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He clearly remembered feeling anxious as his hand flew over the paper, working out how much he could charge, how many sketches he needed to do to cover the latest unexpected expense; a kid struggling to gather rent money. Eventually he managed to control the anxiety, the burning resentment, and he’d learned to do that by detaching. From things, from the need for support and affirmation and, eventually, from people. Sage was the only person who’d ever threatened his control, who tempted him to edge closer, to climb into her head and let her climb into his. He couldn’t do that, wouldn’t allow himself to open up again.
And her being such a temptation was exactly why he’d allowed her to walk away from him years ago, why he’d let her slip through his fingers. It had been self-preservation in action.
He’d been an adult all his life, had dealt with situations no child should have to, had raised his sister as best he could. He wasn’t scared of much but, God, Sage having a baby terrified him. Tyce linked his arms around his bent knees, as fear, hot and acidic, bubbled in a space just under his heart. And, like it or not, he and Sage were now joined together in an age-old way, through the mingling of their DNA. No matter how Tyce looked at it, as the mother of his child, Sage would be a permanent fixture in his life. Sage was also the only person who’d ever come close to cracking his armor and that meant that she was desperately dangerous.
He didn’t like it but the situation couldn’t be changed and all he could do was manage the process. How to do that? Tyce stood up and walked over to his desk in the corner of the studio, pulling out his battered office chair and dropping into it. First things first... Since he was going to be connected to the Ballantyne family for a long time to come, he had to come clean. About everything. First to Sage, then to her brothers.
And yeah, that was going to be as much fun as running around outside, naked, on a winter’s night in Siberia. But it couldn’t be avoided and it had to be done, and soon.
* * *
Sage, resentful that she’d been pulled away from her workbench to attend a meeting at Ballantyne International headquarters, stepped out of the elevator and immediately turned left, waving to the staff working behind the glass walls that were a feature of the Ballantyne corporate offices. Sage deeply appreciated the people who worked for their company, each one an essential cog to keep the massive organization running smoothly. She knew enough about business to contribute to the partners’ meetings but she trusted her brothers to run the company, just as they trusted her to translate their rich clients’ vague desires for “something special” into works of gemstone art.
But occasionally, as a full partner of Ballantyne International, she was expected to attend the meetings Linc called. She’d reluctantly shrug out of her work clothes—comfortable jeans and loose tops—and change into something more businesslike; today’s outfit was a red-and-pink geometric top and plain black wool pants worn over two-inch-heeled boots. Her makeup consisted of a swipe of nude lipstick and she’d pulled her hair into a long braid.
She had the jewelry-designer-to-Ballantyne-partner switch down to a fine art.
At the end of the hallway, Sage pushed open the glass door to Amy’s office, thankful to see the PA Linc and Beck shared at her desk, laconically typing on her computer. The walls to the offices on either side of Amy’s desk were opaque and Sage couldn’t tell whether Linc and Beck were in their respective offices or not.
“Why is your phone off?” Amy demanded, looking at her over the frames of her trendy glasses. “FYI, smoke signals are notoriously unreliable these days.”
Knowing that underneath Amy’s glossy and sarcastic shell was a gooey center, Sage leaned across her desk to drop a kiss on her cheek. “Sorry I worried you.”
“I nearly came to your place myself. I hate it when you don’t answer your phone.” Amy pushed her chair away from her desk, her eyes brightening. “So, what do you think about Linc and Tate’s engagement? Isn’t it fabulous?”
Sure, her life was in turmoil but Sage was genuinely happy for her brothers. Linc and Tate aside, there was more good news: Piper and Jaeger were expecting twin boys, Tate was going to adopt Linc’s son, Shaw, and Linc was going to adopt Ellie, Tate’s ward and niece. Beckett was going to raise Cady’s still-baking baby as his own. Sage felt no surprise at Beckett’s generous offer; in the Ballantyne family blood was a nebulous concept.
Love...love always trumped DNA.
“Are you okay? You seem anxious and stressed.”
As she always did, Sage shook her head and, wanting to distract Amy, ran her finger over the open face of a rose, bending down to inhale the subtle scent. “A gift from Jules?” Sage asked, thinking of Julie, Amy’s soon-to-be wife.
