She wouldn’t think about it, she decided as sadness slipped over her like clouds over the sun. It would be foolish to waste their few remaining days together worrying about the inevitable pain of their parting.
What if they didn’t have to part? The thought, insidious and seductive, slithered across her mind. What if she walked right over to him, took his face in her hands and told him she was hopelessly in love with him?
No. She couldn’t do that to him. He didn’t share her feelings and she wouldn’t burden him with them.
He deserved a woman who was whole and healthy, not someone fractured and damaged, someone desperately afraid the broken pieces of herself would never come together again.
The moment Hunter drove down the quiet street in a comfortably middle-class St. Petersburg neighborhood and parked in front of the dearly familiar rose brick house, Kate felt some of those stray pieces of herself start jostling back into place.
She loved this place. From the hanging begonias on the front porch to the carefully tended lawn to the colorful Christmas lights Tom insisted on stringing across all available surfaces every year.
She jumped from the car, ready to race up and fling open the door like a child racing home from school, but she forced herself to wait with hard-won patience for Hunter to let Belle out of her crate and leash her before she hurried up the walkway with him.
Though it felt odd to ring the doorbell of the house she had spent so much of her life in, she didn’t feel right about bursting in when they weren’t expecting her.
Long moments passed while they waited for someone to answer, until she began to have the horrible fear that perhaps they weren’t home.
Maybe they were traveling. She had spoken with Maryanne a few days before Wyatt and Taylor’s wedding the week before and she hadn’t said a word about going anywhere, but Tom was in the habit of coming home from work with itchy feet and dragging Maryanne on one of their impromptu jaunts across the South.
It seemed desperately important that they be home. She held her breath and only let it out when she heard yipping behind the door. Their little shitzu Lily was a fierce guard dog, even if she only weighed about fifteen pounds.
A moment later she heard a deep voice ordering her to be quiet, for the love of Pete, and a moment later the door swung open.
Her foster father stared out at her for just an instant. Then his broad, handsome face lit up with joy.
“Pumpkin? What on earth?”
He opened his arms and she walked into them, closing her eyes to savor the distinctive scents of wintergreen Life-Savers and Old Spice.
He held her close, rocking a little in the doorway, while Lily and Belle sniffed each other.
“How’s my favorite doctor?”
She smiled against his broad, sturdy chest. “Great. How’s mine?”
“Couldn’t be better, especially since my best girl’s come home.” He pulled away long enough to call down the hallway.
“Maryanne, you better come on out and see who’s come a-knocking.”
A moment later, Maryanne walked in wiping her hands on her favorite apron, one Kate had sewed for her years ago in home economics.
When she caught sight of Kate in the doorway, amazement leaped into those calm brown eyes and she gasped with delight. “Katie? Oh, darling, what a wonderful surprise!”
She pulled her from Tom’s arms and wrapped her arms tightly. Kate hugged her back, barely able to breathe through the love coursing through her for these people who had taken her in and given her a chance.
Though they had talked several times since she learned the results of that DNA test confirming she was Charlotte McKinnon, she hadn’t seen them since. Now, wrapped in the arms of their love, she finally realized how afraid she had been about this moment. Deep in her heart, she had been dreadfully afraid things had been forever changed between them.
She needn’t have worried.
“Oh, I can’t tell you how marvelous it is to see you!” Maryanne pressed her warm cheek to Kate’s. “But what are you doing here? I thought you said last week you weren’t going to be able to come for Christmas.”
“I can’t stay that long. I’m starting my newborn ICU rotation Christmas morning.”
Disappointment flickered in those brown eyes but Maryanne squeezed her hands. “Well, you’re here now and that’s the important thing. You’ll stay the night, of course. You and your friend.”
Hunter! Kate stepped back, appalled at her horrible manners. She had left Hunter and Belle standing on the porch during her happy reunion with the Spencers.
She pulled him inside, noting immediately that Belle and Lily had rekindled their friendship begun a few years ago when the Spencers came out to Utah for an impromptu ski trip.
“I’m sorry. Tom, Maryanne, this is Hunter Bradshaw, Taylor’s brother. And of course you remember Belle.”
