Daddy Bombshell
Daddy Bombshell
Lisa Childs
He had fantasized about what they could have had …
A lopsided snowman in the front yard. No, this would have never been his home. Ever since his parents had been murdered in their beds on Christmas Eve, Thad had never had a home, or at least he’d never let any place feel like one.
But Thad needed an angel now. As much as he needed to leave Caroline alone, he needed even more to see her face.
She wasn’t the one who opened the door at his knock, though.
At first it looked as though it had swung open of its own volition, until Thad adjusted his line of vision way down to the little boy who stood in the doorway. With his dark brown hair and blue eyes, the kid was a miniature version of Thad.
Caroline had had his son.
About the Author
Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a Rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
Daddy Bombshell
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Melissa Jeglinski for being a wonderful, supportive friend as well as an amazing agent!
Chapter One
His finger twitched and, as if by reflex alone, he squeezed the trigger. The gun vibrated in his hand as the bullet propelled down the barrel. He didn’t miss.
He never did….
The body dropped facedown onto the flagstones of the patio. Blood saturated clothing and pooled on the patio beneath the body.
Thad Kendall closed the distance between them and hunched down, feeling for a pulse. Nothing flickered beneath the skin, which was already growing cold despite the heat of the fire that was burning down the cottage on the other side of the patio.
Who the hell was this person who had set fire to the cottage and killed the man near the front of the cottage—not to mention fired all those shots that Thad had barely dodged?
He drew in a deep breath of acrid smoke. Then he reached out and rolled the body over so he could see the face. His sister’s distinctive green eyes, wide with shock, stared up at him.
“No!” Thad awoke with the shout and jerked upright in bed. He had already kicked off the covers, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his chest and back. The perspiration chilled him nearly as much as the dream had.
But it wasn’t just a dream; it was a memory of the shooting that had happened a week ago.
A knock rapped softly against his door, but before he could clear his throat to respond, it creaked open. “You okay?” a feminine voice gently asked.
He grabbed up a T-shirt from beside the bed and dragged it over his head. “Yeah, yeah …”
Just as she hadn’t hesitated before opening the door, she didn’t hesitate before crossing the room and sitting on his bed. “You were yelling,” she said. “Did you have a bad dream?”
Thad stared into his sister’s wide green eyes, which were full of concern and—thank God—life. He hadn’t shot her that night, and the man he had shot hadn’t really had her eyes. His had been a flat brown color, but something about the size and shape of them—as well as the man’s other features—had reminded Thad so much of Natalie that the image had haunted him ever since he’d turned the body over.
“The worst …”
She shuddered. “I know what that’s like.”
He snaked an arm around her shoulders. “Yes, you do.”
Twenty years ago, Natalie had found their parents dead in their beds on Christmas morning, and even though she later hadn’t remembered finding their bodies, nightmares had plagued her ever since their brutal murders. A man had been arrested, convicted and sentenced to two life terms, but just recently DNA evidence had proved that man’s innocence.
So the real killer was still out there.
It couldn’t have been the man Thad had shot. He hadn’t been much older than Thad’s thirty-one, so he would have been just a kid himself two decades ago. That was about all they knew for certain about the dead guy—his approximate age and that his first name had maybe been Wade.
Even though Wade hadn’t been old enough to be the Christmas Eve Killer, as the media had dubbed their parents’ murderer, Thad still wanted to learn more about the man he’d killed. Like why he’d been stalking and trying to kill Natalie….
“You used to come into my room and comfort me,” she remembered with a wistful sigh.
“And now you’re comforting me.” He grinned at the irony.
She leaned her head on his shoulder, her blond hair tickling his cheek. He and his oldest brother, Devin, were dark haired and blue eyed like their father had been, while his brother Ash and Natalie had their mother’s green eyes. Natalie had her straight blond hair, too.
But her sensitive heart was hers alone. “It’s my fault you’re having nightmares.”
“No, it’s not,” he denied. She couldn’t have guessed what he’d realized—he had been the first to notice the resemblance between her and her stalker.
“Yes, it is, because you had to shoot that man to save me and Gray.” She lifted her head and stared up into his face. “I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been for you, killing a man. That’s why you’re having nightmares, Thad.”
If killing a man gave him nightmares, then he wouldn’t have been able to sleep for the past several years.
“Maybe you need to talk to someone,” she suggested, “so that you can sleep. I bet Gray could help you.” Love radiated from her at the mention of her fiancé. “He was a Navy SEAL, you know.”
“I know.” That was why their brother Devin had hired Grayson Scott to protect her when Natalie had first mentioned her stalker to Devin’s fiancée, Jolie Carson.
“Or if you’re not comfortable talking to Gray, you could talk to Ash.” Ash, the second oldest of the Kendall orphans, was also former military and a detective with the St. Louis Police Department.
The oldest, Devin, had joined their uncle, who had become their guardian after their parents’ murders, in running their father’s communications business. Natalie, the baby at twenty-six, worked for Kendall Communications, too, as a graphic artist in the PR department. Thad was the only Kendall who had left St. Louis and hadn’t come back except for very rare visits to check on his family.
Even now he wasn’t back for good. Once his parents’ murderer was finally brought to justice, he would leave again.
“Natalie.” He squeezed her shoulders. “I don’t need to talk to anyone about the shooting.” But he needed to talk to someone. The DNA results had to be back by now. But instead of thinking about the crime-scene tech who was now his sister-in-law, another woman came to mind. Hell, that woman had never really left his mind once during the four years since he had seen her last.
“If you don’t want to talk to anyone about the shooting, you’re not going to want to leave the estate,” she said with a glance toward the window. Sunlight streamed through the partially open blinds.
“Those damn reporters camped out yet?”
She giggled. “You say that like you’re not one of them.”
He wasn’t. But only a very few people knew that. Everyone else believed he was really just an award-winning photojournalist for a cable network. “Well, I’d rather be doing the interviewing,” he clarified, “than being interviewed.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” she murmured.
Growing up a Kendall in St. Louis had been like growing up royalty. The media had recorded their lives, snapping pictures at school dances and proms and their high school graduations. And that coverage always intensified this time of year, around the anniversary of their parents’ murders. Since the discovery that their killer had never been caught, the media had gone crazy trying to get the siblings’ reactions. And in Thad’s case, his story about the shooting his first night back in St. Louis.
“Is that why you’re here and not at Gray’s?” he asked. “You’re hiding out?”
Her face flushed with embarrassment. “Hey, we’re not married yet.”
“Hasn’t stopped the two of you from being joined at the hip,” he teased, amused that her big brother’s knowing that she stayed at her fiancé’s would fluster her so much.
“Well, he’s my bodyguard,” she reminded him. “He’s supposed to be with me 24/7.”
He chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think he considers that a duty of his job. He loves you.”
She emitted a happy sigh. “Isn’t it wonderful? Devin, Ash and I all found love—true love.”
“Yeah, wonderful,” he murmured sarcastically.
She pinched his arm. “You’re such a cynic. I can’t wait until you fall in love, brother dear. You’re going to fall the hardest of all of us.”
He already had. But that was just one more thing his family didn’t know about him. Hell, until he’d left her he hadn’t even known how hard he’d fallen for her. By the time he’d realized the extent of his feelings, he had been a world away from her and in too deep to get out.
Hell, he hadn’t even been able to come back when his family needed him most. By the time he’d finally escaped the life that hardly anyone knew he lived, he’d almost been too late. Natalie had nearly died in the fire her stalker had set to her cottage, and her fiancé had nearly been shot to death trying to save her from that fire. The stalker had ambushed Gray as he’d carried Natalie from her burning cottage.
Thad had absolutely no regrets over killing her stalker. In the same situation, he would not have done anything differently—except for making sure he’d had the kill shot before Gray had taken a bullet for his sister. But his future brother-in-law was fine now, fully recovered. Thad was the one everyone kept looking at like he was going to fall apart. Because none of them knew about his work for the U.S. Department of State, they thought the shooting was bothering him.
What was really bothering him was the fact that his parents’ murderer had never paid for his horrific crimes. Thad wanted justice.
But that wasn’t all he wanted.
CAROLINE EMERSON CROOKED her neck to cradle the cordless phone between her ear and her shoulder while she folded laundry. Her best friend was given to marathon telephone calls even though they’d just seen each other that morning at church and saw each other every weekday at the elementary school where they both taught.
“You still haven’t heard from him?” Tammy asked.
A hard knot tightened in Caroline’s stomach, but she forced a smile into her voice. “No.”
“But he’s been back in St. Louis more than a week now.”
And what a week it had been. His handsome face had been all over the news.
Caroline reminded her overly romantic friend, “He’s been a little busy.”
For once he had been making news instead of reporting it: World famous photojournalist who spent years in war-torn countries finds most danger at home, forced to kill to protect his family.
“I was sure he would call you,” Tammy said, her voice heavy with disappointment.
“I was sure he wouldn’t.” But even though her head had been sensibly convinced that he wouldn’t, her stupid heart had held out hope, so she was disappointed, too.
“I set the two of you up four years ago because I knew you were perfect for each other.” Because Tammy had found the love of her life, she was convinced that everyone else could find the happiness she had with her husband. She didn’t realize how fortunate she had been to find Steve Stehouwer—the sweet man was one in a million.
For the magical month that Thad had been home in St. Louis, Caroline had believed Tammy’s matchmaking successful. But she’d had years since then that had proved how wrong her friend had been. Thad Kendall had not been perfect for her at all. But he had given her one perfect …
“He has been busy.” Tammy rallied her eternal optimism. “So you should call him.”
Caroline choked on her own saliva and the nerves that rushed over her. “No.”
“You should have called him right after you found out you were—”
“I couldn’t reach him then,” Caroline interrupted, “and I doubt I’d be able to reach him now.”
“I could see if Steve has a contact at the station who could get a message to him.” Steve and Thad had taken a journalism class together in college; that was how Tammy had met and then proceeded to introduce Thad to Caroline.
But Steve was an anchor at a local station whereas Thad traveled the world. He’d only been home a month when they’d been going out. Between assignments, he’d explained. Somehow she hadn’t thought he was talking about just photojournalism jobs.
The ever-romantic Tammy had believed he would fall in love with Caroline and stay home. And maybe, for a little while, she had let herself believe that, too. Or at least hope. But those hopes had been dashed forever when he’d left.
As far as Caroline knew, this was the first time he had been home in nearly four years. And in all that time, he hadn’t called, hadn’t sent her a letter or even a text message. He had obviously forgotten all about her.
BEFORE COMING HERE, Thad had driven all around St. Louis, over the Poplar Street Bridge and under the shadow of the infamous six-hundred-thirty-story-tall Gateway Arch. Sentimentality hadn’t inspired his impromptu tour of the city he hadn’t seen in years, though.
He had driven all over Greater St. Louis to lose whatever reporters and whoever else might have been following him. So he was certain that his was the only car that turned onto her street.
Four years ago she’d lived in an apartment building, close to the elementary school where she taught second grade. She still worked at the same school, but she had moved out of the apartment into a subdivision with cul-de-sacs and a mixture of newer ranch homes and well-maintained older brick Cape Cods. Thad glanced down at the paper on which he’d scribbled her house number, but before he could locate her address, his cell rang.
The distinctive ring belonged to his boss—his real boss—not the executive at the network everyone else believed to be his real boss. He answered with a succinct “Kendall.”
“We have a problem.”
He mentally cursed. “Michaels still hasn’t been found?” He shouldn’t have left—not with a man missing. But if he hadn’t come back when he had … he shuddered to think what would have happened to Natalie and Gray that night.
“He’s been found,” Agent Anya Smith replied.
His gut tightened with dread. “Not alive?”
“No. And before he died, he’d been tortured. We have no idea what he might have revealed to his captors before his death.” That was what she considered the problem.
Thad considered the problem the senseless murder of a good man. “Len Michaels wouldn’t have given them any information.”
“He had a wife and kids he wanted to get home to,” Anya warned. “He would have revealed anything if he thought it might get him back with his family.”
Grief and regret tore a ragged sigh from Thad. “His wife lost her husband, his children their father,” he reminded his boss.
“He should have gotten out before now,” Anya said. “Being a family man made him a liability … to the rest of us.”
“I don’t really believe—”
She obviously didn’t care what he thought, as she interrupted him to warn, “He might have given you up, Kendall.”
He hadn’t worked with Michaels that often. The agent had acted as a translator, and Thad’s fluency with languages was too well-known for him to warrant a translator. But their last assignment had taken him to an unfamiliar territory, and so he and Michaels had worked together.
Then Anya had passed on Devin’s message to Thad that he was needed back home, and he’d had to leave. Michaels had disappeared shortly after. Guilt twisted Thad’s guts. If he hadn’t left, maybe Michaels would have made it home to his wife and kids.
“If he did give me up, I’m not sure that I’d blame him,” he murmured.
“Kendall, don’t beat yourself up about this,” his supervisor advised. “I authorized your leaving. I sent in another operative.…” Her voice cracked with regret, but then she cleared her throat.
“That operative obviously wasn’t as good as I am,” he said without conceit. It was simple fact that he’d never lost another operative or a contact.
“You’re one of the best,” she agreed. “You need to wrap up whatever’s going on in St. Louis and get back in the field.”
“Soon,” he vowed.
His parents’ killer had gone free for too long; justice could wait no longer.
“I need you back out there. I don’t have to worry about you,” she said. “You’re not a liability.”
“No, you don’t have to worry about me,” he agreed. He had no wife. No kids.
But he might have … had he not left Caroline. She was the marrying kind; he never should have called her after that first disastrous double date with her friends. But she was so damn beautiful. And it wasn’t because of her summer-sky-blue eyes or her silky dark blond hair; it was the kind of beauty that radiated from the inside out. And he’d wanted to see her again and again.
