The Secret Father (The Calvert Cousins 1) Read online

  Zach stopped at her shoulder, his clean scent wrapping around her. “You didn’t expect him?”

  “I didn’t even think I had to ask him to stay away. He’ll draw every non-Kendall reporter in a ten-mile radius.” People had stopped greeting each other to cast furtive glances at her father. It was a moment of pure desperation. “Let’s try to ignore him.”

  “We’ll be the only people in the airport who do.”

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  “Why don’t we cover our eyes and pretend he can’t see us?”

  Olivia grimaced. She looked foolish again—but she tried to recover. “You have raised a child if you know that game.”

  “Who knew how easily I could prove I’m a good dad?” He pressed his hand into the small of her back. “Your father won’t let you ignore him. Let’s just face him and find out what he’s up to.”

  James Kendall parted the crowd and reached for her in a bone-crushing hug the likes of which she hadn’t known since the day she’d survived giving birth to Evan. Olivia saw through his plan instantly. He was threatening Zach with a painfully obvious warning about hurting her ever again.

  She broke away. “You’re not a good actor, Dad. I’ll bet Zach can guess you’re on my side.” She glanced at Zach. “Not that we’ve taken sides. Let’s get out of here before someone figures out who you are.”

  “Maybe we want people to know,” her father said. “We could leak a story that you and this guy had one of those two-week marriages that never works, an impulse you both regretted, but now you’re older, wiser, and you’re reuniting your son with his father.”

  “That story might work for you, sir.” Zach vetoed the plan with confidence that matched and then raised James Kendall’s. “But do you think the press would leave Evan alone just because he’s a child?”

  “You and I are going to talk about Evan.”

  “Not here and not now.” Exasperated, Olivia clutched her father’s arm and propelled him toward baggage claim. She nodded at the two men, one lean and dark, one buff and auburn-haired, who planted themselves on either side of her father. “Hi, Ian. Jock.” They acknowledged her without taking their eyes off the crowd. She didn’t bother to introduce Zach. They were too busy doing their jobs to acknowledge him anyway.

  She turned back to her dad. “Don’t try to challenge Zach. You can’t win. He’s Evan’s father.”

  “I always win where my family’s concerned.” James Kendall spoke aggressively.

  “We’re talking about my family as well.” Zach’s steady gaze deepened her father’s frown.

  He squeezed Olivia’s arm against his side. “Give Jock your keys, and tell him where you parked your car. I brought a driver so I could take you and Zach home.”

  “So you could orchestrate events.” She glanced over her shoulder, prepared to see hordes of competing journalists. Not finding them, she borrowed Zach’s calmer approach. “I’m not sure what you’re up to, Dad, but we’ll meet you at your house.”

  “I want to talk to you both before you introduce this man to Evan.”

  She dug her heels into the slick airport floor, but Zach took her arm and kept her moving through the stream of people.

  He glanced at her father over her head before he spoke. “We have nothing to prove, Olivia. I’d be concerned, too, if a guy showed up claiming rights to my grandson.”

  He was right, but she didn’t like being caught between two autocratic men. Especially since she needed to be the one in charge. She forced her head up and down again in a sharp nod and handed her keys to Jock, the stockier bodyguard.

  They handed their claim tickets to Ian. While he waited for their things, Olivia’s dad walked her and Zach straight through the terminal and out to the sidewalk where his long black car waited in a policeman’s shadow.

  The policeman actually tipped his cap and opened the far door for James. Her dad merely nodded in his best king-of-the-world manner, confirming Olivia’s worst suspicions.

  He had plenty to prove and territory to stake out. The limo provided two car lengths of luxury and evidence that showed Zach they lived in a different world than a sheriff from Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, could hope to inhabit.

  Zach didn’t seem to get it. Apparently impervious to the undercurrent, he held the other door for Olivia to get in ahead of him. A cool, Chicago fall breeze tossed his blond hair.

  He caught her shoulder as her father got in the car. “I can hold my own,” he said close to her ear. “You don’t have to fight for me.”

