He was trying so hard to make her feel better, Gwen thought. She did her best to smile as she told him, “Sounds good.”

  “Tastes even better,” he promised as he pulled up in front of a warm, inviting restaurant.

  * * *

  Gwen tried very hard to at least look as if she was enjoying herself. She felt that she owed it to Brooks because he was going out of his way to make her come around, to stop dwelling on those bones she had insisted on viewing.

  But no matter how hard Gwen tried to make Brooks think that she was having a good time, she just couldn’t seem to come out from beneath the oppressive blanket of sadness that had descended over her. It had come over her from the moment she’d first viewed the remains that had literally fallen out of the wall.

  “Would you like to order some dessert?” Brooks asked her when they had finished the main course—or at least he had. It was not lost on him that Gwen had barely eaten half her dinner. This was definitely not going the way he’d hoped. “Or would you just rather skip dessert and just go home?”

  Home.

  He was talking about his place, she thought. Funny how quickly that had become more of a home to her than the apartment she had rented.

  “Would you mind terribly if we just skip ordering dessert and go back to your place instead?” Gwen asked.

  “If I minded, I wouldn’t have suggested it,” Brooks pointed out.

  Looking around, he saw their server walking toward another table. He raised his hand to catch her attention. When he did, he asked the woman to bring the check.

  Rather than use a credit card, Brooks paid for the dinner putting a hundred on the tray. He assumed the server would keep the change.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Gwen, escorting her out of the restaurant.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a wet blanket,” Gwen apologized as they walked to his vehicle.

  “You’re not a wet blanket,” he told her. “You’re dealing with a lot of emotions right now, not the least of which involved you seeing what you believe to be your mother’s remains. All things considered, I’d say you were bearing up really well. Give yourself a little credit, Gwen. I certainly do.”

  They had reached his car. Gwen turned to say something to Brooks, to thank him for being so understanding. But when she looked in his direction, she suddenly froze. Her eyes widened as she stared at something in the distance.

  “Gwen?” Brooks said her name. When she didn’t respond, he raised his voice to get her to snap out of it. “Gwen, what’s wrong?”

  She grabbed his arm, her fingers digging harder than she had intended. Her entire body had gone rigid.

  Stunned, Brooks looked around, but he didn’t see anything that would cause her to react this way.

  “What is it?” he asked. Pulling his arm away, he took hold of her shoulders, shaking her a little to make her come around. “What is it that you see?”

  She exhaled, releasing the breath she hadn’t even realized she had drawn in and was holding. She blinked, stared harder and realized that she was staring off into the shadows.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Who’s gone?” Brooks asked, scanning the parking lot. There were a few people there, either getting out of their cars or going into them. But he saw nothing that would have made Gwen grow so pale that he saw the difference even in the moonlight.

  Gwen shook her head, feeling foolish. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  She had genuinely looked spooked. Something had scared her. All he wanted to do was help her. “I’d never think you were crazy.”

  “Well, I’ll think it for the both of us,” she told him. Then, because she could see he was still waiting for an answer, she said, “I thought I just saw Daniel.”

  Brooks scanned the area again, more slowly this time. He didn’t see anyone who resembled Shelton.

  “Where?”

  “Here. Across the parking lot,” she said, pointing at an area that was now empty. “He was staring at us.”

  “Those are just your nerves, overreacting,” Brooks assured her. After what she’d been through, he could understand her seeing the man behind every building and tree. He’d seen it before. “Besides, I know what the man looks like and he’s not out there, Gwen.” He was keenly alert for any signs of the man. “Your mind is playing tricks on you.”

  “Or maybe I’m just losing it,” she countered, referring to her mind.

  For a moment, she looked so stricken, his heart went out to her. All he wanted to do was comfort her. He did the only thing he could. He took her into his arms and held her.

  “I promise I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Gwen.” Her head was lowered but he could tell that she was crying. Very gently, Brooks turned her head up toward him, making her look at him. “I care about you, Gwen. I care a great deal and should that stalker actually turn up anywhere around here, I’m going to make him regret he ever intruded into your life.”

  But Gwen only heard him say one thing. “You care about me?”

  Why did she look so surprised? “Of course I care about you,” he said. “What did you think the last few nights were all about?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “You being a male?” It was more of a question than a statement.

  His brow furrowed. “Is that what you really think?”

  A long, heavy sigh escaped her lips, followed by another shrug. “I really don’t know what to think,” she confessed.

  “Then I will tell you what to think,” he said. He saw the confused, hesitant expression on her face. He pulled out all the stops. “You mentioned ‘crazy’ earlier,” he reminded her.

  Had he changed his mind about her mental state, after all? “I did,” she admitted tentatively, waiting to see what he would say next.