And now, nearly four years after he had left her, he’d wanted to see her again. He clicked off with his boss and then looked up at her house. He didn’t need to check the address—he instinctively knew it was hers.
The brick Cape Cod had a giant wreath on its oak front door. The house sat behind a white picket fence, garlands strung from each snow-topped picket. At night, lights would probably twinkle against the evergreen branches. Lights were also wrapped around the pine tree in the yard and hung like icicles from the eaves.
All the decorations had his stomach churning with his revulsion for Christmas. Caroline loved it, which was just another thing they hadn’t had in common, another reason they could have never made a long-term relationship work.
He had often wondered, over the years, if he should have left her. He had fantasized over what they could have had if he’d stayed instead.…
A lopsided snowman in the front yard. No, this would have never been his home. Ever since his parents had been murdered in their beds on Christmas Eve, Thad had not had a home, or at least he’d never let any place feel like one.
And Caroline was all about home and hearth. Smoke puffed out of the top of the brick chimney—her house even had a fireplace. She probably had two-point-two children by now and a loving, devoted husband who worked a boring nine-to-five job so that he could be home every night to help her with dinner and the kids’ baths.
Thad respected that she had her own life now, and that was why he hadn’t given in to his temptation to mine his St. Louis sources for information about her. He’d hoped she had the life she had always wanted and deserved. He needed to just drive away and leave her alone. But instead he shut off his car and stepped out onto the snow-dusted street. Since getting Devin’s message, he’d been in hell. How could his parents’ killer be free?
But there’d been more, so much more that had happened to his family. His brother Ash had nearly lost his fiancée and their unborn child. Uncle Craig had nearly been framed for his own brother’s and sister-in-law’s murders. And Natalie, sweet Natalie, had been stalked and terrorized. His family had been through hell.
So Thad needed an angel. As much as he needed to leave her alone, he needed even more to see her face.
She wasn’t the one who opened the door at his knock, though. At first it looked as though it had swung open of its own volition, until Thad adjusted his line of vision way down to the little boy who stood in the doorway. With his dark brown hair and blue eyes, the kid was a miniature version of Thad.
Caroline had had his son.
Chapter Two
“Good luck,” Tammy whispered through the open driver’s window after Caroline had buckled Mark into his booster seat in the back.
“Thank you,” Caroline replied. For the good-luck wishes and for picking up her son, so that the little boy wouldn’t overhear the explosion that was certain to come from Thad Kendall.
Despite the cold wind that drove icy snowflakes into her face and chin-length hair, Caroline stood outside, watching Tammy’s minivan drive away. And avoiding Thad.
But he deserved an explanation, which he’d already agreed to wait for until Tammy picked up Mark, so they could talk in private. She drew in a deep breath, the cold air burning her lungs, and turned back to the house. Through the big picture window, she could see Thad pacing the length of her living room—giving a wide berth around the Christmas tree as if it were a vicious dog that might attack if he got too close.
She pulled open the front door and stepped into the room with him. Warmth from the crackling fire immediately melted the snowflakes from her hair and skin so that they ran down her face like tears. Her fingers trembled as she brushed away the moisture. Despite the warmth of the room, she kept her coat on, wrapped tight around her as if she still needed the protection.
Thad didn’t stop pacing. She remembered how he had never stopped moving. How had he ever managed to hold still long enough to take the poignant photos of war and tragedy that had earned him such accolades in his nearly decadelong career?
“So are you going to try to lie to me?” he asked. His voice, colder even than the winter wind, chilled her to the bone.
“Lie to you?” she repeated, the question echoing hollowly off the coffered ceiling.
“Play me for a fool, deny that that little boy is my son,” he said, heat in his voice now as his blue eyes burned with anger.
Still, she shivered. “Mark is definitely your son.”
“Then why did you keep that from me?” he demanded to know with an intensity that might have had Caroline taking a step back if righteous indignation wasn’t pumping through her veins right now.
Except for on the news and in newspapers, she hadn’t seen him in nearly four years. Her anger ignited and she lashed out, “How was I supposed to tell you? When you called me? When you wrote me? Oh, yeah, you didn’t do any of those things!”
He shoved his hand through his hair, tousling the dark brown strands. “We agreed that a clean break would be easier.”
“I agreed.” As she’d fought back her tears and silently called herself all kinds of a fool for falling for him when he’d been clear right from the start that he had to leave again. Why hadn’t she listened to him instead of Tammy and her own stupid heart? “But the clean break was your idea, so I figured you wanted nothing to do with me anymore.”
“Caroline …” He reached out but pulled his hand back before touching her face. “I never led you on. I was straight with you up front.”
And that was why she should have never gone out with him. But the attraction between them had been so strong—as strong as it was now, her skin tingling even though he hadn’t touched her—that she hadn’t been able to resist. And she really had hoped that her friend was right, that if he fell in love with her, he would stay.
But he hadn’t.…
“I know you had to leave,” she said, and she suspected she even knew why—because it was too hard for him to stay in the city where his parents had been so brutally murdered. “But I didn’t know where you were.”
“You could have given a message to my brothers Devin or Ash or to my uncle Craig,” he said. “They would have made sure I got it.”
She laughed, but with bitterness not amusement. “I don’t know your brothers or your uncle. I never met your family,” she reminded him, feeling now as she had then, as if she had been some dirty secret of his. Had dating an elementary school teacher been so far beneath the status of one of the illustrious Kendalls of St. Louis that he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his family?
“But you know who they are and how to reach them,” he stubbornly persisted.
Of course she knew; everyone in St. Louis and most of the United States knew who every one of the Kendalls was.
“But your family doesn’t know who I am,” she retorted. “What reason would they have to believe that I was really carrying your child and not just trying to make a claim on the Kendall fortune?”
According to local gossip, several other women had tried to get their hands on some Kendall money albeit through his brothers and not Thad.
“My brothers or uncle would have told me that you’d come to see them—”
“When?” she interrupted. “Are you in regular contact with them? Have you even come home in the past four years?” She waited, almost hoping he hadn’t so she wouldn’t be disappointed that he hadn’t contacted her earlier.
“I would have gotten word,” he insisted, a muscle twitching along his tightly clenched jaw.
“And what would you have done?” she wondered. “Would you have come back home? Would you have given up your nomad lifestyle for diaper duty and two-a.m. feedings?”
“You did that all alone?” He glanced around the living room as if he were looking for her support system.
Her parents had moved to Arizona years ago, coming back to St. Louis for only a few weeks every summer. Except for her friends, she had no one.
She nodded in response, but she didn’t want his sympathy or his guilt. “And I loved every minute of it. Mark was the easiest baby and now he’s the sweetest little boy.”
“I guess I will have to take your word for what kind of baby he was since I’ve missed out on those years,” he said.
He had stopped his restless pacing and stood now in front of the portrait wall of her living room, staring wistfully at all the pictures of their son. In addition to the studio portraits she’d had taken every few months, she’d framed collages of snapshots, too. She’d recorded every special moment in his life, and hers, because she’d been there. Thad hadn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t have been even if he’d known. But she’d robbed him of that choice.
Now the guilt was hers. She should have tried to talk to his family so that one of them might have gotten word to him. It hadn’t been fair of her to just assume that he wouldn’t have wanted any involvement in his son’s life just because he hadn’t wanted any involvement in hers.
“But I don’t intend to miss out on anything else, Caroline,” Thad said, his voice low and deep as if he were issuing a threat. “I am going to be part of his life.”
“For how long?” she asked. “Just long enough to break his heart when you leave again?” Just like he had broken hers.
THAD’S HEAD POUNDED, tension throbbing at his temples and at the base of his skull. Maybe it was the chemicals in his new sister-in-law’s crime lab at the St. Louis Police Department that had caused the headache.
But the fumes weren’t toxic or Rachel wouldn’t have been working still, not in her condition. The petite brunette was very pregnant, her belly protruding through the sides of the white lab coat.
What had Caroline looked like when she was pregnant? She was taller than Rachel with more generous curves. Had she hidden her pregnancy for a while? Being a single mom might have caused her problems at the elementary school where she worked.
He hadn’t asked about that. He’d been too stunned and angry to do more than yell at her. And he hadn’t talked to his son at all. Knowing how close he’d been to losing his temper, he had let her call her friend to pick up the boy. Instead of talking to him while they waited, Thad had just stared at the kid and had probably scared him.
Had he scared Caroline, too? After he’d demanded a relationship with his son, she had asked him to leave, saying that she needed time to think. That had been a couple of days ago.
All he’d been doing was thinking.
“Hey, little bro!” Devin snapped his fingers in Thad’s face. “You called this meeting. Down here.” The CEO of Kendall Communications glanced around the sterile lab and shuddered. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t care,” Ash murmured as he pressed a kiss against the nape of Rachel’s neck, which her high ponytail left exposed. “He gave me an excuse to see my gorgeous wife.”
“Get a room,” Thad grumbled.
“You’re just jealous,” Ash teased. But he was also right.
Thad was jealous that he’d missed out on seeing Caroline like Rachel was now, glowing and beautiful in her pregnancy … with his son.
The door to the lab opened again. “I’m here,” a deep voice murmured as former navy SEAL Grayson Scott joined them. “And if my fiancée asks, I was out bonding with my brothers-in-law-to-be.”
“How are we bonding?” Devin asked with a grin. His eyes gleamed with curiosity and mischief. “Drinking? Working out?”
Color flushed Gray’s face, and he grumbled his reply. “We’re Christmas shopping.”
Rachel laughed. “Now you’re going to have to actually go shopping, so that you weren’t really lying to Natalie.”
The thought of Christmas shopping, of the music and the crowds and all the goddamn cheer, had Thad’s stomach churning.
“It’s better that she doesn’t know why we’re all together,” Thad pointed out. “There is no point in upsetting Natalie until we know the truth.”
Rachel nodded and was suddenly all business. “The FBI lab results came back.” She stared at Thad, her hazel eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I don’t know how you got the results rushed, but the DNA report is back already. It confirms my findings.”
Thad hadn’t needed a DNA test to prove that he was Mark’s father. The little boy was him twenty-eight years ago.
“So was I right?”
Rachel studied him again. “I don’t know how you knew.…”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know for sure. But the eyes …” He shuddered even now, thinking of how looking into the dead man’s eyes had been like looking into his sister’s. Only the color had been different. “So Natalie is only our half sister?”
“According to the DNA tests you all took in comparison to Natalie’s samples that you had taken while she was in the hospital, and the dead man’s samples I took from the morgue—” Rachel’s ponytail bobbed as she nodded “—her stalker was her half brother.”
“So she had a different father from all of you?” Gray asked, looking somewhat ill.
“That’s the most likely scenario,” Devin said with a weary sigh of resignation, as if this was merely confirmation of something he had already suspected.
He’d been older than the rest of them, sixteen, when their parents had been murdered. He remembered them best. Or perhaps, worst.
“We need to tell her,” Gray said. After dragging in a deep breath, he added, “I need to tell her.”
“No,” Thad said with a head shake that only intensified the throbbing pain. “I’ll tell her.”
Gray’s jaw clenched. “Any particular reason you want to be the one to tell her?”
Over the years, Thad, Devin and Ash had given Natalie’s boyfriends a tough time because none of them had ever been good enough for her. Until now. Grayson Scott was a good man, but that hadn’t stopped them all from being a little rough on him in the beginning. He’d had to prove to them, as well as Natalie, how much he loved her. Taking a bullet to save her life had pretty much sealed the deal for all of them.
“I’m the one who killed him,” Thad offered in explanation. “I’m the reason she’ll never get to know this guy.”
“He didn’t want to get to know her,” Gray reminded him. “He wanted to kill her.”
“Why?” Devin asked. “Knowing now that they’re related, it makes even less sense that he was stalking her.”
“Did you find out anything else from his DNA?” Ash asked his wife. “Like who the hell he is?”
She shook her head. “We already ran his prints. While they matched the ones from the break-in at my apartment, he wasn’t in the system.”
“So he is the guy who tried to get the DNA results from our parents’ crime scene?” Devin asked. “He’s the one who tried to destroy the evidence that cleared Rick Campbell?”
The petty thief had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had done twenty years’ time for someone else’s crime. He never got the chance to enjoy freedom again. He’d been killed to cover up the corruption that had rushed his conviction in order to clear a high-profile case and advance a career.
Ash gave a grim nod in response to his older brother’s question. Rachel had been hurt during the break-in; it was how he had learned she was pregnant since they’d broken up months earlier.
“We need to find out this guy’s identity,” Gray said. “I’m not even sure Wade is his real first name. It’s just what he told the girl at the coffee shop Natalie goes to.”
“Did you get any leads from the photograph that was released to the media?” Devin asked Ash.
Ash shook his head. “The new chief wouldn’t let us release the morgue photo, and that surveillance photo from the ATM camera outside the coffee shop is too grainy for anyone to make a positive identification.”
Devin turned to Thad. “Why don’t you leak a better photo?”
“The chief will know where the photo came from,” Rachel warned them.
“We don’t need to know who this guy was,” Thad said, which elicited gasps from his family.
Gray’s neck snapped back in indignation. “What the hell—he tried to kill Natalie—”
“He’s dead now. He’s no longer a threat,” Thad pointed out. “He was about my age. He couldn’t have been our parents’ killer.”
“Our parents’ killer might not be out there anymore,” Ash remarked. “He could be locked up or dead. But this guy, Natalie’s half brother, is the one who attacked Rachel to try to destroy the DNA evidence from our parents’ murder—”
“Why did he do it? He couldn’t have been their killer,” he repeated, “so he must have been trying to protect someone.”
