The Secret Daughter

Noelani counted four fountains on a huge manicured lawn. Not even the downpour detracted from the effect of tall white pillars and wide balconies supporting a mansion larger than Queen Emma’s summer palace. As a special treat one time, Tutu took Noelani on a tour of their most beloved Hawaiian ruler’s part-time residence. This home was more ostentatious.

Unable to catch her breath, Noelani didn’t immediately realize the cab had pulled around to the back of the house. Awed by the home’s magnificence, and heedless of the falling rain, she stepped out for a better look. The fresh, rain-washed scent failed to cloak an acrid odor of charred wood.

Standing several yards away from a jutting porte cochere, Noelani saw that a section of the mansion had burned. Recently enough so that a workman was even now attempting to spread tarps over a gaping hole in the roof. He leaned far out from the top rung of an extension ladder. The man was bare-headed, and dark hair lay plastered to his skull. Faded blue jeans and a gray T-shirt were molded to his wet skin.

Suddenly the ladder slipped out from under the man’s sneakers and fell hard into a flower bed below. The man was left clawing at a sagging rain gutter. He managed to grab the tarp with one hand seconds before the gutter cracked and a large section canted crazily. If he continued to kick, the section would break and plummet him to the ground below. Granted, that section of the house was only one story tall, compared to three in the main structure. Nevertheless, the man could break his neck.

Heedless of her strappy leather heels and new linen suit, Noelani tore across the soft lawn, leaving her cabbie in the process of requesting her fare.

ADAM ROSS, WHO’D BEEN HIRED by Casey Fontaine to restore Bellefontaine to historical perfection, swore roundly at his ladder. He maintained a tenuous grip on the canvas tarp and had one elbow buried in a weak rain gutter that had sustained damage during a recent kitchen fire. It wasn’t bad enough that this storm had blown in from the gulf, calling a halt to the job of his dreams; now Adam feared he’d break a leg or worse and lose the contract altogether. “Dammit to hell!”

He kicked experimentally to see if maybe the ladder hadn’t fallen all the way to the ground. A warning crack and further sagging of the gutter forced him to freeze. Even at that, his hundred-and-ninety-pound weight was liable to rip the entire gutter from its shaky mooring.

“Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!” He kicked again, only halfheartedly.

“Quit swearing at the roof and hold still.”

Adam wondered if he’d imagined the woman who appeared to be digging through the honeysuckle below and to the left of his swinging feet.

“Are you hurt?” a low melodic voice inquired.

“A few scrapes,” he muttered. “Probably bruised a rib or two. If you can lift that ladder, sweet thing, chances are I’ll live.”

“Chances go down if you call me sweet thing again.”

Adam couldn’t see much of his Good Samaritan. But he fell instantly in lust with her sweet-as-sugar voice. Lately, women hadn’t figured in Adam’s life. He’d been too busy building a business after working his butt off to graduate from LSU in restorative architecture. Certainly he’d never been smitten with a woman based solely on her voice. That was about to change, however, if this one got him out of his current mess.

Damn, any woman capable of standing his heavy ladder upright the way the Amazon below had managed with the ease of a seasoned construction worker definitely owned a big piece of Adam’s heart.

Despite a downpour few women of Adam’s acquaintance would’ve ventured out in, this one had come from nowhere, raised his ladder and then climbed a few rungs to guide his feet to safety.

“Thanks,” he panted. “You saved my—” he’d been about to say job, but that sounded too parsimonious “—my life.”

“Hardly anything so dramatic. But you’re welcome.”

Now that the dangling man was safe and her heart had stopped hammering wildly, Noelani retreated and squinted up for a clearer look at him. She judged the man to be in his early thirties. Even on this overcast day, she could tell that his eyes were very blue. The steaming T-shirt plastered to his broad chest sported the logo of a local university. “Are you…Jackson Fontaine?” Her throat went dry as it struck Noelani that she might have given aid to her half brother.

Adam stared down on a mass of black hair framing a face that seemed to be all eyes. He also noted a lot of leg below a short black skirt. A very nice package from his bird’s-eye view. “Stay put,” he ordered, having more pressing matters at the moment than cataloging his helper’s pleasing attributes. “Could you hold the ladder, please? I’ll secure these tarpaulins so they won’t blow away.”

Either he hadn’t heard or else he chose to ignore her question. The fool hoisted himself off his safe perch onto the roof and left the metal ladder vibrating under Noelani’s fingers. She barely caught his request—or more to the point—his edict.

He must be Jackson Fontaine. Who but the lord of the manor would deem it his right to keep a woman standing in the rain while he covered his castle? Oh, well. She couldn’t get much wetter. And it was a warm rain. Since she needed to speak to him, anyway, she might as well ensure he didn’t break his fool neck.

