His Instant Heir

“Was there anything else?” she asked.

“Just this,” he said, lowering his head and taking the kiss he’d wanted since she’d walked into the conference room and made him regret leaving her all those months ago.

Two

Cari hadn’t planned on Dec. Not at all. Not the way his lips moved over hers or the way he tasted so familiar to her. She’d missed this, she thought. Then chided herself. She hadn’t missed anything. Dec had been nothing but a one-night stand. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted him to be more. He’d only been interested in her because of this.

Sex.

She only wished she could be dispassionate in his arms, but she’d been alone, her feminine instincts directed toward mothering instead of being a woman. Dec was awakening something in her that she thought she’d lost. A wave of desire shot through her. Her blood felt like it was heavier in her veins and every nerve ending came awake.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, knowing this was the only embrace she could allow between them, so she was determined to enjoy every second of it. She tipped her head to the side, angling her mouth under his, and sucked his tongue. He groaned, and for the first time since she’d learned he was back in her life, she felt a measure of control.

But control was fleeting. When he put his hands on her hips and drew her in so that she felt his erection against her lower body, she felt her breasts respond.

Shocked and afraid he might notice, she lifted her head and looked up at him. His eyes were closed and there was a flush of desire on his skin.

He was a hard man, but his lips were always so soft on hers. She lifted her hand and rubbed her thumb over his lower lip. She paused a moment, hoping for something that would resolve the conflict inside her. But then his hands tightened on her hips and she knew this was only bringing more complications to the table.

She dropped her arms and pulled her blazer around her to ensure that he couldn’t see the wetness that would be a sure giveaway that she had a baby.

She sighed. She wasn’t ready for Dec to come back into her life. She’d just settled into her routine with her job and her son, and now Playtone Games and Dec were throwing her back into a tornado. She wanted to grab DJ and her staff and head for the cellar until this passed, but she knew she couldn’t run away. She was the one in charge of everyday operations and the takeover meant she was the best person to advise Dec on her staff. It was up to her to somehow persuade Dec to keep as many employees as possible.

He laughed. “Was my kiss that bad?”

“That good,” she said, opting for honesty. She’d always been a lousy liar. Something her sisters had twigged on to the first time she’d refused to name DJ’s father. But it had been important to keep her secret from them given the bad blood between Dec’s family and hers.

“Then why the sigh?” he asked, his fingers flexing and drawing her nearer to him.

She put her hand between them to preserve the distance and her illusion of control, because it was becoming startlingly obvious that she hadn’t been in charge of anything from the moment she’d walked into this conference room. She stepped back and stumbled into the door.

He reached out to right her but she shook her head. “I can’t do this, Dec. We need to talk and there are things—”

“I’m not doing this for revenge,” he said.

“What?” she asked. She hadn’t even considered that, but now that he’d mentioned it, wouldn’t it be fitting for one of Thomas Montrose’s grandsons to take sexual revenge on his sworn enemy’s granddaughter?

“I just wanted you to know that what is between us has nothing to do with business or our families. This is you and me. Just us,” he said.

“Ah, that’s a nice thought,” she said, thinking of her son and her sisters and the fact that no matter what he wanted to believe, they didn’t live on an island. It would never be just them.

“It’s my opinion. I’m not one to let my cousins dictate my personal life,” he said, touching a strand of her hair, tucking it back behind her ear the way she normally wore it. “I had the impression that you were someone who made her own decisions, as well.”

“Of course I am. Stop trying to shame me into—” She stopped. “What exactly is it that you want from me?”

She felt panicked and nervous, but not because of him. It stemmed from herself and the fact that it would be easy to surrender and give him what he wanted. A casual affair. But that wasn’t like her at all. Dec Montrose was danger, she thought. She had to remember that.

“I want a chance. I don’t want you judging me based on my cousins or this takeover. That has nothing to do with what is between us. It didn’t eighteen months ago and it still doesn’t now,” he said.

“I agreed to dinner,” she said. She struggled to believe him. If she was a sap, she’d fall for his lines, but she wasn’t. Was she?