Gray sucked in a breath. “Maybe that’s why he tried to kill Natalie.”
“Because she did see something that night our parents were murdered,” Ash said. “Maybe the killer …”
“We don’t need to know who this Wade guy was,” Thad repeated, “although finding that out will help us learn what we really need to know—who his father is.”
“And if he was locked up or dead, his son wouldn’t have gone to the extent he had to protect him,” Ash reasoned. He wrapped his arms around Rachel, as if he needed to protect her even inside the lab in the basement of the St. Louis Police Department.
Gray swore beneath his breath. “So even though that son of a bitch is dead, there’s still a threat out there?”
Thad shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. Rachel, we’ll need you to run the DNA from the old crime scene and compare it to the stalker’s DNA.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t have access to any of the original evidence anymore,” she said, patting her belly. “Not even the results. I’ve been taken off the case because no one with any connection to a Kendall is being allowed near the case files or the evidence.”
“They don’t trust that we really want justice,” Ash said.
“Can you talk to someone with access and have them run it?” Thad persisted.
She shook her head. “The stalker was too young to be considered a viable suspect in the old murders. They won’t look at him for any connection.”
“That’s why the Kendalls should be running the investigation,” Thad said. It was why they were going to damn well run their own.
A short while later, when Thad walked through the parking garage to his car, he knew that there was definitely a threat. He felt someone’s gaze boring into his back. It could have been reporters, but he doubted it. If they’d made it past the police department parking garage attendant, then they would have been rushing him with cameras and questions. They wouldn’t have just watched him.
But then why would the killer watch him? He hadn’t witnessed anything the night his parents died. He’d done nothing to save them. But he had saved lives in his real job. He’d also taken lives. Maybe Michaels had given him up. He reached beneath his jacket, but his holster was locked up, with his gun, inside his glove box. He wouldn’t have gotten it past the security scanners in the police department unless he’d had Ash clear it for him. And his brother would have had too many questions about Thad having a license for a concealed weapon.
Now, as the hairs on the nape of his neck lifted with foreboding, Thad wished he’d answered those questions, so that he was armed. Keeping close to vehicles for cover, he visually scanned the garage, looking for whoever was staring at him with such intensity. Yes, there was definitely a threat still out there, and it was focused wholly on Thad.
ONE KILLER ALWAYS RECOGNIZES another…
Thad Kendall couldn’t see him through the tinted windows of his SUV, but still Ed ducked down when the man turned toward his vehicle. How could anyone be fooled by Kendall’s cover?
He was so much more than a bored rich kid or a globe-trotting reporter. Sure, maybe it was because of where he’d reported stories that he moved as he did—as if he had a target on his back. But when he’d felt Ed watching him, he had reached for a gun whereas a reporter’s instinct would have been to grab a microphone or a camera instead. Not a weapon.
Kendall was also a damn good shot … when he was armed. But he had no gun now. No protection at all. And he was so close. All Ed would have to do was start the engine, stomp on the gas and run him down. Ed shook with anticipation—not withdrawal. He didn’t need a drink. He needed vengeance. He could almost imagine the satisfying crunch of the man’s bones beneath the tires of his SUV.
It would hurt Kendall. But not enough.…
The son of a bitch wouldn’t feel as much pain as he had caused. So killing him wouldn’t be satisfying at all—not until Thad Kendall had suffered. All Ed had to do was watch and figure out what would cause Thad the most pain.
Chapter Three
This time Caroline opened the door to his knock. And no one was surprised, like when Mark had let Thad into their house. Then she had been on the phone with Tammy when the doorbell rang, so her son had beaten her to the door and totally disregarded the rule of not opening it unless he knew who was at it.
This time she’d known Thad was coming because she had invited him. But still her heart started beating faster at the sight of him. Fluffy snowflakes melted in his dark hair and clung to his high cheekbones and strong jaw. She stepped back to let him inside, but he hesitated, glancing over his shoulder.
She followed his gaze to the street. Was he waiting for someone? A lawyer? That was why she’d called him—because she hadn’t wanted to force him to fight for his parental rights. With the full resources of the Kendall money and power, he couldn’t lose.
But she could potentially lose her son. Her salary barely stretched to cover her mortgage, Mark’s day care and their living expenses. She couldn’t afford a lawyer, too.
Thad finally stepped inside and closed the door, shutting out the snow and the cold and whoever he might have been looking for.
“Is Mark here?” he asked, glancing around the inside of the house like he had the outside.
Was that a habit he’d picked up from traveling to war-torn countries? He’d probably had to learn to be vigilant in order to stay alive. A lot of reporters hadn’t made it back from the places Thad had been.
Caroline drew in a shaky breath. “Mark is upstairs.”
“So you’re not worried about him hearing us fight?” he asked with a glance toward the open stairwell.
“I’m not going to fight you.”
“What does that mean?” he asked. His eyes, which were the same sapphire-blue of his son’s, widened in surprise. “You’re going to let me see him?”
Her stomach tightened with nerves, but she couldn’t deny her son the chance to get to know his father. Given Thad’s lifestyle, this could possibly be the only chance the boy would ever get. Too bad he would probably be too young to remember him. “If that’s what you really want …”
“He’s my son. Of course I want to see him,” he replied, as if offended by her suggestion. “I’ve already missed so much.”
“And you’ll miss even more when you leave again.”
He ducked his chin as if she’d taken a swing at him. But he didn’t deny that he would leave. “I have a job to do.”
“You don’t have to leave St. Louis to be a reporter,” she pointed out. “You could get a job at any station or paper in the city.”
“Not reporting the story,” he said. “In St. Louis, I would be the story.”
“Because of the shooting.”
Everyone else had been so surprised that Thad Kendall had killed a man. Everyone but Caroline. Beneath his charm and devastating grin, there was a ruthlessness that she had glimpsed the day he’d left her without even a backward glance.
He had a single-minded intensity about his job that seemed to be about more than achieving success or fame. She suspected there was much more to Thad Kendall than anyone realized.
And he was her son’s father. She swallowed a sigh.
“You’re not looking at me like everyone else has been,” he said. He was actually the one looking at her, his gaze intent on her face.
“How’s that?” She had barely let herself look at him at all, as she was determined to not let her foolish heart rule her head once again. She would not fall for Thad Kendall, no matter how damn handsome he was.
“All my family,” he said, “even members of the press keep looking at me like I’m going to fall apart because I pulled the trigger and killed a man.”
“I think you’ve had to do a lot harder things than that in your life,” she admitted.
He jerked his head in a grim nod. Then he stepped closer and skimmed his fingers along her jaw. “Leaving you was one of the hardest.”
She sucked in a breath as her traitorous heart slammed against her ribs. “Don’t.” She moved back so that his hand fell away from her face. “Just don’t …”
“It’s true.”
“You left and never looked back,” she reminded him. “I’m not looking back, either. I’m looking ahead to when you leave again and I have to explain to Mark.”
“I’ll explain to Mark that it’s my job to go to other countries.”
“Will you want to make a clean break with him, too?” She’d worried about that for the past few sleepless nights since her son had opened the door to his father. Mark had had so many questions about the stranger who’d come to their house, and he had deserved to know the truth.
“No. I’ll stay in contact with him,” he promised as he stepped closer again. His voice dropped to an intimate murmur. “And with you …”
His lips curved into that devastating grin. He was arrogant—he couldn’t look like he did and not realize how women wanted him. And he was a Kendall, used to getting what he wanted, and apparently since he was back in St. Louis, he wanted her.
With an effort she steadied her racing pulse and shook her head. “I don’t want a relationship with you.”
His grin faded. “Caroline …”
“Truthfully, I don’t want you to have a relationship with Mark,” she said, keeping her voice low so that her son wouldn’t overhear. “I’m afraid you’re going to break his heart like you did mine.”
He groaned. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” she admitted. “And you won’t mean to hurt him, either. But you will.”
“So what do you want me to do?” he asked. “Pretend that I never saw him? That I don’t know I have a son? Do you want me to just walk away?”
That was the problem. She didn’t want him to walk away. Ever. But he would. “It’s what you do best.”
“Damn it! You’re not being fair!”
“No. I’m not,” she readily agreed. But she needed to keep reminding herself that she couldn’t fall for him again. She wouldn’t be able to help heal her son’s broken heart if she was dealing with her own.
“I didn’t know how much I hurt you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, refusing his apology. “I’m over you,” she said, trying to convince them both of that. “And I intend to stay over you.”
“If you’re so over me, why haven’t you moved on?” he challenged her. “Why aren’t you married or involved with someone else?”
“How—how do you know that I’m not involved with someone?” she asked.
“Since finding out about Mark, I checked with some of my sources.…”
Damn Tammy. “I’m focused on my son right now,” she said, “not dating.”
“I can’t believe men haven’t been beating down your door to take you out,” he said.
She laughed at the outrageous compliment, refusing to be charmed again. Mark was three and a half, but she had fifteen pounds of baby weight to lose yet. Maybe twenty.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Even more beautiful now than you were four years ago.”
Her stomach muscles tightened with desire, but she shook her head. “I am smarter now than I was four years ago. I’m not going to fall for your patented Kendall charm.”
“Patented?”
“Already at three, Mark has it. He can wrap me completely around his little finger.” Just like Thad used to be able to do.
“You’re not immune to me,” he said, his voice husky and his eyes bright with desire. “And I can prove it to you.”
When she opened her mouth to ask him how, his lips were there covering hers. His tongue delved deep, stroking over hers, stroking her passion from flickering flame to full conflagration. He’d wrapped his arms around her, too, so that she couldn’t step back. But she didn’t want to get away; she wanted to get closer. His chest pressed against hers, his heart beating the same frantic rhythm as hers.
“Hey!” exclaimed a little voice, full of curiosity. “What are you doing to my mommy?”
They broke apart as guiltily as teenagers caught necking on the couch. Caroline would have laughed at the shock on Thad’s flushed face if she hadn’t felt more like crying. She didn’t know what was bringing her closer to tears—the kiss or the fact that her son had interrupted it.
THAD’S SKIN BURNED, his fingers numb from the cold as he rolled a snowball across Caroline’s front yard. He’d brought no gloves with him and Caroline’s were too small. But when Mark had asked him to build another snowman to go with the lopsided one already in their front yard, Thad had been unable to refuse no matter how many excuses he’d had to do just that.
She was right. The kid had the Kendall charm but with Caroline’s innate kindness and generosity.
“I can roll it,” Mark said, putting his mittened hands over Thad’s. “You’re cold.”
Maybe his skin was cold, but the rest of him was still on fire from kissing Caroline. If Mark hadn’t interrupted them …
Caroline probably would have pulled away. She was over him. He’d kissed her to prove her wrong, but instead he’d proved to himself that he wasn’t over her. Not even close.
He wanted more than a kiss, but she wanted nothing from him but for him to not hurt their son. He stared at the tiny, mittened hands clasping his, and his heart twisted in his chest.
“Just a li’l bigger,” the boy directed. When the snowball grew to the size of a beach ball, he stopped and tried to lift it.
Thad lifted it instead, setting it atop the other two balls they’d formed into the base of the snowman. The lopsided snowman was actually a snow lady, and he and Mark had already made a snow boy. “There. It’s done.”
Mark shook his head. “We gotta make his face.” He reached in his pocket for the things that Caroline had given him after she’d bundled him into a snowsuit, boots, mittens, scarf and hat.
She was a great mom, just as he’d known she would be. That was another reason he’d forced himself to leave her four years ago. She’d deserved more than he was capable of giving. Because of his real job, he’d never intended to be a husband or a father. He hadn’t wanted to leave a family behind like Len Michaels had.
But he had left behind a son … without ever realizing he’d become a father.
“Here,” Mark said, shoving a carrot into Thad’s cold hand. “You’re gonna have to put it on ‘cuz I’m not big enough.”
Thad handed back the carrot and then, his hands shaking slightly, he slid them around his son and lifted him onto his shoulders. “You’re big enough now.”
A giggle slipped from Mark’s lips. “I’m too big now.” He wrapped one arm around Thad’s neck and leaned forward to reach their snowman. His tongue sticking out between his lips in concentration, he carefully arranged the carrot and a collection of colored stones to make the snowman’s face, which he must have been comparing to Thad’s because he kept looking back and forth between them.
“Mommy says these rocks are the same color as my eyes,” he remarked. He turned toward Thad. “They’re the same color as yours, too.”
“You look like me when I was a little boy,” Thad said.
After discovering he had a son, he’d found some of the old photo albums his aunt Angela kept in the library, and he’d flipped through the pictures of himself and his family. He hadn’t looked through the albums in years because he hadn’t wanted to see old pictures of his parents. Surprisingly there hadn’t been as many in the albums as he’d thought there would have been. The photos had mostly been of just him and his brothers and some of Natalie.
He lifted Mark from his shoulders and then crouched down to the boy’s level. “Do you know why you look like me?”
The child gave a solemn nod. “‘Cuz you’re my dad.”
Thad sucked in a breath of surprise. “You know?” Kissing Caroline had distracted him so much that he hadn’t known whether the boy actually knew who he was yet or not. Mark hadn’t said anything to Thad but to wonder what he’d been doing to his mother and then to ask him to make a snowman with him.
“When I came home from Aunt Tammy and Uncle Steve’s, Mommy told me who you are,” he said, as if it had been no big deal for his father to finally show up after three years.
“Do you have any questions for me?” Thad said. He had a million for Mark. He wanted to learn everything about the little boy, everything that he had missed.
Mark shook his head, though, and returned his attention to the cluster of snowmen. “Look!” he exclaimed with pride. “There’s a snow mommy and a snow kid and now a snow daddy.”
