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Then Anya had passed on Devin’s message to Thad that he was needed back home, and he’d had to leave. Michaels had disappeared shortly after. Guilt twisted Thad’s guts. If he hadn’t left, maybe Michaels would have made it home to his wife and kids.
“If he did give me up, I’m not sure that I’d blame him,” he murmured.
“Kendall, don’t beat yourself up about this,” his supervisor advised. “I authorized your leaving. I sent in another operative.…” Her voice cracked with regret, but then she cleared her throat.
“That operative obviously wasn’t as good as I am,” he said without conceit. It was simple fact that he’d never lost another operative or a contact.
“You’re one of the best,” she agreed. “You need to wrap up whatever’s going on in St. Louis and get back in the field.”
“Soon,” he vowed.
His parents’ killer had gone free for too long; justice could wait no longer.
“I need you back out there. I don’t have to worry about you,” she said. “You’re not a liability.”
“No, you don’t have to worry about me,” he agreed. He had no wife. No kids.
But he might have … had he not left Caroline. She was the marrying kind; he never should have called her after that first disastrous double date with her friends. But she was so damn beautiful. And it wasn’t because of her summer-sky-blue eyes or her silky dark blond hair; it was the kind of beauty that radiated from the inside out. And he’d wanted to see her again and again.
And now, nearly four years after he had left her, he’d wanted to see her again. He clicked off with his boss and then looked up at her house. He didn’t need to check the address—he instinctively knew it was hers.
The brick Cape Cod had a giant wreath on its oak front door. The house sat behind a white picket fence, garlands strung from each snow-topped picket. At night, lights would probably twinkle against the evergreen branches. Lights were also wrapped around the pine tree in the yard and hung like icicles from the eaves.
All the decorations had his stomach churning with his revulsion for Christmas. Caroline loved it, which was just another thing they hadn’t had in common, another reason they could have never made a long-term relationship work.
He had often wondered, over the years, if he should have left her. He had fantasized over what they could have had if he’d stayed instead.…
A lopsided snowman in the front yard. No, this would have never been his home. Ever since his parents had been murdered in their beds on Christmas Eve, Thad had not had a home, or at least he’d never let any place feel like one.
And Caroline was all about home and hearth. Smoke puffed out of the top of the brick chimney—her house even had a fireplace. She probably had two-point-two children by now and a loving, devoted husband who worked a boring nine-to-five job so that he could be home every night to help her with dinner and the kids’ baths.
Thad respected that she had her own life now, and that was why he hadn’t given in to his temptation to mine his St. Louis sources for information about her. He’d hoped she had the life she had always wanted and deserved. He needed to just drive away and leave her alone. But instead he shut off his car and stepped out onto the snow-dusted street. Since getting Devin’s message, he’d been in hell. How could his parents’ killer be free?
But there’d been more, so much more that had happened to his family. His brother Ash had nearly lost his fiancée and their unborn child. Uncle Craig had nearly been framed for his own brother’s and sister-in-law’s murders. And Natalie, sweet Natalie, had been stalked and terrorized. His family had been through hell.
So Thad needed an angel. As much as he needed to leave her alone, he needed even more to see her face.
She wasn’t the one who opened the door at his knock, though. At first it looked as though it had swung open of its own volition, until Thad adjusted his line of vision way down to the little boy who stood in the doorway. With his dark brown hair and blue eyes, the kid was a miniature version of Thad.
Caroline had had his son.
Chapter Two
“Good luck,” Tammy whispered through the open driver’s window after Caroline had buckled Mark into his booster seat in the back.
“Thank you,” Caroline replied. For the good-luck wishes and for picking up her son, so that the little boy wouldn’t overhear the explosion that was certain to come from Thad Kendall.
Despite the cold wind that drove icy snowflakes into her face and chin-length hair, Caroline stood outside, watching Tammy’s minivan drive away. And avoiding Thad.
But he deserved an explanation, which he’d already agreed to wait for until Tammy picked up Mark, so they could talk in private. She drew in a deep breath, the cold air burning her lungs, and turned back to the house. Through the big picture window, she could see Thad pacing the length of her living room—giving a wide berth around the Christmas tree as if it were a vicious dog that might attack if he got too close.
She pulled open the front door and stepped into the room with him. Warmth from the crackling fire immediately melted the snowflakes from her hair and skin so that they ran down her face like tears. Her fingers trembled as she brushed away the moisture. Despite the warmth of the room, she kept her coat on, wrapped tight around her as if she still needed the protection.
Thad didn’t stop pacing. She remembered how he had never stopped moving. How had he ever managed to hold still long enough to take the poignant photos of war and tragedy that had earned him such accolades in his nearly decadelong career?
“So are you going to try to lie to me?” he asked. His voice, colder even than the winter wind, chilled her to the bone.
“Lie to you?” she repeated, the question echoing hollowly off the coffered ceiling.
