A Bride for the Black Sheep Brother

“My name’s Ginger, by the way. If you’re going to go tattle to my boss.”

Portia held up her hand palm out in a gesture of peace. “Look, I’m not going to have you fired, but maybe you could just stay out of Celeste’s way for the rest of the night.”

Ginger blinked in surprise. “You’re not?”

“No. It was an accident.”

“Accident. Right.” Her tone was completely innocent, but there was a slight smirk to her lips as she stepped toward the door into the ballroom. Her smirk made her look so familiar. “Thanks.”

“Wait a second—” But the door swung open and two more waiters came into the hall and pushed past them. Portia reached for Ginger’s arm and stepped off to the side, where they weren’t in anyone’s way. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Tip the glass down your mother’s back? Why would I do that?” Ginger smirked again and Portia felt another blast of recognition. Like she should know this girl.

“I don’t know,” Portia admitted. She looked pointedly at the tray of champagne flutes. “But it seems like it’d be awfully hard to tip just one glass without them all spilling.”

“You gonna have me fired or not?”

Portia sighed. “Why would you do that?”

“What? Spill a drink on someone who’s verbally abusing her daughter in public? I can’t imagine why.” Ginger turned as if she was going to stalk off, but stopped and turned back before she reached the door. “Look, it’s none of my business, but you shouldn’t put up with that. Family should treat each other better.”

“Yes. They should.” Portia had no illusions about her mother. She wasn’t sure why she felt as if she had to justify her mother’s words—certainly not to a stranger—but she found herself doing it anyway. “I know my mother can be a bitch. I’m not going to pretend she has my best interests at heart. But when it comes to this kind of thing, she’s almost always right. And I’m usually wrong. If she thinks people will misinterpret those photos of me, then I’d bet money they already have.”

“That’s messed up.” Ginger just shook her head. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“It does, but it’s the world I live in.”

“I don’t care if that’s the world you live in. Family should be on your side. No matter what.” Ginger’s expression darkened. “The world you live in sucks.”

The fierceness in Ginger’s gaze took Portia aback for a moment. Portia looked at the girl closely. Again she was struck by how familiar she seemed.

“Have we met before?” she asked impulsively.

Ginger took a step back, the startled movement jostling the champagne flutes on her tray. “No. Where would we have met?”

Before Portia could press her for more information, the waitress spun away and disappeared through the door.

Now Portia was sure they’d met before. It was something in the girl’s smile. And something through the eyes.

The eyes.

Portia’s breath caught in her chest as the realization hit her.

This young woman. This waitress whom Portia had met by chance had eyes the exact same color as Dalton Cain’s. Now that she’d placed the eyes, Ginger’s other features seemed to slip right into place. That fierce intensity was pure Griffin Cain. That sarcastic smirk looked just like Cooper’s. Ginger was a near perfect amalgamation of the three brothers. Yes, in a more delicate and feminine form, but still, she could be their sister.

Which Portia might be able to dismiss, except for one crucial fact. Dalton, Griffin and Cooper actually had a half sister. They all knew she existed, but no one knew who or where she was. As impossible and unlikely as it seemed, had Portia just found the missing Cain heiress?

* * *

Portia looked for Ginger the rest of the night. She constantly scanned the crowd for the waitress’s maroon hair and nose stud, but she seemed to have disappeared completely.

By the time Portia had made it back to her small home at the end of the night, she was determined to track down the waitress. It wasn’t that she was obsessed with finding the girl, but it gave her something to think about other than the gossip about her that had been simmering in the background.

Why was it acceptable for people to talk about her merely because her ex-husband was going to be a father? Or because someone had snapped a photo of her playing basketball with some disadvantaged teens? Other people could do truly bad things and no one seemed to care.

The same brutal dynamic was at work with Caro Cain. Hollister Cain, Portia’s ex-father-in-law, had had countless affairs. Somehow Caro had held her head up through it all. When Caro divorced him, people gossiped about her.

Of course, Hollister and Caro had paid the price for his many affairs. Just last year, when Hollister’s health had been so bad, he had received a letter from one of his past conquests. The woman had heard he was on his deathbed and had taunted him with the existence of a daughter he’d never known about.

