To any of them?

  “Emily’s known I got my high school girlfriend pregnant since our second date.”

  Cole stared. High school girlfriend? Lindsay hadn’t mentioned that.

  “Does she know about the drugs, too?”

  Brent blinked and Cole said, “Lindsay told me why she was in town the night she left. She just wouldn’t tell me her father’s name. Or her own, either, for that matter.”

  Brent’s nod, the way his eyes grew moist, the slight tilt at his lips, as though he’d almost smiled, drew Cole up short again.

  “How long have you known?” he asked Brent then, to fill up the gaping hole that was growing wider by the second between the two.

  “I suspected the first time I saw her. She looks so much like her mother, it’s uncanny. That with the name, Lindsay Warren...” Brent broke off then, glancing at Cole and away.

  “Her mother’s name?”

  “A portion of one of them,” Brent conceded and Cole was frustrated all over again. Being denied the name of the woman a guy loved was not a pleasant thing.

  The older man leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and glanced up at Cole. “That and the fact that she was so talented, and willing to settle for what we’d originally offered as a starting position commission. It was enough to make me do some searching...”

  “So how long have you known?” Cole asked again.

  “The day I invited the two of you to movie night.”

  “And Emily?”

  “Same time. She was with me when I got the results.”

  Cole waited to hear about divorce plans. “And the kids?” he asked when no other immediate bad news was forthcoming.

  “Kyle and Kaitlin know I got a girl pregnant during high school. Kerby’s a little young for that, yet.”

  “Do they know Lindsay is the product of that pregnancy?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell them?”

  Brent’s shrug left too many things left unsaid. Questions. Recriminations.

  All things that were really none of Cole’s business.

  “Emily and I both think Lindsay deserves to know first.”

  Made sense to Cole.

  “You love her,” his onetime mentor said then.

  Cole saw no point in denying the fact since he’d already blurted as much at the beginning of the conversation—before it had taken such a bizarre turn.

  “And she loves you.”

  “I thought she did. Now I’m not so sure. She could have been using me to get to you.”

  With a raised brow, Brent pinned Cole with a glance he hadn’t seen from the man in many years. At least not shooting in his direction. “You really think she’d do that?”

  A woman who’d left town rather than expose the man who’d deserted her and had been partially responsible for her mother’s death?

  A woman who’d found a way to keep Cole from talking about the very man she’d come to investigate?

  “No.”

  Brent’s nod was slow. And continued over and over. Until the man finally said, “You think she’d be willing to come back, to be in your life, if I wasn’t an issue?”

  The point was moot. “You are an issue. There’s no way Lindsay, or whatever her name is, would hurt your kids by exposing what you did.”

  Brent sat up at that. “I’m not proud of my part in what happened, Cole, but I don’t keep secrets from my kids.”

  He’d kept them from Cole.

  Who had parents of his own.

  “You’ve kept them from the town.”

  Brent’s frown came again. “Who here doesn’t have a past?” he asked then. And started naming some of the people who’d come to town with pain and shame, and had been given second chances.

  “I don’t get how you could just walk out on your own child and never look back.”

  Brent’s expression turned to stone. And then he sat forward, as though energy couldn’t get out of him fast enough.

  “She thinks I abandoned her?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Brent shook his head. “I think she deserves to hear the truth, first, if that’s possible,” Brent said. “With Emily’s blessing and encouragement, I’m planning to reach out to her, but, because of your feelings for her, I wanted to speak with you before I did so. That’s why we invited you over tonight. So we could speak with you together.”

  Cole was truly perplexed on that one. “Why should my feelings matter?”

  “I thought you two broke up. Whether she instigated it or you did, either way, it could be awkward for you...” Brent told him.

  And Cole’s being settled a bit. He wasn’t Brent’s son, but the man still had his back.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go get her, let her know you know who she is, and, if she wants to come back, I’ll bring her to you,” he said then, thinking a little of himself, but mostly of Lindsay. He’d have to wait for her next show, but having faced a lifetime of doing without, another week or two was a small price to pay.

  “I’d be honored,” Brent told Cole and then stood, holding out his hand.

  Cole accepted the handshake with a full heart, and when Brent pulled him in for a hug, he gave that with gusto, too, before following Brent to the door.

  “Tell Emily I said hello,” he offered as the other man headed out.

  Brent stopped, turned, said he’d do so and then added, “And, Cole? Her name really is Lindsay. The Warren is real, too.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  Leaving Cole to sit with Lillie.

  And dare to hope.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ringing woke Lindsay. A phone. Wrong ring.

  Right ring.

  Lindsay Warren’s phone.

  In the office.

  At two in the morning?

  Sliding out of her king-size bed, she made it down the hall and into the studio before the call ended. Had to jab twice with a shaking thumb to answer.

  “Cole?”

  “I looked at my phone. Saw a missed call from you...”

  “And you decided to call me back at two in the morning?” She was smiling as she slid down the wall to her floor.