Amy smiled softly. “Yeah. She’s better at romance than I am.”
Between her brothers and Amy, she was the only one with no interest in the concept. Besides, she had far more pressing problems than romance—or the lack of it in her life—she was pregnant and only Tyce knew. And, speaking of her baby’s daddy, she couldn’t keep ignoring his calls and messages. They’d have to talk sometime soon...
When their baby was old enough for college?
Sage pulled a face at her silliness. She’d spent two weeks with her head in the sand; she couldn’t keep it there much longer. When this meeting was over she’d invite Tyce to her apartment for a chat. No, not her apartment, that was too intimate a space, too revealing. And her bed was up a short flight of stairs, above her sitting area. She’d spend the entire time looking at his mouth and hoping that he’d put her out of her misery and kiss her. His mouth had always been her downfall; their lips would touch and she’d immediately feel he was stripping her soul of all its barriers.
The fantasy was both wildly exciting and intensely dangerous and that was why she should keep the man out of her private spaces—her apartment, her body, her heart—and meet him in a public venue.
After they’d thrashed out where they stood, what they wanted, what their expectations were, she’d tell her brothers and the rest of the family about the pregnancy.
It was a plan with a hundred holes in it but it was, at least, a plan.
Amy looked at the massive clock on the wall behind Sage. “You need to move or else you’re going to be late for your meeting.”
“What’s this meeting about, by the way?”
“I don’t know.” Amy frowned, looking displeased. She loathed being outside the loop. “I know nothing except that the meeting is in Connor’s boardroom.”
Sage turned around slowly, her eyes wide. Connor’s boardroom was a little-known boardroom on the top floor of the Ballantyne building. It was only accessible by an elevator within the iconic jewelry store, Ballantyne’s on Fifth, on the ground floor of this building or by a nondescript steel door at the back of the building. The room was used for very high-profile clients who demanded anonymity, buyers and sellers of gems who demanded that their movements not be brought to public attention. Or any attention at all.
Sage frowned, realizing that she had to head downstairs, enter the store and then use the elevator. It was a pain in her ass and she was guaranteed to be late.
“Dammit.”
Waving a quick goodbye at Amy, Sage headed back to the private elevator that would take her directly into the back rooms of Ballantyne’s on Fifth. As she stepped into the hallway, Sage tossed a look over her shoulder and saw Amy standing behind her desk, still looking worried. Worried and hurt. It was an expression she’d seen on many faces over the years and she felt the familiar stab of guilt-slicked pain.
Amy hated that Sage kept her arm’s length but it wasn’t personal, she kept everyone there, except, possibly, Linc. At the age of six she’d experienced a double whammy, the deaths of both her parents. So, really, was it any surprise that her biggest fear was that she’d lose anyone she loved, that she would be left alone? Her rationale at six still made sense to her: the more distance she kept between her and the ones she loved, the less it would hurt when they went away.
Sage fully accepted that life was a series of changes, that people came and went and that life required a series of emotional shifts. Loved ones, sadly, died. Friends moved away. Relationships broke up. They all came with their own measure of pain but Sage was very sure that she never wanted to be left behind again and it was easier to walk away than stand still and endure the emotional fallout.
Sage hauled in a deep breath. Her childhood had shaped who she was today. She looked after, as much as she could, the relationships she couldn’t walk away from—her brothers, their partners and Amy—but she didn’t actively seek new people to add to the small circle of people she loved to distraction. She dated casually, not allowing herself to fall in love. If she did find herself someone she liked, really, really liked, she never allowed the relationship to dip beneath the surface because she could never be sure of who would stay or who would go so she made it easy and pushed them all away. Somewhere between her sixth and seventh birthday she’d realized that it was easier to retreat from people and situations than to give them a chance.
Pushing people away, creating distance, it was her thing.
Tyce was the easiest and most difficult person she’d ever walked away from. Easy because she knew that he didn’t want anything serious from her, difficult because she’d been so very close to throwing her innate caution and self-preservation to the wind. He’d tempted her to try, to see what the hype about relationships and commitment was all about, to take a risk. Already teetering, if Tyce had given her the smallest sliver of encouragement, she might have toppled into love. But he hadn’t and she did what she did best; she’d walked away.
