Rags To Riches: A Desire To Serve

“Get in.”

She got. Even this late in the evening, the pale gray leather was warm and sticky from the July heat. The seat belt cracked like a rifle shot when she clicked it into place.

As the convertible rolled down the curved driveway, Grace fought to untangle her nerves. God knew she should be used to having her life turned upside down without warning. It had happened often enough in the past few years. One call. That’s all it usually took. One frantic call from Hope.

No, she corrected fiercely. Not Hope. Anne. Although her cousin was dead, Grace had to remember to think and remember and refer to her as Anne.

She made that her mantra as the Mercedes sliced through the night. She was still repeating it when Blake pulled into the underground parking for Dalton International’s headquarters building in downtown Oklahoma City. Although the clicker attached to the Mercedes’s visor raised the arm, the booth attendant leaned out with cheerful greeting.

“Evenin’, Mr. Dalton.”

“Hi, Roy.”

“Guess your brother ’n his bride are off on their honeymoon.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Sure wish ’em well.” He leaned farther down and tipped a finger to his brow. “How’re you doin’, Ms. Templeton?”

She dredged up a smile. “Fine, thanks.”

Grace wasn’t surprised at the friendly greeting. She’d made many a trip to Dalton International’s headquarters with Molly and her grandmother. Delilah had turned over control of the manufacturing empire she and Big Jake had scratched out of bare dirt to her sons. That didn’t mean she’d surrendered her right to meddle as she saw fit in either DI’s corporate affairs or in her sons’ lives. So Delilah, with Molly and her nanny in tow, had regularly breezed into boardrooms and conferences. Just as often, she’d zoomed up to the top floor of the DI building, where her bachelor sons maintained their separate penthouse apartments.

The penthouse also boasted a luxurious guest suite for DI’s visiting dignitaries. That, apparently, was where Blake had decided to plant her. Grace guessed as much when he stopped at the security desk in the lower lobby to retrieve a key card. Moments later the glass-enclosed elevator whisked them upward.

Once past the street level, Oklahoma City zoomed into view. On previous visits Grace had gasped at the skyline that rose story by eye-popping story. Tonight she barely noticed the panorama of lights and skyscrapers. Her entire focus was on the man crowding her against the elevator’s glass wall.

She hadn’t been able to tell which Dalton twin was which at first. With their dark gold hair, chiseled chins and broad shoulders, one was a feast for the eyes. Two of them standing side by side could make any woman drool.

It hadn’t taken Grace long to separate the men. Alex was more outgoing, with a wicked grin that jump-started female hormones without him half trying. Blake was quieter. Less obvious. With a smile that was all the more seductive for being slow and warm and…

The ping of the elevator wrenched her back to the tortuous present. When the doors slid open, Blake grasped her arm again and marched her down a plushly carpeted hall toward a set of polished oak doors.

Okay, enough! Grace didn’t get angry often. When she did, her temper flashed hot and fierce enough to burn through the fear still gripping her by the throat.

“That’s it!” She yanked her arm free of his hold and stopped dead in the center of the hall. “You hustle me out of your mother’s house like a thief caught stealing the silver. You order me into your bright, shiny convertible. You drag me up here in the middle of the night. I’m not taking another step until you stop acting like you’re the Gestapo or KGB.”

He arched a brow at her rant, then coolly, deliberately shot back the cuff of his pleated tux shirt to check his gold Rolex.

“It’s nine-twenty-two. Hardly the middle of the night.”

She wanted to hit him. Slap that stony expression right off his too-handsome face. Might have actually attempted it if she wasn’t sure she would crack a couple of finger bones on his hard, unyielding jaw.

Besides which, he deserved some answers. The detective’s report had obviously delivered a body blow. He’d loved her cousin once.

The fire drained from Grace’s heart, leaving only sadness tinged now with an infinite weariness. “All right. I’ll tell you what I can.”

With a curt nod, he strode the last few feet to the guest suite. A swipe of the key card clicked the lock on the wide oak doors. Grace had visited the lavish guest suite a number of times. Each time she stepped inside, though, the sheer magnificence of the view stopped her breath in her throat.