  “I saw the missed call,” he said again, as if that explained things. Which it did. “I thought I’d have to wait for another show, but you haven’t posted any, and then I see you called.”

  And he’d called back in the middle of the night.

  She’d been elated.

  And...

  What were they doing? Prolonging the heartbreak by giving in to weakness? She’d had a long, boring premiere to sit through, that night. Way too much time in the dark to think.

  “I need to see you, Lindsay,” his voice sounded different. Totally serious. “I know who your father is, and I’m in San Diego. I just need an address.”

  “What!” She stood up. “Wait, you’re here?”

  Other than the city, he didn’t know how to find her. Which meant he didn’t know her real identity.

  “I’ve been driving all night.”

  So, he hadn’t just noticed her missed call.

  And that was the thought she landed on?

  He couldn’t know her father’s identity—no one knew but her and Sierra’s Web, and she couldn’t have Cole showing up in Warren-Smythe’s world, either.

  But she gave him the address of a furnished condo she owned. One she kept to house out-of-town business associates on occasion. Told him to meet her there in an hour.

  And then jumped in the shower.

  She’d been wrong to call him. To give him hope.

  She had to end things, once and for all.

  * * *

  Cole was waiting in the parking lot when Lindsay’s smart little Porsche pulled in. He’d been watching for the SUV he’d seen her loading in Anaheim. Was glad he’d taken the time to pull on dress pants and shirt before leaving home, when he saw her pants and cropped short jacket.

  He’d chosen his professional gear for moral support. Jeans didn’t seem appropriate to the moment. But wasn’t sure her choice of outfit boded well for him.

  Nor did her greeting in the parking lot. Kind, but all business.

  Because he was close to the man who’d abandoned her?

  But she’d known that before she’d left town. He’d apparently been the only key player in the dark.

  They weren’t even fully inside the door of the luxury unit before she flipped on a light and turned to Cole. “Look... I was wrong to call you, and I’m sorry, but you can’t...”

  “Brent Wilson plans to reach out to you,” he interrupted. Because when he looked in her eyes, he felt her panic. “I asked him to let me come get you and bring you to him. Because if you don’t want to see him, I’m going to make certain that he leaves you alone.”

  The words were just there.

  And complete truth.

  “Brent...” Mouth open, eyes wide, she dropped down to a couch, the closest piece of furniture in the vicinity. “He knows?”

  Cole took a deep breath. So, it was true. A part of him had been expecting differently...

  Joining her on the couch, he left plenty of distance between them. “He said you’re the spitting image of your mother.”

  “When?” She shook her head. “When? How long have you...”

  “Tonight,” he told her, wanting to hold her, not for sex, but so that she knew she wasn’t alone.

  “And you...you’re okay with it?”

  If it was possible, Cole fell in love all over again. So Lindsay, thinking of others when her own world was in crisis. And it dawned on him. Maybe that was why she always had others on her mind. So she didn’t have to feel the holes in her own life.

  “I’m not overly fond of him at the moment, but I love the guy.” He had to be honest with her.

  His response seemed to ease her somewhat. The lines on her face faded. Only to come again. “He really wants to see me?”

  Cole heard the hope there. And saw the anguish in her eyes, too.

  “He says he didn’t abandon you, Lindsay. Had a shocked expression on his face when I accused him of doing so.”

  Her snort was so unlike the woman he knew, as was the bitterness in her gaze, and Cole was back in lawyer mode, ready to keep his mentor from ever seeing her. “What else did he say?” she asked.

  “That you deserved to hear the truth before he told me or anyone else.”

  “Did you tell him I know about the drugs? Did he try to get out of that, too?”

  “We didn’t discuss details, but when I asked him if Emily knew about the drugs, he said she did.”

  “Emily? She knows?”

  “He told her on their second date that he’d gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant.”

  “High school?” Lindsay shook her head. “They’d just met, the summer after she graduated...”

  Cole’s shrug felt weak. He didn’t have enough to ease her pain. Except, “I’ll take you to him, if you want to go,” he said. “We can be there by midmorning, and I’ll have you back here by tomorrow night.”

  “You need to sleep, Cole.”

  Did that mean she was going with him?

  Oddly enough, he didn’t feel at all tired, and told her so. Mostly he didn’t want her to be alone. But when she offered to let him stay at the condo, and meet him back there in a few hours, he had to let her go.

  She texted him a few minutes later, as he’d asked, to let him know she’d made it home.

  But didn’t say anything else.

  No “I love you, it’s good to see you,” or “thank you.”

  Not even “good-night.”

  * * *

  Thankfully Cole had shown up on a weekend, and Lindsay was able to excuse herself from the mostly social functions she’d been scheduled to attend. As she dressed on Saturday, midmorning, she didn’t spend time thinking about what a daughter wore to meet her father for the first time. She and Brent Wilson had already met.