“Play me for a fool, deny that that little boy is my son,” he said, heat in his voice now as his blue eyes burned with anger.
Still, she shivered. “Mark is definitely your son.”
“Then why did you keep that from me?” he demanded to know with an intensity that might have had Caroline taking a step back if righteous indignation wasn’t pumping through her veins right now.
Except for on the news and in newspapers, she hadn’t seen him in nearly four years. Her anger ignited and she lashed out, “How was I supposed to tell you? When you called me? When you wrote me? Oh, yeah, you didn’t do any of those things!”
He shoved his hand through his hair, tousling the dark brown strands. “We agreed that a clean break would be easier.”
“I agreed.” As she’d fought back her tears and silently called herself all kinds of a fool for falling for him when he’d been clear right from the start that he had to leave again. Why hadn’t she listened to him instead of Tammy and her own stupid heart? “But the clean break was your idea, so I figured you wanted nothing to do with me anymore.”
“Caroline …” He reached out but pulled his hand back before touching her face. “I never led you on. I was straight with you up front.”
And that was why she should have never gone out with him. But the attraction between them had been so strong—as strong as it was now, her skin tingling even though he hadn’t touched her—that she hadn’t been able to resist. And she really had hoped that her friend was right, that if he fell in love with her, he would stay.
But he hadn’t.…
“I know you had to leave,” she said, and she suspected she even knew why—because it was too hard for him to stay in the city where his parents had been so brutally murdered. “But I didn’t know where you were.”
“You could have given a message to my brothers Devin or Ash or to my uncle Craig,” he said. “They would have made sure I got it.”
She laughed, but with bitterness not amusement. “I don’t know your brothers or your uncle. I never met your family,” she reminded him, feeling now as she had then, as if she had been some dirty secret of his. Had dating an elementary school teacher been so far beneath the status of one of the illustrious Kendalls of St. Louis that he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his family?
“But you know who they are and how to reach them,” he stubbornly persisted.
Of course she knew; everyone in St. Louis and most of the United States knew who every one of the Kendalls was.
“But your family doesn’t know who I am,” she retorted. “What reason would they have to believe that I was really carrying your child and not just trying to make a claim on the Kendall fortune?”
According to local gossip, several other women had tried to get their hands on some Kendall money albeit through his brothers and not Thad.
“My brothers or uncle would have told me that you’d come to see them—”
“When?” she interrupted. “Are you in regular contact with them? Have you even come home in the past four years?” She waited, almost hoping he hadn’t so she wouldn’t be disappointed that he hadn’t contacted her earlier.
“I would have gotten word,” he insisted, a muscle twitching along his tightly clenched jaw.
“And what would you have done?” she wondered. “Would you have come back home? Would you have given up your nomad lifestyle for diaper duty and two-a.m. feedings?”
“You did that all alone?” He glanced around the living room as if he were looking for her support system.
Her parents had moved to Arizona years ago, coming back to St. Louis for only a few weeks every summer. Except for her friends, she had no one.
She nodded in response, but she didn’t want his sympathy or his guilt. “And I loved every minute of it. Mark was the easiest baby and now he’s the sweetest little boy.”
“I guess I will have to take your word for what kind of baby he was since I’ve missed out on those years,” he said.
He had stopped his restless pacing and stood now in front of the portrait wall of her living room, staring wistfully at all the pictures of their son. In addition to the studio portraits she’d had taken every few months, she’d framed collages of snapshots, too. She’d recorded every special moment in his life, and hers, because she’d been there. Thad hadn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t have been even if he’d known. But she’d robbed him of that choice.
Now the guilt was hers. She should have tried to talk to his family so that one of them might have gotten word to him. It hadn’t been fair of her to just assume that he wouldn’t have wanted any involvement in his son’s life just because he hadn’t wanted any involvement in hers.
“But I don’t intend to miss out on anything else, Caroline,” Thad said, his voice low and deep as if he were issuing a threat. “I am going to be part of his life.”
“For how long?” she asked. “Just long enough to break his heart when you leave again?” Just like he had broken hers.
THAD’S HEAD POUNDED, tension throbbing at his temples and at the base of his skull. Maybe it was the chemicals in his new sister-in-law’s crime lab at the St. Louis Police Department that had caused the headache.
But the fumes weren’t toxic or Rachel wouldn’t have been working still, not in her condition. The petite brunette was very pregnant, her belly protruding through the sides of the white lab coat.
What had Caroline looked like when she was pregnant? She was taller than Rachel with more generous curves. Had she hidden her pregnancy for a while? Being a single mom might have caused her problems at the elementary school where she worked.
He hadn’t asked about that. He’d been too stunned and angry to do more than yell at her. And he hadn’t talked to his son at all. Knowing how close he’d been to losing his temper, he had let her call her friend to pick up the boy. Instead of talking to him while they waited, Thad had just stared at the kid and had probably scared him.
