Forgotten Father (8 page)

The jewel of a lake cradled between the
hills.

Donovan had picked her for the job, he’d
said, because her proposal for the renovation had echoed his own
love of the place.

And Jenna might have been conceived
there.

No, Delanie realized, she couldn’t sell her
half of The Cedars. Not yet, anyway.

Almost against her will, her gaze strayed to
the dark figure blotting out the light from the window.

Now she knew why Mitchell Riese hated her.
She’d stolen half his birthright. Unwittingly stolen it, but still,
she owned half of what he no doubt considered rightfully his.

She met the hard, glittering eyes and felt a
shiver of apprehension run through her. No matter how she
protested, he’d never believe she hadn’t known his grandfather’s
intention.

And she knew from his behavior this morning
that Mitchell would make nothing easy for her.

For a few minutes, Delanie wrestled with her
trepidation. From just her own experience in running a small
business, she’d had the opportunity to note how wrong a partnership
could go. A business partner who hated you could make your life
hell.

In reaction to the thought, she lifted her
chin, her gaze still tangled with Mitchell’s. Well, to hell with
him, too. She’d never lacked for ingenuity and she even had a
certain flair for mischievous warfare when the situation called for
it.

For whatever reason, Donovan wanted her to
have half of The Cedars. She couldn’t dismiss the old man’s
bequest.

If Mitchell Riese wanted to go to battle
over The Cedars, she’d be glad to oblige him.

CHAPTER FOUR

“What do you mean there’s nothing we can do about
it?” Mitchell demanded. “You’re a lawyer, dammit. File some sort of
brief or motion and get the will set aside.”

“Mitchell,” Alec said calmly, “I wrote that will.
Since I’m a fairly good lawyer, I made sure there were no problems
with it. Hell, it’s not a complicated will. This is something a
third year law student could do.”

“Maybe it’s not legally complex,” Mitchell said,
slapping his hand against the desk top in disgust, “but it creates
a damned complicated situation for me.”

He got up and went to the window. “There is no way
I’m letting that woman steal half of The Cedars.”

Alec was quiet for a moment. “You know, I understand
how you feel about the resort but, she seemed fairly…presentable.
And she’s a professional woman. You don’t want a partner in The
Cedars, but if you have to have one, she’s not that bad. After all,
you couldn’t find any complaints against her business-wise. Maybe
this is just one of those situations you have to make the best
of.”

Snapping his teeth together to hold back his hasty
response to the lawyer’s measured advice, Mitchell remembered just
how “presentable” Lanie Carlyle had looked earlier.

She’d lost some weight in the last year and a half,
but her auburn hair, still parted on the side, now swung smoothly
to her jaw line. Her brown suit had been neat and professional even
if the skirt had skated on the short side. She’d appeared sexy and
young and completely desirable.

Damn her.

But her green eyes had looked at him with no hint of
acknowledgement. She’d greeted him as if he were a stranger.

For one fierce moment, he wished he’d called her
bluff on that, reminding her of how she’d lain in his arms,
moaning. Kissed him with a passion that left him shaking.

The bitch.

Calling him
Mister
Riese! As if they hadn’t
spent one of the hottest nights in his life wrinkling the sheets.
As if he hadn’t thrown her off The Cedars’ grounds and demanded she
stay away from his grandfather or he’d prosecute her for fraud.

He’d thought he’d been successful in keeping her
away from his grandfather, too. Foolishly, he’d believed Donovan
had stopped talking about the woman after that weekend. Mitchell’s
occasional carefully-casual questions to the older man’s employees
seemed to indicate that the interaction between he and his
much-younger mistress had ended.

Then Donovan died and left this firebomb of a
will.

Mitchell came away from the window, returning to sit
down in the chair he’d vacated earlier.

“Mitch, as much as you hate this,” Alec said, “I
think you need to make the best of her. That or buy her out.”

He met the lawyer’s sympathetic glance without
expression.

“No way.”

Alec Parker’s eyebrows raised. “It would get her out
of your hair and you’d have full ownership of The Cedars.”

