"What do you mean, good for her? I thought you wanted great-grandchildren?"

"Would you feel the same way about her if she let you buy her like some high-priced call girl? Her respect for herself is one of the things that makes her so special."

"You sound just like her," Jordan mumbled past a bite of his sandwich. "I simply want to take care of her. Whether she quits working for me or not."

"Quit? I hope you're not going to let her."

"And how do you suggest I stop her?" He flipped his hand toward Edward. "And you're a fine one to talk about paying your way through life. How many times in the course of a week do you grease someone's palm to get special treatment or put yourself at the front of a line?"

"I don't grease-"

"The hell you don't. How'd you get those last minute seats behind home plate for the Phillies game?"

"Okay, so I occasionally slip the right people a few bucks. What good is it to have more money than Midas if you can't use it to get the royal treatment once in a while?"

"Once in a while?" Jordan snorted and paused to swallow his mouthful. "Any time you can't get what you want through normal channels, you flash some cash and buy your way."

Edward sank onto a stool at the breakfast bar and stared at the counter, his face turning nearly as white as the top of his snowy head.

"Gramps? Are you okay?"

He simply nodded. "I bet that's why Ruth won't marry me."

"Marry you?" A smiled tugged at Jordan's mouth. The old man must have finally laid his beloved Elisabeth to rest.

"I've done everything I can to show Ruth how easy the rest of her life would be as my wife. She insists she's spent too many years standing in line and eating at the local diner to ever feel comfortable with servants waiting on her hand and foot."

Jordan squeezed his grandfather's shoulder. "Well, I guess you have to ask yourself if being with Ruth is worth lowering your standards."

"Don't you think we could compromise? If she'll give up the blue-plate special, I'd move into her house and live-"

"You're asking the wrong person."

Edward studied him silently for several moments and sucked in a shuddering breath. "Jordan, I have something I've needed to tell you for a lot of years. It has to do with what we're talking about."

"What's that?"

"I've never been able to find the right time, but if you ever needed to hear it, it's now."

"Okay, spit it out."

Edward closed his eyes. "I don't want you to hate me. Just promise you'll remember I did it because I love you."

Jordan tossed the remainder of his sandwich on his plate. "Gramps, for crying out-"

"All right. You know your father got your mother pregnant after high school, and they were never very happy together."

"Right."

"What you don't know is I bribed your mother with a full-time nanny, a house, and a healthy monthly allowance to get her to marry your dad and have you."

"If you thought I'd be shocked that she wanted to abort me, forget it. When she left, she made it pretty clear she never wanted me in the first place."

"But she did love you after you were born. By the time she filed for divorce, she was desperate to take you with her."

Edward didn't have to say it. Jordan knew what was coming.

"Naturally, under the circumstances, I'd insisted your mother sign a prenup, so she wasn't going to end up with much after the divorce." Edward looked away, avoiding Jordan's gaze. "I gave her five million not to sue for custody and to stay out of your life."

Jordan's chest felt like an over inflated balloon. He struggled to release a breath. "Was it really necessary for me to know my mother sold me to you? Or did you just need to clear your conscience?"

"I only told you because you don't seem to realize Hannah is nothing like your mother."

"I know that." If he hadn't before, he did after the way Hannah had come through for him with the conference even though he'd hurt her.

"Nor is she anything like that girl Marcy who worked you over in college."

Jordan jerked his gaze to Edward and peered at him. "What do you know about Marcy? Did Hannah tell-" He closed his eyes. Damn it. He'd done it again. He immediately concluded she'd broken his confidence when, deep in his soul, he knew she never would. Her words from Friday night reverberated in his memory. You've trusted me with your deepest secrets, yet you can't trust me with your heart.

"I don't know a thing about what happened with Marcy." Edward shrugged. "It was just obvious, judging from how long it took for you to start dating again, that she broke your heart."

Something Hannah would never do. He had no doubt that as long as there was a breath of life in her, she would always stand by him.

