The Billionaire’s Valiant Rescue (15 page)

Jack closed his eyes. This was too much. He’d made love to Gracie, more than once, and now it turned out she was his sister?

His head spun, and he thought he would lose it at the thought of what she would say if she found out.

His dad interpreted the silence as an accusation, and he pleaded, “I had to do it, son, can’t you see? I couldn’t deny her the joy of a family, and she would never have accepted my... solution.”

“Couldn’t you have found a different donor, Dad?” Jack croaked, burying his head in his hands.

“I didn’t think. I just figured it would be the perfect solution to give Frank a brother with the same DNA. He’d turned into such a fine boy, and I’d heard horror stories about sperm donors coming from all over the place, some even drug addicts or men with all kinds of diseases. They say they screen the samples, but you just never know, do you? At least I knew that Franklin... Besides, in spite of our differences, we still retained a bond. Enemies, yes, but also... friends.” His shoulders stooped. “And for Franklin it was a way to atone for what he did to Francine. He never forgave himself for laying a hand on her that night. This way he could… find a measure of absolution.” He shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t understand, Jack. I should never have told you.”

“It’s not that, Dad,” Jack rasped, desperate now. “It’s just that... Gracie and I... we slept together.”

Dad jerked his head up. “You what?”

He nodded miserably. “How was I to know that she...”

They both stared before them, the horror of the truth hitting home.

“But she’s your sister, Jack. Your half-sister...”

He pounded the bench with his fist. “Goddammit!”

In spite of the tense moment, Dad chuckled. “You can say that again. Just think of the odds of you meeting Franklin’s daughter. No bookie would accept your money.”

Jack gave him a pleading look. “I have to tell her, Dad. I have to.”

His father looked up in alarm. “No! No, don’t!”

“She has a right to know!”

“Son. If you tell her, the story will spread, and before you know it, it will reach Frank’s ears. Think about your brother.”

“I’m thinking about Gracie first and foremost. I was going to marry her, Dad. I was going to pick out a ring and propose!”

This piece of information had a sobering effect, and Dad spoke but a single word. “Oh.”

“Exactly. Can’t very well go through with it now, can I? Knowing what I know...”

“Perhaps... if you just break off relations with her? I mean, she doesn’t need to know the reason, right?”

“I can’t just tell her I stopped loving her, Dad. I just can’t.”

“You... love her.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.

“Yes, I do. With all my heart.”

A long sigh escaped his lips. “What a mess.”

It neatly summed up the situation. Jack’s life, so perfect only hours before, had suddenly turned into a shithole of majestic proportions.

I sat gazing out the window of my childhood bedroom, trying to puzzle together all the pieces of my life. Mom told me it would all come back to me over time, and the best way to make sure it did, was spending some time in an environment in which I’d enjoyed the better part of my childhood.

Across the street a similar mansion as ours stood majestic and tall, its lime-green gabled roof illuminated by the sun putting in a rare appearance on this dreary morning.

I’d slept well and felt thoroughly refreshed, though strange dreams had haunted my nocturnal slumber, causing me to sit up in bed in search of Jack’s reassuring figure.

Discovering I was alone, a sense of loss had washed over me, and I’d vowed to get in touch with the man who’d saved my life and then stolen my heart at the earliest possible convenience.

It was morning now, and I could have picked up the phone to place a call to Jack whenever it suited me, and yet I found myself postponing the inevitable.

I wanted to see him again, but first I needed to get my own affairs in order. I wanted to meet him in full possession of both my memory and my sanity, in full recollection of all the events that had taken place, so we could leave the sordid episode behind us once and for all, and embark on a new life as a couple, unencumbered by the past.

I wanted to greet Jack through the eyes of Gracie Travers, to touch him as myself, and to place my heart in his hands without a care in the world.

And since I didn’t even know how to begin explaining all this to him, I kept putting off getting in touch.

A soft knock on the door sounded, and I looked up, half expecting to see Jack’s grin appearing in the door crack. Instead, it was Mom coming to check up on me.