  “Well, I am crazy about you. Understand? To the full extent of what that word implies. Crazy about you,” he repeated, his eyes on hers. “So my advice is deal with it.”

  As she looked up into his eyes, she realized that he actually meant those words. Suddenly, the world was back in balance.

  “Oh, I will. I will.” Moved, relieved, happy, Gwen threw her arms around his neck and sealed her lips to his, managing to steal his very breath away, as well.

  After several beats had gone by, Brooks carefully removed her arms from around his neck. Surprised, Gwen looked at him quizzically.

  “I think this is better continued behind closed doors,” he explained. He found himself wanting her and it was really hard not going with his instincts, so he knew he had to get her home before his resolve completely disappeared.

  “Are you propositioning me?” she asked, a provocative smile playing on her lips.

  “Propositioning, begging, whatever gets us out of this parking lot and into my house,” he told her, the look in his eyes already transporting her from here to there.

  Suddenly Gwen didn’t feel nearly so lost and alone anymore.

  “Works for me,” she whispered to Brooks. “How fast can you drive without breaking any laws?”

  “Fast enough,” he replied.

  Her eyes were smiling at him as she said, “Then let’s go.”

  The next moment, she slid into the passenger seat and buckled up.

  Gwen assumed that he would just take off, driving to his house at what would be considered the legal limit. But the route Brooks took wasn’t one that she recognized. Finally, she just had to ask. “Um, Brooks, where are we going?”

  “My house,” Brooks answered, checking his rearview mirror.

  “I don’t really recognize the route,” she told him honestly.

  “That’s because I’m not taking the usual route,” he explained.

  “We’re taking the scenic route?” she asked him. “You do realize that it’s kind of dark for that to be enjoyable, right?”

  “I’m not doing it for that reason,” he said.

  “All right, I’ll bite. Why are you doing it?” she asked.

  “Let’s just call it evasive driving,” he answered, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror.

  “Which you’re doing because?” she asked, her voice going up at the end of her sentence. He had managed to stir her curiosity.

  “Because in case you did see Shelton out there in the parking lot before, I’m not about to lead him to my front door.”

  Gwen sank down farther in her seat, doing her best to deal with what he was suggesting. “If he wants to know where you live, Daniel’s resourceful enough to hire someone to find that out for him. You’re a Colton, for heaven’s sake. Your address would be easy enough to trace.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, but I am not about to help him do that,” Brooks pointed out. “If you’re worried, I can stash you at Jordana’s house.”

  “Thanks, but if it’s all the same to you, I feel safer with you,” she told him.

  She was putting an awful lot of faith in him, Brooks thought, although he had to admit that having her trust him this way did make him feel even more protective toward her than he already did.

  Still he felt it only right to point out to her that “Jordana has a state-of-the-art security system, if you’re interested.”

  “So do you. Besides,” Gwen said as they pulled up into his driveway, “you can distract me in a way that your sister can’t.”

  Brooks laughed softly under his breath. “Guess I can’t argue with that.”

  Her eyes all but caressed him as she looked up at him. “No, you can’t,” she agreed.

  Brooks unlocked the front door, disarming his alarm system. Holding the door open, he gestured for her to come inside.

  “Shouldn’t you be saying something like ‘“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly’?” she asked him, grinning.

  “That all depends,” he said as he took her purse and put it on the table.

  “On what?” Gwen asked.

  Lord, but this man could make her feel breathless faster than anyone had ever been able to do prior to Brooks.

  Right now, her heart was fluttering so fast she was certain it could easily just take off.

  “On whether or not you’ll let me devour you,” he told her, pressing a wreath of kisses gently all along her face.

  Brooks was doing it again, she thought, making her feel dizzy. Every single thought floated out of her head without leaving a single trace in its wake.

  “Devour away,” she gasped, breathing hard but unable to catch her breath sufficiently.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied solemnly.

  Gwen couldn’t contain herself any longer. It felt as if emotions had suddenly exploded in her veins. She began tugging at his shirt, pulling it up over his head and tossing it aside.

  She splayed her hands along his hard, rippled chest muscles, her pulse quickening as she initiated the contact.

  It was all he needed.

  The next second he was pulling off the clothes from her body, sending the garments down to the floor in a heap, right on top of his.

  His mouth hungrily devouring her lips, he knew that they weren’t going to be able to make it up to his bedroom. They weren’t even going to make it to the base of the staircase.

  Picking up her now nude body, he pressed her against him, filling his senses with her scent, her taste, her hunger and doing his very best to match it. It was almost a competition.

  Every time they made love, it was a completely new revelation to her. She discovered things about this man she hadn’t known before, took comfort in and reveled in the way he made her feel, the way he made her body sing in response to the lightest of his touches.

