan asked as she buckled up.

When she
told him, he put the car in gear and took off. She nodded toward the dash. “Why
didn’t you use your navigational system?”

“It kept
telling me to turn at Cleveland, and unless I’m way off the mark, we’re nowhere
near there.”

She
suppressed a smile. MacDuff chose that moment to wriggle his head free and lick
her chin.

“Who’s your
friend?” Dylan put out his hand for the Scottie to sniff.

“This is
MacDuff, the main reason I didn’t want to walk. I would’ve started out carrying
him. But after a while, he would have wriggled to get down. And soggy dog is
not my favorite bedtime companion.”

“He sleeps
with you?”

“Every
chance he gets.”

Dylan’s
chuckle created a connection between them, a pleasant moment that she resented
and would have believed impossible until it happened.

“Smart
dog.”

She glared
at him, but he shrugged. That kind of innuendo was probably second nature to
him. He couldn’t refrain from flirting with any available female any more than
MacDuff could keep from chasing woodchucks.

Ignoring
the fact that his comment produced some definite heat somewhere around her
mid-section and lower, she shivered inside her damp clothes and tried to think
of a way to advance her fact-finding mission for Clay. Unfortunately, she was
hopelessly straightforward down to her bones. Nothing devious or clever came to
mind.

“I was
sorry to hear about your mother.” Her tentative comment managed to evaporate
any connection they shared.

“Did you
know her?” The chill in his voice frosted the air between them.

“Not
really, but she visited the clinic where I work in Hartford a few times. All of
the staff admired her commitment to women’s and children’s health issues.” She
thought of Baxter’s over-privileged mother and the distance she maintained
between herself and anyone less fortunate. Dylan’s mother’s generous actions
were the exception, not the norm among the uber-wealthy. “Your mother took a
personal interest that we greatly appreciated.”

He slid her
a look from the corner of his eye that might have been surprise or gratitude,
but it was gone before she could decide. “Thanks.”

The
curtness of the single word prevented her from continuing a dialogue that might
have revealed her own mother’s death nine years ago. Even after all this time,
the searing loss remained clear and sharp in her memory, so his abruptness
didn’t offend her. If anything, she was grateful.

Sharing
grief about their mothers might have led to further revelations. They had both
lost their fathers at an early age to tragic accidents, too. But it didn’t
matter how many similarities they shared, they really had very little in
common. She was blue-collar, beer, and chowder all the way. He was blue-blood,
champagne, and sashimi.

Just like
Baxter. Except better looking, of course.

Annoyed by
her awareness of his effortless just-rolled-out-of-bed scrumptious good
looks—she’d have to be blind not to notice them—it was time to abandon polite
conversation in favor of a more direct approach. She turned in her seat and
peered at his strong profile in the dim light. “So, why are you gracing us with
your presence?”

His fingers
tightened on the steering wheel, and he gave her a full dose of the famous
Bradford political smile. But she wasn’t sucked in by it. She’d seen that same
expression many times on the face of Dylan’s unacknowledged half-brother and
Gracie’s sort-of-step-brother-slash-best-friend Clay Harris.

“My mother
left me the Bradford camp. I want to look it over before deciding what to do
with it.”

Simple
explanation, plausible, but she didn’t believe evaluating this insignificant
portion of his inheritance was the reason for his visit.

If she
inherited property in France, Fiji, and East Langden, as the papers reported
Dylan had, which one would she visit first? All right, unfair question. She was
prejudiced in favor of East Langden, but doubted that it held the same appeal
to this spoiled political brat.

Did he know that area teens used the secluded
cabin as Party Central?
“It’s in pretty bad shape.”

“How do you
know?”

“Sometimes
I’m in that area picking blueberries.” She winced as the words came out of her
mouth. The admission made her sound about as sophisticated as Little Red Riding
Hood. Considering Dylan’s lady-killer reputation, he could easily fill the role
of Big Bad Wolf.

He eyed her
curiously for a moment. “You grew up around here?”

“Yep. Why?”

“Do you
know a guy named Clayton Harris?”

“You mean
Doctor
Harris?” She stressed Clay’s
professional title. Her interrogation skills clearly left something to be
desired since Richie Rich had taken control of the questioning so easily.
“Sure, I know him.”

“What’s he
like?”

“Nice guy,
good friend.” She couldn’t possibly sum up what Clay meant to her in a few
words. Thinking of his struggle to find out who he was and where he belonged,
she couldn’t resist the temptation to try and shake Dylan Bradford’s rock-solid
self-assurance. “He looks a lot like you actually.”