Her smile was infectious. She really was the mother I’d imagined when driving in the car with Dad. Tall and blond and slender as a willow tree, she didn’t look a day over fifty, though she was closer to sixty now. The moment she’d folded me in her arms yesterday, first the emotions and then the memories had come rushing back, the same way they had with my dad.

“Up already? I thought you’d sleep a hole in the day, seeing how exhausted you were last night.”

“I slept like a rose, Mom. I feel completely refreshed.”

“Glad to hear it. There’s someone downstairs to see you, or else I wouldn’t have disturbed you.” She hesitated. “It’s a police inspector. Jacques Gustave Formelle? He says the two of you have met before.”

I hopped from the alcove, my bare feet making a funny noise on the parquet floor. The feel of the warm wood under my toes brought back fond memories, and I quickly padded to the closet to fetch my clothes.

“You think I can meet him like this? Or do I look too horrible?”

I stabbed at my hair, which was all tangled up from sleep.

Mom smiled. “Perhaps just drag a comb through that mane of yours. For the rest you look fresh as a newborn babe, honey.”

“Great. I’ll be down in a minute, then.”

“I’ll tell him you’re coming.”

Five minutes later, Jacques and I were seated in my father’s study, where we wouldn’t be disturbed, and he’d placed his now familiar notebook on the desk in front of him.

I was sitting in my dad’s wingback chair, my legs folded under me, while Jacques sat perched on the very uncomfortable looking dining chair my father kept for visitors he didn’t particularly like.

“Perhaps we should take the chesterfield,” I suggested, watching the inspector try to make himself comfortable and failing.

He held up his hand and smiled. “I’m perfectly fine,
Mademoiselle
Travers.”

“Gracie. So, what did you find out, inspector?”

“Well, I took the liberty of interviewing all three suspects again, now that we’re in full possession of the facts, and found them more garrulous than ever before. Apparently, spending a couple of nights in jail worked wonders on their willingness to spill the beans. Of course,” he added with a cheeky wink, “I didn’t fail to inform them the other members of the gang had already told me everything, and tried to put the blame squarely on the others’ shoulders.”

“Very clever.”

“I like to think so. So! First off, they would like to offer a formal apology to you, their victim, for the emotional stress caused by their actions, not to mention the physical consequences.”

“That’s really nice of them. Tell them I’ll take it into consideration.”

His eyes twinkled at the suggestion, then he tapped the next point in his little notebook. “You, my young lady, have been very lucky.”

“Oh?”

“When you managed to escape your captors and hitch a ride to Brussels, you probably had no idea what you were doing?”

“I hitched a ride to Brussels?”

“Apparently you did.” His face grew solemn. “You were being held here in Paris, that much we already knew. But that you escaped their vigilance was a fact that surprised me. Why you then decided to go to Brussels in a truck owned and operated by...” He flipped a page. “Chloe’s Fresh Fruits is a mystery to me.”

“And to me,” I murmured.

“They finally caught up with you when the driver kicked you out of his truck, most probably because you failed to produce the stipend he demanded for his services, and you were found wandering around the Canal Zone in Brussels by your captors. When they tried to catch you, you ran and inadvertently fell into the water, knocked your head, and were subsequently saved by Jack.” He tapped the desk. “So far so good.”

“But why did they take me in the first place? And when? And how?”

“Patience, my dear. Patience. I have it all written down in here.”

As Jacques continued to tell the story, I wasn’t surprised that the plan the trio of hoodlums had hatched had focused on exacting sweet revenge on the man they believed had wronged them.

Seth, it turned out, had at one point worked at the bank as a messenger boy, carrying messages from floor to floor. When Dad had caught him flirting with his secretary one fine day, he’d been given the sack, and the irritable little man hadn’t taken it too well.

The fact that the loft Daddy had bought me was located directly adjacent to Seth’s cousin, had been the reason they’d targeted me. Turned out Rainer and I moved in the same artistic circles, and when he heard I was going to Alaska for a fortnight, he’d told Seth, who’d decided it was the perfect opportunity to snag me and no one would be any the wiser. They were going to keep me locked up for two weeks, starve me, and finally deliver me back to my parents with my throat slit.

