LITMIR.BIZ

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the sunroom. Kate had gone to some charity thing. Rafe, a Deputy U.S. Marshall, was on duty, transporting a federal prisoner to Washington, D.C. And their older brother, Jack—well, who knew where Jack might be? Like Cord, Rafe and Kate, Jack had his own rooms at Stockwell Mansion. But he rarely stayed in them. Jack lived all over the world, wherever new governments or old regimes were willing to pay for his highly skilled and lethal services.

      After dinner, Cord went to his office in the West Wing. He’d only meant to wrap up a few things. But as usual, there was just too damn much that couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

      He worked into the evening. He had a number of contracts to review, correspondence to go over and a stack of business proposals that needed a decision from him yesterday.

      The Stockwell empire had really begun with the oil boom of the thirties. Until then, Stockwells had been cattlemen, and not especially successful ones. It had been the land itself that had made them multimillionaires—or the black gold beneath the land, anyway.

      For decades, the name Stockwell and the word “oil” had been almost synonymous. Stockwells drilled in and profited from oil fields from the Lone Star State to the Middle East.

      When times got rough, they proceeded with care. And during the boom years, they took chances. And they prospered.

      In the eighties, when real estate became king again, Caine had seen the trend and jumped on it. And in the nineties, once Cord had graduated from UT and started working alongside his father, he had pushed even harder to diversify.

      Now, when people heard the words, Stockwell International, they still thought “oil.” But those in the know realized that the company had its fingers in a huge number of profit-making pies. Over the past few years, as he’d assumed more and more control, Cord had continued to channel investment capital wherever he saw potential. He backed shopping malls and high-tech companies just getting their start. And the projects in which he invested Stockwell capital almost always paid off and paid off well.

      At a little after ten, Cord scrawled his name on the last in the stack of correspondence his secretary had prepared for him. Then he tossed the pen aside and ran his hand down his face. It was getting late. Time to call it a night.

      Just then the phone on his desk rang—his private outside line. The caller ID window showed him a number he recognized. He hesitated before answering, thinking that he wanted to get back to his rooms, to check on his daughter—and on Ms. Miller, who by then should have been all settled in the nanny’s room off the nursery.

      The line buzzed again. He went ahead and picked up.

      “This is Cord.”

      “As if I didn’t know.” The voice was soft. Extremely feminine. And thick with innuendo.

      “Hello, Jerralyn.” Cord leaned back in his chair.

      Jerralyn Coulter was a Texas aristocrat—if there actually was such a thing. One of her great-great-great-great-grandfathers had perished at the Alamo. And her great-great-great-grandfather had been a true cattle baron. Cord and Jerralyn had been an item in the gossip columns for several weeks now. They’d hooked up at a political fund-raiser, a thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner where they’d been seated across from each other. It had started with smoldering looks and teasing banter. He’d driven her home. And spent the night in her bed.

      Jerralyn was twenty-six, an extremely beautiful and sophisticated woman. Not to mention energetic. With a very naughty mind.

      “Are you working late again?” she asked.

      “Guilty.”

      “You work too hard.”

      “I like to work.”

      “You need to play—and I could be there in twenty minutes—with a bottle of Dom Pérignon in my hand and nothing on under my sables.”

      He laughed at that. “How can you wear sable? I thought you told me you were an animal rights activist.”

      “I was speaking figuratively.”

      “About the rights of animals?”

      “No, about the sables.”

      “You are tempting,” he said, still thinking of Becky, of the irritating Ms. Miller, of the way she hadn’t seemed irritating at all, sitting in the white wicker rocker, her brown hair falling soft and thick along her cheek.

      “And you are preoccupied.” Jerralyn pretended to pout. “I could be hurt.”

      Cord blinked, rubbed his eyes. “Don’t be. Later in the week?”

      “Oh, all right. But at least turn the light off now and get out of that office. Workaholics are not sexy.”

      He promised her again that he was through for the night, and then said goodbye.

      Emma Hightower, who had been the head housekeeper at Stockwell Mansion for well over a decade now, appeared in the doorway as Cord was turning off the lights. As always, she looked serious and sincere in her concern for his comfort. “Just making my last rounds. Is there anything else I can get for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”

      “No, thank you, Emma. I’m fine. Did Ms. Miller get moved in all right?”

      “Yes. She’s all settled.”

      “You saw that she was fed?”

      “I had dinner sent up to her room at seven-thirty, which seemed a good time for her, tonight anyway. By then, I assumed, she would have had sufficient opportunity to unpack her belongings. Consuela picked up the tray an hour later.”

      “And did Ms. Miller eat her vegetables?” he teased, hoping, as he’d hoped for years and years, to catch a hint of a grin on Emma’s long, serious face.

      “Yes,” Emma said, serious as ever. “She seems to have a fine appetite.”

      “Good. It wouldn’t do to have a picky eater for a nanny.”

      A slight crease appeared between Emma’s thin brows, but she apparently decided that Cord’s remark required no comment from her. She asked, “Would you like me to send a snack up for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”

      “No, Emma. Thanks.”

      She went out and he followed, pausing to lock up the offices behind him. When he turned back to the wide hallway, Emma Hightower had disappeared.

      Cord took the West stairway to the second floor, and his rooms, which were also in the West Wing, above the suite of offices. He passed up the door to his own bedroom, at the end of the wing, and proceeded straight to the room with the robin’s-egg-blue walls, where his daughter should, by all rights, be asleep in her crib.

      He paused before the closed door, listening—for a baby’s cry, or possibly a woman’s soft lullaby. But all he heard was silence.

      Carefully, hardly realizing he was holding his breath, Cord turned the brass knob and slowly pushed open the door. The room was dark, the shades drawn against the moon outside. He tiptoed in, across the soft blue rug that in the daylight showed a pattern of swirling stars.

      Yes. She was there. Sound asleep. He stood very still. After a minute, as the silence stretched out, he realized he could hear her breathing in tiny, even sighs.

      As his eyes adjusted, he saw her more clearly, her round baby cheeks, her fat little mouth, that soft dark hair and the stubborn little chin.

      All Stockwell. Yes.

      He felt something tighten inside his chest.

      All Stockwell.

      Mine.

      So strange. He’d never seen himself as a father. In all likelihood, he wasn’t going to be a very good one. He worked hard and he played harder, and he left the joys of family for other men. He was too much like the old man who lay dying at the other end of the house, and he knew it, to be any good as a husband. Pity the poor woman who might have married him. He would

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