One
A s the taxi pulled to a stop in front of the sprawling monstrosity his brother called home, Dex Messina pinched the bridge of his nose. Man, he was tired.
He was getting too old for this. He’d just spent a week in Antwerp working sixteen-hour days getting ready for the opening of Messina Diamonds’ new diamond-cutting branch. On top of that, the seventeen-hour flight from Belgium—complete with a six-hour delay in New York—had taken its toll.“This the place?” the cabbie asked from the front seat.
“Home sweet home.”
Since the renovations on his own urban loft had hit yet another snag, Dex was living with his brother, Derek, a situation that suited neither of them and had been going on far too long. Only the amount of time Dex spent out of the country and the fact that he stayed in the detached guesthouse made it bearable.
Dex handed the driver a fifty, pulled his bag from the seat beside him and climbed out of the car. He swung the rugged canvas duffel over his shoulder and walked up the curved path. The towering oaks and clusters of shrubbery were perfectly manicured to hide the house from the road while creating the impression one had left the exclusive Dallas neighborhood of Highland Park altogether.
Ivy crept up the far corner of the building. A low stone retaining wall crumbled at one end. Both gave the impression of gently declining nobility.
Everything in Derek’s life was like that. Perfect. Controlled. Pretentious.
It set Dex’s teeth on edge. Made him want to take his motorcycle out of storage and pop some wheelies on his brother’s plush green lawn.
Not that he would. He was a respectable contributor to the family business these days. A damn pillar of society.
Why he even—
Dex stopped short just shy of the mahogany double doors.
“What the—”
He stared for a long moment at the object blocking his path before he convinced himself he wasn’t hallucinating.
It was an infant car seat.
Next to the car seat sat a bag decorated with smiling cartoon bears. Far more disturbing than the car seat itself was what appeared to be in it. A pile of blankets, out of the top of which rose a tiny pink stocking cap.
Dex crouched down to get a closer look, then thought better of it. Instead, he yanked his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed his brother’s number.
“Derek here.”
“You at home?”
“Yes. Don’t tell me you missed your flight. I need you in the office to—”
“No. I’m at the front door. You might want to join me.”
“Then why are you calling me?” A note of frustration crept into Derek’s voice.
Dex was too shocked to be annoyed by it. “Just get your butt down here.”
He flipped his phone closed. Sitting back on his heels, he rubbed his hand along his jaw, staring at the car seat and its bundle of…joy or whatever.
Five minutes later Derek swung open the front door. He had clearly been working. He’d lost his jacket and tie and the sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up. “This better be good.”
Dex said nothing but looked up at his brother with a quirked eyebrow, waiting for Derek’s reaction. If he hadn’t been so completely thrown for a loop himself, the situation might have been amusing.
Derek looked down at the car seat. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“If it is, I’m not in on it.”
“You didn’t bring this thing home with you?”
Dex chuckled despite himself. “No. I didn’t bring home a baby from Antwerp. I’m guessing that would be illegal.”
“What’s it doing here?”
“It was here when I drove up.” Feigning a flippancy he didn’t quite feel, Dex reached into the car seat and pulled aside the blanket to reveal the tiny head of a sleeping infant. The baby’s skin seemed impossibly pale in the moonlight, its delicate rosebud of a mouth the only color in its face.
The infant was so still, he couldn’t even tell if it was breathing. Feeling a burst of panic, he pulled loose the pink blanket and pressed his palm to the tiny cotton-covered chest.
The infant drew in one shuddering breath, then exhaled slowly. As he felt the warm breath drift across his hand, he felt something tighten inside of him, even as relief rocked him back on his heels.
“It’s alive?” Derek asked.
“Thank God.”
“What’s that?” Derek asked.
Dex looked to where Derek was pointing. When he’d untucked the blanket, he’d dislodged a note. He picked it up and stood.
Derek took it from him and stepped out of the shadow of the doorway so that the landscape lighting from the yard shone on the note.
D—Her name is Isabella. She’s yours. You’ll have to take her for a while.
The note wasn’t signed.
For a long moment, Derek and Dex merely stared at each other. Then they both turned to stare at the baby.
“This is quite the mess you’ve gotten into this time.” There was a note of grim censure in Derek’s voice.
