Secret Baby for my Brother's Friend Read online

  This diner looked like it sucked, but it had to be better than prison food.

  I heaved a sigh as I sat at the table, waiting with thinly veiled impatience. There was only one waitress in this dump, a harassed-looking young woman who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t want to be here either.

  Truth was, I was pissed. My younger brother Austin had known I’d be released today. I’d served my sentence, paid my fucking debt to society, and now at long last, I was a free man. Au should’ve sent a limo for me—or at least a goddamned taxi. Instead, I’d had to make my own way home.

  I was a billionaire, for Christ’s sake, and I’d been forced to walk several miles in the February cold before someone had taken pity on me and picked me up. Then I’d hitched a ride from a trucker and listened to fucking Brad Paisley all the way here. It did not put me in the best of all possible moods.

  So when the waitress finally paused by my table, I was pretty much primed to bite her head off.

  She wore a shapeless blue uniform that effectively concealed her body, and a cap that shaded much of her face. Her voice was sweet but brisk. “How can I help you?”

  I spoke tersely. “I want a burger. Fries. Glass of Coke.”

  “Of course, sir.” There was a slightly sarcastic emphasis on the “sir,” and I decided I wasn’t going to leave her a damn tip. And yeah, I was being irrational, but my first day of freedom sucked already, and her attitude wasn’t helping any. “Anything else?”

  “No. Just get me my food.”

  She turned away, her red braid swinging slightly behind her. The distinctive color of it—hair like the sunset—caught my eye, and I jerked my head up in time to catch a glimpse of her profile. All at once I felt like the eighteen-wheeler I’d arrived here in had just run me over.

  “Char?”

  She looked back down at me, no surprise whatsoever on her face. “Hello, Hunter,” she answered, her voice very nearly a monotone. She wasn’t thrilled to see me, that much was clear. Well, that was no surprise. After all, I was a felon. I didn’t expect anyone in Pinecone to be happy to see me, least of all the girl I’d banged just before...

  I tried to push that night out of my mind with the usual limited success and stared up at her, drinking her in. God, Char had changed since the night of her twenty-first birthday. She looked tired and decidedly older. What on earth had happened to the pretty, bright-eyed young girl she’d been? And why was she working in this shabby diner, of all places? Hadn’t she mentioned she was getting a degree so she could go into journalism? Words I hadn’t meant to say rose to my tongue, and I spat them out more harshly than I intended.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Working.” Her tone was decidedly unfriendly. “If you’ll let me go, I’ll put in your order.”

  She spun on her heel, and something like panic zipped through me. She was turning away, turning her back on me, and I couldn’t bear to let her go again. I reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her in place.

  She yanked her head around, her eyes blazing. “Let go of me. Now.”

  I let go because it honestly hadn’t been my intent to grab her that way. It had been more of an instinct than a deliberate move. Somehow I just didn’t want her to leave. After three years of fantasizing about that night with her, it seemed almost like a miracle that she was here, virtually the first thing I saw when I got home. It was like fate had drawn us together somehow.

  But if that was the case, she clearly didn’t give a damn about fate. She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and stalked away.

  She didn’t want to talk to me.

  Of course she didn’t. This was, I knew, the reaction I’d be receiving from everyone in Pinecone. Hell, probably from everyone in the United States. Even though I’d pleaded no contest, and there had been no trial and little drama or suspense regarding my fate, the news of my supposed crime had been featured in newspapers from coast to coast. It was the price of being a Kensington.

  Everyone knew I was a felon, and everyone would spit on me because of it for the rest of my life. Even Char.

  Anger, hot and unreasoning, sliced through me. I rose to my feet and glared at her retreating back.

  “Hey!” I snapped.

  She glanced back at me over her shoulder, and I pulled the small wad of money I’d received on leaving prison out of my pocket, found a five-dollar bill, and threw it down on the table. I was ravenous, and I hadn’t had a decent meal in two solid years, but I wasn’t going to sit in this ratty little diner and let her look at me that way, like I was something disgusting she’d scraped off her shoe. I’d rather starve.

