Claiming Her Billion-Dollar Birthright(20)
Author: Maureen Child

But magic wasn’t real.

And eventually, dreamers woke up.

He wanted her desperately. But if he acted on what he wanted, then he stood to lose everything he’d ever worked for. Everything that had made him what he was. How could he turn his back on his life? On the man he’d become? If he did, what would he have left?

Who would he be?

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” she whispered. “Even after everything that happened tonight, you’re going to be the good corporate drone and go back to your cubicle.”

He sighed. What the hell could he say to her? He couldn’t even explain it to himself. “Erica…”

“No, don’t bother.” Her voice was low, almost lost in the roar of the river. But somehow he heard every word and felt the power of them hit home as if each one was a blade.

“You’re going to regret tossing me aside,” she said.

He stared into her eyes and couldn’t quite bring himself to tell her that he already did regret it. Standing here, so close and yet so far away from her, he felt as if all the life was draining out of his body. But he couldn’t say what she wanted—needed—to hear.

“You’ll regret it, but it’ll be too late. I feel sorry for you, Christian. Because I would have loved you forever.” With a sad shake of her head, she turned and walked away from him.

Christian watched her go and felt his heart go with her.

She was gone the next morning. Back to San Francisco on the family jet. According to Melissa, Erica was only going back for a visit, but Christian couldn’t help but wonder if he’d managed to drive her away from her legacy.

Two days later, he felt on edge. He was miserable. He hadn’t slept. Couldn’t close his eyes without seeing her. Work wasn’t the salve it had always been. He couldn’t concentrate on any single task because his mind kept drifting to Erica and the way she’d looked at him just before she walked away.

He never should have let her go.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Christian shook his head and glared at Trevor. They were in Trevor’s office and had been working on the layout for the gala and somewhere in there, Christian’s mind had taken a sharp left turn. “Nothing. Can we just finish this? I’ve got other things to take care of.”

“You know what? Never mind. I’ll finish it myself.”

“Good.” For the first time in years, Christian wasn’t interested in Jarrod Ridge or its gala. He didn’t care about the tourists flocking to Aspen or the businesses depending on the Ridge to increase their profits. He was damn sick and tired of living his life by the wants and needs of the Jarrod family.

Hell, he was still following Don Jarrod’s edicts even after the man was in his grave. So Christian’s life had now come to the point where a dead man was controlling his actions.

Was he really going to allow this to continue? Could he really risk losing the only woman who’d ever gotten under his guard?

Would he give up his future to assuage his past?

Furious with himself and the whole damn situation, Christian turned to go, but stopped when Trevor spoke up again.

“What’s eating at you, man? You’ve been terrorizing the staff and me for the last couple of days.”

Yeah, he had. Wrestling with your demons didn’t make for a good time and there were bound to be innocent bystanders caught up in the fight. But Trevor wasn’t his enemy and it’d be best to remember that.

Christian looked back at his friend and said, “I’ve got some things on my mind, that’s all.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” he said. He had to get things sorted out for himself before he could speak to any of the Jarrods about this.

Trevor stared at him, then nodded. “All right. I figure a man’s entitled to his secrets. But if you change your mind, I’m here.”

“Appreciate it.” And he did. He had friends here, Christian knew that. What he didn’t have was Erica. “I’ll see you later.”

Blake walked in the door almost at the same instant and jumped out of the way before Christian could crash right into him. “What’s his deal?”

“I don’t know. He won’t say. Clearly something’s bugging him though.” Trevor sat down at his desk, ready to dive into the paperwork again.

“I know how he feels,” Blake said.

The tone of his voice more than anything else had Trevor looking up. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Not sure. But I just saw Melissa with Shane McDermott. They looked…cozy. Have you heard anything?”

Trevor leaned back in his desk chair. “No. But if our friendly neighborhood rancher is interested in our little sister, I suggest we keep an eye on things.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Blake agreed.

Three days holed up in her old condo in San Francisco and Erica was no closer to knowing what to do than she had been when she arrived. She’d cried herself silly for the first several hours until her sorrow had faded into fury. Anger was so much easier to deal with.

Erica stood up and moved to the balcony off her living room. She had a view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge and she’d spent most of her days with the sliding glass door open to let in the frigid wind blowing in off the ocean.

After so much time in Colorado, with the sky so wide and open and so much space around her, she felt…caged in the very home she’d once loved so much.

Strange. She’d only been gone three weeks but this place no longer felt like home. She looked at the soft, pastel paintings on the walls and couldn’t figure out what she’d seen in them. She wasn’t the same woman who had lived here. She’d changed. Grown. She’d reshaped her life to suit the woman she’d become.

