Her Sworn Enemy (Men of the Zodiac) (16 page)

Even as her heart shrank, her belly began to expand. There was a baby coming, and she refused to let the negativity she was tempted to wallow in impact her child. If she meant anything to Tuck, and she suspected she was fooling herself to think so, he’d be back. Someday. So she waited and went about her life as best as she could.

Chapter Fourteen

W
illiam Tucker McCormack peered up at the imposing dark-glass facade of the McCormack Group building in downtown Manhattan. In a few hours, all if it would be his. The thought should have made him happy. It didn’t. In fact he was eager to get the deal done and over with and get back to New Orleans to start a life with Bella and the baby.

Since the storm, he’d been pushing himself harder than ever to buy out the McCormack Group and see the defeated look on his half brother’s face when he told him he was going to dismantle MCG and sell it off piece by piece. There wasn’t a damned thing Tucker wanted that had anything to do with his father, or brother. Getting rid of the company was the last thing he needed to feel like he could separate himself from the family who never wanted to acknowledge his existence, to claim his future as a man free of his past.

As far as Phillip and the board of the McCormack Group knew, it was another company buying them out. Tuck had used a shell company and adroitly kept his name out of the paperwork, letting his lawyers handle everything until he was ready to reveal himself. He wanted to see Phillip’s face as the asshole realized who was taking everything from him. He wanted to see his reaction when he realized far from getting rid of the bastard son, their mistreatment of him and his mother had only made him stronger.

He took a deep breath of the city air, laced with the fumes of taxi exhaust, sea brine, and hot dogs being sold on the corner and promised himself a long vacation on his sailing ship with Bella and his child. Five minutes later, he walked past the dark double doors of the boardroom of the McCormack Group. A wall of windows looked over an impressive view of Wall Street and the Hudson, but his attention zeroed in on the lone figure silhouetted against the light streaming in.

Phillip looked no different, only older, than Tuck remembered. More like their father. The slight touch of silver at his temples, the deep blue eyes, and hard features that told the world he bowed to no one. His gut tightened, memories trying to writhe their way up, but he stomped them down, focusing himself on his prey.

“Who let you in here?”

“My attorney.”

“Your attor—who are you?”

Tuck angled his head slightly and pulled at the cuff of his Brioni shirt. “Hello, big brother.”

The color drained from Phillip’s face, leaving him looking pasty and sweating, his shoulders sagged slightly. “It can’t be.”

“Oh, it most certainly can. And FYI, I met—and exceeded—the provisions of the trust fund several years ago. And as frosting on the cake, I just bought out the McCormack Group lock, stock, and barrel.”

Phillip spread his feet aggressively, balancing his fingertips on the polished surface of the boardroom table. He gave Tuck a direct, cold look and asked, his tone mocking. “What are you going to do with a company of this size?”

Tuck leaned forward, flattening his palms on top of the polished table and leaned in for the kill. “Oh, I don’t want it. I’m going to dismantle it and sell it off piece by piece.”

Phillip frowned. “But why? You’ll lose your ass
and
your money.”

Tucker smiled mirthlessly. “Because, dickhead, it was never
about
the money.”

“But you’ll destroy MCG,” he said. “The stocks will be worthless.” Reality dawned on him, and he blanched further. “You’ll ruin us.”

“Oh, you mean ruin
your
side of the family? Different when the shoe’s on the other foot, isn’t it? You didn’t give a shit what your actions did to a grieving woman with a child to support, did you? You didn’t think what it was like to wonder where your next meal was coming from, or how long you’d be able to afford heat in winter, or if you’d even have a place to sleep that night. Somehow I think you’ll find a way to get by, even if you all have to go get
actual
jobs. At least Belladonna Dupré seemed to think you could manage.”

The nauseated look on Phillip’s face faded a bit as color returned swiftly to his cheeks, and his dark blue eyes grew sharp. “Bella? How the hell do you know Bella?”

Tuck’s grin got even bigger. He was sure he was showing all his teeth in a shark’s smile. “She’s going to be my wife.”

Phillip sank into the chair at the head of the long table. Sitting back, he picked the Mont Blanc pen up from the table next to the stack of papers he’d signed and twirled the pen around his fingers. “Please don’t tell me you went to all the effort to look her up and screw her just to get back at me. That would be the height of pathetic.”