She crossed her arms over her chest, not really caring that it was a defensive pose. She had to figure out how to manage Dec. But managing people wasn’t always her best strength. She preferred to help people find their happiness. And Dec wanted two things that wouldn’t leave her in a good place. He wanted her company and she was almost 100 percent certain once he knew about DJ he was going to want their son.

“I want more than dinner,” he said.

“That was obvious,” she said.

“I’ve never been subtle. Kell says with this mug I can’t be,” he said, gesturing to his face.

He wasn’t classically handsome, but there was something about that strong determined jaw and those dark brown eyes that had made it hard for her to look away from him in the past, and now. “You use that to your advantage.”

He shrugged. “I figured out early in life that I had to play to my strengths.”

“Me, too,” she said. “I was never going to be as strong as Emma or as rebellious as Jessi. I had to find my own way.”

“You’ve done well from what I can see. Everyone I talked to about Infinity Games said you are the heart of the company.”

She closed her eyes and wished her staff had said she was the ballbuster of the company. That would make it easier for her to deal with him. What could she say about that? She genuinely cared about her staff and had made it her purpose to make sure they all worked to their maximum. “You’re the axman of Playtone Games.”

“So I’m the Tin Man then and don’t have a heart. Is that what you’re saying?” he asked.

She caught her breath at the flash of pain in his eyes. Just as quickly it was gone, and back was the determined suitor. She still wasn’t sure what he really wanted from her, but she was determined to know this man better. She had until dinner to figure out the best way to tell him about DJ. She had until tonight to figure out if there was a way to use him to save as many of her staff as she could. She had until tonight to find a way to handle everything he threw at her.

She had a bad feeling the latter was going to be much harder than any of the others.

Dec had always felt like he wasn’t the same as everyone else. The adult in him knew it had everything to do with him being adopted. His mother had insisted he be treated like the other Montrose heirs, but inside Dec had always known he wasn’t a true heir. And that had affected him.

Normally he didn’t give a crap about that. He knew he’d been called a shark. Cold and heartless when it came to his approach to business. A man who coolly cut staff, sent them packing and didn’t apologize for it. That was business. Usually the people who complained were the ones who didn’t make the cut. But hearing Cari say he was heartless had given him pause.

“Tin Man, really?” he asked when he realized she wasn’t going to respond to his comment.

Ah, hell, he thought, pushing his hands through his hair. “Well, Cari?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, but he noticed she bit her lower lip and didn’t lower her arms. She in fact did mean it that way.

“I’m not here to hurt you or your company,” he said. “In fact, as a shareholder I’d think you’d be happy about the takeover. Despite the enmity between our families, you are going to be a very rich woman when this is all over.”

“Is money the most important thing to you, Tin Man?” she asked teasingly.

“I’m not a Tin Man.”

“Sorry. I didn’t say it to be rude,” she said, then nibbled her bottom lip. “Well, maybe a little. I’m trying to figure you out.”

It was there in her tone. She was hiding something, or maybe just hiding from him. Maybe she’d discovered that it was going to take more than one kiss to get over him. He sure as hell was winging from the embrace they’d just shared.

“Good luck with that,” he said. “I have enough money to make life comfortable. It’s a nice goal, though. Most people want more.”

“That’s true. Is that the reason most of our stockholders sold to you?”

“I didn’t talk to them, so I can’t say. But profit is why they invested in Infinity Games.”

“I know. I just hate change.”

Change didn’t bother him and never really had. He knew that life was one constant change. People who got comfortable in a situation found themselves…Well, like Cari right now. “I’m not heartless when it comes to staff. Is that your biggest concern?”

She shook her head and fiddled with the ring on her right hand. “Everything about you raises red flags, Dec. I wanted to be cool and sophisticated this morning. Instead I let you kiss my socks off and stumbled into a door.”

“I like you the way you are,” he said.

She gave him that half smile of hers that had originally drawn him across the Atlanta convention space to her booth. It was inviting and sweet and made a man want to do anything he could to keep her smiling.

