“Lemuel, would you come in, please?”
Devin Sloane released the intercom button and let his hand drop to his lap, then stared out his window. It was a cold day but a bright one, the sun casting a white glow over the dusting of snow on the grounds. His curving drive sliced through the white like a black snake, cutting a wide swath from the road to his front door. Along the drive and on the tall iron fence bordering the county road, his groundskeeper had hung thick evergreen garlands studded with tiny white lights. In an hour or two, as dusk fell, the locals would begin their nightly drive-bys, slowing to gawk at the extravagant display. Yes sir, they’d say, Devin Sloane was a community man, eager to do his part to keep Albemarle County beautiful.
Giving himself a stern mental shake, Devin turned away from the window and bent over the letter on his desk. After skimming it, he pulled out his fountain pen and signed the correspondence with a thick flourish. Business brought him far less pleasure these days than dreaming of the future, and too often he found himself staring into space. Lara Godfrey was doing well. The latest reports from Braun indicated that the baby weighed a healthy four pounds and measured fifteen inches.
He had made a good choice. Lara Godfrey was an excellent breeder and the baby was developing beautifully.
And would be born in less than six weeks.
Devin shoved the letter aside and drummed his fingers on the desk. Though all the world seemed atwitter with the news that he expected a son, he had disciplined himself to proceed with business as usual. He had leaked the baby’s sex to a reporter from CNN; within twenty-four hours the news had been featured on Entertainment Tonight and Nightline. Barbara Walters—whose request for an interview Devin had turned down—had promptly done a segment for 20/20: Do Single Men Make Good Parents? The resounding answer seemed to be yes. Opinion polls and newspaper editorials from around the nation supported his fatherhood, a far cry from the outbursts that had arisen when he announced his arrangement with a surrogate mother. In the last few months, while reporters and photographers vainly searched for the invisible woman, the surrogacy issue had quietly disappeared. But it would certainly rise again.
Devin pulled his organizer from his pocket. The media would launch a full-scale assault once he took custody of the child. If a surrogate situation had existed, the mother most certainly would be found.
With every passing day, Devin grew more grateful for Lara Godfrey. Destiny had handed him a perfect opportunity, and he would do all he could to preserve her anonymity. For a few weeks he had toyed with the idea of creating a role for her in the child’s life—after all, the boy would need a mother as well as a father—but the risks were too great. The great spiritual strength that had attracted him to Lara Godfrey would work against him if she knew the truth about her son’s conception. She would not be bought off; she might make serious trouble. Devin had the feeling that half his fortune would not be enough to assuage her affronted moral sensibilities.
The carved mahogany doors opened and Lemuel’s dark head appeared. “Sorry, sir,” he called, panting his way into the room. “I was on the telephone with a news agency from Paris. They’d like an interview, of course.”
“Denied.” Devin’s gaze fell upon the gold-framed photograph on the edge of his desk, the obligatory portrait of his loved ones. His wife appeared in the picture much as she had in life—cool, elegant, lovely. His son, on the other hand, had been nothing like the angelic cherub in the photo. Ethan Jefferson Sloane had grown from a charming baby into a degraded product of his times.
Lemuel dropped into the chair before Devin’s desk. “I also had a call from the president of the American Eugenics Society. He’d like you to say a few words at the organization’s banquet next spring.”
“I’ve changed my mind; I’m not going.” Devin shifted his gaze to his assistant. “I made those arrangements before the child; I’ll not leave him so soon after the birth. You may as well go through my calendar and cancel any engagements where I would be away more than two days.”
“For how long, sir?
“Indefinitely. I’ll not be away more than two nights.” Irresistibly, the family photo drew his gaze again. “I’ll not make the same mistakes this time.”
“But what about the financial conference in Washington? That’s a three-day seminar, May fourth through the sixth—”
“Schedule nothing from mid-January through the following December. No traveling at all. If anyone cares to know my opinion, they can visit me here.” He folded his hands and regarded his assistant with somber curiosity. “You didn’t know my son very well, did you?”
Lemuel’s narrow face twisted into a human question mark. “Sir?”
“Ethan. Did you know him well?”
“Not really.” Lemuel cleared his throat. “Occasionally he’d come up and say a word or two while waiting to see you—”
Devin stared past the photo into his own thoughts. “You didn’t miss much. He was a typical American teenager, spoiled, audacious, and arrogant. He carried a C average in a private school that cared more about catering to him than challenging him. He thought of me as a living money tree, and his mother as his defender. When I tried to discipline him, she rushed to his defense; when I tried to rebuke him, she sent him out of the room lest his tender psyche be damaged.”
