A Risky Affair (4 page)

Comfortably ensconced in the backseat of his Rolls Royce limousine a few minutes later, Crandall Thorne felt the tension slowly ebb from his body.

He was immensely relieved to know that Dane Roarke's investigation had not yielded the identity of Solange Washington's biological parents. Not that Crandall needed the private detective's help to find out what he already knew.

Twenty-four years ago, Crandall had been stunned to learn that the illegitimate daughter he'd once given up for adoption had become a mother at the age of fourteen. When Melanie, who'd been bounced around the foster-care system all her life, had discovered she was pregnant, she was terrified. After delivering a premature infant girl, she'd panicked and abandoned the baby at the hospital, fearing she'd get in trouble if her foster parents at the time found out about the birth.

Solange, like her teenage mother, had become a ward of the state. But unlike Melanie, she'd eventually found a permanent home with what appeared to be a good, loving family.

By the time Crandall learned about her existence, after Melanie's untimely death, Solange was already five years old—a happy, precocious little girl who was the apple of her parents' eyes, according to the private investigator Crandall had hired to find her. Over the next twenty-four years, he'd kept close tabs on her, content to watch her grow from afar. When George and Eleanor Washington died, he assumed it was only a matter of time before she'd attempt to locate her biological parents, which could lead her straight to his doorstep. Rather than take that chance, he'd continued monitoring her for several months while devising a scheme that would bring her to San Antonio.

How fortuitous for him that her employer, Ted Crumley, happened to be a fellow law-school graduate, and that he'd thought nothing of Crandall seeking him out at the class reunion they'd attended in Austin during the summer. Ever the strategist, Crandall had befriended him over the next six months, so that by the time he contacted Ted to ask him to recommend candidates for a personal assistant position, he knew the benevolent country attorney would consider it his duty to hand over his best employee to someone who could offer her better career opportunities. He'd gambled on a hunch that Solange, still mourning the loss of her parents, would be ready for a change of scenery.

His gamble had paid off.

Solange had taken the bait, never suspecting that her new employer was the grandfather she never knew existed.

It had been downright risky to ask Dane Roarke to conduct a thorough background check on her, but Crandall knew it was the only way to find out if the measures he'd put in place all those years ago to conceal the truth about the past withstood scrutiny. They had. Not even Roarke—a highly trained, seasoned investigator—had been able to crack the code to uncover the identity of Solange's biological parents.

But Crandall was nobody's fool. He knew that with a little more time and effort, and with the right incentive, Roarke could expose the truth about everything.

He couldn't let that happen.

Not until he'd gotten to know Solange better, to determine whether she could be trusted to be part of the family, to uphold the Thorne legacy.

And not until he'd gotten his one true love back into his life.

Hiring Solange as his personal assistant had been the first step. Setting up a meeting with Tessa Philbin would be the next.

If all went according to plan, Crandall would not only have a chance to right past wrongs. He'd have a chance at something that had eluded him for decades: happiness.

I
t was after 10 p.m. by the time Solange let herself into her room at the Alamo City Inn. Balancing a taco takeout dinner with a laundry basket teeming with freshly washed clothes, she bumped the door shut with her hip and crossed the room to deposit her meal on the living room table. It was a short walk from there to the queen-size bed, where she dumped the contents of the laundry basket on top of the floral-patterned spread. She knew if she left the clothes in the basket overnight, she'd procrastinate about folding and packing them away until the last minute. After a day spent running errands and waiting for hours in a crowded clinic to take a drug test, she wanted nothing more than to soak in a long, hot bath and go to bed. But she had too much packing to do, and Saturday—the day she was to report to Crandall Thorne's ranch—was right around the corner.

With a deep sigh, Solange toed off her low-heeled pumps, pinned up her shoulder-length hair and returned to the seating area, where dinner awaited her.

She'd just bitten into a hot, spicy beef taco when her cell phone rang. She quickly fished it out of her purse and smiled at the familiar number displayed on the caller ID screen.

“Hey girl,” she answered around a mouthful of food.

She was greeted by the warm, vibrant laughter of her longtime best friend Jill Somerset. “Hey yourself. Kinda late to be eating dinner, isn't it?”

Solange grinned. “When has that ever stopped me? Besides, it couldn't be helped this time. I've been running around all day trying to get things in order before I start my new job.”

“When do you start?” Jill asked.

“Monday, officially, but I move on Saturday.” Taking another bite of her taco, she glanced around the cramped suite she'd called home for the past week. With its dated yellow wallpaper, drab window treatments, cheap paintings and timeworn furniture, the extended-stay hotel room—while far from luxurious—had served its purpose. And, more importantly, it had been affordable. “Call me crazy,” Solange said with a wry smile, “but I think I might actually miss this place.”

