Surrender to a Donovan (Kimani Romance) (8 page)

Chapter 12

“H
ow did you cut your hand?”

“With glass,” was Patrick Dennison’s tight reply. “Just get me a towel, would you?” he yelled at the maid, who, in his estimation, was way too smart for her own good. Giselle was her name, and she was always in his face. Smiling and asking questions, touching his arm or glancing at him from beneath those long, dark lashes she had. He knew what she wanted, what she thought he had to give, and ordinarily he would have been eager to give it to her. But his return to Miami hadn’t been planned.

Tate wasn’t supposed to be here, but she was. And so he’d had to come.

He hadn’t thought about her in months. Hell, to be perfectly honest, Patrick hadn’t thought about Tate since the day he’d walked out of their apartment nine months ago. The divorce had been quick and painless—no contest, no reconciliation, just done. She hadn’t even asked for child support for the baby. And Patrick hadn’t offered a thing. He’d hung around Maryland for a while after that, spending his newly acquired fortune on booze and women. The next part of his plan consisted of long days on some secluded beach and hot, sultry nights with any willing female. Instead he was here, looking for Tate.

The first time he’d seen her had been three days ago at the Excalibur Business Center. He’d thought he was seeing things, because she didn’t look the same. Her face appeared softer, her clothes more attractive. This wasn’t the woman he’d married who’d worked at the local newspaper and read the obituaries just because. He’d been sitting in the car waiting, which was how he spent most of his time these days. She’d come out of the building talking with another woman, then they’d crossed the street and entered a parking garage.

The next day he’d shown up around the same time and followed her through the garage, noting that she drove the same car she had in Maryland. Now he knew where she lived and where the child went to day care. He didn’t really care about the child, not beyond how she fit into his current plan.

“You should maybe see a doctor, señor,” Giselle said, wrapping a bathroom towel around his right fist.

“I’m fine,” he told her, frowning so hard his temples throbbed.

Briana hadn’t been in her crib. He’d watched their apartment at night for the past two days. It faced the back of the building, and there was a Dumpster that put him up just high enough to pull down the fire escape and climb up until he was at their windows. From what he could see, Briana had a pretty room. So did Tate. She’d actually done better for herself than he’d thought she would.

In fact, that’s what had surprised him most about seeing her again. He’d been sure she would have run back to her family in Maryland, begging them to forgive her. She’d been so upset about cutting her ties with them, but Patrick was sure it was for the best. Her father and grandfather were meddling geezers who would have bled them dry the moment Patrick came into some money. And her sisters ran their mouths way too much, and they would have been filling Tate’s head with all sorts of nonsense about him. Leaving that crazy bunch alone had been a good decision.

Moving to the kitchen sink, he switched on the cold water, unwrapped his hand and thrust it beneath the spray. Tingles of pain rippled through his arm, and he clenched his teeth to keep from yelling out. Most likely there were still pieces of glass in his hand, but he wasn’t going to any hospital. That would bring too much attention, and he needed to lay low, at least for a while longer.

“Go get some tweezers,” he yelled to Giselle. “And hurry up!”

She moved quickly out of the room. In a hurry to please him, he thought with some satisfaction. That’s how cooperative he needed Tate to be.

* * *

Tate’s internal clock made her stir at a few minutes before six in the morning. This was her normal wake-up time, as it took about an hour and a half to get herself and Briana ready for the day. She’d make her drop-off at the day care and then head to work and be at her desk no later than eight-thirty.

When she rolled over and realized she wasn’t alone in bed, she figured her morning routine might need a little adjusting.

His body was hard as her knee grazed his, her toes rubbing slightly over his calf. She thought about pulling away but then took a moment just to feel, to savor. Last night had been outstanding, if that word could even describe their lovemaking. It had been something out of a storybook. Not a fairy tale—more like a lustful tale, she thought with a smile creeping onto her face.

Afterward he’d held her. Moments later he’d gotten up and asked her to join him in the shower. She had, because she’d already thrown in the towel on resisting their attraction. What would happen because of her decision to sleep with her boss, she would just have to deal with later. She deserved this one night of pleasure and was profoundly glad she’d partaken.

“That’s what I like to wake up to—a beautiful smiling woman,” he said, jolting Tate from her thoughts.

Her eyes opened quickly, embarrassment warming her cheeks.

He touched a finger to her cheek as if he knew the warmth grew there. More likely he could see a rosy blush, and Tate tried to look away from him.

“Good morning,” he whispered, lifting her face gently so she was looking at him again.

He came in instantly for a soft kiss on her lips. A kiss that made her melt all over.

“Good morning,” she said when he’d pulled back slightly.

Then there was a gurgling sound and baby chatter resonated throughout the room. For a moment, Sean looked perplexed.