“Good, because I’m too old to change.”

He laughed. She was young enough and innocent, as well. Despite the fact that she was the spawn of his family’s hated enemy, there was nothing malicious in Cari. “If you’re old, I must seem ancient.”

She tossed her hair and let her arms fall to her sides as she studied him. “Not old, but there is something ageless about you. I know you have work to do. My assistant will work for both of us…unless you have one who will be joining you here.”

“No. I don’t need an assistant and it’s a cost savings to just utilize existing staff.” He’d had an executive assistant a few years ago, but the man had become a liability when he’d started to get too chummy with the staff of the company they were dissolving. It hadn’t been easy, but Dec had fired him. Not everyone was cut out to work in mergers and acquisitions. It required a person who could compartmentalize. And he was the king of that.

“Cost savings…is that how you always look at the business?” she asked.

Her tone said she didn’t approve, but that didn’t bother him at all. If she’d asked him something like this about their personal life, it might, but this was business. There was no place for emotions in the workplace. If something was losing money it had to be cut, and Infinity Games had made too many poor decisions. Perhaps leading with the heart instead of the wallet. It had left them vulnerable to a takeover and now Dec was here to clean it up. And he would.

“Yes, how else would I view it? It’s all about the bottom line. That’s how we were able to take over your company.”

“I’m not a driven-by-the-bottom-line type of COO. I like to see my staff working and being productive.”

“Maybe you should have been more focused on the bottom line,” he suggested. She hadn’t argued when he’d called her the heart of the company. In his experience, that meant the emotional one. He had the feeling that she had an open-door policy and never said no to any of her staff. He would love to be proved wrong, but he seldom was. That meant they were going to be at odds at work. Mentally, he shrugged.

What he wanted from Cari had nothing to do with business. He’d do his job and he intended to get to know her, as well. The two things were separate in his mind.

“I don’t know. I mean of course I understand that profit has to be a driving force, but I always think about the people behind it. They need to feel safe to work at their best.”

“It will be interesting working with you. I have the feeling I don’t know you at all, Cari,” he said.

“I’m sure you don’t,” she said. “Most men only see what they want to when it comes to women.”

“Interesting thought,” he said. “Whereas you see me as I really am?”

She flushed. “Sorry. I just hate the thought of you looking at a piece of paper and saying we need to cut head count when I know that head count means a person. A person who has a life that they are trying their best to balance.”

“I’m not going to randomly reduce staff. We need to see where you are losing money, Cari. You have to know that your company isn’t as profitable as it could be.”

“Yes, I do. As you said, we’ll have to work together to make it profitable again,” she said. She reached for the door again and he had the feeling that she wanted to get away from him. Who could blame her? He’d given her two things to think about this morning.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. Because he hadn’t meant to reenter her life this way. Well, to be honest, he hadn’t really meant to reenter it at all. She wasn’t the kind of woman with whom he could have an affair. Even if there wasn’t a decades-long feud between their families.

It wasn’t just that she was the heart of the gaming company, she also was caring and compassionate and, he knew, worlds too soft for Beau and Helene Montrose’s adopted son. The boy they’d fought over and eventually, when his mother had lost the argument, handed over to Thomas Montrose to be honed into a weapon to be used in this war against the Chandlers.

“This was never going to be easy,” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“You left me without a backward glance, and probably thought our paths wouldn’t cross again. Definitely like this. Now we have to work together and I’m going to try to save as much of my company as I can and you’re going to—”

“Do what I do best.”

“What’s that?”

“Make this a profitable move for Playtone Games and somehow convince you that despite all of that I’m not really a Tin Man.”

Cari entered her office and picked up the phone to call Emma. Then immediately put it down. The time to go running to her big sister had passed. She was a mom now, a decision maker. At work she didn’t need Emma’s advice and she’d made the difficult decision to stand on her own in her personal life, as well. She knew better than to backpedal now.

She couldn’t help it, though. She felt scared and panicked at the thought of Dec just down the hall from her. And little DJ downstairs in the nursery. Two males who had the most influence in her life. One by her design, the other…by fate?

