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
