Switched At Birth. Christine Rimmer

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СКАЧАТЬ looks just like his pictures.”

      “It’s fine,” said Madison. “I hear you. You did the right thing.” Madison glanced down at her rumpled pink sleep shirt and gray sleep shorts. “I need to change.” She dropped her butterfly notebook and jumped from the bed. “Just let me put on a decent pair of jeans and a top that doesn’t look like I slept in it. Go ahead and tell him I’ll be right down.”

      * * *

      Ten minutes later, Madison was shaking hands with the legendary Bravo Billionaire. He looked good, she thought, tall and broad-shouldered, with striking dark blue eyes and thick graying hair.

      Once they’d said hello, he wished her a happy birthday. She thanked him, not finding it especially strange that he knew. The date of her birth was public knowledge, after all.

      After the birthday wishes, the first words out of his mouth were, “Let me congratulate you on the protectiveness of your staff.”

      She backed off a step. “You’ve been trying to reach me?”

      “This is my first attempt. But rumor has it you’re a very hard woman to get in touch with. I confess, I hoped the element of surprise would work in my favor, that someone might just let me in.”

      “And someone did—coffee or something? Ada makes an amazing latte.” When he shook his head, she cut to the chase. “What can I do for you, Jonas?”

      “I was recently contacted by an elderly gentleman named Percy Valentine.” Jonas said the name slowly and then fell silent, apparently waiting for her reaction. When she gave him none, he asked, “You’ve never heard of Percy Valentine?”

      “No, I haven’t.”

      Jonas launched into a story about how this Valentine guy was related to a branch of the Bravo family in a small coastal town in Oregon called Valentine Bay. “Percy’s been trying to get in touch with you since last summer. He tells me he’s spoken to your personal assistant, your manager, your housekeeper and also someone at your agency, but he’s yet to get any of them to put him through to you.”

      “I’m sorry,” said Madison, and she was—a little. Really, though, a lot of people tried to get through to her: journalists, fans, screenwriters, would-be producers with projects to pitch her, stalkers and other crazies, too. Her people protected her. If this Valentine person hadn’t been able to get in contact, there was probably a very good reason her team had kept him away. “I work a lot and I’ve given orders that only high-priority calls get through.”

      “Which is why I’m here,” said Jonas. “Percy hoped that I might be able to accomplish the impossible and actually get a word with you...”

      Madison was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable and she wasn’t sure why. “Did this Percy Valentine happen to tell any of my people what he wanted to talk to me about?”

      Jonas answered carefully. “It’s sensitive information.”

      “So then, he never said why he needed to reach me?”

      “He did, yes. He explained everything to your personal assistant.”

      “Rudy or Valerie?”

      “Valerie Daws. Percy even sent proof of his claim. He never heard back. When he tried to call your PA again, he couldn’t get through.”

      Valerie had been very ill for a few months the previous year. She’d ended up having to quit and Madison had hired Rudy Jeffries, her current PA. It was possible that the information Percy Valentine had sent had slipped through the cracks, somehow. “What kind of claim are we talking about here?”

      Jonas slanted her the strangest look. “I think we should sit down.”

      Alarm flashed through her. People always suggested sitting down when they were about to come out with some horrible bit of news.

      Madison squared her shoulders. “Of course.” She gestured toward the nearest sitting area and followed him over there. He took an easy chair. Her knees wobbly now, she sank to the sofa. “All right. What?”

      The Bravo Billionaire just looked at her. For a really long time.

      “What?” she demanded again.

      He glanced away and then back. “I’m just going to say it.”

      “Please do.”

      “There is good reason to believe that you were switched at birth and that your biological parents were George and Marie Bravo of Valentine Bay, Oregon.”

      A gasp escaped her as her stomach performed a forward roll.

      It really was a good thing he’d made her sit down. If she’d still been on her feet, she probably would have crumpled to the floor—and it wasn’t true.

      It couldn’t be true!

      But before she could cry out that he had to be wrong, Jonas added, “Percy said to tell you that the switch took place on a ranch called Wild River not far from Astoria, Oregon.”

      Wild River Ranch.

      Okay, yeah. Twenty-seven years ago today, Madison had been born at Wild River Ranch. A few months after her birth, her dad had found another job in a different state and they’d moved on, like they always did.

      But after her father died, when she and her mom moved to LA, they’d made a detour to northwestern Oregon—not to the actual ranch, but to the area. So that Madison would know where she came from, her mom had said with the saddest, strangest look in her eye.

      In one of the few pictures Madison had of her father, Lloyd Delaney stood in front of the foreman’s cottage at Wild River, smiling proudly, cradling a pink-blanketed bundle: Madison herself, just a few days after her birth.

      No. It couldn’t be true. Lloyd and Paula Delaney might have had their problems. But they had loved their only daughter unconditionally. Her dad was always saying how she had that “Delaney” look about her. Madison had no doubt that she was everything to him and to her mom, truly theirs, in every way.

      “Yes,” she gave out grudgingly. “I was born at Wild River Ranch in northern Oregon. But that doesn’t mean—”

      “Just let me say what I came to say.” Jonas spoke very gently, silencing her arguments simply by being so patient, so kind.

      “All right.” She listened, her breath tangled, hot in her chest, her pulse racing, as the Bravo Billionaire shared what he knew.

      At first, his words were a blur to her. She tried to focus, to understand.

      Jonas said that a man named Martin Durand had made the switch. He did it because the other baby, the one raised by the Bravos, had been the result of Durand’s secret affair with Paula Delaney. Durand, now deceased, was a married man. He’d been afraid that Paula would come after him and demand a paternity test.

      “It was a totally out-there move on Durand’s part,” said Jonas. “The truth might very well have come out earlier if Paula had gone ahead and tried to prove Durand’s paternity. СКАЧАТЬ