The Pint-Sized Secret (5 page)

He was up at dawn on Saturday and on the phone to Dylan.

“Some of us actually like to sleep in on the weekends,” his big brother protested when Jeb awakened him. “Especially when there’s a beautiful woman in bed beside us.”

“Stop bragging,” Jeb retorted. “Besides, this is important.”

“And my plans for the morning weren’t?”

“You can get back to them in a minute.”

Dylan sighed heavily. “Afraid not. I can hear the patter of little feet running toward the kitchen right now. Soon I’ll be blessed with the sound of cartoons at top volume. Then my bride will desert me.”

“Okay, okay, you have my pity and my apology. Now will you listen for a minute?”

“Why not? Looks like I don’t have anything better to do.”

“I went out with Brianna last night.”

Dylan whistled. “The lovely spy?”

“We don’t know she’s a spy,” Jeb said defensively.

“Hey, you’re the one who pinned the label on her, not me. What’s changed?”

Jeb ran his fingers through his hair. “She’s…I don’t know. She’s not what I expected.”

“Holy mackerel, you’ve gone and fallen for her, haven’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It was one date. Nobody falls for a woman in one date. Besides, I’m investigating her. How stupid do you think I am?”

His brother laughed. “Not stupid. Just male.”

“You are not helping,” Jeb accused.

“What do you want from me?”

“Advice.”

“About your love life?”

“About the investigation, dammit!”

“Let’s take it from the top then. Tell me again why you suspect Brianna of leaking Delacourt secrets.”

“Timing, mostly. She arrived and suddenly deals started going sour.”

“What does Dad say?”

“That I should stay the heck away from her, that she’s totally trustworthy, etcetera.”

“Maybe you should listen to him for once.”

“I can’t ignore my instincts. There’s something going on, Dylan. I can feel it.”

“Maybe there is, but maybe Brianna has absolutely nothing to do with it. Circumstantial evidence, especially the little bit you have, won’t cut it. You need some cold hard facts. There are other geologists. Any one of them could be behind the leaks.”

“Out of the blue? They’ve been here for years.”

“But maybe one of them has just been hit with huge medical expenses, or college tuition, or blackmail. The possibilities are endless. I think you’d better back off with Brianna. Start from scratch. Look at everyone who had the information that was leaked. Check into their finances. If you want to fax me a list of names, I’ll do some of the financial checks for you. Then you can go from there.”

Jeb could see the logic of Dylan’s plan, but it grated just the same. If he did as his brother suggested, he’d have to stop seeing Brianna. Right now he had the excuse of the investigation. If he kept seeing her, he would have to admit it was personal, and then what? What if the feelings that had stirred in him last night deepened, and then it did turn out that she was guilty? He’d be caught smack in the middle of a disaster.

“Jeb? Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

Dylan groaned. “But you don’t want to stay away from Brianna, do you? It’s already gotten personal. How far has it gone, little brother?”

Jeb saw little point in lying. Dylan was already assuming the worst. “Not far. I kissed her. That’s it.”

“You think she’s a corporate spy and you kissed her. Terrific. That’s really using your brain.”

“I didn’t consult my brain. That’s the difference between you and me, Dylan. Sometimes I just react to the moment.”

“Then perhaps you ought to severely restrict the moments you spend with Brianna,” his brother suggested.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’ve already made plans to see her again this morning.” He didn’t mention that Brianna knew nothing about those plans. “I want to check a little more closely into her lifestyle.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m trying to. You’re just not listening. Fax me those names, Jeb. And keep your distance from Brianna. See her today if you have to, but try to think of her as the enemy. Normally I recommend thinking of a suspect as innocent until proved guilty, but maybe that’s not such a good idea in this instance. Maybe considering Brianna a bad guy will help you to keep your hormones in check until we know what’s really going on.”

Jeb accepted his brother’s advice without comment. It hadn’t worked the night before, but he was willing to give it another try. This time he wouldn’t even take coffee, much less pastries, when he paid his surprise visit.

“I’ll bet
you
looked like a princess even if you were wearing some other color,” Emma said loyally.

“I don’t know about that.” Brianna thought of her escort, who had looked very much like a prince in his fancy tux. The formal attire suited his dark good looks, made him look more than ever like the scoundrel she had to keep reminding herself he was.

Not that he’d behaved that way…for the most part. For the major portion of the evening, he’d treated her with the utmost respect. He’d been a perfect gentleman. And she, perverse idiot that she was, had hated it. Apparently some long-dormant part of her had wanted him to kiss her, had wanted him to make a pass at her when he’d danced her into the shadows of the huge ballroom. Instead, when he’d merely settled her on a bench and gone for champagne, she had been ridiculously disappointed. He was a rogue, wasn’t he?

Later, when she got her unspoken wish, when he kissed her on the terrace, the results had been devastating. Her blood had almost literally sizzled. She hadn’t realized that was possible. She had also recognized belatedly just how intoxicatingly dangerous that could be.

