Guardian Groom Read online

  Grant’s hand clamped tightly around the paper in his pocket. Cade was flying to Texas to find out why an oil company was going under; Zach was heading for California to get a handle on a film outfit. And he—he was going back to New York to—to—

  Jesus. It was ridiculous, but he was stuck with it. He took a deep breath.

  “I’ve got my own mess to deal with. It seems some old pal of Father’s named him guardian of his twelve-year-old kid.”

  “And?”

  “And,” he said through his teeth, “until she turns twenty-one, I seem to have inherited her.”

  He saw the smiles begin to curve across his brothers’ faces, saw even Kyra try, and fail, to maintain a neutral expression. But what choice was there? He was an attorney, he lived and practiced in New York. The girl lived there, too—it was no contest, he thought grimly. The child was his burden by default.

  His brothers were looking at each other, their smiles rapidly becoming grins, and he glowered at them.

  “You guys think this is funny? Listen, we can always swap jobs. I’ll take on Hollywood, or Dallas, and one of you can—”

  “No,” Zach said quickly, “no, that’s okay, old buddy. I’ll deal with Hollywood, Cade’ll handle Dallas.” His lips twitched. “And I bet you’re going to make one hell of a terrific baby-sitter.”

  Cade suppressed a snort of laughter. Grant swung toward him.

  “This—this is not funny,” he choked, and then, suddenly, the grim look left his face and he burst out laughing. “Hell,” he said, “I can’t believe it, either.”

  Laughing, the three men moved into a tight circle, clapped each other on the back, then joined right hands as they had when they were kids.

  “To the Deadeye Defenders,” Cade said.

  “To the Deadeyes,” Grant echoed, and they grinned happily at each other.

  Cade stepped back. “Time to get started.”

  Zach nodded. “Yeah. I’ll see you guys before I leave.”

  They both hurried from the room. Grant was following after them when Kyra caught his sleeve. “Grant?”

  He looked down at her and smiled. “Hey, princess, I almost forgot you were here!”

  Kyra gave a short, sharp laugh. “Isn’t that the truth!”

  “Well, what is it, sweetheart?”

  “I wonder…” She hesitated. “I was wondering how you feel about this place. Is it important to you?”

  At first, the question puzzled him, but then he understood. Kyra was worried that her brothers might feel cheated because their father had left the mansion solely to her. Grant put his arm around her shoulders.

  “This house will always be important to me,” he said, “with you living in it.”

  “I don’t mean that.” Her tone was impatient. “This isn’t about me, Grant, it’s about you. And Cade. And Zach. I need to know if you care about the house, and the grounds, and—”

  “I’m certain they feel as I do,” Grant said in a kindly voice. “This place makes you happy, and your happiness is all that matters to us.”

  Kyra wrenched free of his arm. “Dammit,” she said, her face flushed, “sometimes you all remind me of Father!”

  Grant drew back. “What in hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means—it means none of you listens. You hear what you want to hear, what you think you ought to hear, what—” Kyra blinked. “Sorry. I must be tired. It’s been a long week.” She smiled, reached up, and laid her hand against his chest. “I bet you’ll be a fine guardian for this girl.”

  He frowned. “I’ll do my duty, of course.”

  “But if she needs a friend…”

  Grant laughed. “I am not about to be a ‘friend’ to this child. I will pay her bills, see to it that her future is secure—those are the responsibilities of a guardian.”

  Kyra sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” She stood on her toes and pressed her lips to his cheek. “I’m sorry I jumped on you a few minutes ago, Grant. I love you. I love all my brothers—and I always will.”

  Grant hugged her. “And we love you, princess.” He kissed her forehead, then made his way past her. When he reached his room, he closed the door and let out a long sigh.

  Kyra was sweet and wonderful, and he’d have willingly given his life for her—but did she really think he’d play big brother to—what was her name? Crista, that was it. Crista Adams.

