The Palace hotel stood on a corner of Main Street, its brick facade, verdigris-tinged copper trim and shining windows making a hell of a statement. He’d already been told by the hotel clerk that the place had been in business since 1870. It had had plenty of face-lifts over the years, of course, but still managed to hold onto its historic character, so that stepping into the hotel was like moving into a time warp.
He walked into the lobby, with its scarlet rugs spread out across gleaming wood floors. Cream-colored walls were decorated with paintings by local artists, celebrating the town’s mining history and the splendor of the mountains that encircled Swan Hollow on three sides. The lobby was wide and warm, with wood trim, a roaring fire in the stone hearth and dark red leather sofas and chairs sprinkled around the room, encouraging people to sit and enjoy themselves. He was greeted by muted conversations and the soft chime of an elevator bell as the car arrived. The quiet, soothing atmosphere did nothing to ease the roiling tension within him.
He avoided eye contact with everyone else as he walked past the check-in desk, a long, shining slab of oak that looked as if it had been standing in that spot since the hotel first opened. Wes took the elevator to the top floor, then walked down the hall to his suite. After letting himself in, he shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it onto the dark blue couch and walked across the room to the French doors. He threw them open, stepped out onto his balcony and let the icy wind slap some damn sense into him.
January in Colorado was freezing. Probably beautiful, too, if you didn’t have too much on your mind. There was snow everywhere and the pines looked like paintings, dripping with layers of snow that bowed their branches. People streamed up and down the sidewalks, but Wes ignored all that activity and lifted his gaze to the mountains beyond the town limits. Tall enough to scrape the sky, the tips of the mountains had low-hanging gray clouds hovering over them like fog.
Wes’s hands fisted around the black iron railing in front of him, and the bite of cold gave him a hard jolt. Maybe he needed it. God knew he needed something.
He had a daughter. There was no denying the truth even if he wanted to—which he didn’t. The little girl looked so much like him, anyone would see the resemblance. His child. His little girl.
His stomach twisted into knots as the enormity of this situation hit him. He huffed out a breath and watched the cloud of it dissipate in the cold air. That beautiful little girl was his. And she was deaf.
He should have known.
He should have been a part of all of this. He might have been able to do something—anything—to help. And even if he couldn’t have, it was his right to be a part of it. To do his share of worrying. But his daughter’s mother hadn’t bothered to clue him in.
As furious as he was with Isabelle, as stunned as he was at being faced with a daughter, he couldn’t deny it wasn’t only anger he’d felt when he was in that house.
“She looks even better now than she did five years ago,” he muttered. Isabelle had always had a great body, but now, since having a child, she was softer, rounder and damn near irresistible.
Instantly, her image appeared in his mind and the grip he had on the icy railing tightened until his knuckles went white. That long, blond hair, those eyes that were caught somewhere between blue and green, the mouth that could tempt a dead man. He hadn’t seen her in five years and his body was burning for her.
“Which just goes to prove,” he mumbled, “your brain’s not getting enough of the blood flow.”
He shivered as the wind slapped at him, and he finally gave up and walked back into his suite. With everything else going on, he didn’t need a case of pneumonia. Closing the doors behind him, he went to the fireplace and flipped a switch to turn on the gas-powered flames.
It was quiet. Too damn quiet. He stared at the fire for a minute or two, then dropped onto the couch, propping his boots up on the sturdy coffee table. Late afternoon sunlight came through the windows in a pale stream, the fire burned, and his brain just shut down. He needed to think, but how the hell could he when he was distracted by his own body’s reaction to the woman who’d lied to him since the moment he met her?
“Isabelle Gray.” How had she managed to get hired under a false name? Didn’t his damn personnel department do a better job of checking résumés than that? “And she’s rich,” he exclaimed to the empty room. “Why the hell was she working for me anyway?”
But the “rich” part probably explained how she’d gotten away with changing her name to get a job. She’d been able to pay for whatever she’d needed to adopt a different name. Closing his eyes, Wes remembered the slap of shock he’d felt when looking for Isabelle Gray online only to find Isabelle Graystone. The names were enough alike that the search engine had hooked onto her real identity. Seeing her picture, reading about who she really was had been yet another shock in a day already filled with them.
He had no explanation for any of this, and checking his watch, Wes saw that he had several hours before he could go back and demand she give him the answers he needed. What was he supposed to do until then?
He dragged his cell phone out of his pocket and turned it back on. He’d had it off during his visit to Belle’s house since he hadn’t needed yet another distraction. Now, the message light blinked crazily and he scrolled through the list of missed calls.
Starting at the top, he hit speed dial and waited while his assistant’s phone rang.
“Hi, boss,” Robin said.
“Yeah, you called. Anything new?” He got up and walked to the bar in the far corner of the room. He opened the fridge, saw the complimentary cheese plate and helped himself before grabbing a beer. Twisting off the cap, he took a long drink to wash the cheese down and gave Robin his attention.
“IT department reports they’re no closer to discovering who this Maverick is or even where he sent that email from.”
“I thought they were supposed to be the best,” he complained.
“Yeah, well, IT’s pretty impressed with Maverick,” she said wryly. “Seems he bounced his signal all over hell and back, so they’re having a time pinning it down.” She took a breath and said, “You already know that email account’s been closed, so the guys here say there isn’t much hope of running him to ground.”
Perfect. He had his own computer experts and they couldn’t give him a direction to focus the fury still clawing at his throat.
“What else?” Another swallow of beer as he plopped back onto the couch and stared at the flames dancing in the hearth.
“Personnel did a deeper check on the name you gave them, and turns out Isabelle Gray’s name is really Graystone. Her family’s got holdings in pretty much everything. She’s an heiress.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know that.”
“Oh. Well, that was anticlimactic. Okay. Moving on.” She forced cheer into her voice. “On the upside, IT says the Twitter trend is dying off. Apparently you’re down to number ten today instead of number one.”
“Great.” Wes made a mental note to check with his IT guys on the status of his Twitter account when he got off the phone. What he really needed was for some celebrity to do something shocking that would be enough to push him off the stage entirely.
“And the warehouses are set up for delivery of the doll. Everything’s ready to roll out on time.”
“Good.” He set the beer on the coffee table and rubbed his eyes in a futile attempt to ease the headache pounding there. “Keep on top of this stuff, Robin, and make sure I’m in the loop.”
“Boss,” she said, “you are the loop.”
He had to smile and he was grateful for it. “Right. Did you hear from Harry today?”
“Yep, he’s on it. He’s working with PR to put a spin on all this, and when