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Searching for Cate
Marie Ferrarella
Since her mother's death, FBI Special Agent Cate Kowalski had to cope with the deep emptiness she felt–and the shocking revelation that she was adopted.The news came too soon after losing her fiancé and destroyed the very foundation of her identity. So now, the only way for Cate to find herself was to go in search of her birth mother.She didn't count on finding love on her path to self-discovery.It had been three years since Dr. Christian Graywolf's wife died and he still blamed himself for her death. As a result, he focused entirely on his work at Blair Memorial Hospital until his sister brought home colleague Cate Kowalski. The attraction was intense, immediate–and the truth was something neither Christian nor Cate expected: that all his life Christian had been searching for Cate.
An eerie feeling wafted through Cate, as if this wasn’t real.
As if she was looking into the mirror and seeing into the past.
Joan cleared her throat, her nervousness growing. “Can I help you?”
Cate kept looking at the woman in the bed, searching for some foolproof sign. All the while knowing that there wouldn’t be one. “That all depends.”
“On what?” Joan whispered the words, now clearly fatigued.
Cate took a step toward her then stopped. She was afraid that the woman would pass out if she came any closer. Did she know? On some instinctive level?
Cate put her thoughts into words. “On whether you’re willing to admit that you’re my mother.”
Dear Reader,
The Signature Select aims to single out outstanding stories, contemporary themes and oft-requested classics by some of your favorite series authors and present them to you in a variety of formats bound by truly striking covers.
We want to provide several different types of reading experiences in the new Signature Select program. The Spotlight books offer a single “big read” by a talented series author, the Collections present three novellas on a selected theme in one volume, the Sagas contain sprawling, sometimes multi-generational family tales (often related to a favorite family first introduced in series) and the Miniseries feature requested previously published books, with two or, occasionally, three complete stories in one volume. The Signature Select program offers one book in each of these categories per month, and fans of limited continuity series will also find these continuing stories under the Signature Select umbrella.
In addition, these volumes bring you bonus features…different in every single book! You may learn more about the author in an extended interview, more about the setting or inspiration for the book, more about subjects related to the theme and, often, a bonus short read will be included. Authors and editors have been outdoing themselves in originating creative material for our bonus features—we’re sure you'll be surprised and pleased with the results!
The Signature Select program strives to bring you a variety of reading experiences by authors you’ve come to love, as well as by rising stars you’ll be glad you’ve discovered.
The excitement continues!
Warm wishes for happy reading,
Marsha Zinberg
Executive Editor
The Signature Select Program
Searching for Cate
Marie Ferrarella
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader
What if, one day, you wake up to discover that everything you believed to be true, wasn’t? That the parents you’d always loved really weren’t your parents? How would you feel? These are the emotions that FBI Special Agent Cate Kowalski finds herself facing. She’d gone into law enforcement to honor and emulate the father she’d always adored, the father who was killed in the line of duty while she was still in her teens. Now, she finds the very reason for who and what she is has been based on a lie. This is the premise behind Searching For Cate. It is Cate who is searching for herself, the way that, in part, we all search for ourselves, except that in her case she has to begin from scratch. The search for her birth parents brings her to Southern California and eventually, into the life of Dr. Christian Graywolf, a selfless physician who is also one of the walking wounded. Together, slowly, they each heal the gaping hole in the other’s soul.
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. And, as always, I wish you love.
To Marsha Zinberg, who asked, and Patience Smith, who said yes.
Thank you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Bonus Features
Chapter 1
“What do you mean it’s not compatible?”
Special Agent Catherine Kowalski stared at the short, husky lab technician before her. A basket filled with vials, syringes and other blood-letting paraphernalia was looped over his arm and he looked at her as if she were a deranged troll who had wandered out of a fairy tale.
The drone of voices in the hospital corridor outside her mother’s single-care unit faded into the background as she tried to make some kind of sense of what the man had just told her.
It’s a mistake, a voice whispered in her head. But still, there was this terrible tightening in the pit of her stomach, as if she was about to hear something she didn’t want to hear.