She shook her head. She wasn’t going to figure this out right now and didn’t want to try. She instant messaged her assistant.

Ally knocked on the door and popped her head around. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes. I need you to draft a memo to the staff from me and my sisters letting them know that Playtone Games has taken over our company and we will be using the next six weeks to merge.”

“Okay. Anything else?” Ally asked without hesitation or concern. Her assistant was thirty-two and had gotten married last summer, and Cari knew she’d just signed a mortgage on a new house. She had to be worried.

“Let them know that Dec Montrose is going to be observing them for the next few weeks. Everyone who works to their full potential need not worry.”

“Okay. I’ll draft an email and send it to you for approval,” Ally said.

“Thank you. Do you think we could get a temp in here to serve as my assistant?”

“Why?”

“Ally, I’m thinking of transferring you to finance. You have the skills to be in accounts receivable and that way you won’t be attached to me,” Cari said.

She wasn’t sure how much any of the staff knew of the bad blood between her family and Dec’s, but she didn’t want to take any chances of Ally being a casualty of that old feud.

“That’s not necessary.”

“Being part of this office might be a liability,” she warned.

“Like you said, if I do my job I’m fine. Besides, I’m not abandoning you,” Ally said with a smile.

“Thanks. In that case, Dec and I will be sharing you as an assistant. Think of it as a dual-reporting relationship.”

“Okay,” Ally said.

As her assistant left, Cari leaned back in her chair and swiveled around to face the plate-glass windows that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. She took a deep breath, warned herself that if she didn’t get her head together Dec was going to walk all over her. And she couldn’t let that happen.

Her door opened loudly and she pivoted around to see Jessi standing there. She had thick black hair that she wore shoulder length with a thick fringe of bangs on her forehead. For shock value, she had a deep purple streak on the left side. On anyone else it might have looked frivolous but on Jessi it just added to her commanding presence.

“So, how’s it look?” she asked, putting a Starbucks cup down in front of Cari before dropping down into one of her Louis XIV wing chairs. She wore a pair of skinny black trousers with a rhinestone top and an Armani tuxedo jacket. Cari loved her sister’s bold style.

“Thanks for the skinny latte,” she said, taking a sip.

“Figured you’d need it this morning, and with my cute little nephew you don’t exactly have time to get one for yourself. So what’d he say?”

She didn’t need to ask who she meant. She sighed. “Dec’s here for blood. He pretty much said he’s cutting the dead weight and going to find out where we are profitable.”

Jessi propped one booted foot on her knee and leaned back, taking a sip of her own drink, which Cari knew was a mocha. Her sister was a rabid chocoholic. “Figured as much. Can you influence him at all? What do you think is the best approach?”

“Um…” That was a loaded question. Now that Dec was here and his family had the upper hand in business, Cari realized her sisters would be at a disadvantage once DJ’s parentage became public knowledge.

“What? Did he threaten you?” Jessi said, jumping to her feet. “I’ve dealt with the Montrose clan before.”

“You have?”

“Unfortunately. Allan McKinney was the best man at John and Patti McCoy’s wedding.”

Cari remembered Jessi being the maid of honor at her best friend Patti’s wedding two years ago in Las Vegas. She recalled hearing nothing about Allan, however. “I didn’t realize that,” she said.

“Well, since we’re feuding with his family I didn’t think I should talk about it. Besides Allan was a total jerk douche about a few things. I can see why there is bad blood between our families. Anyway, I spent the longest weekend of my life in Vegas thanks to him. If I need to go in there—”

“No. You don’t need to do anything for me, Jess. Dec was fine,” she said. Then she realized she needed to start laying the groundwork for Dec to be introduced as DJ’s father. “In fact, we’re having dinner tonight.”

“You are? He must be nothing like Allan, who is an annoying jerk.”

Cari laughed, and for the first time this morning she felt maybe it wasn’t the end of the world. No matter what happened at Infinity Games, they’d be okay. They might be a bit worse for the wear, but her sisters and she would be fine.