“I’m not giving that witch one more dollar of Riese
money. She’s already bled Donovan while she was working on the
resort. I’m not enriching her further.”

“Then how are you going to settle this?”

Mitchell sat forward in the chair, thinking of
Delanie Carlyle’s smile, the way her firm breasts filled his hands,
the breathy sound of her passionate moans. The way her red-gold
hair glimmered against her cheek, tears shimmering in her green
eyes.

The complete lack of recognition in her eyes
today.

“I’m going to fight her,” he told the other man
crisply. “I’ll put my other business on hold, go up to The Cedars
and find a way to get rid of her without paying her a dime.”

“Okay,” Alec said slowly. “But how do you know
she’ll go up there. She has a business here in town.”

“She’ll come,” Mitchell responded with contempt.
“She thinks this is the biggest coup of her gold-digging career. No
matter what she’s got going on in Boston, she’ll go up to The
Cedars to lay claim, if nothing more.”

“And you’ll be there, too,” Alec concluded.

“Yes,” he said implacably.

The lawyer shook his head, a faint smile playing at
his lips. “Heaven help the management staff. They’re about to
witness bloodshed.”

******

Mitchell sat down at the head of the conference
table, scanning The Cedars’ executive staff with satisfaction. He’d
been right to schedule this meeting at eight o’clock in the
morning.

Lanie Carlyle wouldn’t get up this early. He knew
from checking with the desk clerk, that she’d arrived late the
night before.

Not a week after the reading of the will, just as
he’d expected.

“Good morning to you all,” he said to the people
seated at the conference table, before glancing down at the notes
he’d made.

“Good morning,” the six chorused as if they were
nervous first graders who faced a new teacher.

“As you know, we’re here to discuss the status of
the resort in the transition after my grandfather’s death.

He paused, the scattered rain at the window
underscoring the wave of sadness that rose in him. “I thank you for
your notes and cards. Donovan would have enjoyed knowing how much
you all appreciated him.”

Several staff members loosened up enough to smile
sympathetically and Martha, Donovan’s secretary, an older woman at
the end of the table, wiped at her cheek and reached for a
tissue.

Mitchell paused, scanning over the agenda.

“As you know, we’re nearing the end of the summer
season and we need to talk about—“

He broke off as the conference room door opened.
Every head in the room swiveled to see the newcomer.

Delanie Carlyle came in a flurry of gleaming red
hair and white teeth, her slender body graceful as she eased the
door shut behind her.

“Good morning!” she said with a smiling hint of
breathlessness. “I apologize for being late.”

Dressed this morning in another suit, this one of
some sort of cream-colored material, she seemed to light up the
room. Watching as she affectionately greeted Donovan’s secretary,
Mitchell dismissed his unusually fanciful observation as a trick of
the light on her red-gold hair.

Yes, she was beautiful. Women who traded on their
sex appeal usually were.

“Since Ms. Carlyle has joined us,” he said with a
carefully neutral voice, “perhaps I should introduce her—“

“Don’t bother,” she said breezily, leaving Martha’s
hug to take the hand Ben Norton, The Cedars’ manager, held out to
her. “I know everyone, I think. It’s so good to see you all again.
I’ve missed you!”

Delanie’s affectionate smile seemed to encompass
everyone at the table.

Mitchell wanted to throttle her for that happy,
sweeping glance. For the life of him he couldn’t think what she
expected to gain by pretending she didn’t know him.

“How have you all been? Has business been good since
we reopened?” she asked gaily.

To Mitchell’s surprise, several voices rose in
response. He glanced at the others at the table, startled to see
smiles replacing the guarded anxiety that had met him when he came
in the room this morning.

Irritated to see his staff beaming at the
interloper, Mitchell cut off their eager comments.

“We were just getting to the progress reports, Ms.
Carlyle. If you’ll take a seat, we’ll continue.”

“Of course,” she said, sliding into an empty spot
next to Ben Norton without seeming to notice Mitchell’s tone of
reproof.

Delanie’s casual inclusion of herself in The Cedars
management team hadn’t escaped him and it grated.

