can be very dangerous, Hannah.” She had a haunted, faraway look in her eyes. “Emotionally dangerous,” she added bleakly.
Hannah stared at her, intrigued. Katie was three years her senior, slender and pretty with long, light brown hair and green eyes. Though she was warm and friendly and smiled often, during unguarded moments—like this one—there was a certain sadness about her. Was it inspired by an emotionally dangerous man?
Hannah remembered that some years ago Katie had seriously dated a man named Luke Cassidy, but he’d left town and never come back. Though Katie had never revealed what happened with Luke, the general consensus in Clover was that she’d had her heart broken. But nobody had any real facts, and Katie’s firmly quiet reserve did not invite intimate questions. Not even gossip maven Jeannie Potts dared to pry. This was the most personal conversation Hannah had ever had with Katie and she was tempted to take it further.
But before she could ask any questions about men in general or Luke in particular, Abby Long joined them on the steps. Slightly tipsy, she took Katie and Hannah by their hands. “I was looking for you two,” Abby exclaimed effusively. “Ben and Sean want to have a shag contest. Katie, do you still have those old shag records?”
“As if I would ever get rid of such nostalgic treasures!” Katie grinned, her somber mood evaporating. “I have Carolina Beach Classics, volumes one and two, and all four volumes of Shagger’s Delight. Why, those records are icons of the glorious past, handed down to me for safekeeping.”
“Maybe I should think about carrying them in my shop, along with the Victorian lady’s writing desk and the French Egyptian Empire chest and the Kestner baby dolls,” kidded Hannah.
“Katie, go get the records,” Abby ordered. “Sean, Tommy Clarke and Zack Abernathy are all demanding to have you as a partner, Hannah. You can either choose one or enter the contest with each guy.”
“Suppose I choose none of the above?” Hannah’s eyes danced. “I think I’d rather have that adorable hunk, Ben Harper, as my partner in the contest. Do you think his fiancée will mind?”
“That jealous witch?” Abby grinned, playing along with Hannah’s joke. “Keep away from her. She’ll get revenge by making you wear a hideous bridesmaid’s dress, say, something in puce with three hoopskirts and lots of ruffles.”
“Anything but that!” Hannah feigned a horrified gasp. “I swear I won’t go near the man!”
Laughing, the bride-to-be and her bridesmaids rejoined the party.
* * *
It took Matthew less than ten minutes to unpack, then he unzipped his canvas bag and pulled out his copy of The First Families of South Carolina. He turned to the index, found the name Farley and smiled slightly. It didn’t surprise him that the dark-haired beauty was a member of an affluent, highborn clan. She not only possessed the natural confidence of one blessed by money, brains and looks but also that intangible aura of class and privilege.
But Hannah Farley added sexual magnetism to the package; she had a provocative sparkle that other high-society types he’d met had lacked. That silver dress of hers with its halter top and short, tight skirt and those wickedly high-heeled sandals were unlikely to be seen at any proper country-club affair or society ball.
The jolt of pure desire that hit him caught him off guard, and he had to steel himself against it. He had not come to Clover to have a fling with the sultry little Southern belle with skin as soft and white as the magnolia blossoms that seemed to bloom in every yard in town. He was here to discover who he really was....
Matthew opened the top bureau drawer and removed the framed photograph he’d put there. The photo had been one of his mother’s favorites, always displayed on a small mahogany end table in the living room wherever they had lived. It was a five-by-seven color portrait of Galen and Eden Granger and their dark-haired, dark-eyed five-year-old son, Matthew, who gazed solemnly into the camera lens.
He had always been a serious child, intense and focused from an early age, and had grown into a responsible, hardworking student and athlete who’d made his proud parents even prouder. Matthew thought of the milestones—his graduations from high school, college and law school. His father, a camera buff, had been there to photograph the events, his mother smiling adoringly at her son. They had been there for the smaller everyday things, too—school programs, Little League games, helping with homework, a game of catch in the backyard. No son could have had a more loving, devoted set of parents. Matthew had been the center of their lives, and he knew it.
He had a shelf filled with albums of photos chronicling his life, from the day he’d been carried home from the hospital as a newborn to the family shots beside the gaily decorated Christmas tree snapped six months ago. It was the last Christmas he would ever spend with his mother and father. They had been killed in a car accident just two weeks later.
A spasm of grief, physical in its intensity, radiated through him. He remembered that devastating phone call from Albert Retton, his father’s best friend and fellow retired navy captain, the call that had shattered his life. And then the second shock, which had come only days after the funeral...
“You were adopted, Matthew,” Al Retton had told him. “Your parents knew you should have been told earlier but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. They wanted you to believe you’d been born to them. I think they came to believe it themselves. But I was instructed to give you this letter if anything ever happened to them.”
The letter confirmed the adoption story and reassured Matthew of their great love for him. There were no references to the woman who had given birth to him or the man who’d fathered him, no mention of where he’d come from.
The news sent him reeling. He hadn’t had a clue. According to the letter, Galen and Eden had tried for years to have a child of their own before considering adoption. Matthew had been three days old when he’d left the hospital maternity ward with his adoptive parents, who had considered him their own from the moment they’d held him in their arms.
And from that moment on, adoption was never mentioned. Since the family had lived on naval bases all over the world and were without close relatives, the fiction had been easy to maintain.
Matthew placed the picture back in the drawer and reached inside his canvas bag. Inside were paperback editions of the books he’d written—page-turning thrillers with lawyers as the protagonists and the villains. He had used the pseudonym Galen Eden, a combination of his parents’ first names, and they had been thrilled with his success. He’d written the first book as a lark in his spare time, because he found the corporate law he was practicing both boring and unfulfilling. When the book turned out to be an unexpected blockbuster with the movie rights optioned, he decided to try again. After all, the first book might’ve been a fluke. It wasn’t. Two bestselling books later, he found himself retired from the corporation to write full-time.
But he hadn’t written a word since he’d learned that his whole life had been based on a lie. Six months later, he was still angry, bitter and disconnected, deeply grieving for his late parents yet hungry for the truth about his identity. A rather shady private investigator in Tampa, who demanded an outrageously expensive per diem, had promised him satisfaction, and finally, weeks later, had delivered his clandestinely obtained original birth certificate.
Carefully, Matthew removed it from the file at the bottom of the canvas bag.
He held it, not needing to read it because he’d studied it so long and so often that he knew it by heart. On the document, his name was listed as Baby Boy. No first