Jill snorted loudly. “
Puh-leeze.
You won't think twice about that dump once you're comfortably situated in your boss's lavish country estate. Girl, I read the article about him in
Black Enterprise,
and the way his ranch was described made
me
want to pack up and move to San Antonio to try and get a job with him. Does he need another housekeeper or personal assistant?”

Solange snickered, taking a sip of her Coke. “You know your family would have a royal fit if you even thought about leaving Haskell. And they'd blame me for putting the crazy idea in your head, just like they blamed me when you broke up with Wyatt, the man everyone expected you to marry and have ten children with.”

“You've got a point there,” Jill agreed, and Solange could almost see the rueful, dimpled grin on her friend's gently rounded face. “They did blame you for the breakup—like it was
your
fault I walked in on Wyatt and that little hussy he'd been seeing behind my back for months. If you hadn't canceled our dinner plans in order to work late that night, I wouldn't have gone over to Wyatt's house and caught him red-handed. So
I
thank you for being a workaholic, even if my family didn't see it that way at the time. And it was
eight
children they expected us to have, not ten.”

Solange chuckled dryly. “I stand corrected.”

Jill laughed, sobering after another moment. “Seriously, though, Solange. Is Crandall Thorne's ranch as beautiful as it was described in the magazine article?”

“Definitely. And I can say that without having seen every room in the house. But before you even reach the property, the scenery alone takes your breath away.”

Jill heaved a long, wistful sigh. “You are so lucky, having an opportunity to live in a place like that. Maybe I'll come for a visit during Christmastime.”

“I wish you would,” Solange murmured. “The holidays won't be the same without you around—and my parents, too. I miss them so much.”

“I know,” Jill said quietly.

A mournful silence fell between the two women. It had been almost a year since Solange's parents were killed in a fire that swept through their farmhouse late one night while they were sleeping. The arson investigator had ruled the fire an accident, caused by a leak in the gasoline generator they'd been using to heat the old house that chilly January evening. If Solange had not been out of town on a business trip that week, she, too, might have died in the inferno that claimed the lives of George and Eleanor Washington and reduced her childhood home to a blackened, burned-out shell. The fact that she'd escaped the horrible tragedy haunted her every day of her life, along with memories of her adoptive parents. After their funeral, she'd moved in with Jill and her older sister Theresa, who'd always treated Solange like a member of their large, boisterous family. She honestly didn't know how she could have survived those dark, devastating days without the friendship and support of the Somerset sisters.

“They would have wanted you to move on,” Jill said gently, rousing Solange from her painful reverie. “They would have approved of your decision to leave Haskell and start a new life someplace else. You know that, don't you?”

“I think so.” Solange swallowed past the tight ache in her throat and blinked back tears. Suddenly she had no appetite for the half-eaten taco dinner on the table before her. Not for the first time since arriving in San Antonio a week ago, she wondered if she
had
done the right thing by leaving her hometown and all that was familiar to her. San Antonio was a big, bustling city, nothing at all like the small, quiet town to which she'd grown accustomed, where everyone knew their neighbors by first name and traffic was considered an urban legend.

“How long do you think you'll have to work for Crandall Thorne to save up enough for law school?” Jill asked curiously.

Solange began packing away her unfinished meal. “Two years, ideally. He's paying me sixty thousand dollars, plus providing room and board, so that should really cut down on my expenses and allow me to save plenty of money. I've been doing some research on the law programs at St. Mary's University here in town and UT in Austin, and they're both pretty expensive. But I'd be happy attending either school.”

“I read that Crandall Thorne's son teaches at St. Mary's, so maybe you'd be better off going there so he could take you under his wing and show you the ropes.”

“That might not be a bad idea.” Solange chuckled dryly. “Assuming I ever get a chance to meet him, that is. The way Crandall Thorne described the position to me, come Monday I'll be working so hard this may be the last time you ever speak to me again.”

Jill wasn't amused. “Hush your mouth. You already know that's one of my biggest fears, that you'll get so caught up in your new life that you'll forget all about me.”

Solange smiled, touched by the trace of vulnerability she heard in her best friend's voice. “You know that could never happen,” she said softly. “Not after all we've been through together. Hell, if I could've knocked you over the head and dragged you to San Antonio with me, I would have.”

Jill laughed. “That would have been a great way to start your new life—as a fugitive of the law.”

“Hmmm. And speaking of the law,” Solange murmured, an image of Dane Roarke's sexy face filling her mind, “you'll never guess what happened to me today.”

