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That chocolate gaze was anything but melting and warm now, Kate noticed, and told herself she was glad.
“Touching as this is,” Rafe drawled, saving her from answering. “Why don’t we get down to business?”
“Yes,” Cord agreed. “I left Hannah with Becky waiting at the pediatrician’s office and I want to get back to them.”
Kate held her breath, embarrassingly grateful when Brett finally looked away from her, to focus on the others. She wished Hannah was here. The woman who’d become Kate’s friend, then Cord’s wife, after she’d brought sweet little Becky into the Stockwell home, would have provided some badly needed moral support.
“Guess that means I’m on,” Jack was saying, and Kate realized she’d been staring at Brett’s back. She mentally shook herself and focused on her brother. He’d propped a flat wrapped parcel across the arms of a wing chair and was peeling away the brown paper to reveal the whirls and curls of a fussy, gilded frame and the corner of a painting.
“I found this in France,” he said as he tore away the rest of the paper and let it drift to the floor beside his feet. He pointed at the artist’s signature in the lower corner. “Painted by Madelyn LeClaire.”
But Kate wasn’t looking at the signature. She stared at the portrait, feeling as if all the oxygen in the room had disappeared.
“Good Lord,” Rafe finally breathed, breaking the shocked silence that had filled the room.
“It looks just like Kate did when she was a girl,” Cord murmured.
“Yup.” Jack looked at the painting along with the rest of them, as if even he couldn’t believe it. And he’d been the one to find it. He’d been the one to call the rest of the family from France and tell them he’d picked up the trail of Madelyn’s from France to New England and that he was bringing back something astonishing that they all had to see. “I about fell over when I saw it.”
“You think we ought to take it to the old man’s room and show it to him?” Rafe didn’t look particularly enthusiastic about his suggestion.
“Shove it in Dad’s face as proof of the lie he raised us to believe?” Cord grimaced. “He’s so doped on pain meds for the cancer, it wouldn’t faze him.”
“Even if he is coherent, it wouldn’t faze him,” Jack murmured without emotion. His blue gaze settled on Kate. “Feel like you’re looking in a mirror, kiddo?”
She heard the words through a fog. “How—” Words wouldn’t come. She shook her head.
Jack seemed to understand, though. “It was hanging in a tiny art gallery outside of Paris. Cost a fair piece, too.” He stepped away from the painting, allowing room for his siblings to move in for a closer look.
Standing behind them, Kate listened to her brothers go off on the outrageous price of art until she wanted to scream. Then Brett slowly turned his head, his gaze pinning hers.
It was too much. Her eyes suddenly burned and she turned away, walking hurriedly out of the study.
Madelyn LeClaire had painted that portrait that uncannily resembled Kate.
Madelyn LeClaire…aka Madelyn Johnson Stockwell. Her mother.
Her mother who had supposedly died in a boating accident years ago.
Her father, Caine, who lay bedridden in his room in this very house had told them so. Until a few months earlier when, apparently in some attempt at cleansing his conscience that had to be weighted down with a lifetime of sins, he’d divulged that Madelyn may still be alive. And that, when she’d left her home and her children still in it, she’d been pregnant with another man’s child.
Since that moment, Kate’s brothers had been turning over heaven and earth trying to find out if it were true. And where she was now.
Had Madelyn had another daughter? A daughter who was the true subject of that painting? It made sense, considering Caine’s claim of her pregnancy, but so much of what Caine said these days was pure delusion.
Kate walked blindly through the house, her arms clasped around her body as if to hold her shakiness at bay. Well, she could keep the shakes at bay, but the tears flooding her eyes were another matter.
“Kate. Are you all right?”
She stiffened. Oh God. Why did he have to follow her? She swiped her fingers across her cheeks and dashed her hair away from her face, realizing she’d wandered into the sunroom. “Of course,” she answered airily. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She reached out to adjust the angle of a small fern, but her shaking hands knocked it askew and it tumbled from its narrow perch, sending rich soil cascading across the antique rug. A sob caught in her chest and she crouched down, furiously scrabbling the clumps of dirt back into the small pot.
“Kate.” Brett crouched down beside her, then closed his big hands over her shoulders, urging her to her feet. “Leave it.”
“I don’t want to leave the mess,” she whispered thickly. But his broad shoulder was so close and before she knew what she was doing, her face was pressed against it and his arms—oh, his strong, warm arms—had closed around her, pulling her against him.