And he’d let her.
Sage shook her head, annoyed with her thoughts. She was focusing on the past and she wasn’t going in that direction. Tyce might be the father of her child and she might be crazy, fiercely attracted to him but, baby or not, she intended to keep him on the periphery of her life.
She did, however, have to find another way to interact with him because—she glanced down at the screen of her cell phone showing the number of calls she’d missed from Tyce—he wasn’t going away.
Sage stepped out of the elevator into the back room of the original Ballantyne jewelry store and smiled at an employee who was on her way to the break room. Stepping across the hallway, she punched in the code to access the private elevator that would take her up to the secret room on the top floor of the building, adjacent to rooms holding the safes and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of precious gems.
Sage bit her bottom lip, resigning herself to the inevitable. When this secretive meeting was over, she’d call Tyce and set up a time to meet, to discuss how involved he wanted to be in the baby’s life, how they were going to deal with each other when the baby arrived. She would be cool, calm and collected. She wouldn’t lose her temper or slap or kiss him.
Sage stepped into the small boardroom. Her stomach immediately rebelled at the smell of coffee rolling toward her and she frantically looked around for a trash can or a receptacle in case her morning sickness turned nasty.
A hand on her back steadied her. Sage slowly lifted her eyes to look into that familiar face, the high cheekbones, the stubble covering his strong jaw. Hard, black eyes. “You okay?” Tyce asked her, holding her biceps in a firm grip. He’d catch her if she fell, Sage thought, relieved. If her knees gave way she wouldn’t hit the floor.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, wondering if she’d dropped down Alice’s rabbit hole.
An indefinable emotion flashed in Tyce’s eyes. “Now that’s a long story. Take a seat and we’ll get into it.”
Four (#u00aef943-b608-54cb-a0d0-81933dccd12a)
Tyce guided Sage to a chair and stepped away from the table, deliberately walking over to the far side of the room and leaning his shoulder into the wall, crossing his feet at the ankle. It was an insolent pose, a deliberate maneuver to keep the Ballantyne men off-balance. Tyce had deliberately dressed down for this meeting; he wore faded, paint-splattered jeans over flat-heeled boots and a clean black button-down shirt over a black T-shirt, cuffs rolled back. Linc and Beck were dressed in designer suits; Jaeger was a little less formal in suit pants and a pale cream sweater.
Sage, well, Sage looked stunning in the clashing colors of pink and red, most of her hair in a messy knot on top of her head, tendrils framing her face and falling down the back of her neck. She was innately stylish, yet people assumed it took her hours to look so perfectly put-together, but he’d seen Sage on the move; she could shove her hair up in thirty seconds, could dress in another minute. Sage wasn’t one for spending hours in front of a mirror.
Tyce looked at her face and frowned at the blue stripes under her eyes, at the pallor in her skin. She looked like she’d dropped weight and it was weight she could ill afford. She kept sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, darting anxious looks at his face. Tyce, deliberately, kept his expression blank, his face a mask. She could’ve avoided this meeting, he reminded himself; she could’ve taken one of his many calls; they could’ve done this differently. But, after trying to reach her for two weeks, her refusal to see him or talk to him limited his options so he contacted Linc and convinced him that a meeting would be beneficial to all parties.
Tyce watched as Linc stepped forward and placed both his hands on Sage’s shoulders, his gentle squeeze conveying his support. Jaeger and Beck flanked Sage on either side, arms folded and jaws tense. Her brothers were very protective of their sister and he hoped that this conversation wouldn’t turn physical but who the hell knew? When you were dealing with family and money and business, anything could happen.
“Since you asked for this meeting, Latimore, would you like to get the party started?” Linc asked, his voice as cold as a subzero fridge.
Tyce nodded, straightened and walked to the table, pulling out a chair at the head, another deliberate gesture. It was a silent screw you to their pecking order, telling Linc and his brothers that he wasn’t going to neatly slot into their order of command.
