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“Why?” Because she didn’t trust him to do his job. The knowledge sat like a bitter pill. “Or maybe you really are enamored of my company once again,” he needled.
Her eyes flashed. “Oh, please. Don’t flatter yourself. If you must know, it’s because…because my brothers have all done something to help find our mother, and I’ve done nothing!”
“Come again?”
She pushed her fingers through her hair and walked over to the portrait, her expression telling him that she already regretted her flash of honesty. But she surprised him when she didn’t clam up the way he expected her to.
“Cord was the one to discover that Daddy was sending huge sums of money to one of his attorneys and had been every month since our mother supposedly died when I was a baby.” She recited the details without emotion. “He’s also the one who found a letter from my mother’s side of the family, the Johnsons, in Daddy’s personal records implying that the Stockwell side had once swindled the Johnsons out of land on which the Stockwells eventually discovered oil. And he’s been looking into that so we can make it right again, if it is true.”
She rubbed her fingertip along the frame of the portrait. “Rafe, now, he followed the money. To Clyde Carlyle’s office. And between him and Clyde’s daughter, Caroline, they found the divorce papers between my parents which were dated months after Madelyn supposedly died. They’re the ones who learned that Madelyn, and Uncle Brandon, too, most likely, spent a considerable amount of time in France, moving here and there. And that, somewhere along the way, she’d apparently changed her last name to LeClaire.”
“And Jack, being the most familiar with Europe because of his travels, picked up the reins at that point,” Brett concluded. He’d heard it all before from her brothers. But he’d never really thought how Kate may have felt about not having as active a role in the discoveries as her brothers.
Then he reminded himself that he was no longer interested in what went on inside her pretty head. Which mattered not at all considering the way her oddly false calm gnawed at him. “You think you’ll be holding up your end by traipsing around Boston with me.”
She nodded silently.
Brett swore inwardly. He still didn’t know why he’d accepted this case in the first place. It was gonna be one huge headache. Not only did she not trust him, but she was trying to salve her conscience. “Kate. You and me…it’s not a good idea.”
Her lips pressed together for a moment. “Because we used to be engaged.”
Because you drive me nuts. “Because I’m used to working alone.”
“I wouldn’t get in your way.”
No, you’d just be a constant distraction. Things might be dead and gone between them, but he was still a man. And she was a beautiful woman. A woman who didn’t trust him, no matter what her other reasons were. “No.”
She made a soft sound, her gaze still on the portrait. And he made the fatal mistake of moving around from where he stood, so that he could see her face.
Confusion. Hurt. Longing.
All of that was written on her perfectly oval, perfectly formed face. It was in her eyes and in the soft lip that she’d caught between pearly teeth.
In the days since he’d become embroiled with the Stockwells’ case, Kate had consistently been cool and controlled whenever they’d encountered each other.
And now, in one day—hell, in one hour—he’d seen her blue eyes swimming in tears, her aching so clear on her face that it beat his better sense into dust.
Swearing a blue streak in his mind, Brett knew he was making a mistake. “All right,” he said, sounding anything but gracious. “We leave in the morning. I’ll have my secretary, Maria, call you with the time.”
Now her blue eyes were glistening again. And she was looking at him as if he’d just saved a kitten from the jaws of a rattlesnake.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He slapped the catalogs he still held against his palm. “Be ready on time,” he said abruptly. “And don’t go packing a dozen suitcases, either, princess. We’re going there to work, not so you can walk around looking like a fashion show in progress.”
Her expression changed. Her lips parted, furious.
But he was already walking out of the room, satisfied. Her fury he could handle. Her tears, obviously, he couldn’t.
Chapter Three
She was late.
Brett would be by soon and Kate had yet to finish packing.
Yet where was she? In her room packing?
No.
She was standing in the wide arch of her father’s bedroom, struggling with the urge to turn around and leave. The room was dark, the heavy velvet drapes at the windows drawn against the morning sky.
She shouldn’t have left this task so late, she thought. Visiting her father when she felt so uneasy about going to Boston with Brett was probably not the wisest course, but he was her father. She was a Stockwell. And Caine, for all of his many faults, had drilled into his children the fact that Stockwells looked after their own.
She moistened her lips and entered the room. She quietly greeted Gunderson, her father’s primary nurse, and approached the hospital bed that was situated in the center of the cavernous room. Caine lay back against the white bedding. The muscular, wide-shouldered build that he’d passed on to his sons was wasting away on Caine; he looked much older than his sixty years.
