Winning Wyatt (The Billionaire Brotherhood Book 1) (3 page)

“That’s
a pretty general category,” Dylan said. “Can you be more specific or should I
just pick one for you?”

“You
know I don’t want your leftovers.”

Dylan
chuckled. “Then what’s her name?”

“Remember
that crazy, wild girl who went with us on a motorcycle trip through Europe?”
The woman who had eventually fixed him up with Kara Enderley, but Wyatt wasn’t
sharing that information. Not even with Dylan.

“Yeah,
we stayed a few days at her uncle’s chateau on the Riviera. Regina Viviano? The
one who jumped from your bike to mine, mid-trip?”

Of
course, his friend would give Wyatt a hard time before giving him the phone
number he wanted. “Not how I remember it, but, yes, that’s one.”

By
the time he finished with Dylan, they’d made plans to meet in New York on
Friday, and Wyatt had the telephone number he wanted.

He
weighed the phone in his hand just as he weighed the decision to make a call
he’d promised Kara he would never make. But the time had come. He had to do it.

“Regina?
This is Wyatt Maitland.”

On
Friday evening, Kara closed the heavy door of Manhattan’s Rothschild Gallery against
the drizzly autumn rain. After checking her coat and umbrella, she squared her
shoulders and pushed her way through the damp crowd milling around the mammoth
room filled with towering sculptures. Jostled and elbowed from one corner of
the room to the other, she muttered under her breath and wished she’d stayed
home.

Everything
had been off-kilter since Wyatt’s call on Tuesday. Her editor had pushed up the
publication date of her art history manuscript. Her dreams at night had
contained an emotionally confusing mix of hot, erotic scenarios and searing,
incomprehensible loss.

And
to make matters worse, Sean’s nagging cough had been diagnosed as a minor
respiratory infection, just as she’d feared. The resulting stuffy head and
sniffles had made him cranky all week. So tonight, she’d waited too long to
tear herself away from him to get here on time.

Normally,
she arrived for the media preview of a new show before the general public
trooped inside. Otherwise, like now, it was almost impossible to block out the
swirling opinions of the less-than-knowledgeable masses who attended every hot
new exhibit.

The
escalating level of cocktail chat prevented her from recording a lot of
observations on her phone. In the morning, she’d come back for a more careful
study of Samantha Davenport’s creations. Some of the California sculptor’s
pieces seemed naggingly familiar as they soared in majestic relief toward the
stark white of the vaulted ceiling. But Kara’s advance research indicated that
the Rothschild had nabbed the artist’s first New York showing.

As
Kara wove through the gathering, she scanned the crowd for her agent. Also her
best friend, Regina had agreed to meet her here prior to dinner at their
favorite Italian restaurant, but the vivacious woman had never been known for
her punctuality. With one eye on the door instead of on her destination, Kara
bumped into a sturdy figure dressed in black.

“Dylan!
Hello.” She greeted the staggeringly handsome and wealthy Dylan Bradford with a
touch of caution. Even though his family patronized the arts, Kara found him
too smooth and good-looking for his own good. His wealth and high-profile name
kept him from moving in her usual social circles, but he had his share of
charm. More obvious and less subdued than Wyatt’s, but still, pretty lethal.
“When was the last time you attended a new artist’s opening? Samantha Davenport
should be honored.”

“Kara,
love.” Dylan gathered her in for a hug and a kiss. Too late to avoid the
inevitable grope, she planted her hands against his rock-solid chest and pushed
herself away from the determined player. He’d pursued her with erratic levels
of interest from the day of their first meeting. Normally, the attention amused
her. But this evening, she was on edge and not in the mood.

Sometimes,
late at night during a vulnerable or lonely moment, she grappled with the
temptation to accept the next offer he made for some down-and-dirty,
no-holds-barred sex. But he represented nothing but temporary—and if rumors
could be believed—spectacular relief. In the end, he wasn’t the one she wanted,
and she’d wind up lonelier than before.

He
accepted the rebuff with a flicker of amusement in his dark and smoldering
eyes. “I had started to regret the impulse. Seeing you here makes it almost
worthwhile.”

“Almost?”
she questioned with feigned indignation.

“Well,
you know how I hate these crowds—unless it’s for one of my own causes or
protégés.” He plucked two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray and
handed her one. “But an old friend asked me to come and be supportive.”

“And
you did as you were bid?” She raised her eyebrows and studied the generally
self-absorbed prince of society as she sipped the bubbly. “I’m impressed. I
want to meet the person who can bring you into line with just a request.”

He
leaned forward to speak into her ear. “Let’s just say, there are favors owed
that can never be repaid.”

“Blackmail
or bribery, huh? I should’ve guessed.” Kara returned him to arm’s length and
surveyed the room for Regina.