Now Erica knew what it was to finally find her place. She had discovered what it was like to love someone and lose. She knew what it was to go on with your heart breaking and not have a clue what to do next.

She’d found more than a home in Colorado.

She’d found herself. And the woman she was today needed answers to questions she was no longer afraid to ask. She hadn’t run from Christian; she’d run toward her past. After leaving him at the river, Erica had realized that she couldn’t enjoy a future without first dealing with her past. And so she’d come back to San Francisco. To tie up the loose ends of her life so that she could return to the place she belonged.

Okay, yes, she hadn’t immediately gone to face her father. But she was going to. She’d simply needed a few days to sort out her own feelings. That didn’t mean she was turning tail and running. And she certainly wasn’t going to hide here in a condo that wasn’t really hers anymore.

She was going back.

Just as soon as she found what she needed to know.

Ten

The very next morning Erica marched into her father’s office and faced him, for the first time not as his daughter, but as an adult who demanded respect.

“Erica,” Walter said, standing up and moving out from behind his desk. “You didn’t tell me you were com ing.”

“No.” She studied his familiar features and saw with surprise that he looked older than she remembered. And not as intimidating, either. Was it her imagination? she wondered. Or was it that she was no longer looking at him as a child would?

“Are you all right?” He came to her, gave her a brief, awkward hug, then stepped back.

The embrace was over so quickly it was almost as if it hadn’t happened at all. Erica felt the sting of tears in her eyes and inwardly groaned. She fought to hold those tears at bay as she asked, “I need to know something, Father, and I need the truth.”

“Of course.”

“Did you ever love me?”

“What kind of question is that?” His eyes narrowed and his scowl deepened. “Is this what they’ve been telling you in Colorado? Those Jarrods have been filling your head with nonsense and you’ve been listening?”

Shaking her head, Erica felt her heart sink. “They haven’t said a word about you, Father. This is something I need to know. Did you love me? Ever?”

His mouth tightened into a straight, grim line as if he were deliberately holding back the words she needed to hear.

Walking past him, she dropped her cream-colored leather bag onto the nearest chair, then turned to face him again. “I’m tired, Father. And hurt. And a little miserable, too. I’m finally figuring out who I am, but to finish doing that, I have to know who I was. Was I ever a daughter to you?”

As if all the air had left his body suddenly, Walter Prentice seemed to shrink in size right before her eyes. His shoulders slumped, his head dipped until his chin met his chest. Tiredly he lifted both hands to rub his face, then dropped them again and looked up at her.

She walked toward him, drawn by the nak*d pain on his face. Erica had never seen this side of her father. Never known him to be emotional at all. She took a shallow breath and held it.

“You’re more like your mother than you know, Erica. You have her beauty, but more important, you have her heart.” Leaning forward, he took her hands in his and held them gently. “I do love you, child. Always have. I couldn’t love you more if you were my own blood.”

A great weight eased off her heart and Erica took her first easy breath since walking into his office. “Then why? Why have you always kept me at a distance? Why would you never let me get close? You wouldn’t even let me work here, Father. I thought you believed I wasn’t good enough to join the family business.”

“Ah, God, I’ve made so many mistakes,” he muttered, his grip on her hands tightening. “But I swear they were made with the best of intentions. For years I was afraid that Don would try to take you from me, so I tried to keep an emotional distance from you. Fearing that if I did lose you, the pain would be too great to bear.” He sighed heavily. “Then the years passed and I kept you tucked away, out of the family business, to protect you from Don Jarrod.”

“What? That makes no sense.”

“It did to me. I was terrified that he’d come back, you see. Try to take you from me as he stole your mother. I couldn’t bear the thought of that.”

“Oh, Dad…”

He squeezed her hands. “Do you realize that’s the first time you’ve ever called me that? To you, I was always ‘Father,’ not ‘Dad.’”

Erica sighed and let go of the pain and misery she’d been carrying around for most of her life. Sad as it was, it was also sort of comforting to know that neither one of them had deliberately shunned the other. Mistakes had been made, true, but by both of them and for far too long.

Leaning into his warm embrace, she wrapped her arms around her father’s neck and let the tears flow. He patted her gently and whispered words of comfort that were too soft for her ears to catch—but her heart heard and slowly began to heal.

“Are you happy out there?”

Erica sat across from her father and smiled. It was the first time she could ever remember her father being concerned with her happiness. But then, there had been a lot of firsts today. She felt lighter, freer than she had in years. She’d accomplished so much in just leaving, taking her own life in her hands. She’d found who she was meant to be. She’d reconnected with the father who had loved and raised her. And she had found—and lost—Christian.