He considered her for a moment, deeply annoyed by
her friendly nonchalance, but determined not to show it. What the
hell was she up to? He had no doubt she had an angle.

No matter how many lovers a woman took, it wasn’t
likely she’d forget the kind of night they’d shared. From the
instant they’d laid eyes on each other a year and a half ago, heat
shimmered between them. An explosive, instantaneous passion that
turned suddenly to corrosive disgust on his part when he’d
discovered her trashy plan to manipulate his grandfather.

There was nothing the least bit nonchalant about
their interaction. Despite her current pretense, perfunctory
pleasantness now didn’t fit between them.

Unless, of course, she’d been pretending her tearful
reaction when he’d confronted her beside the lake. Mitchell felt
anger rise in him at the thought. The deceitful bitch. Had she
known even then that Donovan had left half The Cedars to her?

Dragging his thoughts back to the meeting, Mitchell
said carefully. “Ms. Carlyle is now part owner of The Cedars. She
may be sitting in on meetings when she’s in town.”

Delanie smiled at the others around the table who
were nodding and smiling back. “I’m hoping to be here often. I love
The Cedars almost as much as Donovan did and I want to be part of
everything that happens here.”

Mitchell’s faint hope of maneuvering her into the
role of silent partner whimpered and died. Watching her exchange an
animated greeting with Chad Walker from the advertising department,
he grimly wondered if she ever subsided into the background.

“Is that a new hairstyle?” Chad asked Delanie,
leaning forward in his chair, a fatuous smile on his face.

“Let’s start with status reports,” Mitchell said
abruptly, interrupting Walker’s flirtatious comment. To his own
disgust, he knew the answer to the younger man’s question. After a
year and a half, he remembered Delanie Carlyle in enough detail to
know that her hair was shorter than it had been, now just swinging
just below her ear.

Damn the woman for being so memorable.

“Ben?” Mitchell said, prompting the older man. “Why
don’t you give us the overview of how The Cedars is doing before we
consider the specific departments.”

“Of course.” Ben Norton shuffled through the papers
in front of him on the table.

As the resort manager reported on occupancy and
reservations, Mitchell forced himself to listen. Just beyond the
manager, he could see Delanie, her smooth oval face attentive.

Why did she have to be so deceptively warm, so full
of life? That’s what made her dangerous. The sense of intimacy with
which she listened, no matter who was talking. She acted as if
every individual were her closest friend, each one special to
her.

She made a man want to believe she lit up like that
just for him.

He’d been half seduced into that belief himself,
Mitchell reflected with a faint bitterness. She’d looked at him
with her green eyes and her luscious smiling lips and he’d almost
thought himself to be the center of her world.

What a lie.

What an idiot he’d been.

“…
we have some projects that need
taking care of during the off-season, of course,” Ben finished,
“but nothing very big. I’d like to get the pool repainted and
replace the stained carpet in the blue dining room. Minor things,
really.”

“Sounds good,” Mitchell said, turning to the next
person. “What about things in the kitchen, James?”

The head chef shook his head, his perpetually
worried mien not changing. “Well, I suppose we’re doing as well as
can be expected. I’ve had another assistant quit on me, so I’m
having to hire again. It’s difficult to get good help out here in
the wilds.”

“James,” Delanie leaned forward stretching a hand
out to his, “the banana nut pancakes on the buffet this morning
were fabulous. Even more than usual. They made me late to this
meeting! I’ve never tasted anything so good!”

The chef’s expression relaxed into a smile. “Thank
you, Delanie. I’m glad you enjoyed them. I’ve been tweaking the
recipe a little.”

“Well, it shows,” she said with every appearance of
delight. “I had to make myself stop eating when I was full.”

“You should eat more,” James said with gruff
affection. “You’re too thin.”

“I won’t be after a week here!” she said gaily.

Watching with displeasure, Mitchell put an end to
their love fest. “If everything is under control in the kitchen,
let’s hear from Housekeeping. Celia?”

The dark-haired woman at the end of the table nodded
briskly. “We’re fine, other than the maroon bedspreads not wearing
well.”

“The ones in the east wing?” Delanie asked with a
frown.