Honey. Really cute. I’m at a crossroads in my life and you’re making jokes.”
“Sorry.” Honey didn’t look contrite.
Emily stared at her sister. Maybe for some women mothering was inborn, but for Emily, the only babies she had any acquaintance with had four legs and a mane, and not a one of them grew up and attended college or got the measles or…or called her Mommy.
THE NEXT DAY, Emily settled more comfortably on her horse’s back. She did her best thinking in the saddle, and she planned on riding out to the west pasture, just to clear her head.
As she rode farther from home, hammering coming from the old Madison place disturbed the silence. She couldn’t imagine who would be hammering over there. It had been deserted since fire had partially destroyed it years ago.
She reigned in Butternut and walked him through the barrier of trees dividing her property from the Madisons’. The hammering stopped, replaced by the loud squeak of a rusty nail being torn from old, dry wood. Pushing the branch of a maple out of her way, she peered through at the ruins of the house.
On a ladder, shirtless and bronzed from exposure to the sun, was a man. With one hand he held on to the ladder, while with the other he tore off a half-burned board.
She eased the horse closer. When she was within shouting distance, she stopped.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Surprised, the man spun toward her, almost losing his balance. As he clutched the rung of the ladder, the muscles in his shoulders and arms danced under his tan skin. Butternut sidestepped and a shaft of bright sunlight blinded her from seeing the intruder clearly.
“I would have thought that after all these years, you’d have given up trying to send me to an early grave.”
Taken aback by his words and the familiar tone of his voice, Emily eased the horse closer. “Who told you you could tear this house apart?”
“I did. I own it, Squirt. Or have you forgotten?”
Squirt?
Emily sucked in her breath. Only one person in her entire life had called her Squirt, and he’d walked out on her without a word sixteen years ago. Gently nudging Butternut in the ribs, Emily moved into the shadow of an overhanging maple tree to see him more clearly.
Shock ebbed over her. Above his left eyebrow, just below a wayward lock of wavy, jet-black hair, a pencil-thin, two-inch scar marred his tanned skin. She knew that scar very well—after all, she’d been the cause of the injury that had produced it. When she was seven and he was eleven, she’d dared him to jump from the maple in her front yard with a homemade bedsheet parachute. Because he always did anything she asked of him, Kat Madison had jumped and landed facedown on a piece of glass in the driveway.
Kat, the only man she knew who could enter a room and not be heard. She might have known that, true to his nickname, he’d sneak back into town on silent feet. She recalled hearing the story of how he’d insisted on spelling his name with a K to make himself unique. He was unique all right, a unique jerk who cared nothing about a friend’s feelings.
Silently, the rhythm of her erratic heart pounding in her ears, she continued to study him. He’d changed. Matured. She quickly did the math in her head. Thirty-three. But more than his age had altered. The lanky Kat she’d known hadn’t had muscles out to here and skin the color of soft suede. Nor had that Kat ever looked at her with a mixture of longing and pain in his eyes.
She called her emotions under control, then hardened herself to say all the things she’d been waiting to tell him. Instead, the pain generated by his abrupt appearance spoke for her.
“Were you ever going to tell me you were here or were you going to just walked away again without a word?”
He said nothing. She fought back the sudden rush of tears unaccountably choking her. Turning the horse, she started to ride away, then pulled up short and glanced back.
“You could at least have written.” Her voice harsh with emotion, she stared into his dark eyes. Although his face twisted, he said nothing, offered no explanation, made no apologies. “Stay away from me, Kat Madison. Just…stay away.”
Quickly, before he could reply, she rode away, her skin cooled by the wind mixing with the tears streaming down her cheeks.
Chapter Two
Kat stood in the reception area of the office of J. R. Pritchard and Associates, Private Investigations. He glanced around at the plush carpeting, the silk foliage, the gleaming chrome-and-leather furniture and the fancy door with the brass plate declaring the room beyond to be Private. Quite a contrast to the drab, grungy offices of the private investigators in the old Humphrey Bogart flicks Kat loved.
“Can I help you?” The curvaceous redhead behind the desk smiled up at him.
Yesterday, Kat would have smiled back, taking advantage of and pleasure in the obvious interest in the woman’s eyes. Why not now? His answer came with all the ease of morning turning to night.
Emily.
Their earlier meeting remained fresh in his mind. So fresh, that, even after a shower, he could still feel the dust stirred up by Emily’s horse’s hooves abrading his sweat-soaked skin. But the discomfort of the grit seemed a fitting cover for the pain inside. He’d lost the friendship of a person who had been a primary player in his young life, his confidant. The image of Emily’s pained expression was burned into his conscience.
“Sir?” The receptionist, eyebrow raised, captured Kat’s attention. “Did you want to see someone?”
“I have a three o’clock appointment to see Mr. Pritchard.”
The woman ran a bloodred nail down her appointment book. “Mr. Madison?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Pritchard has someone in the office with him right now. If you’ll take a seat, he’ll be with you in a few minutes.” She smiled and batted long, false, sooty lashes at him.
“Thanks.” Kat turned away, deliberately taking a seat behind the large silk tree that blocked the view of the receptionist.
Once more, his rebellious mind centered on the woman who’d ridden away from him—looking like a part of her horse—a few hours ago. Woman. Equating the Emily on that horse with the girl-child he’d left behind sixteen years ago reminded him of his reasons for leaving and for not telling her he was going. Back then, he couldn’t have withstood the pain in her eyes any better than he had today.
He admitted he owed her an explanation, but giving her one was a whole different ball game. How could he explain that, sixteen years ago, in the space of a few hours, the life he’d always known had fallen apart? Would she understand that he’d had to find out who he was, get answers, and that those answers lay somewhere beyond the village of Bristol ? Would she care that he hadn’t found those answers, but that he’d made peace with all that and had come home to stay? Probably not. Their earlier meeting proved conclusively that he’d put the last bullet into the special friendship he and Emily had shared.
A persistent question niggled at
