Claiming Her Billion-Dollar Birthright / Falling For His Proper Mistress: Claiming Her Billion-Dollar Birthright

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.

My dear Don,

I wanted you to know that I don’t regret our time together. Though what we shared was never meant to last, I will always remember you with affection. That said, you must see that you can never acknowledge our child. Walter has forgiven me and has promised to love this child as he has our sons. And so I ask that you stay away and let us rebuild our lives. It’s best for all of us.

Love,

Danielle

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.

Jarrod,

My wife is dead, delivering your daughter. This letter is as close as you’ll ever get to the child, make no mistake. If you try to get around me, I’ll see to it that you regret it.

Walter Prentice

“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?”