  “Thanks so much for your service,” I snarled. Her face flooded red, and I knew she understood perfectly well what I was referring to. Then I squared my shoulders and strode out of the diner, fury and hurt rioting inside me.

  Damn it. Damn it. I was a Kensington. Even if I’d spent the last few years in jail, how dare she look at me like that? How dare she?

  Rage surged inside me, and humiliation too. All at once I desperately wanted to go home, to hide behind the white brick walls of Hilltop where no one could mock me. On foot, I headed for the mansion on the hill, trying to put the diner and the memory of her dark blue eyes behind me as fast as possible.

  With any luck, I’d never see Char Evans again.

  ***

  Charlotte

  “Word on the street is that Hunter Kensington is back in town.”

  At my brother’s quietly spoken words, I almost choked on my spaghetti. I looked up in guilty haste, but Jacob was speaking to my mother, not me. Of course. She’d always had a soft spot for Hunter, and at times I thought he’d had a soft spot for her too. At least he’d always cut back on the cussing and coarse language when she was around and had treated her with more respect than he’d treated any other adult in town.

  Even as a child, I’d suspected that Hunter came over to our house frequently not just because he was fond of Jacob, but because my mother had filled a void in his life, a void that had been empty since his own mother had died.

  “Oh, that’s nice. The poor dear, being cooped up like that for nearly three years. It can’t have been easy for him.”

  Jacob rolled his eyes. “Mother, please. He is not a poor dear. He embezzled from the charity his family set up, remember?”

  “I don’t believe that, and you shouldn’t either.” My mother’s voice was soft and gentle, but beneath it there was a note of absolute certainty. She’d always been steel wrapped in a soft marshmallow coating. Maybe she’d had to be like that to raise two children by herself after my dad had died. “Hunter would never steal from a charity. I don’t care what that silly trial determined. It’s simply not true.”

  Jacob sighed. He was a smart guy who’d studied business at William and Mary, but for some reason known only to himself, he hadn’t chosen to pursue a high-paying job in the big city. Instead he’d come home to Pinecone and opened a used bookstore, of all things. In a world filled with ebooks, bookstores were rarely profitable, and Pinecone wasn’t exactly filled with ardent readers anyway. He was barely scraping by, financially speaking, but at least he’d had his own apartment until he’d moved back in to our childhood home to help out with Diana. I was grateful, but I knew that being around Mom all the time grated on him. She still tended to treat him like a teenager instead of the responsible adult citizen he’d become.

  “Mom, Hunter was never the good guy you think he was. Even in high school, he was an asshole.”

  “Jacob Evans. I won’t have that kind of language at the dinner table.”

  My brother ran an irritated hand through his short auburn hair—less brilliant than mine, but redder by far than he wanted it to be. As a teenager, he’d spent hours staring into the mirror, mourning over the color of his hair. But it suited him. He was a nice-looking guy, and his hair was eye-catching. Which was why, I supposed, he managed to date a different woman every week, de
spite the limited pool of single women available in Pinecone.

  “But it’s true,” he said at last. “What he did to me, Mom—the things he said—”

  “He was a teenaged boy, Jacob. And he was going through a difficult time. Don’t hold grudges.”

  Jacob gave an irritated huff and went back to eating his spaghetti. He had held his grudge against Hunter for a long time now—over ten years—and it didn’t seem likely that he’d give it up any time soon. Jacob had a core of steel too.

  Personally, I was grateful he’d been distracted by Mom. Jacob had no idea that Hunter Kensington was the father of my baby, and I desperately wanted to keep it that way. Considering how much he hated Hunter, I didn’t want him to know, and I’d never even hinted at it. In fact, I’d claimed Diana’s father was some random guy from Washington I’d met in the bar on my twenty-first birthday—that I didn’t even know his name. It was better that way. Jacob had given up a lot to help me raise Diana, and he didn’t need to know that her father was his mortal enemy.