Had he scared Caroline, too? After he’d demanded a relationship with his son, she had asked him to leave, saying that she needed time to think. That had been a couple of days ago.
All he’d been doing was thinking.
“Hey, little bro!” Devin snapped his fingers in Thad’s face. “You called this meeting. Down here.” The CEO of Kendall Communications glanced around the sterile lab and shuddered. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t care,” Ash murmured as he pressed a kiss against the nape of Rachel’s neck, which her high ponytail left exposed. “He gave me an excuse to see my gorgeous wife.”
“Get a room,” Thad grumbled.
“You’re just jealous,” Ash teased. But he was also right.
Thad was jealous that he’d missed out on seeing Caroline like Rachel was now, glowing and beautiful in her pregnancy … with his son.
The door to the lab opened again. “I’m here,” a deep voice murmured as former navy SEAL Grayson Scott joined them. “And if my fiancée asks, I was out bonding with my brothers-in-law-to-be.”
“How are we bonding?” Devin asked with a grin. His eyes gleamed with curiosity and mischief. “Drinking? Working out?”
Color flushed Gray’s face, and he grumbled his reply. “We’re Christmas shopping.”
Rachel laughed. “Now you’re going to have to actually go shopping, so that you weren’t really lying to Natalie.”
The thought of Christmas shopping, of the music and the crowds and all the goddamn cheer, had Thad’s stomach churning.
“It’s better that she doesn’t know why we’re all together,” Thad pointed out. “There is no point in upsetting Natalie until we know the truth.”
Rachel nodded and was suddenly all business. “The FBI lab results came back.” She stared at Thad, her hazel eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I don’t know how you got the results rushed, but the DNA report is back already. It confirms my findings.”
Thad hadn’t needed a DNA test to prove that he was Mark’s father. The little boy was him twenty-eight years ago.
“So was I right?”
Rachel studied him again. “I don’t know how you knew.…”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know for sure. But the eyes …” He shuddered even now, thinking of how looking into the dead man’s eyes had been like looking into his sister’s. Only the color had been different. “So Natalie is only our half sister?”
“According to the DNA tests you all took in comparison to Natalie’s samples that you had taken while she was in the hospital, and the dead man’s samples I took from the morgue—” Rachel’s ponytail bobbed as she nodded “—her stalker was her half brother.”
“So she had a different father from all of you?” Gray asked, looking somewhat ill.
“That’s the most likely scenario,” Devin said with a weary sigh of resignation, as if this was merely confirmation of something he had already suspected.
He’d been older than the rest of them, sixteen, when their parents had been murdered. He remembered them best. Or perhaps, worst.
“We need to tell her,” Gray said. After dragging in a deep breath, he added, “I need to tell her.”
“No,” Thad said with a head shake that only intensified the throbbing pain. “I’ll tell her.”
Gray’s jaw clenched. “Any particular reason you want to be the one to tell her?”
Over the years, Thad, Devin and Ash had given Natalie’s boyfriends a tough time because none of them had ever been good enough for her. Until now. Grayson Scott was a good man, but that hadn’t stopped them all from being a little rough on him in the beginning. He’d had to prove to them, as well as Natalie, how much he loved her. Taking a bullet to save her life had pretty much sealed the deal for all of them.
“I’m the one who killed him,” Thad offered in explanation. “I’m the reason she’ll never get to know this guy.”
“He didn’t want to get to know her,” Gray reminded him. “He wanted to kill her.”
“Why?” Devin asked. “Knowing now that they’re related, it makes even less sense that he was stalking her.”
“Did you find out anything else from his DNA?” Ash asked his wife. “Like who the hell he is?”
She shook her head. “We already ran his prints. While they matched the ones from the break-in at my apartment, he wasn’t in the system.”
“So he is the guy who tried to get the DNA results from our parents’ crime scene?” Devin asked. “He’s the one who tried to destroy the evidence that cleared Rick Campbell?”
The petty thief had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had done twenty years’ time for someone else’s crime. He never got the chance to enjoy freedom again. He’d been killed to cover up the corruption that had rushed his conviction in order to clear a high-profile case and advance a career.
Ash gave a grim nod in response to his older brother’s question. Rachel had been hurt during the break-in; it was how he had learned she was pregnant since they’d broken up months earlier.
“We need to find out this guy’s identity,” Gray said. “I’m not even sure Wade is his real first name. It’s just what he told the girl at the coffee shop Natalie goes to.”
“Did you get any leads from the photograph that was released to the media?” Devin asked Ash.
Ash shook his head. “The new chief wouldn’t let us release the morgue photo, and that surveillance photo from the ATM camera outside the coffee shop is too grainy for anyone to make a positive identification.”
Devin turned to Thad. “Why don’t you leak a better photo?”
