For one thing, a few restless hours of sleep did not put her at her best for traveling. She also had a whole range of sore muscles she hadn’t expected from their extracurricular activities the night before.
To top it all off, her traveling companion could hardly force himself to look at her in the early morning sunlight.
“Ready?” Hunter asked, his voice terse and his eyes shielded behind Ray-Bans the color of espresso.
As I’ll ever be,
she thought, but gave him only a polite smile in response. What else could she do? Tell him that although she had been as close to him as two people could possibly be the night before, in the light of morning the idea of sitting next to him in a moving vehicle for eight hours seemed about as daunting as taking her boards with her eyes closed.
She decided not to risk saying anything, so she just climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV.
“I grabbed coffee and a bagel for you while I was walking Belle earlier,” he said tersely once he had climbed in the driver’s seat.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
His only response was to shrug and reach for the radio. Soon the low voices of NPR’s Morning Edition filled the vehicle, effectively squashing any conversation, had she been at all inclined to attempt any.
They rode for fifteen miles in a tense, awkward silence. She wondered if they would spend the whole day with this morning-after discomfort between them. Just when she was about to say something, her phone bleeped from her bag.
For the first time she could remember, she reached for it eagerly, grateful for any interruption in the tension between her and Hunter.
“Hello?” she said after the second ring.
“Kate, this is Gage. Gage McKinnon.”
Despite her grim mood, she couldn’t contain a little smile at her brother’s formal greeting—as if she knew any other strong, commanding men named Gage besides her oldest brother that he felt he had to qualify with his last name.
“Hello Gage. How are Allie and the girls?”
“Good. Great. Well, Anna picked up a bit of cold at the wedding so she’s been home from preschool since Monday. Poor thing is miserable. Runny nose, sore throat, sniffles. The only thing that makes her feel better is me reading
Yertle the Turtle
to her. I’ve read it at least a hundred times in the last few days. Good thing her mother’s a nurse because I don’t know the first thing about comforting sick kids.”
Her smile was a little broader by the time he wound down. She found it funny—and terribly sweet—that her taciturn brother could wax positively eloquent when it came to his stepdaughters. “Have you taken her to her pediatrician yet?”
“Yeah. Allie’s got her all fixed up. Cough syrups, pain relievers, the works.”
“Good. Give her a kiss for me.”
“I’ll do that.” He cleared his throat. “That’s not why I called, actually. Mom phoned me this morning and told me what you’ve been up to down there. I really wish you had talked to me first. I could have saved you three days of driving.”
Her hands tightened on the phone as she absorbed his meaning. “You know where Brenda Golightly is?”
Gage didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, she heard the regret in his voice. “Yeah. I know.”
“Is the FBI investigating?”
“Twenty-three-year-old kidnapping cases are a fairly low priority to the bureau so Wyatt and I did a little digging on our own. We hired a P.I. and he tracked her down a few weeks ago. She’s living in the Keys.”
Her brothers had known where Brenda was all along. She stared out the windshield, her mind whirling. She didn’t know much about the whole sibling dynamic but she was fairly certain keeping secrets like this one shouldn’t be allowed.
“You and Wyatt both knew this and yet you never bothered to tell me?”
“We talked about it but we didn’t think you wanted to know,” Gage said warily. “If you’ll remember, when I questioned you about the woman right after we received the DNA tests back confirming you were Charlotte, you said you didn’t know where she was and you didn’t care. You said you lost contact with her years ago and you didn’t seem all that eager to find her again. I believe your exact words were
She can rot in hell as far as I care
.”
Kate winced, remembering her words. She had meant them at the time but that was before she had come to see that she would never be free of Brenda until she faced her one more time.
They knew where Brenda was. The implications of her brother’s words started to seep in. She hadn’t needed to drag Hunter into this at all. If she had only talked to Wyatt or Gage, she could have flown out and confronted Brenda on her own.
She had made a royal mess of this whole thing.
“Did you talk to her? Ask her how she ended up with me?”
Gage was quiet. “I didn’t. Not personally,” he finally said. “I wanted to but I had some pending cases here I couldn’t break away from for a trip right now. I had a friend of mine out of the Miami field office pay her a visit.”
Kate waited for him to go on. When he said nothing, she fought the urge to grind her teeth. “And? What did she have to say?”
“Not much, Kate. I’m sorry. She wasn’t in any condition to say much of anything.”
“Let me guess. She was stoned.”
“Not exactly.” His voice gentled. “Brenda Golightly is in a Key West nursing home after a heroine overdose four years ago that left her with limited mental function. She wasn’t sure of her own name, forget about remembering details of something that happened more than two decades ago.”
The fist in her lap moved to her stomach as she tried to absorb one more blow. “Limited mental function. Does that mean she won’t be prosecuted for what she did to me? To all of us?”