“Wow,” Thad said, trying to sound suitably impressed. This meant a lot to his son.
“We have a snow family,” Mark said with a bright smile of satisfaction, as if a family was something he’d wanted for a while.
Thad stood back to admire the family, but then the sound of an idling engine drew his gaze to the street beyond the picket fence. Had the white SUV followed him again?
He suspected it had been in the parking garage the day before when he’d felt someone watching him. Then he’d thought he glimpsed it near the estate, as well. But he’d made sure he wasn’t followed here, taking a circuitous route again.
And really he was probably overreacting. There were a million white SUVs. He hadn’t noted the plate, so he couldn’t be certain if the one he’d seen near the estate was the same one or even the same make and year as the one from the parking garage.
But he couldn’t shake the uneasiness he’d felt in the parking garage, the sense of foreboding that someone was watching him with an intense hatred. He glanced toward the house and confirmed that he was being watched.
Caroline stood at the living-room window, staring intently at him. He doubted she was reliving that kiss as he had and wishing they hadn’t been interrupted. He suspected instead that she was watching to make sure that he hadn’t already screwed up with Mark.
She was right to worry about his parenting skills. The only parenting he’d ever really known had been when Uncle Craig and Aunt Angela became his and his brothers’ and sister’s guardians. But that had been a long time ago.
Where he’d been the past several years had had nothing to do with family and everything to do with survival. His own and all those he’d been able to save. He had to go back to finish his assignment and make sure Michaels’s killers were brought to justice. But what kind of father could he be to Mark if he wasn’t even around?
Something struck the back of his head and exploded in shards of ice that ran down his neck and inside his collar. Thad whirled around so quickly that Mark shrieked and ran from him. He’d stayed alive for years in the most dangerous places in the world but had taken one in the head from his own kid.
He grabbed up a handful of snow and gave chase.
CAROLINE GIGGLED, echoing her son’s laughter that she could hear even through the double panes of glass. He’d nailed his father with that snowball. Thad threw a couple at him, careful to miss wide while stepping squarely in front of the ones that Mark threw back at him.
He had no hat, no gloves, not even a scarf, but he didn’t seem to care about the cold. The only thing he seemed preoccupied with was the street, as he kept glancing back at it.
Was he expecting someone or was it just a habit for him to constantly survey his surroundings? He hadn’t seen that snowball coming.
Just like she hadn’t seen his kiss coming. Or maybe she had but she’d wanted it too much to push him away. If Mark hadn’t interrupted them, she wouldn’t have stopped Thad. Being back in his arms, kissing him, had felt too good—too right. She touched her lips, which tingled yet from the contact with his. She could taste him, too, from when he’d slid his tongue between her lips deep into her mouth.
But she’d meant what she’d told him. Not about being over him—that had been a lie that he’d easily disproved. But about not wanting a relationship with him.
He was her son’s father, and that was all he would ever be to her. Not her lover. Not her boyfriend. Not even her friend.
Because she couldn’t trust him. But she wouldn’t have been able to beat him, either, if she’d fought to keep him away from Mark. Now, seeing them chase each other around the yard, she was glad that she hadn’t tried. She’d worked hard the past three years to be both mother and father to her son, but the little boy needed more than she had been able to give him.
He needed Thad.
And, as Thad grinned and laughed, she began to wonder if Thad didn’t need Mark, too. Enough to stay?
But then he glanced to the street again, his body tensing as if he’d identified a threat. To himself or to their son?
She knew when he left St. Louis that Thad put himself in danger. But she hadn’t realized until now that he could be in danger in St. Louis, as well. He had killed his sister’s stalker, but maybe in doing so, he had picked up his own. Or he had brought danger back with him from one of those war-torn countries?
She’d already had her doubts, but now she was certain that Thad Kendall was more than just a photojournalist.
Whatever else he was, he was also a father now. Would he put their son in the danger that he had constantly put himself in?
Chapter Four
Thad paced his brother’s office at Kendall Communications. This was all Devin had ever wanted, to be CEO and take over the running of their father’s company.
Uncle Craig might have been technically in charge ever since Joseph Kendall’s murder, but the business had grown even more after Devin had joined the company. The stock each of the Kendall siblings had inherited had definitely increased in value due to Devin’s initiatives.
Over the years, throughout his travels, Thad had come up with some ideas he’d love to see the company explore. While it may have been just a cover, he had become an expert on communications, some less legal than others.
Devin opened his office door but didn’t see Thad yet as he continued his conversation with the red-haired secretary who was also his fiancée. “I didn’t give you a chance to give me my messages,” he murmured to her as he wiped her lipstick from his mouth. “Did Turner call back?”
“No,” she replied. “According to his staff, he hasn’t been in the office at all this week and not much in the past few months. Not since his wife died. Maybe he is ready to retire and sell the company.”
Turner Connections LLC? Excitement coursed through Thad at the thought of Kendall Communications acquiring the company, which had a good number of defense contracts.
Devin snorted. “He’s younger than Uncle Craig. I doubt he’s ready to retire.”
Jolie sighed. “So you’re going to be one of those guys who never knows when to quit.…”
“I thought that’s what you liked about me.…” He leaned forward and kissed her again.
Thad cleared his throat to make them finally aware of his presence.
Jolie pulled free of Devin’s arms, her face flaming nearly as red as her hair. “I forgot to tell you Thad was waiting for you.”
“Probably because the two of you were too busy making out to remember I was back here,” Thad teased.
Jolie’s ringing phone drew her back to the outer office. With only a wave at Thad, she closed the door, leaving him and Devin alone together. Her fiancé stared after her for a moment, as if he’d not been ready to let her go. Natalie was right that each of his siblings had found true love.
“I’m surprised you manage to get any work done around here.”
“We don’t have a choice.” Devin pushed his hand through his hair as he made his way around his desk and dropped into the chair behind it. “It’s been pretty crazy around here since September.”
That was when Rick Campbell, the man behind bars for their parents’ murders, had been cleared of the crime. It hadn’t been long before authorities had been looking at a new prime suspect, though.
“I can’t believe that damn D.A. tried to blame Uncle Craig.” Thad wished he’d been home then; he would have skewered the man in the media. Instead, his family had been smeared. One of the first things he’d noticed on his return was how much his aunt and uncle had aged since he’d been gone. He suspected most of that had happened since September.
“He’s a son of a bitch,” Devin bitterly murmured. “But clearing Uncle Craig hasn’t ended the media circus.”
“Some good things came out of the coverage,” Thad reminded his older brother.
To protect Jolie’s reputation and the company image, Devin had proposed a fake engagement with his secretary. But that engagement had quickly become real when his stubborn brother had finally realized the depths of his feelings for the amazing woman who’d been his friend and right hand for years.
“It would be nice if the press would give us a break for a while,” Devin said, “especially with Christmas coming.”
“The media coverage has always been bad around Christmastime,” Thad reminded him. “And it’s even worse this year.”
Devin groaned. “It was going to be bad enough, given the twenty-year anniversary, but then with everything else that’s happened, the reporters have been relentless.”
Which was why Thad had told no one about Mark and Caroline. He didn’t want them being pulled into the media circus that was life as a Kendall. It might make Caroline change her mind about allowing Thad time with the boy, and it would no doubt frighten the child. Sure, his family wouldn’t let anything slip to reporters, but they would want to meet his son and that meeting would not go unnoticed by the press.
Thad glanced at his watch; he had a meeting to go to. He couldn’t believe he’d agreed to what he had. But then Mark had asked and he doubted he’d be able to deny the kid anything. It was a wonder that Caroline hadn’t spoiled the little charmer rotten. But he was a great kid. And kids loved Christmas. At least kids whose parents hadn’t been murdered on the holiday.
“Will you actually be here this Christmas?” Devin asked.
Thad shrugged. “Depends on when we catch our parents’ killer. Finally finding the real murderer is the only way to stop the media frenzy.” His body tensed with anger. “And get justice.”
“Is that why you came to my office?” Devin asked. “Have you found out something new?”
“I did,” Thad said, “when we found out that Natalie is only our half sister. But you didn’t seem very surprised by the news.” News that they hadn’t shared with anyone who hadn’t been at the meeting at Rachel’s lab. Thad had to tell Natalie first, but not only did he dread doing that, he’d also been too busy with Mark and Caroline.
Devin leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand over his face. He had always looked the most like their father but never more so than now. Despite the happiness he’d found with his fiancée, he looked tired and tense, as if he’d been working too hard. At the family company or at keeping family secrets?
“What do you know about that night?” Thad wondered.
“I wasn’t even home,” Devin reminded him, his voice gruff with guilt. “I’d snuck out.”
“You were sixteen,” Thad said. “You wanted to hang out with your friends like other sixteen-year-olds. None of what happened was your fault. You couldn’t have prevented their deaths if you’d been home.”
Knowing Devin, he probably would have gotten himself killed, as well, if he’d even heard anything at all. The master bedroom was in an entirely separate wing of the house from where the kids’ bedrooms were, accessed by separate stairwells.
“We’ll never know that for certain,” Devin pointed out. “But Jolie’s helped me deal with it so that I could finally let the past go.”
Thad wouldn’t be able to do that until the killer had finally been brought to justice, and he wasn’t sure that even that would be enough for him. But he wouldn’t know until the killer was caught. “What do you know about the past that made Natalie’s paternity no surprise to you?”
Devin sighed wearily. “You’re not going to let this go. Damn reporter …”
Thad grinned. “That’s what I am.”
His brother fixed him with a steady gaze as if trying to determine if Thad told him the truth. “Is that all you are?”
Nerves tightened his stomach, but he forced a laugh. “You’re not getting out of this.” Nor was he getting the truth from Thad. At least not the whole truth. For the most part, he was a real photojournalist, reporting real stories for a real news station, but that was only a small part of what he was.
“I’m not an eleven-year-old kid, Devin. You don’t need to protect me anymore. Tell me everything you know about our parents. It’s the only way we’re going to catch their real killer.”
Devin hesitated as if determined to protect their memory.
“I don’t remember that much about them,” Thad said with regret and guilt. He had been eleven when they’d died; he should have had more memories of them.
What would Mark have when Thad left? At three, would he remember his father at all if, like Michaels, Thad didn’t make it out of his next assignment?
“I even looked through old photo albums the other day,” he said, but that had been to compare how much his son looked like he had at that age, “and they were hardly in them.”
“They weren’t around much,” Devin admitted. “Dad was here all the time, building this company. He was so ambitious.” He surveyed the office with pride in their father’s accomplishments.
He needed to take pride in what he’d accomplished, too. But there was something else he’d left out. “What about Mom?” Thad asked.
“You must remember how beautiful she was?”
Thad shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s my memory, though, or all the news reports that have been done about her over the years. They talk about her like she was a movie star or a princess.”
“She was the perfect trophy wife for a rich and powerful man like our father,” Devin said. “But she craved attention and always had to be the center of it.”
Thad stilled his usual restless pacing and focused on his brother. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that they weren’t happy.”
Thad remembered yelling. Screaming. Slamming doors. And he winced, realizing now what had been happening. “You were the oldest. You knew what was really going on with them.”
Devin nodded. “Affairs. While Dad was working so hard building this company, Mom was sleeping around.”
“With who?” His gut churned at the prospect that there was more than one. Finding Natalie’s biological father might not be as easy as Thad had hoped.
“I don’t know.” Devin shrugged. “I didn’t really want to know.” He sighed. “Hell, I don’t think our father wanted to know, either. They fought about her going out all the time, but I don’t think he realized she’d actually taken it as far as she had—to a hotel one of my friends worked at. Or maybe Dad was just too proud to admit it.”
“We need to find out who these men were,” Thad said, although the thought of delving into their mother’s affairs made him nauseous. There had been no mention of her affairs in the police report. The detectives had figured the murders were the result of a botched burglary and hadn’t looked any further for motives or suspects than the man who’d spent twenty years in prison for crimes he hadn’t committed.
“Do you remember the name of the hotel?”
Devin named one renowned for its discretion. “That was twenty years ago. You aren’t going to find out anything now.”
“I’ll try.” But he didn’t like his chances, either.
“That’s your theory here?” Devin said. “That Natalie’s real dad murdered our parents?”
“Why else would his son try to destroy the evidence that cleared Rick Campbell of the crimes?” he asked. “It’s a lead. About the only one we have right now.”
“You’ve been scarce lately,” Devin remarked. “Have you been chasing down leads?”
No. He’d been chasing down a squealing little boy who’d thrown snowballs at him. And kissing a woman he’d had no business kissing. After he’d forced that kiss on her, he’d been lucky she hadn’t thrown him out. Instead, she’d been accommodating about Thad spending time with their son. But usually she made herself scarce, going grocery shopping or Christmas shopping while he and Mark hung out.
He would spend tonight with both of them, as if they were a real family. But that they could never be, not just because of Thad’s real job but because of his real past.
HE WASN’T GOING TO SHOW. Caroline had known it the minute Mark had asked his father to meet them at the mall this Friday night to see Santa. Thad Kendall had been hunkered down, deeply embedded, in war zones. He had nearly been blown up and had almost been abducted, if there was any truth to news reports about him. But Mark asking him to visit Santa Claus was the first time Caroline had ever seen a flicker of panic in his blue eyes.
He hated Christmas. She understood why. And if she didn’t have a son who loved it, she would have been more sensitive to Thad’s predicament. But she hadn’t made an excuse to get him off the hook with Mark. She’d waited for him to come up with his own excuse.
Instead, he’d agreed, with a grim determination, as if he really intended to show up. And maybe he would. Maybe he hadn’t lied to their son.