Whoever had written the letter had known what a manipulative bastard Hollister was. She had known it would drive him crazy to learn he had a daughter he’d never met and couldn’t control. When he’d received the letter, Hollister had called his three sons to his bedside—Dalton and Griffin, his legitimate sons, and Cooper, his illegitimate son. He’d demanded that they find the daughter and bring her back into the family fold. Whichever son found her first would be Hollister’s sole heir. If she wasn’t found before Hollister died, he’d will his entire fortune to the state.

The quest he’d set his sons on had torn the family apart. It had destroyed his own marriage. And now, a year later, the missing heiress still hadn’t been found. And Hollister’s health had improved. The last time she’d seen him, he’d seemed as bitter and angry as ever, but he was no longer haunted by death. He was just as determined that someone find his daughter.

Maybe it was ridiculous for Portia to think that she might have just found the woman tonight.

As far as she knew, Dalton and Griffin had figured out that their sister was from somewhere in Texas, but that hardly narrowed it down. There were almost thirty million people in Texas.

But of all the people Portia had ever met, only five of them had Cain-blue eyes. Hollister and his sons and now Ginger. This woman with Cooper’s smirk and Dalton’s determination. She looked just like a Cain.

Not that it was any of her business.

So what if a waitress at a hotel in Houston looked like she could be Dalton’s sister?

It didn’t have anything to do with Portia.

Except that when Portia thought about Ginger—about the waitress’s petulant defiance, about the fierce way she talked about how families should treat each other, Portia felt oddly protective of her. If she was the missing heiress, someone would find her. Someday—maybe someday soon—one of the brothers would stumble on a piece of evidence and they would track her down. Everything about her life would change in a moment. And she was completely unprepared for it.

Ginger was about to be thrust into a world of cutthroat gossips where her every action and motive would be questioned, analyzed and criticized. Where mothers berated their daughters in public and where divorcées were ostracized when they didn’t get a lavish divorce settlement. It was a world of wealth and power, but it was also a crummy world.

But maybe there was something she could do to make this world a little less crummy.

Two

When she was young, Portia had had a reputation among her family for being impulsive, reckless, rash—qualities she had worked hard to banish from her personality in the past fifteen years. And she’d succeeded. No one who knew her now—well, almost no one—would call her reckless.

Now she was not the kind of girl who got a tattoo over summer break—even one of a completely inoffensive, beloved cultural icon like Marvin the Martian. She was not the sort to do headstands in fancy clothes. Those parts of her were gone. It was that simple.

So, a week after the Children’s Hope Foundation gala, when she packed her bags and hopped on a plane, it was part of a planned vacation. After all, it was perfectly reasonable for her to take a few weeks of vacation after the months of grueling work on the event. And the Callahans had a condo in Tahoe that she often visited. It wasn’t as if she was fleeing from Houston because she couldn’t stand the gossip—which hadn’t actually been that bad. This was a vacation. A well-thought-out event.

And if she tweaked her travel plans just a smidge so that they included a four-hour layover in Denver, that was totally normal. She’d never liked long flights. Or airports.

And it was also normal—and not at all impulsive—for her to stop by and visit the one person she knew in Denver. Her former brother-in-law, Cooper Larson. Cooper—once the snowboarding darling in the world of extreme sports—was now a successful businessman. He was the CEO and owner of Flight+Risk, which just happened to be headquartered in Denver. He was also possibly the one person who could help her untangle the identity of the Cain heiress.

This was a slight detour in her life. That was all. Visiting Cooper wasn’t impulsive or reckless. It was smart. Of the three Cain brothers, he was the least invested in finding Hollister’s missing daughter. He had the least at stake. And he was the most likely to know where the young woman was coming from. Visiting Cooper was only logical.

The litany of logical, sensible reasons echoed through her mind as she paid the taxi driver who’d taken her from the airport to Flight+Risk’s office in downtown Denver not far from the Sixteenth Street Mall. The building was an older one that had been refurbished. It was sleek and modern inside, while maintaining the sort of informality that suited Cooper’s snowboard accessory business. It was exactly what she’d expected of his office. It suited the black sheep of the Cain family.

