An eerie feeling wafted through Cate, as if this wasn’t real.

As if she was looking into the mirror and seeing into the past.

Joan cleared her throat, her nervousness growing. “Can I help you?”

Cate kept looking at the woman in the bed, searching for some foolproof sign. All the while knowing that there wouldn’t be one. “That all depends.”

“On what?” Joan whispered the words, now clearly fatigued.

Cate took a step toward her then stopped. She was afraid that the woman would pass out if she came any closer. Did she know? On some instinctive level?

Cate put her thoughts into words. “On whether you’re willing to admit that you’re my mother.”

Dear Reader,

The Signature Select aims to single out outstanding stories, contemporary themes and oft-requested classics by some of your favorite series authors and present them to you in a variety of formats bound by truly striking covers.

We want to provide several different types of reading experiences in the new Signature Select program. The Spotlight books offer a single “big read” by a talented series author, the Collections present three novellas on a selected theme in one volume, the Sagas contain sprawling, sometimes multi-generational family tales (often related to a favorite family first introduced in series) and the Miniseries feature requested previously published books, with two or, occasionally, three complete stories in one volume. The Signature Select program offers one book in each of these categories per month, and fans of limited continuity series will also find these continuing stories under the Signature Select umbrella.

In addition, these volumes bring you bonus features…different in every single book! You may learn more about the author in an extended interview, more about the setting or inspiration for the book, more about subjects related to the theme and, often, a bonus short read will be included. Authors and editors have been outdoing themselves in originating creative material for our bonus features—we’re sure you'll be surprised and pleased with the results!

The Signature Select program strives to bring you a variety of reading experiences by authors you’ve come to love, as well as by rising stars you’ll be glad you’ve discovered.

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Executive Editor

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Searching for Cate
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dear Reader

What if, one day, you wake up to discover that everything you believed to be true, wasn’t? That the parents you’d always loved really weren’t your parents? How would you feel? These are the emotions that FBI Special Agent Cate Kowalski finds herself facing. She’d gone into law enforcement to honor and emulate the father she’d always adored, the father who was killed in the line of duty while she was still in her teens. Now, she finds the very reason for who and what she is has been based on a lie. This is the premise behind Searching For Cate. It is Cate who is searching for herself, the way that, in part, we all search for ourselves, except that in her case she has to begin from scratch. The search for her birth parents brings her to Southern California and eventually, into the life of Dr. Christian Graywolf, a selfless physician who is also one of the walking wounded. Together, slowly, they each heal the gaping hole in the other’s soul.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. And, as always, I wish you love.

To Marsha Zinberg, who asked, and Patience Smith, who said yes.

Thank you.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Bonus Features

Chapter 1

“What do you mean it’s not compatible?”

Special Agent Catherine Kowalski stared at the short, husky lab technician before her. A basket filled with vials, syringes and other blood-letting paraphernalia was looped over his arm and he looked at her as if she were a deranged troll who had wandered out of a fairy tale.

The drone of voices in the hospital corridor outside her mother’s single-care unit faded into the background as she tried to make some kind of sense of what the man had just told her.

It’s a mistake, a voice whispered in her head. But still, there was this terrible tightening in the pit of her stomach, as if she was about to hear something she didn’t want to hear.

This was absurd, she thought. Just a small foul-up, nothing more.

“She’s my mother. How could my blood type be incompatible with hers? There has to be some mistake,” Cate insisted.

There was no sympathy on the technician’s rounded, pockmarked face, just a weariness that came from doing the same laboratory procedures day after endless day. There was more than just a touch of indignation in his eyes at being questioned.

His voice was flat, nasal. “No mistake. I tested it twice.”

Her stomach twisted a little harder. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm went off, followed by the sound of running feet. She blocked it out, her mind focused on what this new information ultimately meant.

No more surprises, I can’t handle any more surprises. Cate had graduated near the top of her class at Quantico. In the field, there were few better. But on the personal front, she felt as if her life had been falling apart for the past few years.

And this might be the final tumble.

Cate’s eyes narrowed. Her voice was low, steely. “Test it again.”

Submitting to the blood-typing test had been nothing more than an annoying formality in Cate’s eyes. She’d thought it a waste of time even as she agreed.

Time had always been very precious to her.

Ever since she could remember, for reasons she could never pin down, she’d always wanted to cram as much as she could into a day, into an hour. It was as if soon, very soon, her time would run out. Over the years, every so often, she’d tried to talk herself out of the feeling.

Instead, she’d been proven to be right. Because there hadn’t been enough time, not with the father whom she adored. Officer Thaddeus Kowalski, Big Ted to his friends, had died in the line of duty, protecting one of his fellow officers during the foiling of an unsuccessful liquor store robbery. She was fifteen at the time. It seemed like the entire San Francisco police force turned out for his funeral. She would have willingly done without the tribute, if it meant having her father back, even for a few hours.

When she was a little girl, they used to watch all the old classic westerns together, and her father always told her that he wanted to die with his boots on. She’d cling to him and tell him that he could never die. He’d laughed and told her not to worry. That he wasn’t prepared to go for a very long time.

He’d lied to her and died much too soon.

As had Gabe Summer.

Special Agent Gabriel Summer, the only man she had ever allowed herself to open her heart to. Gabe, who had stubbornly assaulted the walls she’d put up around herself until they’d finally cracked and then come down. Gabe, who somehow managed to keep an upbeat attitude about everything in general and humanity in particular.

Gabe, of whom nothing more than his arm had been found in the rubble that represented a nation’s final departure from innocence on that horrific September 11 morning in 2001.

Like her father, Gabe had left her much, much too soon. They never had the chance to get married the way they’d planned, or have the children he wanted so much to have with her. The lifetime she’d hoped for, allowed herself to plan for, hadn’t happened. Because there wasn’t enough time.

And now, with her mother diagnosed with leukemia and her bone marrow discovered not to be a match, Cate had thought at the very least she could donate blood to be stored for her mother so that when a match would be found—as she knew in her heart just had to be found—at least the blood supply would be ample.

But now here was this stoop-shouldered man myopically blinking at her behind rimless eyeglasses, telling her something that just couldn’t be true.

“I can’t test it again,” he informed her flatly. “I’ve got work to do.”

Lowering his head, he gave the impression that he was prepared to ram his way past her if she didn’t let him by.

Cate planted herself in front of him. At five foot four, she wasn’t exactly a raging bull. To the undiscerning eye, she might have even looked fragile. But every ounce she possessed was toned and trained. She was far stronger than she appeared and knew how to use an opponent’s weight against him.

She temporarily halted the technician’s departure with a warning glare.

“Look, a lot goes on in the lab. You people are overworked and underpaid and mistakes are made. I need you to test my blood again. And then, if you get the same results, test hers. Just don’t come back and tell me they’re incompatible, because they’re not. They can’t be.”

The small man stepped back, his eyes never leaving her face. “Lady, you’re AB positive. Your mother’s O. I don’t care how many tests you want me to run, that’s not going to change. You give her your blood, she dies, end of story.” He drew himself up to the five foot three inches he came to in his elevator shoes. The vials in the basket clinked against one another. Annoyance creased his wide brow, traveling up to his receding hairline. “Now, I’ve got other patients to see to.”

“Problem?”

Cate recognized the raspy voice behind her immediately, even before she turned around. It belonged to Dr. Edgar Moore.

Doc Ed.

Tall, with a full head of thick silver hair that added to the impression of a lion patrolling his terrain, Doc Ed had been her family’s primary physician long before the term had taken on its present meaning. It was Doc Ed who had held her and comforted her when she’d found out about her father’s death. And it was Doc Ed who had called her at the field office to tell her to come home, that her mother needed her even if Julia Kowalski was too stubborn to get on the phone and place the call herself.

Cate had gotten herself reassigned to the San Francisco field office, where she’d initially started her career. That allowed her to see to her mother’s care. It didn’t help. Her mother’s condition was worsening by the week. By the day. Time was slipping away from her and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

On the verge of feeling overwhelmed, Cate sighed with relief. Reinforcements had arrived. Doc Ed would put this irritating person in his place.

She refrained from hugging the doctor, even though she felt the urge. Instead, fighting for control over her frayed emotions, banking down the scared feeling growing like an overwatered weed, Cate brushed aside a strand of straight blond hair that had fallen into her face.

“Doc Ed, could you please tell this man that his infallible lab has made a mistake.”

The doctor’s warm gray eyes looked from the annoyed technician to the young woman he’d known since her first bout of colic. “How’s that?”

Cate took a breath and collected herself. She hadn’t realized that her temper was so close to snapping. The restraint she’d always valued so highly was in short supply.

She gestured toward the technician and stopped to read his name tag. “Bob here is telling me that I can’t donate blood to my mother. That our blood types are incompatible.” The laugh that punctuated her statement was short and mirthless. And nervous. “We both know that can’t be true.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, they tasted bitter. Like bile. Instincts honed on the job pushed their way into her private life. Once again whispering that something was wrong. Very, very wrong. That the twisting feeling in her gut was there for a reason. There were no planes flying into buildings, no bullets firing, no cells mutating and turning cancerous, but something was still wrong. She could feel it vibrating throughout her whole body.

Because Doc Ed’s affable face had taken on a look of concern.

Cate suddenly felt like throwing up. Like running down the hall with her hands over her ears so she couldn’t hear anything, anything that would further shake up her already shaken world.

She did neither. But it was all she could do to hang on. She’d spent a good part of her life trying to be tough, trying to live up to Big Ted’s reputation. He’d had no sons and she felt she owed it to him, because in her eyes, he’d been the greatest father to ever walk the earth.

But she wasn’t sure just how much more of life’s sucker punches she could take and still remain standing, remain functioning.

“Can’t be true, right?” Cate heard herself asking quietly. Holding her breath.

Doc Ed sighed. “Cate, maybe it’s time that you and your mother talked.”

Every bone in her body stiffened, braced for an assault. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

“We talk all the time, Doc.” Her voice was hollow to her ear.

Behind her, Bob, the lab technician, took his opportunity to hurry away. She heard the rattle of the vials as he escaped down the hall. But her mind wasn’t on the other man. It was centered on the expression on Doc Ed’s face, which did nothing to give her hope.

She wasn’t going to like whatever it was that she was going to hear. She was willing to bet a year’s salary on it, and she had never been a betting person.

“At least,” she added, “I thought we talked. But I guess I thought wrong.”

Doc Ed made no answer. Instead, he lightly cupped her elbow and guided her back into the room she’d vacated several minutes ago when she’d seen the technician making his rounds. Her mother had been dozing off.

Cate had waylaid the lab tech in the hallway, once again stating her impatience. She wanted to begin donating blood, the first of what she intended to be several pints. Frustration had assaulted her even before he’d opened his mouth to tell her the bad news.

Ever since she’d learned that her mother had leukemia, Cate had felt completely frustrated. There was nothing she could do to change the course of events. When her bone marrow turned out not to be a match, it had just fed her impatience, making her that much more determined to be able to help somehow. She’d immediately taken it upon herself to spearhead a search amid the San Francisco bureau personnel and their families for a donor. So far, there had been none who matched.

More frustration.

And now, this, whatever “this” was.

“Julia.” Doc Ed’s gravelly voice was as soft as Cate had ever heard it as he addressed her mother.

The pale woman in the bed stirred and then turned her head in their direction. The look on Julia Kowalski’s face told Cate that her mother was braced for more bad news. Resigned to it.

Don’t be resigned, Mama. Fight it. Fight it!

Cate found herself blinking back tears as she approached her mother’s bed and took the small, weak hand into hers.

She could almost feel time slipping through her fingers. Her soul ached.

Julia tried to force her lips into a smile as she looked at her daughter. “Yes?” The single word came out in a whisper.