Phillip’s feeble attempt to goad him showed how desperate his brother was…and how much Tuck had grown. He didn’t need his father or his family’s approval. He was his own man, and Phillip’s jabs no longer hit home. “As a matter of fact, we met by accident working on the same job. She almost refused to work with me because I reminded her too much of you.”

“Heartbroken?”

“Nauseated. Whatever you did to her made her loathe you.”

Phillip shrugged, as if Bella meant nothing. Tuck bristled, his hands closing into fists. “Bella was a little too bookish for my taste, and obsessive. She ever find that little boat of hers that she never stopped talking about?”

“Yes.”

“And did she find her sunken treasure?” he said, a mocking tone in his voice as he made quotation marks with his fingers around the words sunken treasure.

Tuck brushed off the instant urge to punch him in the face and instead chose to turn it back on him. “I helped her do so.”

Phillip’s expression changed, his brows knitting together and he stood up, the sharp, poisonous look still in his eyes. “So you left her to come here to take me on?”

“And when I get back we have a wedding and a baby shower to plan.” At this point not strictly true, but it would be as soon as he went back to New Orleans. The words came out, intended to wound Phillip, but the minute he’d said it aloud Tuck realized he meant them. He’d resisted the idea of marriage for so long, and love for even longer, that he hadn’t even seen the desire for both of them creep up on him.

“Bella is
pregnant
?”

“She is. We’re both thrilled.” Again a supposition he’d turn into reality as soon as he was able. She had a shitload of things to forgive him for, her pregnancy was one them. He’d fix things with her. He loved her more than he thought he’d ever loved anyone. Pregnant or not, he wanted to marry her. He’d figure things out. Make them work. He had to.

“Don’t worry, you won’t be expected to clear time in your schedule for either one. You’re not invited.” His composure slipped a little. What if, after all this time away setting up the necessary paperwork and money to orchestrate this takeover, Bella wanted nothing to do with him? She was stubborn and opinionated and had a streak of pride a mile wide. Could she, hell
would
she, forgive him? God, he hoped so.

“You’re still an idiot, you know that?”

Tuck tried to shove the worries about Bella aside. This was his moment to throw things down with Phillip, and he couldn’t let it slip by. “Bitter much? It’s a good look for you. Now your outsides match your insides, dickhead.”

Phillip put his hands on his hips, spoiling the line of the black Brooks Brothers jacket. “You still don’t get it do you?” His handsome face, so similar to their father’s, twisted with distaste. “You had it all. The girl. A life of freedom to do whatever the hell you wanted with it. All without being encumbered by all of this.” He jerked his chin to indicate the corporate boardroom walls around them. “And you blew it”—he snapped his fingers and gave a mirthless laugh—”just like that. You left her when she was probably her most vulnerable to come here and orchestrate a takeover. That had to take some time, a month at least, maybe more. Women like Bella don’t forget shit like that. And from experience, I can tell you she’s not the type to forgive or forget. You might have won the battle, William, but you lost the war.”

Tuck’s gut took a dive to the vicinity of his polished shoes. Yeah, he’d screwed up. Big time. He knew that.
Now.

He’d let his drive to fix his past overshadow his future and potentially lost out on something far more valuable—a family of his own. A wife. A child. A home he could come back to no matter how far the adventures in his life took him.

The triumphant gleam in Phillip’s eye only rubbed salt in the wound, making the sting that much sharper. He’d crafted one of the most brilliant hostile takeovers in decades and gotten credit for finding the
Rapid
. And it made no difference at all. He wasn’t getting the satisfaction he’d imagined, and by being so damned one track about this takeover, he’d ignored his own instincts. He should’ve listened to the little nagging doubts he’d shoved aside. He should never have left Bella alone. All he really wanted was to go back home to New Orleans.

Home…the thought struck him. He’d never had a place he really thought of as home until now. And it wasn’t a place, it was a person—a woman with green eyes like the sea on a summer’s day, whose bright smile and sassy mouth could make all the pain, all the angst, fade away with just a kiss of her soft lips.