The only thing that threw her for a loop was Cooper’s assistant. She’d expected some young blond snow bunny type. Someone with more style than sense. Someone she could easily talk her way past.

Instead, the woman—Mrs. Lorenzo, according to the nameplate on her desk—was nearing fifty, with a humorless smile and cold, assessing eyes.

“And what did you say your name was again?”

“Portia Callahan.”

“Hmm...” Mrs. Lorenzo looked her up and down, as if Portia might be lying. Then the older woman turned back to the computer, clicked her mouse several times and started typing.

Mrs. Lorenzo must have sensed Portia’s doubts, because she raised an eyebrow and made a disapproving mmm sound.

“I’m his sister-in-law,” Portia threw out hopefully.

Mrs. Lorenzo smirked. “Mr. Larson has one sister-in-law—Laney Cain. She’s a lovely young woman. And you are not her.”

Portia swallowed, suddenly irritated by this woman’s superior attitude. She so didn’t need one more person telling her how lovely Laney was. “I’m his former sister-in-law.”

“I see.” Mrs. Lorenzo’s mouth turned down as if Portia had just admitted to being pond scum. “Mr. Larson is in a business meeting out of the office this morning. Would you like to reschedule?”

Portia glanced down at her watch. If she’d done the math right, she had about two hours before she needed to head back to the airport. “No. I’ll wait.”

“Excellent,” Mrs. Lorenzo said grimly. “I’ll let him know when he gets in.”

With a sigh, Portia picked a chair in the reception area and settled down to wait. She pulled a magazine out of her travel tote and flipped it open, but didn’t actually read any of it. Instead, she stared blankly at the brightly colored pictures, her mind racing from the lies she’d been telling herself.

Here was the flaw in her logic: if today’s visit to Denver really was logical and not impulsive, she would not have ambushed Cooper at work, hoping to talk her way past his secretary. She would have called ahead and made an appointment. Or better yet, called him and asked to meet for lunch. Or even better yet, just called and talked through this on the phone.

He was her former brother-in-law. Calling him to chat was perfectly reasonable. She’d talked to him on the phone plenty of times during her marriage to Dalton. And even since the divorce, she’d called a couple of times a year to hit him up for donations to the Children’s Hope Foundation.

But instead of just calling, she’d changed her travel plans and come to see him in person. Why?

She looked around the office, felt panic starting to choke her and fought the urge to bolt. What was she doing here? Why had she gone to these drastic lengths? And for a girl she barely knew? Based on nothing more than a pair of blue eyes and a gut feeling?

It was ridiculous. Absurd. Completely irrational.

And that was why she’d come here herself.

Because it was irrational and ridiculous. And she knew if she hadn’t jumped in feetfirst, she would have backed out. If she had called and tried to explain this over the phone, she would have panicked and changed her story. She never would have had the guts to actually talk about the missing heiress. She had come here to do it in person because now she was committed. Now, she couldn’t back out. She could only wait.

* * *

In business, as in snowboarding, talent and preparation only got you so far. After that, it was all a matter of luck. Which sucked, because Cooper Larson had never been a particularly lucky man. Ambitious, yes. Talented, smart and ruthless, yes. Lucky, not so much.

But he was okay with that. Luck was for a privileged few. It wasn’t something you could control or work for. And personally, he would much rather owe his success to something he’d done.

Still, when it came to important business meetings, like the Flight+Risk board meeting he had scheduled for the afternoon, he never left anything to chance. The meeting would be held at a hotel conference room, not far from Flight+Risk’s headquarters. He’d spent the morning at the hotel, putting the finishing touches on the proposal he’d be bringing before the board. Which left him just enough time to stop back by the office and check in before grabbing lunch and heading to the board meeting.

Except Portia was waiting to see him when he got there.

For a moment, he just stopped cold in the doorway staring at her. “Portia?” he asked stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

She stood up, looking strangely nervous. “I had a layover in Denver. And I thought maybe we could talk.”

She’d been reading a magazine when he walked in and now she rolled it tightly in her hands, clenching it as if maybe she wanted to swat the nose of some naughty dog.

