“These are all the photographs I have of my mother,” she went on to explain. “Some of them were taken of the two of us, others have my mother and my grandmother in them. There’s also a handful of photographs of my mother just by herself.”

  As she spoke, she took out photos to illustrate her point. “I thought if you knew what she looked like, these might help you find her. I realize that they’re at least twenty-five years out of date, if not more, but it’s the best I can do.”

  “No need to apologize,” he told her as he carefully looked over the photographs. “I can ask Yvette to age a couple of these for me so we can get more of a realistic idea of what your mother might look like now.

  “Oh, and Yvette’s the sister who works as a lab tech,” he added as an afterthought, anticipating that was going to be the next question that Gwen was going to ask him.

  But Gwen was focused on something else he had said, a comment Brooks had made in passing. “Wait, then you think my mother might still be alive?” she asked him.

  There was no missing the hopeful inflection in her voice.

  “Hey, anything’s possible,” he said, not committing himself one way or another. At this point, he wasn’t about to rule anything out. Hope was a precious commodity and he wanted her to be able to hang on to it for as long as possible.

  “But if that’s true,” she questioned, “then why, in twenty-five years, hasn’t she attempted to get in touch with me?” Gwen was really hoping that this investigator could tell her something believable to get her through this trying period of time.

  Practicing his trade, Brooks had gotten very good at reading people. He could sense now what this new client of his was looking for. Something plausible she could believe. He did his best to supply it without actually lying to her.

  “There are all sorts of reasons why your mother didn’t try to get in touch with you,” he told her.

  She wanted to believe that, but she needed convincing. “Such as?”

  “Such as your mother grew embarrassed that she had let this much time go by. And that fed on itself. The more time that went by, the more her embarrassment grew. Or maybe she’d been in an accident that prevented her from coming home. And now she feels it’s better for you to just continue living your life rather than having her disrupt it.”

  Gwen frowned. She wasn’t buying that. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “To you, yes, that might sound ridiculous,” he agreed. “But maybe it doesn’t sound so ridiculous to her.” He went on to tell her something that his mentor had once told him. “Fears that haven’t consciously been dealt with can grow to huge proportions until they just about overwhelm us.”

  For a second, she was putting herself in her mother’s place. “Well, that’s just not true,” Gwen protested. “You have to make my mother see that—” And then she abruptly stopped, a surprised expression in her eyes as she realized what she was doing. “I’m talking as if my mother is still alive and you’re going to zip right out and bring her back to me.”

  He really did want her to hang on to hope, at least for a little while. “You know how you said your grandmother has this saying that you live by?” he asked her. “The one that you said went ‘better safe than sorry’?”

  Gwen had no idea where the investigator was going with this. “Yes?”

  “Well, my grandmother had a saying, too. Hers was, ‘Prepare for the worst but hope for the best.’ I always found those to be very good words to live by,” he told his client. “Now why don’t you take me through these photographs so I can start to get to know your mother?”

  Gwen’s lips curved, forming a heartened smile that he found completely captivating. It took effort to tear his eyes away as she began to take her treasured photographs out, one by one. She spread them out on the table, giving him a narrative as to what was in each of the photographs as best she could. There weren’t all that many and she couldn’t possibly remember all the circumstances she was now reciting for him. His guess was that, as a child, Gwen had had her grandmother repeat the stories that were behind the photographs over and over again.

  From the state the photographs were in, he didn’t doubt that they had been pored over countless times and she had memorized all the circumstances that went with each photograph until she probably believed that she could actually remember back that far.

  When Gwen had taken the last photograph out, one depicting what appeared to be a lovely young woman and her three-year-old daughter, she looked up at Brooks, clearly wishing there were more photographs to show him.

  “I guess that’s not much to go on, is it?” she said ruefully.

  “It’s more than I had before,” Brooks kindly pointed out. He watched as Gwen neatly gathered the photographs together and returned them to the shoebox that had housed them. “You mentioned the other day that your mother left Kansas City and came to Braxville to find out why your father had stopped sending her money to support the two of you,” he began.

  “That’s what my grandmother surmised because there was money coming in, and then she saw that there wasn’t,” Gwen maintained.

  “Do you have any idea who your father was or where he lived in Braxville?” Brooks asked. He knew it was a long shot, but at bottom, he was an optimist.

  However, Gwen shook her head. “No. All my grandmother could tell me was that the man who fathered me worked for your father’s construction company.”

  “Do you think your grandmother knows the man’s identity,” Brooks asked, “but for some reason she’s just not telling you?”

  Gwen paused for a moment, thinking. “I suppose it’s possible, but I really doubt it. I mean, why would she be trying to protect that man? She made no secret of the fact that she didn’t approve of him not stepping up and doing the right thing. And don’t forget,” she told Brooks, “he’s the reason that my mother took off in the first place.”