  One of his law partners had a daughter Crista’s age; from what Grant had seen, the poor guy was adrift in a sea of orthodontia, acne, and adolescent angst.

  But he wouldn’t face any of those problems. As Crista Adams’s guardian, he’d simply be responsible for approving her expenses and signing the checks to meet them. Now that he thought about it—although he’d be damned if he’d ever admit as much to Cade and Zach—he was getting off easy.

  Crista Adams’s guardian, hmm? He zipped shut his weekend case, picked it up, and walked out of the room.

  What could be simpler?

  CHAPTER TWO

  GRANT generally liked Mondays. They put a clean start to the week ahead, but somehow this one already had the feel of disaster.

  Why wouldn’t it? he thought, glaring at himself in the bathroom mirror as he shaved. He was about to meet the child who had become his unwanted responsibility, like it or not.

  What had seemed a minor inconvenience last week in Denver was looking more and more like a catastrophe waiting to happen. A little judicious checking of guardianship laws suggested that he’d have to do more than sign checks. He might have to offer advice. Even guidance.

  Grant’s mouth thinned as he rinsed off his razor. What he knew about children could fit in a pea pod with room left over. And he didn’t know a damned thing about Crista Adams.

  He had phoned Simon Adams’s attorney right away but Horace Blackburn was out of the country, his holiday guarded with almost religious fervor by an iron-willed secretary who’d agreed to set up this meeting on her boss’s first day back only after Grant’s growing exasperation had become evident.

  But she’d steadfastly refused to release the Adams file so that he could, at least, familiarize himself with the simple details of his ward’s life.

  Grant splashed some cologne on his face and strode from the bathroom. Was the child living in her uncle’s house with a governess or was she away at boarding school? Was she a snot-nosed brat or a wellbehaved young lady? Had she been traumatized by the loss of her uncle?

  Did she expect her new guardian to take her uncle’s place?

  Jaw set, Grant undid the towel knotted at his hips and tossed it aside. The child would simply have to realize that her entire situation had changed, and if she couldn’t cope with that change, she’d be in for a rough ride.

  At eight-thirty, just as he was about to leave, the telephone rang. It was his driver, calling to tell him that his car had a flat.

  “No problem,” Grant said. “I can grab a taxi.”

  But it had started to rain. Finding a cab was impossible at rush hour on a rainy Monday. With a muttered curse, Grant gave it up and sprinted for the nearest subway station.

  The platform was crowded and he paced its length with growing irritation. When a train finally came shrieking into the station, the crowd surged forward as if it were the last train anyone would ever see. Grant set his jaw and shouldered his way inside.

  By the time he emerged on Wall Street, his mood had gone from bad to grim. Finding that he had at least another three blocks to go in the rain without an umbrella did not improve it.

  “Dammit,” he snarled to no one in particular. He turned up the collar of his jacket, ducked his head against the rain, and hurried down the street.

  Crista was walking as fast as she could toward the building that housed Blackburn, Blackburn, and Katz but it wasn’t easy when the ridiculously high heels on her boots kept slipping on the slick pavement.

  She sighed, thinking how much better she’d feel if she were wearing her own clothes to this meeting. But the me
eting was at nine, and she had to be back in the Village to start work by eleven. There wasn’t any choice, except to wear this silly getup under her raincoat.

  The letter from her uncle’s attorney had arrived by registered mail on Saturday.

  Dear Miss Adams,

  Your presence is required at this office Monday morning promptly at nine regarding the provisions of your late uncle’s will.

  It was signed by Horace Blackburn, LL.B., J.D.

  Crista had frowned. What was this about provisions in Uncle Simon’s will? There wouldn’t be anything in the will that concerned her. Simon had made that clear when she’d moved out of his home.

  “You will not get one penny from me, young woman,” he’d said shrilly, wagging a bony finger in her direction. “I’m going to cut you off without a cent!”

  “I never wanted anything from you, Uncle,” she’d responded—nothing he’d wanted to give her, at any rate.