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Lisa Childs
He had fantasized about what they could have had …
A lopsided snowman in the front yard. No, this would have never been his home. Ever since his parents had been murdered in their beds on Christmas Eve, Thad had never had a home, or at least he’d never let any place feel like one.
But Thad needed an angel now. As much as he needed to leave Caroline alone, he needed even more to see her face.
She wasn’t the one who opened the door at his knock, though.
At first it looked as though it had swung open of its own volition, until Thad adjusted his line of vision way down to the little boy who stood in the doorway. With his dark brown hair and blue eyes, the kid was a miniature version of Thad.
Caroline had had his son.
About the Author
Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a Rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
Daddy Bombshell
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Melissa Jeglinski for being a wonderful, supportive friend as well as an amazing agent!
Chapter One
His finger twitched and, as if by reflex alone, he squeezed the trigger. The gun vibrated in his hand as the bullet propelled down the barrel. He didn’t miss.
He never did….
The body dropped facedown onto the flagstones of the patio. Blood saturated clothing and pooled on the patio beneath the body.
Thad Kendall closed the distance between them and hunched down, feeling for a pulse. Nothing flickered beneath the skin, which was already growing cold despite the heat of the fire that was burning down the cottage on the other side of the patio.
Who the hell was this person who had set fire to the cottage and killed the man near the front of the cottage—not to mention fired all those shots that Thad had barely dodged?
He drew in a deep breath of acrid smoke. Then he reached out and rolled the body over so he could see the face. His sister’s distinctive green eyes, wide with shock, stared up at him.
“No!” Thad awoke with the shout and jerked upright in bed. He had already kicked off the covers, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his chest and back. The perspiration chilled him nearly as much as the dream had.
But it wasn’t just a dream; it was a memory of the shooting that had happened a week ago.
A knock rapped softly against his door, but before he could clear his throat to respond, it creaked open. “You okay?” a feminine voice gently asked.
He grabbed up a T-shirt from beside the bed and dragged it over his head. “Yeah, yeah …”
Just as she hadn’t hesitated before opening the door, she didn’t hesitate before crossing the room and sitting on his bed. “You were yelling,” she said. “Did you have a bad dream?”
Thad stared into his sister’s wide green eyes, which were full of concern and—thank God—life. He hadn’t shot her that night, and the man he had shot hadn’t really had her eyes. His had been a flat brown color, but something about the size and shape of them—as well as the man’s other features—had reminded Thad so much of Natalie that the image had haunted him ever since he’d turned the body over.
“The worst …”
She shuddered. “I know what that’s like.”
He snaked an arm around her shoulders. “Yes, you do.”
Twenty years ago, Natalie had found their parents dead in their beds on Christmas morning, and even though she later hadn’t remembered finding their bodies, nightmares had plagued her ever since their brutal murders. A man had been arrested, convicted and sentenced to two life terms, but just recently DNA evidence had proved that man’s innocence.
So the real killer was still out there.
It couldn’t have been the man Thad had shot. He hadn’t been much older than Thad’s thirty-one, so he would have been just a kid himself two decades ago. That was about all they knew for certain about the dead guy—his approximate age and that his first name had maybe been Wade.
Even though Wade hadn’t been old enough to be the Christmas Eve Killer, as the media had dubbed their parents’ murderer, Thad still wanted to learn more about the man he’d killed. Like why he’d been stalking and trying to kill Natalie….
“You used to come into my room and comfort me,” she remembered with a wistful sigh.
“And now you’re comforting me.” He grinned at the irony.
She leaned her head on his shoulder, her blond hair tickling his cheek. He and his oldest brother, Devin, were dark haired and blue eyed like their father had been, while his brother Ash and Natalie had their mother’s green eyes. Natalie had her straight blond hair, too.
But her sensitive heart was hers alone. “It’s my fault you’re having nightmares.”
“No, it’s not,” he denied. She couldn’t have guessed what he’d realized—he had been the first to notice the resemblance between her and her stalker.
“Yes, it is, because you had to shoot that man to save me and Gray.” She lifted her head and stared up into his face. “I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been for you, killing a man. That’s why you’re having nightmares, Thad.”
If killing a man gave him nightmares, then he wouldn’t have been able to sleep for the past several years.
“Maybe you need to talk to someone,” she suggested, “so that you can sleep. I bet Gray could help you.” Love radiated from her at the mention of her fiancé. “He was a Navy SEAL, you know.”
“I know.” That was why their brother Devin had hired Grayson Scott to protect her when Natalie had first mentioned her stalker to Devin’s fiancée, Jolie Carson.
“Or if you’re not comfortable talking to Gray, you could talk to Ash.” Ash, the second oldest of the Kendall orphans, was also former military and a detective with the St. Louis Police Department.
The oldest, Devin, had joined their uncle, who had become their guardian after their parents’ murders, in running their father’s communications business. Natalie, the baby at twenty-six, worked for Kendall Communications, too, as a graphic artist in the PR department. Thad was the only Kendall who had left St. Louis and hadn’t come back except for very rare visits to check on his family.
Even now he wasn’t back for good. Once his parents’ murderer was finally brought to justice, he would leave again.
“Natalie.” He squeezed her shoulders. “I don’t need to talk to anyone about the shooting.” But he needed to talk to someone. The DNA results had to be back by now. But instead of thinking about the crime-scene tech who was now his sister-in-law, another woman came to mind. Hell, that woman had never really left his mind once during the four years since he had seen her last.
“If you don’t want to talk to anyone about the shooting, you’re not going to want to leave the estate,” she said with a glance toward the window. Sunlight streamed through the partially open blinds.
“Those damn reporters camped out yet?”
She giggled. “You say that like you’re not one of them.”
He wasn’t. But only a very few people knew that. Everyone else believed he was really just an award-winning photojournalist for a cable network. “Well, I’d rather be doing the interviewing,” he clarified, “than being interviewed.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” she murmured.
Growing up a Kendall in St. Louis had been like growing up royalty. The media had recorded their lives, snapping pictures at school dances and proms and their high school graduations. And that coverage always intensified this time of year, around the anniversary of their parents’ murders. Since the discovery that their killer had never been caught, the media had gone crazy trying to get the siblings’ reactions. And in Thad’s case, his story about the shooting his first night back in St. Louis.
“Is that why you’re here and not at Gray’s?” he asked. “You’re hiding out?”
Her face flushed with embarrassment. “Hey, we’re not married yet.”
“Hasn’t stopped the two of you from being joined at the hip,” he teased, amused that her big brother’s knowing that she stayed at her fiancé’s would fluster her so much.
“Well, he’s my bodyguard,” she reminded him. “He’s supposed to be with me 24/7.”
He chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think he considers that a duty of his job. He loves you.”
She emitted a happy sigh. “Isn’t it wonderful? Devin, Ash and I all found love—true love.”
“Yeah, wonderful,” he murmured sarcastically.
She pinched his arm. “You’re such a cynic. I can’t wait until you fall in love, brother dear. You’re going to fall the hardest of all of us.”
He already had. But that was just one more thing his family didn’t know about him. Hell, until he’d left her he hadn’t even known how hard he’d fallen for her. By the time he’d realized the extent of his feelings, he had been a world away from her and in too deep to get out.
Hell, he hadn’t even been able to come back when his family needed him most. By the time he’d finally escaped the life that hardly anyone knew he lived, he’d almost been too late. Natalie had nearly died in the fire her stalker had set to her cottage, and her fiancé had nearly been shot to death trying to save her from that fire. The stalker had ambushed Gray as he’d carried Natalie from her burning cottage.
Thad had absolutely no regrets over killing her stalker. In the same situation, he would not have done anything differently—except for making sure he’d had the kill shot before Gray had taken a bullet for his sister. But his future brother-in-law was fine now, fully recovered. Thad was the one everyone kept looking at like he was going to fall apart. Because none of them knew about his work for the U.S. Department of State, they thought the shooting was bothering him.
What was really bothering him was the fact that his parents’ murderer had never paid for his horrific crimes. Thad wanted justice.
But that wasn’t all he wanted.
CAROLINE EMERSON CROOKED her neck to cradle the cordless phone between her ear and her shoulder while she folded laundry. Her best friend was given to marathon telephone calls even though they’d just seen each other that morning at church and saw each other every weekday at the elementary school where they both taught.
“You still haven’t heard from him?” Tammy asked.
A hard knot tightened in Caroline’s stomach, but she forced a smile into her voice. “No.”
“But he’s been back in St. Louis more than a week now.”
And what a week it had been. His handsome face had been all over the news.
Caroline reminded her overly romantic friend, “He’s been a little busy.”
For once he had been making news instead of reporting it: World famous photojournalist who spent years in war-torn countries finds most danger at home, forced to kill to protect his family.
“I was sure he would call you,” Tammy said, her voice heavy with disappointment.
“I was sure he wouldn’t.” But even though her head had been sensibly convinced that he wouldn’t, her stupid heart had held out hope, so she was disappointed, too.
“I set the two of you up four years ago because I knew you were perfect for each other.” Because Tammy had found the love of her life, she was convinced that everyone else could find the happiness she had with her husband. She didn’t realize how fortunate she had been to find Steve Stehouwer—the sweet man was one in a million.
For the magical month that Thad had been home in St. Louis, Caroline had believed Tammy’s matchmaking successful. But she’d had years since then that had proved how wrong her friend had been. Thad Kendall had not been perfect for her at all. But he had given her one perfect …
“He has been busy.” Tammy rallied her eternal optimism. “So you should call him.”
Caroline choked on her own saliva and the nerves that rushed over her. “No.”
“You should have called him right after you found out you were—”
“I couldn’t reach him then,” Caroline interrupted, “and I doubt I’d be able to reach him now.”
“I could see if Steve has a contact at the station who could get a message to him.” Steve and Thad had taken a journalism class together in college; that was how Tammy had met and then proceeded to introduce Thad to Caroline.
But Steve was an anchor at a local station whereas Thad traveled the world. He’d only been home a month when they’d been going out. Between assignments, he’d explained. Somehow she hadn’t thought he was talking about just photojournalism jobs.
The ever-romantic Tammy had believed he would fall in love with Caroline and stay home. And maybe, for a little while, she had let herself believe that, too. Or at least hope. But those hopes had been dashed forever when he’d left.
As far as Caroline knew, this was the first time he had been home in nearly four years. And in all that time, he hadn’t called, hadn’t sent her a letter or even a text message. He had obviously forgotten all about her.
BEFORE COMING HERE, Thad had driven all around St. Louis, over the Poplar Street Bridge and under the shadow of the infamous six-hundred-thirty-story-tall Gateway Arch. Sentimentality hadn’t inspired his impromptu tour of the city he hadn’t seen in years, though.
He had driven all over Greater St. Louis to lose whatever reporters and whoever else might have been following him. So he was certain that his was the only car that turned onto her street.
Four years ago she’d lived in an apartment building, close to the elementary school where she taught second grade. She still worked at the same school, but she had moved out of the apartment into a subdivision with cul-de-sacs and a mixture of newer ranch homes and well-maintained older brick Cape Cods. Thad glanced down at the paper on which he’d scribbled her house number, but before he could locate her address, his cell rang.
The distinctive ring belonged to his boss—his real boss—not the executive at the network everyone else believed to be his real boss. He answered with a succinct “Kendall.”
“We have a problem.”
He mentally cursed. “Michaels still hasn’t been found?” He shouldn’t have left—not with a man missing. But if he hadn’t come back when he had … he shuddered to think what would have happened to Natalie and Gray that night.
“He’s been found,” Agent Anya Smith replied.
His gut tightened with dread. “Not alive?”
“No. And before he died, he’d been tortured. We have no idea what he might have revealed to his captors before his death.” That was what she considered the problem.
Thad considered the problem the senseless murder of a good man. “Len Michaels wouldn’t have given them any information.”
“He had a wife and kids he wanted to get home to,” Anya warned. “He would have revealed anything if he thought it might get him back with his family.”
Grief and regret tore a ragged sigh from Thad. “His wife lost her husband, his children their father,” he reminded his boss.
“He should have gotten out before now,” Anya said. “Being a family man made him a liability … to the rest of us.”
“I don’t really believe—”
She obviously didn’t care what he thought, as she interrupted him to warn, “He might have given you up, Kendall.”
He hadn’t worked with Michaels that often. The agent had acted as a translator, and Thad’s fluency with languages was too well-known for him to warrant a translator. But their last assignment had taken him to an unfamiliar territory, and so he and Michaels had worked together.
Then Anya had passed on Devin’s message to Thad that he was needed back home, and he’d had to leave. Michaels had disappeared shortly after. Guilt twisted Thad’s guts. If he hadn’t left, maybe Michaels would have made it home to his wife and kids.
“If he did give me up, I’m not sure that I’d blame him,” he murmured.
“Kendall, don’t beat yourself up about this,” his supervisor advised. “I authorized your leaving. I sent in another operative.…” Her voice cracked with regret, but then she cleared her throat.
“That operative obviously wasn’t as good as I am,” he said without conceit. It was simple fact that he’d never lost another operative or a contact.
“You’re one of the best,” she agreed. “You need to wrap up whatever’s going on in St. Louis and get back in the field.”
“Soon,” he vowed.
His parents’ killer had gone free for too long; justice could wait no longer.
“I need you back out there. I don’t have to worry about you,” she said. “You’re not a liability.”
“No, you don’t have to worry about me,” he agreed. He had no wife. No kids.
But he might have … had he not left Caroline. She was the marrying kind; he never should have called her after that first disastrous double date with her friends. But she was so damn beautiful. And it wasn’t because of her summer-sky-blue eyes or her silky dark blond hair; it was the kind of beauty that radiated from the inside out. And he’d wanted to see her again and again.