  “He’s trying to run over you because he’s afraid Evan will love you more than him.”

  “He’s helped you and our son. Look, you didn’t come to Tennessee because it was easy. You came on Evan’s behalf. Your father obviously needs to show us I’m not going to take his place in your family. I can stand a jab or two if letting your dad have his say makes the rest of this easier.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” She ducked in front of Zach, sensing the breadth of his chest as she got too close to him. Inside, her father had already sprawled across the larger seat. As Zach sat next to her on the bench that backed up to the driver, her dad reached for the Scotch.

  She covered his hand. “It’s hardly even noon.”

  “You sound like my doctors. Lay off.”

  “Dad, I want you to take care of yourself.”

  Zach took Olivia’s briefcase and settled it on his other side, uniting the two of them with a simple gesture. “Why don’t we discuss Evan?”

  Olivia’s father widened his gaze at her while she tried not to show her own surprise. She was enough his daughter to resent being corralled with him. He smiled, waiting for an explosion.

  Olivia hit the intercom. “Roger,” she said to the driver, “can we turn the heat down a little?”

  “Sure, Ms. Kendall.”

  She smiled at her father. He frowned, rubbing the top of the Scotch decanter.

  “What plans have you made, Zach?”

  “It’s too early to plan.” Olivia jumped in first. “Let’s introduce Zach and Evan to each other and feel our way from there.”

  “Ridiculous,” her dad said. “We don’t make another move that exposes Evan until we know Zach’s intentions.”

  “I intend to be my son’s father.” He settled his elbows on his knees, almost too tall to sit comfortably. “I appreciate what you’ve done—you and Olivia.” His gaze raked her quickly, waking an unwelcome awareness that made her glad when he turned back to her father. “I’ll never hurt Evan. I want him to be happy. I’d like to make up the past five years to him.”

  “You can’t make up for five years. His mother and I are all the family he knows.” James lifted one of the crystal glasses and set it down again. “We’ve been enough for him.”

  “Not after today.” Zach sat back, his hair brushing the roof. “Our families just expanded. I want to get along with you. I intend to make our new relationship as easy as possible for Olivia and Evan, but make no mistake. I’m not going away.”

  As Olivia gripped the leather seat with both hands her father tapped his perfectly tailored black serge knee. “My wealth has nothing to do with your objectives?”

  “My bank account doesn’t stand up to yours, but maybe Evan has enough money. I didn’t know about him, and I don’t remember Olivia, but this has been a mistake we don’t have to compound.” Zach leaned forward. Pain crept across his face as if he were allowing them to see feelings he normally hid deep. “I have no idea who my son is, and he thinks I’m dead. Even if he didn’t need me, I’d need him. That makes me safe for your family.”

  “And if I don’t believe you?” her father asked in a silky tone.

  Olivia curved her hand around Zach’s wrist. Her pulse faltered as she felt the heat of his skin, but she eyed her father as she spoke. “You don’t have to believe. I do.”

  Zach covered her hand with his. “I can’t blame you for trying to protect Olivia and Evan, but I won’t disappear again, and I
’ll never put myself before my son. I found out about him around twenty-four hours ago, and I’m here. How could I sound more like a parent?”

  Her dad slid back in his seat. “Okay. So now we know where we stand.”

  His trembling voice stunned Olivia as he called a truce in the battle he shouldn’t have waged. Behind him, the trunk popped open, and Ian stored Olivia’s and Zach’s bags inside. Then the bodyguard took his seat next to the driver, and they sped away from the curb.

  “One last thing, Dad.” She hated to doubt her own father’s intentions, but he’d always done what he thought best, and to hell with the cost. “You didn’t tell Evan about Zach, did you?”

  “I thought about it,” he admitted. “But I decided you’d want to, and I thought Zach had the right to tell him in his own way.”

  So ended the pissing contest…. She hoped.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ZACH SCANNED Chicago as they drove through the town, but nothing came back to him. They passed strip malls and apartment buildings, houses and finally skyscrapers. Each structure, each turn in the road, each face that glanced at the long car passing, was chilling in its strangeness.

