Another Man's Son

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Chapter One

"There's something you should know, Mr. Collier, before we meet with Kathleen."

Ian Collier didn't like the high-school principal's tone - ominous - or her expression, which was sheepish. And he felt that the worrisome "something" should have been revealed to him long before now.

Kathleen Cahill had been selected as this year's Rain Mountain Scholar. The scholarship was Ian's idea and Ian's money. But he left it to a committee of educators to decide which high- school senior was most deserving of the all-expenses-paid opportunity to attend the college of his or her dreams.

All the applicants were deserving. Bright students from impoverished backgrounds. Ian would award the scholarship to every name on the list if he could.

But Rain Mountain Scholars were funded with personal not corporate money, and there was a limit to the number of college educations Ian could underwrite at one time - especially since the first three recipients were doing exactly what he'd hoped they'd be doing: getting the best education money could buy.

At present, thirty-six-year-old Ian Collier had a freshman at Harvard, a sophomore at Stanford and a junior at Yale. It was an admirable investment in other people's children, Ian's accountant conceded. But the C.P.A. urged caution.

True, Rain Mountain - the company - had exceeded all expectations. The Pacific Northwest had needed another winter-sports outfitter. And Rain Mountain Enterprises was enjoying a national presence, too.

But consumers were fickle, and trends were unpredictable and one mustn't forget that perennial wild card: weather. This past December had been particularly instructive. Torrential rainfall between Christmas and New Year's had washed out the holiday ski season and made slush of January's ski-area revenues as well.

Rain Mountain had, of course, been fine. The slopes had been powdery perfection from Thanksgiving till Christmas Eve. Rain Mountain skis, boots, parkas and goggles had topped the Christmas wish lists of skiing enthusiasts, and the company's inaugural line of fluffy sweaters and mittens for the snow-bunny crowd had sold out by December fifteenth.

Had the rain come a few weeks earlier, however ...

El Nio weather patterns or not, Ian's scholarship students would be fine. Their entire four years' tuition-and-living-expense money had been placed in trust. Rain Mountain employees - and their retirement funds - were similarly protected.

But there were no such guarantees for Rain Mountain Enterprises'CEO. Ian didn't care. He and poverty had been sparring partners for a very long time. He could think of no better use for his hard-won wealth than sponsoring exceptional students' dreams.

"Something I should know." Ian repeated Mrs. Petersen's words. "About Kathleen?"

"Yes. Well, about her feelings toward the scholarship. It's possible she won't want it."

"Even though she applied."

"Actually, we applied for her. Last spring, when we told her we were going to nominate her, she said she'd decided not to go to college after all. We couldn't believe it. College and medical school were what she'd been working toward forever. Needless to say, we went ahead with our plans, hoping that when she returned to school this fall she'd have reconsidered."

"But she hasn't."

"No."

"Any idea why?"

"None."

"I take it she doesn't know about today's meeting?"

"No. I just had my assistant pull her out of third-period study hall."

So Mrs. Petersen was planning a surprise for Kathleen Cahill. An ambush. Well-intentioned, of course. The unexpected gift of a dream.

But it was an ambush, nonetheless.

Ian hated being any part of it. His loathing was based on experience and pain....

Ian Collier had been ambushed for the first time at age ten. Wanting to know what everyone else seemed to know about his parents - and the reason prospective adoptive couples never gave him a serious look - he'd managed a middle-of-the-night break-in at the administrative offices of the orphanage.

In his naivet, the hopefulness of a lonely boy, he'd created a happy reason for being perennially overlooked. He wasn't truly a candidate for adoption. His own parents would be returning for him any day.

The real reason was far from happy. Gordon and Eileen Collier wouldn't be coming for him. Indeed, for all practical purposes, Ian had been orphaned before he was born.

Gordon Collier's assault on his pregnant wife had left Eileen near death. She'd been maintained on life support only until her unborn son could mature enough to survive outside the womb.

Gordon was dead, and long since buried in a pauper's grave, before Ian's birth. The gunshot to Gordon's head hadn't been self-inflicted, a final mortal act of conscience by the suddenly repentant murderer. The bullet had come instead from the high-powered rifle of a Seattle cop. And in the neatly typed recounting of the carnage that was Ian's legacy - and pedigree - there'd been nothing to suggest that Gordon Collier had felt the slightest tug of remorse.

So there it was. The truth that had been withheld, presumably for his own good, was hidden no more. Ian was a murderer's son.

The knowledge was freedom of sorts. Ian understood that it was his destiny to remain unclaimed. He used the knowledge as a defense against pain. Never again would he let his caretakers see, let anyone see, how it hurt to be unwanted.

And never again would anyone know more about Ian than Ian knew himself.

No one did, either, until a twenty-four-year-old socialite surprised the eighteen-year-old murderer's son with a dream he'd never imagined he'd want.

"I'm pregnant," Vanessa Frances Worthing had informed him. "And guess what, Ian? The baby's yours."

At the time, Ian remembered Vanessa only vaguely. She and the sex they'd had were indistinguishable from all the other girls and all the other sex that was readily available to him.

Ian's sexual liaison with Vanessa had occurred during ski season at Crystal Mountain, the popular ski resort located seventy-six miles southeast of Seattle. Ian was on the ski patrol at Crystal, the culmination of a work history that had begun as a ski-lodge busboy five years before.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Another Man's Sonby Katherine Stone Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
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