“I’ve gotten into?” Why it surprised him that Derek assumed this was his mess, he didn’t know. “Who says it’s mine?”
Derek propped his hands on his hips. “It’s not my baby. I’m scrupulously careful about that kind of thing.”
“Trust me. About that kind of thing, so am I.”
“You found her,” Derek pointed out.
“Yes. At your house.”
“Where we both live.”
They stared each other down, neither relenting.
Even as he looked into his brother’s steely-blue eyes, Dex knew how ridiculous the conversation was. Yet conceding that they had no way of knowing who’d fathered the baby was like admitting that it could be his.
A little mewing sound came from the car seat and they both turned to the baby. She moved her head, her mouth opening and closing as if searching for something. He’d been on enough flights with crying babies to know that this could go very bad if they didn’t do the right thing.
He dropped to his knees, ran his hand along the edge of the car seat and found a pacifier attached by a cord. With the precision of a movie hero disarming a nuclear weapon, he eased the pacifier into her mouth.
Holding his breath, he watched her suck contentedly, bringing a hand to rub against her cheek and then fall back asleep.
From behind him, Derek let out an audible sigh. “This is ridiculous.”
Pulling his phone out of his pants pocket he spoke into the phone. “Call Lorraina.”
“You’re calling Raina?” Dex asked in a whisper as he pulled Derek farther away from the baby. “It’s after midnight on a Sunday night.”
“So?”
“It’s a little late to be calling your assistant. Besides, someone abandoned a baby on your doorstep. We should call the police.”
Derek’s gaze narrowed. “Absolutely not. That would be a public relations nightmare.”
“And naturally the public image of Messina Diamonds is more important than the welfare of this baby.”
He didn’t know if Derek heard him or not because by then Raina had picked up and Derek was talking to her. A few minutes later, he flipped his phone closed. He stood, hands clasped behind his back, glaring at the tiny infant.
“She said she can’t come.”
“I can’t blame her.”
“She did give me some…advice.” Derek sounded disgusted. “She said if the baby wakes up, we should feed her.”
“Then I guess we’re on our own.”
Dex stared at the car seat before mustering the courage to approach again. Derek, he noticed, didn’t seem any more eager than he was to move the child off their front door step and into the house.
Finally, Dex pushed himself forward, plucked the car seat up by the handle and headed inside. Derek stopped him before he reached the door.
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“She’s a baby. Not a vampire. We’ve got to bring her into the house at some point.”
Derek nodded reluctantly and followed them into the front room. Dex set the car seat down in the shadow of the sofa, where the lights wouldn’t shine on her face, then sat down in the chair beside her to wait.
Derek handed him a brandy before lowering himself to the armchair opposite. “You’ll have to stay with her tomorrow.”
Dex nearly choked on the brandy. “Why me?”
“I leave for London at noon.”
“Why can’t Raina watch her?”
“Raina’s coming with me. She’ll be back by the end of the week, but she’s going to be busy planning the reception for next week. You’ll have to find someone to watch the child soon. Someone you can trust. I need you in the office by Tuesday for the board meeting.”
Dex took another sip of his brandy. “Good thing you’re not leaving until noon.”
Derek looked up. “Why’s that?”
“Because first thing in the morning, we’re going to go get paternity tests.”
Lucy Alwin—as a rule—didn’t lie. She didn’t like doing it and she wasn’t any good at it.But today, she was going to have to lie her butt off. And she’d better damn well be convincing at it. Isabella’s future was at stake.
She double-checked the address one last time and turned her Toyota Prius onto Briarwood Lane. The sight of one mansion after another did little to quell her nerves and only reinforced what she already knew. The Messinas were filthy rich. And very powerful.
She eased her car to a stop across the street from number 122, mentally cursing her twin sister yet again. She’d warned Jewel a year ago, “You have to tell Dex Messina you’re pregnant now. He needs to know he’s going to be a father. Because if he finds out later that you’ve deceived him, he may do everything in his power to take your baby away from you.”
But had Jewel followed her advice? No. Instead, she’d been determined to do this her own way. And on her own. Of course, Jewel’s definition of “on her own” involved relying heavily on Lucy. From the moment she’d first held her darling niece in her arms Lucy hadn’t minded one bit.