Horrified, she scrambled backward, scattering the dirt even more. Vision glazed, she tried scooping it back into the pot.
“For God’s sake, Kate. I said leave it. Mrs. Hightower will have it cleaned up. God knows she has plenty of staff under her thumb,” he added flatly.
Kate dashed the dirt hurriedly into the pot, then brushed her fingers together. “You always detested Mrs. Hightower,” the words came without volition and her ears felt like they were on fire.
“She detested me,” Brett countered smoothly. “Here. Stop blubbering.”
Shock propelled her to her feet. “I don’t blubber.”
“Spoken with all the dignity of the princess of the manor.” Brett’s glance flickered over her as he returned the more-or-less restored pot to the shelf. “Except you’ve got mascara running down your face.”
Her stomach ached. “You’re hateful.”
He shrugged, his disinterest plain. “Wipe your eyes, Katy.”
Katy. The name that only Brett had ever called her. She closed her eyes. For an aching moment, time seemed suspended. Bittersweet and filled with the ghosts of the past.
She turned away from the memories. And from his eyes that had always seen too much, yet not enough.
Then he pushed a soft, white handkerchief into her hand, and the aching moment passed. “Trust you to have a handkerchief,” she murmured thickly. He’d always carried one. Even when they’d both been only thirteen years old, tearing up the schoolyard with their antics.
“My mama may have been a servant in a big old house not too far from here, but she did raise me with some manners.”
His oh-so-smooth voice grated. “And I’m sure all the women whose tears you’ve tenderly mopped throughout the years have greatly appreciated it.” She scrubbed her cheeks. Hating him. Hating the situation that had brought him back into her life.
“Well, well, Kate. Jealous?”
She very nearly snorted. Only a lifetime of minding her manners prevented it. “Hardly. I’m not the jealous type.” That was a bald-faced lie and she was grateful that he didn’t challenge it. She had been jealous. Jealous of the one great love in Brett’s life. And she’d had no one to help her deal with it.
She’d needed a mother.
But Kate had been raised to believe that her mother had drowned in Stockwell Pond nearly thirty years ago. Caught between pond and lake, it was thirty feet deep in some places, two miles across at its widest point. Willows and oaks crowded along its jagged coves and inlets.
She wiped her eyes. She may hate the situation—hate him even—but there was a purpose to his presence. One she’d do well to remember. He was supposed to be a crackerjack investigator, after all. And that was his only purpose there.
“It can’t be a painting of me,” she said, forcing herself to think straight. “It’s just…a coincidence. It has to be her…other child.” A child who would have been only a year or so younger than Kate. A child who’d grown up with a mother.
Brett’s silence spoke volumes and her fingers tightened around his handkerchief. “Why would my father lie all these years about my mother?” The question that had plagued them all for weeks, months, burst from her. “I never knew her because of him. I knew he was a cold, cruel man. But this—” She couldn’t continue.
“That’s why you and your brothers hired me,” Brett reminded. “To help you find your mother. To get the answers that Caine can’t, or won’t give.”
“I didn’t want to hire you,” she said, perturbed at the way he still managed to unsettle her.
His shoulders moved. Amused? Annoyed? She’d given up trying to figure his thoughts long ago. “No kidding.”
“But I’m told that you do own the best private investigative agency in the entire Dallas area.”
“Not just in the suburb of Grandview?” Brett commented dryly. “I’m wounded.”
“Jack suggested it some time ago. Then Caroline.” Caroline Carlyle Stockwell. Rafe’s brand-new wife. The mother of Rafe’s brand new child.
“I get the hint. I’m here to find your mother. To do a job.”
“Make sure you remember that.”
His expression didn’t change. “What’s the matter, Kate? You afraid I can’t keep my mind on the job what with being back amongst the exalted Stockwells?”
“Nobody knows better than I do that nothing distracts you from your work. I’m just curious why you accepted this case in the first place.” Her lips felt dry. “Considering everything.”
“You mean considering you.”
“That was a long time ago.”
His gaze drifted over her. “You don’t trust me,” he said softly.
Her lips parted “I—”
“That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t believe I’ll do my best for your family.”
“My brothers wouldn’t have brought you in on this if they thought that.”
“We’re not talking about your brothers.”
“No,” she said after a long moment. “We’re not.”
“Well, well,” he mused. “Score one for fierce Katy Stockwell.” His eyes narrowed and his lips twisted a little. Just enough to make him look even more saturnine. “It’d have more effect if you weren’t in tears, I’m afraid.”