  I was more than a little concerned that Hunter might wind up my mortal enemy too. I wasn’t sure why he’d sought me out at the diner, and the fact that he’d run off so quickly tended to suggest it wasn’t because of our daughter. It seemed likely that he had no idea she existed. And yet—well, it was awfully coincidental that he’d come to the diner where I worked right after being released from prison, wasn’t it?

  I didn’t know what to think. But one thing was for sure—if Hunter didn’t know about Diana yet, he was bound to learn about her sooner or later. And then—and then—

  Well, then things would go to hell in a handbasket. The situation, I decided, was complicated enough without bringing Jacob’s hatred for Hunter into the mix.

  I concluded it was safest not to even mention that I’d seen Hunter. I swallowed another forkful of spaghetti and didn’t say a word.

  Chapter Three

  Hunter

  It was damn good to be home.

  Whiskey glass in hand, I leaned back in the plush leather chair, looking at the book-lined walls that rose to the twenty-foot ceiling all around me.. When I was a kid, this library had been my father’s sanctuary, but I’d always crept into this room whenever he was out, looking through the myriad volumes and curling up on the couch to read. I didn’t admit to it often, because it wasn’t exactly part of my bad boy persona, but I loved books. Only Jacob had known my guilty secret—the two of us had first bonded over our mutual love of books.

  After years of prison, I was incredibly grateful for the comfortable surroundings and the army of servants who’d appear at my elbow in a heartbeat to provide me with anything my heart desired. It was true that minimum-security prison hadn’t been as awful as what a lot of convicted criminals experienced, but it hadn’t been enjoyable, either. And the food had sucked.

  But at home—well, tonight I’d feasted on shrimp, scallops, and blue crab, and now I was sipping at a glass of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat from the fireplace, the buttery softness of the upholstery, inhaling the mingled scents of wood smoke and thousands upon thousands of leather-bound books.

  I was home at last. And I was grateful.

  Home, though, felt strangely empty without the old man, I thought, opening my eyes and looking around. While I’d been in prison, Dad had passed on, and I wasn’t sure how I’d felt about that. On one hand, my controlling, demanding, manipulative father had irritated me right down to my core, which was probably one reason I’d been such a rebel in my youth. I’d had a hell of a lot to rebel about.

  On the other hand…well, he’d been my father. Which probably accounted for the ache in my chest.

  At any rate, Dad had died and left me a billionaire in my own right. I had inherited enormous amounts of money and investments, not to mention a large amount of stock in Kensington Media.

  I should probably be making plans to take over the company from my younger brother. To gain power and wield it like a club. After all, that was the Kensington way, wasn’t it?

  But of course Au had inherited just as much money as I had, and he had already had a chance to entrench himself within the glass walls of the Kensington Media building in downtown DC, like a medieval knight taking refuge behind stone ramparts. Taking him down wouldn’t be easy, even if I wanted to. And at this point, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Right now I felt content to simply sit in front of the fireplace, sip an excellent bourbon, and let freedom and the comfort of being home at last wash over me.

  “More bourbon, sir?”

  The butler had simply appeared at my elbow out of nowhere. It was amazing how he did that. His name was Clive Underwood, and he had been a shadowy presence in the mansion for my entire childhood. As a child, I’d been convinced he had superpowers. I still wondered.

  The vague thoughts I’d been turning over in my head coalesced, and I nodded, holding out my glass. “Tell me, Clive, where is my brother? I’d like to see him again.”

  That was only partially true. I’d always loathed Au, and I blamed him for everything that had happened. But even so…

  Well, he was my brother.

  “I am sorry, sir.” Clive didn’t say the words so much as he intoned them. He had a classy English accent, and his voice was pitched perfectly—not too loud, not too soft. Clive was the Goldilocks of butlers. “Young Mr. Kensington has flown to New York for the weekend, I’m afraid.”

  It figured. Au had never enjoyed living in this bumfuck town any more than I had. I didn’t think my dad had liked it all that much, either—I always had the impression that he simply enjoyed lording it over the common people. Small town life was dull, bland, and boring, and I didn’t blame Au for fleeing to the family penthouse in New York whenever he got the chance. Who wouldn’t prefer the Big Apple to fucking Pinecone?