She had been a little nervous at their reaction to Hunter but again, she should have known better. Tom reached around her and shook Hunter’s hand.
“Mr. Bradshaw. It’s a real pleasure. We’ve heard a lot about you.”
Hunter looked a little disconcerted at that information and sent Kate a questioning look.
To her dismay, she could feel herself blush. “Taylor,” she explained quickly. “Tom and Maryanne met her when they came to Utah to visit and then she and I drove out here together a few years ago.”
“Right.”
“Come in, come in,” Maryanne said. “I was just getting ready to fry up some chicken. I was making extra for Tom’s lunch later in the week so there’s plenty for both of you.”
“Do I have time to walk the dog first before dinner?” Hunter asked.
“Why, of course,” Maryanne answered with Southern politeness. “Will half an hour give you enough time?”
He nodded and Tom grabbed Lily’s leash off its hook by the door. “Mind some company?” he asked.
Hunter looked a little uncomfortable at the idea but he shook his head.
“Good,” Tom said with a smile. “While Maryanne works her usual magic in the kitchen, you can tell me what brings you both all this way.”
Kate watched them go, praying fiercely that Tom wouldn’t pull his concerned-father routine and subject Hunter to the third-degree.
She watched them walk to the end of the driveway and head west before she followed Maryanne into the kitchen.
The familiar smells and sights in the room seemed to instantly transport her to her teenage years, sitting at the bar, dipping graham crackers in milk and telling Maryanne about her day while they waited for Tom to come home so he could help her with her Trig homework.
“It’s so good to be here,” she told Maryanne truthfully.
“Now what’s this all about? What are you doing in Florida? And with Taylor’s brother, of all people.”
Kate took her usual stool at the bar, not sure where to begin. She finally cut to the heart of the matter.
“Looking for Brenda.”
“Oh baby.” Maryanne looked up from dipping the chicken pieces in her special blend, her eyes deep and dark with compassion. “What were you hoping to find?”
“Why she did it. Why me instead of some other poor little girl. I had to try to find out. I
had
to. It was Hunter’s idea but as soon as he offered to search for her, I knew this was something I had to do.”
“Did you find her?”
Kate gripped both hands around Maryanne’s ever-present cup of tea. “Yes. She’s in a Key West nursing home after a drug overdose a few years ago. She’s in bad shape with AIDS-related cancer and the overdose left her with lasting brain damage.”
Maryanne frowned. “So you weren’t able to find any answers.”
She thought of the little they had learned, of those few tantalizing moments when she thought Brenda recognized her and was ready to tell all. “Not what I was hoping for, anyway.”
“How did you feel, seeing her?”
Her foster mother was always asking questions like that, forcing Kate to examine her actions and reactions. She should have been a shrink, Kate thought.
How did winning that geography bee make you feel? Why do you think you made that kind of decision to break curfew? How could you have handled the conflict with your English teacher better?
The third degree used to drive her crazy but now she recognized it for what it was; Maryanne’s not-so-subtle method of helping a troubled, confused young girl learn to sort through her wild jumble of emotions to find the truly important ones.
“I don’t hate her. I thought I did—from about the third or fourth time she refused to give up her parental rights so you could adopt me, I thought I hated her. You know I did. I expected to feel that hot, familiar weight of it as I walked into her room. But seeing her lying there so frail and worn-out, I felt nothing. Nothing but sadness.”
Maryanne appeared to think about this as she added the chicken to the oil. The kitchen was filled with their merry sizzle and delicious scent before she finally spoke.
“You know, the other day I lost my car keys. While I was searching the house for them, I accidentally discovered—to my considerable dismay, you can be sure—that the diamond had fallen out of my wedding ring setting. The big one. I only realized it when I happened to see something glittering on the dresser in the bedroom while I was there searching the room for my keys. If I hadn’t been scatterbrained enough to lose my keys in the first place and go looking for them, who knows when I would have realized that diamond was missing and where it would have ended up by then?”
Her gaze met Kate’s and she smiled. “Life is funny that way. Sometimes we think we’re looking for one thing when, really, what we end up finding is something else entirely. Something we never even realized was missing.”
