appeared with two menus, two cups and a coffeepot.
“Good morning,” Max said, turning on his charm and immediately rattling the poor girl.
“Good morning,” the girl stammered and sloshed coffee onto the table. She hurried away to get a dishrag to clean up the mess.
He shot Kat a grin as if to say, “See, all women find me irresistible.”
Kat groaned and disappeared behind her menu.
The waitress returned, sopped up the spilled coffee and apologized profusely.
“It’s all right,” Kat assured her. “It could have happened to anyone.”
Max shot her another grin before picking up his menu.
Kat waited for the young woman to finish filling their coffee cups as Max continued to peruse his menu.
“We’ll both have bacon and eggs, hash browns and a side of pancakes,” Max said.
“No,” she said and tried to stop the waitress, but Max shooed the girl off with a wink. Kat had been planning to have nothing but coffee and toast like she usually did to also make this breakfast as short as possible. “I don’t eat pancakes, let alone bacon or hash browns or egg yolks for that matter.”
Max lifted an eyebrow.
“What?” she demanded.
“I hadn’t taken you for one of those.”
“One of those?” she repeated, feeling her blood begin to heat.
“Why do you deny yourself one of the pleasures of life?”
“Bacon?”
“Eating.” He leaned on his elbows on the table to study her. “What other pleasures do you deny yourself?”
“I really don’t have t—”
As she started to rise, he reached over and put a hand on her arm. “Sorry, didn’t know you were that sensitive about life’s...pleasures.”
She shot him a daggered look. “Just tell me what I’m doing here.”
“I hate doing business on an empty stomach.”
“Start talking or I’m walking.”
He nodded and leaned back, suddenly all business. It startled her for a moment at how quickly he could turn off the charming but inept, arrogant cowboy reporter, and become serious and seemingly competent. It made her wonder who the real Max Malone was.
“How much do you know about your mother’s past before she married your father?” he asked.
Kat shrugged, a little embarrassed to admit even to herself that she knew little. Her father had never talked about their mother. Even as a child, when she’d asked about her mother, he’d been vague. It wasn’t until her mother returned that she understood why. For years, her father had believed that Sarah had committed suicide. He would have seen that as the ultimate betrayal—as well as his own failure. Add to that his broken heart...
Once Angelina had come into the picture, all evidence of their mother had disappeared, and her mother was never mentioned again. That was, until she’d shown up all these years later, alive but with no memory of the past.
“Why don’t you tell me what you know,” Kat suggested.
He gave her a look that said he saw right through her veiled attempt to hide what she didn’t know, but he didn’t seem concerned about it. “Your mother had what appeared to be a privileged childhood,” he began as if reciting from notes. “Two loving parents, a nice house in a nice neighborhood, friends and picture-perfect high school years. So I ask you, why are there no photographs from college? Your mother has been all over the news. By now friends would have come forward with candid shots, which would have been worth a nice chunk of change.”
“Maybe her friends aren’t as mercenary as you.”
“It’s just a fact of life. If not for the money, then for fifteen minutes of fame. It looks to me like your mother just dropped off the radar in college after being so popular and so involved in high school. It doesn’t add up.”
“So what?” Kat said, frowning. “I know she graduated.”
“According to her transcripts.”
She stared at him. “What are you saying?”
The waitress reappeared with their food. Max dug in as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe he hadn’t. There hadn’t been many vehicles on Main this morning because of the hour. She assumed that the old pickup parked down the street from the gallery with the California plates must have been his.
“I can’t find anyone who knew her,” he said between bites. “Not a professor who remembers her, a roommate, anyone.”
“It was a large university, and she probably could afford not to have a roommate,” Kat said.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Add to that the fact that she wasn’t a member of any organizations, sororities or even campus clubs, or involved in any campus-sponsored extracurricular activities.”
Absentmindedly Kat picked up a strip of bacon and took a bite. It had been so long since she’d had meat—let alone bacon—that she was shocked at how good it tasted. She quickly put it down.
“That isn’t that unusual,” she said wiping her hands on her napkin. “I wasn’t interested in any of that either and at a large campus...” She watched him slather butter on his pancakes and then drown them in syrup, recalling the taste for the first time in what seemed like forever.
He was right. She hadn’t quit eating things that she loved for health reasons. She knew exactly when she’d begun denying herself any pleasures and shuddered inside at the memory.
“So you really don’t have any proof,” she said. “You’re just fishing.”
* * *
MAX DIDN’T LET her words affect his appetite or his confidence in what he had to tell her—or her desire to hear it.
Looking up, he jabbed his fork into the air as he ticked off what he’d discovered about the early Sarah Johnson pre-Hamilton.
“Think about it. Your mother was pretty and popular in high school. There were tons of photos of her in all kinds of organizations, at dances, with her girlfriends in the yearbooks. She was a cheerleader and in every kind of after-school activity there was.” He noticed that she was buttering her pancakes. Not missing a beat, he slid the syrup over to her. “Then she goes off to college and...nothing.”
“Maybe college was harder for her, and she had to study more,” Kat said and took a bite of her pancake. She closed her eyes for a moment, her face a picture of euphoria. He tried to concentrate on her words, telling himself she was beginning to question her mother’s past, as well.
But at the back of his mind, he kept asking himself why Kat Hamilton had given up the food she