“Cate just found out that her blood doesn’t match yours.” Moving over to the bed, Doc Ed took his patient’s other hand and held it for a long moment. “Julia, it’s time.”

“Time?” Cate echoed. A shaft of panic descended, spearing her. She fought to push it away without success. Her heart hammering, she looked at the man who, over the years, she’d regarded as her surrogate grandfather. “Time for what?”

“Something that you should have been told a long time ago.” His words were addressed to her, but Doc Ed was looking at the woman in the bed as he said them. “I’ll leave the two of you alone now.” Releasing Julia’s hand and placing it gently on top of the blanket, Doc Ed made his way to the door. Pausing to look at them for a moment longer, he added, “I’ll be by later to look in on you, Julia. And Dr. Conner will be by shortly.”

Cate was vaguely aware of the reference to her mother’s oncologist as she watched the door close behind him.

Sealing her in with her mother and whatever secret the woman had kept from her all this time.

Chapter 2

Juanita Graywolf was nursing a cup of the black tar she liked to call coffee when her son, Dr. Christian Graywolf, entered the small house in Arizona where he’d grown up. Hearing the soft creak of the front door, Juanita Graywolf barely stirred in her seat. Instead, she looked at the reflection in the kitchen window directly opposite her. The window faced the garden, and west. Dawn was still making up its mind as to just how large an entrance it was going to make this morning. Darkness remained with its face pressed against the pane, helping to define her son’s image in the glass.

He was such a handsome boy, she thought. He looked like his father. Tom Graywolf had turned out rotten to the core, but he had been a handsome devil, there was no denying that. Christian was twenty-nine years old now, but he was still her boy. And once, he had been her golden child.

Until she had stolen his smile from him. His smile and his soul.

Her face gave away none of her thoughts as she took another sip of coffee. Juanita smiled at the reflection instead of at her second born. “You’re up early this morning, Christian.”

It was Monday morning and she’d risen early to have a little time with him before he returned to Bedford, California, which he and his brother now called home. But Christian’s bed was empty when she’d knocked and looked into the room. And she’d known where he had gone.

“So are you,” Christian Graywolf pointed out.

She sat up straight, like a young girl, he thought. People seeing them together mistook them for siblings, not mother and son. He was proud of her for taking care of herself. Proud of her for never giving up the way so many here did. She had always been the source of strength to him. She and Uncle Henry.

“I have a flight to catch,” he reminded her.

The flight had nothing to do with where she knew her son had been. For a moment longer, Juanita held her peace, even as her mother’s heart ached.

“And I have a schoolhouse full of students to prepare for,” she said. Turning around now to face him, she nodded toward the old-fashioned stove. It was the same one that had occupied that space when she was growing up in this same house. “Coffee’s hot.”

“And hard as usual,” he joked. Taking a cup, he filled it only halfway.

At the other end of the small house, they heard Henry stirring, mumbling to himself as he obviously ran into something in the dark. The words were all in Navajo and hard for Christian to catch. He saw his mother smiling to herself as she listened.

Henry Spotted Owl, his mother’s older brother, had come to live with them years ago, to take the place of the father he hardly remembered. And to help straighten out Lukas before his older brother was forever lost to them. Henry, an ex-boxer among other things, had done such a good job with Lukas, he’d decided to stay on and offer his own brand of rough-handed counseling to some of the other troubled teenagers on the reservation. He built a gym and gave them a way to work off their anger productively. In his late sixties and fifteen years’ his mother’s senior, the man gave no sign of letting up despite the emergency bypass surgery he’d received from Lukas some years back.

Grit and determination against all odds ran in the family. Henry had pulled himself out of a self-destructive lifestyle that would have killed him before he reached forty. Lukas had become the first of their family not just to graduate high school and college, but to become a doctor. And Christian was the second.

Christian’s mouth curved slightly. He and Lukas both owed a great deal to their mother, who had refused to follow a path of self-indulgence and self-pity, the way so many other of her contemporaries had. Just to put her sons through school, she’d worked two jobs without a word of complaint, behaving as if it was the norm.

At fifty-three, Juanita Graywolf looked younger now than he remembered her looking while he was growing up. Back then, he thought of her as just his mother, who was also a schoolteacher. Now she was principal of the school where she’d once sat in the back row as a student. It was the reservation’s only school, taking children from kindergarten to twelfth grade. His mother had almost single-handedly brought up the standard of teaching there, so that now the school was held up as an example to other reservations.

She was a remarkable woman, and he had grown up thinking that all women were that strong, that determined not to allow life to best them.

His late Alma had shown him how wrong he was.

Juanita suppressed a chuckle. “It sounds like your ride is grumbling,” she said as she nodded toward the rear of the small house.

There had been just three rooms when Henry had come to live with them, a combination living room and kitchen and two small bedrooms. The first thing Henry had done was add on his own room. After that, he’d built on another room and expanded the living room, then added a porch. Henry liked to say that he left his mark wherever he went. Truer words were never spoken.

Christian finished the remainder of the black pitch in his coffee cup and set it on the table. “Uncle Henry wouldn’t be Uncle Henry if he didn’t grumble.”

Juanita looked at her son, her mother’s heart tugging hard. He looked so sad, so different from the boy he’d once been. Her brain told her to avoid the subject, to let it slide, because to raise it would serve no purpose, heal no wounds. The fact that Christian had gone there told her that the wound he bore was far from healed.

Seasons had gone by. And it was time he let go of the past.

Long past time.

Juanita almost wished that Christian wouldn’t come home as frequently as he did. She dearly loved seeing him, loved seeing both her sons when they came to work at the clinic to tend to the sick and the forgotten. But whenever Christian came, he was also returning to the scene of his greatest heartache.

She would rather never see him again than have him relive his pain, time and again.

He needed to put it all behind him. And she couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. It wasn’t in her. She set down her cup again and looked into his eyes. “You went there, didn’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” He met her gaze unwaveringly. Of her two sons, Christian was the more sensitive one. The one more like her.

“Why should you?” Juanita challenged. She spoke quickly, before he could answer. Before he could defend actions that to her were undefendable. “Christian, every time you go, you come back with this look on your face, as if your heart has been torn out of your chest all over again. As if,” she emphasized, “what happened that day was your fault.”

He looked at her sharply with blue eyes that proved their lineage had allowed an interloper. “It was my fault. I was her husband, Mother. I should have seen it coming. I should have known.”

The words might be different, but the conversation was not new. They’d had it before. Many times in the past three years. It never got any better.

“The blood of the shamans runs through my veins,” Juanita reminded him. “And I did not know, did not see.” She leaned forward at the table, a new urgency in her voice as she pleaded with him. “Alma was an unhappy girl all of her life, Christian. We all saw that. We all knew that. How could we—how could you—have known that she would do such an awful thing?” she demanded.

Awful thing.

Words that could have been used to describe so many events. Somehow, they didn’t seem nearly adequate enough to apply to what had happened. Because what had happened that morning was beyond awful. Beyond anything he could have ever imagined.

Afterward, every night for a full year he’d wake up in a pool of sweat, shaking, visualizing what he hadn’t been there to see. Alma, their six-month baby girl in her arms, walking out onto the train tracks, the very same tracks that had run by the reservation ever since he could remember.

The same tracks where they’d foolishly played as children.

Except that morning she hadn’t been playing.

They were staying with his mother and Uncle Henry for a few days. He’d brought Alma and the baby with him on a working holiday, brought them so that his mother could visit with the baby. Alma had bid him goodbye as he’d gone to the clinic to work with Lukas. Both he and his brother returned as often as they could manage, to give back to the community where so many of their friends had remained.

That last trip, Alma had asked to come with him. He’d thought nothing of the request, except that perhaps she was finally finding a place for herself in the life they were carving out together. He was hopeful that she finally had put the baggage from her past into a closet and permanently closed the door on it. Because he loved her so much and tried every day to make up for the childhood she’d endured. The shame she had suffered at her father’s hands.

Alma had seemed happy enough to accompany them. Happy enough when he’d left that morning. He’d turned one last time to wave at her before climbing into the car. She was holding the baby in her arms. Picking up one of Dana’s tiny hands, she’d waved back.

There’d been no hint of what was to come in her manner.

Alma had waited until everyone was gone, his mother to the school, Uncle Henry to the gym he still ran, and then she’d taken their daughter and walked onto the train tracks. To wait for the nine-thirty train. Not to leave the reservation, but to leave life.

A life she could no longer tolerate, according to the note she’d left in her wake. She hadn’t wanted her daughter to grow up without a mother, the way she had, so she had taken the baby with her.

Lukas was the one who had broken the news to him. He remembered screaming, cursing and not much else. Except that there had been a burning sensation where his heart had been. For days afterward, he’d thought about following Alma, about making the same journey she had. Lukas kept him sedated and Lydia, his brother’s wife, kept vigil over him, making sure to keep him safe when the others weren’t around.

His whole family loved him and rallied around him. Eventually, he saw the reason for continuing to live. His tribe needed him. His patients needed him and his family loved him. So he continued. That was all the life he’d once relished with such gusto had become to him, a continuance.

He set up his practice and was affiliated with the same hospital that Lukas was. Blair Memorial in Bedford. He banked close to every cent he made, bringing it back with him whenever he came to the reservation. With the money, he purchased much needed equipment for the clinic that retained only nurses now that Doc Brown had died. He, his brother and the handful of doctors they’d gotten to volunteer their time came whenever they could.

The clinic needed so much, even now. The closest hospital to the Arizona reservation was more than fifty miles away. That barely amounted to a trip for most people, but in an emergency, it was a considerable distance, especially since most of the vehicles on the reservation were old and unreliable.

His dream was to someday have a hospital on the reservation. But until that time, he did what he could. And worked until he dropped so that he didn’t have to think, or remember.

Except that some days, it couldn’t be helped.

Moving her cup and saucer aside, Juanita reached across the table, her hand covering her son’s.

“Christian, beating yourself up isn’t going to change anything. Isn’t going to bring her or Dana back. And it’s wrong. It’s as futile as Alma constantly reliving everything that happened to her. She couldn’t let go of the past and it killed her. Don’t let what happened kill you,” she pleaded softly. “Learn from it, my son. Learn from it and grow.”

He knew his mother wasn’t giving the advice lightly. She’d been through a great deal herself. Married at seventeen to a man who betrayed her on a regular basis, she found herself suddenly widowed at thirty-two when Tom Graywolf had been killed in a barroom brawl. From somewhere, Juanita Graywolf had summoned an inner strength and made a life for herself and her two sons. Christian was well aware that he wouldn’t be where he was if it hadn’t been for her.

But right now, he didn’t want advice, didn’t want to be told what he should or shouldn’t do. The pain was there whether he stood over Alma’s grave, attended one of Blair Memorial’s surgical salons, performed an operation. It was always there to press against his chest when he least expected it and steal away the very air he breathed.

He’d married Alma, promising her that he would always be there for her, to protect her from everything. And he had failed. Failed to protect her from the inner demons that haunted her. And that failure was something he was going to have to carry around within him for the rest of his life.

He offered his mother what passed for a smile. “I’ll do what I can, Mother.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Christian saw his uncle entering the room. Short, squat and built like a bull even at his age, Henry had a vivid three-inch scar across his right cheek that he liked to refer to as his badge of courage. He’d gotten it as a young man, and in all these years, it hadn’t faded. And neither had Henry.

He helped himself to some of Juanita’s coffee, draining the cup in one long swig as if its bitterness was nothing. “You about ready, boy?” He put the cup down on the counter. “I’ve got miles to cover today, miles to cover.”

“I’m all set, just let me get my bag.”

Juanita rose from her chair, embracing Christian before he could leave the room. “Try to be happy, Christian,” she whispered.

For her sake, he smiled and nodded, even though he knew that wasn’t possible. “I’ll try, Mother,” he repeated. There was no feeling behind the words.