After the kiss, they had danced some more, putting on a show, in fact. Then they had talked. And talked. Most of the time Jeb had been totally, utterly charming. Attentive. Witty. Compassionate, especially when it came to helping her claim revenge against Max Coleman. In fact, she hadn’t met a man she’d been more attracted to in years.

Or a man who was more out of reach. She had absolutely no intention of risking her job by getting involved with someone at the office, a Delacourt no less. She had no time for a relationship, period. Talk about courting disaster. She simply couldn’t risk it, not with so much at stake.

Besides, there had been all those probing questions he’d dismissed as nothing more than small talk. She knew better. He was after something, though she honestly had no idea what. Could it really be as simple as a man wanting to get to know a woman? She might be out of practice at dating, but her instincts said no. She could still recognize idle conversation. She did a lot of networking, especially with men. She knew how to play
that
game. Jeb’s questions had been too sharp, a little too pointed. They would have made her uncomfortable even if they hadn’t come so close to exposing all her secrets.

“Mama?”

Emma’s voice cut into her thoughts. “Sorry, baby. My mind wandered.”

“Wandered where?”

“Back to the party,” she said, forcing herself to inject a note of enthusiasm into her voice as she described all of the elegant clothes and beautiful decorations.

Emma had too few chances to hear about anything that could carry her away from this confined world in which she lived. Their rare outings were seldom more exciting than the drive-through line at a fast-food restaurant, though hopefully that would change now that Emma was getting more adept at dealing with her wheelchair. Up until now she had stubbornly refused to go anywhere unless she could remain in the car.

“I don’t want people to stare,” she declared, and that was that.

One day Emma’s world would open up again, but until then Brianna did her best to let Emma live vicariously through her own activities. Her site explorations were seldom as intriguing for a five-year-old as last night’s dance clearly was.

“It sounds like a fairy tale,” her daughter concluded with a little sigh when Brianna had finished. “I wish I could go to a ball and dance.”

Brianna’s heart broke at the wistfulness in her daughter’s voice. In Emma’s case, it wasn’t just childish yearning to be grown-up. Unspoken was the very real fear that she might never be able to walk, much less dance.

“You will, sweetie,” Brianna promised in an attempt to reassure her. “One of these days you will make all of the other girls weep with envy when you arrive with your handsome prince.”

“What about
your
prince? Is he very handsome? Can I meet Mr. Delacourt?”

The very idea horrified Brianna. “No,” she said curtly, then tempered it by adding, “He’s a very busy man.”

“But you like him, don’t you? You haven’t gone out with anyone since Daddy left, so you must.”

“This was just a business occasion, Emma, not a real date,” Brianna said, ignoring the fact that for a few minutes, out on the terrace, it had felt very much like a date. In fact, it had felt like the start of something important.

Then he’d started in with those questions again, and the mood had been lost.

“Oh,” Emma said, clearly disappointed.

Brianna decided it was time to change the subject. “Want to try to stand up for me? Gretchen says you’re getting better at it every day.”

Emma shook her head. “Not now.”

“It’s important to keep trying.”

Emma’s expression set stubbornly. “No,” she said as emphatically as she had when it had been the primary word in her vocabulary.

“Please,” Brianna coaxed.

“I don’t feel like it.”

Brianna sighed. She’d had to learn not to push, though it went against her nature. But she knew Emma had to be allowed her rebellions. There were so few things she had control over in her life. The therapists were demanding taskmasters. The doctors poked and prodded. Occasionally Emma had to be permitted to make her own decisions about what she was ready to try.

“Maybe next time, then,” Brianna said cheerfully, and gave Emma a kiss. “I love you, baby. I’ll be back first thing in the morning. If the weather’s nice, I’ll bring a picnic and we can eat lunch outside. Would you like that?”

Emma shrugged, then turned away to face the TV, even though Brianna doubted she really cared what was on. It was just a way to show her displeasure with her mother.

Once again filled with the sensation that she had let her daughter down, Brianna left. She’d known there would be days like this, days when she would feel utterly and totally defeated. The doctors, the counselors and Gretchen had repeatedly told her it was perfectly normal, but she wanted so badly to be a positive influence in Emma’s life. She wanted her little girl to be motivated, to feel loved. She wanted her to fight her injuries, not her mother.

Brianna was dragging by the time she got home, lost in waves of self-pity and regrets. Though her pulse took an unwanted leap at the sight of Jeb waiting on her doorstep, she was in no mood to welcome him.

Even so, for a fleeting moment she found herself regretting that she hadn’t dressed in something other than jeans and a faded teal T-shirt when she’d run out of the house to pay a quick visit to Emma. She looked decidedly frumpy, while he managed to make his own jeans and dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up look like something out of a men’s fashion spread in
GQ.

Why was it that she constantly felt at a total disadvantage with this man? She worked in a man’s world. She had never been easily intimidated, but there was no denying that Jeb rattled her. He could shake her composure without even opening his mouth. Possibly it had something to do with the fact that he deliberately kept her off balance. She couldn’t get a fix on his real intentions.