  She dressed like the confident, successful, independently wealthy businesswoman she’d become of her own accord. In expensively tailored gray pants, a cream silk camisole and the matching cropped jacket that went with the pants. And slip-on heels that cost far too much. She wore her two-thousand-dollar gold hoop earrings from her grandfather in one of her ears’ three piercings. And filled the other two with similarly expensive, if smaller, gold hoops.

  And for the six hours across the desert she held her silence, other than to respond to Cole Bennet’s small talk. He was her ride. Brent Wilson’s protégé. A member of the man’s family.

  He couldn’t be her rock.

  Or even a friend.

  When he pulled onto Brent’s street, the ice around her cracked for a moment. “We’re going to his house? What about his kids and...”

  “The older two know Brent had a child, but they don’t know it’s you,” Cole said, shocking her. Unnerving her.

  Shattering another layer of the shields she needed to get through the meeting and make it home in one piece.

  “But they’re all with Emily, watching Kaitlin in a rodeo being hosted at Homestead Ranch.”

  Mia Jones’s place. She’d liked Mia.

  They hadn’t even pulled fully into the drive when she saw Brent Wilson come out the front door of the house and stand on the massive porch.

  As though he owned the world.

  The bitter thought crept through, shoring her up for the potential lies that lay ahead. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if the man had figured out she knew who he was, he’d know she could choose to inflict damage upon him any time she chose. He could offer to buy her silence, but he’d know that she didn’t need his money.

  She wondered, as she exited Cole’s SUV, what he’d try to offer to get her to go quietly away. What he thought he had that she’d want.

  Then she noticed that Cole wasn’t getting out of the vehicle, and stopped to glance at him through her still-open door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving you to meet with him in private.”

  “If you aren’t coming, I’m not going,” she stated without thought. Ms. Bohemian to the rescue. A new thing.

  Cole got out.

  And Warren-Smythe was back in action.

  Until she climbed the steps up the porch and saw the intensity, the welling tears, the trembling lips on the face of the man she’d come there to hate.

  “They told me you didn’t make it,” the man blurted, any resemblance to the nurturing, calm man she’d known Brent Wilson to be just...gone. “That you were stillborn. I never would have taken the agreement. I swear to God, Lindsay, I would have stayed—I’d have taken whatever punishment they wanted to hand out, if I’d known you were alive.”

  They? Who? What in the hell was the man babbling about?

  And why were there tears in her eyes? Blurring her vision when she’d never needed to see more clearly in her life.

  She shook her head. Ready to call him on his lies, but couldn’t get words up through her throat.

  “I was trying to stop him from selling to her. I’d had no idea...she wanted to be an artist, not a philanthropist, but she couldn’t stand up to her parents. We met in art class and while I had talent, she was worlds above me. She was such a sensitive, sweet woman, with so much to offer, but she didn’t have the strength to oppose her mother and father. She didn’t even tell them about me until she could no longer hide the pregnancy. Then when they refused to let me see her...”

  The man fell to a chair on the porch, as though broken, and Lindsay sat, too. In the chair across from him. Looking up to Cole.

  A chair by Brent. A chair by her.

  His choice.

  He sat by her.

  It mattered. She couldn’t think why.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “You found out Mom was pregnant. You left. She had me and then got back on the drugs you and your brother had been selling to her. End of story.”

  She didn’t need his emotion. His regret.

  She needed truth.

  “I’d known she was pregnant for months before she told her parents. I wanted to marry her.” The man was looking her right in the eye. No wavering. “Her parents told her they’d cut her off if she didn’t end things with me. We had no health insurance. My home life wasn’t good. Mom was gone as much as she was there. My brother was dealing drugs. I told her we had to do what her parents wanted. Just until I could get my diploma and get a job. Next thing I know, her parents’ lawyer calls to tell me the baby is gone.”

  She shook her head. Physically and mentally. Didn’t want to believe a word of what he was saying.

  Wasn’t willing to give him any trust at all.

  But hearing some sense in his story, too. What he was describing...sounded exactly like things her grandparents would have done. Down to the baby being “gone.” Leading him to believe one thing, when it could have simply meant that they’d taken her away from the city for a while.

  They’d have had the best of intentions.

  They lived in a world where order and rules didn’t change a lot. Where there was only one way to do the right thing.

  But she had questions. A ton of them.

  “I was a mess, drinking too much,” Brent Wilson continued before she could voice a single thought. “And one night my brother lets me know that I’m wasting my energy, hurting over your mother like I was. He said that she was out partying, getting high. I refused to believe him. He showed me a picture of her with some of her wealthy friends. My brother’s clients. I tried to reach her, but no one would let me near her. Then one night, I hear my brother on the phone. He’s getting ready to make a drop-off in her neighborhood. He needs to borrow my car. I won’t let him. He fights me for the keys—I got a busted lip, and he got my car. I jumped in as he was leaving, thinking I’d finally found a way to get to her. Instead, he gets busted, and I did, too, right along with him.”