“I doubt it. After the report I got from my colleague, I don’t see how Brenda Golightly could ever be found competent enough to stand trial, even if the Nevada statute of limitations on kidnappings hadn’t run out years ago.”
The woman had destroyed so many lives, had wrecked a good marriage, had taken an innocent child and thrust her into hell. Yet she would never pay for what she had done. The injustice of it was staggering.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Gage said. “I see now I should have, no matter what you said about not wanting to ever see her again. But I never imagined for a moment you would suddenly decide to take off in the middle of the night to go after her.”
“It was a last-minute thing,” she said, still reeling. “I had some time off and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Well, you could always go to Disney World or something while you’re down there. Or visit that foster couple who took such good care of you, the couple whose name you took.”
Kate had a sudden powerful yearning to walk into the warm, cheerful kitchen of Tom and Maryanne Spencer, to smell Maryanne’s African violets and see Tom’s familiar, sturdy frame. She pushed it away and tried to focus on her brother.
“Good suggestions. Thanks. I’ll have to see what Hunter thinks.”
“Which brings us to the second reason for my call. What the hell were you thinking to head off across the country with a man like Bradshaw without telling anyone?”
Her hackles rose as she readied to defend the man who sat in the driver’s seat, listening to every word as they drove past strip malls and warehouses. “I don’t need a lecture from you, Gage.”
“No, what you need is a hard kick in the seat. You scared Mom half to death when she couldn’t reach you these last few days.”
“I’ve already I told her I’m sorry for that. I’m not used to having anyone besides Taylor worrying about me and she and Wyatt are on their honeymoon. I didn’t even think about calling anyone else about my plans.”
“And the rest of it. Taking off with Bradshaw? Why is he involved?” Suspicion colored his voice. “Do the two of you have something going?”
An image from the night before danced across her mind, of mouths and bodies tangled together, and heat crept across her cheeks. “None of your business, Gage.”
She knew she sounded rude but she had just about had it with big, handsome, overbearing men who thought they knew everything.
“Be careful, Kate,” he said after a pause. “That’s all I’m going to say. Be careful, for your sake and for mine.”
“For yours?”
“Yeah. Prison can make any man—especially an innocent one—mean as a snake in a badger hole. I don’t particularly want to have to try to whip Hunter Bradshaw’s ass if he ends up hurting my baby sister.”
To her surprise—and no doubt to Gage’s—she laughed. “Thanks for your concern, but I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can,” he said gruffly. “You’ve done a good job of it so far. I just wanted to remind you that you’ve got a couple brothers on your side now. I might still be hobbling around with these bum legs but that doesn’t mean I can’t get the job done. And Wyatt is a whole lot tougher than he looks. Between the two of us, we ought to be able to take care of Bradshaw if he steps out of line.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”
Chapter 11
A
few moments later, Kate said goodbye to Gage then returned the phone to her bag. She leaned back against the leather of the seat, lost in thought.
Hunter waited as long as he could. “You planning to leave me in suspense all the way to Miami? What did he say?”
She opened one eye and peered at him. “He says he doesn’t want to beat you up if you hurt his baby sister but he will. And Wyatt will help. That’s what big brothers are for, apparently—a side benefit I hadn’t fully appreciated when the McKinnons found me.”
“Good to know. Did he have anything else to say?”
“Oh, not really.”
She dropped the light tone and opened both eyes. In them he saw a mix of emotions—regret and apology and no small amount of embarrassment. “Only that I’ve dragged you and Belle three thousand miles on a wild goose chase.”
“Oh?”
“I should have called him first. I’m so stupid. It never even occurred to me to start with Gage. I’m so used to doing everything on my own that I have to keep reminding myself I even have brothers, one of whom works for the FBI. Apparently he and Wyatt have known for a few weeks now that Brenda Golightly is in a nursing home in Key West. An OD a few years ago left her brain-damaged.”
She said the last in a flat tone at odds to the tumult in her eyes.
Brain-damaged. Hunter didn’t miss the implications. No punishment, no vengeance, no answers.
“I’m sorry, Kate.”
She gazed out the windshield, her color high. “You must think I’m such a fool. I can’t believe we’ve come this far for nothing.”
“I don’t think you’re a fool. I think you’re a victim of a terrible crime who wanted to find answers. Who
deserved
to find answers. What could possibly be foolish about that?”
“Well, it looks like I’ll never find them now. The whys and the hows are probably locked away somewhere in Brenda Golightly’s drug-ravaged mind.”
He hated seeing her features haunted by pain.
“I suppose we should just turn around and start heading back to Salt Lake City,” she went on. “There’s no reason to drag this out any further.”
A few hours earlier when he had been sitting awake in that damn hotel room after a sleepless night castigating himself and her, he might have agreed with her that they should just cut their losses and go home.
Faced with her pain, he had a difficult time remembering the anger that had prowled through him like a caged animal since making love with her the night before.