I gulped at the cruel fate the trio had had in store for me, and Jacques assured me these were hardened criminals, as vicious and nasty as they came.

Well, at least the couple was. Rainer, apparently, was of a different ilk. A petty criminal, he hadn’t agreed to the plan from the start, and had tried to convince the others to let me go.

In fact he said he’d even helped me escape, though Jacques had his doubts about that. At this stage, the man would do or say anything to escape his rightful punishment.

“The most surprising part of the story, to me, is this so-called friend of yours.” He inspected his scribblings. “Natasha Subaru. When you didn’t show up at the airport, instead of notifying your parents or the police, she decided you’d gotten cold feet, and went to Alaska on her own. We contacted her, and she was extremely surprised about what happened.”

“Great friend,” I murmured. I now remembered Natasha as a bit of a flibbertigibbet. She was a model I’d met when she’d modeled at the art academy.
 

The idea to travel to Alaska had occurred to us when we saw a movie late one night about a girl traveling to Alaska and meeting the man of her dreams. In a moment of extreme silliness, we’d decided to do the same.

Well, in a sense it had worked. I had found the man of my dreams, though he’d been much closer by than I thought.

I was feeling so relieved after Jacques’s visit, that I decided not to wait for my memory to return in full, but to head on over to Jack’s immediately.

Our fathers might hate each others’ guts, but that had nothing to do with us. Our love would irk the previous generation of Carters and Traverses, but I didn’t care, and I knew Jack wouldn’t either.

So I stepped from home feeling refreshed and exhilarated and hailed a cab to take me into town, where I knew Jack would eagerly await my return. At least, that’s what I secretly hoped and prayed for.

Even though we had only been apart for a single night, it felt like an eternity, and when finally the taxi decanted me on Jack’s doorstep, I pressed the bell with pounding heart.

Magali showed up within seconds, and her face lit up when she caught sight of me.

“Valerie, honey!” she cried out, and folded me in a warm embrace. I hadn’t the heart to inform her that my name had changed yet again, and when I asked if Jack was home, she happily informed me that he was.

In fact, he’d just returned home, looking all gloomy and sad, and she was sure that my visit would cheer him up immensely.

She told me to walk through the kitchen to the back yard. Apparently Jack, when not being a multi-millionaire in Brussels, liked to potter about in his garden.

“It calms his nerves,” confided Magali in a conspiratorial whisper.

I stepped onto the back terrace, searching for Jack, and was greeted by a sight to behold. Jack’s ‘little back yard’ was, in fact, a much bigger patch than I’d deemed possible in the heart of Paris, where land is extremely expensive and most houses have to do without a bit of greenery.

The trellises placed against the walls were bare, but held the promise of an explosion of reds and greens once spring was heralded in, and patches of mulched soil announced the emergence of daffodils, crocuses and tulips once winter left the land. Beyond a row of blue point junipers, I spotted a large garden house, which told me here lay a garden belonging to an owner who cared. I’d never expected Jack to possess a green thumb; the man really was full of surprises.

I followed a brick-lined path in search of the elusive gardener, and finally found Jack digging in the earth with a gardening trowel, a deep frown etched on his face, along with more than a few smudges. He looked quite sexy in his torn jeans and checkered shirt.

I snuck up on him, and when I crouched down and placed my hands on his eyes from behind, he jerked away and almost keeled over into the shrubbery.

Looking over, he seemed pained more than pleased at my showing up here.

“Gracie,” he grunted.

My heart sank. “Surprise?”

“It most certainly is.”

My grin lost some of its exuberance. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

He forced a smile on his face. “Of course. How are you?”

I stood up, and so did he. Approaching him for a kiss, I was horrified when he jerked his head so my lips landed on his cheek.

Still I didn’t get the message. I hugged him close and murmured, “I missed you so much.”

When he didn’t respond, I placed my hands on both sides of his face, pulling his head down to my level. This time, he actually took my hands in his and gently pushed me away.

Pained, I asked, “Jack, what’s going on?”

“Nothing, I just...” He stood staring uncomfortably at the ground, looking visibly troubled. “Just...”