It was the absence of her breath that worried him.

Edward spread his hands and looked toward the ceiling. "If you know Hannah's nothing like your mother and that girl, why in heaven's name don't you marry her?"

"And mourn another person I love like you have Grammy the last twenty-two years? No, thank you."

"The memory of the thirty-five years I had with your grandmother was the only thing that made the last two decades without her bearable." Edward cocked his head and studied him. "For such a smart guy, sometimes you can be awfully stupid. Do you honestly believe you can let Hannah walk out of your life and not suffer just as much as if she'd died?"

The tightness in Jordan's chest every time he thought of her leaving was a lot like what he'd felt when his grandmother passed away. But in truth, it would be even harder knowing Hannah was still in this world, falling in love with someone else who would give her the family she wanted. And what made matters worse was that death was at least beyond his control, whereas he had the complete power to prevent her from leaving. All he had to do was propose.

"Hannah's so much like your grandmother," Edward said absently. "Sweet and feisty at the same time." His gaze spun toward Jordan as if he suddenly remembered he was there. "And she doesn't take any crap from you."

"You can say that, again."

"The day we met, she stomped out of Stanley Pulaski's office breathing fire and offered me some of her cookies. I knew right then she was the woman for you."

"Wait a minute." Jordan grabbed his grandfather's arm. "Do you think Stanley could've been the one who cancelled the conference? After I hired Hannah, I issued a formal reprimand to him. He's definitely holding a grudge."

Edward's gaze narrowed. "I can see Stan being angry, but fouling up the conference seems a little extreme-even for him. Besides, he's not smart enough to think of it."

"That wasn't his only motive. The office grapevine has been buzzing with how Hannah humiliated him last week when he asked her out."

"How would he have known all the conference's details?" Edward asked.

"You're right. Renee's the only one I can think of who knew enough. Unless...." Was it possible she'd had Lily get her cousin Nora hired at Calder to be Renee's puppet?

No. Now he was really grasping at straws.

"Unless what?" his grandfather asked.

"Maybe two people conspired to get back at both of us. Earlier you suggested she might have had someone else sign the letter. It could be why we haven't been able to figure out who did it. We've only been looking for one person."

"You might have something." Edward pursed his lips, nodding. "But how can you be sure it was Stanley who was her accomplice?"

"Who else? Everyone at Calder loves Hannah except Trudy and Pulaski."

"Do they?" Edward raised his bushy eyebrows. "When I took Hannah to lunch a few days ago, she confided that the other women have been giving her the cold shoulder."

"I can picture their claws coming out, but I don't buy one of them hating her enough to do something so vindictive."

"That's not all." Edward stole another slice of tomato. "Did she tell you someone let the air out her tires last week?"

"No." Here he'd thought he'd been doing her a favor assigning her a reserved parking space. Obviously, it had simply announced which car was hers.

"And when I brought Hannah back to the office after lunch," Edward continued, "she asked me to drop her off at the south end of the building instead of the main entrance. She told me one of the security guards-that Chuck fellow-has been hassling her about her relationship with you. He asked her out at few times and became hostile when she kept turning him down."

"Chuck Howell," Jordan muttered, remembering the guard's smirk the night he'd caught them in the parking lot. "Damn it." He slapped the granite counter. "I don't know why I didn't realize this sooner."

"What?"

"For the last month, I've been seeing Chuck Howell's initials on the security log sheet every time I've walked into my office. If we compare his signature to the one in the letter, I bet the Hs will match."

"Well, he's certainly one of the few people with a master key," Edward pointed out. "He could've easily sneaked into her office to steal the stationary. Except that doesn't explain how he would've known about the conference."

"Wendy Carson."

"Who the hell is Wendy Carson?"

"Assistant to the VP of Regulatory Affairs. I rejected her as an applicant for Hannah's job. Chuck is her stepbrother or something. I think if we check the personnel records, we'll find out she even received an employee referral bonus when he was hired."