And now, nearly four years after he had left her, he’d wanted to see her again. He clicked off with his boss and then looked up at her house. He didn’t need to check the address—he instinctively knew it was hers.
The brick Cape Cod had a giant wreath on its oak front door. The house sat behind a white picket fence, garlands strung from each snow-topped picket. At night, lights would probably twinkle against the evergreen branches. Lights were also wrapped around the pine tree in the yard and hung like icicles from the eaves.
All the decorations had his stomach churning with his revulsion for Christmas. Caroline loved it, which was just another thing they hadn’t had in common, another reason they could have never made a long-term relationship work.
He had often wondered, over the years, if he should have left her. He had fantasized over what they could have had if he’d stayed instead.…
A lopsided snowman in the front yard. No, this would have never been his home. Ever since his parents had been murdered in their beds on Christmas Eve, Thad had not had a home, or at least he’d never let any place feel like one.
And Caroline was all about home and hearth. Smoke puffed out of the top of the brick chimney—her house even had a fireplace. She probably had two-point-two children by now and a loving, devoted husband who worked a boring nine-to-five job so that he could be home every night to help her with dinner and the kids’ baths.
Thad respected that she had her own life now, and that was why he hadn’t given in to his temptation to mine his St. Louis sources for information about her. He’d hoped she had the life she had always wanted and deserved. He needed to just drive away and leave her alone. But instead he shut off his car and stepped out onto the snow-dusted street. Since getting Devin’s message, he’d been in hell. How could his parents’ killer be free?
But there’d been more, so much more that had happened to his family. His brother Ash had nearly lost his fiancée and their unborn child. Uncle Craig had nearly been framed for his own brother’s and sister-in-law’s murders. And Natalie, sweet Natalie, had been stalked and terrorized. His family had been through hell.
So Thad needed an angel. As much as he needed to leave her alone, he needed even more to see her face.
She wasn’t the one who opened the door at his knock, though. At first it looked as though it had swung open of its own volition, until Thad adjusted his line of vision way down to the little boy who stood in the doorway. With his dark brown hair and blue eyes, the kid was a miniature version of Thad.
Caroline had had his son.
Chapter Two
“Good luck,” Tammy whispered through the open driver’s window after Caroline had buckled Mark into his booster seat in the back.
“Thank you,” Caroline replied. For the good-luck wishes and for picking up her son, so that the little boy wouldn’t overhear the explosion that was certain to come from Thad Kendall.
Despite the cold wind that drove icy snowflakes into her face and chin-length hair, Caroline stood outside, watching Tammy’s minivan drive away. And avoiding Thad.
But he deserved an explanation, which he’d already agreed to wait for until Tammy picked up Mark, so they could talk in private. She drew in a deep breath, the cold air burning her lungs, and turned back to the house. Through the big picture window, she could see Thad pacing the length of her living room—giving a wide berth around the Christmas tree as if it were a vicious dog that might attack if he got too close.
She pulled open the front door and stepped into the room with him. Warmth from the crackling fire immediately melted the snowflakes from her hair and skin so that they ran down her face like tears. Her fingers trembled as she brushed away the moisture. Despite the warmth of the room, she kept her coat on, wrapped tight around her as if she still needed the protection.
Thad didn’t stop pacing. She remembered how he had never stopped moving. How had he ever managed to hold still long enough to take the poignant photos of war and tragedy that had earned him such accolades in his nearly decadelong career?
“So are you going to try to lie to me?” he asked. His voice, colder even than the winter wind, chilled her to the bone.
“Lie to you?” she repeated, the question echoing hollowly off the coffered ceiling.
“Play me for a fool, deny that that little boy is my son,” he said, heat in his voice now as his blue eyes burned with anger.
Still, she shivered. “Mark is definitely your son.”
“Then why did you keep that from me?” he demanded to know with an intensity that might have had Caroline taking a step back if righteous indignation wasn’t pumping through her veins right now.
Except for on the news and in newspapers, she hadn’t seen him in nearly four years. Her anger ignited and she lashed out, “How was I supposed to tell you? When you called me? When you wrote me? Oh, yeah, you didn’t do any of those things!”
He shoved his hand through his hair, tousling the dark brown strands. “We agreed that a clean break would be easier.”
“I agreed.” As she’d fought back her tears and silently called herself all kinds of a fool for falling for him when he’d been clear right from the start that he had to leave again. Why hadn’t she listened to him instead of Tammy and her own stupid heart? “But the clean break was your idea, so I figured you wanted nothing to do with me anymore.”
“Caroline …” He reached out but pulled his hand back before touching her face. “I never led you on. I was straight with you up front.”
And that was why she should have never gone out with him. But the attraction between them had been so strong—as strong as it was now, her skin tingling even though he hadn’t touched her—that she hadn’t been able to resist. And she really had hoped that her friend was right, that if he fell in love with her, he would stay.
But he hadn’t.…
“I know you had to leave,” she said, and she suspected she even knew why—because it was too hard for him to stay in the city where his parents had been so brutally murdered. “But I didn’t know where you were.”
“You could have given a message to my brothers Devin or Ash or to my uncle Craig,” he said. “They would have made sure I got it.”
She laughed, but with bitterness not amusement. “I don’t know your brothers or your uncle. I never met your family,” she reminded him, feeling now as she had then, as if she had been some dirty secret of his. Had dating an elementary school teacher been so far beneath the status of one of the illustrious Kendalls of St. Louis that he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his family?
“But you know who they are and how to reach them,” he stubbornly persisted.
Of course she knew; everyone in St. Louis and most of the United States knew who every one of the Kendalls was.
“But your family doesn’t know who I am,” she retorted. “What reason would they have to believe that I was really carrying your child and not just trying to make a claim on the Kendall fortune?”
According to local gossip, several other women had tried to get their hands on some Kendall money albeit through his brothers and not Thad.
“My brothers or uncle would have told me that you’d come to see them—”
“When?” she interrupted. “Are you in regular contact with them? Have you even come home in the past four years?” She waited, almost hoping he hadn’t so she wouldn’t be disappointed that he hadn’t contacted her earlier.
“I would have gotten word,” he insisted, a muscle twitching along his tightly clenched jaw.
“And what would you have done?” she wondered. “Would you have come back home? Would you have given up your nomad lifestyle for diaper duty and two-a.m. feedings?”
“You did that all alone?” He glanced around the living room as if he were looking for her support system.
Her parents had moved to Arizona years ago, coming back to St. Louis for only a few weeks every summer. Except for her friends, she had no one.
She nodded in response, but she didn’t want his sympathy or his guilt. “And I loved every minute of it. Mark was the easiest baby and now he’s the sweetest little boy.”
“I guess I will have to take your word for what kind of baby he was since I’ve missed out on those years,” he said.
He had stopped his restless pacing and stood now in front of the portrait wall of her living room, staring wistfully at all the pictures of their son. In addition to the studio portraits she’d had taken every few months, she’d framed collages of snapshots, too. She’d recorded every special moment in his life, and hers, because she’d been there. Thad hadn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t have been even if he’d known. But she’d robbed him of that choice.
Now the guilt was hers. She should have tried to talk to his family so that one of them might have gotten word to him. It hadn’t been fair of her to just assume that he wouldn’t have wanted any involvement in his son’s life just because he hadn’t wanted any involvement in hers.
“But I don’t intend to miss out on anything else, Caroline,” Thad said, his voice low and deep as if he were issuing a threat. “I am going to be part of his life.”
“For how long?” she asked. “Just long enough to break his heart when you leave again?” Just like he had broken hers.
THAD’S HEAD POUNDED, tension throbbing at his temples and at the base of his skull. Maybe it was the chemicals in his new sister-in-law’s crime lab at the St. Louis Police Department that had caused the headache.
But the fumes weren’t toxic or Rachel wouldn’t have been working still, not in her condition. The petite brunette was very pregnant, her belly protruding through the sides of the white lab coat.
What had Caroline looked like when she was pregnant? She was taller than Rachel with more generous curves. Had she hidden her pregnancy for a while? Being a single mom might have caused her problems at the elementary school where she worked.
He hadn’t asked about that. He’d been too stunned and angry to do more than yell at her. And he hadn’t talked to his son at all. Knowing how close he’d been to losing his temper, he had let her call her friend to pick up the boy. Instead of talking to him while they waited, Thad had just stared at the kid and had probably scared him.
Had he scared Caroline, too? After he’d demanded a relationship with his son, she had asked him to leave, saying that she needed time to think. That had been a couple of days ago.
All he’d been doing was thinking.
“Hey, little bro!” Devin snapped his fingers in Thad’s face. “You called this meeting. Down here.” The CEO of Kendall Communications glanced around the sterile lab and shuddered. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t care,” Ash murmured as he pressed a kiss against the nape of Rachel’s neck, which her high ponytail left exposed. “He gave me an excuse to see my gorgeous wife.”
“Get a room,” Thad grumbled.
“You’re just jealous,” Ash teased. But he was also right.
Thad was jealous that he’d missed out on seeing Caroline like Rachel was now, glowing and beautiful in her pregnancy … with his son.
The door to the lab opened again. “I’m here,” a deep voice murmured as former navy SEAL Grayson Scott joined them. “And if my fiancée asks, I was out bonding with my brothers-in-law-to-be.”
“How are we bonding?” Devin asked with a grin. His eyes gleamed with curiosity and mischief. “Drinking? Working out?”
Color flushed Gray’s face, and he grumbled his reply. “We’re Christmas shopping.”
Rachel laughed. “Now you’re going to have to actually go shopping, so that you weren’t really lying to Natalie.”
The thought of Christmas shopping, of the music and the crowds and all the goddamn cheer, had Thad’s stomach churning.
“It’s better that she doesn’t know why we’re all together,” Thad pointed out. “There is no point in upsetting Natalie until we know the truth.”
Rachel nodded and was suddenly all business. “The FBI lab results came back.” She stared at Thad, her hazel eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I don’t know how you got the results rushed, but the DNA report is back already. It confirms my findings.”
Thad hadn’t needed a DNA test to prove that he was Mark’s father. The little boy was him twenty-eight years ago.
“So was I right?”
Rachel studied him again. “I don’t know how you knew.…”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know for sure. But the eyes …” He shuddered even now, thinking of how looking into the dead man’s eyes had been like looking into his sister’s. Only the color had been different. “So Natalie is only our half sister?”
“According to the DNA tests you all took in comparison to Natalie’s samples that you had taken while she was in the hospital, and the dead man’s samples I took from the morgue—” Rachel’s ponytail bobbed as she nodded “—her stalker was her half brother.”
“So she had a different father from all of you?” Gray asked, looking somewhat ill.
“That’s the most likely scenario,” Devin said with a weary sigh of resignation, as if this was merely confirmation of something he had already suspected.
He’d been older than the rest of them, sixteen, when their parents had been murdered. He remembered them best. Or perhaps, worst.
“We need to tell her,” Gray said. After dragging in a deep breath, he added, “I need to tell her.”
“No,” Thad said with a head shake that only intensified the throbbing pain. “I’ll tell her.”
Gray’s jaw clenched. “Any particular reason you want to be the one to tell her?”
Over the years, Thad, Devin and Ash had given Natalie’s boyfriends a tough time because none of them had ever been good enough for her. Until now. Grayson Scott was a good man, but that hadn’t stopped them all from being a little rough on him in the beginning. He’d had to prove to them, as well as Natalie, how much he loved her. Taking a bullet to save her life had pretty much sealed the deal for all of them.
“I’m the one who killed him,” Thad offered in explanation. “I’m the reason she’ll never get to know this guy.”
“He didn’t want to get to know her,” Gray reminded him. “He wanted to kill her.”
“Why?” Devin asked. “Knowing now that they’re related, it makes even less sense that he was stalking her.”
“Did you find out anything else from his DNA?” Ash asked his wife. “Like who the hell he is?”
She shook her head. “We already ran his prints. While they matched the ones from the break-in at my apartment, he wasn’t in the system.”
“So he is the guy who tried to get the DNA results from our parents’ crime scene?” Devin asked. “He’s the one who tried to destroy the evidence that cleared Rick Campbell?”
The petty thief had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had done twenty years’ time for someone else’s crime. He never got the chance to enjoy freedom again. He’d been killed to cover up the corruption that had rushed his conviction in order to clear a high-profile case and advance a career.
Ash gave a grim nod in response to his older brother’s question. Rachel had been hurt during the break-in; it was how he had learned she was pregnant since they’d broken up months earlier.
“We need to find out this guy’s identity,” Gray said. “I’m not even sure Wade is his real first name. It’s just what he told the girl at the coffee shop Natalie goes to.”
“Did you get any leads from the photograph that was released to the media?” Devin asked Ash.
Ash shook his head. “The new chief wouldn’t let us release the morgue photo, and that surveillance photo from the ATM camera outside the coffee shop is too grainy for anyone to make a positive identification.”
Devin turned to Thad. “Why don’t you leak a better photo?”
“The chief will know where the photo came from,” Rachel warned them.
“We don’t need to know who this guy was,” Thad said, which elicited gasps from his family.
Gray’s neck snapped back in indignation. “What the hell—he tried to kill Natalie—”
“He’s dead now. He’s no longer a threat,” Thad pointed out. “He was about my age. He couldn’t have been our parents’ killer.”
“Our parents’ killer might not be out there anymore,” Ash remarked. “He could be locked up or dead. But this guy, Natalie’s half brother, is the one who attacked Rachel to try to destroy the DNA evidence from our parents’ murder—”
“Why did he do it? He couldn’t have been their killer,” he repeated, “so he must have been trying to protect someone.”
Gray sucked in a breath. “Maybe that’s why he tried to kill Natalie.”