And so she approached him with wariness.

“Where have you been this early on a beautiful Saturday morning?” he asked as she neared. “Not the office, I know, because I called there.”

Even though his tone was curious rather than accusatory, Brianna instinctively bristled. “Checking up on me, Mr. Delacourt?”

“Now that I’ve held you in my arms, I think you can stick to calling me Jeb,” he chided. “No, I wasn’t checking up on you, just looking for you. I thought you might want to do something today. It’s a little late now, but we could go out for breakfast.”

“Sorry. I’ve already eaten.”

“So that’s where you were. Having breakfast with a friend?”

Brianna grasped the explanation eagerly. “Yes. If I’d known you were thinking of coming by, I could have told you I had a prior engagement. Some people actually call ahead.”

He shook his head. “Too easy to get turned down. It’s harder for you to say no to my face.”

Despite her dark mood, her lips twitched with amusement at his feigned vulnerability. “Is that so? Well, I’m sorry, but the answer is still no.”

“How about lunch then? Or dinner?”

“I thought you had another ball to attend tonight.”

“I’ll skip it.”

“Won’t that upset your date?”

“I was planning on going solo. They have my money. No one will miss me.”

Brianna doubted that.

He gave her one of those winning, megawatt smiles. “So, how about it?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Another date?”

“No.”

“Too much to do?”

“Yes.”

“You work too hard,” he scolded. “It’s not good for you. You need to relax, have some fun.”

“I thought that’s what I did last night. Now I have to catch up.”

“On?”

“Housework. Paperwork. I have an important business trip at the end of next week.”

Clearly undaunted, he suggested, “Tell me about it.”

“You’d be bored to tears.”

“It’s my family’s business. Why would I be bored?”

Put in her place, Brianna searched for an explanation that would ring true. She couldn’t very well tell him that he made her uneasy, that she simply wanted him to go, that she didn’t want to get too comfortable with having someone—especially him—around.

“Rumor has it that you don’t care all that much about oil, that you’re working at the company because your father expects it,” she said eventually. “Naturally I assumed hearing about dirt samples and rocks would bore you.”

He surveyed her with one of those knowing, penetrating looks that he obviously knew rattled her. “I’ll bet you could make it interesting.”

“I don’t have time to try,” she said flatly. Then because her first tactic had clearly backfired, she tried another one. “Before I get down to work, I have to do my chores around here. With my schedule, I have to stick to a routine.”

“In other words, you’re in a rut.”

“I prefer to think of it as living a structured life,” she said testily.

“Okay, then, I’ll help,” he volunteered.

Taken aback by the unexpected offer, she stared at him. “You’ll help?” she repeated, as if his offer hadn’t been entirely clear. When he nodded, she asked, “Why?”

“Why not? I can run a vacuum or dust as well as the next person, though I’m a little curious why a woman with so much on her plate and making your salary wouldn’t have a maid.”

“Because I have better uses for my money,” she said tersely, brushing past him and going inside, hoping to put an end to this absurd discussion. If she could have, she would have slammed the door in his face, but there were a whole lot of reasons for not doing that, starting with his ability to make trouble for her at the office. Naturally, he didn’t take the hint. He followed.

The minute he crossed the threshold, she very nearly panicked. Had she left the door to Emma’s room closed, as she usually did? Though the townhouse was a recent acquisition, purchased in the aftermath of the divorce because she no longer had the funds or the time to cope with the upkeep on the house she and her ex had shared, she had decorated a room for her daughter. It was filled with dolls and stuffed animals, the overflow from a collection too big for Emma’s room at the rehab center.

The bed was a little girl’s dream, a white four-poster with a pink eyelet canopy and matching comforter. Emma had picked it out just before the accident, but she had never slept in it. It had been delivered during those awful days when they hadn’t known if she would live or die. When Larry would have sent it back, Brianna had insisted on keeping it, clinging to it as a talisman that her daughter would get well and come home again.

“Excuse me a minute,” she said, and dashed upstairs to check the door. If she couldn’t talk Jeb into leaving, she had to be sure he wouldn’t spot any evidence that she had a daughter.

Upstairs, she found the door to Emma’s room closed. She turned the key in the lock as an added precaution, then pocketed it. Thank heavens, the only pictures of Emma were in her bedroom, a place she was all but certain she could manage to keep Jeb from entering.

When she went back downstairs, she found Jeb surveying the living room with open curiosity. She thought she detected surprise at the simplicity of her surroundings. Other than Emma’s room, she had done little to turn the townhouse into a home. She hadn’t wanted to spend the time and she hadn’t had the money. The truth was, every spare cent she had went into Emma’s care. The insurance covered a lot, but far from everything.

“I know it’s understated,” she said defensively, “but I like it.”

He seemed surprised by her defensiveness. “Did I say anything about the decor?” he asked.

“No, but I could see the wheels churning in that mind of yours. You know what I earn and it’s clear I don’t spend it on knickknacks.”