him Matthew John Granger, which appeared on a subsequent birth certificate, the familiar one he had always believed to be true.
Matthew’s eyes lingered on his birth mother’s name—Alexandra Wyndham, who had been just sixteen years old when her son was born. His father was listed as Jesse Polk, aged eighteen. There was no other information available. According to the detective, the maternity home for unwed mothers in central Florida where his mother had spent her pregnancy no longer existed.
But just last month, more information had turned up. The P.I. had tracked Alexandra Wyndham’s and Jesse Polk’s origins to a small, quiet and quaint city in South Carolina, situated very close to the ocean. Clover.
At first, Matthew had been dead set against coming to Clover. He’d tried to convince himself that the information he now possessed, the names of his birth parents, was enough. But the turmoil that had become his life continued unabated.
He couldn’t write; his concentration and his imagination seemed to have been suspended. He still lay awake night after night, troubled by grief and anger, grappling with the lifelong deception and all that was unknown to him. When he went to the library to research his latest book, he found himself researching South Carolina. Especially the coastal area. And finally, inevitably, Clover itself.
And so here he was, in the town where two lusty teenagers had taken no precautions and conceived him. He wondered if they were still here, although they certainly were not teenagers now. His mother would be forty-eight, his father, fifty. Still, they seemed startlingly young to him because his adoptive parents had been forty years old when he was born. And adopted.
Matthew stared at the battered copy of The First Families of South Carolina. His maternal relations were the upper-class Wyndhams. Their social position, wealth and prestige had come as a shock to him. Of his father, Jesse Polk, he knew nothing. The Polk family was not in the book, which meant they weren’t one of the first families of South Carolina.
But the Farleys were. Matthew turned back to the section on them. They rated only a few pages, as compared to the Wyndhams’ two full chapters. Both families had been given royal land grants in the latter half of the seventeenth century, but the Wyndhams, while keeping their land holdings, had soon moved up into the great wealth of the shipping business, with branches of the family based in Charleston. Through the centuries, the Farleys had remained socially prominent and well-to-do while the Wyndhams had achieved superstatus.
And he was part Wyndham. Part of their illustrious history. Matthew closed the book as confusion enveloped him like a heavy cloud. Matthew Wyndham. Matthew Polk. Matthew Granger. Who was he? It was a shattering blow to reach the age of thirty-two, only to find out that the life you’d been living and the identity you claimed as your own was a lie.
The sounds of music and laughter drifted up to his room, breaking the silence that enshrouded him. He was filled with a terrible loneliness. Since his parents’ death, he had distanced himself from everybody—his friends, his agent, his editor at the publishing house. His love life had been nonexistent. He had no energy or desire to pursue any of the women who wanted him.
Even before the tragedy, he had always been in control, remaining slightly aloof with his lovers because he wasn’t looking for emotional intimacy with all its accompanying entanglements. He’d enjoyed women and sex but steered clear of involvement. That dreaded phrase “serious relationship,” when uttered by a dewy-eyed woman, made him want to run in the opposite direction. He’d had his writing, his parents’ adoration, his friends and his woman of the moment. Who needed anything more?
Now his life seemed singularly empty, without focus, without love.
“Hannah Kaye Farley, you’re not allowed to invent new steps! You have to follow the rules!” A female voice, so loud and shrill that it sounded as if it were in the same room with him, startled him from his gloomy reverie.
Matthew looked around, discerned that the earsplitting voice came from downstairs and felt a flash of sympathy for those in close proximity. It seemed that somebody was scolding Hannah Kaye Farley for breaking the rules.
He smiled grimly. He’d bet that little Miss Farley was a rule breaker extraordinaire whenever it suited her purposes. From their brief acquaintance, he’d pegged her as a headstrong, spoiled beauty who said and did as she pleased. The kind of woman he avoided because he preferred quiet, compliant, worshipful types who let him call all the shots from beginning to end.
But thoughts of Hannah continued to haunt him as he sat on the bed listening to the rain pound on the roof. He had never met a woman who affected him as viscerally as Hannah Kaye Farley. She was vibrant and sexy, provocative and elegant, her face alight with laughter one minute, then stormy with anger the next. It occurred to him that she was the first woman since the accident to capture his interest, to make his body tauten and rise with desire.
He visualized her on his bed, but carried the image a step further, stripping her of that eye-catching silver minidress, picturing her silky, naked body lying open and ready for him. He thought of her mouth, not laughing or pouting, but swollen from his kisses, her gray eyes dreamy with passion.
Matthew stood, sensual heat and urgency coursing through him. Hannah stirred his senses, and while it was a relief to know that he was still a virile, functioning male, an affair with her was out of the question. She was already suspicious of him and with good reason. His imagination must still be in limbo if he couldn’t come up with a better cover story than that insect textbook nonsense. Katie was too tactful—and too interested in keeping him as a paying guest—to question the story, but Hannah had no such reticence.
And why should she? As the beautiful daughter of one of the first families in the state, she undoubtedly played by her own set of rules. And he was accustomed to making and breaking his own. An affair with her would be a disaster. She would expect things of him and from him, demand them even. The last thing he needed right now was a demanding woman who wouldn’t respect his need for boundaries and control.
No, he wasn’t willing or ready to get mixed up with the beautiful Miss Farley, however hot and hard she made him. He had to focus all his thoughts and energy on his secret mission, learning as much as he could about his birth parents. Only then could he make an informed, intelligent decision about whether or not to meet them and, possibly, introduce himself to them.
The surge of sexual energy made him restless, eager to turn the pulsating tension into action. Why not begin his investigation tonight?
It was as good a time as any to start, he decided, placing the canvas bag in the closet and pocketing his room key. He had an invitation from Miss Katie Jones herself to join the party of Clover citizens downstairs. He could ask some subtle questions, perhaps pick up some information about Alexandra and Jesse, as he’d come to think of them. Never mother and father. He preferred to view them distantly, like characters in a novel: interesting to contemplate but having nothing to do with him or his life.
He assured himself that the fact that Hannah Kaye Farley was there had nothing at all to do with his decision to join the party.
The music and the laughter grew louder as he walked downstairs. He stood at the threshold of the crowded living room and watched the couples dancing to some old rhythm-and-blues classics. He recognized some of the songs but not the fast, rather intricate dance steps they were doing. Hannah was one of the best dancers, animated and lithe and vibrant as she moved with her partners, and she seemed to have several.
Matthew tried to turn his eyes to others in the crowd. Invariably his gaze returned to Hannah.
“She’s a knockout, isn’t she?” A smiling blond preppy type