That was something else Maryanne was always doing. She seemed to have a parable for everything, from losing a soccer game to learning the correct way to sort laundry.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You think about it. What do you think is more important? Finding out why things happened to you or learning to find peace with it even if you never know the reasons?”
Before she could puzzle this out, she heard the bustle of two men and two dogs returning through the front door.
“Hope that chicken is almost done,” Tom said as they walked into the kitchen. “That smells enough to bring a man to his knees. Isn’t that right, Bradshaw?”
“Absolutely.” A corner of Hunter’s mouth quirked up and Kate’s heart turned over with love for him.
She may not have found answers or peace on this trip but she had certainly found her own treasure, better than a loose diamond. Too bad she wouldn’t be able to keep it.
Chapter 15
H
unter couldn’t sleep.
He found that odd, really, because the Spencers’ guest room was the most comfortably, cozy space he had inhabited for a long time. With a bed as wide and deep as a mountain lake, crisp, cool cotton sheets and a stack of paperbacks by the bed, he should have been completely content.
But his arms felt empty and familiar restlessness prowled through him.
He missed Kate.
She was the reason he had wandered the guest room for the last two hours, until he knew every inch of it. The discovery wasn’t a pleasant one. Though he had only spent two glorious days with Kate in his arms and his bed, the prospect of a night without her left him hollow.
What worried him most was that making love to her wasn’t the thing he missed most, but those priceless, peaceful moments he held her while she slept, tenderness a sweet, heavy ache in his chest.
“Damn, I’ve got it bad,” he said out loud.
Belle, curled up on the floor, blinked at him sleepily then snuffled and went back to sleep.
Hunter sighed and wandered to the window again. Outside in the Spencers’ backyard, their pool gleamed blue in the moonlight, cool and inviting. If he had brought a suit along he would have worked some of this restlessness off with a good hard swim.
He was almost tempted to go out anyway, but since he didn’t relish the idea of Kate’s foster parents wandering out to find him skinny-dipping in their swimming pool, he discarded the idea.
He liked Tom and Maryanne Spencer. They seemed genuinely good people, the kind of grounded souls who calmed everyone lucky enough to wander into their sphere.
On their walk earlier with the dog, he had been sure Tom would grill him, the kind of paternal interrogation a father subjects to any man who drags his daughter across the country.
He braced himself, waiting for Tom Spencer to bring up his prison time—or at least ask if he was sleeping with Kate. But the good doctor only asked about the weather on their trip, what kind of highway mileage his Grand Cherokee got, if they had visited any maritime museums when they were in the Keys.
Only as they turned around and started back toward the house did he ask in a quiet, calm voice how Hunter was adjusting to the world after his incarceration.
Hunter had almost brushed him off with a curt answer but something had compelled him to tell Tom Spencer the truth.
“It’s a struggle,” he had admitted to Kate’s foster father. “But every day seems a little easier.”
Tom had smiled and patted him on the shoulder as if Hunter were seven years old. “You’re going to be fine, son. Just fine.”
The strange thing was, for the first time in a long time, Hunter almost believed him. He kept thinking about Henry Monroe’s words earlier in the week, about having a choice to make when he started to go blind.
I could sit there in my house until I died, scared and angry and bitter. Or I could go on living. I decided to go on.
He needed to make that choice, too, but he didn’t know how.
Dinner had been enjoyable, he remembered now as he gazed out at the play of moonlight on water. Maryanne’s fried chicken had been perfect, crispy and spicy and melt-in-your-mouth delicious. The conversation had jumped all over the place but through it all he had sensed the deep love running like a river through that dining room.
Kate adored them and they obviously returned her affection.
Hunter had never considered himself a touchy-feely kind of person but throughout the evening they spent together he had wanted to grab both Maryanne and Tom in a tight hug and thank them for rescuing a scared, troubled young girl.
With another sigh, he traced a finger down the window. What the hell was he going to do about Kate?
He thought of the courage it must have taken for her to walk into that room at the nursing home earlier that day. It humbled him. She was brave enough to face her fears yet he cowered here, afraid to tell her how much he loved her.
That was the crux of the matter. He had been telling himself since that day on the beach when he realized he had fallen headlong for her that keeping quiet about his feelings was some kind of high-minded, magnanimous gesture. She deserved better, he had told himself.