“It’s Briana,” she told him, moving away and throwing the covers off her legs. “I brought the monitor in here last night after, um, after.” She was fumbling for words, and she absolutely hated that. So she shut her mouth and moved out of the bed to find her robe. Slipping it and her slippers on, she was about to leave when he grabbed her arm.

He hadn’t taken the time to put on a robe, so he stood before her in boxer briefs that did absolutely nothing to hide his morning arousal.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “I don’t mind both my ladies saying good morning.”

Both his ladies? No, she warned herself. No. No. No. He didn’t mean anything by that. He was just saying it because it seemed to fit the moment. Her response was to smile.

“I’ll go get her so we can get ready. We’ll use the downstairs bathroom to stay out of your way.”

Sean was already shaking his head before she could finish speaking. “You’ll use the bathroom up here just as you did last night. You’re not in my way. We’re both adjusting our morning routines. It’ll be fine.”

She only nodded, afraid of what might come out of her mouth if she attempted to talk. Tate wanted to refuse again, but she knew it sounded idiotic. After all, she’d slept with the man. Acting like a shy schoolgirl now was just pointless.

“And Tate,” he called to her.

She stopped at the door and turned to face him. “Yes?”

“I’ll drive us in to work and we can stop at your place this evening to pick up your car.”

Again she nodded and then felt like a mute. “That will be fine,” she replied and walked away before he could stop her once more.

* * *

The ride to the day care and to the office was silent. Sean figured she was gathering her thoughts about the change in their relationship. He wanted to give her that time. Because for him, there was no turning back. He liked this woman, a lot, and he wanted to get to know her and her daughter. If she needed a little peace and quiet to accept that, he was game.

But when they stepped out of his car, he felt he had to at least make his intentions clear.

“I respect your feelings about sleeping with your boss,” he began as she collected her things out of the car and then stood to face him.

“Word spreads like wildfire around here,” she admitted. “I don’t plan on telling anyone about last night or our current living arrangements.”

He nodded, figuring that’s how she would plan to deal with it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in agreement.

“I don’t hide. If I’m sleeping with you, I’m the only person sleeping with you. And you can expect the same from me. To that end, if I’m dating you, that’s out in the open. While I’m not a fan of tabloids or office gossip, I’m not in the habit of living my life in secrecy.”

She didn’t respond immediately, which Sean expected. What she did do shocked him.

“Understood,” she said, coming up on tiptoe to kiss him lightly.

He watched her walk toward the elevator in amazement. He’d been poised for an argument, but none had come. This might be one for the record books, he thought. The first time a woman had baffled him.

* * *

Tate answered three letters before noon, finding her advice coming quickly and seamlessly to the lovelorn. Actually, the letters she’d selected were all from men asking questions such as, “How can I show my lady she’s the only woman I want?” To that she’d replied:

When you look at her, take her hands and tell her exactly how you feel. If you’re truly sincere, she’ll get the message. It’s not in the material things you provide her; any man can buy a gift. It’s about being honest with her and being there when she needs you. The simplest way to convince her is to show her.

After she’d finished typing, Tate thought about the dinner Sean had prepared for her last night. It wasn’t anything fancy, just homemade spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread, and she forgot the size of her thighs as she enjoyed two thick slices of bread. He’d sat across from her at the island in the center of his kitchen while Briana sat in her high chair—miraculously eating strings of noodles that Sean had cut into small pieces and put into a bowl in front of her.

“I can’t believe she’s eating that,” she’d said to him, unable to keep the amazement from her voice. “Everything I feed her, she tosses across the room.”

He laughed, a deep, rich sound that Tate found very comforting. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be fed. She seems like a very independent little lady to me. Just like her mother.”

Tate had smiled and continued to eat, wondering how Sean knew more about her daughter than she did. She realized that that wasn’t really the case, but Sean had a way about him. A sort of Mr. Fix-it mentality—if he saw a problem, it was his job to fix it. Just like he was fixing her temporary homelessness problem. It reminded her of her grandfather and her father, of how they always seemed to step in to take care of things for her and her sisters when they were growing up. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d missed that sort of comfort.

Her cell phone rang, loudly, and her startled fingers clicked across her keyboard. Reaching across her desk to where she usually sat her phone during the day, she looked at the screen. The number was reading unknown again. She didn’t want to answer it, because she knew it was going to be another hang-up. Just as she was about to hit the button that would send the call directly to her voice mail, Tate thought of the break-ins and wondered if they were connected. On impulse she answered the phone.

“Hello?”

There was no answer, but someone was on the line. She knew because she could hear them breathing.

“Who is this?” she asked, agitation and fear battling for her heart. “I said who is this?”

