The
Butler's Daughter Excerpt
Chapter One
They
weren’t going to make it to Severance tonight, Juliana Goodhew realized,
resigning herself to that fact as another heart-wrenching wail erupted from her
five-month-old charge who was strapped into the infant carrier in the back seat
of the SUV. Cort Collingwood’s cry fractured into a refrain of sharp, desolate
sobs that reverberated off the windows like steel balls.
Poor Cort was making it
clear he’d had enough of traveling for one day. They’d missed their morning
flight from Cleveland because he’d spent a restless, irritable night, and she’d
taken him to the doctor only to discover Cort had an ear infection. The pain
reliever she’d given him a few hours ago must have worn off.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so
sorry,” she crooned, trying to soothe him with her voice as she searched the
dark New York interstate for an exit and lodging for the night. “I was hoping
you’d sleep for most of the trip and before you knew it . . . you’d be in your
parents’ arms.”
Emotion gathered tight
in her throat at the thought of Lexi waiting anxiously for their arrival.
Spending one more sleepless night without her baby. Lexi hadn’t seen her son
since she’d tearfully handed him over to Juliana’s safekeeping when he was three
days old. “They’re so anxious to see you again, pumpkin. They love you so
much. But the reunion will have to wait until morning after we’ve both had a
rest.”
Cort snuffled as if he
completely agreed with her, then let out another wail that sounded like a
wounded tomcat. Juliana couldn’t see him, but she could hear him squirming in
the carrier, completely fed up with being confined.
Her fingers gripped the
steering wheel as she debated the risks of pulling over to the side of the road
to comfort him for a few minutes. It was almost midnight and the traffic along
the highway was sparse. She had a gun in the diaper bag that she knew how to
use. But still, she couldn’t take a chance with Cort’s safety. Not after what
had happened to the Collingwood’s first baby.
Anger and grief abraded
her heart like bits of broken glass ground into an open wound. In the blink of
an eye, Ross and Lexi Collingwood’s one-day-old daughter, Riana, had been
abducted from the hospital nursery. The heir to one of America’s wealthiest
families had gone missing. There had been one aborted ransom demand. Then
nothing. Twenty-eight months later there were still no clues in Riana’s
abduction.
And poor Lexi blamed
herself. Juliana had taken Lexi’s request to see Cort as a sign of hope that
she was finally ready to go on with her life after the tragedy. Surely after
holding her delightful son in her arms--and experiencing just one of his bubbly
sunshine smiles--she’d know that Cort’s rightful place was with his parents and
not with the butler’s daughter.
“You are going to love
your mommy, Cort,” she babbled reassuringly, still scouring the roadway for a
hotel. “She’s so beautiful--she has a smile that begins with a starry twinkle
in her eyes. It infects everyone she meets with an uncontrollable urge to smile
back at her. Just like yours, pumpkin. And unlike some of the well-to-dos who
shall remain nameless because I don’t tell tales about what I see behind closed
doors, she’s kind and sincere all the time, not just when she’s in public.
She’s generous, too.”
Despite her distress
over Cort’s cries, Juliana’s heart swelled with gratitude for Cort’s mother.
She knew full well it was Lexi’s glowing praise of her design and organizational
skills that had resulted in her pick of a dozen job offers from wedding
consulting firms across the country. A car hurtled past her on the left,
blowing its horn, making Juliana realize she was driving well below the posted
speed limit.
She sped up. Keeping
her left hand on the steering wheel, Juliana stretched her other arm into the
back seat and gently stroked Cort’s downy head with her fingers. He was hot and
sticky, poor darling. She kept talking to him in an effort to soothe him. “Do
you remember me telling you how your parents met at a hospital charity ball for
sick children, pumpkin? Your mommy worked as a social worker for the hospital.
Your father flirted with her--shamelessly, I might add. She didn’t know who he
was, but she thought he was too handsome and too arrogant for his own good. He
asked her out, but she told him she wouldn’t even consider going out with him
unless he donated one whole week’s salary to the hospital because a man who
didn’t care about sick children wasn’t a man she cared to spend five minutes of
conversation with, much less an evening. Oh, I’d have loved to have seen your
father’s face when she said that! Would you believe your father took your
mother’s hand, pulled her to the stage of the ballroom and made a pledge for 1.2
million dollars?”