He glanced at the corporate boardroom, the epicenter of power for the McCormack family, cold and pristine…and realized he didn’t want it, not one bit of it. Tuck picked up the papers Phillip had just signed, the papers that gave him control of every aspect of the McCormack Group, and tore them in half. The sheets fluttered down to the smooth slate gray carpeting.

Phillip narrowed his eyes. “What’s your game, William?”

“It’s Tucker, and this is no game.”

Phillip sneered at him, crossing his arms. “You really have lost your mind.”

Tuck smiled. “No, I think, I’ve actually found it. You can keep the company, Phillip. I don’t need it. And I don’t need you or anyone else in the family. In fact, I might even change my name.”

Phillip’s brow furrowed with confusion, but Tuck didn’t stay to find out why. He didn’t care. All he wanted to do was get on the next flight back to New Orleans so he could begin to make things right with Bella.

I
t was dusk and the shadows collected in the corners and crevices of her family home. Bella never knew how tired she could be until she’d hit the first trimester of her pregnancy. What was it about babies that had the ability to siphon off both your energy and your brain? She brushed her teeth to get ready for bed. It didn’t matter that she’d skipped dinner; her stomach was too touchy to want to eat. Right now she needed sleep more than food.

She was drifting off when there was a knock at the front door. Min was still at work at the shop so there was no one but her to hear the echo of the heavy iron knocker as it reverberated on the marble in the entryway. When she had a home of her own, she’d have wood floors and soft rugs. She sighed, flipped off her blankets, and padded down the stairs.

The marble tiles were cool against her bare feet. She opened the door a crack and peered out to see Tucker standing there in a business suit, shirt, and a blue power tie worthy of Wall Street. Bella’s fingers tightened around the door as her uneven heartbeat increased and her breathing became ragged. “Tucker?”

“Forgotten me already?” His mouth tipped up in a halfhearted smile. A fragile smile.

For a second Bella was too stunned to breathe. He looked so good. So different from the man, the lover, she’d known on the
Discovery
. Perhaps this was the real him, the McCormack him. Dressed in his powerbroker suit, she didn’t know him at all. “What are you doing here?”

He frowned. “I came back for you like I said I would.”

“Yes, two damned
months
ago. What the hell do you want?”

Tuck glanced up and down the street. “Can I come in? Might be easier if we talked inside.”

She rubbed her forehead with shaking fingers, trying to ease the ache that was building behind her eyes. “Yeah, of course, come in.” She closed the door, slid off the chain latch, and opened it wide so he could enter. Turning, she left him to close it and walked ahead to the living room. Curling up on the old, familiar couch, she tucked her feet beneath her. Lord, she was crazy happy to see him, but she wasn’t going to make this easy on him. He had a lot of explaining to do, and she’d give him enough rope to hang himself before she asked him politely to leave. He had no right to disappear for months on end without a word. He had no right to make her believe he loved her.

Bella gave him a cool look as he took a nearby chair. “Well?”

G
od, she was beautiful.

How in such a short time had he forgotten the silky texture of her hair, how it gleamed in the low light of evening, or how dark the lashes were that framed those pale green eyes? There were subtle changes, things he didn’t think were memory lapse. Her frame looked slightly thinner, but her breasts were larger. He avoided the temptation of touching her.

“How are you?”

“How
am
I?” She gave him an incredulous look. “I’m three months pregnant, morning sick, afternoon sick, and just for fun, evening sick, too. My ankles are swollen, and all I want to eat are pickles. My lover disappeared for months on end without so much as a damn word, and Aunt Min is worried sick about me.
That’s
how the hell I am, Tucker. Not that you have a right to know any of that.”

“It’s good to see you.” He faltered. There was an awkwardness between them that had never been there before. Tuck chalked it up to her being hurt and him feeling like a dick for hurting her. He’d told her on the satellite call from the ship he’d be going to New York. He’d gotten caught up in the whirlwind of making the takeover happen and getting the artifacts back to her and had no personal time at all.

“I’m sorry, Bella, I know it took longer than I intended, but—”

“How long did you
intend
to abandon me? No more than a month? Six weeks? Until our baby turned eighteen? I want to know what the hell your plan was. I want to know—” Her voice broke. “How could you leave me alone, wondering what the hell happened to you?”