He studied her, taking in the white of her clenched knuckles. The faint lines of strain around her eyes. He hadn’t seen her often since her divorce from Dalton—hell, he hadn’t seen her often during their marriage—but he knew her well enough to recognize the signs of stress and nerves.

Even though it would mess with his schedule for the day, he nodded toward his office. “Sure. Come on in.” He glanced toward his secretary with a nod. “Hold my calls.”

Mrs. Lorenzo narrowed her gaze infinitesimally in disapproval. “Sir, shall I send you a reminder, oh, say thirty minutes before your meeting?”

Good ol’ Mrs. Lorenzo could always be counted on to impose a rigid schedule. He grinned. “Make it twenty minutes.”

If he skipped lunch that would leave plenty of time to walk back over to the hotel.

He led Portia into the office and gestured toward one of the chairs, admiring the subtle sway of her hips as she preceded him. Portia was built exactly the way he liked—tall and lean. Today she wore her pale blond hair back in a sleek ponytail. She was dressed in skin-tight jeans and a white shirt under a tan sweater. Everything about her looked cool and confident. Everything except those white knuckles.

Though he gestured her toward a chair, he didn’t sit behind his desk. Instead, he propped his hips on the desktop and stretched his legs out in front of him. Frankly, he hated the trapped feeling that came with sitting behind a desk for too long. It reminded him of school. And with the board meeting this afternoon, he was going to spend enough time sitting still.

“What’s up?” he asked as soon as Portia sat down.

She bobbed back to her feet before answering. “I think I’ve found the heiress.”

“Who?” he asked.

“The missing Cain heiress. The one Dalton and Griffin have been searching for so frantically. Your sister. I’ve found her.”

“What?” He frowned. Her answer was so unexpected, so completely out of left field, his brain spun. No, not even left field. Out of no field. “I didn’t even know you were looking for her.”

“I wasn’t!” Portia started pacing, her words pouring out of her. “I was at a fund-raiser. The big Children’s Hope Foundation gala. And I just met this girl. She’s about the right age, mid-twenties. Her hair’s red, but I’m pretty sure it was dyed. But she has the Cain eyes.”

He rolled his own eyes at that, but he was surprised by the way those words drove the tension right out of his body. “The Cain eyes? That’s what you’re basing this on? The fact that she has blue eyes?”

Portia paused on the far side of his office, right in front of the wall of books he’d never read that the decorator had picked out. He got the feeling that Portia wasn’t studying the book spines, but rather summoning her courage before turning back to look at him. She jutted out her jaw as she frowned. “It’s a real thing. Don’t act like it isn’t.”

“I’m not acting. Ten percent of the population have blue eyes. They can’t all be related to the Cains. Not even Hollister slept around that much.”

She blew out a frustrated breath. “Listen, there are some things women are better at than men. Facial recognition—including eye color—is one of them.” He waggled his hand in a that’s iffy gesture. “Trust me on this. Cain-blue eyes are very unique. I spent ten years staring into Dalton’s eyes. I know that color. And I’ve never seen anyone else with those eyes except for Hollister and his sons. This girl—this girl I saw at the fund-raiser—she’s your sister. That has to mean something to you.”

Cooper shifted and studied Portia.

She was such a mystery. Half the time, she came off as this coolly serene princess. No, more than half. Eighty percent, maybe ninety percent of the time. But he’d seen another side of her. He knew she had more going on than the ice princess thing most people saw. He couldn’t forget when he’d walked in on her doing a headstand on her wedding day. Every time he saw her he thought of those long legs and the pink kitty cat underwear. A guy never forgot a thing like that. He never forgot the sharp punch of desire. Even when the woman had spent a decade married to his brother.

But Portia wasn’t married to Dalton anymore. She was here in his office. A thousand miles from her home. Talking to him about something she easily could have told Dalton.

What was up with that?