  Brooks had his own thoughts on the matter. It could very well be possible that Rita Harrison knew the man’s identity but for some reason, she wasn’t saying anything because she was trying to shield Gwen.

  There were too many unknowns in the case right now, Brooks decided, for him to be able to say anything for certain.

  What he needed was more information. “Would you mind if I talked to your grandmother?” he asked.

  Brooks really needed to talk to the woman so he could get more input. But he didn’t want to have Gwen thinking that he was planning on just barging into Rita Harrison’s life and firing questions at her point-blank, especially since he had gotten the impression from Gwen that her grandmother wasn’t doing all that well healthwise.

  “Well, like I said previously, my grandmother’s not here. She’s back in Kansas City. I can take you to her,” Gwen volunteered. “But I’m not free to go anywhere until the weekend. Right now, I’m the new kid on the block,” she said, referring to her new job at the elementary school, “so I can’t just suddenly take off for a few days.” And she didn’t want him talking to her grandmother without her.

  “Understood,” Brooks assured her. “I can look into some things from here. And there’s also the matter of finding out just who killed Crane. I’d like to see if I can come up with a working theory to give Jordana.”

  Gwen nodded. She understood where Brooks was coming from.

  Sensing that the private investigator was getting ready to leave, she rose to her feet. She was going to accompany him to the front door.

  “You’ll call me if you find anything?” she asked just before she opened the door.

  “Count on it,” he promised. “I mean, it’s your case that helped me to identify Crane in the first place,” he reminded her, thinking again what a small world this actually was.

  When Gwen began to go out the door with him, Brooks turned to her one last time. “I realize that people aren’t restricted by gender roles anymore, but you still don’t have to walk me to my car,” he joked. “I can get to it on my own.”

  “I’m not walking you to your car,” she told him. “I did, however, forget something in mine. By the time I got to my apartment complex, I knew that I was running late and when I saw you standing in front of my door, all I could think of was getting to you so I could properly apologize for the fact that I’d kept you waiting.”

  “Oh, well if that’s the case, I’ll walk you to yours,” he said good-naturedly, adding, “It’s on the way to mine, anyway.”

  “Well, that seems fair enough,” she teased.

  Walking beside him now, it felt somehow right as well as comfortable. It was as if they had always been doing this, walking together this way.

  As they came to her car, Gwen turned toward Brooks and told him, “This really means a lot to me.”

  “Being walked to your car?” A teasing smile playing on his lips even though he knew what she meant.

  “That’s just nice,” she said honestly. “But what I was referring to was you taking on my case like this,” she explained. “You still haven’t actually said anything about what you’re planning on charging me,” she reminded the investigator.

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m not looking to retire after I finally close this case.” And then Brooks smiled down into her face as he looked into her eyes. “Don’t worry, I intend to be more than reasonable about the charges for my services.” He shared something further with her in hopes that it would reassure her. “I like taking on cases that challenge me and this one certainly promises to be a challenge.”

  “You really mean that?” she asked, hoping he wasn’t just stringing her along, trying to placate her.

  “I never say anything I don’t mean,” Brooks assured her.

  Maybe she was being gullible, Gwen thought. But heaven help her, she believed him. And believing him gave her hope.

  Standing here like this, so close to him that she could feel the warmth coming from his body, was making her very skin tingle, she thought.

  Tingle and heat up, she realized.

  She couldn’t help wondering if what she was experiencing was due to the fact that in some way, she was on the rebound after having been with Dan. After all, Dan had been charming in the beginning. It was only after some time had passed that she realized there was no substance there and eventually, his true colors began to show. But she hadn’t known any of that in the beginning.

  Heaven knew that the tall, sexy private investigator certainly fared exceedingly well when it came to a comparison with the other man. All in all, it was like comparing a filet mignon to a fast-food hamburger.

  The unexpected comparison had Gwen smiling to herself. She had always had a real weakness for filet mignon.

  “That looks good on you,” Brooks observed, his voice breaking into her thoughts.

  Surprised by his comment, Gwen looked up at him. “What does?”

  “That smile of yours. It seems to light up your whole face,” he told her.

  His words stirred up something in her stomach. For a second, she was tongue-tied. And then, because she had no real comeback to offer him, she murmured, “You have to say that.”

  “No, I don’t,” he protested. “In taking on your case, I have to solve it. But I don’t have to say anything even remotely flattering to you—unless I actually want to and mean it. Which I do. In both cases.”

  Without actually being aware of it, Brooks drew closer to the woman before him, cutting the distance between them down to absolutely nothing.

  He told himself that he had to get going. There was no actual hurry, but he sensed that by standing here like this beside her, he was playing with fire and he wasn’t certain that he was carrying the kind of fire insurance that was necessary to prevent a fatal burn.

  Even if he was, he was certain that it definitely wasn’t sufficient enough to bank down any flames that were now leaping up in his veins, threatening to completely incinerate him.