Angled floor-to-ceiling glass walls gave a stunning, hundred-and-eighty-degree panorama of Oklahoma City’s skyline. The view was spectacular during the day, offering an eagle’s-eye glimpse of the domed capitol building, the Oklahoma River and the colorful barges that carried tourists past Bricktown Ballpark to the larger-than-life-size bronze sculptures commemorating the 1889 land run. That momentous event had opened some two million acres of unassigned land to settlers and, oh, by the way, created a tent city with a population of more than fifty thousand almost overnight.

The view on a clear summer night like this one was even more dazzling. Skyscrapers glowed like beacons. White lights twinkled in the trees lining the river spur that meandered through the downtown area. But it was the colossal bronze statue atop the floodlit capitol that drew Grace to the windows. She’d been born and bred in Texas, but as a social studies teacher she knew enough of the history of the Southwest to appreciate the deep symbolism in the twenty-two-foot-tall bronze statue. She’d also been given a detailed history of the statue by Delilah, who’d served on the committee that raised funds for it.

Erected in 2002, The Guardian, with his tall spear, muscular body and unbowed head, represented not only the thousands of Native Americans who’d been forced from their homes in the East and settled in what was then Indian Territory. The statue also embodied Oklahomans who’d wrestled pipe into red dirt as hard as brick to suck out the oil that fueled the just-born automobile industry. The sons and daughters who lived through the devastating Dust Bowl of the ’30s. The proud Americans who’d worked rotating shifts at the Army Air Corps’ Douglas Aircraft Plant in the ’40s to overhaul, repair and build fighters and bombers. And, most recently, the grimly determined Oklahomans who’d dug through nine stories of rubble to recover the bodies of friends and coworkers killed in the Murrah Building bombing.

Grace and Hope… No! Grace and Anne had driven up from Texas during their junior year in high school to visit Oklahoma City’s National Memorial & Museum. Neither of them had been able to comprehend how the homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh could be so evil, so twisted in both mind and morals. Then, less than a year later, her cousin met Jack Petrie.

Frost coated Grace’s lungs. Feeling its sick chill, she wrapped both arms around her waist and turned away from The Guardian to face Blake Dalton.

“I can’t tell you about Anne’s past,” she said bleakly. “I promised I would bury it with her. What I can say is that you’re the only man she got close to in more years than you want to know.”

“You think I’m going to be satisfied with that?”

“You have no choice.”

“Wrong.”

He yanked on the dangling end of his bow tie and threw it aside before shrugging out of his tuxedo jacket. His black satin cummerbund circled a trim waist. The pleated white shirt was still crisp, as might be expected from a tailor who catered exclusively to millionaires and movie stars.

Yet under the sleek sophistication was an edge that didn’t fool Grace for a moment. Delilah bragged constantly about the variety of sports Blake and his twin had excelled at during their school years. Both men still carried an athlete’s build—lean in the hips and flanks, with the solid chest and muscled shoulders of a former collegiate wrestler.

That chest loomed far too large in Grace’s view at the moment. It invaded her space, distracted her thoughts and made her distinctly nervous.

“How many cousins do you have?” he asked with silky menace. “And how long do you think it will take Jamison to check each of them out?”

“Not long,” she fired back. “But he won’t find anything beyond Anne’s birth certificate, driver’s license and a few high school yearbook photos. We made sure of that.”

“A person can’t just erase her entire life after high school.”

“As a matter of fact, she can.”

Grace moved to the buckskin leather sofa and dropped onto a cushion. Blake folded his tall frame onto a matching sofa separated by a half acre of glass-topped coffee table.

“It’s not easy. Or cheap,” she added, thinking of her empty savings account. “But you can pull it off with the help of a very smart friend of a friend of a friend. Especially if said friend can tap into just about any computer system.”

Like the Texas Vital Statistics agency. It had taken some serious hacking but they’d managed to delete the digital entry recording Hope Patricia Templeton’s marriage to Jack David Petrie. By doing so, they’d also deleted the record of the last time Grace had used her maiden name and SSN.