“Because she did see something that night our parents were murdered,” Ash said. “Maybe the killer …”
“We don’t need to know who this Wade guy was,” Thad repeated, “although finding that out will help us learn what we really need to know—who his father is.”
“And if he was locked up or dead, his son wouldn’t have gone to the extent he had to protect him,” Ash reasoned. He wrapped his arms around Rachel, as if he needed to protect her even inside the lab in the basement of the St. Louis Police Department.
Gray swore beneath his breath. “So even though that son of a bitch is dead, there’s still a threat out there?”
Thad shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. Rachel, we’ll need you to run the DNA from the old crime scene and compare it to the stalker’s DNA.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t have access to any of the original evidence anymore,” she said, patting her belly. “Not even the results. I’ve been taken off the case because no one with any connection to a Kendall is being allowed near the case files or the evidence.”
“They don’t trust that we really want justice,” Ash said.
“Can you talk to someone with access and have them run it?” Thad persisted.
She shook her head. “The stalker was too young to be considered a viable suspect in the old murders. They won’t look at him for any connection.”
“That’s why the Kendalls should be running the investigation,” Thad said. It was why they were going to damn well run their own.
A short while later, when Thad walked through the parking garage to his car, he knew that there was definitely a threat. He felt someone’s gaze boring into his back. It could have been reporters, but he doubted it. If they’d made it past the police department parking garage attendant, then they would have been rushing him with cameras and questions. They wouldn’t have just watched him.
But then why would the killer watch him? He hadn’t witnessed anything the night his parents died. He’d done nothing to save them. But he had saved lives in his real job. He’d also taken lives. Maybe Michaels had given him up. He reached beneath his jacket, but his holster was locked up, with his gun, inside his glove box. He wouldn’t have gotten it past the security scanners in the police department unless he’d had Ash clear it for him. And his brother would have had too many questions about Thad having a license for a concealed weapon.
Now, as the hairs on the nape of his neck lifted with foreboding, Thad wished he’d answered those questions, so that he was armed. Keeping close to vehicles for cover, he visually scanned the garage, looking for whoever was staring at him with such intensity. Yes, there was definitely a threat still out there, and it was focused wholly on Thad.
ONE KILLER ALWAYS RECOGNIZES another…
Thad Kendall couldn’t see him through the tinted windows of his SUV, but still Ed ducked down when the man turned toward his vehicle. How could anyone be fooled by Kendall’s cover?
He was so much more than a bored rich kid or a globe-trotting reporter. Sure, maybe it was because of where he’d reported stories that he moved as he did—as if he had a target on his back. But when he’d felt Ed watching him, he had reached for a gun whereas a reporter’s instinct would have been to grab a microphone or a camera instead. Not a weapon.
Kendall was also a damn good shot … when he was armed. But he had no gun now. No protection at all. And he was so close. All Ed would have to do was start the engine, stomp on the gas and run him down. Ed shook with anticipation—not withdrawal. He didn’t need a drink. He needed vengeance. He could almost imagine the satisfying crunch of the man’s bones beneath the tires of his SUV.
It would hurt Kendall. But not enough.…
The son of a bitch wouldn’t feel as much pain as he had caused. So killing him wouldn’t be satisfying at all—not until Thad Kendall had suffered. All Ed had to do was watch and figure out what would cause Thad the most pain.
Chapter Three
This time Caroline opened the door to his knock. And no one was surprised, like when Mark had let Thad into their house. Then she had been on the phone with Tammy when the doorbell rang, so her son had beaten her to the door and totally disregarded the rule of not opening it unless he knew who was at it.
This time she’d known Thad was coming because she had invited him. But still her heart started beating faster at the sight of him. Fluffy snowflakes melted in his dark hair and clung to his high cheekbones and strong jaw. She stepped back to let him inside, but he hesitated, glancing over his shoulder.
She followed his gaze to the street. Was he waiting for someone? A lawyer? That was why she’d called him—because she hadn’t wanted to force him to fight for his parental rights. With the full resources of the Kendall money and power, he couldn’t lose.
But she could potentially lose her son. Her salary barely stretched to cover her mortgage, Mark’s day care and their living expenses. She couldn’t afford a lawyer, too.
Thad finally stepped inside and closed the door, shutting out the snow and the cold and whoever he might have been looking for.
“Is Mark here?” he asked, glancing around the inside of the house like he had the outside.
Was that a habit he’d picked up from traveling to war-torn countries? He’d probably had to learn to be vigilant in order to stay alive. A lot of reporters hadn’t made it back from the places Thad had been.
Caroline drew in a shaky breath. “Mark is upstairs.”
“So you’re not worried about him hearing us fight?” he asked with a glance toward the open stairwell.
“I’m not going to fight you.”
“What does that mean?” he asked. His eyes, which were the same sapphire-blue of his son’s, widened in surprise. “You’re going to let me see him?”
Her stomach tightened with nerves, but she couldn’t deny her son the chance to get to know his father. Given Thad’s lifestyle, this could possibly be the only chance the boy would ever get. Too bad he would probably be too young to remember him. “If that’s what you really want …”
“He’s my son. Of course I want to see him,” he replied, as if offended by her suggestion. “I’ve already missed so much.”
“And you’ll miss even more when you leave again.”
He ducked his chin as if she’d taken a swing at him. But he didn’t deny that he would leave. “I have a job to do.”
“You don’t have to leave St. Louis to be a reporter,” she pointed out. “You could get a job at any station or paper in the city.”
“Not reporting the story,” he said. “In St. Louis, I would be the story.”
“Because of the shooting.”
Everyone else had been so surprised that Thad Kendall had killed a man. Everyone but Caroline. Beneath his charm and devastating grin, there was a ruthlessness that she had glimpsed the day he’d left her without even a backward glance.
He had a single-minded intensity about his job that seemed to be about more than achieving success or fame. She suspected there was much more to Thad Kendall than anyone realized.
And he was her son’s father. She swallowed a sigh.
“You’re not looking at me like everyone else has been,” he said. He was actually the one looking at her, his gaze intent on her face.
“How’s that?” She had barely let herself look at him at all, as she was determined to not let her foolish heart rule her head once again. She would not fall for Thad Kendall, no matter how damn handsome he was.
“All my family,” he said, “even members of the press keep looking at me like I’m going to fall apart because I pulled the trigger and killed a man.”
“I think you’ve had to do a lot harder things than that in your life,” she admitted.
He jerked his head in a grim nod. Then he stepped closer and skimmed his fingers along her jaw. “Leaving you was one of the hardest.”
She sucked in a breath as her traitorous heart slammed against her ribs. “Don’t.” She moved back so that his hand fell away from her face. “Just don’t …”
“It’s true.”
“You left and never looked back,” she reminded him. “I’m not looking back, either. I’m looking ahead to when you leave again and I have to explain to Mark.”
“I’ll explain to Mark that it’s my job to go to other countries.”
“Will you want to make a clean break with him, too?” She’d worried about that for the past few sleepless nights since her son had opened the door to his father. Mark had had so many questions about the stranger who’d come to their house, and he had deserved to know the truth.
“No. I’ll stay in contact with him,” he promised as he stepped closer again. His voice dropped to an intimate murmur. “And with you …”
His lips curved into that devastating grin. He was arrogant—he couldn’t look like he did and not realize how women wanted him. And he was a Kendall, used to getting what he wanted, and apparently since he was back in St. Louis, he wanted her.
With an effort she steadied her racing pulse and shook her head. “I don’t want a relationship with you.”
His grin faded. “Caroline …”
“Truthfully, I don’t want you to have a relationship with Mark,” she said, keeping her voice low so that her son wouldn’t overhear. “I’m afraid you’re going to break his heart like you did mine.”
He groaned. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” she admitted. “And you won’t mean to hurt him, either. But you will.”
“So what do you want me to do?” he asked. “Pretend that I never saw him? That I don’t know I have a son? Do you want me to just walk away?”
That was the problem. She didn’t want him to walk away. Ever. But he would. “It’s what you do best.”
“Damn it! You’re not being fair!”
“No. I’m not,” she readily agreed. But she needed to keep reminding herself that she couldn’t fall for him again. She wouldn’t be able to help heal her son’s broken heart if she was dealing with her own.
“I didn’t know how much I hurt you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, refusing his apology. “I’m over you,” she said, trying to convince them both of that. “And I intend to stay over you.”
“If you’re so over me, why haven’t you moved on?” he challenged her. “Why aren’t you married or involved with someone else?”
“How—how do you know that I’m not involved with someone?” she asked.
“Since finding out about Mark, I checked with some of my sources.…”
Damn Tammy. “I’m focused on my son right now,” she said, “not dating.”
“I can’t believe men haven’t been beating down your door to take you out,” he said.
She laughed at the outrageous compliment, refusing to be charmed again. Mark was three and a half, but she had fifteen pounds of baby weight to lose yet. Maybe twenty.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Even more beautiful now than you were four years ago.”
Her stomach muscles tightened with desire, but she shook her head. “I am smarter now than I was four years ago. I’m not going to fall for your patented Kendall charm.”
“Patented?”
“Already at three, Mark has it. He can wrap me completely around his little finger.” Just like Thad used to be able to do.
“You’re not immune to me,” he said, his voice husky and his eyes bright with desire. “And I can prove it to you.”
When she opened her mouth to ask him how, his lips were there covering hers. His tongue delved deep, stroking over hers, stroking her passion from flickering flame to full conflagration. He’d wrapped his arms around her, too, so that she couldn’t step back. But she didn’t want to get away; she wanted to get closer. His chest pressed against hers, his heart beating the same frantic rhythm as hers.
“Hey!” exclaimed a little voice, full of curiosity. “What are you doing to my mommy?”
They broke apart as guiltily as teenagers caught necking on the couch. Caroline would have laughed at the shock on Thad’s flushed face if she hadn’t felt more like crying. She didn’t know what was bringing her closer to tears—the kiss or the fact that her son had interrupted it.
THAD’S SKIN BURNED, his fingers numb from the cold as he rolled a snowball across Caroline’s front yard. He’d brought no gloves with him and Caroline’s were too small. But when Mark had asked him to build another snowman to go with the lopsided one already in their front yard, Thad had been unable to refuse no matter how many excuses he’d had to do just that.
She was right. The kid had the Kendall charm but with Caroline’s innate kindness and generosity.
“I can roll it,” Mark said, putting his mittened hands over Thad’s. “You’re cold.”
Maybe his skin was cold, but the rest of him was still on fire from kissing Caroline. If Mark hadn’t interrupted them …
Caroline probably would have pulled away. She was over him. He’d kissed her to prove her wrong, but instead he’d proved to himself that he wasn’t over her. Not even close.
He wanted more than a kiss, but she wanted nothing from him but for him to not hurt their son. He stared at the tiny, mittened hands clasping his, and his heart twisted in his chest.
“Just a li’l bigger,” the boy directed. When the snowball grew to the size of a beach ball, he stopped and tried to lift it.
Thad lifted it instead, setting it atop the other two balls they’d formed into the base of the snowman. The lopsided snowman was actually a snow lady, and he and Mark had already made a snow boy. “There. It’s done.”
Mark shook his head. “We gotta make his face.” He reached in his pocket for the things that Caroline had given him after she’d bundled him into a snowsuit, boots, mittens, scarf and hat.
She was a great mom, just as he’d known she would be. That was another reason he’d forced himself to leave her four years ago. She’d deserved more than he was capable of giving. Because of his real job, he’d never intended to be a husband or a father. He hadn’t wanted to leave a family behind like Len Michaels had.
But he had left behind a son … without ever realizing he’d become a father.
“Here,” Mark said, shoving a carrot into Thad’s cold hand. “You’re gonna have to put it on ‘cuz I’m not big enough.”
Thad handed back the carrot and then, his hands shaking slightly, he slid them around his son and lifted him onto his shoulders. “You’re big enough now.”
A giggle slipped from Mark’s lips. “I’m too big now.” He wrapped one arm around Thad’s neck and leaned forward to reach their snowman. His tongue sticking out between his lips in concentration, he carefully arranged the carrot and a collection of colored stones to make the snowman’s face, which he must have been comparing to Thad’s because he kept looking back and forth between them.
“Mommy says these rocks are the same color as my eyes,” he remarked. He turned toward Thad. “They’re the same color as yours, too.”
“You look like me when I was a little boy,” Thad said.
After discovering he had a son, he’d found some of the old photo albums his aunt Angela kept in the library, and he’d flipped through the pictures of himself and his family. He hadn’t looked through the albums in years because he hadn’t wanted to see old pictures of his parents. Surprisingly there hadn’t been as many in the albums as he’d thought there would have been. The photos had mostly been of just him and his brothers and some of Natalie.
He lifted Mark from his shoulders and then crouched down to the boy’s level. “Do you know why you look like me?”
The child gave a solemn nod. “‘Cuz you’re my dad.”
Thad sucked in a breath of surprise. “You know?” Kissing Caroline had distracted him so much that he hadn’t known whether the boy actually knew who he was yet or not. Mark hadn’t said anything to Thad but to wonder what he’d been doing to his mother and then to ask him to make a snowman with him.
“When I came home from Aunt Tammy and Uncle Steve’s, Mommy told me who you are,” he said, as if it had been no big deal for his father to finally show up after three years.
“Do you have any questions for me?” Thad said. He had a million for Mark. He wanted to learn everything about the little boy, everything that he had missed.
Mark shook his head, though, and returned his attention to the cluster of snowmen. “Look!” he exclaimed with pride. “There’s a snow mommy and a snow kid and now a snow daddy.”
“Wow,” Thad said, trying to sound suitably impressed. This meant a lot to his son.