  Rather than be rough, he was incredibly gentle yet so very arousing and she was seriously afraid she might just lose her mind.

  She was so caught up in what was happening between them, she didn’t think about Daniel right now, wasn’t concerned that he might have been the man she had seen lurking in the background earlier. For this small isolated space of time, Brooks was all that existed for her. Being with him defined both the beginning and the end of her world.

  And just for now, that was enough for her.

  Something whispered within her soul that that very well could be enough for forever.

  If only he wanted her forever.

  Chapter 21

  “Do you want to call your grandmother to let her know that we’re coming?” Brooks asked Gwen the following morning after they had gotten dressed and ready to leave. “That way we can make sure she’ll be home and we won’t be making the long trip for no reason.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Gwen told him. “My grandmother’s almost always home, especially in the morning.”

  The inflection in her voice caught his attention. “You don’t want to tell her about that second body turning up, do you?” he guessed.

  She debated denying it, but then didn’t even try. “Not over the phone. I’d rather tell her about that face-to-face. That way I can be there for her when she has to deal with the realization that my mother is never going to be coming back. That she died a long time ago.”

  He fought the urge to just take her into his arms and hold her. Instead, he pointed out, “That jewelry might not be your mother’s. I know that this might be clutching at straws, but...”

  A smile quirked her lips. “Until I can show my grandmother the picture with those pieces of jewelry, straws are good,” she commented.

  He gave up fighting his urge. Brooks took her into his arms and held her close. “I hate that you’re going through this.”

  She appreciated his saying that. She also appreciated having him hold her like this. There was something very comforting about having those strong arms around her.

  “At least I’m not going through it alone.” She took a deep breath, as if that would help her face the ordeal ahead of her. “Ready?”

  He nodded, giving her hand one quick, final squeeze before heading toward the front door.

  “Ready.”

  * * *

  “You’re very quiet,” he observed. They had been on the road for almost fifteen minutes and she hadn’t said a single word.

  “It’s kind of hard to talk when your heart’s in your mouth.” A sad smile curved her lips. “For most of my life, part of me was waiting for my mother to walk through the front door and back into my life and now...and now that’s not going to happen,” she said, forcing the words out.

  He drew the logical conclusion from that. “Then you’re really sure that’s her jewelry, aren’t you?”

  Gwen grimly nodded her head, holding her emotions in check. “Pretty much, yes.”

  “Look, we don’t have to go see your grandmother with this right now. We can wait until after Yvette gets those dental records and confirms that the second body in the wall belonged to your mother. For that matter, it could be that making a conclusive identification even with the dental records will be impossible,” he pointed out.

  But Gwen shook her head. She’d come this far, she was going to see this through all the way. “My grandmother deserves closure.”

  “And you?” he asked, glancing at her. “What do you deserve?”

  He saw her jaw clenching. “I deserve to find the SOB who did this, who killed my mother, and make him pay. I also deserve to find out who my father was.”

  A thought occurred to him. “And if they turn out to be one and the same person?”

  He had seen cases when a philandering husband took extreme measures to protect his secret and keep his wife from finding out that he was cheating. Brooks really hoped that Gwen’s grief wouldn’t wind up being compounded by having her father turn out to be the person who killed her mother.

  Gwen squared her shoulders, as if bracing herself against a physical blow. “I’ll deal with that when and if it turns out to be true. Right now I just want to get through showing these photographs to my grandmother,” she said.

  * * *

  They made good time.

  Pulling up in front of the small house where Gwen had lived for most of her life, Brooks got out of the vehicle and rounded the hood to the passenger’s side. When he took Gwen’s hand to help her out of the car, he thought that it felt almost icy.

  His heart went out to her.

  “You know there’s still time to go home,” Brooks told her.

  “No, there isn’t,” she answered.

  She flashed him a grateful smile, knowing he was just trying to comfort her. With that, she turned and walked up to her grandmother’s front door. She still had the key but she didn’t want to walk in and frighten her grandmother. If she’d called ahead to tell the older woman that she and Brooks were coming, that would have been a different matter.

  But even that would have presented problems. Her grandmother would immediately be suspicious about a second visit coming so close on the heels of the last one.

  It was best to keep all the questions down to a minimum. But now it was finally time to face the music, she thought.

  So she rang the bell and waited for her grandmother to come to the door and open it. That took time. Gwen felt anxious and she would have wanted to ring the bell for a second time, but she forced herself to just be patient and wait.

  Finally, the door opened and her grandmother was standing there in the doorway. The older woman’s face lit up when she saw her.

  “Gwennie, Brooks, you’re back,” she declared in surprise. But as her own words sank in, the woman’s smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why does anything have to be wrong?” Gwen asked, her nerve faltering. “Maybe I just missed you.”