  Apparently, he’d paid more attention to instructions for dismantling a miniature cannon than to directions home—or to a woman he must have cared for. What had made the gun stick in his mind when he’d lost Olivia?

  He refused to believe he’d played with her. He wasn’t built that way. He’d tried hard enough to make his marriage work with Helene, though they’d both realized early on that they weren’t in love. Surely he hadn’t made the same mistake twice in a matter of months.

  He glanced at Olivia, trying to remember the texture of her hair in his hands, the soft, living warmth of her skin. This close to her, enveloped in her scent, every breath became an unexpected pleasure. He could want her now. What had happened between them six years ago?

  As if sensing his gaze, she turned her head. She smiled first with her eyes, but the curve of her mouth seemed uncertain. She looked away almost in time to hide the color that washed up her throat. Zach turned too, but locked gazes with James Kendall, who eyed him with a mixture of speculation and suspicion.

  “Anything seem familiar to you?”

  Zach shook his head, going toe-to-toe. He couldn’t blame Kendall for wanting to protect his daughter, but Zach wasn’t out to hurt her. He pointed through the window, at nothing really, more to change the subject. “Do you live with your dad, Olivia?”

  She shook her head with enough emphasis to splay her hair across her shoulders. “Evan and I have a condo. He’s been staying with Dad while I was in Tennessee.”

  “You should still recognize something out here.” James wasn’t tactful about doubting Zach’s memory loss. “Olivia brought you to our home a few times.” The older man spread his arms along the back of his seat, a guy who owned his world. “I didn’t trust you then, either.”

  “Dad,” Olivia began.

  Zach held out his hand to stop her. He didn’t want to be a wedge between her and her cynical, overprotective father. “I can’t explain what happened to me in that crash, but I don’t believe I’m capable of abandoning Olivia—even if I didn’t know about the baby.”

  Zach waited for Kendall’s snide response, but the other man slid his gaze toward his daughter. The unhappiness on her face made him lock his jaw and turn to the window.

  Zach followed his example, still searching for something he might recognize. High brick walls and stately trees planted at regular intervals between wide sidewalks and the street indicated a more exclusive area. Ivy climbed over the bricks into lawns well protected from the streets. Beyond the fences, houses that belonged to families like the Kendalls, rose toward the sky.

  Some were brick, some stucco, some just glass-and-wood. All off-limits to a guy like him. James Kendall had wasted a lot of time. He hadn’t needed to meet them at the airport. Even if he’d driven here with Olivia, Zach would have seen this wasn’t his life. He wouldn’t feel at home here, couldn’t imagine belonging.

  How would his son, a native of wealth and privilege, feel about a stranger who came from a place of cold streams and dark forests, where steel and glass and old money hardly ever showed up? Not only would Zach never make the kind of income the Kendalls enjoyed, he’d come back from the dead. He tried to imagine standing in his son’s shoes. This situation was bewildering for an adult.

  Kendall’s driver turned in at the tallest walls Zach had seen yet. The car rolled to a stop in front of wrought iron gates and the driver put down his window to punch a code into the numbered panel on the intercom stand. The gates slid open on a drive that led through a winding tree-bordered lawn dotted with green shrubbery.

  It didn’t look much like a boy’s playground.

  The driveway widened, and a Tudor-style mansion hovered behind a long walk of precision-cut hedges. The whole estate could have been lifted out of the English countryside, but it was as much Evan’s world as the one he shared with Olivia.

  For a moment Kendall’s rudeness made sense. Zach couldn’t compete. Sure, he had a huge family who’d love Evan to distraction. He’d already begun clearing the bike paths of his youth for Lily, and Evan, who’d been guarded from babyhood might enjoy the freedom of running free in primitive woods. But Evan probably owned a lot of Kendall toys Zach couldn’t match.

  A glance at James’s self-satisfied reflection in the window told Zach he and Kendall were sharing the same thoughts. Olivia took her family’s fortune in stride, but her father saw things Helene’s way.

  “It’s not that big.” Olivia looped her hair behind her ear. “Don’t let Dad get to you.”