Three

Dec rubbed the back of his neck as Ally escorted the lead programmer from the IOS team out of the conference room. He needed a long, stiff drink and an evening where he didn’t have to think about staff reductions. It was clear to him that part of the problem with Infinity Games was the fact that Cari allowed her staff too much leeway. But that was neither here nor there. It was almost six and as he had a date for the first time in almost six months, he was leaving.

“Good evening, Mr. Montrose,” the security guard said as he exited the elevator. The lobby of Infinity Games spoke of heritage. On the wall in large print was a list of accolades the company had garnered since its inception in the early ‘70s. Dec skimmed over the first one, which listed both Gregory Chandler and Thomas Montrose’s names. The next accolade was a partnership with the Japanese video-game giants Mishukoshi, after which Thomas’s name disappeared. And so began the family feud.

Dec looked at the guard. “Good evening. What was your name again?” he asked. He knew in takeovers it was important to have a face to go with every name on his list. Kell wanted this place gutted and soon there would be no need for two teams of security. And this man looked like a prime candidate for early retirement.

“Frank Jones,” the older man said. His blue security uniform was neatly pressed, he presented himself in a well-groomed manner and despite his age, Frank was in good shape.

“Declan Montrose,” he said, holding out his hand. The handshake was firm and strong. There might be some gray in his hair, but Frank’s posture and attitude weren’t as elderly as it had seemed from across the lobby.

“Who hired you?”

“Ms. Cari. She said we needed someone who took this job seriously and understood that security was the most important part of making a game,” Frank said.

“And that convinced you to take the job?” Dec asked.

“That and her smile,” Frank said.

“Her smile?”

“She has this way of making you feel like you’re the only one for the job when she smiles at you. Makes me want to do my best,” Frank said.

“She does have a way,” Dec agreed. Suddenly he had an inkling of why Cari was so popular with her team. There was something to be said about being made to feel important. Obviously it was a skill that Cari had in spades.

His iPhone rang as soon as he was in his Maserati GranTurismo convertible. He glanced at the caller ID and wanted to toss the phone out of the car. He wasn’t ready to download information to Kell, but as the man was his boss and not just his cousin, ignoring the call wasn’t an option.

“Montrose here.”

“Here, as well,” Kell said. “Is it as bad as we feared?”

“Worse. The staff is really loyal. I think if we kick the Chandlers out we might have a mutiny. I’ve spent the better part of the day listening to how great they are.”

“That doesn’t concern me,” Kell said. “We knew the takeover was going to be messy.”

“And I’m mitigating the mess, but it’s going to take some time.”

Kell cursed under his breath. “You said six weeks.”

“And that’s still exactly how long I need. Calling and badgering me isn’t going to speed it up.”

“I know that. I was wondering how the Chandler girl was…Cari?”

She was nervous and sexy and sweet. But his cousin didn’t need to know any of that. And if Dec had learned one thing from his socialite mother it was to keep some information to himself. “She’s hiding something.”

“What? There is no other investor in the wings,” Kell said with surety.

“I’ll find out what I can. But there is definitely something she’s protecting. Maybe one of her sisters. From what I gather, the oldest one, Emma, is something of a barracuda. The staff spoke of her the way our team talks about you.”

“I’ll get in touch and see if I can find out what they are hiding. You keep working on Cari. I think that Allan’s best friend is married to the middle Chandler girl’s best friend.”

“Why do you know this?” Dec asked. Kell just didn’t do personal stuff. If it didn’t affect Playtone Games, usually Kell didn’t bother with it.

“I had the misfortune to try to drink our cousin under the table last weekend and heard all about the girl.”

So Allan knew the middle sister, and unless Dec was very much mistaken—and he was seldom wrong about anything—he himself was going to know the youngest sister very intimately. Again. And this time he was going to…What? He was the adopted son of the Montrose dynasty. He had been abandoned, adopted, pretty much left to his own devices again. He knew he wasn’t a man for commitment. What could he do with Cari except have an elusive affair?