That hadn’t been the issue at all. He faced that now, just past midnight, alone in his room. Really, it all came down to a choice, just like Henry had talked about.
A choice he still wasn’t sure he was capable of making.
To reach for Kate and the happiness and contentment that beckoned with her, he would have to let go of all the ugliness, all the hate. There wasn’t room in his life and his heart for both.
Was he strong enough to make that choice—to release his anger and bitterness over Martin James and the lives he had taken, the time he had stolen from Hunter—so he could grab hold of something better?
He didn’t know. That was the hell of it. So he holed out here in this comfortable guest room, exhaustion seeping through him, more lonely than he had been, even during those dark nights at the Point of the Mountain.
He was just about to give up and toss and turn in the bed for a while when he saw movement out in the lovely yard, a dark shadow slipping out of the house and wandering toward the pool.
Kate.
In the pale, clouded moonlight, he saw she was dressed in a gauzy white nightgown and looked fragile, otherworldly, like something off the cover of one of those spooky haunted-mansion-type novels his sister used to read.
His heart seemed to twist in his chest as he watched her standing by the pool, gazing up at the stars.
The urge to go to her blew through him like a hurricane but he didn’t dare. Until he figured out whether he was ready to live again, he would be best to keep his distance.
He would have stayed in his guest room and tried to sleep if the moon hadn’t slipped from behind the clouds and captured her features in pale moonlight.
The twist of emotions there broke his heart.
Without taking time to think through the consequences, Hunter made his silent way through the house and out into the quiet backyard.
Kate looked up when he opened the door but said nothing as he approached.
“Nice night,” he murmured.
“In a few days we’ll be back to single-digit temperatures and whiteouts. I figured I had better enjoy a pleasant night while I have the chance since we won’t see one in Utah until June.”
“Mind if I join you?”
She gestured to the plastic chaise lounge next to her and they both sat there, gazing up at the stars.
“You ready to talk about things yet?” he asked after a moment.
She didn’t say anything for a full thirty seconds. “What time is it?” she finally said.
Disappointment flickered through him at what he thought was another attempt to change the subject.
“About half past midnight.”
“It’s officially my birthday then.”
He stared. “Why didn’t you say something? Or the Spencers? They didn’t say a word about it all evening. I would have thought Maryanne would have at least whipped up a cake for you.”
“They probably don’t even know.”
“How could they not know it’s your birthday?” he asked with a frown.
“December 19 is Charlotte McKinnon’s birthday. I only learned that little bit of information after Gage and Wyatt found me. I’ve always celebrated my birthday on March 16. That’s the date on my birth certificate. On Katie Golightly’s birth certificate, I should say. I’m three months older than I always thought I was. Funny, isn’t it?”
He found the whole thing remarkably unamusing, especially when her last word came out more like a sob.
He couldn’t bear it, any more than he could sit by and do nothing. He rose and tugged her into his arms, then sat again with her on his lap.
She stayed frozen in his arms briefly, her spine rigid and her shoulders tight, then she seemed to sag against him. Her arms slid around him and she held on tight while a storm of tears buffeted her.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured after several moments of silent weeping. “I’m so sorry, Hunter. I didn’t mean to cry all over you again. I feel like all I’ve done for six weeks is bawl.”
Her forced laugh turned into another sob. “I hate this, Hunter. I hate it.”
She punched his chest for emphasis and he folded her small fist inside his hand. “I know you do. Anyone would.”
“I’ve always refused to think of myself as a victim. It was important to me. Maybe I went through some ugly stuff when I was a kid. But then, who didn’t? I survived it. More than survived it, I’ve built a good life for myself and I’m doing something I love, helping others. I don’t want to feel like a victim but I can’t seem to help it.”
“You were a victim. You can’t change that. You were three years old with no control at all over the situation.”
“I thought seeing her today would, I don’t know, give me some kind of peace. Closure. But nothing has changed. I still don’t know who I am. What I am. I feel like I’m three people wrapped up in one royally screwed-up package. Which is it? Am I Katie Golightly, the poor, pitiful little girl abandoned by her junkie whore of a mother? Or Kate Spencer, M.D., beloved foster daughter of Tom and Maryanne Spencer? And where does Charlotte McKinnon and her family fit into the mix? I just don’t know!”