He hadn’t been mad at her. Not really, though he supposed she no doubt believed otherwise after the abrupt, rude way he left her.
Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
While he still believed she should have told him she had never been with a man, most of his anger was self-directed. He had given into his overwhelming need without giving any thought to the consequences. For three long days he had fought his attraction for her and then in an instant all his hard work, every bit of control and self-denial, had been for nothing.
None of that seemed important suddenly. Not with Kate in the seat next to him, looking like she had just been kicked in the teeth. The need to comfort her, to ease that pain in her eyes, was stronger than any lingering anger.
“We’re not turning around.”
She blinked. “We’re not?”
“No. We can’t just give up. We’re this close, Kate. We can make it to Key West in time to watch the sunset.”
“To what end? There’s no point in dragging this out. Don’t you get it? Brenda can’t tell us anything. Gage sent one of his FBI colleagues to talk to her and from the sound of it she was barely coherent.”
“She might not have said much to an FBI agent but that doesn’t necessarily follow that she won’t have anything to say to you. I’ve seen brain injuries before and I know how capricious they can be. You should know that, Dr. Spencer. Who knows, you could have better luck getting through than a stranger.”
They traveled a full mile before she spoke again. “She might not even know who I am. What if she doesn’t say anything more to me than she did to Gage’s colleague?”
“Then she doesn’t. You may never find the answers you want. I guess you’ll have to be ready for that eventuality. But at least it won’t be for lack of trying on our part.”
She still looked unconvinced, her hands fisted together on her lap.
“Besides, I’ve never been to Key West,” Hunter went on, undeterred by her silence. “Maybe I can take Taylor home a conch shell for Christmas.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’d like to take her a palm tree but I don’t think it will fit in the cargo area.”
She frowned. “No, why do you insist on dragging this out? After last night, I would think you should be more than ready to turn back.”
His jaw hardened at her reference to the evening before. “The job’s not done. I offered to help you and I’ll see it through.”
“Don’t you think you’re carrying this damsel-in-distress thing a little far?”
Maybe. If he were smart, he would be doing all he could to spend as little time as possible with a woman who left him aching and confused. He would have seen the wisdom of cutting their trip as short as possible, returning to Salt Lake City and going their separate ways.
A sane man—or at least a smart one—certainly wouldn’t be coming up with transparent excuses to spend as much time as possible with a woman he knew he couldn’t have.
“We’ve come this far, Kate. Let’s see it through.”
She looked undecided for a moment, then nodded tightly.
She wasn’t sure how he did it, but Hunter was able miraculously to find deluxe lodging in Key West that welcomed pets, after only a few phone calls. The two tiny matching cottages were set in a lush tropical garden over-looking the Gulf of Mexico. Both painted a pale, cheerful pink, they looked like the perfect spot for a breezy, relaxing beach vacation.
Too bad she wasn’t here to relax.
Under other circumstances she would have found it restful swinging in the hammock on the small wood porch while palm fronds rustled and swayed overhead and the ocean licked the sand twenty yards away.
If not for the low, steady thrum of anger—the deep, restlessness that seemed to have increased the closer they drove to this isolated paradise—she would have loved this.
She had come to the Keys once with Tom and Maryanne. They had stayed not far from here, she remembered.
The trip had been a panacea of sorts—a consolation prize—to offset their deep disappointment after Brenda once more had refused to relinquish her parental rights so Kate could be officially adopted by the Spencers.
Her entire adolescence had been one long tug-of-war with Brenda. With the Spencers, Kate had finally found a place where she could be content, could belong. Yet Brenda had refused time and again to let them make their foster arrangement permanent.
Kate had been fourteen that long-ago trip to the Keys, trying desperately to figure out why Brenda didn’t want her but didn’t seem to want anyone else to have her either.
She and Tom and Maryanne had gone through the motions of enjoying themselves on that trip, she remembered now. They had walked and shopped along Duval Street and the rest of Old Town, had snorkeled, had even gone out deep-sea fishing where Tom had caught a swordfish that still hung in his office in St. Petersburg.
But through it all, a dark, greasy cloud had hung over them, a shadow they couldn’t shake. Brenda, with her lies and her manipulations and her dogged determination that Kate remain legally hers.
It wasn’t as if Brenda had wanted to play a huge part in her life in those eleven years after Kate had been removed from her custody until she’d reached eighteen and could legally change her name.
Brenda had come only occasionally for the court-approved visit, just often enough that Kate couldn’t be considered abandoned and therefore become eligible for adoption.
She had come to dread those brief, uncomfortable encounters that always left her angry and depressed for weeks.
The real hell of it was that she hadn’t hated Brenda. Not at first, anyway. That had come later, as she had moved further into her teens.
