His Unexpected Heir. Maureen Child

was like white noise in the background and the guy seated at it moved quickly, efficiently. Their work was fast and good enough that they’d also done jobs for the navy and Jack figured if they could handle that, they could handle his cruise ship.

      But why the hell was Jack even here? He was the CEO of Buchanan Shipping. Didn’t he have minions he could have sent to take care of this?

      But even as he thought it, he reminded himself that being here today, in person, had all been his idea. To immerse himself in every aspect of the business. He’d been away for the last ten years, so he had a lot of catching up to do.

      Jack, his brother, Sam, and their sister, Cass, had all interned at Buchanan growing up. They’d put in their time from the ground up, starting in janitorial, since their father had firmly believed that kids raised with all the money in the world grew up to be asses.

      He’d made sure that his children knew what it was to really work. To be alongside employees who would expect them to do the job and who had the ability to fire them if they didn’t. Thomas Buchanan raised his kids to respect those who worked for them and to always remember that without those employees, they wouldn’t have a business. So Jack, Sam and Cass had worked their way through every level at the company. They’d had to buy their own cars, pay for their own insurance and if they wanted designer clothes, they had to save up for them.

      Now, looking back, Jack could see it had been the right thing to do. At the time, he hadn’t loved it of course. But today, he could step into the CEO’s shoes with a lot less trepidation because of his father’s rules. He had the basics on running the company. But it was this stuff—the day-to-day, small but necessary decisions—that he had to get used to.

      Buchanan Shipping had interests all over the world. From cruise liners to cargo ships to the fishing fleet Jack’s brother, Sam, ran out of San Diego. The company had grown well beyond his great-grandfather’s dreams when he’d started the business with one commercial fishing boat.

      The Buchanans had been on the California coast since before the gold rush. While other men bought land and fought with the dirt to scratch out a fortune, the Buchanans had turned to the sea. They had a reputation for excellence that nothing had ever marred and Jack wanted to keep it that way.

      Their latest cruise ship was top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art throughout and would, he told himself, more than live up to her name, The Sea Queen.

      “Mr. Buchanan,” the decorator said, forcing Jack out of his thoughts and back to reality.

      “Yeah. What is it?”

      “There are still choices to be made on height of stools, width of booths...”

      Okay, details were one thing, minutiae were another.

      Jack stopped her with one hand held up for silence. “You can handle that, Ms. Price.” To take any sting out of his words, he added, “I trust your judgment,” and watched pleasure flash in her eyes.

      “Of course, of course,” she said. “I’ll fax you a complete record of all decisions made this afternoon.”

      “That’s fine. Thanks.” He shook hands with Daniel Black, waved a hand at the men in the back of the shop and left. Stepping outside, he was immediately slapped by a strong, cold breeze that carried the scent of the sea. The sky was a clear, bold blue and this small corner of the city hummed with an energy that pulsed inside Jack.

      He wasn’t ready to go back to the company. To sit in that palatial office, fielding phone calls and going over reports. Being outside, even being here, dealing with fabrics of all things, was better than being stuck behind his desk. With that thought firmly in mind, he walked to his car, got in and fired it up. Steering away from work, responsibility and the restless, itchy feeling scratching at his soul, Jack drove toward peace.

      Okay, maybe peace was the wrong word, he told himself twenty minutes later. The crowd on Main Street in Seal Beach was thick, the noise deafening and the mingled scents from restaurants, pubs and bakeries swamped him.

      Jack Buchanan fought his way through the summer crowds blocking the sidewalk. He’d been home from his last tour of duty for four months and he still wasn’t used to being surrounded by so many people. Made him feel on edge, as if every nerve in his body was strung tight enough to snap.

      Frowning at the thought, he sidestepped a couple of women who had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to argue about a pair of shoes, for God’s sake. Shaking his head, he walked a little faster, dodging gawking tourists, teenagers with surfboards and kids racing in and out of the crowd, peals of laughter hanging in their wake.

      Summer in Southern California was always going to be packed with the tourists who flocked in from all over the world. And ordinarily Jack avoided the worst of the crowds by keeping close to his office building and the penthouse apartment he lived in. But at least once a month, Jack forced himself to go out into the throngs of people—just to prove to himself that he could.

      Being surrounded by people brought out every defensive instinct he possessed. He felt on guard, watching the passing people through suspicious, wary eyes and hated himself for it. But four months home from a battlefield wasn’t long enough to ease the instincts that had kept him alive in the desert. And still, he worked at forcing himself to relax those instincts because he refused to be defined by what he’d gone through. What he’d seen.

      A small boy bulleted around a corner and slammed right into Jack. Every muscle in Jack’s body tensed until he deliberately relaxed, caught the kid by the shoulders to keep him from falling and said, “You should watch where you’re running.”

      “Sorry, mister.” The kid jerked his head back, swinging his long blond hair out of his eyes.

      “It’s okay,” Jack said, releasing both the boy and the sharp jolt of adrenaline still pumping inside him. “Just watch it.”

      “Right. Gotta go.” The boy took off, headed for the beach and the pier at the end of the street.

      Jack remembered, vaguely, what it had been like to be ten years old with a world of summer stretched out ahead of you. With the sun beating down on him and a sea breeze dancing past, Jack could almost recapture the sensation of complete freedom that everyone lost as they grew up. Frowning at his own thoughts, he concentrated again on the crowd and realized it had been a couple of months since he’d been in Seal Beach.

      A small beach community, it lay alongside Long Beach where he lived and worked, but Jack didn’t make a habit of coming here. Memories were thick and he tended to avoid them, because remembering wouldn’t get him a damn thing. But against his will, images filled his mind.

      Last December, he’d been on R and R. He’d had two weeks to return to his life, see his family and decompress. He’d spent the first few days visiting his father, brother and sister, then he’d drawn back, pulling into himself. He’d come to the beach then, walking the sand at night, letting the sea whisper to him. Until the night he’d met her.

      A beautiful woman, alone on the beach, the moonlight caressing her skin, shining in her hair until he’d almost convinced himself she wasn’t real. Until she turned her head and gave him a cautious smile.

      She should have been cautious. A woman alone on a dark beach. Rita Marchetti had been smart enough to be careful and strong enough to be friendly. They’d talked, he remembered, there in the moonlight and then met again the following day and the day after that. The remainder of his leave, he’d spent with her, and every damn moment of that time was etched into his brain in living, vibrant color. He could hear the sound of her voice. The music of her laughter. He saw the shine in her eyes and felt the silk of her touch.

      “And you’ve been working for months to forget it,” he reminded himself in a mutter. “No point in dredging it up now.”

      What they’d found together all those months ago was over now. There was no going back. He’d made a promise to himself. One he intended to keep. Never again would he put himself in the position of loss and pain and he wouldn’t ever be close enough to someone else that his loss would bring pain.