Claiming Her Billion-Dollar Birthright (2 page)

“Y
ou must be crazy,” Erica said fifteen minutes later.

The outdoor Italian café sat at the corner of a busy intersection in downtown San Francisco. Only a few of the dozen small round tables covered in bloodred tablecloths were occupied by people stopping for an early lunch. Inside the restaurant there were less hardy souls, diners not wanting to deal with the capricious wind. Fabrizio's was one of Erica's favorite places, but now she was sure this visit was going to forever take the shine off the restaurant for her.

Staring across the table at the man who watched her through steady eyes, she repeated what she'd said only moments before. “You're wrong. This is crazy. I am
not
Donald Jarrod's illegitimate heir.”

Their waiter came up to the table just as she finished speaking and Erica felt heat rush up her neck and fill her cheeks. She only hoped the man hadn't heard her. That would be perfect. She was known here. People would talk. Speculate.

They would anyway, she realized. The Jarrod family, much like the Prentice family, was big news. Even if this wasn't true—which, she assured herself silently, it wasn't—word would get out and soon Erica would be the subject of tabloid gossip and whispered innuendos from those she knew.

She could just imagine the reactions from her father and stepmother, Angela. Walter Prentice loathed scandal. He'd raised his children to believe that family business was private and that getting one's name in the paper was not something to be desired. Now, Erica thought, ancient dirty laundry would be spread out for the world to read about and enjoy and she and her family would be the punch line to mean-spirited jokes told at cocktail parties.

Oh, God, this just couldn't be happening.

“Iced tea for the lady,” the waiter was saying as he divested his tray of drinks, “and coffee for the gentleman. Have you decided on lunch?”

“No,” Christian said. “We need a few minutes.”

“Take your time,” the young man told him, then gave them each a smile and left them alone with their menus.

Erica didn't even glance at hers. She wasn't sure she'd ever be hungry again. She grabbed her tea, took a long drink to ease the dryness in her throat and then
set the glass down. Keeping her voice low enough that Christian was forced to lean across the table to hear her over the discordant hum of traffic, she said, “I don't know what this is about, or what you're up to, but…”

“If you'll hear me out, I'll try to explain.”

He looked as if he wished he were anywhere but there and Erica knew exactly how he felt. She wanted nothing more than to jump up, vault over the iron railing separating the café tables from the sidewalk and disappear into the crowds. But since that wasn't going to happen, she told herself to remain calm and listen to him. Once he was finished saying his piece, she'd simply walk away and put this hideous conversation out of her mind forever.

He threw a quick glance at the table closest to them as if to assure himself he wouldn't be overheard, then he looked back to Erica. His dark chocolate eyes shone with determination as he said quietly, “I realize this is a shock—”

“It would be if it were true,” she allowed.

“It is true, Ms. Prentice.” His voice dropped another notch. “Would I be here if this were all some elaborate joke?”

“Maybe,” she said. “For all I know this is some sort of extortion attempt or something.”

Now those dark eyes of his fired with indignation. “I'm an attorney. I'm here at the behest of my late employer. It was his final wish that I come to you personally to deliver this news.”

Erica nodded, seeing the insult her jibe had delivered and said, “Fine. It's not a joke. But it
is
a mistake.
Believe me when I tell you, I'm the daughter of Walter Prentice.”

“No,” he said tightly. “You're not. I have documentation to back me up.”

She took a breath of the cold, clear air, hoping it would brace her for what was coming. If this was a mistake, she'd find out soon enough. If it was all true, she needed to see proof. “Show me.”

He delved into his briefcase and handed her a smaller manila envelope than the one he'd shown her earlier at her office. Warily, she took it, her fingers barely touching it, as if she half expected the thing to blow up in her hands. But it didn't and she opened the clasp and slid free the three sheets of paper inside.

The first document was a letter. Written to Don Jarrod and signed by…Erica's mother. Her heart lodged in her throat as she stared at the elegant handwriting. Her mother had died in childbirth, so Erica had always felt cheated out of a relationship with the woman her brothers remembered so clearly. Danielle Prentice had kept a journal though, one that had been passed on to Erica when she was sixteen. She'd spent hours reading those pages, getting to know the mother she'd never known. So she recognized that beautiful, familiar handwriting and it was almost as if her mother were there with them at the table.

The note was brief, but Erica felt the grief in the words written there.

Shock faded into stunned, reluctant acceptance as Erica's eyes misted over with tears. Not once in her journals had Danielle ever even hinted at the affair she had had with Don Jarrod. Yet these few, simple words were impossible to deny even as the page before her blurred and she blinked frantically to clear her vision. Slowly she traced the tip of one finger across the faded ink, as if she could actually touch her mother. Though a ball of ice had settled in the pit of her stomach, she realized that this letter explained so much.

Walter had never been an overly affectionate father, even with Erica's older brothers. But with her, Walter had been even more…distant. Now at least, she knew why. She wasn't his child. She was, instead, a constant reminder of his wife's infidelity. Oh, God.

Christian was sitting there across from her and not speaking, and for that she was grateful. If he tried to say something kind or sweet or sympathetic, she'd lose what little control she was desperately clinging to.

She lifted her gaze to look at him and said in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the inevitable, “How do I know
my mother actually wrote this letter? For all I know you've had it forged for your own reasons.”