Tyce rested his forearms on the table. He turned his head to look at Sage and wished that they were alone, that he could kiss her luscious mouth, trace the fine line of her jaw, kiss his way down her long neck to her shoulders. Peel her clothes from her body...
Tyce sighed. He was imagining Sage naked because, yeah, that was helpful. He ran his hand across his face and caught Sage’s eye.
“This could’ve gone differently, Sage. If you had taken my calls, answered my emails, had a goddamn conversation with me, I wouldn’t have had to do it like this.”
Ignoring her frown, Tyce reached across the table and pulled his folder toward him. He flipped open the cover and withdrew a sheaf of papers and tossed them in Linc’s general direction. “Share certificates showing that Lach-Ty owns around fifteen percent of Ballantyne’s.”
Four backs straightened, four jaws tensed. Linc picked up the share certificates, examined them and carefully placed them facedown on the table. “Would you care to explain,” he asked in a dangerous-as-hell voice, “why you own fifteen percent of our company?”
Sure, that was why he was here, after all. “Technically, I don’t own the shares. I just paid for them.”
Linc gripped the table, his hands and knuckles white. “Then who does own the shares and why the hell did you pay for them?”
“My sister owns those shares because I thought it was right that she owned a percentage of the company her father left to you.” Tyce hesitated and thought that he might as well get it all out there so that they could move forward from a basis of truth. “I thought that, since your sister is carrying my baby, it was time to lay my cards on the table.”
And that, Tyce thought, his eyes moving from one shocked Ballantyne to another, was how you dropped a bombshell.
Shock, horror, surprise, anger...all the emotions he expected were in their faces, coating their questions, their shouted demands for more information. Tyce ignored them and kept his gaze focused on Sage, who stared at him with hellfire in her eyes.
She half stood, slapped her palms on the table and leaned toward him. “How dare you tell them without my permission?”
Tyce held her gaze and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Because if I left it up to you, then you’d be ready to go into labor and you’d still be hemming and hawing about how to tell them, what to tell and whether you should.”
“You had no right—”
Tyce pointed at her stomach. “That’s my child in there too and, might I remind you, if you’d agreed to meet with me instead of ignoring me, then we could’ve resolved this and more.”
“More? What are you talking about?” Sage demanded, her voice vibrating with fear and concern.
Linc placed a hand on Sage’s shoulder and urged her back into the chair. “He’s talking about the shares and alluding to Connor having a daughter.”
“What? Connor never had any children,” Sage emphatically stated. “That’s crazy!”
“You’re pregnant?” Jaeger yelled.
“Everyone shut up!” Linc ordered and looked at Sage. “Let’s finish with Latimore first. Then he can get out of our hair and we can talk about your baby,” Linc added in his CEO-everyone-must-listen-to-me voice. Yeah, well, Tyce didn’t have to.
“Your optimism is amusing, Linc,” Tyce drawled. “It’s my baby too and, sorry to disappoint you, but I’m going to be around for a hell of a long time.”
“No, you’re not,” Sage stated.
“Oh, honey, I so am. But we’ll discuss that later,” Tyce said, his voice quiet but holding no trace of doubt.
“Why would you think that your sister is Connor’s daughter?” Linc asked, his jaw rock tight with annoyance.
“I don’t think she is Connor’s daughter, I know she is,” Tyce replied. Tyce saw that they were going to argue and lifted his hand. “Look, let me start at the beginning and I’ll talk you through it.”
Where to start? As he said, at the beginning. Well, at Lachlyn’s beginning, not his. They didn’t need to know about his childhood, about those dark and dismal years before, and after, Lachlyn came along. As quickly and concisely as he could, Tyce recounted the facts. His mom had worked as a night cleaner at Ballantyne International, in this very building—something he had no reason to feel ashamed of; it was honest work and if the Ballantynes were too snobby to understand that, to hell with them—and, because Connor worked long hours, they struck up a friendship. His mom and stepdad separated, she and Connor started an affair and she became pregnant.
“My mom knew that she had no future with Connor so she went back to my stepfather hoping that he’d raise Lachlyn as his.”