She sat down on the chair beside his bed. His eyes were closed, but when she tentatively touched his hand, his head moved and he looked at her. “Hi, Daddy.”
If Caine recognized her, he gave no indication. She’d visited him every day—except when he’d still been strong enough to tell her to go away. She’d told herself that his actions then had been because his pride didn’t want her seeing him in his condition; but a part of her knew it was just as likely because he didn’t want to be bothered with her.
“Gunderson?” She looked over her shoulder at the man. “I’d like to be alone with my father for a moment, if you don’t mind.”
He looked as if he did mind, but he nodded after a moment and left.
Kate turned back to face her father. “I’m going to Boston this morning,” she told him. “With Brett Larson.”
She saw Caine’s lip curl, still managing to communicate his derogatory feelings without a word. He’d always treated Brett as if he weren’t fit to step foot on Stockwell property. He’d been appalled when, at only twenty years of age, Kate had announced flatly to him that she was planning to marry Brett.
She swallowed and gathered her thoughts. This wasn’t about Brett. It was about Caine’s lies. About finding their mother. “We’re going to find Madelyn,” she continued, and at that, Caine’s eyes flickered.
Though she’d promised herself that she was finished with tears, they burned, threateningly near. She’d cried more in the past twenty-four hours than she had in years. And now she struggled with tears and the need to escape. She’d always felt a sense of fearsome awe for her father; now she felt pity and a hundred other emotions too tangled to define. “We’ve been a disappointment to each other, Daddy. You and I, both. But I—”
Beneath her hand, his fingers curled. “Madelyn? You came back to me.”
She bit her lip, dropping her forehead onto their hands, praying for strength. It wasn’t the first time Caine had mistaken her for her mother. She heard a rustle behind her and knew that Gunderson had decided that she’d used up her allotment of privacy. She lifted her head and looked again at her father. “I just wanted to tell you about my plans.”
“Leave.” The word was an order, despite the sigh that shuddered through his frail form.
She wondered if it was because, in his delusions he’d taken her for Madelyn, or if he knew it was his daughter he was ordering away. Sadly, it mattered little. She rose and began to walk from the room. Yet when she reached the archway, she paused. Looking back at him. There were so many things she wished had been different.
She drew in a shuddering breath and walked back to Caine’s bedside. She gently smoothed his sheet over his chest. Then leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.
“Goodbye, Daddy. I do love you.”
She realized she was waiting for a response from him that would never come. Not even if he’d been physically able. Particularly if he’d been physically able.
Swallowing, Kate straightened and walked blindly from the room, stopping short at the sight of Mrs. Hightower.
“You have another call,” the other woman said, handing Kate a cordless phone, then turned on a silent heel and glided away.
Kate held the phone, feeling rather like a child who’d been caught receiving phone calls after curfew. She’d been fielding calls all morning, taking care of last minute details with her associates.
She sighed, glancing at her watch. Brett would be arriving any minute, and she still had to complete her packing.
She hurried to her bedroom, pushing the button on the phone as she went. “This is Kate Stockwell,” she greeted, half afraid it would be Brett, calling to tell her he’d changed his mind after all. But hearing the voice of Bobby Morales’s father, Kate knew that the garment bag, open and empty on her bed, would have to wait a little while longer.
She was late.
Brett looked at his watch again and climbed out of his car. He looked up at the set of windows on the second story that overlooked the front grounds.
Kate’s windows.
At least they used to belong to her bedroom suite, he amended silently, remembering the day when he’d climbed up there and sneaked through her window just to leave her a rose on her pillow. For all he knew now, she could be occupying one of the pool cabanas out back.
But as he watched the windows, he saw a shadow pass by them and knew by the tightening at the base of his neck that it was Kate. Probably packing stuff she’d never need, he thought, as impatient with himself for agreeing to let her go to Boston as he was with her for being late.
He glared at the upper-story windows. Very nearly reached over the car door to lay on the horn. He had no particular desire to go up into the house to collect her.
House.
The place was called Stockwell Mansion. And a mansion it was. An enormous, cold mansion inhabited by a coldhearted man.
There were few people that Brett could say he truly hated. But Caine Stockwell headed the list. And because of it, Brett knew he probably shouldn’t have accepted this particular case. He also knew that, because of it, he did accept this particular case.