Chapter 3

For a moment, Cate remained where she was, near the door. Looking at her mother.

Ever since she could remember, she’d always believed in challenging herself, in seeing just how brave she could be. Her father had been her very first hero and she’d wanted to be just like him, an officer of the law who put herself out there, protecting people. Keeping them safe the way he made her feel safe.

Being brave, testing that bravery, was the first step to getting there. It wasn’t something she even thought about in the beginning. She just did her job. Even now, she would draw a line in the sand and dare herself to cross it. When one of the other field agents had recently referred to her as being fearless, she’d taken it as the highest compliment.

It was only privately that fear had gotten such a huge toehold in her life. Until the day he died, she had always thought of her father as being ten feet tall and bulletproof. Nothing could happen to him. Ever. When her mother would worry on those evenings that he was late coming home, she’d comfort her, saying it was just some loose end on the job that was keeping her father, nothing more. She never once thought that her father’s life might be in danger, that something could happen to him to permanently keep him from coming home.

When it did, the very foundations of her world cracked. They became so badly damaged that they were never quite the same again.

And neither was she.

Like the snake that had entered paradise and ultimately brought about the loss of innocence for Adam and Eve, fear entered her life the day her father was killed, forever robbing her of her innocence.

Losing Gabe had brought about another upheaval, another magnitude-nine earthquake that destroyed the foundations she’d so painstakingly repaired. Older, wiser, she was still that fifteen-year-old girl who had sobbed her heart out the July night her father was shot.

She hadn’t bothered to attempt to repair her foundations a second time. She just patched the gaping cracks as best she could and went through the motions of living her life.

Eventually, because she knew how badly her state affected her mother, she tried harder. Her enforced routine took, and while she didn’t exactly enjoy life, Cate found she could once again draw breath without pain. She rallied for her mother once again. Because the woman needed her.

Receiving news that her mother had leukemia threatened to throw her down into the bowels of hell again. Secretly, Cate clung fiercely to the threadbare hope that her mother would survive, that this was some kind of trial she had to endure, but that she would ultimately emerge on the other end of this long, dark tunnel victorious. Cate refused to entertain the thought that her mother might not make it. That Julia Kowalski’s light would be extinguished and that the sweet-tempered woman would no longer be a presence in her life. She’d lost her father and her lover. The thought of possibly losing her mother as well was too heinous to contemplate, even for a second.

And now, something besides death hovered between them. Something that threatened to destroy her world for a third time.

Or maybe it was death—not of a person, but of a belief. A belief upon which her very world had originally been founded. Each time she’d rebuilt, it was on that belief, that truth. That she was Catherine Kowalski, Big Ted and Julia’s daughter.

Was that going to be taken away from her, too?

Cate curled her fingers into her hands, as if to clutch what little power she had left. Silence blanketed the room. The only break was the sound of her mother’s labored breathing.

Say it isn’t so, Mama. Tell me I’m your little girl, your own flesh and blood. Yours and Daddy’s.

Cate remained by the door for a moment longer, trying to absorb everything she could about the woman. Holding off that first bite from the apple a moment longer.

She was acutely aware, not for the first time, that her mother and she didn’t look at all alike. Julia Kowalski was a short woman with dark brown hair and lively hazel eyes. Until this illness had begun to eat away at her, her mother had been pleasantly plump and large boned, like her husband.

Cate had always been thin, delicate, even as a little girl, despite all her attempts to bulk up and be just like her father. She was small boned and deeply frustrated by it when she was younger. To comfort her, her father told her she took after his only sister, who had died before she reached her twentieth birthday.

“Josephine was a real beauty, just like you,” he’d tell her time and again.

And she’d been content that she looked like his sister, Josephine. Even when he could produce no photographs to back up his claim, it never occurred to her to doubt him.

Cate doubted him now. Doubted everything they had ever told her, and yet she still desperately hoped that she was just being paranoid. That her imagination was running away with her.

Years on the job did that to you, Cate thought. It heightened your senses and made you ready to take on anything. It also made you see things that weren’t really there. Full-blown figures where in reality only shadows existed.

Please let there be only shadows.

Cate took a deep breath and braced herself. It was time to test her bravery again. Time to cross another line in the sand. God knew she didn’t want to. But she had to.

“Mom, what was Doc Ed talking about just now?” To her own ear, her voice trembled slightly. She fisted her hands harder, dug her nails into her palms more deeply. “Why is our blood type incompatible?”

The smile on Julia’s lips was thin, weary, and yet somehow still just as warm now as it had been when Cate had been a little girl of eight. Back then, thunderstorms would frighten her, causing her to crawl into the shelter of her mother’s arms, begging to hear stories that would distract her. Her mother always obliged.

She wasn’t eight anymore, Cate thought sadly.

“You’re a smart girl, Catie.” Julia’s voice was thin, reedy. “You know why.”

Yes, Cate thought, she knew in her soul. But until she heard the actual words, she would remain in denial. She needed that kick in the butt to make her stop playing games with herself.

Cate pressed her lips together, hating this. “Tell me.”

Julia sighed. Passing a hand over her eyes, she willed her tears back. A couple seeped out, anyway. Because she was tethered to an IV, her movement was restricted. With another bracing sigh, Julia dropped her hand to the bed. It fell as if it was too heavy to hold up.

God, how she wished Teddy had listened to her. She’d told him that it was wrong to keep this from Catie. But he’d begged. It was one of the very few times he’d asked anything of her and she couldn’t deny him, even though she knew it was wrong. Teddy had been and always would remain her childhood sweetheart, the man with the key to her heart.

With effort, Julia forced words past her lips, trying not to let the very act exhaust her. “Your father and I loved you from the moment we saw you.”

“Tell me, Mama.”

And so Julia said the words she’d promised her husband never to say. But he wasn’t here now, and if Teddy was looking down, she told herself he’d understand. “You were adopted, Catie.” She channeled every last bit of strength into her voice, determined to make Cate understand. And forgive. “You came into our lives when you were just a week old, but you were always part of us.”

In her heart, she begged Cate not to be angry at the grave omission that had been made. Julia fisted one frail hand and placed it against her breast.

“I didn’t get to carry you beneath my heart, the way your birth mother did. But I held you there when you cried because the other kids made fun of you, or when that boy you liked so much asked another girl out. I held you to my heart when your father died—and he was your father. Just as you are my daughter, Catie. In love, in spirit and in fact. In every way but the mechanics of birth.” Pushing a button on the hospital bed, Julia drew herself up as best she could, a pale shadow of the vivacious woman she’d once been. “No one could have loved you more than your father and I did. No one,” she underscored as fiercely as she could.

“It’s okay, Mama, it’s okay.”

On legs that were less than solid, Cate crossed to the lone bed in the room and took her mother’s hand. She didn’t want her to become agitated and waste what precious little strength she still had left.

Even as Cate held her mother’s hand, she could feel everything around her cracking, breaking. Shattering and raining down around her like tiny shards of glass. Cate struggled to understand why her parents would keep this from her. Were they ashamed of her, of how she had come into their lives?

Julia wrapped her fingers tightly around Cate’s, afraid to let go. Afraid that the young woman she’d loved for the past twenty-seven years would walk out the door and never come back.

But that isn’t my Catie. Catie would never leave.

“But why didn’t you ever tell me?” Cate asked.

A ragged sigh escaped Julia’s lips. “That was your father’s decision. He was afraid to let you know. When I tried to argue him out of it, he made me promise that I would never tell you.” Julia tried to read her daughter’s expression, but Cate had on what she’d once teased was her special agent face, the one that gave nothing away. Julia proceeded cautiously, as if every step on the tightrope might be her last. “Your father loved you so much, he said it would kill him if someday you wanted to go away to find your real parents.”

Digging her elbows into the mattress, Julia struggled to sit up. Shifting pillows, Cate propped her up. Julia offered her a weary smile of thanks. “We were your real parents, your father and I.”

“I know.” Cate said the words because her mother expected them. Because up until a few minutes ago, they had been true. But they weren’t now. There was a hollowness opening up inside of her, a hollowness that threatened to swallow her whole. It took everything she had not to let it register on her face.

Doggedly, Cate pressed as much as she dared. “But after Daddy died…?” She paused, searching for words. Trying desperately to absolve the woman she’d thought of as her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

A helpless look entered the hazel eyes. “You were fifteen and I didn’t know how to tell you. I did try, though, several times. But every time an occasion opened up, I realized that, like your father, I was afraid, too. You have to understand, after he died, you were all I had. I didn’t want to lose you.”

After her father died, she and her mother had grown closer. So close that when it came time for her to go away to college, she opted to go to the University of San Francisco instead of a school back east the way she’d originally planned. She didn’t want to be far from her mother in case she was needed.

They’d taught her that family was everything.

How could they have said that to her, knowing what they’d known?

Cate battled back the bitter anger as she lightly squeezed her mother’s hand. Trying to remember only the good times. “You wouldn’t have lost me, Mama.”

The look in Julia’s eyes said she knew better. “I’ve lost you now.”

She couldn’t allow her to think like that. If Julia was going to get well, she needed only positive energy in her life. Cate was determined to provide it. She knew she owed it to the other woman.

“Shh, don’t talk nonsense. I’m here and I’m always going to be here.” Cate took the once robust woman into her arms. Julia felt as if she weighed next to nothing and it broke her heart. “You just make sure that you do the same, understand?”

“I’m trying, Catie,” Julia whispered hoarsely. “I’m trying.”

“Yes, Mama, I know you are.”

The problem was, Cate thought, she was afraid that it just wasn’t enough. A cold fear gripped her heart once again.

Chapter 4

When her mother fell asleep, Cate slipped out into the parking lot and drove the five miles over to Doc Ed’s office.

Rhonda, the nurse who had been with him for the past ten years, looked somewhat surprised to see her and even more surprised when she asked to speak with the doctor. The nurse obligingly sandwiched her in between patients.

Cate ignored the exasperated look the woman in the waiting room gave her as she walked by and went into the inner office.

The doctor’s terrain was as familiar as the back of her own hand. Three exam rooms huddled together, with Doc Ed’s personal office at the end of the tiny hall. All three charts were in the slots that hung on the outside of the doors. It reminded her of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, except that she was in search of something far more important than porridge and comfortable sleeping accommodations.

She knocked once on Doc Ed’s door and let herself in before he gave his permission. If he was surprised to see her, he hid it well.

Cate struggled to hold in her hurt and anger. “You knew, didn’t you?”

Doc Ed put down the file he was reviewing and indicated that she should take the chair that was before his scarred desk. Old-fashioned in his methods, he put the patient before the fee and there was no computer on his desk, challenging his mind and his time. He liked only what he could put his hands on, like the files that littered every flat surface within his office.

“Yes,” he told her, scrutinizing her reaction, “I knew.”

Somehow, that seemed like the ultimate betrayal to her. Had no one in her life been honest with her? “For how long?”

“From the beginning. I was the one who put them in touch with the private agency.”

Cate reminded herself that she was first and foremost a special agent with the FBI. That meant she had to conduct herself professionally. She was supposed to be able to gather information under the worst situations, and heaven knew, this one qualified. “What was the name of it?”

Doc Ed shook his head. “Angels From Heaven,” he told her. “But it’s long gone.” He saw the protest rise to her lips, as if she thought he was lying. “From what I’d heard, the lawyer handling all the private adoptions was killed in a freak accident. Stepped off a curb and right in front of a bus. Died instantly.”

That sounded like the punchline of a bad joke. “When?”

Doc Ed thought for a moment, trying to pin down a year. He remembered reading the story in the paper and wondering what was going to happen to all the files of the babies who had changed hands. He’d even gone so far as to try to find out. But the address on the card the lawyer had given him turned out to belong to a dry cleaner’s now. All trace of the dead man’s small office was gone.