  So what could the estimable Horace Blackburn, LL.B., J.D., be talking about? Did some kind of legal mumbo jumbo require him to inform her that Simon had written her out of his will?

  Well, she’d thought as she dialed Blackburn’s office, he could just tell her that over the phone.

  A recorded voice had informed her that the offices were closed until Monday morning at nine.

  Crista had grimaced. She’d just have to wait until then to make the call…

  Maybe it was impulsiveness. Maybe it was stubborn pride and the determination not to be intimidated by anyone, traits that had always infuriated her uncle. But sometime between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening, she’d changed her mind.

  Crista had decided to keep the appointment.

  She’d met Horace Blackburn once when Simon had consulted him about transferring her from one boarding school to another. A prissy man with the same icy bearing as his client, Blackburn’s disapproval of her had been written all over his face.

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to smile sweetly at him and tell him where to get off after he’d read the words he undoubtedly hoped would bring tears to her eyes?

  The more she’d thought about it, the more she’d looked forward to the chance.

  But reality wasn’t measuring up to the fantasy, Crista thought glumly as she turned down Canal Street. Things had gone wrong from the minute she’d awakened this morning. She’d slept through the first jangling call of her alarm clock, and then the gray cat had managed to get himself stuck behind the refrigerator. By the time she’d finally dashed from the apartment, Crista had been running late.

  The bus had pulled out just as she’d reached the stop, and neither frantic shouting or jumping up and down had slowed it down or brought it back. So she’d caught the crosstown instead, intending to transfer to a downtown bus at Broadway, but somehow she’d miscalculated.

  Now she was walking the last four long blocks in the rain, wondering why on earth she’d ever thought a face-to-face confrontation with Horace Blackburn would be a good idea.

  She hunched deeper into the collar of her raincoat. The wind was picking up now, driving the rain before it. Her hair would be as tangled as a bird’s nest by the time she reached Blackburn’s office, and whatever rain-defeating abilities her thin coat once had were long gone. She didn’t even want to think about what the dampness seeping through it might be doing to her already snug T-shirt.

  Crista sighed as she stepped off the curb. She’d have been better off sticking to Plan A, she thought as she hurried across the intersection. She could have phoned Blackburn this morning and told him, in her best lockjawed, boarding-school accent, that she didn’t give a fig for whatever it was he had to tell her, that he could either make his little speech over the phone or he could—

  “Look out!”

  The warning came too late. Crista’s head came up just as the man barreled into her. Her right foot, already up on the curb, slid out from under her. She gave an outraged cry, windmilled her arms in a desperate attempt to keep her boots from bidding a fast farewell to the pavement, and went stumbling backward into the street just as a truck, horn blaring, came racing into the intersection.

  The man’s arms swept around her. “I’ve got you,” he said, swinging Crista off her feet and onto the pavement as the truck thundered past, drenching them both in a spray of water.

  They stood looking at each other in shocked silence and then Crista let out a long, shaky breath.

  “Ohmygod,” she whispered as she clung to the hard, broad shoulders of her rescuer.

  “Oh my God?” Her rescuer’s voice was deep and harsh and very angry. “Oh my God? Is that all you can say after you almost killed us both?”

  Crista blinked. His face, as harsh and as angry as his voice, was inches from hers; his eyes—some strange combination of blue and brown and green—were cold with fury.

  “Me?” she said. Her head lifted. “Me?” she repeated, her voice shooting up the scale in indignation. “I almost killed us both?” She glared back at him, shoved her drenched hair back from her eyes, and twisted free of his grasp. “You ran into me, remember?”

  “Where are you from, lady? Didn’t anybody tell you that you’re supposed to watch where you’re going in the big city?”

  “I was watching where I was going,” Crista said in her best New York fashion. “You were the one who was tearing along like a linebacker for the Jets.”

  The man’s eyes grew flinty. “Thank you for the apology. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get by.”