Jill listened with rapt absorption as Solange relayed the morning's events to her, starting from that first electrified moment when she and Dane locked gazes across the conference room, to the nerve-racking experience with the lie-detector test.

“I've never been so
distracted
by a man in my life,” she admitted, settling back against the sofa cushions and drawing her knees up to her chin. “Girl, I couldn't think straight. All I wanted to do was jump his bones.”

“No wonder,” Jill said with a lascivious chuckle. “He sounds downright delicious. Tall, dark and sexy—just the way you like them.”

Solange laughed. “Yeah, but I can tell you there's
nobody
like Dane Roarke in Haskell. Before today, I honestly didn't know God made 'em that fine.” Just thinking about the man was enough to heat the blood in her veins and quicken her pulse.

“Maybe Dane is just what the doctor ordered,” Jill suggested, adding quietly, “You know, to help you get over Lamar.”

Solange stiffened at the mention of her ex-boyfriend, a man she'd once thought she would marry. A lieutenant colonel in the army, Lamar Rogers was ten years older than Solange and a lifetime more experienced. He'd lived in Germany, Korea and Italy, and had traveled to numerous exotic locales, while Solange had never ventured outside her small hometown until a week ago. His worldliness was one of the main things she'd found so attractive about him. That, and the way he looked in uniform.

They'd met at the annual county fair, where Solange was selling fresh produce from the farm, as she did every year. Lamar, on leave from the military, had wandered over to her table and struck up a seemingly innocuous conversation about the “inferior” quality of goods being sold by her competitors at the fair. She'd found him clever, charming and good-looking, with a warm, gentle smile, beautiful brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he laughed, and skin the color of the caramel apples on display at a neighboring booth. By the time her mother returned from judging the apple pie contest—another annual tradition—Solange had given Lamar her phone number and agreed to a date that very same evening.

It became the first of many.

After he returned to Germany, they'd kept in touch via e-mail
and
postal mail, because, as Lamar often told her, seeing her handwriting and being able to hold her letters in his hand assured him that she was real and not a figment of his imagination. Solange had never been with a man who wasn't afraid to express his feelings so openly and earnestly. She'd soaked it all up like a sponge immersed in a bucket of water. When Lamar returned home in six months, they'd picked up right where they'd left off, rediscovering the best restaurants in town, visiting the local Civil War museum like a pair of tourists, picnicking by their favorite lake. For almost three years they'd been inseparable.

Until Lamar grew bored with her.

Unlike Jill's ex-boyfriend Wyatt, Lamar hadn't cheated on Solange. He'd simply lost interest in her. And the pain of his desertion, the confusion and rejection she'd felt even before he ended their relationship, had taken a long time to get over.

“I saw him at the bank today,” Jill said softly, breaking into Solange's painful reverie. “He asked me how you were doing, wanted to know if you'd found a job yet. I think he was hoping I'd tell him no, that you regretted your decision to leave home and were thinking about returning.”

Solange traced a pattern on the worn sofa. “Why would he hope to hear something like that?” she murmured.

“You know very well why. Because he misses you.”

Solange gave a derisive snort. “Girl, you always
were
a hopeless romantic. Lamar Rogers doesn't miss me. If he did, he sure had a funny way of showing it. I can count on one hand how many times I've seen or heard from him since my parents' funeral.”

“That's because you didn't want to see or hear from him,” Jill gently reminded her. “After he told you he needed space,
you
told him to take all the space he needed—permanently. Or have you forgotten that?”

“Of course not,” Solange grumbled morosely. She'd had some other choice words for Lamar as well, but they didn't need to rehash that. As far as she was concerned, her three-year relationship—and subsequent breakup—with Lamar Rogers was ancient history.

Jill had never paid much attention in history class. “He was half-afraid to attend the funeral,” she continued, unwilling to drop the subject. “He was worried you'd have him tossed out of the church.”

“Typical, selfish Lamar,” Solange murmured with a sad shake of her head. “Always making everything about him. I was too busy saying goodbye to my parents to be thinking about the final argument he and I had. As I told you then, I was glad he showed up to pay his last respects. You know how fond of him my parents were.”

“Mine, too. They're always saying what a fine, respectable young man he is, serving his country the way his father, grandfather and great-grandfather did before him. If I didn't know any better, I would think they were trying to marry
me
off to Lamar!”

Solange managed a tremulous smile. “You know I would give you my blessing.”

Jill grunted. “Maybe you would, but I have no interest in marrying Lamar or anyone else you've ever dated.”

“Why not?”

“Are you kidding? Apart from the fact that I've never enjoyed leftovers, there's that other matter to consider.”