He ran his thumb along his jaw. “Okay. So let’s say this is the girl. Let’s say she’s really the heiress. Why come to me? Why not just call up Dalton?” And then it hit him—of course she wouldn’t call Dalton. He was her ex-husband. Yeah, their divorce seemed civil enough. From the outside. But who knew what it had been like from her side of things? Just because she’d kept in contact with Caro and Hollister that didn’t mean she wanted Dalton to win the challenge so that he could inherit all of Cain Enterprises. “Never mind. Sorry I said that. That was stupid. Of course you’re not just going to hand him the money. But why not talk to Griffin about this?”

She pulled a sheepish face. “I’m not exactly Griffin’s favorite person. I don’t know if he’d even believe me. But in reality I couldn’t go to him for the same reason I couldn’t go to Dalton.”

“The same reason? Jesus, how many of us have you married?”

She narrowed her gaze, looking confused for a second before shaking her head. “Very funny. Yeah, sure, I’m not Dalton’s biggest fan right now, but that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“I couldn’t talk to Dalton because he wants it too badly,” she said simply, like he was the idiot for not seeing it right off.

“You can’t tell him you think you’ve found the girl because he wants to find her?” he asked slowly, drawing the words out while he tried to wrap his brain around what she meant.

“Yes! Think about it—if the girl isn’t found before something happens to Hollister, then Cain Enterprises is going to be in serious trouble. If Hollister’s shares of the company go to the state, they’ll probably be auctioned off, most likely to Cain’s competitors. The company will be in ruins. Even though Dalton doesn’t work for Cain Enterprises anymore, he doesn’t want that to happen. He’s worked his ass off for Cain all his life. A new job doesn’t change that. He still loves the company. He’s always going to pick what’s best for Cain Enterprises. He’s not going to think twice about his sister.”

“So you’re telling me you haven’t gone to Dalton with this information because you’re worried about the heiress?”

“Exactly. Someone needs to think about what’s best for this poor girl.”

Cooper raised an eyebrow. “This poor girl? If you’re right, this poor girl is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Probably more money than she’s ever dreamed of. No one would call this girl poor.”

Portia seemed to hesitate, then smiled faintly. “Perhaps poor isn’t quite the word I meant, but I’m sure you’ll agree, if Dalton and Griffin do find her, she’s going to have a rough time of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that the Cains live in a world of wealth and power that most people can’t even imagine. You and I both know that if you’re unprepared for that world, it will gobble you and devour you whole. This girl, she didn’t grow up with money.”

“How exactly do you know she’s poor?” he asked with a bit of a sneer. “Are you guessing based merely on the way she was dressed or is this something she told you while you were gazing into her Cain-blue eyes?”

“Very funny. But trust me, I know. She’s a waitress, with dyed red hair and one of those little studs in her nose.”

“You think rich kids don’t rebel? Because I’ve got to tell you, I’ve made a lot of money in an industry that’s all about rich kids rebelling.”

“Exactly. When rich kids rebel, they go snowboarding in Utah. Kids working jobs as waitresses at a hotel? Those kids don’t have time to rebel.”

Well, she had a point there. And he might even be willing to help her; her heart was in the right place, even if it wasn’t really her business anymore. After all, he’d always liked Portia—hell, he’d always more than liked Portia. That was part of the problem, though, wasn’t it? It wasn’t appropriate to more-than-like your sister-in-law. Not that she was his sister-in-law anymore. Was there some sort of statute of limitations on that?

But he was getting off track. Regardless of how he felt about Portia, it was hard to be too enthusiastic about helping out when her entire reason for asking for his help was because he didn’t fit into her world.

“I can’t tell Dalton where to find her,” Portia said. “He wouldn’t think twice about thrusting her into this completely unprepared. And I’m not saying that because I think he’s jerk. He just wouldn’t even think. He always put business first. He wouldn’t hesitate.”

“And you think I would?”

“Hesitate?” She shrugged. “I think you know better than anyone where this girl is coming from. She has a middle-class background at best. She won’t know what she’s getting into. She’ll be vulnerable and unprepared—”

“Yeah. I get it.” Cooper cut Portia off with a sharp wave of his hand. Jesus, was this how people had seen him when he’d first gone to live with the Cains? “It’s probably not as bad as you think. I’m sure she’ll at least be potty trained.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Portia glared at him, but she looked more exasperated than angry. “I’m trying to protect her.”