Then he laughed. Yes, it was a he. And the laugh was familiar.

“Patrick,” she sighed.

He hung up.

Chapter 13

“S
abine put an offer on the table,” Dion said the moment Sean walked into his office that afternoon.

He’d received an urgent message to call his brother the moment he stepped out of his meeting with a potential advertiser. Instead of calling him, Sean figured he’d just go see him. He really wanted to ask if Dion had heard anything from Trent on Tate’s background check. He’d been thinking about her all morning and all through his meeting. Hopefully he hadn’t given Cassidy Cosmetics too much of a good deal because of his unusually distracted demeanor.

Now he was standing at the edge of Dion’s desk, feeling his temples start to throb as he reached for the piece of paper Dion held out to him.

“Thirty million dollars for
Infinity
and shares into DNT,” Dion told him.

“Damn it!” Sean cursed, his fingers tightening on the paper, threatening to crumple it up and toss it across the room. On second thought, he did precisely that.

The paper bounced off the window and fell to the floor behind Dion’s desk.

Dion chuckled. “My sentiments exactly.”

Sean took a deep, steadying breath and then pinched the bridge of his nose as he gathered his thoughts. “We’re still ahead of her by a fifteen-percent margin. This is a bold-ass move on her part.”

“She’s obviously serious about making a deal. But here’s my question. Why?”

“Because she’s a controlling bitch. Did you doubt that?” Sean asked as he began pacing.

Dion shook his head. “No. There’s got to be something else. Something personal. Why
Infinity?
Why now? And where’d she get all this money? You said yourself that
Onyx
isn’t doing better than we are, and even we got hit hard when the economy slumped. So how is it that she has all this ready capital?”

In his mind, Sean reread Sabine’s financial records. None of the accounts he remembered seeing had that type of money, even combined.

“You think she has an investor?” he asked, immediately ticking off names in his mind.

Who else would be interested in
Infinity,
or owning a piece of the DNT empire? On a whole, DNT was worth more than six hundred million dollars. That’s an amount that would acquire enemies. Enemies that would like nothing better than to see them fold.

“I think it’s highly unlikely that a lowly porn star is masterminding this deal all by herself. Where did you get her financial records?”

“There’s a guy that works at
Onyx,
in the mailroom. He contacted me a few months ago, said he’d seen my name on a bunch of emails and was wondering if I could use some information.”

“Are you paying him?” Dion asked.

Sean stopped pacing and stared at his brother. “Are you crazy? No, I’m not paying him. I told him to get lost. Then the information just started showing up. And last time I checked there was no law against reading mail that’s addressed to you.”

Dion nodded. “I guess you’re right. Even though you’re not the lawyer in the family,” he added with a chuckle.

No, Sean thought, a thin smile touching his own lips. The lawyer in the Donovan family was their cousin Ben, Matthew’s brother, and he lived and practiced in Las Vegas.

“No. I’m not the lawyer. But I can’t stop the guy from sending me mail.”

“What’s this guy’s name?”

“Fred Mackley. I kept all the envelopes as well as the contents.”

Dion nodded. “Okay. I’ll contact Legal today just to make sure we’re in the clear on that end. But I still want to find out where she’s getting this money.”

Sean agreed. “I’ll call Trent.”

“Good.”

Sean turned to leave Dion’s office, and his brother was picking up his phone. Then he stopped and said, “Oh, how was staying in last night?”

He should have known Dion wouldn’t let that go.

“It was just fine, thank you very much,” was his tight but good-natured reply.

* * *

The minute Sean walked in to his office, he sighed. His phone call to Trent would have to wait.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, going to the chair where Janean Donovan sat in an impeccable coral-colored pantsuit.

He kissed her cheek and then accepted the kiss she planted on his.

“Hello to you,” she said with a smile.

His mother was a beautiful woman with eyes that saw everything, carefully glossed lips that smiled even when she wanted to cuss someone out and high cheekbones that gave away her Native American heritage.

He moved behind his desk, taking off his jacket before sitting down. “What brings you down here today? And in my office? Regan and Lyra are on the fourth floor.”

“I know what floor they’re on, Sean. Just because I don’t work here doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in this building.”

He nodded. Of course she knew what was going on thirty miles away from her house. The building belonged to the Donovans, which meant Janean made it her business.

“I’m not looking for Regan or Lyra. They were at the house the other night, remember?”

Okay, so this was about the other night. The babysitting. Sean was betting his mother wanted to know more about Tate and Briana.

“I remember.”

“You also came to the house that night. Had a lovely young woman with you, too. What was her name again?”

He felt like he was being reprimanded long before Janean had even begun with her purpose. Folding his hands in front of him, he did as he used to when he was a child. Answer her questions quickly and concisely and pray that that would get the ordeal over with faster.

