Or maybe, despite everything, he just liked watching Kate.
She was stubborn and contrary and bossy as hell.
She was also a tall, blue-eyed beauty, and standing there—her slender body clad in that silvery blue suit that clung to the high curves of her breasts and the completely female curve of her hips—she was completely distracting. The vulnerability barely hidden by the passion vibrating from her was enough to make a man want to sit up and beg.
Another man. Not him. He’d already ridden that ride, thanks.
“No, I wouldn’t want someone interfering with one of my therapy sessions,” she admitted, her voice husky.
“Okay, then,” Jack said, as if that settled the matter. Then his expression seemed to soften a little as he studied his sister. “You sure you want to do this?”
Kate nodded, and it seemed to satisfy Jack, because he turned to Brett. “Brett. Good luck. Keep in touch.”
Brett nodded, still watching Kate, and the other man left the room, too.
Kate’s blue gaze slid to Brett and he leisurely adjusted his focus from her hips. Her cheeks were flushed when he finally looked at her face.
But at least she’d nearly lost that lost look.
“Must be nice to be able to call the shots with your schedule,” he said. “Most people don’t have the luxury. Particularly psychologists.”
“I’m an art therapist,” she said flatly. “I work in partnership with psychologists and psychiatrists. And you control your schedule, too. So don’t stand there and act as if it is something to be ashamed of.”
“Feeling a little defensive, are you?”
To his secret relief, the last bit of lost disappeared from her eyes.
“Not in the least,” she assured coolly. “But at the moment, I am between patients. And I do intend on going to Boston.”
“Because you don’t trust me to do my job.”
“Will you?” Her voice was husky and it made his nerves tighten. “You hate me. I can see it in your face.”
“You overestimate yourself, Kate. And as you’ve said, nothing gets in the way of my work.”
She seemed to wince a little. “Then I’ll go to Boston by myself.”
“And do what?”
“I can talk to gallery owners just as easily as you can.”
“You’re right. Go hunting through the art world yourself. Spread that mighty Stockwell name of yours as far and wide as you like. And if your mother doesn’t want to be found, which seems kinda likely if you ask me after nearly thirty years, once she hears a Stockwell is looking for her, she could well go to ground and you and your brothers would be lucky to pick up her trail ever again.”
She blanched and swayed.
He swore and pushed her down on a chair, summarily pushing her head down. “I don’t need you passing out.”
She scrabbled at his hand. “Get your hands off me. I am not passing out.”
He was perfectly happy to remove his hand from the slick silk of her hair.
She shot out of the chair, her hair tossing about. Almost as if she was afraid he’d have the gall to put his hands on her again. “I’m going to Boston,” she insisted.
“Why?” Because she didn’t trust him to do his job. The knowledge sat like a bitter pill. “Or maybe you really are enamored of my company once again,” he needled.
Her eyes flashed. “Oh, please. Don’t flatter yourself. If you must know, it’s because…because my brothers have all done something to help find our mother, and I’ve done nothing!”
“Come again?”
She pushed her fingers through her hair and walked over to the portrait, her expression telling him that she already regretted her flash of honesty. But she surprised him when she didn’t clam up the way he expected her to.
“Cord was the one to discover that Daddy was sending huge sums of money to one of his attorneys and had been every month since our mother supposedly died when I was a baby.” She recited the details without emotion. “He’s also the one who found a letter from my mother’s side of the family, the Johnsons, in Daddy’s personal records implying that the Stockwell side had once swindled the Johnsons out of land on which the Stockwells eventually discovered oil. And he’s been looking into that so we can make it right again, if it is true.”
She rubbed her fingertip along the frame of the portrait. “Rafe, now, he followed the money. To Clyde Carlyle’s office. And between him and Clyde’s daughter, Caroline, they found the divorce papers between my parents which were dated months after Madelyn supposedly died. They’re the ones who learned that Madelyn, and Uncle Brandon, too, most likely, spent a considerable amount of time in France, moving here and there. And that, somewhere along the way, she’d apparently changed her last name to LeClaire.”
“And Jack, being the most familiar with Europe because of his travels, picked up the reins at that point,” Brett concluded. He’d heard it all before from her brothers. But he’d never really thought how Kate may have felt about not having as active a role in the discoveries as her brothers.
Then he reminded himself that he was no longer interested in what went on inside her pretty head. Which mattered not at all considering the way her oddly false calm gnawed at him. “You think you’ll be holding up your end by traipsing around Boston with me.”
She nodded silently.
Brett swore inwardly. He still didn’t know why he’d accepted this case in the first place. It was gonna be one huge headache. Not only did she not trust him, but she was trying to salve her conscience. “Kate. You and me…it’s not a good idea.”
Her lips pressed together for a moment. “Because we used to be engaged.”
Because you drive me nuts. “Because I’m used to working alone.”
“I wouldn’t get in your way.”
No, you’d just be a constant distraction. Things might be dead and gone between them, but he was still a man. And she was a beautiful woman. A woman who didn’t trust him, no matter what her other reasons were. “No.”
She made a soft sound, her gaze still on the portrait. And he made the fatal mistake of moving around from where he stood, so that he could see her face.
Confusion. Hurt. Longing.
All of that was written on her perfectly oval, perfectly formed face. It was in her eyes and in the soft lip that she’d caught between pearly teeth.
In the days since he’d become embroiled with the Stockwells’ case, Kate had consistently been cool and controlled whenever they’d encountered each other.
And now, in one day—hell, in one hour—he’d seen her blue eyes swimming in tears, her aching so clear on her face that it beat his better sense into dust.
Swearing a blue streak in his mind, Brett knew he was making a mistake. “All right,” he said, sounding anything but gracious. “We leave in the morning. I’ll have my secretary, Maria, call you with the time.”
Now her blue eyes were glistening again. And she was looking at him as if he’d just saved a kitten from the jaws of a rattlesnake.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He slapped the catalogs he still held against his palm. “Be ready on time,” he said abruptly. “And don’t go packing a dozen suitcases, either, princess. We’re going there to work, not so you can walk around looking like a fashion show in progress.”
Her expression changed.