“Twelve, fifteen years ago. Without him, there was no agency.”

She watched the doctor’s eyes for signs of nervousness. Seeing none still didn’t convince her. He could just be a convincing liar. After all, he’d allowed her to believe a lie all these years. “You’re sure?”

Doc Ed spread his hands wide. “I have no reason to lie to you, Catherine.”

“You had no reason to keep my adoption from me, either,” she pointed out.

“Not my call, Catherine.” He leaned back in his chair, an old leather chair that had long since assumed his shape. It creaked slightly as he studied her. She was a strong-willed girl, she always had been. She would get through this, but not easily. “For what it’s worth, I thought your father was wrong, keeping this from you.” He laughed softly to himself. “Big Ted was absolutely fearless, but you were his Achilles heel.”

Her eyebrows drew together. That didn’t make any sense to her. Achilles heels signified a weakness. She’d never held Big Ted back. “I don’t understand.”

“If you had wanted to call someone else ‘Dad,’ it would have killed Big Ted. You were the sun and the moon and stars to him.”

How could her father have even thought that she’d turn her back on him and all their time together? Turn her back on the man who’d taught her how to ride a dirt bike, how to play baseball, how to fish. She’d been the best boy she could be for her father, and all the while the relationship she’d believed in didn’t even exist.

“But he didn’t trust me.”

The accusation surprised Doc Ed. “What?”

“He didn’t trust me,” she repeated. “My father didn’t trust me not to leave him, not to think of him differently once I knew that I didn’t have his genes in my body.” She leaned forward, trying to make Doc Ed understand what she was still trying to grapple with herself. “Don’t you see, if my father had told me I was adopted, it would have been no big deal. I knew a couple of kids in school who were adopted and they were okay.

“But he didn’t tell me. Neither of them did, and that made it a big deal. That they couldn’t tell me the truth. And the truth I knew was a lie.” Restless, she ran her hand through her hair. “Now I’m not really sure about anything anymore, least of all who I am.”

Doc Ed reached for her hand and forced her to look at him. “You’re still Catherine Kowalski,” he told her firmly. “You can call yourself Watermelon, it makes no difference. You’re still Cate.”

Despite herself, her mouth quirked in a half smile. “Watermelon, huh?”

“Watermelon,” he repeated.

Her smile faded and she shook her head. “It’s not the name that matters, Doc. It’s the truth that makes a difference. And the truth is that someone else gave birth to me, that there are genes inside of me that didn’t come from the people who, until a couple of hours ago, I’d thought of as Mom and Dad. The truth is, I thought there was no secret in my family and there is. And it’s a whopper.”

Doc Ed folded his hands on the desk and looked at her over his glasses. “So what are you going to do? All the records that might have given you a clue are long gone.”

Maybe not, she thought. Maybe someone had claimed them, stored them. Something. But she wasn’t going to deal with that now.

“For the time being, I’m going to stay where I’ll do the most good, right here with my mother.” She noted how he smiled when she still referred to Julia as her mother. “I’m putting in for a leave of absence so I can be with her for as long as I can. After she gets well, we’ll see.”

Unlike his colleagues, he believed in dispensing hope if there was even so much as a shred to be had. But even he couldn’t find it within his heart to allow her to deceive herself like this. “Cate, you know that she might not get well.”

Cate squared her shoulders, the look in her eyes forbidding him to say anything more. “Please,” she whispered the word quietly, “I’m dealing with one truth at a time.”

Two and a half weeks later, Cate found herself standing at her mother’s gravesite. It was raining, which seemed somehow fitting. She’d been angry at the sun for daring to shine the day of her father’s funeral so many years ago.

She was only vaguely aware that her partner, James Wong, was holding an umbrella over her head, keeping her dry. Vaguely aware of the world in general. She felt as if she was walking along on the outside of a huge circle, looking in.

She’d refused the Valium Doc Ed had offered her just before the ceremony. She didn’t want to be any more numb than she already was. Numb from the loss of a woman she’d loved with all her heart and had thought of as her mother to the very end, despite everything.

Numb from the realization that she’d been lied to for the past twenty-seven years of her life.

Numb because there were no foundations beneath her feet, no walls around her to protect her. She was bare and exposed. Completely and utterly adrift in dark waters. And for the first time in her life, she had no sense of identity. She had no idea who she was, or who she might have been meant to be.

She wouldn’t know anything until she found the answers to the questions that had been battering her brain for the past two and a half weeks.

Ever since that day in her mother’s hospital room.

Just before the end, her mother had begged her to forgive her and of course she had. She bore no malice toward the people who had done everything in their power to make her feel loved and secure. But it didn’t negate her desire to discover her birth parents and, with them, her roots.

Cate realized that the priest had stopped talking. The ceremony was almost over. Someone handed her a white rose. She went through the motions, kissing a petal and then throwing the flower onto the deep-mahogany casket that lay nestled in the freshly dug grave.

As she looked down, she felt her heart tightening within her chest.

Julia Kowalski had died three days ago. And now she and Big Ted were together again.

And she was alone. Completely alone. With no family to fall back on.

Neither one of her parents had had any siblings. Cate had always thought of herself as the only child of only children. Now she no longer knew what to think, what to feel.

Except for alone.

Everyone gathered at her parents’ house after the funeral. Betsy Keller, her mother’s best and oldest friend, had taken over and handled all the arrangements. Had insisted on it.

“You have enough to deal with, poor thing,” she’d clucked sympathetically several times during the past three days.

The mother of six and grandmother of nine, Betsy took to traffic control easily. Rather than call in a caterer, she’d summoned the collective resources of all of Julia’s friends. The women had brought over casseroles, pies, cakes and enough food to feed two armies.

“You’ve got to eat something,” Betsy insisted. She paused to deliver the same entreaty every time their paths crossed within the crammed house filled with people who had loved Julia and Ted.

And each time, Cate would respond the same way. “Maybe later.”

Betsy would peer at her through her red-rimmed glasses. “All right, but I’ll be watching you.”

Cate forced a smile to her lips. She tried to cheer herself up with the fact that her mother had been well loved by a great many people. Both her parents had been. And she was going to miss them terribly, but it was going to take her some time to get over the fact that they had deceived her. That they hadn’t had enough faith in her to know that she wasn’t about to pick up and go searching for her birth parents the moment she knew of their existence.

She wouldn’t have then. But, she had to now. Now that she had no roots. No family to call her own. Maybe it was a failing, she thought, but she needed to feel part of something. Something other than the bureau.

She made eye contact with James, who was there with his wife and oldest son. Her partner started to come over, but she shook her head and James faded back, giving her space.

As she stood, looking at people exchanging pleasantries, catching up on one another’s lives, she became aware that someone had come up to join her. She began to move away but felt something being slipped into her hand.

“What’s this?” Cate looked down at the brown manila envelope Doc Ed had just given her.

“Everything that I know about your adoption. It’s not much, but it might give you a start.” Slipping his arm around her slim shoulders, he said, “I know you people at the bureau have ways of finding things out as long as you have some kind of starting point.”

The envelope was light. It couldn’t contain much. “We don’t use government resources for personal ends.”

His gray eyes twinkled for the first time in three days. He gave her a fatherly squeeze. “Yeah, and I’m sure there are ways around that, too, Catherine. Now, eat something before I have you strapped down to a gurney and fed intravenously.”

She looked down at the manila envelope again. The smile that rose to her lips was only slightly forced, far less than what she’d been displaying all day as well-wishers pumped her hand, gave their condolences and told her stories about her parents.

“Yes, sir.”

He took hold of her arm and steered her toward one of the two tables laden down with food. “If you think I’m going to be taken in by that, then you don’t really know me, either.”

She appreciated the irony he’d tossed her way.

Chapter 5

Dr. Lukas Graywolf quietly tiptoed up behind his wife in the Wedgwood-blue tiled bathroom of their modest Southern California home. He slipped his arm around her waist and buried his face in the nape of her neck. Taking a deep breath, he inhaled the fragrance that still clung to her skin from her morning shower, an event he sorely regretted missing.

“So how’s the bureau’s sexiest extra-special agent this morning?”

He’d startled her. Lost in thought and rushing, Lydia Wakefield Graywolf hadn’t realized that her husband was behind her until she’d seen his reflection in the slightly fogged mirror a second before he’d wrapped his arm around her waist.

Lucky for him that she had, otherwise he might have found himself sprawled out on the floor, flat on his back. She wasn’t trained for pleasant surprises, only the other variety.

Lydia had had every intention of going in to the office early today. Certain new things had come to light regarding the case she was working on and she wanted to go over the details. And they were getting in someone new today, a Catherine Kowalski from up north. The assistant director wanted her to take the woman under her wing as if she was some kind of mother hen instead of one of their top operatives.

She didn’t have time to babysit anyone.

She didn’t have time for this, either, Lydia thought, but she allowed herself to linger for a moment in the embrace of the man she loved more than life itself.

His bare chest pressed against her back and heat penetrated the bath towel she’d wrapped around herself. She could feel the heat stirring her. Tiny tongues of desire began to burn away at logic and resolve. Her mascara wand slipped from her fingers.

Lydia smiled at his reflection, their eyes meeting as she covered his arm with her hand. “The bypass surgery went well, I take it?”

He hadn’t mentioned the operation to her yesterday at breakfast. Their schedules were so busy lately, especially hers, that they barely had time to see each other. He didn’t want to waste what time they had together with shop talk. Neither did she.

He wished they could both take some time off and just spend it with each other, going away to some reclusive beach where the next warm body was miles away.

She’d probably go stir crazy within two days, he thought with a silent laugh. Lydia always had to be doing something. Most of the time that involved making the country safe for tomorrow.

Pressing a kiss to the side of her neck, Lukas thought for the umpteenth time how lucky he was to have found Lydia. Everything had changed since she’d come into his life, including him. He never knew he could feel like this, that love could be so uplifting, so empowering.

He felt her sigh as it rippled through her. “You add clairvoyance to your job description, Special Agent Graywolf?”

With a small laugh, Lydia turned around to face him, her body brushing against his as she did so. Her heart quickened a little, the way it always did when they were so close together.

Her husband had the vaguest hint of stubble on his rugged, handsome face, and there was still a trace of sleep in his vivid blue eyes. Right now, he looked more like a boy than the skilled surgeon that he was. She didn’t know who she loved more, the boy or the man.

Because her towel felt as if it was slipping, she tugged it back into place, then threaded her arms around his neck. “Not that I couldn’t use that kind of an added boost, especially with this case, but clairvoyance has nothing to do with it. You always act like this whenever a bypass goes well.”

He didn’t mind being predictable, but she’d aroused his curiosity. “Like what?”

She cocked her head. Her smile bathed over him. “As if you just won the brass ring and all’s well with the world.”

“All is well with the world and the brass ring I won doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Sellers, the man whose life yours truly saved yesterday.” His sentence was punctuated with two light, almost chaste kisses, delivered to first one cheek, then the other.

A sound akin to a purr escaped her lips. Lydia moved her hips against his, her body silently teasing him, drawing him out.

“Oh?” There was nothing short of mischief in her eyes. “Then what?”

He’d started this, but now he was the one who was hopelessly trapped. Trapped by the look in her eyes, by the smile on her face. By the feelings that were always there, just a hairbreadth beneath the surface, waiting to be summoned and pressed into service.

“You know damn well, what.” Lukas pressed a kiss to her temple. “It has to do with a certain sexier-than-hell FBI operative.”

Gazing up at him, struggling not to melt right there in his arms, Lydia batted her lashes at Blair Memorial’s leading cardiac surgeon like an old-fashioned femme fatale. “Anyone I know?”

“Maybe.” Ever so lightly, he brushed her lips with his own and ignited a fire in his veins. “Someone I definitely know better than you do.”