“Hey, lady. How about you pay your fare and let me be on my way?”

Adam slipped again when he heard the rough male voice heckling his savior. He tied the last tarp and quickly descended the ladder. As he did, he saw that his helper was having trouble unsticking one of her spiky heels from the mud around the honeysuckle.

Skipping the last three rungs, Adam landed hard and grasped her elbow. He jetted her across the lawn to keep her from sinking those stilts she wore into the rain-softened grass.

She jerked away from his hold. “I can walk on my own.”

But Adam didn’t release her until they reached the asphalt drive. “The least I can do for causing you a problem is to pay your cabbie,” he said gallantly, peeling some bills off a money clip he’d dug, with great difficulty, out of the pocket of his soaking wet jeans.

Noelani wanted to get out of the rain before she squared the debt she now owed her host. As the driver snatched his fare and jumped back into the cab, she hefted her suitcases and again wobbled gingerly onto the wet lawn, aiming for the front door of the mansion. All at once she was left clutching air.

“We’ll go through the back door. It’s closer.”

His second abrupt order in no way endeared him to Noelani. She stomped after him, kicking mud off her shoes and muttering darkly.

Striding across slick cobblestones, Adam halted beneath a high-ceilinged breezeway. He propped her large suitcase against the wall and drew a hand through his dripping hair. “If you’re huffy because we’re going in the servants’ entry, sweet thing, don’t think you’re being slighted. This is where carriages used to deposit elegant women in ball gowns who visited the plantation during the social season.”

“Really? Well, I’m going to drip water all over the ballroom floor.”

Adam laughed. He was glad to see that this exotic-looking woman, who’d bowled him over with her competence, also possessed a sense of humor.

More used to giving orders than taking them, Noelani felt at a disadvantage. Flipping aside her soggy hair, she said, “If you’ll tell me how much my fare was, I’ll reimburse you.” She unzipped her purse.

“Forget it. You saved my bacon. We’ll call it even.”

“I’d rather not. If you won’t take cash, then I insist you deduct what I owe you from my portion of the inheritance.”

Adam blinked. As a good friend of Nick Devlin, the new husband of Casey Fontaine, Adam had observed the shock reverberating through the mansion when the siblings first discovered their father had a love child no one knew anything about. Adam recalled hearing that this secret daughter of Duke’s was coming for the property settlement. But not in a million years would he have imagined that he’d foolishly develop a sudden adolescent crush on the illegitimate Fontaine heir.

Damn, the rumors floating around didn’t do her justice. With her uptilted eyes and black hair falling halfway to a narrow waist, wet or not, she was a beauty.

But wait. She thought he was Jackson. A mistake Adam needed to rectify. “I’m Adam Ross, not Jackson Fontaine. At the moment, I occupy one of the family’s two garçonnières.” He jerked a thumb toward a squat tower Noelani had noticed and wondered about. “Jackson moved into the main house after his daughter came to live with him. Today he’s in New Orleans on business.”

Noelani gaped at Adam, feeling foolish but not at all sure how to extricate herself from this conversation. Certainly they were now both aware that she’d mistaken his identity.

“I restore historic homes,” he said pleasantly. “I guess you saw the fire damage.”

“As you aren’t family, Mr. Ross, would you be so kind as to direct me to Cassandra Fontaine?”

“Devlin,” he corrected smoothly. “Casey doesn’t go by Fontaine anymore. She married Nick last week. She’s out on the property overseeing the cane cutting. Their harvest was delayed but— That’s beside the point,” he muttered, getting a grip on his runaway tongue.

Noelani narrowed her eyes. This guy didn’t have a clue. You couldn’t cut cane in this deluge; it’d only mash the stalks into the mud.

“I suppose I could take you to Auntie E,” Adam continued. “She’s their aunt, uh…your aunt…not mine.” Adam floundered as the woman to whom he spoke seemed slow to comprehend. “Esme Fontaine is Duke’s sister. She lives here at Bellefontaine.”

More blank looks from the dripping newcomer.

“Esme’s the only one around right now. Megan’s nanny, Tanya, left to collect her from preschool right before you showed up. Jackson’s daughter, Megan—are none of these names ringing any bells with you?” he finally asked.

Shaking her head, Noelani rubbed her temples. She’d started out expecting to meet two relatives, and this man— Adam Ross—stood here blathering on about an aunt, a niece and a brother-in-law. Or would Nick Devlin technically be her half brother-in-law?

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Adam said bluntly.

“Noelani. Noelani Hana. I’m… Duke Fontaine is… My mother, Anela Hana… It’s too difficult to explain,” she said, blinking back tears. “Look, I’ve had a long flight from Honolulu, and I’m wet to the skin. Do you think I could see someone about getting a towel?”