“If
I had seen Samantha Davenport beforehand, I would’ve complied without the
arm-twisting.” He downed his drink and nodded at someone across the way. “Have
you met her yet?”

“No.
What’s she like?”

“Judge
for yourself. She’s standing with Irma over by the fountain.” He nodded in the
artist’s direction. “Ebony waterfall of hair… long, shapely legs… voluptuous
breasts you could balance a plate on. And she’s dressed all in black. Just my
type.”

“If
she’s breathing, she’s your type.” Kara shifted to get a glimpse of the paragon
he’d described.

The
beautiful sculptress towered over the diminutive gallery owner and leaned into
a tall, well-built male who choose that moment to join her. The man placed an
arm around her waist, and the woman relaxed into his embrace. An
all-too-familiar twinge of longing twitched between Kara’s shoulders as she
witnessed the couple exchange the simple gestures of affection.

Get over it
. She turned her attention to Samantha’s
escort. Apparently Wyatt’s phone call had lodged him stubbornly in her
thoughts. If she looked at Samantha’s companion in a certain way, this rare
specimen of supportive male resembled Wyatt a bit.

Resembled
him a lot, actually.

Hmmm
. The companion stroked the sculptress’s cheek with long-fingered,
expressive hands. Just like Wyatt’s. Hands that had caressed, comforted, and
excited Kara with urgent, silent eloquence.

And
the man’s dark hair—with a hint of curl—fell stubbornly forward at the temples.
Just like Wyatt’s. He thrust it off his forehead with an impatient shove and
turned to the side, revealing a profile she knew all too well.

Kara
gasped and pressed a hand to her chest to suppress her heart’s uneven thumping
while she drank in every detail of Wyatt’s all-too-real, all-too-recognizable
presence. She took one eager step in his direction. And then another. A smile
touched her lips.

And
then she remembered.

Despite
the compelling attraction that pulled her toward him, several horrific facts
unfurled through her brain and kept her rooted to the floor.

She
didn’t
want
to see him.

She
especially didn’t want
him
to see
her
.

She
told him she’d be out of town. On a cruise.

“Oh,
God.” She thrust her glass into Dylan’s hand and dove into the crowd. Ignoring
the toes she stepped on, she plowed a path across the black marble floor.

“What’s
wrong?” Dylan followed hard on her heels.

She
brushed a trembling hand across her forehead, but didn’t slow. “I’m not feeling
well. If you see Regina, tell her—”

They
reached the entryway and her friend materialized by her side. “Tell her what?”

“I
have to leave.” Kara pushed onward, toward the door.

Regina
grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. “But what about dinner? I have a
yummy surprise for you.”

“I’m
sorry, but I can’t stay. I’ll explain tomorrow.” Kara shrugged off her friend
and cast a worried glance over her shoulder. Wyatt no longer stood beside Irma
and the female sculptor. He could be anywhere.
He could be headed her way
.

“It’s
pouring outside.” Regina stepped forward and blocked the door. “Where’s your
coat? You’ll need an umbrella.”

Kara
pulled a claim check out of her purse and swapped it for Regina’s dripping
tiger-striped umbrella and raincoat. “You take mine. I’ll take yours. We can
trade back later. Sorry about dinner.”

She
dashed out the door, plunging into the cold, wet darkness, desperate to protect
the safety of the world she’d created for herself a little while longer.

Wyatt
scanned the crowd for Regina Viviano and listened with half an ear as Irma Rothschild
made predictions about Sam’s almost certain success.

His
gaze shifted across the sea of faces. He hadn’t seen his outlandish friend in
years. He hoped he’d recognize her. If not, Wyatt could count on Dylan to
identify the bold woman they’d partied with across Europe.

Sam’s
strong, sculptor’s fingers bit into his forearm and pulled at his attention.
Placing an arm around her shoulders, he hugged her against him. “Relax, Sammie.
You’re a hit.”

“But
there’s so much at stake.” She spoke so quietly he had to bend down to hear.

Wyatt
shook his head at her lack of confidence. Putting his hands on her shoulders,
he looked her in the eye. Not many women around could match him in height.
“Your best work is on display in a top-notch New York gallery. Try to enjoy
it.”

“Good
advice!” Irma bobbed her head like a pigeon. “However, it wouldn’t hurt for you
to mingle with the customers and the press and try to make a good impression.”

“Don't
worry about the critics,” Wyatt continued to soothe. “They’re probably a bunch
of dried up old prunes who wouldn’t recognize your kind of style, innovation,
and creativity if it bit them in their collective butts.”