A familiar sadness settled like a lump in Grace’s middle. Her naive, trusting cousin had believed Petrie’s promise to love and cherish and provide for her every need. As the bastard had explained in the months that followed, his wife didn’t require access to their bank account. Or a credit card. Or a job. Nor did she have to register to vote. There weren’t any candidates worth going to that trouble for. And they sure as hell didn’t need to talk to a marriage counselor, he’d added when she finally realized he’d made her a virtual prisoner.

Financially dependent and emotionally battered, she’d spent long, isolated years as a shadow person. Jack trotted her out when he wanted to display his pretty wife, then shuffled her back into her proper place in his bed. It hadn’t taken him long to cut off her ties with her friends and family, either. All except Grace. She refused to be cut, even after Petrie became furious over her meddling. Grace wondered whether those horrific moments when her gas pedal locked on the interstate were, in fact, due to mechanical failure.

Grace and Hope had become more cautious after that. No more visits. No letters or emails that could be intercepted. No calls to the house. Only to a pay phone in the one grocery store where Jack allowed his wife to shop. Even then it had taken a solid year of pleading before Hope worked up the courage to escape.

Grace didn’t want to remember the desperate years that followed. The mindless fear. The countless moves. The series of false identities and fake SSNs, each one more expensive to procure than the last. Until finally—finally!—a woman with the name of Anne Jordan had found anonymity and a tenuous, tentative security at Dalton International. She’d been just one of DI’s thousands of employees worldwide. An entry-level clerk with only a high school GED. Certainly not a position that would bring her into contact with the multinational corporation’s CFO.

Yet it had.

“Please, Blake. Please believe me when I tell you Anne wanted her past to be buried with her. All she cared about in her last, agonizing moments was making sure Molly would know her father, if not her mother.”

Or more accurately, that her baby would have the name and protection of someone completely unknown to Jack Petrie.

Grace prayed she’d convinced Blake. She hadn’t, of course. The lawyer in him wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d dug up and turned over every bit of evidence. But maybe she could deflect his inquisition.

“Will you tell me something?”

“Quid pro quo?” His mouth twisted. “You haven’t given me much of a trade.”

“Please. I…I wasn’t able to talk or visit with Anne much in her last year.”

She hadn’t dared. Jack Petrie was a Texas state trooper, with a cop’s wide connections. Grace knew he’d had her under surveillance at various times, maybe even bugged her phone or planted a tracking device on her car, hoping she would lead him to his wife. Grace had imposed on every friend she had, borrowing their cars or using their phones, to maintain even minimal contact with her cousin.

Jack didn’t know about Grace’s last, frantic flight to California. She’d made sure of that. She’d emptied her savings account, had a friend drive her to the airport and paid cash for a ticket to Vegas. There she’d rented a car for a desperate drive across the desert to the San Diego hospital where her cousin had been admitted.

Five heart-wrenching days later, she’d retraced that route with Molly. Instead of flying back to San Antonio with the baby, though, she’d paid cash for a bus ticket to Oklahoma City.

She hadn’t used her cell phone or any credit cards in the weeks since she’d wrangled a job as Molly’s temporary nanny. Nor had she cashed the checks Delilah had written for her salary. She’d planned to go back to her teaching job once Molly was settled with her father. The longer she spent with the baby, though, the more painful the prospect of leaving her became.

The thought of leaving Blake Dalton was almost as wrenching. Lately her mind had drifted to him more than it should. Especially at night, after she’d put Molly to bed. The increasingly erotic direction of that drift spurred pinpricks of guilt, then and now.

“Tell me how you and Anne met,” she pleaded, reminding herself yet again Blake was her cousin’s love, the man she’d let into her life despite all she’d been through. “How… Well…”

“How Molly happened?” he supplied.

“Yes. Anne was so shy around men.”

For shy, read insecure and cowed and generally scared shitless. Grace couldn’t imagine how Blake had breached those formidable barriers.

“Please,” she said softly. “Tell me. I’d like to know she found a little happiness before she died.”

He stared at her for long moments, then his breath eased out on a sigh.

“I think she was happy for the few weeks we were together. I was never sure, though. Took me forever to pry more than a murmured hello from her. Even after I got her to agree to go out with me, she didn’t want anyone at DI to know we were seeing each other. Said it would look bad, the big boss dating a lowly file clerk.”

