LITMIR.BIZ

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imagine any one dismisses you,” she said instead. Not anymore. He was too commanding. Too self-sufficient. And the cynical tilt of his lips was just a little bit fearsome.

      The teenager who’d earned spending money working in the same house where his mother was the live-in cook for Judge Orwell and his perfectly coiffed wife, Bitsy, was long gone.

      Now, Brett, in his beautifully cut summer-weight suit looked as if he might have a host of servants in his home at his beck and call. Which reminded her that, aside from knowing about Brett Larson, owner of a very well-respected private investigation and security firm, she knew very little about Brett Larson, the private man.

      A fresh knot tied itself in her stomach. “I—”

      “Don’t sweat it, Kate. We’ll both forget this tête-à-tête ever happened. No one will ever learn from me that Kate Stockwell possesses tear ducts.”

      Kate’s tears ceased. “Remind me why I ever wanted to shackle myself to you. Oh, wait. I remember. It was that scintillating sense of humor.” She listened to the cutting tone of her voice with something akin to horror. That wasn’t her talking. She wasn’t a cold, cutting woman.

      She was an art therapist, for pity’s sake. She spent her life helping people. Troubled children, most specifically. She didn’t engage in verbal warfare with others.

      Brett leaned over and looked in her face.

      It took everything she possessed not to back away. “What are you looking at?”

      He straightened and shrugged, disinterested. “Just seeing if that bit of vulnerability ran off your face along with the mascara and makeup.” Then he smiled humorlessly and walked out of the sunroom.

      Kate’s hands curled. She angled her chin and glanced around the sunroom. It was filled with carefully tended plants, antiques, comfortable furnishings. The Texas sun shafted diagonally in through the windows, golden and bright and warm.

      One might actually think the house she stood in was filled with that same warmth. But she knew differently. Her cold and cutting father had seen to that.

      “Damn you, Caine Stockwell,” she murmured under her breath. He was her father. She knew that a part of her loved him, despite everything. But another part, a part she felt guilty in admitting to, detested him. For his coldness and abusiveness to his family. For his manipulations. For his lies.

      The biggest lie of which had brought Brett Larson back into Kate’s life.

      Her hands were shaking again. She drew in a long breath and went into the hall, stopping to check her reflection in one of the framed mirrors that hung on the wall, along with an extensive collection of paintings. Stockwell ancestors. Oils. All originals. Her father would never have settled for anything less hanging on the hallowed walls of his mansion.

      Her eyes looked a little red-rimmed, but she didn’t have mascara running down her face.

      Other than that, she looked much like she always did. Dark brown hair. Blue eyes. A face that was too narrow, a nose that was too long. Overall, she guessed she was presentable. There had even been a time when Brett had called her beautiful, and she’d believed it. Felt it.

      But that time was past. Long past.

      Now, she was just a woman who tried to help other people’s children deal with their problems. She was successful enough at it, found it fulfilling and rewarding enough that, usually, she managed to forget what she really was.

      A useless shell of a woman.

      She looked down and realized she still held Brett’s handkerchief crumpled in her fist. She pressed it to her cheek for a moment. Smelling the seductively male scent of him that clung to the folded, pressed-edged, square.

      She was also a member of the Stockwell family, she reminded herself silently. She’d been part of the decision she and her brothers had made to right as many of the wrongs committed by their father as they could. And part of that meant finding their mother. If she really was still alive, as their findings suggested.

      She sighed and turned toward the study once more. And nearly jumped out of her skin when Mrs. Hightower appeared silently behind her.

      Kate cleared her throat and slid the handkerchief into the hidden pocket of her slacks. “Did you need something, Mrs. Hightower?”

      The woman’s smooth expression didn’t indicate in the least whether she recognized the vestiges of tears in Kate’s eyes. “Your office is calling,” she said.

      Kate’s mind shifted to the calls she’d made earlier. She thanked the housekeeper and turned back to the sunroom and the phone extension there.

      With any luck at all, the call would bring good news for her young patient, who was so close to a breakthrough if only his father would stand firm against his controlling family who seemed to want nothing more than to shut the boy in his bedroom and pretend he didn’t exist.

      She didn’t want to fail little Bobby.

      She knew it was unwise to become so emotionally vested in a patient, but there was something about the dark haired, sloe-eyed little boy that had stolen her heart.

      Yes, as a woman, Kate was pretty well useless.

      Which meant being a therapist was all she had left.

      Chapter Two

      Was there ever a woman put on this earth who drove him nuts the way Kate Stockwell did? If there was, Brett didn’t want to meet her.

      He ran his hand down his face and battled down the annoyance inside him before walking back into the Stockwells’ study where Kate’s brothers were still discussing the portrait. If they’d even noticed his and Kate’s absence, they made no sign of it.

      Then he realized that Jack was watching him. Kate’s oldest brother had noticed all right. But then Jack had always seemed to have an extra dose of protective instincts where his sister was concerned.

      And even though Brett had once been as comfortable around her brothers as he’d been around her—when he’d been just one more of the gang—he knew those times were gone.

      He was the ex-fiancé of their baby sister and he had no doubts that Kate hadn’t left any question in her brothers’ minds about who was at fault for the “ex” part of that particular equation.

      He wasn’t part of their group any longer, if there even was a group. Jack seemed to spend most of his time in Europe, as far as Brett knew. Rafe was a Deputy U.S. Marshal now, and Cord had taken over the family business interests. And Kate. Well, Kate had returned from Houston a few years ago, after her divorce from a man who’d once been Brett’s friend.

      Brett remembered the exact day he’d heard she was back in Grandview. That she’d moved back into Stockwell Mansion. He’d blown his cover on a case he’d been investigating and it had taken two solid weeks to regain the ground he’d lost that day.

      No. Brett definitely wasn’t here because of his former ties to this family. He was only the investigator they’d hired to follow the leads they’d already discovered regarding their mother. And since that’s the way he liked it, he needed to stop thinking about his past and focus instead on Madelyn Johnson Stockwell’s past.

      “Were there other paintings of hers in the gallery where you found this one?” he asked Jack.

      The other man shook his head. “Not anymore. I’d just missed a seascape that he’d had for a brief time. Beyond that, what there was had already been sold. Her work seems to be in fair demand over there.” His lips twisted. “And has been for years. The only reason this portrait hadn’t been sold to a private party was that the gallery owner, Roubilliard, didn’t want to part with it.”

      “Then why did he?” Cord asked.

      “Made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

      “Bought him off, you mean,” Rafe translated.

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