Сандра Хьятт – Revealed: His Secret Child (страница 1)
She’d wanted to tell him.
But she decided there was no point telling him before the child was born, and then decided to wait until Ethan was sleeping through the night so she had a clear head, and then … The longer she left it, the harder it became.
‘Pack your bags.’ Max surged from his chair, strode back to the window. ‘My son will know me. He’ll grow up with his father. I’m seeing to that today.’
Gillian gripped the table as though that could anchor her. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘I’m saying,’ he said quietly, ‘that we’re getting married.’
Dear Reader,
I love continuity series—six or so individually terrific books linked so that one teases you for the next, and the next lets you revisit the characters you grew to know and love in the previous one.
This is the first continuity book I’ve had the pleasure of writing and it’s been a fabulous experience working with the authors who’ve written the other five books. I’m really looking forward to reading all of the stories to see how everything finally plays out.
As for Max and Gillian, whose story this is, it was fun getting to know them. Gillian tried so hard to make best decisions for the best reasons, even if that reasoning was one Max vehemently disagreed with. And as for Max—a man used to being in absolute control of his life—he never expected a family of his own. Even less did he expect to fall so hard and so completely for Gillian.
Sometimes having our expectations thwarted is the perfect solution.
Enjoy!
About the Author
After completing a business degree, travelling and then settling into a career in marketing, SANDRA HYATT was relieved to experience one of life’s eureka! moments while on maternity leave—she discovered that writing books, although a lot slower, was just as much fun as reading them. She knows life doesn’t always hand out happy endings and figures that’s why books ought to. She loves being along for the journey with her characters as they work around, over and through the obstacles standing in their way. Sandra has lived in both the US and England and currently lives near the coast in New Zealand with her high school sweetheart and their two children. You can visit her at www.sandrahyatt.com.
Don’t miss a single book in this series!
The Takeover
For better, for worse. For business, for pleasure.
These tycoons have vowed to have it all!
Revealed:
His Secret Child
Sandra Hyatt
One
Max Preston looked from the newspaper spread before him to the glittering sea beyond the window and made up his mind. This time he wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to ignore his calls. To ignore
His chair scraped across the parquet flooring of the Beach and Tennis Club’s breakfast restaurant as he stood from his table. Leaving a tip for his waitress and his just delivered omelet untouched, he took one last sip of his coffee and left.
So much for the first Saturday off he’d had in months.
He hadn’t known he was going to fill his morning. He did now.
A search on his phone as he strode to his car turned up her address. Tossing the parochial, two-bit rag she worked for—the proverbial thorn in his side—onto the passenger seat, he slid into his seat and eased the Maserati out of the club’s parking lot.
The first time he’d seen Gillian Mitchell’s picture and byline in the
It only took the seconds he’d needed to read her first biting paragraph for those feelings to vaporize.
Since that moment, he’d been trying to view her presence here and her articles with purely professional detachment.
Clearly, she wasn’t doing the same. Her attacks on Cameron Enterprises and, in particular, Max’s boss, Rafe Cameron, might, to the uninformed reader, appear objective, but they were personal and directed at Max. He was sure of it.
On the seat beside him, her opinion piece lay face-up. At the first set of lights he flipped the paper over so that he didn’t have to see the one-sided article that constituted her opinion.
A call came through on his cell. “Max speaking,” he said into his earpiece.
“Have you seen it?” Rafe wasted no words.
“I’m dealing with it.” As head of PR for Cameron Enterprises it was Max’s job to smooth the waters, to make sure the people of Vista Del Mar saw Rafe’s takeover of Worth Industries—a microchip manufacturer and one of the town’s biggest employers—in the best possible light.
And Gillian, it seemed, was doing everything in her power to achieve the opposite result.
“Is it libel?” Rafe asked.
“It’s close. I’m on my way to see her now. I’ll let her know how seriously we’re taking this. That our lawyers will be examining this piece as well as every word she’s written to date, and every word she will write in the future on anything related to this subject.”
“Good.” Rafe rang off.
At one time, Max had nothing but the highest respect for Gillian’s doggedness. But when she started making his boss the repeated target of her campaign, that doggedness looked a lot more like intransigence and plain old sour grapes.
Because she and Max had history.
But the way he remembered it, it had been good history. And it had ended cleanly. Six months into their relationship, when she’d casually dropped the words
So he’d broken it off with her. On the spot. It was the only honest thing to do. And he’d thought she’d taken it well. There had been no drama. She’d calmly agreed with him that they clearly had different needs from a relationship, and walked away without so much as a backward glance.
He hadn’t heard from her or of her in the three and a half years since then. Till these opinion pieces and her supposed factual, objective articles. So now he was thinking maybe she hadn’t taken it well. Maybe she had merely bided her time till the opportunity to strike back arose.
The ten-minute coastal drive gave Max time to calm down so that by the time he reached her place—an older Spanish-style home set several blocks back from the beach—he was only annoyed instead of furious.
She was nothing he couldn’t deal with.
And, if he was honest, he was just a little curious, too. They’d had some good times. Had she changed in the intervening years? Were her eyes as green as he remembered?
He strode the path to her door, knocked firmly and waited, standing where she’d have a clear view of him through the glass bordering the door. He could just make out the beat of the rock music she used to enjoy and had a flash of memory, of Gillian swaying and sashaying around her L.A. apartment. The music stopped.
Beyond a row of orange flowering bushes, a blue hatchback with tinted windows sat in the driveway. Max paused before knocking again. She used to drive a sporty, two-door soft top.
Had she married, as she’d been so clearly keen to do? The thought gave him pause. The fact that she hadn’t changed her name didn’t mean she hadn’t gotten her wish. The hatchback had a definite family-car aura to it.
It didn’t matter. The only thing that concerned him was the paper he held and the inflammatory words she was writing in it. As he lifted his hand to knock again, the door swung open halfway.
For a moment, as they looked at each other, the world stopped. For just that moment, he forgot why he was here. Sunlight caught her chestnut-brown hair, brought a luminescence to her creamy skin. She was so hauntingly familiar, and yet, not.
“Max?” She blinked, regrouped. “What are you doing here?” Her words, the shock and the underlying reluctance in them, got the world spinning nicely again. He hadn’t expected or wanted warmth, but he also hadn’t expected fear, and that was definitely what he saw in her wide, green eyes and heard in the catch in her throaty voice. She didn’t want him here.
“We need to talk.”
“If you want to talk to me, phone.” She swung the door.
Max put his hand and foot out to halt its momentum. “You’ll see me now. I tried phoning last week, remember? That didn’t work. This is what you get when you don’t answer my calls.”
“I was going to call you Monday. We can make an appointment. I’ll see you during normal working hours.”