knew that younger man very well, indeed. He’d been her lover in Paris six years ago. He was the father of her son. And the man in the other, more recent, picture was the man she lived with now, the father of her daughter. Ellie squawked as she lost her grip on breakfast, and Laura was momentarily distracted resettling the baby.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she murmured. “Mommy was just surprised.”
Although surprised hardly described the sick nausea rumbling through her gut. Nick was a Greek shipping tycoon named Nikolas Spiros? A billionaire? Why had he turned his back on all that? Why did he continue to live under this Nick Cass identity?
Her mind flashed back to Paris. To meeting Nick Cass there. He’d lied to her. He hadn’t told her who he was back then, and he was perpetuating the lie now. No wonder neither she nor her attorney had been able to learn anything about him back then. Nick Cass didn’t exist. The first stirrings of anger started low in her belly, building by steady degrees. Only Ellie’s tiny body nestled against her breast, sucking sleepily, kept her from storming up the stairs and bursting in on Nick—Nikolas—this very second and demanding the full truth and nothing but the truth.
Who in the world was he?
Laura reached her desk just as the phone rang. Who on earth would be calling her at this time of morning? Alarmed, she picked up the receiver.
“Good morning, this is Shelley Hacker from The Morning News Hour. I’m calling to speak to Nikolas Spiros.”
“I’m afraid you have a wrong number.” Laura hung up fast, not giving the reporter time to ask any follow-up questions.
The phone rang again. Oh, Lord. She glanced at the caller ID: unknown caller. She picked the receiver up an inch and set it back down. The feeding frenzy had begun.
“What’s going on?”
Laura whirled to face Nick. “You tell me. The phone’s ringing off the hook with reporters wanting to speak with Nikolas Spiros.”
Beneath his olive complexion, Nick went a sickly shade of gray. He gritted out, “I’m Nick Cass.”
“You are now. I get that. But were you this Spiros guy at some point in your past?”
“My past is dead.”
She gritted her teeth. This was about her and the children as much as it was about him, darn it. She had a family to protect. “I understand your desire to move on. To start a new life. I really do. I support you all the way. But if you were Nikolas Spiros before, you’re going to have to deal with him sometime. What are you going to tell the media?”
“I’ll tell them nothing. It’s none of their business.”
A new hardness, or maybe an old hardness for all she knew, clung to Nick. This was not the gentle, laid-back man she’d spent the past year with. This man resembled much more a savvy, tough businessman who might run a billion-dollar shipping empire. Did she know him at all?
The phone rang again. She glanced at the caller ID and stopped herself at the last second from hanging it up. “It’s Tatum Carter. Your lawyer wants to talk to you … Nikolas.”
Nick sighed and held a hand out for the receiver.
“What the hell’s going on, Nick?”
“Tatum. Good morning. I gather you’ve seen the news?” Nick asked evenly.
“What’s this about you being some Greek billionaire? Hell, you owned AbaCo Shipping until a few years ago. What have you gotten me into?”
Ahh, the ass-covering had commenced. Nick sighed. “If you want to remove yourself from this case, I won’t stop you.”
“No, no,” Tatum quickly replied. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
Nick rolled his eyes. Greed won out, then. He took a certain comfort in knowing what made the attorney tick. And then he jolted as he realized his old, sharklike business instincts were roaring back to the fore. He didn’t want to return to this part of his life, this part of himself.
He glanced up and caught Laura staring at him in equal parts dismay and horror. He was losing her. As sure as he was standing here, she was pulling away from him—from the stranger he’d become. “I’ll call you later, Tatum.”
He hung up on the man without any further ado and sat down beside Laura on the sofa. “I lied to you in Paris.”
“I already figured that out,” she replied dryly. “Why?”
No way was he going to tell her all the things William Ward had revealed to him. There was still a chance he could keep her and the kids out of his past, and he was going to do his darnedest to make that happen. The private investigator had found nothing on any Nick Cass. So far it appeared such a man had never existed. If that held true, his new family was in the clear.
He shrugged. “I apparently created an alter ego for myself. An identity under which I could travel anonymously and unobtrusively. Nick Cass could go into a coffee shop or sit at a café and no one paid any attention to him.”
“Who were you hiding from?” Laura asked shrewdly.
“The media, I imagine. My employees, maybe. Hell, maybe an ex-lover.” He added candidly, “And myself, if I had to guess.”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“I expect you fell for Nick Cass, the regular guy, not some Greek billionaire. Knowing you and loving you the way I do now, I’ll bet I wasn’t about to risk what I had with you.”
“So you lied to me? You trusted me so little? Didn’t you think I would understand? Am I that judgmental or just that stupid?”
She didn’t raise her voice, but the anger in it was unmistakable.
“I’m sorry, Laura. I don’t remember any of it. I have no answers for you. Undoubtedly, I was wrong and should have told you everything from the start.”
She threw up her hands. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be this furious with you and not be able to be mad at you because you can’t remember doing any of it?”
He smiled sadly. “I really am sorry.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Deal with the fallout as best as I can, and when the excitement blows over, go back to being plain old Nick Cass, the man who loves you and our kids.”
“What fallout should I expect from this revelation?”
He grimaced but forced himself to look her squarely in the eye. “I honestly don’t know. But I can tell you this. I plan to do everything in my power to keep you and the kids out of this.”
“This what?”
She was too smart for her own good, sometimes. She’d heard the evasion in his voice and put her finger exactly on the source of his discomfort. “I’ve had a gut feeling since the moment you fished me out of that box that I should let sleeping dogs lie. I feel that way more strongly than ever. It’s nothing concrete. Just a feeling.”
He reached out and took her icy hands in his. “I don’t know what’s hidden in those lost five years, I swear. But I think it’s bad, and I think it could put you and the children in danger. You’ve got to let me deal with this alone. Stay away from it, Laura.”
She stared at him, her dark gaze brimming with frustration. “No way—”
He cut her off gently. “I have to know the children are safe. You have to take care of them for me—for us—while I put my past to rest.”
Ellie