“Her name is Tate Dennison. She works as a columnist for the magazine.”

Janean nodded. Her dark brown hair was pulled back so that heavy curls hung to her neck. Her full face was perfectly made up with only the slightest enhancement around the eyes and mouth. She sat with her back straight, head held high, just as she’d raised her sons to do. And when she looked at him with her light brown eyes, she saw things he knew nobody else did.

“And?”

“And I took her to dinner to discuss her column being a part of the magazine television show. Parker suggested it a while ago. The ratings for the column have grown tremendously, so I thought it was time to put that in motion.”

She nodded once more, folding her fingers together similar to the way he had his. Fading sunlight filtered through the window, catching the huge diamond on her left hand that his father had given her for their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

“Do you find babysitters for all your employees?”

There were two ways he could handle this: continue with the question-and-answer session or just tell her what she wanted to hear. Sean really wanted to call Trent to ask about Sabine, as well as to find out any news about Tate’s background. So he was ready to get this over with as quickly as possible.

“Tate’s not just an employee,” he started off. Then he paused to make sure what he was going to say was actually the right thing to say. The last thing he wanted was for his mother to go off and start planning another wedding, when he was just getting to know the woman.

“I like her a lot and I like her daughter. They’re having a difficult time right now, so I offered to let them stay at my place.”

Janean, who did not shock easily, raised a questioning eyebrow when he was finished. “Well,” she said, releasing her fingers and rubbing her hands over her lap.

“What kind of difficulties are they having? Nothing that’s giving you difficulties, I hope.”

Sean shook his head. “Someone broke into her car here in the garage, so I took her to pick up her daughter and had the car windows repaired. Then her house was broken into. She wanted to go to a hotel, but I suggested they stay with me.”

“So you could take care of them yourself,” she finished for him.

“Yes,” he answered honestly, because she would have known he was lying otherwise. Besides, not telling his mother the truth was something Sean did not do often, if ever.

“That means you care about her and her child.”

“I do.” He admitted that also.

“I see.” Janean continued to assess her son. “Where’s the baby’s father?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you plan to find out?”

He nodded.

“I know I don’t have to tell you this, because you’re totally different from your brother, but I’m going to say it anyway to ease my own conscience.”

Oh, boy, here it comes,
he thought. “Children are not toys, Sean. They’re very impressionable, and if that child doesn’t have a father in her life, she’ll latch on to you quicker than she would a bottle of milk.”

He was about to say something, but she held up a hand to stop him.

“Let me finish.” She nodded and he did the same. “Single mothers are not to be played with. They, for one reason or another, have already been through enough. You never know when you’ll be the one she snaps on.”

She took a deep breath. “With that said, I know you’re a good man. And from what I’ve seen of Ms. Dennison, she’s a good mother. And I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I can’t wait to see that precious little girl again. So I expect to see you all at the house for dinner this Sunday.”

He didn’t speak.

She clapped her hands together and smiled. “Now you can talk.”

Sean chuckled. “Okay.”

He cleared his throat and rested his arms on his desk. “I had Trent do a background check on her because she doesn’t really want to talk about her ex, and I’m concerned about why.”

Janean had already begun shaking her head. “The minute I give you the benefit of the doubt, you turn on me. You’re just like your father and your cousins, thinking you can do anything you like just because you want something. Don’t you know its an invasion of that woman’s privacy to have you looking into her life before she met you?”

“Even if something in her background might be coming back to haunt her? I’m just trying to protect her.”

“You’re trying to control the situation, just like you always do. Sometimes you’re not going to have all the answers. You’re not going to be able to fit every piece into the puzzle.”

“It’s not about control—it’s about protection.”

“Then why didn’t you just ask her about this other man?”

“I did,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “She told me they were married and they got divorced. That’s all she said.”

“Then that’s all you need to know. For now.”

He was shaking his head. “I want to know who he is and why he’s not with his wife and child. I want to know what his intentions are before I—”

“Before you what? Take his place?”

He remained quiet and shrugged. Sean wasn’t a hundred percent certain what he was getting ready to say—or if taking her ex’s place was what he really wanted.

“Listen, if you are developing feelings for this woman, you are going to have to trust her.”

“Even if I know she’s holding something back?”

“That’s her prerogative, son. I know you men think you are the end-all be-all because your last name is Donovan. And truth be told, I know my boys are damned good catches. But that doesn’t make you indispensible. You either trust her or you’ll lose her.”

His mother’s words resonated in his head. An hour later, he hung up with Trent without asking about the search into Tate’s background. Instead he’d given his cousin all the information he had on Sabine Ravenell and Onyx Publications.