“Stick to the case, Brett. Find Madelyn LeClaire.”
“And stay away from you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She cursed the tears that still insisted on leaking from her eyes. “Jack didn’t come all the way home from Europe with that…that painting, and call you here today just so I could cry on your shoulder.” Her voice was flippant. Better that, than anything else. She couldn’t bear it that this man, of all people, should see her weakness.
“I’ll consider it my perk for the day.” He didn’t look any more delighted about it than she felt. “Look,” he said after a moment. “You don’t have to pretend that this hasn’t been rough on you. First you learn that your father’s cancer is terminal, then that your mother may be alive. And now, to see that portrait— Katy, it would shake anyone. You don’t have to hide it. Hell, it shook me.”
“Nothing shakes you.”
His lips tightened. “You’d be surprised. Besides. I remember you at that age. You were a holy terror, and the girl in that painting looks as serene as a lovely country pond.”
“Go away,” she said flatly. “I need to fix my face.”
“Is that a dismissal, princess?”
She shot him a look, prepared to give him a stinging reply, but the words died as she looked at him. “I don’t imagine any one dismisses you,” she said instead. Not anymore. He was too commanding. Too self-sufficient. And the cynical tilt of his lips was just a little bit fearsome.
The teenager who’d earned spending money working in the same house where his mother was the live-in cook for Judge Orwell and his perfectly coiffed wife, Bitsy, was long gone.
Now, Brett, in his beautifully cut summer-weight suit looked as if he might have a host of servants in his home at his beck and call. Which reminded her that, aside from knowing about Brett Larson, owner of a very well-respected private investigation and security firm, she knew very little about Brett Larson, the private man.
A fresh knot tied itself in her stomach. “I—”
“Don’t sweat it, Kate. We’ll both forget this tête-à-tête ever happened. No one will ever learn from me that Kate Stockwell possesses tear ducts.”
Kate’s tears ceased. “Remind me why I ever wanted to shackle myself to you. Oh, wait. I remember. It was that scintillating sense of humor.” She listened to the cutting tone of her voice with something akin to horror. That wasn’t her talking. She wasn’t a cold, cutting woman.
She was an art therapist, for pity’s sake. She spent her life helping people. Troubled children, most specifically. She didn’t engage in verbal warfare with others.
Brett leaned over and looked in her face.
It took everything she possessed not to back away. “What are you looking at?”
He straightened and shrugged, disinterested. “Just seeing if that bit of vulnerability ran off your face along with the mascara and makeup.” Then he smiled humorlessly and walked out of the sunroom.
Kate’s hands curled. She angled her chin and glanced around the sunroom. It was filled with carefully tended plants, antiques, comfortable furnishings. The Texas sun shafted diagonally in through the windows, golden and bright and warm.
One might actually think the house she stood in was filled with that same warmth. But she knew differently. Her cold and cutting father had seen to that.
“Damn you, Caine Stockwell,” she murmured under her breath. He was her father. She knew that a part of her loved him, despite everything. But another part, a part she felt guilty in admitting to, detested him. For his coldness and abusiveness to his family. For his manipulations. For his lies.
The biggest lie of which had brought Brett Larson back into Kate’s life.
Her hands were shaking again. She drew in a long breath and went into the hall, stopping to check her reflection in one of the framed mirrors that hung on the wall, along with an extensive collection of paintings. Stockwell ancestors. Oils. All originals. Her father would never have settled for anything less hanging on the hallowed walls of his mansion.
Her eyes looked a little red-rimmed, but she didn’t have mascara running down her face.
Other than that, she looked much like she always did. Dark brown hair. Blue eyes. A face that was too narrow, a nose that was too long. Overall, she guessed she was presentable. There had even been a time when Brett had called her beautiful, and she’d believed it. Felt it.
But that time was past. Long past.
Now, she was just a woman who tried to help other people’s children deal with their problems. She was successful enough at it, found it fulfilling and rewarding enough that, usually, she managed to forget what she really was.
A useless shell of a woman.
She looked down and realized she still held Brett’s handkerchief crumpled in her fist. She pressed it to her cheek for a moment. Smelling the seductively male scent of him that clung to the folded, pressed-edged, square.
She was also a member of the Stockwell family, she reminded herself silently. She’d been part of the decision she and her brothers had made to right as many of the wrongs committed by their father as they could. And part of that meant finding their mother. If she really was still alive, as their findings suggested.