  Still, a little flame of resentment lit inside me. After everything I had done for Au, everything I’d sacrificed for him, welcoming me home seemed like the least the little bastard could do.

  Instead, he was living it up in New York City.

  I sighed and pushed my irritation aside. I didn’t really need the stress of dealing with Au tonight anyway. Maybe it was cowardly of me, or maybe it was just that the years in prison had worn me down, but I really wanted to relax and bask in the sheer pleasure of being home.

  “Thank you, Clive,” I said, and the butler faded away into the shadows.

  Alone again, I sipped at the bourbon, stared into the dancing flames, and let my mind drift.

  Unsurprisingly, the first place it landed was on Char Evans.

  I’d thought about her a lot in prison. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. I’d been lonely, and she’d featured prominently in most of my fantasies for the past three years. It wasn’t like I was in love with her, of course; it was simply that she’d been the last woman I’d made love to, on the very night I had been arrested. After I’d been arrested, I’d been allowed out on bail for a while, but I hadn’t felt like it was fair to involve any woman in the soap opera of my life. As a consequence, I’d remained celibate for the last three years.

  So Char had been the last woman I’d been with, and she’d been young and beautiful besides. Thus the lonely, empty years since I’d last seen her had been filled with restless imaginings in which I’d picked her up, shoved her against the brick wall in that alley, and…

  I broke off the thought before I could settle into the groove of my well-worn fantasy, and forced myself to remember the way she’d looked this afternoon. Not old—she’d only be twenty-four now, after all—but tired and careworn, like the past several years had weighed heavily on her.

  I wondered what had led to her working in a crappy diner. Hadn’t she gotten her bachelor’s degree? Enough years had passed that she surely must have. But if so, why was she working here instead of heading off to Richmond or Washington to become a journalist? I wondered if perhaps her mother was ill and Char had stayed in this one-horse town to take care of her. Or maybe her
big brother…

  I pushed away that thought instantly. Jacob Evans and I had once been close, but our friendship had imploded spectacularly near the end of high school. I tried not to think about Jacob at all if I could help it. He’d once been my very best friend, but now…now we were nothing to one another. Nothing at all.

  Anyway, there was no point in speculating, not really. I could find out Char’s story easily enough simply by asking around. Rule one of a small town was that everyone loved gossip. I promised myself that I’d look into it first thing tomorrow.

  In the meantime… I allowed myself to sink into my fantasy, remembering the warm scent of her skin, the faint fragrance of strawberries in her hair. The way she’d wrapped herself around me in that alley, innocent but eager. The little sounds of pleasure she’d made.

  Like all the Kensingtons, I was cold and remote when it came to relationships, so I didn’t feel anything more for her than I’d ever felt for any woman…but god, that night had been hot.

  I tried to hold onto my fantasy, to focus on the too-vivid memories of how she’d felt against me, hot and soft and eager, but suddenly the memory shifted, and all I could see was her dark eyes gazing at me with contemptuous disdain. The thought made something in my chest clench, and a sudden gust of anger blew through me. How dare she, a mere waitress, look at me that way? I was a Kensington, goddammit. Even if I had just been released from prison, I was better than her. Better than anyone in this tiny, pitiful town.

  That’s Dad talking, I thought.

  My father had always insisted we were better—better educated, more intelligent, and in general superior to the common folk of Pinecone. They aren’t fit to shine your boots, Hunter. Remember that. As a teenager, I’d bought into that wholeheartedly, and in the end it had caused a terrible rift between me and Jacob Evans. And even then I hadn’t been able to bring myself to admit that I was at fault and that maybe, just maybe, being a Kensington didn’t automatically make me superior to anyone else.

  But now…

  I was a felon. I’d spent over two years in a cell, sleeping on a cot, and eating revolting food. Yes, I’d served my time for a crime I didn’t even commit, but Char had no way of knowing that. Just because I happened to be filthy rich didn’t make me better than her or anyone else. In the eyes of society, I was a mere criminal.