“Not
true. Some of them are quite enlightened.” Irma ticked them off on her fingers.
“Callie Jones is here, and I spotted Kara Enderley earli—”

“Kara
Enderley?” Wyatt swiveled his head from side to side to see for himself. “But
she’s—”

“Excuse
me—” One of Irma’s anemic-looking, overeager assistants interrupted them with a
potential buyer in tow. Irma and Sam snapped to attention.

Wyatt
took the opportunity to slip away.

His
inspection of the crowd intensified, but too many people milled around for him
to pinpoint Kara or Regina. Frustrated, he focused on the main entrance. For
the space of a heartbeat he spotted Kara’s auburn hair.

There!

Before
he could be sure, a set of broad shoulders blocked his view and a sprite with
bright red hair and electric clothing stepped in the way. Kara darted a glance
around the room, allowing him a tantalizingly brief view of her delicate
features before she ducked outside.

Wyatt
moved swiftly, torn between fury and jubilation. He stood too far away to catch
up with her, and though he called her name, noisy conversation drowned him out.
When he arrived at the door, Dylan stepped into his path.

“Wyatt!
Great to see you, buddy.” Dylan slapped him on the back.

“Great
to see you, too. Thanks for coming.” Wyatt shook his friend’s hand and gave him
a loose-limbed shoulder hug. “I tried to get Ryan to join us, but he’s laid up
with another knee surgery.”

“Yeah,
I heard. We should go to Boston tomorrow to see him.”

“Good
idea. Let’s do it. Tomorrow or the next day. I’ll get back to you on that.” He
turned to face the woman at Dylan’s side. “And Regina, my love. Been dancing in
any Italian fountains lately?”

She
groaned at the memory. “Trust you to bring up sordid episodes from my past.
Besides, you were the instigator of that prank, if I remember correctly.”
Linking her hands behind his neck, she brushed Euro-air kisses on first one
cheek and then the other. “How’s my favorite Renaissance Man? Don’t tell me
you’re still friends with this reprobate.” She jabbed Dylan with an elbow.

“Ouch,
that hurts.” Dylan shielded his heart with a hand. “And I thought you wanted
me. Bad.”

“Oh,
I do. In the worst way. Tied up, blindfolded. Maybe a little whip-action.” She
released her grip on Wyatt’s neck to loop her arm through Dylan’s and nip his
ear.

Dylan
patted her on the ass. “Sure, that would work, babe. Give me a call sometime.”

Wyatt
looked from one of them to the other, speculating on the tension that bounced
between them. Were they kidding? Or were they serious? Hard to tell. And not
his business. Whatever was going on between these two, Wyatt had his own agenda.

 
“Wyatt, I definitely want to meet your latest
protégé before the evening’s over. Catch up with me later, okay? And Regina
darling, I see a tempting tidbit over there I’d love to do—I mean, talk to. If
you’ll excuse me...” As she sputtered, Dylan put his hands in his pockets and
strolled away.

“Satyr,”
Regina muttered to Dylan’s retreating back.

While
their exchange had roused Wyatt’s curiosity, he had history of his own to
explore. He turned to check on Sam’s whereabouts before backing the agent into
a corner behind one of Sam’s towering free-forms.

Regina
crossed her arms, leaned against the wall, and cut to the chase. “Okay,
gorgeous, what is it you want?”

He
sighed. “What makes you think I want something?”

“Well,
I haven’t seen you since that summer we biked through Italy. How long ago was
that?” A skinny eyebrow arched into hiding behind her shock of bangs with pink
highlights. “Ten, twelve years? And then I receive your phone call the other
day, out of the blue, saying you’re eager to meet with me. So what’s it about?”

“It’s
not that abrupt,” Wyatt objected. “We’ve talked occasionally.”

“True,
but I’ve been the one calling you.”

“Wanting
favors of one sort or another,” he reminded her.

She
drew back then, warier than before. “Not always.”

“Right.”
He pinned a smile to his face. “Actually, this meeting is about one of those
favors you wanted. I wondered what happened to that friend you asked me to meet
in Los Angeles a couple of years ago.”

“I
don’t know why you’d care about Kara now.” Regina wrinkled her nose with elfin
charm. “You only took her to dinner that one time.”

“I
intended to ask her out again, but I had to leave town on business the next
day.” Or, that was the story he and Kara had agreed to share with Regina
anyway. Kara had been adamant about keeping their steamy affair a secret.
Wyatt’s hope that Kara had found a way in the past three years to tell her
friend the truth plummeted. “Does she still live in New York? I thought we
might get together now that I’m here and kind of at loose ends.”

Regina
hooted her disbelief. “You call Samantha Davenport a loose end? How
unchivalrous.”

He
frowned at her assumption that there was something intimate going on between
them. “We’re just friends.”

“Does
she
know that?” Both of Regina’s
penciled-in eyebrows soared upward this time. “Don’t look now, but she’s headed
this way and does not look happy.”