Because she was so well trained, Lydia didn’t stiffen, didn’t react. Lukas had said that before. That he knew her better than she knew herself. Until recently, she wouldn’t have taken exception to the point.

Until recently, she would have been the first to say that Lukas could see into her very soul, a soul that had been driven and troubled until she’d allowed him into her life.

But now, well, now he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did. Didn’t know that she was keeping something from him and would continue to do so for at least a while longer, even though it killed her to do it. But there were reasons for what she was doing, reasons she knew that her husband wouldn’t understand.

“Speaking of which,” Lukas murmured, his words heating the hollow of her throat just before he kissed it, “something bothering you?”

It was a struggle to keep her eyes from fluttering shut. She really did need to get down to the Santa Ana field office and Lukas was making it very, very difficult for her to keep her mind on her goal. She’d been rigorously trained to withstand anything the enemy might have to throw at her. But this was torture of an entirely different variety. Lukas was her weakness as well as the source of her strength.

“Other than the chaos of the world as we know it?” Lydia could feel her very core tightening. Yearning. Her husband had one hell of a bedside manner.

She heard him laugh softly as he took another pass at her throat. “Other than that.”

His hand cupped her breast, pressing lightly. Her mind began scrambling. “No, why?”

“You were talking in your sleep last night. I couldn’t make out the words.” He raised his head to look at her, a faint line of concern between his eyes. “And you were tossing and turning like a top. That’s something new.”

Anyone else would have used a far more modern comparison, she thought. But Lukas had spent his childhood living on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. It was a life that had deprived him of so many things that children even in his generation had taken for granted. For lack of other toys, he had probably played with a top as a boy. It might have been something that had been handed down from generation to generation, because on the reservation there was nothing else to give a child beyond love, which she knew her mother-in-law did with abundance.

Without realizing it, Lydia caught her bottom lip between her teeth. The answer to her husband’s question was very simple. But she couldn’t give it to him. God, but she hated keeping anything from Lukas. Still, there might not even be something to tell him. She wasn’t certain. But there was no way she could share her thoughts with Lukas. She knew him. The second he found out, he’d want her to restrict her duties. As would the department. And she couldn’t, not yet. Not until this case was over.

She was personally invested in the case, had been right from the start. If she was taken off the case or relegated to some desk, it would probably kill her. Or come very close.

Lydia gave him a half truth. “Just the case,” she answered vaguely, then before Lukas could comment, she added, “and frustration.”

His eyes narrowed as he looked up at her, momentarily abandoning the slow-moving siege he was laying to her body. “What do you mean?”

Her mouth curved wickedly. “Well, there I was, lying alone in that big, empty bed. My husband was gone, working late—”

He’d had plans of being home by six. Instead, he’d gotten home after eleven. There’d been complications. When he’d walked into the bedroom, Lydia had already gone to bed and was asleep.

“The operation ran over. Way over.”

Lydia nodded. They’d made a promise when they were first married that neither would upbraid the other because of the demands of their careers. Each felt that what they did was of paramount importance.

She smiled seductively now, not wanting him to think she was complaining in the true sense of the word. An intentionally dramatic sigh escaped her lips before she said, “Maybe if I’d had someone there with me last night, I wouldn’t have been so tense or tossed around ‘like a top.’”

When she looked at him like that, there was very little he could do to resist her. And there was no desire to. He could feel his body hardening in response to the look in her eyes.

He’d been exhausted when he’d walked in last night. Exhausted, but exhilarated. There was nothing he’d wanted more than to make love with her then. Disappointment had nibbled away at him when he’d found Lydia asleep. But it never occurred to him to wake her to satisfy his own needs.

Right now, he pretended to lament the lost opportunity. “If I’d known that, I would have woken you up.”

Lydia sniffed. “Yeah, yeah, big words after the fact.” She placed her hands on his biceps, loving the way the muscles felt under her palms. “I guess I’ll just have to take a rain check.” Lukas dropped his hands from her waist and lightly tugged on the towel she had wrapped around her. She raised her eyes to his face, barely keeping hers straight. “What are you doing?”

“Unless I miss my guess,” he said, giving the towel a final tug, “preparing for rain.”

Lydia laughed as her damp towel hit the floor, pooling around her feet. Along with her resistance. Still, she was honorbound to make an attempt at a protest. “Luke, I have to get to the office.”

He filled his hands with her hair, bringing her mouth to his. She felt his breath on her lips as he promised, “You will.”

Everything inside of her was turning to the consistency of oatmeal. “I mean, like soon.”

Amusement etched itself into his features. “I’ll be quick, I promise.”

Any kind of resolve she might have been able to muster on short notice evaporated like icicles in the hot August sun. She had never been able to resist Lukas, not even from the very first. And then she’d been armed with determination, resolved not to allow herself to fall for the tall, dark, handsome surgeon. As if she had any say in the matter, even then.

They’d met under the most dire of circumstances. She’d burst into the hospital E.R., accompanying a man she’d shot not fifteen minutes earlier. He’d been the grief-stricken parent of a young girl who had overdosed on drugs she’d gotten from someone dealing at the mall. Extremists had tapped into his grief, making use of his knowledge of demolitions. Only timing and a huge amount of luck had allowed her and her former partner to partially foil his plot to blow up the mall.

She’d arrived at the hospital determined to bring her wounded “suspect” to justice. Lukas was only concerned with saving his life.

All in all, it hadn’t been the best setting for love to take root, but it had. Strongly. But then, she hadn’t counted on the determination of a man like Lukas. Despite their years of marriage, she could feel her head beginning to spin, her pulse beginning to race as his lips roamed over her shoulders. God, she hoped that would never change.

“Just not too quick,” she cautioned.

Stripping off the pajama bottoms that had just barely been clinging to his hips, Lukas caught her up in his arms.

“Your wish is my command,” he told her just before he brought his mouth down on hers.

And made the world disappear.

Chapter 6

The moment she got behind the wheel of her vehicle, Lydia transformed. She was no longer Lydia Graywolf, the proud, contented and very much in love wife of a prominent cardiac surgeon. She was Special Agent Lydia Wakefield Graywolf, a dedicated operative who had given her all to the bureau.

At times, she found the system restrictive, the regulations frustratingly binding. But when she came right down to it, no better system existed within the country, certainly not outside it. And until a better one did, she was determined to remain working for the bureau in one capacity or another. That meant being a field operative, and she wanted nothing to change that. Not yet.

Again, a pang of guilt slipped through her. She banked it down.

Not now, she told herself sternly. There was time enough for that later, when she was a hundred percent certain.

Lydia glanced at her watch. Silver-banded, blue-faced, it had been a gift from Lukas on their first wedding anniversary. The irony of it was, without knowing his choice, she’d bought a similar one for him.

Just showed that they thought alike, she mused. Kindred spirits that had found each other.

She wasn’t late—yet—but she certainly wasn’t going to be early the way she wanted to be, either.

Pressing down on the accelerator, Lydia gunned her engine. She made her way from Bedford to Santa Ana taking surface streets. The Santa Ana Freeway was a bear at this hour of the morning. Traffic was known to come to a dead stop with a fair amount of regularity. She didn’t have the patience for that this morning.

Lately, there was very little patience to draw on.

Periodically, Lydia glanced up in the rearview mirror, keeping an eye out for any policeman who might have a quota to fill. Luck was with her. She managed to fly through a number of amber traffic lights before they turned red and kept her from getting to the office on time. Any hope of getting there early died the second Lukas had kissed her that morning.

No, she amended, they’d died the moment he’d come up behind her.

She didn’t exactly hold it against him. Lydia knew she was one of the lucky ones. Like her mother had been before her.

Love was a funny thing. The right kind of love lit things up, made even the worst that life threw at you bearable. Made life exciting. She didn’t take it, or Lukas, for granted for one moment.

She realized that she’d had love all her life. First from her parents, from her mother who’d doted and from her father, whom she’d emulated by entering the world of law enforcement. And then from Lukas. She didn’t know if she would have turned out to be the same person had she grown up the hard way. Without love.

Main Street, which went from Bedford straight through to Santa Ana, lost a lane, when she entered the latter city. While every bit of Bedford was modern, Santa Ana was comprised of both the old and the recently renovated.

Traffic moved slowly on the older streets, and there was no use fighting it.

Her mind turned to the case, where some young girls’ lives were over before they had even begun. Their hope, their very souls, were stolen from them, leaving behind empty shells. Girls barely into puberty who did what they could to survive in a world they hated.

The task force she headed was trying to break up a teenage prostitute ring that had far-reaching tentacles. In some cases, the girls weren’t even teens yet. Just yesterday, it had come to light that kiddie porn was involved. Videos depicting awful, awful things that little girls shouldn’t even know about, much less take part in.

She knew most of the girls had either run away from intolerable conditions at home, or been sold into the life by a family member. Somebody needed crack but had no money, so he passed around a daughter, a younger sister, any means to an end. It happened more often than she wanted to acknowledge and made her sick to her stomach.

And if it was the last thing she did, she was going to break up the ring and send whoever was responsible to prison. But first, she wanted to hang them upside down by their genitals. And leave them there for a week. Maybe longer.

She owed it to her cousin Susan.

Traffic cleared up a block away from the civic plaza. The difference between the blocks that housed the federal buildings and their surrounding area was astounding, like going from one world to another. Every so often, like today, it hit her anew.

After making a left, Lydia drove into the structure, not even bothering to look for a place in the open lot. You had to arrive at six to get a spot there. She parked her car, made her way back into the daylight and hurried across the grounds to the second federal building. She took the stone steps leading to the glass doors two at a time. The doors parted automatically, and she sailed right through. It was a quarter to nine and already busy.

The second she got off the elevator on the seventh floor, she walked into Mike Santiago, narrowly avoiding his jelly doughnut. Considering that Mike’s reach cleared him to over seven feet, there was little danger of jelly smearing across the navy blazer she had on today.

Once he lowered his prize, he took a bite, then nodded his head toward the rear of the room where the A.D. had his office. “New girl’s here. She’s in with Sullivan.”

Lydia made her way to her desk. They were all out in the open here, unrestricted by cubicle walls. That was both good and bad, depending on which side of a private conversation you were on.

“We’re not girls, Santiago,” she told him mechanically, knowing he expected it, “we’re women.”

Married, with two kids and one on the way, Santiago was as faithful as they came. But he liked perpetuating the image of a Romeo. “You can say that again. This one makes me glad God made me a man.”

Lydia deposited her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk, then shut it with her foot. Looking at the tall, slightly rumpled agent, she shook her head. “God’s not finished yet.”

Mike did his best to imitate a leer as he spread his hands before him. “Any time you want to sample the goods, Graywolf…”

They’d known each other ever since she’d joined the field office some six years ago. And had been friends for almost as long.

“Death would be preferable.” Taking off her jacket, she draped it over the back of her chair. Her blond hair was caught back in a clip and worn up, her style of choice while on the job. “Besides, I have something really special at home.”

“Brag, brag, brag.” Tommy Hawkins came up behind her, munching on another doughnut, a plain glaze. Tiny bits of sugar broke off, marking his path from the common room. In his late fifties, widowed with one estranged son who lived on the opposite coast, Tommy seemed to be counting the days to retirement. And dreading it. “Morning, Beautiful.”

She gave him her best deadpan expression. “That’s sexist, Tommy.”

“That’s observant,” he corrected, then winked broadly at her. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

A smile curved her mouth. “You win again.” She indicated the doughnuts both men were consuming. “What’s the occasion?”

“I didn’t ask,” Tommy said. “That way, nobody can tell me they’re not meant for everyone.”

Mike wiped his lips and tossed the napkin into the basket by Lydia’s desk. “New girl—excuse me, woman, brought them.”

“She trying to bribe us?” Tommy asked.