Cort let out a
discontented roar.
The corners of
Juliana’s mouth tilted. “You think he should have offered more, do you? Spoken
just like a Collingwood.” Juliana steadied her grip on the steering wheel as a
gust of wind from a passing eighteen-wheeler buffeted the SUV. “They don’t call
your daddy the baron of Wall Street for nothing. He certainly proved he was
smart enough to convince your mother to marry him--and I got to help your mommy
plan their wedding.”
Juliana’s gaze
flickered toward the star-studded sky, remembering the music and the twinkling
lights and the thousands of flowers for that spectacular December night. She’d never seen two people more in love. Lexi had looked like a princess in an
exquisite silk gown with diamonds sparkling in her chestnut hair. Juliana had
planned every detail of the wedding and every detail had been perfect. Even her
father had said so.
“That’s how I
discovered I wanted to be a wedding planner. It’s sort of like being a fairy
godmother to brides. They get to be Cinderella with their own prince.” Juliana
sighed softly and stroked Cort’s head, missing the glamour and the romance of
her job. She even missed the thousand and one details that had required her
constant attention. While she hoped she’d be returning to that life after this
weekend a part of her ached at the thought of being separated from Cort.
After five months
together, she knew each of her tiny charge’s smiles and cries. She knew the
plump rounded curves of his cheeks and limbs and the delicious scents of his
skin and his hair. Her heart folded into a tight contented box whenever she
held him. Saying goodbye was not going to be easy.
“But for the moment,
pumpkin,” she mused as Cort continued to whimper and grumble like a radio with
static, “I’m your fairy godmother--until your mommy comes to her senses
and realizes she can’t hide your birth from the rest of the world.”
To her relief, Juliana
rounded a dark curve and the headlights flashed on an accommodations sign for
the next exit. “It won’t be much longer now.” She gave Cort’s head one last
caress and put both hands on the steering wheel.
Within fifteen minutes,
she’d managed to secure a motel room and juggle the baby, his diaper bag, her
purse and her carry-on bag up to the second-floor room. She gave Cort another
dose of pain reliever, changed his diaper and snapped him into a miniature
Yankees baseball sleeper while a portable crib was brought up to the room. Then
she put a bottle to heat in the bottle warmer. Cuddling Cort against her, she
pulled the cell phone from the diaper bag to call her father.
“Juliana? It’s
practically midnight.” Her father’s voice was stiff with disapproval. “Where
are you?”
“Sorry, Papa. I thought
I could surprise the Collingwoods tonight, but Cort is fussing. His ears are
bothering him still. The doctor said it would be a good twenty-four hours
before the antibiotics took effect.” Juliana rocked from side to side as Cort
started to whimper, his fingers clinging to her cotton sweater. “We’ve just
checked into a motel about two hours from Severance. We’ll leave first thing in
the morning and arrive for breakfast. Cort usually wakes around six.”
“Well, then, I suppose
it can’t be helped.”
Juliana closed her eyes,
hearing the unspoken accusation that she’d failed him yet again echo in her
ears. Typically, her father viewed the baby’s ear infection and her failure to
arrive by the designated hour as a poor reflection on him. Would she ever stop
failing him? Probably not. Why did she even try?
“I need to go, Papa.
Cort needs his bot--” her words were drowned out by an explosive roaring
transmitted over the phone line. What on earth? “Papa! Are you there?
Answer me! What’s happening?”
Juliana strained to
hear as she pressed the receiver close to her ear, her heart thundering in her
chest, while her other arm clutched the baby. Oh, dear God. The phone line was
not dead. She could hear distinct crackling and popping sounds. Flames?
“Papa!” she shouted
into the receiver. “Can you hear me?”
To her relief she heard
her father’s voice, fading in and out, as if coming from the end of a tunnel.
“There’s been an explosion--a bomb. Take the baby, Juliana. Protect him with
your life. Operation Guardian. Promise me as a Goodhew that you’ll . . . .”