No, for most of her childhood before she had landed with the Spencers, Kate had loved the woman she thought was her mother—loved her with single-minded, childlike affection and desperately wanted her approval, waiting for the day when Brenda would claim her and they could be together again.
For all Brenda’s selfishness, her addictions, her men, she had been the only constant in Kate’s life as she was shuttled from home to home, the one thing she had to hold onto for as far back as she could remember.
The troubled child she had been was frightened of Brenda—of the chaos and tumult of their life—but she had loved her.
Sitting on the porch of this cheerful little cottage by the sea, Kate felt an echo of that love and couldn’t stop her heavy sigh. How could she have loved a woman who treated her with such callous indifference? Why hadn’t she
known
somehow that their whole relationship was a fraud?
Since finding out about her past, she had scoured the deep recesses of her memory bank trying for even one instance when she might have suspected Brenda wasn’t really her mother. She could come up with nothing. She had only a vague, very early memory—not even a memory, really, more just a hazy impression—of a time when her life had been happy, safe.
Charlotte McKinnon might have been happy in her safe, comfortable world but poor little Katie Golightly had never enjoyed that luxury.
She sighed again, hating this self-pity, just as Hunter walked up the steps to the porch with the suitcase he had insisted on carrying up from the Jeep for her.
He set it down inside the cottage, then rejoined her on the porch, leaning against a pillar.
“Want to grab a bite to eat before we head over to the nursing home?” he asked.
She turned to face him, for the first time noting how the hard lines around his mouth seemed to have eased a little. In the slanted sunlight filtering through the lush growth in bright patches, his features seemed less harsh than they had four days earlier.
He was gorgeous, so beautifully male that her stomach did a long, slow roll.
“I’m not very hungry.”
“No problem. We can get something a little later, after we talk to Brenda.”
The dread that had ridden with her all afternoon seemed to wash over her again, drenching her like a sudden tropical rain.
She exhaled slowly. “I…Hunter, would you mind if we waited until the morning to go to the nursing home?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why? We’re here now. You’ve come three thousand miles for answers.”
“Answers we both know I’m not likely to ever find now.”
“You certainly won’t find them if you refuse to even go talk to the woman.”
“I will talk to her,” she insisted. “But not yet. I know you probably think I’m crazy or the world’s biggest coward but I…I just can’t yet. I need to work up to it. Can we wait until morning?”
He studied her. “You’re not crazy.”
“Well, I seem to be doing a pretty good imitation of it then. I
feel
crazy. Restless and angry. Itchy inside my own skin. I want to scream and shout and throw chairs around one minute and curl up into a ball and cry my eyes out the next.”
“Sounds pretty normal to me.”
She laughed a little at his dry tone. “I guess that proves we’re both a little wacky.”
“That’s certainly a possibility.”
Kate had a sudden vivid memory of the wild heat they’d generated between them the night before and had to take a deep breath to calm her suddenly racing heart.
“Crazy or not,” she said when she could think again, “I can’t face Brenda yet. I just can’t, Hunter. I need a little more time.”
Hunter studied her in the dappled tropical light. She looked fragile and tired, her eyes huge in her pale face. With each mile they drove closer to Key West he had seen the finely wrought tension on her features, her body posture. By the time he’d found these cottages, she was so tightly strung it was a wonder she didn’t vibrate.
He couldn’t blame her for being nervous about meeting the woman who had caused her such pain. He still hadn’t been able to bring himself to see Martin James since his release. His former defense attorney was in the county jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a host of charges, including the capital-murder charges he had ostensibly been defending Hunter on, though Martin had done everything possible to make sure his client would pay for his own crimes.
Martin was expected to receive the same sentence he had done his best behind the scenes to make sure Hunter had received—death by lethal injection.
Hunter doubted he would ever have the strength of will to face Martin as Kate was facing her demons. A least not without wanting to be the one shoving in that needle—not just because Martin had framed him but for Dru and her dying mother and her unborn baby. And because Martin had been willing to kill Taylor to keep his deadly secrets.
He wouldn’t even go see Martin, so how could he blame Kate for needing a little time to prepare herself before confronting her pain?
“Okay. This is your show,” he said. “There’s no reason we can’t go in the morning.”
Her smile flashed like a heron taking flight. “Thank you.”
That smile entranced him and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to stand in the warm sunlight and soak it in.
Well, okay, he did want something more. He wanted to capture that smile with his mouth, to absorb her sighs and her pain into him.
Hunger gnawed at him, making a mockery of any hope he might have been foolish enough to entertain that the night before might have worked her out of his system.
He couldn’t kiss her and he couldn’t afford a repeat of the night before. The very fact of her inexperience had driven that home forcefully through the long night and their drive south across Florida.
Kate was a relationship kind of woman with a capital
R
. She obviously wasn’t interested in casual sex or she wouldn’t have still been a virgin, and he wasn’t capable of anything else right now.