"Okay." Edward shrugged. "So how would Wendy know enough about the conference to sabotage it?"

"Because I told her about it. I forgot she filled in for a while the afternoon you took Hannah shopping. She's also one of Renee's friends. I'd bet next year's bonus Wendy got Hank to steal the stationary and sign that letter."

"You really think so?"

"I'm almost certain of it. That's why the H in the forgery seemed so familiar."

Jordan recalled the unrestrained way he'd taken Hannah and made her shriek last Friday night, and his stomach rolled. It made him sick to imagine that pervert might have stood outside his office, listening.

If it was the last thing he ever did, he'd see to it the son of a bitch was nailed to the wall. He fished his car keys out of his pocket. "I'm going back to the office to see if I'm right."

"Now?" Edward's gaze jerked up. "It's after ten-o'clock."

"I might as well. I won't sleep if I go to bed wondering. I need to check this out in the personnel file room."

"Well, at least finish your sandwich and give me two minutes to change my clothes." Edward dashed toward the back staircase. "I'll go with you."

Jordan smiled. The old guy acted as if they were setting out on some suspense-packed Hardy Boy's adventure.

"Look at the H on these." Jordan laid Chuck Howell's signed employment application from his personnel file on the table next to the copy of the letter with Hannah's forged signature. "You don't need to be a graphologist to tell the same person wrote them."

Edward pointed to the L in Hannah's last name. "Even the two Ls in Howell have the same lopsided slant as in the forgery. Hannah's handwriting is neater than most calligraphers'. Any idiot could tell she didn't sign that letter."

Jordan snorted to himself. Any idiot but him.

To be fair, he'd known immediately it wasn't Hannah's signature. Except that hadn't stopped him from assuming the worst of her before he'd seen the evidence of her innocence in black and white. She hadn't deserved his mistrust and suspicion.

She'd proven to him time and again that she'd been cut from an entirely different bolt of cloth than women like Marcy and his mother-or the Renees and Wendys of the world. He was a lot more to Hannah than, as she put it, just a big gold-plated penis.

The excuse that it wouldn't be fair for him-an emotionally challenged cynic-to marry her or that she deserved better than him was pure bull. He was scared shitless. Plain and simple.

How long was he going to let his fear of rejection and abandonment keep him isolated from his feelings, from letting other people in-and more importantly, from trusting Hannah's love?

Jordan dug his cell phone out of his pocket.

"Who're you calling at this hour?" Edward eased Chuck's employment file back into the drawer.

"Hannah. I need to tell her what we discovered. This is too important to wait until tomorrow." Jordan punched out her number.

The line rang four times before she finally yawned in his ear. "Hullo."

"I think I've solved the mystery of who tried to frame you." He told her about Howell's handwriting and Wendy Carson's knowledge of the conference details.

"Chuck and Wendy are related?" she murmured. "Why am I not surprised?"

"First thing tomorrow, I'm having him charged with forgery, and getting the IT manager to search Wendy's computer hard drive and her network files." If they were lucky, they'd discover she'd saved the letter at work somewhere.

"Even if we can't dig up any hard evidence against Wendy, once Howell is officially charged, I guarantee that maggot will roll over on his stepsister faster than the DA can have her arrested for accessory to fraud."

"Jordan, I'm glad you figured it out, but couldn't you have waited to tell me? I didn't get a wink of sleep last night-and neither did you. Why are you still up at this hour?"

"I'm sorry I woke you, sweetheart. But that was only part of the reason I called. I also wanted to tell you-" He struggled to push the words past the emotion clogging his throat. "I love you, Hannah. And I trust that you love me."

"Please." A heart-wrenching sob caught in her voice. "Don't do this to me."

The line clicked in his ear. He stared at the cell phone and turned to Edward, his mouth hanging open. "I don't think she believed me."

"Why not?"

Jordan shrugged one shoulder. "I don't know. You've lived nearly twice as long as I have. Have you ever understood women?

"No." Edward chuckled. "You've got me there."