He hooked his wrists on his knees and contemplated his black dress shoes. He must not have liked what he saw. A note of unmistakable self-disgust colored his deep voice.

“She wouldn’t let me take her to dinner or to the theater or anywhere we might be seen together. It was always her place. Or a hotel.”

It had to be that, Grace knew. Her cousin couldn’t take the chance some society reporter or gossip columnist would start fanning rumors about rich, handsome Blake Dalton’s latest love interest. Or worse, the paparazzi might snap a photo of them together and post it on the internet.

Yet she risked going to a hotel with him. She’d come out of her defensive crouch enough for that. And when she discovered she was pregnant with his child, she’d had no choice but to run away. She wanted the baby desperately, but she couldn’t tell Dalton about the pregnancy. He would have wanted to give the child his name, or at least establish his legal rights as the father. Hope’s false IDs wouldn’t have held up under legal scrutiny, and her real one would have led Petrie to her. So she’d run. Again.

“Did you love her?”

Damn! Grace hadn’t meant to let that slip out. And she sure as heck hadn’t intended to feel jealous of her cousin’s relationship with this man.

Yet she knew he had to have been so tender with her. So sensitive to her needs. His mouth would have played a gentle song on her skin. His hands, those strong, tanned hands, must have stroked and soothed even as they aroused and…

“I don’t know.”

With a flush of guilt, Grace jerked her attention back to his face.

“I cared for her,” he said quietly, as much to himself as to her. “Enough to press her into going to bed with me. But when she left without a word, I was angry as well as hurt.”

Regret and remorse chased each other across his face.

“Then, when I got the report of the bus accident…”

He stopped and directed a look of fierce accusation at Grace.

“I wasn’t with her when it happened,” she said in feeble self-defense. “She was by herself, in her car. The bus spun out right in front of her and hit a bridge abutment. She was terrified, but she got out to help.”

“And left her purse at the scene.”

“Yes.”

“Deliberately?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Grace shook her head. “I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you any more than I have. I promised Anne her past would die with her.”

“But it didn’t,” he countered swiftly. “Molly’s living proof of that.”

She slipped off the sofa and onto her knees, desperate for him to let it go. “She’s your daughter, Blake. Please, just accept that and take joy in her.”

He was silent for so long she didn’t think he would respond. When he did, the ice was back in his voice.

“All I have right now is your word that Anne and I had a child together. I’ll send in the DNA sample you offered to provide. Once we have the results, we’ll discuss where we go from here.”

“Where I need to go is back to your mother’s house! She’s exhausted from the wedding. She told me tonight she was feeling every one of her sixty-two years. She can’t take care of Molly by herself for the next few days.”

“I’ll help her, and when I can’t be there I’ll make sure someone else is. In the meantime, you stay put.”

He pushed out of the chair and strode to the wet bar built into the far wall. For a moment Grace thought he intended to pour them both a drink to wash down the hurt and bitterness of the past hour, but he lifted only one crystal tumbler from one of the mirrored shelves. He returned with it and issued a terse command.

“Spit.”

Three

The melodic chimes of a doorbell pierced Grace’s groggy haze. When the chimes gave way to the hammer of an impatient fist, she propped herself up on one elbow and blinked at the digital clock beside the bed.

Oh, God! Seven-twenty! She’d slept right through Molly’s first feeding.

She threw the covers aside and was half out of bed before reality hit. One, this wasn’t her room in Delilah’s mansion. Two, she was wearing only the lavender lace bikini briefs she left on when she’d changed her maid of honor gown. And three, she was no longer Molly’s temporary nanny.

Last night’s agonizing events came crashing down on her as the fist hammered again. Scrambling, Grace snatched up her now hopelessly wrinkled khaki crops and white blouse. She got the pants zipped and buttoned the blouse on her way to the front door. She had a good idea whose fist was pounding away. She’d spent almost a month now with Blake Dalton’s often autocratic, occasionally irascible, always kindhearted mother.

So she expected to see the raven-haired matriarch. She didn’t expect to see the baby riding on Delilah’s chest, nested contentedly in a giraffe sling. Grace gripped the brass door latch, swamped by an avalanche of love and worry and guilt as she dragged her gaze from the infant to her grandmother.