  “That makes two of us,” Crista said, her tone as nasty as his.

  She stepped to her right. The man stepped to his left. They glared at each other, then made the same moves in reverse. He shook his head, muttered something, then made a mock-chivalrous sweeping gesture with his arm.

  “Ladies first,” he said, his tone heavy with sarcasm.

  Crista sniffed. “Try keeping that in mind. It might save another woman from almost getting knocked down.”

  It was, she thought, a fair exit line—but as she started past him, her right ankle buckled. With a cry of alarm, she stumbled—and was caught in the man’s arms again.

  “What now?” he demanded.

  Crista’s brows drew together. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was fine until I put weight on my foot. But when I did, it just—”

  “Hell, I get it.” She gasped as his hands dug into her forearms. “What comes next? An ambulance ride to the nearest emergency room, where you suddenly develop an incurable headache and back pains?”

  “What are you talking about? I never said—”

  “I warn you, you’re wasting your time trying a scam like this on me. I’m an attorney, and—”

  “An attorney!” Crista twisted away from him and slapped her hands on her hips. “Of course,” she said, her lip curling, “I might have known.”

  “Spoils your little scheme, doesn’t it?” Grant smiled tightly. “Trust me, madam. There’s nothing you can try that I haven’t seen before.”

  No, he thought, with a catch of his breath, no, he had not seen a face like hers before.

  Her eyes were enormous, the color of violets. Her mouth was rosy and heart-shaped, centered between a small, slender nose and a feminine, yet determined, chin. Clusters of tiny silver bells swayed from a pair of delicate ears that were framed by a silky tumble of ebony hair in which raindrops glistened like tiny jewels.

  For a man who had seen everything, Grant was suddenly speechless.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Grant blinked. She was eyeing him narrowly, her face tilted at a questioning angle. The anger was still there but something else was there, too. Wariness? Suspicion?

  He sighed. Hell, she was right to look at him like that. Only a nut—or a man in a very bad moodwould go off the deep end the way he had.

  She’d run into him, or he’d run into her—who could tell? And what did it matter? The one indisputable fact was that their collision had been forceful. For all he knew, she damned well might h
ave twisted her ankle when she fell back off the curb.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been so—”

  “Unpleasant?” That determined chin shot forward. “Hostile? How about just plain nasty?”

  He tried a polite smile. “I was just heading into that building,” he said, and nodded toward an entryway on his right. “Why don’t we step inside the lobby? You can get off that foot and I’ll check to see if—”

  Her hand drove into his belly, hard enough to make the breath shoot from his lungs.

  “That’s the most pathetic come-on I’ve ever heard,” she snarled. “Next you’re going to ask me to come up to your office so you can examine me on your couch.”

  “Don’t be a fool. I simply meant—”

  “Oh, I know exactly what you meant.” Crista’s chin lifted. “First you knock me down, then you accuse me of faking an injury, and now you’re trying to—to—”

  “Listen, lady—”

  “I’m on my way to a meeting with my attorney this very minute. I swear, I’ll tell him to sue you for—for—”

  “The charge is stupidity, lady. First degree stupidity,” Grant said coldly. “Go on, limp your way to wherever it is you’re going. And good luck to the next poor chump you run into.”

  “The same to you,” Crista said, and flounced past him.

  She didn’t get very far. This time, she didn’t so much stumble as drop to her knees.

  “Oh,” she said in surprise.

  “Give me a break,” Grant said wearily, stooped, and swung her up into his arms.

  “Hey,” she said, “what are you doing?”

  Being a glutton for punishment, Grant thought as he carried her toward the building where Horace Blackburn’s office was located. Hell, he thought grimly, at least he was getting closer to that damned meeting.

  “You put me down!”

  She was beating her fists against his shoulder, but Grant ignored her. At some later point, he thought with bemused detachment, he’d probably laugh at all this, especially at how a woman who felt so soft and smelled so good could land such solid, uncompromising punches.