“She’s
just nervous about the show.” He steered Regina more deeply into the corner.
“Tell me what happened to your friend before Sam reaches us.”

Regina
crossed one elegantly shod foot over the other and crossed her arms. “Remember
when I asked you to meet her? She was really depressed about the deaths of her
husband and child. Understandable, but still, it had been three years since the
accident. I thought a change of scene would do her good, and I got her a
temporary writing assignment in L.A.”

“At
The Hansett. Right, I remember some of that.” Wyatt’s patience stretched thin,

waiting
for her to continue.

“I
thought you must have something special in the air or the water out there,
because by the time she came back to New York, she glowed with good spirits. I
wasn’t sure the improvement would last, but then she went and got herself
pregnant. Having a baby seems to have worked wonders.”

“Pregnant?”
His voice cracked on the word. He needed a moment to accept the concept. More
than a moment. “She had a baby?”

“Yeah,
can you imagine?” Regina shuddered at the prospect. “Having another child
wouldn’t have been my choice. But to each person, their own poison, I always
say. She’s a little paranoid about the kid’s safety, but I guess that’s to be
expected after what happened with the first one.”

Although
he remained on his feet, he felt like he’d been body slammed to the floor. He
gasped to get his breath back. “How—” Wheeze. “What—” Wheeze. “Who—”

“Um,
Wyatt?” Sam interrupted the inarticulate line of questions tripping against one
another on his tongue.

Questions
about the child’s age, gender, and the most important question of all. Who the
hell was the father? Questions like that could wait until he had Kara standing
in front of him. He wanted her to personally fill him in on the gory details,
not Regina.

He
squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead. “Do you need something?”

“Um,
yes. I mean, when you have time, could you come with me to talk to some
reporters? You know I’m not very good with that kind of thing.”

“Sure,
Sam.” He summoned an encouraging smile for her. “That’s why I’m here.”

She
linked her arm with his, and Wyatt excused himself to Regina. He held Sam’s
hand through the question-and-answer session, but his heart and head tumbled
with thoughts of Kara. And her baby.

She lied!

Speeding
through the rain and dark toward Kara’s Connecticut home, Wyatt slammed the
heel of his hand against the steering wheel of the rental car his assistant had
delivered to the gallery. He hadn’t reserved a car and driver for the night and
he needed to get to Kara as quickly as he could.

She’d
lied about so many things, not just about being out of town this weekend. She’d
lied by omission every time she failed to mention a small detail like the birth
of a child.

Although
some persistent corner of his brain suggested, maybe her silence on the subject
made sense in a weird, convoluted kind of way.

As
much as he hated to acknowledge it, the last time they’d been together, she’d
made no secret about how much she wanted to be a mother again. In their
conversations since then, he’d been satisfied to hear her voice and know she
was all right. They rarely discussed private or personal matters. And he
particularly applauded whatever reasoning had kept her from sharing confidences
about romantic involvements.

But
she must have known that he appreciated how much having a baby meant to her.
Why hadn’t she mentioned something so important? So freaking monumental?

Over
the past three years, she’d provided him with mountains of information about
the renovation of her nineteenth-century Victorian house. How she’d scoured
estate auctions for the perfect nineteenth-century Austrian crystal chandelier
to hang in the dining room. How carefully she’d recreated the house’s original
color scheme. How she’d hired a carpenter to repair the authentic railing on
the gazebo. He knew how long it had taken to refinish the hardwood floors
throughout the lower level of the whole damn house.

But
he knew nothing about her baby.

Or
the baby’s father. Could
he
be—? No.
Tugging on the knot of his necktie, he cut off that thought abruptly. Surely
she would’ve told him
that
!

He
pulled up the circular driveway and parked. Light gleamed through various
windows, but not from her tower room office. Was the window on the second floor
with a light on the nursery?

A
late model Mustang sat in front of the house. Well, too bad if she had company.
He couldn’t wait another second to see Kara. Without conscious effort, he found
himself out of the car and stationed on the wide porch.

But
then, he hesitated. What if she wasn’t home yet? What if someone else came to
the door? Someone like a babysitter. Or a boyfriend. Or worse, the father of
her child. The lucky son of a bitch.

Wyatt
thumped the polished brass doorknocker with intentional force. Once. Twice. And
then again. The foyer light blinked on and the door eased opened.

At
last.
Kara.

His
gaze feasted on the sight of her. Even with fear banked in her lavender eyes,
she looked stronger, less fragile than she had the last time he’d seen her.
From the top of her reddish-brown hair pulled into a sophisticated topknot,
down the pale silky blouse that shimmered like moonlight, past the slim skirt,
to the toes curling against the hardwood floor, she exuded a new confidence and
contentment.