His voice faded, snatching away the rest of his words.
Horror gripped her. “I
promise--”
With a loud pop, the
line went dead. Juliana stared at the phone and started to shake. Operation
Guardian could only mean one thing. Ross and Lexi Collingwood were dead.
* * * * *
SICK WITH FEAR OVER the
safety of her father and the Collingwoods, Juliana called the police and
reported the explosion, then punched in the number she’d been asked to memorize
in the event of an emergency such as this.
“Yes.” The voice that
answered was curt and concise. One word, but totally male and in charge. She
knew instinctively that he was the enigmatic security consultant Ross
Collingwood had hired to head up the search for Riana. The man known only as
The Guardian.
Juliana had never met
him. But then, few people ever met The Guardian in the flesh or knew his real
name. His existence and the services he supplied were a closely guarded secret
of the world’s upper class.
“Operation Guardian,”
she replied numbly, the code word falling from her lips like a blunt instrument
onto a table. She gripped the phone tightly as tears seared her eyes.
Please God, this wasn’t
happening. Not to her father. Or Ross and Lexi. They couldn’t be dead.
Tremors wracked her
body in undulating waves of disbelief and grief. If not for Cort’s ear
infection, she and the baby would have been caught in the explosion, too!
A softly muttered curse
whispered over the line, the hint of raw emotion it conveyed so genuine it
snagged her heart like a hook, connecting her to him. “Tell me your name,” he
commanded.
The clear authority in
his tone evoked a comforting image of an indomitable muscle-hewn Marine
sergeant. Juliana caught the tiny precious foot of the child who lay on the bed
beside her. Cort’s golden gossamer eyebrows arched over his sooty blue eyes in
surprise as he gnawed on a teething ring of plastic keys. She swallowed hard
and glanced nervously over her shoulder toward the door, half expecting someone
to kick it open. Whatever fate had been dealt her charge’s parents, Cort was
not alone. Not while breath still remained in her body.
“My name is Juliana
Goodhew,” she said as calmly as she could.
“Juliana, I’m The
Guardian. Tell me what’s happened.”
Wanting to tear her
hair out with the fear that was expanding in her until she thought her skin
would burst, she told him about the secret rendezvous with the Collingwoods at a
rented home in the Adirondacks and the horrible explosion she’d heard a few
minutes ago when she’d called her father to inform him she and the baby would be
delayed until morning.
“My father believed it
was a bomb. He told me to call you. I called the police first to get them some
help . . . .” her voice broke.
After all her problems
with her father . . . was this how it was going to end? I’m sorry, Papa.
A sharp stab of guilt
lanced her side, torturing her with memories of a rainy autumn afternoon and a
gleaming banister--a forbidden and irresistible temptation to two young
children. The day that had changed their lives forever.
She fanned her fingers
over Cort’s plump belly, her heart melting at the snugly warmth of his compact
body and his gummy irresistible smile. Tears slipped down her cheeks, splashing
onto his sleeper. I won’t let the baby out of my sight, Papa. I promise.
The Guardian’s voice
penetrated her thoughts. “You did the right thing, Juliana. Your father is
wise to be cautious. Until we have more information confirming the cause of the
explosion, I’m going to implement measures to keep you and the baby safe. Where
are you now?”
“A motel in Utica.”
She gave him the name and room number.
“Stay inside, away from
the windows. Don’t go out to your car. I’ll catch a chopper and be with you in
an hour and a half, two hours tops. Did you call your father or the police from
the phone in the motel room?”
“No, I used my cell
phone.”
“Good. So only the
police know of your location.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell
them who the child is with you?”
Did he think she had
the IQ of an idiot? “Of course not,” she said shortly. “I told them I was the
butler’s daughter and I’d been talking to my father when the explosion
occurred.”
“Are you armed?”
The implication of his
question slid over her like the blade of a razor. He thought the danger was
real.
“Yes. Mr. Collingwood
insisted I be trained properly in how to use a gun.”
“Excellent. I’m on my way. Stay alert and
be
ready to move.” The line clicked off.