  Her eyes were melting him, Brooks thought. They were going to be his undoing, turning him into a puddle.

  He knew he shouldn’t be mixing business with pleasure, shouldn’t be giving in to this feeling that was sweeping over him, but it was getting really, really hard to resist.

  And when she turned her face up to his like that, his ability to resist went from a vague possibility down to zero—and even that number was dropping quickly.

  Before he knew what he was doing—certainly before he could stop himself—Brooks found himself framing her face with his hands and then lowering his mouth down to hers.

  His fate was sealed.

  As he kissed her, he could have sworn that he felt fireworks erupting and zipping right through his veins. His kiss immediately intensified, making everything that much hotter than it had been only a few moments ago.

  And then, just like that, the explosion came. Not a figurative one, but a literal one. The explosion turned into what sounded like a series of explosions, like the kind emitted by high-pitched automatic gunfire.

  Brooks only had time to react. Grabbing hold of Gwen’s shoulder, he pushed her away from her car, then down on the ground. He flung his own body over hers, effectively covering it in its entirety.

  She didn’t even have time to be afraid.

  The unnerving noise continued, echoing in her head.

  Chapter 8

  It was over as quickly as it had started. The high-pitched crackling, shooting noises faded away as if they had never happened.

  The second they did, Gwen became even more intensely aware of the fact that Brooks’s hard body was still covering hers. She became aware of other things as well, like the fact that every breath she took seemed to bring her body up, touching his.

  Not to mention that somehow, they were now facing one another and his eyes were on hers. In addition, one of his hands was cradling the back of her head, keeping it from hitting the sidewalk.

  “I think it’s over,” she finally managed to say out loud.

  “Yeah,” he responded.

  Then the next moment Brooks realized that the woman beneath him was giving him more than a status report. She was telling him that it was safe to let her up now.

  “Oh.” Brooks all but sprang to his feet, then took her hand so that he could help her up, as well.

  The first thing she did was look at all the car windows to make sure none of them had been shot out. They hadn’t been.

  “Well, at least the windows are still intact,” she told Brooks.

  “I don’t think that was gunfire we heard,” he said, doing his own survey, both of her vehicle and the surrounding area. The cars parked around hers all seemed to be intact.

  “If it wasn’t gunfire, what was it, then?” She had to admit that once she played the sound back in her head, it didn’t seem as if it actually was gunfire.

  “I’d say it sounded more like firecrackers going off,” he told her.

  “Firecrackers?” Gwen repeated. This was August. She associated firecrackers with the Fourth of July. Maybe a couple of weeks before and after the holiday. But not in August. “Are you sure?”

  Brooks had crouched down beside her vehicle, doing his best to peer under it and assess the damage. He was not about to use his hands to pull out anything he might have found just in case one of the firecrackers were still live and could go off.

  “Yep,” he declared. “Those were firecrackers.” He pointed toward the area on the ground that was just beneath the center of the automobile. There was a cluster of spent firecrackers right there.

  Gwen eyed the firecrackers uncertainly. “They’re not going to go off any more, are they?”

  “Doesn’t look likely,” he replied, “but I think we should have this checked out by the police, just to be safe.” He already had his cell phone out.

  Not bothering with a middleman, Brooks placed a call in to his sister. Once he explained what had happened, and assured her that neither he nor Gwen had been hurt, she told him that she and her partner would be there as soon as they could.

  Putting his phone back in his pocket, Brooks looked Gwen over again carefully. She had insisted that she was all right, but he wanted to make certain for himself. She appeared to be unhurt.

  “Are you sure that you’re okay?” Brooks asked her again.

  “I’m sure. I’m just shaken up—and really annoyed,” Gwen admitted. She looked back at her car and frowned. “Why would someone do something like this?”

  “To make a point. Maybe for the effect.” He was just guessing now because he had no real answers for her—yet. But he could see that there was something on her mind, gnawing away at her. “Why? What are you thinking?”

  Ordinarily, she might have just waved this away. But since he was technically in her employ, running an investigation for her, she should tell him everything.

  “All morning I had this uneasy feeling that there was someone following me.” She blew out a breath. “I know I’m probably just imagining it, or being paranoid, but still...” Her voice trailed off, as she looked up at him, frustrated.

  “Did you actually see anyone?” he pressed her in all seriousness.

  “Then you don’t think it was my imagination?” she questioned.

  “At this point, we can’t rule anything out yet,” he told her. And he said what he knew they were both thinking. “If Shelton wanted to hire me to follow you around and keep tabs on you, he could have just as easily turned around and hired someone else to do it.”

  Gwen frowned uneasily. She knew he was right. Still, she almost wished he had lied. “I thought your job was to reassure me.”

  “No,” he contradicted. “My job, among other things, is to make sure that you stay safe.”

  She forced a smile to her lips. She had to admit that hearing him say that those were his intentions did reassure her to some degree.