Wild Horses

She should lie. She should tell him none of this was his business. But if he wanted the ugly truth, she would give it to him. “My father divorced my mother when I was seven. He moved to California and married another woman. He never communicated with us again. He made it clear he didn’t want to.”

He set down his fork. He whistled softly. He put his elbow on the table and his chin on his fist. He stared at her. “So you were sixteen years old, without parents? What did you do?”

“I became a ward of the court. Nobody wanted me for a foster child. So Vern and Carolyn became my guardians. They took me in.”

He gazed at her with disconcerting steadiness. “Bridget said Carolyn put you through business school.”

I’m going to kill Bridget, Mickey thought. I’m going to put my hands around her neck and strangle her dead.

“Can we please talk about something else? What about your family?”

He shook his head. “I see why you’re close to Carolyn. You both had the same experience. The runaway father, the abandonment. She must seem like a second mother to you.”

No. She feels like my only mother; the one who really counted, the one I could depend on, who never shamed me or scared me or made me feel bad about myself.

But Mickey didn’t want to think about her real mother, a deeply troubled woman. Her appetite had fled, and she pushed her plate away. She struggled against the urge to excuse herself from the table and leave Adam sitting alone.

She must have looked as unhappy as she felt. He said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that your relationship is unusual. I—glanced into your office. You have all these photographs. Of you and her and her family. None of you and anyone else.”

Mickey’s emotions, so off balance for so long with this man, tipped again. Anger seized her. “You looked in my office? You looked at my pictures? How dare you?”

“I’m a daring guy,” he said. “I looked in hers, too.”

His brazenness appalled her. “You went in our offices? Those doors were closed. I closed them on purpose.”

“You didn’t lock them,” he said. He had the effrontery to smile.

“That’s inexcusable,” she accused. “I’m calling Vern. I’m telling him about this. And I hope he says to put you right out of this house. What right do you think you—”

He cut her off. “Look, I didn’t commit a crime. I didn’t go through the drawers or read the mail or move so much as a paper clip. I opened two doors, I looked at some pictures. That’s all. And I didn’t hide it from you. I told you.”

“It’s still a violation of trust,” she said with the same indignation. “It’s an invasion of privacy. Carolyn opened her house to you—even while she’s going through this—this horrible thing. And you flout her generosity by poking and snooping and spying on us like a—a—”

Resentment crackled in his eyes. “Stop it. I came here expressly to see her. I didn’t even know what she looked like. When you took me to the guest room, both those office doors were open. I saw the photos. I wanted to see close-up. I especially wanted to see her. It’s not like I picked your locks and stole the damned silverware.”

Mickey stood and roughly shoved her chair back in place. “You still had no right.”

“I said I wanted to see her,” he repeated, his lip curling in a sneer. “And I did. I figured out which one she is from the pictures of Beverly’s wedding. She’s a very lovely woman, Carolyn is.”

“Yes, she is,” Mickey snapped. “And you’re a very ill-bred man. Good night.”

She stalked from the room, her heart slamming so hard she could barely breathe. She would call Vern. She hoped he would tell her to throw Duran out of the house, executor or not, will or no will. Let Martin Avery handle it. And she was going to read Bridget the riot act.

But not now. Not yet. She was too upset. She threw open the French doors in the living room that led to the screened deck. She stepped outside into the gathering darkness, grateful for the coolness of the evening air on her heated skin.

She was so furious that she shook and her blood banged in her temples. Too much had happened today. She could stand no more. She forced herself to breathe deeply. She closed her eyes and covered them with her hands.

Perhaps she had overreacted to the man. But he really was the last straw. She started to count from one to a hundred, trying to calm herself.

But suddenly she realized she was not alone. She could feel another presence; feel his presence. She opened her eyes and whirled to face him.

She was about to order him to get away from her, but before she could speak, he laid his forefinger against her lips. The movement was full of such self-assurance, it shocked her wordless.

He pressed his finger against her mouth more firmly. “Shhh,” he commanded in a low voice. “I only wanted to see what she looks like. What she seems like. And I have the right. I’m her brother. Her half brother. Enoch’s my uncle, too. And he didn’t leave the lease lands to her. He left them to me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

MICKEY GAPED AT HIM, speechless. She felt as if she’d taken a punch to the stomach. Nausea and giddiness spun within her. She couldn’t get her breath.

Carolyn’s half brother? Impossible. He couldn’t be. He was younger even than Carolyn’s daughter.

Yet, not impossible.

Frantically, Mickey’s eyes explored his moonlit features. He did resemble Carolyn. Even more, he looked like Carolyn’s late sister, Pauline. She should have seen it from the first.

He had Pauline’s square jaw and stubborn chin. He had her straight nose, her sculpted mouth. His eyes were blue, like Pauline’s, but otherwise they were like Carolyn’s eyes, too: deep-set, thick-lashed, intense.

But his age and masculinity had disguised the similarities. So Mickey stood transfixed, both believing and not believing. “No,” she objected, as if that word could break the evil spell his words had cast.

“Yes,” he whispered. He was so close she could feel his breath tickle her cheek, stir an errant lock of her hair.

She realized his callused fingertip still rested against her lips. She jerked her head away to break the contact, yet her mouth tingled as if rubbed with something spicy. She wanted to move farther from him, but shock paralyzed her.

He touched her jaw, gently forcing her to face him again. “My father was Steve Randolph, the same as Carolyn’s.”

His expression was hard, but paradoxically his touch was almost tender. He said, “I was born in Florida.”

“Florida?” She didn’t understand. “I thought Steve Randolph went to Canada. I never knew he’d married again.”

“He didn’t.” A muscle twitched in Adam’s cheek. “He moved on before I was born. He must have had a habit of moving on.”

Mickey blinked in surprise, yet she felt an unexpected surge of sympathy.

Adam’s upper lip curled slightly. “So if you want to call me a bastard, go ahead. The name fits.”

She tensed. The news that he was Carolyn’s half brother had so stunned her, she’d forgotten the other bombshell he’d dropped. The lease land was his, or so he claimed.

Her sympathy died; suspicion loomed up in its place. She pushed his hand aside and tried to jerk away. But her shoulder blades struck the barrier of the screened windows. He had her cornered.

She jerked her chin up. “How’d you hook up with Enoch? How’d you talk him out of the lease land? Suck up to him?”

His mouth twisted sardonically. “I tried to track down my father. I found out he died in Ontario. That he’d had two brothers. One was dead—”

“—Thom,” Mickey said. She knew the story. Thom, the middle of the three Randolph brothers, had died in Thailand.

Adam cocked his head and leaned nearer. “But my father’s obituary notice said he was survived by a brother in the Caribbean—Enoch. Enoch and I had lived near each other for God knows how long. I looked him up. Last year. Until then, he hadn’t known I existed.”

She used her suspicion militantly, like a protective shield. “United, at last. How touching. And what a nice bonus for you—to learn you had a rich uncle. Or did you know he had property before you found him?”