Overnight Heiress. Modean Moon
“Yeah, Lucas?”
“We may be getting a call from a Blake Wilson. He’s a detective with the Simonville, California, PD, although he may claim some previous DEA connection. He’ll be asking for professional consideration, and he may claim he has visitation rights with his son. He doesn’t get either.”
Tully’s left eyebrow went up a quarter of an inch, but he made no comment, only nodded his understanding.
“If he shows up,” Lucas went on, “I’m to be notified the moment he sets foot in this jurisdiction, and he’s not to be allowed anywhere near Meg Carlton or her son without an escort. Will you make that clear to the department?”
Again Tully nodded.
“And will you see if you can find a picture of him, probably from the DEA, without letting him know?”
“Is he dangerous?”
Lucas considered that for a moment. “He’s a cop,” he said finally, “so he will be armed. He’s a cop,” he said, letting his distaste show, “who broke his ten-year-old son’s arm.”
After Tully left, Lucas leaned back in his leather chair, toed open a bottom desk drawer and propped his feet on the rim. Meg Wilson—Meg Carlton—had been quite a surprise for him. And he was pretty sure he had been a surprise for her—over and above the obvious stunning news of the day.
He’d felt the moment she became aware of him and of the attraction he’d felt for her. He let a rueful smile twist his face at the memory of that one brief moment, standing in front of her brother’s home with her son watching as he helped her from the car: one brief moment that had no time to go anywhere before he surrendered her to her new brother and to her new life.
What on earth had made him think this woman needed him? Meg Wilson might have. But Meg Carlton? Not too likely. At least, not after the ordeal of the next few weeks had passed.
But until then, she did.
Oh, yes. Until then, she definitely did.
And did he need her? He suspected that he did. He suspected—hell, he knew, damn it!—that sometime between watching her being led into the interrogation room and helping her from the car in her brother’s driveway, he had grown to need the surprising, gentle, stubborn, competent and insecure woman that Meg Carlton had become.
His chair was too well constructed and maintained to squeak when he pushed out of it, but his desk drawer closed with a satisfying slam.
He couldn’t need her. He couldn’t take from another person. Not again. Not ever. And he was afraid that if he ever admitted to needing Meg Carlton he’d want to take, have to take, and it wouldn’t matter then how much he had to give, because it would never be enough.
He ran an impatient hand through his hair and then grasped the back of his neck, working his head back and forth in an attempt to release some of his tension.
Enough! he told himself. He had more to do than wallow in what he couldn’t or wouldn’t take.
He had responsibilities.
Shaking his head, he reached for his telephone and punched out the numbers.
“Lambert residence,” answered the sweet, young-girl’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hi, kiddo.”
“Pops! Are you home? Did you bring Avalon’s Anastasia with you?”
Lucas surrendered to a grin. At fourteen, Jamie was only two years older than Danny, but a world apart in openness from the quiet, solemn boy, and a world apart in spontaneity from the daughter he had finally tracked down seven years ago. Russian history was her latest love. How like her to compare Meg Carlton’s return with the tragic life of the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas.
“I did,” he said.
“And is she?” Jamie asked. “Really?”
“Really,” he told her. “Wait till you see her. There’s no way she’s not Edward’s sister.”
“Hot da—oops!”
Lucas chuckled. “Oops is right, kiddo. You won’t like the taste of soap messing up your pizza.”
“You mean I don’t have to force feed us broccoli tonight after all?”
Lucas shook his head. Jamie loved broccoli. But she loved pizza more. “Not tonight,” he told her. “Tonight I have a craving to take my best girl out for a special meal and a night on the town.”
After he hung up, he shrugged into his suit jacket and looked around the office.
It was a good office. A stable, dependable workplace after a lifetime of strife. And if Jamie was his best girl, that was his choice, too. A choice he had willingly made. A choice he could live with, as he could live with the peace of Avalon, as he could live with doing what he had to do to ease the way of others, as he could live without...without the temptation that for a moment Meg Carlton so unconsciously had offered.
He couldn’t need her, he told himself again. He wouldn’t need her. But somehow his vows seemed pathetically lacking in force.
Three
Meg stretched and twisted, trying to get comfortable in the wide bed. She suspected she wouldn’t, no matter how many times she pounded the down-filled pillows. No matter how many times she told herself that Danny was sleeping peacefully in the equally luxurious room adjoining hers. No matter how many times she realized she was living her little-girl fantasy: the king and queen had come for her—had told her, “You belong with us, my dear. We’re taking you home to live in the castle,” and had whisked her away from the unhappiness of life with James and Audrey, of life with Blake.
And they’d whisked her away from the insecurity of knowing that if anything happened to her, her son would be alone, unprotected and unloved. Now Danny would never be left alone. Edward would love him, and Jennie; she knew that from the few hours she had spent with them. And Lucas would protect him.
Meg slid her hand over the smooth sheet she lay on. It wasn’t actually linen—she was fairly sure of that—but a cotton so luxurious that the sheets on this bed alone had to have cost as much as the entire contents of her bedroom in Tulsa. And across the room, in the alcove of a sitting room, the glow from a fire in the tiny marble fireplace danced over the pattern of an Oriental rug. Sheer luxury. Opulence in excellent taste.
So why was her mind spinning, refusing to let her sleep? Wasn’t her life going to be wonderful from here on out? After all, the glass slipper had fit.
No. That was the wrong fairy tale.
And in spite of all the times she’d wished as a child for the king and queen to come and get her, in spite of the pictures and videotapes of converted home movies Edward had shown her that evening, in spite of the memories her brother—her brother—had shared with her, she didn’t feel like the princess. She was just Meg Wilson, Danny’s mother and Patrick’s bartender. Tomorrow she would miss an entire shift at Patnck’s. Tonight Danny had missed his woodcarvers’ club meeting, and she had missed a class in contract law. That was going to be important when everyone here discovered she was really an impostor.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She wasn’t an impostor. This was her life now, and no matter how strange, how alien it seemed to her, she had better get used to it.
A brother. Oh, Lord, she had a brother. A family. A decent family—she would have been drawn to Edward and Jennie even if they hadn’t been—been hers. And friends. She could have friends now. Friends she wouldn’t have to leave without a word, if—when—Blake found them.
And when Blake found them this time, Lucas would be there with her, standing between her and whatever he threatened.
Lucas.
Meg turned