He focused on his wife’s brown eyes. “It was fitting that they died together. Appropriate that his recklessness killed them. She allowed him to drink; she let him drive; she let him take that corner too fast. And though I mourned them both, now I see the irony in their deaths. They died as they lived, mother and son together. And that is why my second son must live with me, not with the woman who will give birth to him.”
The corners of Lemuel’s mouth were tight with distress, his eyes slightly shiny. “Sir—how do you know Lara Godfrey will not want to have some say in how the boy is reared? If she is as strong a woman as you say—”
“It’s part of the surrogate contract. She has agreed to bear my child and surrender him at birth. In exchange, I will pay for her medical care and the laboratory expenses she will incur during the conception of her next child.”
A sense of unease crept into Devin’s mood as he studied his assistant. Lemuel knew about his plans for the Iceman, and he handled the Godfrey file almost daily. What he did not know was that the surrogate contract had been copied onto a blank form with Ms. Godfrey’s signature and the woman had no idea she carried the hope of the future in her womb. Though Lemuel was a consummate professional, discreet and loyal, the entire truth was a rare treasure—too valuable to share.
Devin’s mouth curved in a mirthless smile. “It’s best that you not worry about Ms. Godfrey. I have promised to protect her, and I will do so to the best of my ability—just as I will protect my son.”
Lemuel looked down at his hands as a blush burned the contours of his cheekbones. “Of course, sir.”
Devin tented his hands. “We are only six weeks away from the child’s birth, so we must double-check our preparations. Follow up on that decorator who’s redesigning the west wing—I want the nursery ready in two weeks, in case the baby comes early. Make sure the contractor cuts a door from the nursery to the nanny’s room—and call Mr. Thackery in London and check on the progress of his search. I want a properly trained English nanny here within three weeks.” He snapped his fingers as a thought suddenly surfaced. “And remove every television from that wing. My son will not be weaned on Sesame Street.”
Lemuel made a few notes, then looked up. “Contractor, nanny, televisions— anything else?”
“Prentice Technologies in Alexandria—they are designing my son’s subdermal identification chip. Have it hand-delivered to Dr. Braun for insertion immediately after the birth.”
Lemuel stared. “An ID chip? I’m sorry, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
The corner of Devin’s mouth lifted in a dry smile. “It’s not something I’d like broadcast to the world, but there’s no denying its importance. My son will be unique, and I’ll not lose him to terrorist kidnappers. If by some chance someone manages to foil the security system and the perimeter defenses, I want to be able to track the boy.”
“Of course, sir.” Lemuel jotted down the name, then glanced up again.
“One more thing.” Devin pulled a business card from his coat pocket and flipped it across the desk. “Call this woman and invite her to the house for lunch as soon as possible.”
Lemuel smiled as he read the card. “A social call?”
“Strictly business. Nadine Harrington is a private investigator, and I want to employ her full-time for a few months. If she asks the reason for the invitation, be as honest as you need to be about our surrogate situation.” He chuckled. “If you lie, she’ll discover the truth sooner or later, so play straight with her.”
“What if she asks about the subject of the investigation?”
“That question”—Devin closed his eyes—“will have to wait until our luncheon.”
To his dismay, Lemuel discovered that Nadine Harrington, of the Harrington Group in Washington, D.C., was not exactly hungry for work. Her secretary flatly refused his telephone requests for an appointment, so on the sixteenth of December he flew from Charlottesville to Washington to meet the woman in person. At the agency’s circular reception desk he boldly stated his name and his mission, then spent two hours cooling his heels in the lobby.
The Harrington Group’s headquarters was nothing like the seedy private eye’s office of Lemuel’s imagination. There was no dark hallway, no sultry secretary at the telephone, no chain-smoking thug loitering outside. By ten a.m. on Wednesday morning, the Harrington Group’s office echoed with a busy chorus of telephones and fax machines. After passing through the brass-and-glass reception area, Lemuel found himself surrounded by a sea of cubicles where smartly dressed men and women attended an array of computers, printers, and cell phones.
Nadine Harrington’s office lay at the rear of the building. Her secretary, a clean-cut fellow with a polished veneer, escorted Lemuel through the maze with a vaguely sympathetic smile. For an instant he felt like Daniel venturing in to face the lions, but then he passed through the double doors and saw Ms. Harrington, blonde and beautiful, sitting behind her desk. The woman who rose to shake his hand seemed more finished than fierce.
“Mr. Reis,” Nadine Harrington gestured toward an empty seat, “why must you pursue me so doggedly? I’ve told you, I’m not interested in traveling to Charlottesville for lunch with Devin Sloane.” She lowered herself into her chair, then looked at him and arched her brow. “It seems to me that men of Mr. Sloane’s stature have the freedom to travel anywhere they want. If he wants to see me, why doesn’t he come to Washington?”