“We have a snow family,” Mark said with a bright smile of satisfaction, as if a family was something he’d wanted for a while.
Thad stood back to admire the family, but then the sound of an idling engine drew his gaze to the street beyond the picket fence. Had the white SUV followed him again?
He suspected it had been in the parking garage the day before when he’d felt someone watching him. Then he’d thought he glimpsed it near the estate, as well. But he’d made sure he wasn’t followed here, taking a circuitous route again.
And really he was probably overreacting. There were a million white SUVs. He hadn’t noted the plate, so he couldn’t be certain if the one he’d seen near the estate was the same one or even the same make and year as the one from the parking garage.
But he couldn’t shake the uneasiness he’d felt in the parking garage, the sense of foreboding that someone was watching him with an intense hatred. He glanced toward the house and confirmed that he was being watched.
Caroline stood at the living-room window, staring intently at him. He doubted she was reliving that kiss as he had and wishing they hadn’t been interrupted. He suspected instead that she was watching to make sure that he hadn’t already screwed up with Mark.
She was right to worry about his parenting skills. The only parenting he’d ever really known had been when Uncle Craig and Aunt Angela became his and his brothers’ and sister’s guardians. But that had been a long time ago.
Where he’d been the past several years had had nothing to do with family and everything to do with survival. His own and all those he’d been able to save. He had to go back to finish his assignment and make sure Michaels’s killers were brought to justice. But what kind of father could he be to Mark if he wasn’t even around?
Something struck the back of his head and exploded in shards of ice that ran down his neck and inside his collar. Thad whirled around so quickly that Mark shrieked and ran from him. He’d stayed alive for years in the most dangerous places in the world but had taken one in the head from his own kid.
He grabbed up a handful of snow and gave chase.
CAROLINE GIGGLED, echoing her son’s laughter that she could hear even through the double panes of glass. He’d nailed his father with that snowball. Thad threw a couple at him, careful to miss wide while stepping squarely in front of the ones that Mark threw back at him.
He had no hat, no gloves, not even a scarf, but he didn’t seem to care about the cold. The only thing he seemed preoccupied with was the street, as he kept glancing back at it.
Was he expecting someone or was it just a habit for him to constantly survey his surroundings? He hadn’t seen that snowball coming.
Just like she hadn’t seen his kiss coming. Or maybe she had but she’d wanted it too much to push him away. If Mark hadn’t interrupted them, she wouldn’t have stopped Thad. Being back in his arms, kissing him, had felt too good—too right. She touched her lips, which tingled yet from the contact with his. She could taste him, too, from when he’d slid his tongue between her lips deep into her mouth.
But she’d meant what she’d told him. Not about being over him—that had been a lie that he’d easily disproved. But about not wanting a relationship with him.
He was her son’s father, and that was all he would ever be to her. Not her lover. Not her boyfriend. Not even her friend.
Because she couldn’t trust him. But she wouldn’t have been able to beat him, either, if she’d fought to keep him away from Mark. Now, seeing them chase each other around the yard, she was glad that she hadn’t tried. She’d worked hard the past three years to be both mother and father to her son, but the little boy needed more than she had been able to give him.
He needed Thad.
And, as Thad grinned and laughed, she began to wonder if Thad didn’t need Mark, too. Enough to stay?
But then he glanced to the street again, his body tensing as if he’d identified a threat. To himself or to their son?
She knew when he left St. Louis that Thad put himself in danger. But she hadn’t realized until now that he could be in danger in St. Louis, as well. He had killed his sister’s stalker, but maybe in doing so, he had picked up his own. Or he had brought danger back with him from one of those war-torn countries?
She’d already had her doubts, but now she was certain that Thad Kendall was more than just a photojournalist.
Whatever else he was, he was also a father now. Would he put their son in the danger that he had constantly put himself in?
Chapter Four
Thad paced his brother’s office at Kendall Communications. This was all Devin had ever wanted, to be CEO and take over the running of their father’s company.
Uncle Craig might have been technically in charge ever since Joseph Kendall’s murder, but the business had grown even more after Devin had joined the company. The stock each of the Kendall siblings had inherited had definitely increased in value due to Devin’s initiatives.
Over the years, throughout his travels, Thad had come up with some ideas he’d love to see the company explore. While it may have been just a cover, he had become an expert on communications, some less legal than others.
Devin opened his office door but didn’t see Thad yet as he continued his conversation with the red-haired secretary who was also his fiancée. “I didn’t give you a chance to give me my messages,” he murmured to her as he wiped her lipstick from his mouth. “Did Turner call back?”
“No,” she replied. “According to his staff, he hasn’t been in the office at all this week and not much in the past few months. Not since his wife died. Maybe he is ready to retire and sell the company.”
Turner Connections LLC? Excitement coursed through Thad at the thought of Kendall Communications acquiring the company, which had a good number of defense contracts.
Devin snorted. “He’s younger than Uncle Craig. I doubt he’s ready to retire.”
Jolie sighed. “So you’re going to be one of those guys who never knows when to quit.…”
“I thought that’s what you liked about me.…” He leaned forward and kissed her again.
Thad cleared his throat to make them finally aware of his presence.
Jolie pulled free of Devin’s arms, her face flaming nearly as red as her hair. “I forgot to tell you Thad was waiting for you.”
“Probably because the two of you were too busy making out to remember I was back here,” Thad teased.
Jolie’s ringing phone drew her back to the outer office. With only a wave at Thad, she closed the door, leaving him and Devin alone together. Her fiancé stared after her for a moment, as if he’d not been ready to let her go. Natalie was right that each of his siblings had found true love.
“I’m surprised you manage to get any work done around here.”
“We don’t have a choice.” Devin pushed his hand through his hair as he made his way around his desk and dropped into the chair behind it. “It’s been pretty crazy around here since September.”
That was when Rick Campbell, the man behind bars for their parents’ murders, had been cleared of the crime. It hadn’t been long before authorities had been looking at a new prime suspect, though.
“I can’t believe that damn D.A. tried to blame Uncle Craig.” Thad wished he’d been home then; he would have skewered the man in the media. Instead, his family had been smeared. One of the first things he’d noticed on his return was how much his aunt and uncle had aged since he’d been gone. He suspected most of that had happened since September.
“He’s a son of a bitch,” Devin bitterly murmured. “But clearing Uncle Craig hasn’t ended the media circus.”
“Some good things came out of the coverage,” Thad reminded his older brother.
To protect Jolie’s reputation and the company image, Devin had proposed a fake engagement with his secretary. But that engagement had quickly become real when his stubborn brother had finally realized the depths of his feelings for the amazing woman who’d been his friend and right hand for years.
“It would be nice if the press would give us a break for a while,” Devin said, “especially with Christmas coming.”
“The media coverage has always been bad around Christmastime,” Thad reminded him. “And it’s even worse this year.”
Devin groaned. “It was going to be bad enough, given the twenty-year anniversary, but then with everything else that’s happened, the reporters have been relentless.”
Which was why Thad had told no one about Mark and Caroline. He didn’t want them being pulled into the media circus that was life as a Kendall. It might make Caroline change her mind about allowing Thad time with the boy, and it would no doubt frighten the child. Sure, his family wouldn’t let anything slip to reporters, but they would want to meet his son and that meeting would not go unnoticed by the press.
Thad glanced at his watch; he had a meeting to go to. He couldn’t believe he’d agreed to what he had. But then Mark had asked and he doubted he’d be able to deny the kid anything. It was a wonder that Caroline hadn’t spoiled the little charmer rotten. But he was a great kid. And kids loved Christmas. At least kids whose parents hadn’t been murdered on the holiday.
“Will you actually be here this Christmas?” Devin asked.
Thad shrugged. “Depends on when we catch our parents’ killer. Finally finding the real murderer is the only way to stop the media frenzy.” His body tensed with anger. “And get justice.”
“Is that why you came to my office?” Devin asked. “Have you found out something new?”
“I did,” Thad said, “when we found out that Natalie is only our half sister. But you didn’t seem very surprised by the news.” News that they hadn’t shared with anyone who hadn’t been at the meeting at Rachel’s lab. Thad had to tell Natalie first, but not only did he dread doing that, he’d also been too busy with Mark and Caroline.
Devin leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand over his face. He had always looked the most like their father but never more so than now. Despite the happiness he’d found with his fiancée, he looked tired and tense, as if he’d been working too hard. At the family company or at keeping family secrets?
“What do you know about that night?” Thad wondered.
“I wasn’t even home,” Devin reminded him, his voice gruff with guilt. “I’d snuck out.”
“You were sixteen,” Thad said. “You wanted to hang out with your friends like other sixteen-year-olds. None of what happened was your fault. You couldn’t have prevented their deaths if you’d been home.”
Knowing Devin, he probably would have gotten himself killed, as well, if he’d even heard anything at all. The master bedroom was in an entirely separate wing of the house from where the kids’ bedrooms were, accessed by separate stairwells.
“We’ll never know that for certain,” Devin pointed out. “But Jolie’s helped me deal with it so that I could finally let the past go.”
Thad wouldn’t be able to do that until the killer had finally been brought to justice, and he wasn’t sure that even that would be enough for him. But he wouldn’t know until the killer was caught. “What do you know about the past that made Natalie’s paternity no surprise to you?”
Devin sighed wearily. “You’re not going to let this go. Damn reporter …”
Thad grinned. “That’s what I am.”
His brother fixed him with a steady gaze as if trying to determine if Thad told him the truth. “Is that all you are?”
Nerves tightened his stomach, but he forced a laugh. “You’re not getting out of this.” Nor was he getting the truth from Thad. At least not the whole truth. For the most part, he was a real photojournalist, reporting real stories for a real news station, but that was only a small part of what he was.
“I’m not an eleven-year-old kid, Devin. You don’t need to protect me anymore. Tell me everything you know about our parents. It’s the only way we’re going to catch their real killer.”
Devin hesitated as if determined to protect their memory.
“I don’t remember that much about them,” Thad said with regret and guilt. He had been eleven when they’d died; he should have had more memories of them.
What would Mark have when Thad left? At three, would he remember his father at all if, like Michaels, Thad didn’t make it out of his next assignment?
“I even looked through old photo albums the other day,” he said, but that had been to compare how much his son looked like he had at that age, “and they were hardly in them.”
“They weren’t around much,” Devin admitted. “Dad was here all the time, building this company. He was so ambitious.” He surveyed the office with pride in their father’s accomplishments.
He needed to take pride in what he’d accomplished, too. But there was something else he’d left out. “What about Mom?” Thad asked.
“You must remember how beautiful she was?”
Thad shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s my memory, though, or all the news reports that have been done about her over the years. They talk about her like she was a movie star or a princess.”
“She was the perfect trophy wife for a rich and powerful man like our father,” Devin said. “But she craved attention and always had to be the center of it.”
Thad stilled his usual restless pacing and focused on his brother. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that they weren’t happy.”
Thad remembered yelling. Screaming. Slamming doors. And he winced, realizing now what had been happening. “You were the oldest. You knew what was really going on with them.”
Devin nodded. “Affairs. While Dad was working so hard building this company, Mom was sleeping around.”
“With who?” His gut churned at the prospect that there was more than one. Finding Natalie’s biological father might not be as easy as Thad had hoped.
“I don’t know.” Devin shrugged. “I didn’t really want to know.” He sighed. “Hell, I don’t think our father wanted to know, either. They fought about her going out all the time, but I don’t think he realized she’d actually taken it as far as she had—to a hotel one of my friends worked at. Or maybe Dad was just too proud to admit it.”
“We need to find out who these men were,” Thad said, although the thought of delving into their mother’s affairs made him nauseous. There had been no mention of her affairs in the police report. The detectives had figured the murders were the result of a botched burglary and hadn’t looked any further for motives or suspects than the man who’d spent twenty years in prison for crimes he hadn’t committed.
“Do you remember the name of the hotel?”
Devin named one renowned for its discretion. “That was twenty years ago. You aren’t going to find out anything now.”
“I’ll try.” But he didn’t like his chances, either.
“That’s your theory here?” Devin said. “That Natalie’s real dad murdered our parents?”
“Why else would his son try to destroy the evidence that cleared Rick Campbell of the crimes?” he asked. “It’s a lead. About the only one we have right now.”
“You’ve been scarce lately,” Devin remarked. “Have you been chasing down leads?”
No. He’d been chasing down a squealing little boy who’d thrown snowballs at him. And kissing a woman he’d had no business kissing. After he’d forced that kiss on her, he’d been lucky she hadn’t thrown him out. Instead, she’d been accommodating about Thad spending time with their son. But usually she made herself scarce, going grocery shopping or Christmas shopping while he and Mark hung out.
He would spend tonight with both of them, as if they were a real family. But that they could never be, not just because of Thad’s real job but because of his real past.
HE WASN’T GOING TO SHOW. Caroline had known it the minute Mark had asked his father to meet them at the mall this Friday night to see Santa. Thad Kendall had been hunkered down, deeply embedded, in war zones. He had nearly been blown up and had almost been abducted, if there was any truth to news reports about him. But Mark asking him to visit Santa Claus was the first time Caroline had ever seen a flicker of panic in his blue eyes.
He hated Christmas. She understood why. And if she didn’t have a son who loved it, she would have been more sensitive to Thad’s predicament. But she hadn’t made an excuse to get him off the hook with Mark. She’d waited for him to come up with his own excuse.
Instead, he’d agreed, with a grim determination, as if he really intended to show up. And maybe he would. Maybe he hadn’t lied to their son.
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Lisa Childs
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Daddy Bombshell, электронная книга автора Lisa Childs на английском языке, в жанре современная зарубежная литература