“Of course.” The woman nodded, her face a professional mask as she accepted the squirming six-week-old, easily cradling him against her starched gray livery. “Your security team suggested we don’t open the door to anyone but uniformed police officers or McNeill family members.” She lifted a dark eyebrow, seeking confirmation.
“Correct.” Damon tightened his hold on Caroline, feeling her trembling right through her warm winter clothes. “And please be as vigilant at the service entrance. No delivery people past the gates.”
“Certainly. I’ll remind Marcie to stay in the nursery where you can monitor the little one.” The woman spared a brief smile for the wriggling baby before turning on one quiet heel and disappearing down the hallway that led to the service elevator, the bodyguard behind her.
With Lucas cared for and the home well-guarded, Damon could turn his attention to Caroline. His plans for winning her back tonight would have to be deferred after the devastating revelations she was still trying to process. He steered her toward the elevator, hugging her close to his side.
* * *
A few minutes later, Caroline swayed on her feet inside the suite’s lavish dressing room, her brain pinging with too many worries, thoughts and fears to name them all.
Could her father really have arranged to have her kidnapped? Her head throbbed with as much pain as her heart to think about that while she searched for a clean tee and pajama pants—comfort clothes. It seemed easier to believe she’d walked out on her husband than that her father would be so cruelly calculating.
People ended relationships all the time, after all. And she had been arguing with Damon when she was in London before she flew back to the Los Altos Hills house. What if the holes in her memory had steered her all wrong? What if she hadn’t been kidnapped? Maybe she’d asked for her father’s help in walking away from the marriage…
That scenario made her head hurt less, but her heart protested just as much. She had been wildly in love with her husband, and no amount of secrets or betrayals could dim that fact. Stepping into warm blue flannel pj pants, she reminded herself that she’d seen evidence of her happiness in those honeymoon photos. The joy in the pictures couldn’t be faked.
She ran a brush through her hair and tapped her phone to pull up the video feed of Lucas in the nursery. The baby curled against Marcie while the young woman sat with him in a rocker, the lights dim. The fresh air had tired them all out today.
Stepping out of the dressing room, she found Damon in front of the fireplace in the small sitting room. He’d rearranged the furniture a little so the gray couch was closer to the hearth where he’d built a real fire from the supply of logs in a wrought iron grate. An elaborate white mantelpiece was decorated with a relief sculpture of figures in ball gowns beside a carriage, surrounded by servants with torches lighting the way.
Pivoting from the grate with a poker in his hand, Damon watched her move toward him.
“I just wanted to stay long enough to build a fire and make sure you are okay.”
The authenticity in his voice washed over her. He truly was a kind and thoughtful man underneath the intense, work-driven exterior. If Damon had done nothing wrong in all this, and her father bore the full brunt of the blame for what happened to her, she couldn’t begin to imagine how hurt her husband must have been at her disappearance.
He had missed out on so much by not being a part of Lucas’s birth. And if she didn’t handle things well moving forward, if she couldn’t sort through what had happened and recover some additional memories, she ran the risk of hurting him all the more. Yet she ached everywhere whenever she tried to force herself to remember.
“It causes physical pain to think about my father…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. Her eyes stung, but that pain was minor in comparison to how her head throbbed.
“Then don’t think about it.” He set aside the wrought iron poker and rose to meet her. He laid his hands on the part of her upper arms exposed by her tee. “Are you warm enough in this?”
“Kind of.” She wasn’t. “Actually, I don’t think there are enough sweaters to ward off the sort of chill I’m feeling anyhow.”
“Come and sit.” He tugged her phone from her hand and propped it on the arm of the sofa before gently pushing her onto the seat cushion directly opposite the blaze in the hearth. “I’ll get you a blanket.”
Drawing her feet up underneath her, she double-checked that she could still see the nursery video feed. Marcie had moved the camera so that it was closer to the crib, where Lucas now slept with his favorite dinosaur blanket.