“Mr. Sloane is involved in a crucial project at the moment and doesn’t want to leave the area.” Lemuel colored his voice in neutral shades. “He apologizes for any inconvenience a trip might cause you.”
“Why me?” Ms. Harrington asked smoothly, with no expression on her face. “Surely there are excellent investigators in Charlottesville or even Richmond—”
“What Mr. Sloane has in mind is more complex than the usual background check on an employee.” Lemuel leaned forward, resting one elbow on the arm of his chair. “I would add that my employer does not give up easily, Ms. Harrington. You’re the best, he wants you, and he’ll pay handsomely for the privilege. He has authorized me to offer you this”—he pulled the check from his inner jacket pocket and laid it on the desk before her—“and to tell you that his private jet is waiting at the airport. I will escort you to Charlottesville myself.”
Her mouth quirked with disbelief. “You want me to leave now?”
Lemuel nodded.
“Well”—the lady toyed with a gold pen—“for sheer chutzpah, I’ll have to admit no one has ever come close to your boss.” She picked up the check; then her eyes met Lemuel’s. “Twenty-five thousand? Is this a retainer?”
“It is payment for your time if you agree to come with me.” Lemuel searched her eyes for some sign of acquiescence. “If you don’t care to take on Mr. Sloane’s project after you’ve heard about it, we ask only that you respect his privacy and not share any confidential information. Mr. Sloane’s jet will return you to Washington, and you are free to keep the check.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.” Though her mouth stayed curved in a polite smile, the wariness in her eyes froze into a blue as cold as ice. “I’m good, yes, but so are others. So why did your boss send you to fetch me?”
Lemuel looked at his hands as something in his soul shriveled.
“May I be honest?”
“I wish you would.”
“Then to be frank, Ms. Harrington, I think Mr. Sloane chose you because you have a son. Mr. Sloane’s case concerns the child a surrogate is carrying for him. I’m sorry, but I’m not authorized to say anything more at this time.”
Nadine Harrington gave Lemuel a look hot enough to sear his eyebrows, then transferred her gaze to the check in her hand. For a long moment she sat silently, idly tapping the check on the desk.
Finally she picked up the phone. “Stuart,” she said, her eyes meeting Lemuel’s at last, “cancel all my appointments for today; I’ll be leaving for Charlottesville within the hour. Leave my messages on the desk; I should be back to return calls this evening. Thanks.”
Lemuel cleared his throat. “I should warn you, Ms. Harrington—if you agree to take the job, you may not be back this afternoon.”
Ms. Harrington dropped the receiver back into the cradle and gave Lemuel a flat smile. “Please don’t think the sight of money tempts me, Mr. Reis; it doesn’t. But I have to admit your boss’s request is intriguing. And he is right.” Her voice softened. “I do have a son.”
Lemuel uncrossed his legs and stood, ready to be on his way. Grateful to have accomplished his goal, he spoke the first words that crossed his mind: “Do you need to make arrangements for your son if you do not return this evening?”
“Mr. Reis,” Ms. Harrington answered, standing, “a judge made those decisions long ago. I haven’t seen my son in six years.”
Nadine Harrington sat across from Devin Sloane and struggled to maintain an inscrutable expression as he related the most incredible story she had ever heard. Through the science of artificial insemination, he explained, he had impregnated a young medical professional in Charlottesville. The woman had signed a surrogacy contract, she had accepted free medical care and genetic testing, and she would continue to receive free medical care if she wished to conceive another child to raise as her own. According to the terms of the agreement, the baby, a boy, was to be placed in Sloane’s custody immediately after the expected February birth.
“The arrangement is specific and clearly defined,” Sloane told Nadine, his eyes shining darkly above his coffee cup, “and my lawyer, Madison Jarvis, has assured me that the contract is as airtight as a surrogate arrangement can be.”
“But you’re not entirely confident of his assurances.” Nadine smiled, reading the worried lines above his brows. “Or we would not be having this conversation.”
Sloane lifted a finger. “Touché, Ms. Harrington, you have hit the nail precisely on the head. Surrogate arrangements are not exactly common, and this will be a high-profile case. I have done my best to ensure that the surrogate will not cause trouble, but she lost her husband a few months ago, and lately I have begun to worry that grief might . . . disturb her sense of reality. She seemed perfectly stable at the time of the insemination, but I do not trust human nature.”
Nadine took a moment to spoon sugar into her coffee. A butler had removed their luncheon plates; she and Sloane were now alone in the dining room. “So what do you want from me, Mr. Sloane?”