He looked at his watch again then headed for the door. He didn’t bother ringing the bell. He’d had to stomach enough glares from Emma Hightower across the threshold over the past few days to last him a lifetime. She’d made it abundantly clear that she figured he should still be using the servants’ entrance in the rear.
Maybe it was high-handed, but Brett just pushed open the enormous door, and headed straight for the central staircase.
At the top, he turned unerringly toward the suite that Kate used to occupy. The door was opened and he could see her pacing back and forth across the thick carpet.
He also noticed the opened—but empty—suitcase sitting on the foot of her bed.
“Some things never change,” he said, halting in the doorway.
She whirled, clearly startled as she pressed the phone clutched in her hands to her chest. “And some things do,” she said, her tone frosty. “I should have locked my door.”
“You oughta know that locks don’t keep me out.”
“Breaking and entering. Sneaking up on people. Well, I suppose that’s what a professional snoop does.”
“Don’t turn up your pretty nose at that, princess,” he said smoothly. “My snooping is going to lead you to your mother.”
She frowned and turned away, tossing the phone onto the blinding white spread. “Mrs. Hightower didn’t tell me you were here already.”
“I didn’t see Mrs. Hightower.” He frowned at the way Kate was carefully arranging one thing at a time inside the suitcase from the neatly folded pile beside it on the bed. He walked over and joined her, reaching for the entire stack.
She gaped at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
In answer, he plunked the clothing, stack intact, right into the case. “It would take all day at the rate you were going. What else goes in here?” He glanced around, expecting to see a stack of suitcases sitting somewhere already. The occasional trips they’d taken together years ago had always been accompanied by a minimum of three suitcases too many. All he saw, however, was one soft-sided tote sitting atop the white upholstered chair near the French doors. Shoes and makeup, he’d bet. “Well? What else? This can’t be all.”
“Why can’t it?” She countered.
He eyed her and she huffed, striding into the dressing room. She came out a bare minute later, diligently avoiding his gaze as she dropped a bundle into the case. All he caught was a glimpse of pastels and lace and silk before she quickly jerked the flap into place and yanked the zipper around, closing it.
“All right, I’m ready. Satisfied?”
“I would be if you weren’t thirty minutes late.” He grabbed up the bag and slung the strap over his shoulder.
She picked up a small purse that matched the coral-colored dress she wore and retrieved the smaller tote from the white chair. Then it was she who waited for him. “Well? I thought you were in a hurry.”
“Where’s the rest?”
“Rest of what?”
“Your suitcases.”
She gave her tote bag an exaggerated jiggle, raising her eyebrows expressively. “Hello?”
“Come on, Kate. We don’t have time for this.”
“Then stop standing there, wasting more of it,” she said, sugar sweet, and glided past him in a tantalizing swish of fragrance. “Like I said, Brett. Some things have changed.”
He followed, thinking he’d be a helluva lot happier if he could count on that fact on every front, not just her apparent packing habits.
Outside the mansion, Kate stopped short at the sight of Brett’s car parked in the driveway at the base of the wide entry steps.
Naturally, she thought. Gleaming black, long, low and wicked, the car was everything that he’d long ago vowed to own. He took the tote bag from her and she watched him dump the bags into the minuscule back seat. With his black-brown hair, shadowed jaw, and dark glasses that he slid into place before opening the passenger door, he looked wholly unfamiliar to her.
Dark. Dangerous. A perfect complement to the powerful car he drove.
Unsettled at the thought, she sank into the passenger seat and busied herself with retrieving her own sunglasses from her narrow purse. The top of the car was down, and the sun was killing despite the early hour.
“Fasten your seat belt.”
Her lips tightened at the sharp pain that knifed through her. As if she needed a reminder? She shoved her sunglasses on her nose and snapped the safety belt into place. But still, Brett didn’t start the engine. She looked straight ahead through the windshield. “What are you waiting for now?”
“You’re awful edgy this morning.”
She propped her elbow on the sun-warmed door beside her, unable to prevent a quick glance his way. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He still didn’t reach for the ignition.
“Well,” she said flippantly, “don’t blame me if we miss the flight.”
“We’ve got time,” he said as he finally started the car and drove away from the house. “I told Maria to tack on an extra half hour since I know you’ve never been on time for anything in your life.”
She sat back, stung. “I had a few calls. It couldn’t be helped.”
“Need to cancel your next manicure and pedicure?”