“Works for me,” Mike responded. “Wouldn’t mind having another.” He glanced toward the common room. From here, he could just barely see into it. The large box of doughnuts was on a table near the rear of the room.

Lydia looked in the opposite direction, toward Assistant Director Aaron Sullivan’s office. She could see a poised, young blonde in a teal-blue suit sitting in the chair beside Sullivan’s desk. The new special agent. Her new special agent if she were to believe Sullivan. The A.D. had said the young woman would be working with them. And specifically, she would be taking Patterson’s place. Her partner had put in for a leave of absence shortly after he’d been wounded. It was his second time and he thought that perhaps it was an omen that he should reevaluate his career choice. Over the years, they had come to work like a well-oiled machine. She’d known him longer than she’d known Lukas. Although the time interval since he’d left had been short, she already missed him like crazy.

Welcoming his substitute, even his temporary substitute, was not going to be easy.

Lydia looked back at the men she worked with. “Anyone know anything about her?”

Tommy shrugged, finishing his doughnut. “Just that she’s a transfer from San Francisco.”

Lydia sighed. “Which means she’s probably a hotshot, or thinks she is.”

Santiago laughed. “And we all know that you’re the only hotshot around.”

Playing along, Lydia patted Mike’s face. “And don’t you forget it.”

All three saw Sullivan rising from his chair. He’d be summoning them soon. Tommy straightened his jacket, but it still looked wrinkled. “Time to make nice, Lydia.”

Plucking her own jacket from the back of her chair, she slipped it on again. “Yeah.”

Instinct had Cate glancing over her shoulder a second before the three people entered the assistant director’s inner office.

These would be some of her new co-workers.

They looked friendly enough, she decided. The woman seemed to be sizing her up. Undoubtedly wondering if she was going to be competition. Well, she’d put the special agent’s mind at rest soon enough. She had no desire to compete on any level, except possibly against herself. All she wanted to do was her job.

That and find her birth mother.

The day after the funeral, she’d gotten down to work, though still on leave. She utilized everything she had at her disposal, determined to track down any shred of information regarding her birth parents and her subsequent adoption. What Doc Ed had said to her was true enough, she would still be Cate Kowalski at the end of the journey. But depending on what she found out and the effect it had on her, she very well might be a different version of herself.

And if for some reason that didn’t happen and she remained just as she’d always been, that was all well and good. But the bottom line was that she needed to know why she’d been given up. And most of all, she needed to know the identity of her biological parents.

Doc Ed had given her her start, handing her names. Thanks to Jeremy Kovel, a computer wizard she’d briefly dated, and his almost uncanny ability to pluck things out of cyberspace, she’d managed to find Ava Gerber. Ava was the secretary who had handled all the details for Larry Lieberman, the lawyer who had arranged for her adoption.

Retired and desperate for company, Ava needed no prodding to get her to talk about her days with Lieberman. The woman turned out to be one of those secretaries who ran the entire office and was up on everything that had ever crossed not just her desk, but her boss’s as well. Thanks to Ava and her incredible memory, made more accessible over wine and dinner at the finest restaurant in San Francisco, Cate wound up getting the names of not just her birth mother, but her birth father as well.

“I got the feeling that he didn’t know anything about it,” Ava confided over her third glass, her head nodding dangerously. “But she put his name on the baby’s birth certificate.” She’d grinned broadly at her. “That would be you, I guess.”

Her last name, it turned out, was Blue. Bonnie Blue. Like the old sea chantey about the ocean. In any event, the name didn’t really fit, and there was a reason for that. As it turned out, the name wasn’t really her birth father’s, either. He’d been a would-be musician who’d billed himself as Blue in his short-lived career of going from one half-baked band to another. His real name was Jim Rollins, and his so-called career had lasted long enough to attract the attention of one Joan Haywood.

Instead of becoming a successful musician, Rollins had wound up going into life insurance and was a salesman for Gotham Life when he’d died in a three-car pileup on I-15 on his way to Las Vegas for a three-day weekend. Twice divorced, he had no children, no family that she could unearth.

Cate turned from that dead end to searching for her birth mother, Joan Haywood. The trail had brought her to Bedford, California.

Since the bureau had field offices in Santa Ana and Los Angeles, she’d decided to put in for a transfer. She’d needed a change of scenery, anyway. The Santa Ana office was closer to Bedford and to her birth mother’s last-known address, so she’d chosen the one city over the other.

Cate realized that she was gripping the arms of the chair she was sitting in when the trio walked into the office. She dropped her hands into her lap. She was going to have to work at learning to relax. Otherwise, by the time she did find her birth mother, who had moved several times in the past twenty-six years, gotten married and was now Joan Cunningham, she was going to be far too stressed out to have something good come out of the meeting.

Chapter 7

After a very poor night’s sleep during which she had woken up every hour on the hour, Cate finally gave up and stumbled into the living room of her garden apartment. She narrowly avoided tripping over a small box she’d opened some time earlier. It took her a minute to remember where the light switch was. Boxes impeded her progress to the opposite wall.

There were boxes everywhere within the two-bed-room ground-floor apartment. She’d been here almost a week now and it still looked as if she’d just arrived from San Francisco.

Cate tried to remember if she’d unpacked any paper yet besides the sheets that were with her printer. Frustrated, she went into the second, smaller bedroom, which would eventually become her office, and took a sheet right off the top.

It had taken her two trips to get everything together in one place. She’d brought her car down first, then flew back to rent the U-Haul. Whatever she couldn’t cram into it, she’d left behind. She wasn’t much on possessions, anyway. Her mother used to tell her that if you owned too much, it wound up owning you.

Fiercely independent, Cate liked being in control of everything, had been that way since her father, since Big Ted—she amended with an ironic smile—had died. She’d controlled the timing of her move down here, the method used to do everything.

Control, however, didn’t extend to unpacking within a given amount of time. That she did on a need-to-have basis. So far, beyond her computer and printer, she’d unearthed a week’s worth of clothing and her coffee-maker. Everything else she’d brought with her, besides the small amount of furniture that was now disbursed within the rooms, was still sealed away within the boxes.

Her furniture might have still been on the truck if it hadn’t been for Lydia. To her surprise, when she’d mentioned in passing that she planned to spend the weekend unloading her U-Haul, Lydia had volunteered to come over with her husband and help. She’d also volunteered Santiago and Hawkins, much to the agents’ surprise.

Cate had tried to turn down the offer, saying that it wasn’t necessary, but Lydia wouldn’t take no for an answer. From anyone.

Sometimes pushy had its place, Cate thought with a smile. She had no idea how long it would have taken her to unload the U-Haul by herself.

Making her way to the kitchen, paper still in hand, she went to the refrigerator to take out the can of coffee she kept there. If she wasn’t going back to bed, she needed a cup of coffee. Maybe several cups.

She got along well with her new partner, which was a nice bonus. And the woman’s husband was a sweetheart. The two looked perfect together, like the figures on top of a wedding cake, except far more lively and animated. Anyone looking at them knew they were in love.

She envied Lydia, envied her because she would never know what that was like, being married to someone she adored who adored her back. Her one chance had come and gone with Gabe.

“So you’re the new special agent. Read your file.” There’d been no expression on Lydia’s face when the woman had initially greeted her.

Lydia seemed to have materialized out of nowhere and looked her carefully up and down. Cate knew she was being sized up. But she didn’t have long to wait to discover what the verdict was. A smile entered Lydia’s eyes at the same time it curved her mouth.

“Pretty impressive” had been her verdict about what she’d read. “Reminds me of me.” One of the other agents in the room had punctuated her statement with “Ha!” and she’d nodded behind her. “That would be the bull pen. Don’t mind them. All thumbs and male testosterone.” She winked and her smile widened. “Nice to have another female on the team. They can get pretty rowdy sometimes.”

She wasn’t sure if Lydia was serious or joking, but she liked the woman’s friendly manner. Liked her almost instantly because Lydia didn’t seem worried about guarding her territory, she’d made it instantly clear the job was about teamwork. Lots of it.

“This thing gets uglier by the day,” Lydia had warned her, dropping off a thick-looking file on her desk. She discovered that all the notes taken on the case that hadn’t made it onto the computer were stuffed in there. “It’s about all the awful things in society the rest of the world doesn’t want to hear about. Kidnapping, child prostitution. The worst of it is, we still don’t have much, despite all the hours we’ve all put in.” Lydia placed her hand on the file before Cate had been able to open it and asked, “Are you up to it? Because if you’re not, I can recommend having you transferred to something that isn’t quite as gut-wrenching to deal with.”

It was a first. No one had ever given her a choice, considered her reaction before. It made her feel instantly accepted. She’d looked at Lydia and said, “I’m up to it.”

Lydia had nodded and smiled. “Good.” She removed her hand from the file.

In a way, Cate thought now, Lydia reminded her of a slightly older version of herself. Very together, very efficient, and driven. All qualities she could relate to. Except perhaps the “together” part, she mused. She still tried to project that image, but inside she felt like a little girl lost, waiting for someone to find her.

Knowing that no one would.

It was up to her to find them. Or in this case, her birth mother. Until that was resolved, she felt as if she was just hovering around, unable to find a place to really settle.

Which, she supposed, was one of the reasons most of the boxes still remained packed. It wasn’t that she intended to pick up and go somewhere at a moment’s notice, but she couldn’t quite get herself to unpack and make herself at home here, because she wasn’t certain that “here” would be home.

Besides, she was far too busy to unpack more than a few things at a time. Whatever time she had away from the job and the man-hours it demanded, she spent on the computer, trying to track down the whereabouts of one Joan Haywood, now Cunningham.

It was far from easy. She was good, but she wasn’t in Jeremy’s league. From what she had managed to piece together, both while in San Francisco and now here, her birth mother had gone on to have a regular life after she’d given away her firstborn. Joan Haywood had attended a local four-year college, gotten married in her senior year and then moved down to Southern California.

Her husband, Ron, a former air force pilot, now aerospace engineer, had gone where the jobs were. There’d been five addresses in the past twenty years. And a sixth she couldn’t find. The last known address had been in Bedford, even though he was working for an aerospace company in El Segundo. Having gotten familiar with the area, she could appreciate that it was quite a drive. One he didn’t have to make for long. Raytheon had laid him off. And then he and Joan, along with their children, had disappeared, going down somewhere beneath the radar. They’d moved, leaving no forwarding address.

Facing a dead end, she’d turned to Jeremy, her computer fairy godfather. In part, he was responsible for her broken night’s sleep. Jeremy had called yesterday, saying that he’d managed to hack into records that were far off the beaten path. The records testified that a Ronald Cunningham had undergone a top-secret clearance check a little more than two years ago. The check had been requested by one of the leading companies in defense. When Jeremy had mentioned the name, she’d recognized it instantly. A major branch of the company was domiciled in Orange County, just north of Bedford.

It took Jeremy a little while to ascertain that the social security number for Ron Cunningham and Ronald Cunningham were one and the same. To elude detection, his “break-ins” could last only ninety seconds. Gleaning information had been slow-going. He’d waited until he had more before calling Cate.

When he did, it was well past midnight. Closer to two in the morning. “Got an address for you, Cate. You ready to take it down?”

She’d been in a deep sleep when the phone rang. It had taken her a couple of breaths to get her mind reasonably in gear. It took a little longer to find a writing utensil and paper.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked.

Jeremy was a self-described insomniac who prowled chat rooms in the dead of night when nothing else presented itself as a diversion. This was a diversion.

“Not when something’s on my mind. I’ve been looking for this woman for you since you left our field office. By the way, how is it down there?”

Her first response would have been “chaotic,” but that would have been describing her life, not conditions. She gave the standard reply. “Weather’s perfect.”

Jeremy made a little disparaging noise with his teeth and lips. “Huh. It has no character.”