“Delilah, I…”

“Don’t you Delilah me!” She stomped inside, the soles of her high-topped sneakers slapping the marble foyer. “Don’t you dare Delilah me!”

Grace closed the door and followed her into the living room. She wished she’d taken a few seconds to brush her hair and slap some water on her face before this showdown. And coffee! She needed coffee. Desperately.

She’d tossed and turned most of the night. The few hours she’d drifted into a doze, she’d dreamed of Anne. And Blake. Grace had been there, too, stunned when his fury at her swirled without warning into a passion that jerked her awake, breathless and wanting. Remnants of that mindless hunger still drifted like a steamy haze through her mind as Delilah slung a diaper bag from her shoulder onto the sofa and released Molly from the sling.

Grace couldn’t help but note that her employer had gone all jungle today. The diaper bag was zebra-striped. Grinning monkeys frolicked and swung from vines on the baby’s seersucker dress. Delilah herself was in knee-length leopard tights topped by an oversize black T-shirt with a neon message urging folks to come out and be amazed by Oklahoma City’s new gorilla habitat—a habitat she’d coaxed, cajoled and strong-armed her friends into funding.

“Don’t just stand there,” she snapped at Grace. “Get the blanket out of the diaper bag.”

Even the blanket was a riot of green and yellow and jungle red. Grace spread it a safe distance away from the glass coffee table. Molly was just learning to crawl. She could push herself onto her hands and knees and hold her head up to survey the world with bright, inquisitive eyes.

Delilah deposited the baby on the blanket and made sure she was centered before pointing an imperious finger at Grace.

“You. Sit.” The older woman plunked herself down in the opposite chair, keeping the baby between them. “Now talk.”

“You sure you wouldn’t like some coffee first?” Grace asked with a hopeful glance at the suite’s fully equipped kitchen. “I could make a quick pot.”

“Screw coffee. Talk.”

Grace blew out a sigh and raked her fingers through her unbrushed hair. Obviously Delilah had no intention of making this easy.

“I don’t know how much Blake told you…” She let that dangle for a moment. Got no response. “Okay, here’s the condensed version. Molly’s mother was my cousin. When Anne worked at Dalton International, she had a brief affair with your son. She died before she could tell me which son, so I brought Molly to you and finessed a job as her nanny while Alex and Blake sorted out the paternity issue.”

Delilah pinned Grace with a look that could have etched steel. “If one of my sons got this cousin of yours pregnant, why didn’t she have the guts or the decency to let him know about the baby?”

Grace stiffened. Shielding Hope—Anne!—had become as much a part of her as breathing. No one knew what her cousin had endured. And Grace was damned if she’d allow anyone, even the formidable Delilah Dalton, to put her down.

“I told Blake and I’ll tell you. Anne had good reasons for what she did, but she wanted those reasons to die with her. She didn’t, however, want her baby to grow up without knowing either of her parents.”

Delilah fired back with both barrels. “Don’t get uppity with me, girl!”

The fierce retort startled the baby. Molly swung her head toward her grandmother, wobbled and plopped down on one diapered hip. Both women instinctively bent toward her, but she was already pushing back onto her knees.

Delilah moderated her tone if not her message. “I’m the one who bought your out-of-work schoolteacher story, remember? I took you into my home. I trusted you, dammit.”

Grace didn’t see any use in pointing out that she hadn’t lied about being a teacher or temporarily out of work. The trust part stung enough.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about my connection to Molly.”

“Ha!”

“I promised my cousin I would make sure her child was loved and cared for.” Her glance went again to the baby, happily drooling and rocking on hands and knees. Slowly, she brought her gaze back to Delilah. “And she is,” Grace said softly. “Well cared for and very much loved.”

Delilah huffed out something close to a snort but didn’t comment for long moments. “I pride myself on being a good judge of character,” she said at last. “Even that horny goat I married lived up to almost everything I’d expected of him.”

Grace didn’t touch that one. She’d heard Delilah say more than once she wished to hell Big Jake Dalton hadn’t died before she’d found out about his little gal pal. His passing would’ve been a lot less peaceful.

“Is all this you’ve just told me true?” the Dalton matriarch demanded.