This was absurd, she thought. Just a small foul-up, nothing more.
“She’s my mother. How could my blood type be incompatible with hers? There has to be some mistake,” Cate insisted.
There was no sympathy on the technician’s rounded, pockmarked face, just a weariness that came from doing the same laboratory procedures day after endless day. There was more than just a touch of indignation in his eyes at being questioned.
His voice was flat, nasal. “No mistake. I tested it twice.”
Her stomach twisted a little harder. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm went off, followed by the sound of running feet. She blocked it out, her mind focused on what this new information ultimately meant.
No more surprises, I can’t handle any more surprises. Cate had graduated near the top of her class at Quantico. In the field, there were few better. But on the personal front, she felt as if her life had been falling apart for the past few years.
And this might be the final tumble.
Cate’s eyes narrowed. Her voice was low, steely. “Test it again.”
Submitting to the blood-typing test had been nothing more than an annoying formality in Cate’s eyes. She’d thought it a waste of time even as she agreed.
Time had always been very precious to her.
Ever since she could remember, for reasons she could never pin down, she’d always wanted to cram as much as she could into a day, into an hour. It was as if soon, very soon, her time would run out. Over the years, every so often, she’d tried to talk herself out of the feeling.
Instead, she’d been proven to be right. Because there hadn’t been enough time, not with the father whom she adored. Officer Thaddeus Kowalski, Big Ted to his friends, had died in the line of duty, protecting one of his fellow officers during the foiling of an unsuccessful liquor store robbery. She was fifteen at the time. It seemed like the entire San Francisco police force turned out for his funeral. She would have willingly done without the tribute, if it meant having her father back, even for a few hours.
When she was a little girl, they used to watch all the old classic westerns together, and her father always told her that he wanted to die with his boots on. She’d cling to him and tell him that he could never die. He’d laughed and told her not to worry. That he wasn’t prepared to go for a very long time.
He’d lied to her and died much too soon.
As had Gabe Summer.
Special Agent Gabriel Summer, the only man she had ever allowed herself to open her heart to. Gabe, who had stubbornly assaulted the walls she’d put up around herself until they’d finally cracked and then come down. Gabe, who somehow managed to keep an upbeat attitude about everything in general and humanity in particular.
Gabe, of whom nothing more than his arm had been found in the rubble that represented a nation’s final departure from innocence on that horrific September 11 morning in 2001.
Like her father, Gabe had left her much, much too soon. They never had the chance to get married the way they’d planned, or have the children he wanted so much to have with her. The lifetime she’d hoped for, allowed herself to plan for, hadn’t happened. Because there wasn’t enough time.
And now, with her mother diagnosed with leukemia and her bone marrow discovered not to be a match, Cate had thought at the very least she could donate blood to be stored for her mother so that when a match would be found—as she knew in her heart just had to be found—at least the blood supply would be ample.
But now here was this stoop-shouldered man myopically blinking at her behind rimless eyeglasses, telling her something that just couldn’t be true.
“I can’t test it again,” he informed her flatly. “I’ve got work to do.”
Lowering his head, he gave the impression that he was prepared to ram his way past her if she didn’t let him by.
Cate planted herself in front of him. At five foot four, she wasn’t exactly a raging bull. To the undiscerning eye, she might have even looked fragile. But every ounce she possessed was toned and trained. She was far stronger than she appeared and knew how to use an opponent’s weight against him.
She temporarily halted the technician’s departure with a warning glare.
“Look, a lot goes on in the lab. You people are overworked and underpaid and mistakes are made. I need you to test my blood again. And then, if you get the same results, test hers. Just don’t come back and tell me they’re incompatible, because they’re not. They can’t be.”
The small man stepped back, his eyes never leaving her face. “Lady, you’re AB positive. Your mother’s O. I don’t care how many tests you want me to run, that’s not going to change. You give her your blood, she dies, end of story.” He drew himself up to the five foot three inches he came to in his elevator shoes. The vials in the basket clinked against one another. Annoyance creased his wide brow, traveling up to his receding hairline. “Now, I’ve got other patients to see to.”
