“I don’t know if they coerced me into signing something or just forged my signature. I can’t imagine ever giving anyone permission to sell the family business.”
“Who hated you enough to steal your business?”
He briefly considered pulling off the road to address her question but decided she’d be less likely to attack him if he were at the wheel of a moving car with her and Ellie in it. He answered carefully, “When you arrived at William Ward’s house, I was browsing through the most recent documents on his computer.”
“And?” she prompted cautiously.
“And it turns out that shortly before I met you in Paris, I took a secret trip to Las Vegas.” Laura went still. She must see it coming. He continued grimly, “I wasn’t alone on that trip. It turns out I was secretly married there to a woman named Meredith Black.” The name felt strange on his tongue. Vaguely unpleasant, like the remembered taste of bitter medicine.
If Laura had been still before, she went statuelike now. Alarmed, he alternated between glancing over at her and keeping an eye on the highway.
Finally, he couldn’t stand the suspense of her complete nonreaction any longer. “Talk to me,” he urged.
“What do you want me to say?” Laura’s voice was hollow. Hoarse. Unlike how he’d ever heard it before. Guilt and self-loathing consumed him. He’d caused the woman he loved this pain.
He spoke in a rush. “I swear. I have no recollection of her whatsoever. I don’t know why I married her, and I surely don’t know why I got involved with you in Paris so soon afterward. I can only assume the marriage was an impulsive thing and didn’t work out. Maybe I was drunk and it was all a big joke.”
“A joke?” Laura choked out.
“A really, really bad one?” he offered. Based on the thunderous frown settling on her brow, Laura clearly failed to see the humor. He didn’t blame her.
He drove in silence while guilt and misery ate at his gut from the inside out. It was his worst nightmare come true. Something—someone—out of his past had the power to destroy everything he and Laura had built between them, including their happy little family. He’d contact this Meredith Black woman and get a divorce. The woman could have whatever financial resources had been left to Nikolas Spiros. He’d make it all better.
But then Laura asked, “Why hasn’t she come forward or contacted you now that your face is being splashed all over the news?”
“Maybe she hasn’t heard about me.”
Laura snorted. “You’re an international sensation. The playboy billionaire back from a mysterious, six-year absence. She’d have to be living in a cave not to have heard about you.”
He frowned. Laura was right. Why hadn’t this Meredith person contacted him? Or had she? Was she the urgent reason William Ward had insisted on him coming to the Cape to discuss?
“Did she have control of your financial assets while you were gone?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Then your return would throw a serious monkey wrench into her life. You’d be a massive problem for her.”
He laughed with scant humor. “Gee. Thanks.”
“Sorry. Just trying to think like my enemy.”
Warmth burst in his gut. If Laura considered Meredith her enemy, he almost felt sorry for the woman. But not quite.
Laura made an angry sound under her breath. He’d bet she wasn’t even aware of having made it. Her unconscious loyalty warmed him all the way down to his soul.
“You truly have no recollection of her whatsoever?”
“None.”
“Convenient,” Laura muttered.
Alarmed, he glanced over at her. “I’m telling you the truth. I have no idea why I married her.”
“She must be hell on wheels in the sack,” Laura commented sourly.
Nick laughed. “I’ll take you any day of the week and twice on Sunday over any other woman on the planet in that department.”
Laura threw him a vaguely skeptical look. “The thirty-year-old mother of two with a body under attack by gravity and who needs a slave driver of a personal trainer to keep her even remotely non-jiggly these days?”
“Yes. Exactly,” he replied firmly.
She didn’t look convinced.
He swore mentally. Just how much damage control did he have ahead of him to convince Laura that, in spite of this wife, she was the love of his life?
“Could your wife be behind tonight’s kidnapping attempt?”
The idea shocked him into silence.
Laura continued, “But why?”
“She wants to renew our vows?” he quipped.
“Not funny,” Laura retorted.
He sighed. “I imagine she wants to aggressively renegotiate control of my estate.”
“With a gun pointed at your head?”
“Precisely.”
“Bitch,” Laura breathed under her breath.
Nick laughed quietly. “My sentiments exactly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Give her whatever she wants to divorce me.”
“She has probably taken almost everything you own already.”
He shrugged. “I’m not concerned about the money. I can always make more. I just want to get away with my life and my soul intact. I refuse to live always looking over my shoulder, worried that she might come after you and the kids someday.”
Laura’s expression snapped closed. Unreadable. Stubborn enough to give him a severe and unpleasant jolt. “Are we okay?” he blurted.
“No, Nick. We’re not okay. You’re married to another woman. You knew who you were and didn’t tell me. And now your past has put not only you, but me and Ellie, in danger.”
He nodded slowly. He couldn’t blame her for feeling any of that. But there was also no way he was giving up on them. He’d fight to the death to keep her and the kids.
They drove in heavy silence to his hotel and he led her up to his room. He’d just fished William’s flash drive out of his pocket to plug into his laptop when Laura’s cell phone rang. He frowned. It was nearly 2 a.m. Who’d call her at this time of night? Was it Adam, waking up from a nightmare and needing his mother’s voice to comfort him? Guilt at tearing Laura away from their son speared through him.
But then he heard a shrill female voice babbling through the line and Laura’s face drained of all color. Panic unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, including the moments after he first woke up in his box, ripped through him. Adam. Oh, God. What had happened to his son?
Laura was going to throw up. “What have you done?” she gasped in a horrible, unrecognizable voice at Nick. She shoved past him and ran for the toilet in the tiny connected bathroom.
“What happened? What’s going on?” Nick demanded right on her heels. “Whatever I’ve done, I’ll fix it. I swear.”
“They’ve kidnapped him,” she sobbed. “Adam and Lisbet are gone. Marta was drugged and just woke up. The police are at the house and the FBI’s been called.” Her stomach rebelled then, and she emptied