She thought of the cold, clammy winters, the sticky, humid summers she’d left behind. Watching leaves turn color did not balance out the minuses. “That’s okay. I’ve got character enough to spare.”

There was no paper to be had, but the local newspaper caught her attention. Scooting off the bed, Cate bent down to capture a corner of the paper and pull it back to her.

In a pinch…

She spread the paper on her lap, her pen poised over one of the margins. “Okay, shoot.”

Jeremy recited the address and phone number he’d found in the top-secret files. He turned down her offer to pay him for the information. This was what he did, he told her, he challenged himself. Not for any personal or monetary gain, but just to see if he could do it.

Grateful for his help, Cate jotted the address and phone number down along the margins of the newspaper. She did her best to print carefully. Someone once told her that her handwriting looked as if a spider had been dipped in ink and then allowed to run pellmell over a page. Cate fervently hoped she’d be able to make it out in the morning,

“That’s it for now,” Jeremy had concluded.

She put the pen back down on the nightstand. “Thanks, Jeremy. I owe you one.”

She heard him laugh shortly. “After all the work I’ve put in, you don’t owe me just one. You owe me your firstborn.”

There was a slight pang in her stomach. She tried not to think of Gabe. “Since there’s little chance of there ever being a firstborn, let me take you out to lunch the next time I’m up there.”

“You’re coming back?”

He sounded eager, which she thought was sweet. She’d always liked Jeremy, thinking of him as a slightly unkempt younger brother, even though in reality he was a couple of months older than she was.

As to what she’d just said to him, she’d meant coming back to Frisco for a visit. His question made her stop to consider. And realize again that from where she was standing, her future was undecided and murky.

“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.” She knew nothing was going to be decided until after she’d met with her birth mother and eradicated the hollow feeling she’d been carrying around inside of her for the past three weeks. “First I need to take care of these loose ends.”

Everyone who knew Cate knew she was like a bulldog with a bone. Once she clamped down on something, she wouldn’t let go until it was resolved to her satisfaction.

“Just don’t let them strangle you. Pleasant dreams, Cate.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

But even as she hung up the receiver and stifled another huge yawn, Cate knew she wasn’t going to get any sleep, not tonight. If she forced herself to remain in bed, all she was going to wind up doing was counting the minutes as they trickled their way into dawn. And then count more minutes as she waited for a decent time to arrive before she showed up on her birth mother’s doorstep.

Glancing at the address and phone number she’d written in the newspaper margins, she decided that she needed to transcribe both while they still looked reasonably readable.

After that, she promised herself, she’d see about maybe unpacking a few more things.

Cate’s hand felt damp on the receiver as she gripped it, her fingers tightly holding the mouthpiece. Her hand was so sweaty, she was surprised that the receiver didn’t just slip out of it.

The line on the other end was ringing. She silently counted the number of rings.

She’d waited until eight o’clock, forcing herself to shower and get dressed before she made the call. To hear the voice of the woman who had rejected her. Granted, she’d wound up in a home most kids only dreamed about, rich in love if not possessions, but it could have easily gone another way. She could have landed in an abusive home.

Or worse.

Her birth mother had no way of knowing what her fate was to have been when she gave her away. Right now, it was very hard not to be resentful, if not downright angry with the woman.

“Hello?”

The high-pitched female voice that answered the telephone on the fourth ring sounded way too young to be the woman she was seeking. Joan had been seventeen when she was born. That would make her forty-four or forty-five now. The person on the other end of the line was definitely not forty-five.

Her mouth felt like cotton. Cate forced herself to speak. “Hello, this is Catherine Kowalski. Is this Joan Cunningham?”

There was a short, breathless, nervous laugh. It was as if the girl was unaccustomed to speaking to people. “No, this is Rebecca.”

That would be Joan’s daughter, Cate thought. There was a pause, after which Cate pressed on. “Then may I speak to Joan, please?”

“Sorry, she’s not here.”

Damn it, she’d waited too long. Joan had left the house for the day. According to what she’d found, her birth mother worked as an interior designer in one of those small, trendy stores along the Pacific Coast Highway. Athena and Daughter.

With effort, she managed to rein in her impatience. “What time will she be back?” Cate asked politely.

“I’m not really sure,” the girl responded. “My mom’s in the hospital.”

Chapter 8

Christian flipped the chart closed and frowned. This was the downside of his job and he hated it.

He never minded being roused out of bed at some ungodly hour of the night or predawn to help bring a new life into the world. Even in his worst moments, when the futility of life got to be too much for him, there was something indescribably exhilarating about holding a brand-new human being in his hands. About seeing eyes open for the very first time. About seeing a tiny chest rise and fall as a baby took its first breath. All of it humbled him.

And made him feel hope.

Hope was what he tried to dispense now to Joan Cunningham, the woman in room 527. Hope that the life she cherished so much was not going to be cruelly yanked away from her now, in the prime of her life.

He knew she was frightened. Who wouldn’t be in her place? She’d come to his office two days ago with huge eyes and a tremor in her voice. Even as she spoke, there was a silent plea in her eyes, a plea for him to tell her that her fears were unfounded.

He wished he could. But the test results indicated otherwise.

Walking into her hospital room, he tried hard to appear upbeat. It wasn’t easy for him. The moment she saw him enter, the woman stiffened as if she were anticipating a physical blow.

He spoke quietly, softly, hoping to soothe her. “Joan, I’m afraid there’s no way to say this except to say it, so we’re going to get the bad part over with first.” Christian realized that he was bracing himself as much as his patient was. “The tumor appears to be malignant.”

Joan’s long, delicate hands flew up to her mouth as she tried to keep the sob back. She paled, growing whiter than her sheet. He knew one could be braced for the worst, but never fully be prepared for it. Losing Alma had proven that to him.

“Oh God,” Joan cried. “Oh God, oh God.”

“But,” he continued gently, taking her hand and holding it tightly, as if to anchor her to the world, “there is every indication that once we remove it, everything’ll be fine.”

“It?” Her voice was hollow, numb, as she repeated the single word. Her hand went to her right breast, covering it protectively. Joan was terrified. “You mean my breast?”

He empathized even if he could not relate. “No, just the tumor.”

It would have been prudent to add “For now” and cover his bases, but Christian refused to do that to the woman. Refused to hedge at her expense. They’d cross each bridge when they came to it. And they might not have to make that final journey. For now, that was all he was going to focus on.

“It’s very, very tiny,” he assured her. “I’ve already spoken to the surgeon. You can be scheduled for surgery as early as this afternoon.” He saw fear rise in her eyes. She had to be feeling that things were careering beyond her control. In her place, he knew he would. Christian did what he could to make her feel that it wasn’t all out of her reach. “The final decision, of course, is yours.”

Joan nervously passed her tongue over her lips as she raised her eyes to his. “What’s your opinion?”

He gave her the benefit of his experience—and all the extensive reading he’d done on the subject. Christian didn’t believe in entering into a situation unprepared. “I think an aggressive course of action is the most effective way to go. Have the operation and recover. Your life’ll be on track again soon.”

Joan swallowed hard. The lump in her throat was almost choking her. That’s all she needed, another lump, she thought cynically. Her fingers dug into his hand as her eyes searched his face. “Do you promise?”

His profession had long since gotten away from making promises. The day of the promise had gone the way of exchanging medical services for a chicken and three potatoes. These days, people were far too eager to sue over the smallest of things, and this was by no means a small thing. But he couldn’t divorce himself from his patients, couldn’t think of them as merely names on a file, statistics in a computer, the way so many of his colleagues did.

That wasn’t his way. His way was to care. Usually too much.

Christian closed his hand around hers and looked into her eyes. “I promise.”

Joan let out a shaky breath. Nervously, she ran her hand through her pale reddish hair and wondered if she was going to lose it in the treatment. She’d always been so proud of her hair. So vain. “I should discuss this with my husband.”

He moved over to the telephone on the nightstand beside her bed, picked up the receiver and handed it to her.

“Call him.” And then he nodded toward the door. “I’ll be back in a little while. I have a few other patients to see to.”

Joan nodded mechanically. She looked like a woman whose whole world had been turned upside down, and who could blame her? he thought. It had. And he of all people could identify with the helpless feeling that had to be coursing through her veins.

With any luck, though, all this would be temporary and they would have her back on her feet soon. In his case, the helpless feeling was permanent. Nothing was ever going to change that.

He heard Joan begin to press the numbers that would connect her to her husband’s telephone at work. He moved out of the room to give her privacy.

Preoccupied, Christian walked right into a woman standing directly outside Joan’s door. The impact was sudden and startling.

He had close to a foot on her and nearly knocked her to the floor. Instinct had Christian’s hand shooting out to grabbed her and keep the woman from falling. Pulling too hard, he wound up pulling her into him. He was vaguely aware of soft breasts brushing against him a second before he stepped back.

He was also mildly aware of the buzz of electricity just before contact was broken.

“Sorry.”

The woman, blond, twenty-ish and dressed for business, shrugged and forced a smile to her lips. “My fault.”

He could feel her eyes sweeping over him, as if she was trying to place him. Did he know her? No, he was fairly confident he would have remembered a woman who looked like her.

Christian sank his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat. The almost pleasant hum throughout his body had yet to cease, even though he willed it to. “Are you looking for someone?”

Still staring at him, she appeared to hesitate before finally answering. “An outpatient here.”

Only two of the patients on the floor were his. The others were in the maternity ward two floors up. The woman with the soft smile would do best to ask for her friend’s room number where the names were listed.

“The nurses’ station is right over there.” He pointed it out to her.

Cate had already been there. It was her first stop off the elevator, despite the fact that she had asked for Joan Cunningham’s room number at the information desk on the ground floor. “I know. They sent me here.”

He had a full schedule even without assisting at Joan’s lumpectomy this afternoon. But he noticed that the young woman was looking at the door behind him as if that was her intended goal. The small bit of curiosity he still retained got the better of him. “Who is it you’re looking for?”

“Joan,” she told him. “Cunningham,” the woman added after a moment, as if the surname was difficult for her to work her tongue around.

Moving slightly for a better light, he looked at her more closely. And realized that, despite the different hair color, there was a resemblance between the two women, especially around the mouth and eyes. Younger, fixed up, Joan Cunningham must have been a very pretty woman.

This woman, however, was beautiful. Even in the muted lavender suit, with her silver-blond hair pulled back and away from her face, she was more than just striking. With very little effort, she could have been—what was it that his brother John called it?—drop-dead gorgeous.

He’d never met any of Joan’s relatives. Was this her daughter? A younger sister? They seemed to be too far apart for the latter, too close for the former. But then, anything was possible these days.

“Are you related to Joan?”

As he watched, the woman straightened her shoulders, pulling them back as if she was bracing herself for something.

“Yes.”

At least, that was what she thought, Cate added silently. If the woman in the room behind this door turned out to really be the Joan Cunningham, nee Haywood, that she was looking for.

Nerves danced through her. Taunting her. She hadn’t felt this unsettled even on her very first day out of Quantico, facing her first real boss. But she’d had confidence in herself then.

This was different.

The more he looked at the woman, the more he was certain that she was related to Joan. And if she was a relative, she couldn’t have timed her appearance better. Joan looked ready to fold when he’d talked to her. There was no doubt in his mind that she was going to need all the support she could get. Even with all the positive feedback he’d given her before she’d gone in for her test, and despite the fact that the numbers were increasing every day regarding survival rate, this news had to be devastating for Joan.

“She’s on the phone right now,” he told the woman. “Trying to reach her husband with the news. But any encouragement you can give her will be very good.”

“Encouragement?” Cate didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s wrong with her?”

Telling her wasn’t his call. His role here was limited, which at times frustrated him. “You’ll have to ask her.”