“And what could those be?” Christian asked. “What possible reason could the Jarrod family have for lying about this?”

“I don't know,” she admitted as she frantically tried to come up with something, anything that might explain all of this away. Her family wasn't a close one, but they were all she had. If she accepted this as truth, wouldn't that mean she would lose them all?

“Look at the other two papers,” he urged, taking a sip of his coffee.

She didn't want to, but didn't know how to avoid it. Pretending this day had never happened, that Christian Hanford had never appeared at her office, wouldn't work. Hiding her head in the sand wouldn't change anything. If this were actually true, then she had to know. And if it were all some elaborate lie, then she had to know that, too.

Nodding to herself, she looked at the next paper and froze in place. It was a letter from her father to Donald Jarrod and it managed, in a few short lines, to completely disintegrate the last of her doubts.

“Oh, my God.” Erica slumped against her chair and looked at Christian.

“I'm sorry this is so hard.” His voice was without inflection, but she thought she caught the sheen of sincerity in his dark brown eyes. Still, his being sorry didn't change anything.

“I don't even know what to say,” she whispered, staring at her father's handwriting. She'd have known that scrawl anywhere. She knew it was genuine because as her older brothers had long said, what forger could ever reproduce such hideous writing?

God. Her brothers.

Half brothers.

Did they all know? Had they been lying to her, too, all these years? Was nothing in her life what she'd thought it was? If she wasn't Erica Prentice, then just who was she?

“Ms. Prentice…Erica,” Christian said, “I know you're having a hard time with this.”

“I don't think you could have the slightest idea,” she told him.

“Fair enough,” he said. “But I do know that your biological father regretted never being able to know you.”

“Did he?” She shook her head, unsure just what she felt about Donald Jarrod. What kind of man was it who slept with another man's wife? Who created a child and then never made an attempt to acknowledge it? Had Walter's letter really kept Don Jarrod away? Was he that easily put off? Had his affair with Danielle and Erica's birth meant nothing to him?

As if he knew exactly where her thoughts had taken her, Christian said, “Donald's wife, Margaret, died of cancer, leaving him with five children to raise alone when the youngest, your sister Melissa, was only two.”

“My sister,” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said, “and Melissa is eager to meet you, by the way. She's delighted she's not the only girl in the family anymore.”

“I'm the only girl in my family, too—” Erica laughed shortly as she looked at him. “But then, apparently I'm not.”

An icy wind blasted down the street and the sun slipped behind a bank of gray clouds. Erica shivered, but didn't know if it was the emotional reaction or the sudden drop in temperature that caused it.

Christian said, “Don met your mother at a vulnerable point in his life—”

“And that excuses him?”

“No, it doesn't,” he said, his features tightening even as his voice grew clipped. “I'm simply trying to explain it to you the same way Don did for me. He knew how you'd feel hearing this news.”

“I'm surprised he gave it a thought,” she said. “Not one word from him my whole life and now I'm supposed to be grateful that my biological father is popping up after his death?”

“He didn't contact you because he thought it would make your life more difficult.”

“Putting it lightly.”

“Exactly. Don't think you weren't on his mind,
though.” Christian folded his hands around his coffee cup. “I knew him for a lot of years and I can tell you that to him, family was most important. It must have driven him insane knowing you were here and completely out of his reach.”

“So my father's—Walter's—threat worked. Donald stayed away from me to avoid scandal.”

“No.” Christian smiled a little at that. “Don wasn't worried about what other people thought of him. My guess is he stayed away out of respect for you and your father. He wasn't the kind of man to go out looking to destroy marriages.”

“And yet…”

Christian shook his head. “Just before he died, Don talked to me about all of this because he knew I'd be the one coming to see you.”

“So even when he knew he was dying, he didn't get in touch with me.” Erica wasn't sure how she felt about that. If Donald Jarrod had contacted her, would she have believed him? Would she have welcomed him? She couldn't say. Her relationship with her father had never been a good one, but she did love Walter. He
was
her father. The only one she'd ever known.

Didn't she at least owe him loyalty?

Frowning, the man across from her admitted, “I argued with him about that. I thought he should talk to you. Tell you this himself. But he refused to go back on his word. He'd sworn to Walter he would stay away and he did, though I believe it cost him a great deal to keep that promise.”

“I'll have to take your word for that, won't I?”

“I guess so.” Their waiter appeared with a coffeepot to refill Christian's cup, but when he would have stayed to take their order, he was waved away again. “Look,” Christian continued when they were alone again. “Just do me a favor and read the last letter in that envelope before I say any more.”

She really didn't want to. What more was there to tell? What in her life was left to shake up and rearrange? Yet, morbid curiosity had a grip on her now and Erica knew she'd have to satisfy it.

Somehow, she wasn't surprised when she glanced at the bottom of the page and saw the name
Donald Jarrod
in a bold signature. Lifting her gaze to the top of the paper, she read,

Again her eyes misted over. She had never known her mother. She'd grown up with a stepmother, Angela, who had been as distant in her own way as Walter
had. Now, it turned out, she'd never known her father, either.

“Did you read these letters?”

“No. Don gave them to me in the closed envelope and they've stayed sealed up until just now.”

She looked at him. “And I'm supposed to take your word for that, too?”

He met her gaze. “I'll never lie to you, Erica. That is one thing you can depend on.”