His stepdad, originally from Jamaica, took one look at Lachlyn, a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby, and lost his temper. Tyce took his disappearance that same day as a firm no on the raising-and-supporting-Lachlyn question. Those months following his stepfather’s disappearance had been, by far, the worst of his life. His mom sunk into what he now knew to be postpartum depression, made a hundred times worse by her normal, run-of-the-mill depression. Looking after the baby had been a struggle for her. She hadn’t had any energy left over for a confused eight-year-old boy.
“Did your mother ever tell Connor that he had a daughter?” Beck asked, his voice laced with skepticism.
“No,” Tyce snapped back, frustrated. “Since Lachlyn’s birth certificate states that my stepdad is her father, she didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. She assumed that Connor would dismiss her claims.”
“Which is exactly what we are going to do,” Linc told him, his blue eyes hard.
Linc reacted exactly as he expected him to so Tyce wasn’t particularly surprised. “You can, but it won’t make any difference to my plans.”
Tyce ran his hand around his neck, hoping to rub away the headache at the base of his skull. He darted a look at Sage and saw that her face was even whiter than before and her big, endlessly blue eyes were dark with pain and confusion. She looked like he’d punched her in the gut. The fight immediately went out of Tyce and he moved his hand across the table to cover hers. He desperately wanted to scoop her up, soothe away her pain, assure her that everything would be okay.
But Tyce, more than most, knew that life had a nebulous concept of fairness and had a shoddy record at doling out good luck.
Sage snatched her hand out from under his, as if he were contagious with some flesh-eating disease. She folded her arms against her chest and glared at him. He couldn’t help his smile.
“You should know that your prissy, ‘I’m a princess and you’re a peasant’ look turns me on.”
His comment also had the added bonus of pissing her brothers off. Score.
Sage lifted her hand, her lips thinning. “This is business so let’s keep it to that, okay? You and I have nothing to say to each other.”
Oh, they so did. “We have a great deal to say to one another and we will,” Tyce promised her, lowering his voice.
“In your dreams, hotshot,” Sage retorted, fire in her eyes.
Tyce reached across the table and pushed a curl out of her eyes with the tip of his finger. “You can fight this, kick and claw and scratch, but you and me, and that kid, we’re going to come to an understanding, Sage. I’m not crazy about this arrangement, neither are you, but we’re going to have to deal. I’m not going anywhere. Start getting used to the idea.”
Because he so badly wanted to frame her face with his hands, to lower his mouth to cover hers—God, it had been so long since he’d held her, tasted her, feasted on her—Tyce stood up and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Feeling wiped, he blew out a breath before locking eyes with Linc again. It was time to get this done.
“I’ve purchased enough shares to earn a seat on the Ballantyne board. I’m going to take that seat, I will oppose every decision and I will vote against every motion you make unless you actively try to establish whether Lachlyn is Connor’s child or not. Do not underestimate how much trouble I can cause. I’ll undermine your position and I’ll actively campaign to have you removed as CEO.”
Linc’s face paled at the threat. But because he was a deal maker and a strategist, Linc then asked the question he was expecting. “So if Lachlyn is Connor’s daughter, how much do you want?”
These rich people, they always thought it came down to money. “I don’t want any of your money,” Tyce replied, enjoying the surprised shock on their faces. “If the DNA results come back saying that Lachlyn is not Connor’s daughter, then I will sell the shares.”
“What’s the catch?” Beck demanded.
“If Lachlyn is Connor’s daughter, then I’d like you to give her a chance...to get to know you, to become part of your family. She missed out on that, having a family.”
So had he but that didn’t matter. Lachlyn was the one who’d spent her childhood and teenage years in a dismal house permeated with the sadness of a perpetually depressed mother and a too tense, uncommunicative brother. She deserved the chance of being part of a close, happy family. And nobody, apparently, did family better than the Ballantynes.
Tyce held the back of a chair, his hands white against the black leather. He didn’t drop his eyes from Linc’s face, didn’t break the contact. Linc, confusion all over his face, frowned. “I don’t understand any of this. You spent tens of millions buying those shares but all you want is for us to give your sister a chance to get to know us?”