Cate nodded, really expecting nothing less by way of an answer. Joan’s daughter hadn’t been very informative, either, when she’d spoken to her on the phone earlier. But that was probably because she really didn’t know what was going on. The girl was eighteen, too young to be burdened with anything that might be happening behind hospital walls. Her mother was undoubtedly keeping this from her. Whatever “this” was.

“I will,” she told him. Moving around him, Cate rapped once on the door, then opened it. She assumed that the dark-haired doctor with the electric-blue eyes had gone on his way.

The moment she slipped into the room and closed the door behind her, Cate forgot all about the physician she’d encountered. Forgot about everything except for the woman she saw sitting up in the hospital bed.

The irony of the situation was not lost on her.

A little more than four weeks ago, she was entering another hospital room more than four hundred miles to the north. Entering it to say goodbye to her mother, although she didn’t realize it at the time. Her mother slipped into a coma that evening and died twelve days later.

And now here she was, walking into another hospital room, attending possibly another sickbed; this time, though, it was to say hello to her mother. Another mother.

A host of emotions charged through Cate, riding horses with jagged hooves. There was anger, sorrow, joy and so much more. Too much to sort through and catalog. She felt as if she had no room in which to think.

The woman in the bed—was that really her birth mother?—was talking on the phone just as the doctor had told her. Unable to help herself, Cate listened. The redhead’s voice was shaky. As shaky as the hands that were desperately clutching the receiver.

“I’m going through with it,” she said to the person on the other end of the line. “I just wanted you to know. Dr. Graywolf said it was important to do it as quickly as possible.”

The familiar name had her snapping to attention. Dr. Graywolf? Was her partner’s husband this woman’s doctor? Just how small was the world? Cate wondered.

The fact that there was someone in the room, silently watching her, slowly penetrated the wall of fear around Joan. She murmured “I love you” to her husband and then hung up the phone, her eyes now on the young woman in her room. An eerie feeling wafted through her, as if this wasn’t real. As if none of this ever since she’d first detected the thickness on her right breast was real.

As if she was looking into the mirror and seeing into the past.

Joan cleared her throat, her nervousness growing. “Can I help you?”

Cate kept looking at the woman in the bed, searching for some foolproof sign. All the while knowing that there wouldn’t be one. “That all depends.”

“On what?” Joan whispered the words, now clearly frightened.

Cate took a single step toward her, then stopped. She was afraid that the woman would pass out if she came any closer. Did she know? On some instinctive level, did Joan sense that she was her mother?

Cate put her thoughts into words. “On whether you’re willing to admit that you’re my mother.”

Chapter 9

The woman in the bed drew in a sharp breath. “Excuse me?”

Cate’s heart was in her throat as she confronted a piece of her life. The very air felt still, despite the soft whoosh made by the air-conditioning system.

Was this woman lying in a hospital bed, looking small, frightened and disoriented, really her biological mother, or had Jeremy’s information led them in the wrong direction?

She searched for signs of resemblance and thought she saw a few, but her desire to belong could have colored her perception. Maybe she looked like her father. So far, the only picture she’d managed to find of Jimmy Rollins was his last DMV photo. In true DMV fashion, the photograph was terrible.

“My mother,” Cate repeated. The word tasted chalky on her tongue. Part of her felt disloyal to Julia for even addressing someone else by that name, but part of her felt this need to connect, to still be someone’s daughter. The confidence with which she’d helmed her life was nowhere in sight.

Joan pressed the button on the side railing, moving the bed into more of an upright position. She struggled to get hold of herself.

This can’t be happening, it wasn’t real.

She was still reeling from what Dr. Graywolf had just told her, she couldn’t handle this on top of that.

Despite the reading about breast cancer that she’d done, despite having talked to several women at her club who had lived through the horror that she now faced, she’d discovered in the last five minutes that she wasn’t prepared at all. Not emotionally. Not for this horrible gut-twisting feeling that threatened to cut off her very air. She felt trapped, unable to know which way to run or where.

And Ron, well, Ron didn’t know how to deal with anything that couldn’t be solved with some kind of an elaborate mathematical equation. Her husband of the last twenty-two years had all his emotions stored somewhere in a bank vault and she had no idea what the combination to it was.

Her nerves frayed, her future uncertain, Joan was in no condition to field this latest shock.

Avoiding the young woman’s eyes, Joan grasped at a lie. “I’m afraid that you must have me confused with someone else.”

Then why won’t you look at me? Cate silently demanded. People lied to her all the time, attempting to avoid the consequences of their actions. Part of her job was to see through the lies and get down to the truth.

She saw through Joan’s.

Cate moved closer to the bed. “Are you Joan Cunningham?”

The woman’s breathing became more audible. Like a cornered animal, Cate thought.

“Yes, but—”

Holding up her hand, Cate didn’t let her finish. “And are you formerly Joan Haywood?”

The look of panic in the woman’s eyes increased. “Yes, but—”

Cate pushed on, refusing to allow the woman a chance to regroup. “And did you live in the San Francisco area twenty-eight years ago? Did you know someone named ‘Blue?’”

Joan dug her fingers so deeply into the bedclothes that she was pulling loose not only the white blanket, but the sheets beneath it. Panicked, unable to cope, she cried, “Get out.”

Cate remained where she was. Rather than triumph, she felt anger welling up inside of her. This was the woman who’d given her away. People gave away things they didn’t want, not children.

Her voice was deadly calm, even though her insides were in turmoil. “Well, did you?”

“I said get out!”

The order came out in almost a high-pitched scream. Frantically, Joan searched for the buzzer to summon a nurse, an orderly, someone, anyone, to come and help her. To come and save her.

This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. She was back in her own bed in her own bedroom and this was some nightmare she was having. If she could only scream, Ron would shake her awake and tell her that this was just one of those awful dreams she sometimes had. Dreams of small girls with huge green eyes looking up at her.

It had been a mistake ever to hold that baby, to even look at it. If she hadn’t, she would have been able to sweep this out of her life forever, like the nightmare it was.

But she had held her little girl. Against her mother’s wishes, she had held her baby. Held Bonnie Blue to her breast. And left a piece of her heart wrapped up in those small, curled fingers when the nurse came to take her away.

The woman looking at her had green eyes. Accusing green eyes. Joan shrank back in her bed, still frantically trying to locate the call buzzer that had somehow gotten loose.

“I just need to know that I’m right,” Cate said, struggling to remain calm. To keep from crying because the hurt went down deep, scraping against the bone.

Shaking now, Joan felt as if she was falling completely apart. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m too upset to deal with this—”

“I’d like an answer, please.” It was hard keeping the emotion that choked her out of her voice.

“Get out!” Joan screamed again. Finally finding the buzzer, she clutched it in both hands as she pressed the button frantically. Her entire body was trembling. Any moment, she thought she was going to begin convulsing.

The door flew open.

“What’s going on here?” Christian demanded as he strode into the room. He looked accusingly at the young woman by his patient’s bedside. He’d been right outside, about to go in when he’d heard Joan’s raised voice. Coming in, he recognized the other woman as the one he’d bumped into earlier.

Just who the hell was she and why was she agitating his patient?

Joan looked ready to collapse. “Oh, God, Doctor, please get her out of here,” she sobbed, covering her face with her hands. “I can’t deal with this right now, I just can’t.”

Christian had no idea what was going on, only that his patient was on the verge of hysteria, which didn’t do her present condition any good.

He turned his attention to the blonde. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Mrs. Cunningham obviously doesn’t want you here.”

Cate continued looking at the woman fate and genetics had made her mother. Despite the frustration she felt at the moment, she was still determined to find out all she could about Joan. “I’m sure she’d rather I wasn’t anywhere. She should have thought of that twenty-seven years ago.”

Christian had no idea what was going on, only that he needed to have the blonde leave before Joan became even more agitated. “Don’t make me call Security.”

Cate suppressed a sigh. She didn’t want to create any trouble. And getting tossed out on her ear wasn’t going to get her what she wanted. At this point, she wasn’t completely clear what it was that she did want, other than recognition.

Acceptance, she supposed. Something to make this awful restless feeling in the pit of her stomach go away, to help dam up this gnawing, gaping hole in the center of her being. She didn’t expect to have the space filled, but at least the rent could be repaired before she began hemorrhaging.

Angry, frustrated, Cate turned on her heel, away from Joan and under her doctor’s watchful eye.

It was hard not to succumb to the dark mood that was vying for possession of her. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. She wasn’t supposed to have lost her temper like this.

But then, she supposed her nerves had been on edge ever since she’d discovered that she had been adopted. And now it was as if she was waiting for something else to happen, something to further tear down the foundations of her world.

What foundations? she mocked herself. What was left? Between Gabe’s death and her mother’s deathbed confession, there were no foundations. Only empty air under her feet. And, unlike the cartoon characters who could walk on air until they realized what they were doing, she couldn’t. She was plunging down swiftly. Toward what, she didn’t know.

Maybe the chasm was bottomless.

No, damn it, it wasn’t. She was going to stop feeling sorry for herself and rally. Because Joan Cunningham was going to give her some answers.

Reaching the door, Cate looked back over her shoulder toward the woman who refused to admit to being her mother. “This isn’t over yet,” she warned, then left the room.

“Yes, it is,” Joan insisted. Her voice broke as she attempted to raise it. A sob followed and then she began to cry.

“Calm down, Joan,” Christian instructed, his voice low, soothing.

The tears continued to come. Joan looked from the door toward her doctor, her eyes pleading with him again. “She’s not coming back. She can’t come back.”

Who was this woman to her? The question echoed in his head. He knew his asking would only contribute to Joan’s agitation. He wanted her calm.

Reaching over to the nightstand, Christian picked up the small box of tissues tucked behind the telephone. He held it out to her.

Instead of taking one tissue, Joan took the whole box and held it against her chest, as if having it there somehow comforted her. She looked up at him, the same silent plea in her eyes.

“No, she’s not coming back,” he told her. Christian crossed to the door. “I’ll send in a nurse in a couple of minutes with a tranquilizer for you. You need to calm down.”

He saw gratitude enter her face as she silently nodded her thanks.

Once outside the room, Christian looked up and down the hall. The blonde was just disappearing around the corner. Hurrying to catch up to the source of his patient’s agitation, he passed Joan’s nurse and gave her his instructions on the fly.

“Hold on a minute,” he called after the blonde.

Cate didn’t hear him. Or if his voice registered at all in the recesses of her mind, she didn’t realize that he was talking to her.

That certainly went well, she upbraided herself. If she’d interviewed suspects the way she had her birth mother, the bureau would have had her mowing lawns instead of where she was.

She did her best to calm down. Part of that entailed focusing on a plan. Now that she had located her birth mother, she was going to have to try talking to her again. Later, after both she and Joan had an opportunity to collect themselves.

As she approached the elevators it occurred to Cate that she still didn’t know what the woman was doing in the hospital. She needed to get a look at Joan’s medical records.

Christian lengthened his stride. He had considerable more leg than the woman did, but she moved quickly. He managed to finally catch up to her just as she pressed for the elevator. Rather than call out to her again, he simply got in front of her. She looked surprised, and almost as agitated as his patient.

“Excuse me.”

She could feel herself growing defensive. Was he about to lecture her on behalf of his patient? Right now, she was in no mood to have to listen. If he wasn’t careful, this good-looking doctor was going to find he had bitten off more than he had bargained for. “Yes?”

There were a great many diplomatic ways to begin. Since Alma’s death, he’d lost the ability to be diplomatic and patient. Christian went straight to the heart. “Who are you?”

Blunt. She admired blunt. Sometimes.

“Ah, the million-dollar question,” the woman he’d just chased down said sarcastically. Christian saw the same tears he’d just witnessed in Joan Cunningham’s eyes now making an appearance in the blonde’s. It struck him that they had the same light green color. “I wish to God I knew,” she whispered. It sounded as if she’d said the words more to herself than to him.

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