The billionaire didn’t hesitate. “First”—one finger tapped the elegant linen tablecloth—“I’d like you to covertly discover all you can about this woman in case she decides against surrendering the child. I do not want a public custody hearing, nor do I want to part with the child I have begotten. He is mine, I have worked hard to bring him into the world, and I cannot—I will not—take the slightest risk regarding his welfare.”
“You have already taken a risk.” Nadine dropped her teaspoon onto the saucer. “The moment you went public with the news, you opened yourself up to conjecture. People magazine has already begun to speculate about the mother’s identity—in the last issue I saw a list of the top ten contenders.”
Sloane waved his hand. “I don’t care about idle gossip.” He hesitated, his dark gaze falling on the unusual table centerpiece, a sterling silver sculpture consisting of six concentric moveable rings. He idly stroked the largest ring. “Have you ever considered that relationships are like circles within circles?” He cocked an eyebrow in her direction. “The world, Ms. Harrington, is like this outer circle. Let people talk; I don’t care. The people I care about”—his finger moved over the rings until it caressed the inner circle—“are here, safe and secure.”
“If I am to move from an outer ring to an inner one”—Nadine brought her own hand to the sculpture and pointedly let her finger travel from the largest ring to the smallest—“we should begin with you calling me Nadine. Unless you want to advertise the fact that we are business associates, it would be better if we are on a first-name basis.”
His smile brought an immediate softening to his features. “A good idea, Nadine. And in keeping with your suggestion, I will invite you to an inner circle. The world knows that I have hired a surrogate mother, but you will join the few who know her name. But”—the amused look abruptly left his eyes—“no one else must know who this woman is. You must not tell your people why she is under investigation, and you must never breach our confidentiality agreement. Only four people can know her identity: Dr. Braun, my assistant, myself, and you.”
“You’ve miscounted.” Nadine lifted a brow. “You forgot to include the woman herself.”
Inclining his head in a distracted nod, Sloane returned her smile. “Of course. Five.”
Nadine leaned back and mentally ran through a list of basic considerations. “You have the proper documents, of course. She signed a surrogacy agreement, the pregnancy has been monitored by a doctor—”
“Certainly, but paperwork is a weak weapon against a mother’s tears.”
Sloane’s eyes flashed as his hand fell upon the table with a dull thump.
“I’ve seen how the courts favor birth mothers, so I don’t want to give this woman a chance to grow attached to the child. I want physical custody from the moment of birth. I want it known from the beginning that the child is mine.”
Nadine looked away as her heart rate quickened. Sloane couldn’t know everything about her past, could he? Surely he would never have contacted her agency if he knew she had lost a son on a courtroom battlefield. She sipped her coffee, burying her expression in her coffee cup, until she was certain her eyes were as veiled as the pain in her heart. “Not all courts favor birth mothers,” she said, her voice flat.
“True.” Sloane’s eyes warmed slightly, and the hint of a sympathetic smile betrayed his knowledge of her thoughts. “Let me put you at ease, Nadine. I know about your divorce and your ex-husband’s charges against you. And I am certain they were false.”
Were they? Nadine lowered her gaze lest Sloane look into her eyes and read the secrets there. He had discovered the facts, but he wouldn’t have had to dig far. Her divorce was a matter of public record, the judge’s ruling available at the Washington courthouse for a photocopying charge of $2.00 per page. She was an unfit mother, the court had declared, unable to properly nurture a child. The judge had believed every story her ex-husband told him.
And she had lost her son.
She lifted her chin and stared at the man who seemed intent upon resurrecting her pain. “I am surprised you would call me, Mr. Sloane, knowing what you do about my past. How do you know I won’t feel compassion for this woman?”
“I know you were an alcoholic, but you’ve been sober five years.” Sloane’s brown eyes darkened as he held her gaze. “I know you are a chain smoker, you walk three miles every morning, and you have an aversion to red meat. You grew up in Missouri, you took speech lessons to rid yourself of a midwestern twang, and you keep a one-hundred-dollar bill, the first you ever earned, taped to the back of a picture hanging on your office wall.” A bright mockery invaded his stare. “Need I go on?”
She shook her head. “Someone has been thorough. If you’re capable of finding out so much, why do you need me?”
Sloane smiled. “That was nothing, a mere collection of details Lemuel pulled from a talkative receptionist in your office. I need more than details.” He leaned forward and spoke with a delicate ferocity that underlined his words. “I am the one who initiated this child’s birth. I provided the genetic material that gave him life. I have dreamed of him and yearned for him, and I can give him every advantage.”
“This woman might love the child too.”