He kissed the top of her head, love and tenderness and compassion thick in his chest. This was it, then. What he had been running from these last few days. His fears seemed insignificant compared to the need to comfort her, to try to ease her pain.
“You’re all those things, Kate. All those things and more.”
She made a sound of disbelief and he tightened his arms. “I know who you are. You’re a smart, compassionate, beautiful woman. All those things you’ve been through that you want to discount have made you the person you are today.”
“A mess?” She meant the words as a little self-deprecating joke but Hunter didn’t laugh. Instead, he continued to hold her tightly, gazing at her with the moon shooting sparks of light through his dark hair and an intense expression in his eyes.
“A woman of great courage and strength,” he said quietly. “A woman who can’t sit by and do nothing when she sees anyone else in pain, whether that pain is physical or emotional.”
She drew in a shaky breath, stunned by his words. “Is that really how you see me?”
He studied her, that muscle working his jaw. “Do you want to know what I see when I look at you?”
She nodded, holding her breath as her stomach suddenly jumped with nerves.
“I see a woman with every reason to hate but with this great core of love inside her. A woman who somehow found the strength of character to show the frail, broken-down shell of her kidnapper nothing but compassion and gentleness.”
She let out her breath, warmth spreading through her as he went on.
“I’ve seen so much ugliness in my life, Kate. Parents torturing children, husbands killing wives. It’s all part of a cop’s life. You learn to deal with it in your own way but it still gets to you, grinds away at your spirit. And then for eighteen months I lived with men who committed crimes heinous enough to put them on death row. Murderers, rapists. Child molesters. The worst of the worst. It’s enough to shake a person’s faith that there’s anything good and decent left in the world.”
His arms tightened and she felt the light, feather-soft brush of his mouth against her hair again.
“On this trip, because of you, I’ve found that faith again. What I saw in that nursing home was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And it wasn’t just that moment. I saw you show the same loving, healing care to a frightened mother giving birth under less than perfect circumstances and to a frail old man trying to make it to see his granddaughter dance, even though he couldn’t see anything at all.”
“You helped Mariah and Henry too,” she was compelled to remind him.
“Only because you pushed me into it. On this trip you’ve made me better than I am, Kate. I don’t know if it’s because of what happened to you or in spite of it but you’re amazing.”
He rubbed a thumb over her cheek and the tenderness of the gesture weakened her knees. She wanted to close her eyes and lean into him, to stay right here in his arms.
“You’re amazing,” he repeated. “How could I help but fall in love with you?”
His words didn’t register at first but when they did she jerked her eyes open and jumped to her feet. “What? You
what?
”
He laughed at her stunned reaction. “I know. Shocked the heck out of me too. I wasn’t looking for it but there it is. I love you, Katie Golightly, Kate Spencer, Charlotte McKinnon. Whoever you are, I love you.”
She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only stand there on a moonlit Florida night and stare at him. “You can’t love me!”
“And yet I do.”
“How can you possibly, after I dragged you across the country on this wild goose chase and have spent the whole week moaning and complaining about my poor, pitiful life?”
He laughed again and reached for her hand. His fingers caressed hers and sent twirly, twitchy little nerve impulses up her arm. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that’s all you’ve done.”
Heat soaked her cheeks as she remembered trying to seduce him, as she thought of the passion they shared and her own voraciousness.
The impact of his words finally fully hit her and she sank down onto the chaise lounge again.
“You love me.”
“I said so, didn’t I? Why is it so hard for you to believe?”
“I never thought I would hear you say that. I…I suppose I can’t believe it because I’ve loved you forever,” she finally admitted and had the satisfaction of seeing him blink in surprise.
“You have not.”
“Well, at least since the first day we met, when you were sitting in that diner with those cops. I remember it vividly. It was the middle of the night and Taylor and I walked in after studying and you were so thrilled to see her. I never had a brother and seeing how much you obviously adored your little sister was the first thing I loved about you. The more I learned about you, the more I came to love.”