life had called her Squirt, and he’d walked out on her without a word sixteen years ago. Gently nudging Butternut in the ribs, Emily moved into the shadow of an overhanging maple tree to see him more clearly.
Shock ebbed over her. Above his left eyebrow, just below a wayward lock of wavy, jet-black hair, a pencil-thin, two-inch scar marred his tanned skin. She knew that scar very well—after all, she’d been the cause of the injury that had produced it. When she was seven and he was eleven, she’d dared him to jump from the maple in her front yard with a homemade bedsheet parachute. Because he always did anything she asked of him, Kat Madison had jumped and landed facedown on a piece of glass in the driveway.
Kat, the only man she knew who could enter a room and not be heard. She might have known that, true to his nickname, he’d sneak back into town on silent feet. She recalled hearing the story of how he’d insisted on spelling his name with a K to make himself unique. He was unique all right, a unique jerk who cared nothing about a friend’s feelings.
Silently, the rhythm of her erratic heart pounding in her ears, she continued to study him. He’d changed. Matured. She quickly did the math in her head. Thirty-three. But more than his age had altered. The lanky Kat she’d known hadn’t had muscles out to here and skin the color of soft suede. Nor had that Kat ever looked at her with a mixture of longing and pain in his eyes.
She called her emotions under control, then hardened herself to say all the things she’d been waiting to tell him. Instead, the pain generated by his abrupt appearance spoke for her.
“Were you ever going to tell me you were here or were you going to just walked away again without a word?”
He said nothing. She fought back the sudden rush of tears unaccountably choking her. Turning the horse, she started to ride away, then pulled up short and glanced back.
“You could at least have written.” Her voice harsh with emotion, she stared into his dark eyes. Although his face twisted, he said nothing, offered no explanation, made no apologies. “Stay away from me, Kat Madison. Just…stay away.”
Quickly, before he could reply, she rode away, her skin cooled by the wind mixing with the tears streaming down her cheeks.
Chapter Two
Kat stood in the reception area of the office of J. R. Pritchard and Associates, Private Investigations. He glanced around at the plush carpeting, the silk foliage, the gleaming chrome-and-leather furniture and the fancy door with the brass plate declaring the room beyond to be Private. Quite a contrast to the drab, grungy offices of the private investigators in the old Humphrey Bogart flicks Kat loved.
“Can I help you?” The curvaceous redhead behind the desk smiled up at him.
Yesterday, Kat would have smiled back, taking advantage of and pleasure in the obvious interest in the woman’s eyes. Why not now? His answer came with all the ease of morning turning to night.
Emily.
Their earlier meeting remained fresh in his mind. So fresh, that, even after a shower, he could still feel the dust stirred up by Emily’s horse’s hooves abrading his sweat-soaked skin. But the discomfort of the grit seemed a fitting cover for the pain inside. He’d lost the friendship of a person who had been a primary player in his young life, his confidant. The image of Emily’s pained expression was burned into his conscience.
“Sir?” The receptionist, eyebrow raised, captured Kat’s attention. “Did you want to see someone?”
“I have a three o’clock appointment to see Mr. Pritchard.”
The woman ran a bloodred nail down her appointment book. “Mr. Madison?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Pritchard has someone in the office with him right now. If you’ll take a seat, he’ll be with you in a few minutes.” She smiled and batted long, false, sooty lashes at him.
“Thanks.” Kat turned away, deliberately taking a seat behind the large silk tree that blocked the view of the receptionist.
Once more, his rebellious mind centered on the woman who’d ridden away from him—looking like a part of her horse—a few hours ago. Woman. Equating the Emily on that horse with the girl-child he’d left behind sixteen years ago reminded him of his reasons for leaving and for not telling her he was going. Back then, he couldn’t have withstood the pain in her eyes any better than he had today.
He admitted he owed her an explanation, but giving her one was a whole different ball game. How could he explain that, sixteen years ago, in the space of a few hours, the life he’d always known had fallen apart? Would she understand that he’d had to find out who he was, get answers, and that those answers lay somewhere beyond the village of Bristol ? Would she care that he hadn’t found those answers, but that he’d made peace with all that and had come home to stay? Probably not. Their earlier meeting proved conclusively that he’d put the last bullet into the special friendship he and Emily had shared.
A persistent question niggled at the edges of his mind. If he’d made peace with all that, why was he here looking to hire a P.I.? Because the answers to all the questions didn’t matter anymore. Only the answer to one. Why? And only that one because he was curious. Curious as to why his birth parents had left him and allowed him to be adopted by the Madisons.
Kat picked up a glossy magazine, leafed through it then tossed it aside. The fragrance of the receptionist’s perfume wafted to him. Its flowery scent brought to mind an image of his adoptive mother. With that image came more, until he could no longer keep the memories at bay.
In his mind, he stepped through the half-removed doorway and into the house in which he’d grown up, the house where he’d known love, laughter and the warmth of a family…until sixteen years ago. He climbed the stairs to their bedroom.
Slowly, memories of the day he’d come home after his parents’ funeral crowded his mind. Their room had been untouched by the fire. The closet door hung open, just as it had back then. Sitting on the floor…
Unwilling to get into reliving the day his life had exploded around him, he shook away the memories and strode to the office window. He squinted his eyes against the glare of the bright June sunshine blanketing the city of Albany, New York.
Taking refuge where he had so many times over the years, he thought about Emily. The way his insides always warmed when she smiled at him. The way the mischief in that smile forecast one of her schemes, a scheme that would include him and would inevitably end in disaster. Emily, with tears in her eyes, asking him to help her bury a stillborn kitten or understand why her father had broken another promise. The cool smoothness of her lips on his cheek the day he gave her a necklace for her thirteenth birthday to mark her transition from child to teenager.
He’d told her the tiny gold key suspended from the delicate chain represented the key to their friendship. But after he’d found himself alone and miles away, he’d wondered if it had been the key to something more.
Today, that old magnetism connecting them had tugged at his heart. Back then he’d have coaxed a smile from Emily, but today he’d had to watch her pain and do nothing. Now, instead of using their friendship as a refuge, they’d been on the outside, both of them, for their own reasons, afraid to step back into the circle.
A knot of regret formed in his stomach. He hit the windowsill with his balled fist. “Why in hell did I think coming back here would be easy? Why didn’t I just stay away?”
“Excuse me? Did you say something?”
Kat glanced over his shoulder. The receptionist peered around the silk plant. He shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. Just thinking out loud.”
“Oh.” She dismissed him and went back to her computer.
Before he could immerse himself in his musings again, the door marked Private opened and two men came out shaking hands. The older of the two men nodded at the redhead and walked toward the