“But he will be better off with me—just as your son is better off with your ex-husband.” Sloane’s sharp smile softened. “Lemuel also learned that you have not attempted to see your son in six years. I have to believe you know what is best for him—and I admire all you have sacrificed for his benefit.”
Exhaling slowly, Nadine studied the edge of her coffee cup. Sloane was thorough; she’d grant him that. His wily assistant had done far more than sit in the two hours she kept him waiting, but he had not been able to plumb the depths of her heart. No one knew the secrets residing there.
She shifted her gaze to the window. The afternoon seemed to sleep under a clouded molasses-colored sky; it was a lousy day for flying. She might as well take the case and nose around Charlottesville for a few hours. Sloane was a high-powered mover with high-voltage friends; some people would take the job for nothing. In a month, after she’d been well paid, she might receive a furtive phone call from Donald Trump or Julia Roberts or some other celebrity parent in need. Best of all, Sloane had already set a new precedent in her fee schedule—twenty-five thousand for a lunch conference wasn’t exactly peanuts.
Turning toward Sloane, she assumed all the professionalism she could muster. “Give me the background.”
Sloane lifted his coffee cup. “I salute you, Nadine. You will not regret this decision.” He took a sip, then leaned back and clasped his hands on his knee. “I will give you copies of all the paperwork I have, including documents from the lab and affidavits signed by Dr. Helmut Braun, the supervising geneticist. I am not expecting trouble, but I want to be prepared if something goes amiss.”
Nadine pulled a notepad from her briefcase. “What can you tell me about the surrogate?”
Sloane tugged on the knot of his tie. “Her name is Lara Michelle Godfrey; birth date, October 14, 1970. A widow. Lives at 3948 Maple Leaf Court. Husband was Michael James Godfrey; eighteen months ago he died from bone cancer. No children prior to this pregnancy. She is a physician’s assistant at the Women’s Medical Clinic affiliated with the University of Virginia Medical College. Her social security number is on the paperwork from Dr. Braun’s lab.”
Nadine jotted down the particulars. “Anything else?”
“You tell me.”
She snorted softly. “Have your assistant assemble a file with the pertinent documents. And if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to take a hotel room and spend a few hours getting to know our subject. I should be able to return to Washington tomorrow, where we’ll do the background search.”
Sloane watched her with shrewdness. “How will you proceed?”
“To begin, I’ll have my office track her Social Security number and pull her credit report. Simple Internet searches can bring up all sorts of organizational memberships, news items, and the like.” Nadine slipped her notepad and pen back into her briefcase. “There are other avenues, not entirely legal but extremely effective, that will tell us anything else we want to know—her credit balances, employment history, unusual bank deposits, that sort of thing. By this time tomorrow, the guys in my office will know more about that lady than her own mother—but they won’t know about her connection to you, of course. We do background checks all the time; this one will be like a hundred others.”
“Lemuel could do most of those things. What will you do that he can’t?”
Nadine lifted the napkin from her lap and placed it on the table. “If you can have your assistant provide me with a car, I think I’ll visit the Women’s Medical Clinic.”
Sloane’s expression tightened. “As an investigator?”
Her mouth twisted. “As a patient.”
As he lifted his coffee cup, Sloane’s smile matched her own. “To your success, Nadine—and to the hope that we won’t need your hours of preparation.”
Nadine lifted her own cup and touched it to Sloane’s. “To your son,” she countered. “Life, joy, and happiness to you both.”
From the back of the limo Sloane provided, Nadine pulled out her cell phone, activated the scrambling program that prevented eavesdropping, called her office. After telling her secretary that she wouldn’t be back for the rest of the day, she asked to be put through to Joe Costello.
“Joe”—she smiled when the connection was made—“I need you to come down here to Charlottesville.”
“Charlotte-who?”
“Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s a lovely town; you’ll like it. Anyway, we’ve a subject here who will require the works. Devices in the house, maybe one or two outside in the shrubs, and in her car—I’ll fax you the license number. Do the usual routine—weeklong surveillance, note arrival and departure times, and configure any likely escape routes.”
“Whadda we got this time? An escaped felon?”
“Nothing so spectacular. Just write up the usual and put it in a file, okay? Pack plenty; you’ll be here at least a week. But the scenery’s gorgeous, and I promise you’ll be home for Christmas.”
She heard an exasperated sigh, then, “Okay, Nadine. I’m packin’.”
“And Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“Find out who worked the reception desk this morning.”
“Cecelia’s been out front all day. I just talked to her about an hour ago.”
“Fine.” Nadine ran her hand over her hair and began to yank out the hairpins that held her smooth chignon in place. “Tell her she’s fired.”