  Good advice. And he’d have to hope she’d kept her father from getting to Evan, too.

  They parked in front of wide, stone steps. Immediately, iron-studded, double doors swept open and a dark-suited man floated somberly out, like a butler in an old black-and-white movie.

  Ian opened the car door for his employer. James got out and Olivia followed him. Zach climbed out behind her, his heart thrumming with a shuddering beat as he waited for a small boy to burst out of the house.

  “Where’s Evan?” Olivia asked.

  James looked surprised. “Upstairs, probably, with his nanny.”

  “Nanny?” Zach looked at Olivia, questioning. She’d said the nanny had helped her when Evan was a baby. A nanny now hardly matched Zach’s image of trying to live a “normal” life.

  Olivia took her briefcase and purse from Ian with a swift thank-you smile. “I told you about Mrs. Nedland. She retired when Evan started kindergarten a few months ago, but I asked her to help Dad while I was away.”

  He nodded. A more generous guy might be glad his son had access to so many people who truly cared about him.

  “Let us show you our home again.” James Kendall led the way up the steps, speaking in a tone as gratified as his expression.

  “Dad, I want to see Evan, and I’d really like you to stop being rude to Zach.”

  “I’ll ask Mrs. Nedland to bring Evan down.” The older man sailed on, ignoring his daughter’s frustration.

  Zach stopped the second his feet touched marble in the wide front hall. The ceiling dwarfed them all. Pale, red-tipped white roses spilled over the lip of an oriental bowl on a huge, ancient table. Their perfect scent filled the air. Not too sweet, not too floral.

  Footsteps on wood drew Zach’s gaze. Ian was carrying their bags up one side of the curving, paneled stairs that split the back of the hall into two wings. Olivia dropped her things on the table as if scratches didn’t matter. Her father, lord of this manor, spread his arms with a proud flourish.

  Zach fought an intimidated urge to push past both of them and the bodyguard and find his son. This meeting needed to happen before Kendall and Zach’s own doubts convinced him he might be inappropriate for his child to know.

  “Let’s wait in my study,” James said.

  “We could go up to Evan.” To hell with patience. Zach
didn’t want to lose another second.

  “I agree, Dad. I’m tired of your games.”

  “I’d like to talk to you both.” The other man took a deep breath and looked as if he was making a great effort. “Please.”

  Zach suspected James of starting another game.

  “Dad.” Olivia’s tone said she agreed with Zach again.

  Zach shared a glance with her, but she fell in line behind her father. Seeing no other choice, he followed them through another tall set of double doors into a library.

  Excess reigned here as well. Zach took in burgundy leather walls broken only by wide bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound volumes. Apparently, no one here read paperbacks.

  A wooden staircase spiraled up to a balcony that bordered a second level of bookshelves. No paperbacks up there either. Just the Kendall collection of tomes last read by whom?

  Zach stroked his upper lip, where sweat had begun to bead in response to a different kind of fear than his flying phobia. His farmhouse would probably fit on its side in this room. Evan’s life here looked less and less compatible with a future in Bardill’s Ridge.

  James led the way to one of the leather sofas scattered between two man-size fireplaces. “Take a seat, Zach. Are you cold, Olivia? I can have a fire lit.”

  “No, thanks, Dad. Just call Evan.”

  James headed for the desk in front of ivory-draped, arched windows. Olivia loitered in front of a leather armchair, clearly too restless to sit. Kendall was trying to control her and Evan. He didn’t want them stepping out of his reach. Zach recognized the symptoms because such maneuvers were all that remained of his and Helene’s relationship.

  Across the room, out of hearing range, James lifted a telephone receiver and spoke in a low voice. Zach crossed to his son’s mother, his footsteps resounding on the hardwood floor.

  She looked up before he reached her side. He searched her gaze, questioning again what they’d really been to each other.

  He resisted a compulsion to touch her. They were planning to share a son, nothing more, but surely he could offer her comfort and gratitude in exchange for coming to find him, for the kindness she’d shown on the plane.