There had been enough chaos in her life in the first eighteen years to last a lifetime.
Still, that didn’t stop her pulse from accelerating slightly as she saw Kevin across the street. As she watched, he crossed the street, sauntering with a kind of loose-hipped gait she couldn’t help but admire.
Although his legs were long and lean in his tight jeans, his upper body was muscular beneath the short-sleeved polo shirt. His bulging biceps peeked out just beneath the sleeves of the dark-blue cotton shirt.
As she watched, he paused just outside the front door of the café and quickly raked a hand through his light-brown hair, as if wanting to make certain he looked all right for his meeting with her.
Phoebe reached up and started to smooth her own hair, then jerked her hands back down as she realized what she was doing.
This meeting with Kevin Cartwright wasn’t a date. She simply wanted any information he might be able to give her about the possibility of her having siblings.
He walked through the café front door, bringing with him an energy that seemed to electrify the entire establishment. She’d noticed that earlier about him…the energy that seemed to emanate from him.
He gazed around the café, then he found her and a smile curved the corners of his lips. He had a devastating smile. It transformed him from a handsome man into a sexy devil.
“I see you found it,” she said as he slid into the chair opposite her at the small table.
“I’m not just a private investigator, I’m a good private investigator,” he said and flashed her another of his seductive grins.
At that moment Camilla stopped at the table. “Evening,” she said, then winked broadly at Phoebe, as if to indicate she approved of the way Kevin looked. “The specials this evening are meat loaf and barbecue chicken.”
Kevin looked at Phoebe expectantly.
“I already ordered,” she explained.
“She always gets the same thing,” Camilla said.
“Then I’d just like a cheeseburger and fries,” Kevin said as he handed Camilla back the menu. “And a cup of coffee to drink.”
As Camilla hurried away, Kevin returned his attention to Phoebe, gazing at her without speaking for a long moment. She picked up her glass of iced tea and took a sip, her mouth unaccountably dry. She suddenly realized she was nervous.
She told herself it had nothing to do with Kevin, but rather with the information he might give her, information that might unite her with members of her family.
She set her glass back down and looked at him. “All right, Mr. Cartwright, tell me again what brought you to me.”
“Please, make it Kevin,” he replied. He leaned back in his chair and studied her. She felt her cheeks pinken beneath his obvious appraisal. “You’re very pretty,” he finally said.
Her cheeks grew hotter. “Do you always speak your mind so freely?”
His grin widened. “Always, but I’ve made you uncomfortable and I apologize.”
She nodded stiffly, although she didn’t think he sounded apologetic in the least. Suddenly he irritated her with his sexy smile and broad chest, with his flirting long-lashed eyes and five-o’clock shadow of whiskers.
“Mr. Cartwright, I’m a busy woman and I don’t have time for nonsense. Now, you mentioned this afternoon that somebody had hired you to find a woman named Phoebe. What makes you think I’m the one you’re searching for?”
He shrugged, his smile fading away. “When I saw you on the news report, you looked to be around the right age of the woman I’m seeking.”
“I’m around twenty-seven.”
One of his eyebrows lifted. “Around twenty-seven?”
Their conversation came to a halt as Camilla arrived at their table with their orders. She served Phoebe’s salad and soup first, then gave Kevin his cheeseburger, fries and coffee.
“You said you were around twenty-seven,” he reminded her the moment Camilla had left them alone once again.
She nodded and broke apart the whole-wheat roll that had come with her salad. “I was raised in foster care and no birth certificate was ever found for me. Child protective services thought I was about two when I went into the system.”
Kevin chewed a bite of cheeseburger and chased it with a sip of coffee. “How did you get into the system?” he asked.
“From what I was told, I was brought to a hospital severely ill. The woman who brought me in was also sick and later died. She was never identified.” Phoebe stared down at her vegetable soup, fighting against the sadness that always threatened to overwhelm her when she thought of her past.
He leaned forward, so close that she could smell the scent of him, a spicy cologne tempered by spring sunshine and a hint of maleness. “So, you don’t know if her name was Trealla?”
“Trealla…” The name rolled off her tongue, unfamiliar and yet somehow not totally alien. “I don’t know…I really don’t remember anything about my early childhood.”
He popped a fry into his mouth and once again stared at her unabashedly. “There’s one way for me to know if you’re the woman I’m looking for,” he said after a long moment of silence.
“And what’s that?”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “The woman I’m searching for has in her possession a piece of metal that looks like this.” He unfolded the paper and shoved it over to her.
With trembling fingers, Phoebe picked up the paper and stared at the object drawn there. It was a fourth of a pie shape, with intricate designs that were as familiar to Phoebe as the sound of her own heartbeat.
Instantly her hand grabbed her chest, fingers fumbling for the charm that hung on the silver chain and nestled between her breasts.
She pulled the charm from its resting place and half rose, leaning across the table to show him. Her heart crashed frantically against her ribs. “I’m the one you’ve been looking for, Kevin. You’ve found the right woman.”
Chapter Two
As Kevin compared the drawing on the paper to the actual piece of metal on the chain around her neck, a wave of excitement swept through him. The drawing on the paper perfectly matched the charm she wore.
He’d found her. After all his years of searching, after all the false leads and dashed hopes, he’d finally found one of the four he’d been hired to find.
In his exuberant high spirits, he reached across the small table and grabbed her hands in his. “We’ve got to get you to Southern California,” he exclaimed.
“Whoa…wait.” She pulled her hands from his, a touch of wariness…and something else in her sea-green eyes. She fumbled with her napkin in her lap, her eyes downcast. When she finally looked up at him again, her eyes sparkled overbrightly, as if she were on the verge of tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice slightly husky. “You have to understand, I long ago gave up on ever finding any of my family. I thought I was all alone in the world. I—I’m a little bit afraid to get my hopes up.”
In that instant Kevin had the ridiculous impulse to reach out and pull her to his chest, tell her that he would see to it that she was never alone in the world again.
He’d always been a sucker for vulnerable women.
However, a return visit to the hospital that afternoon had given him enough information to believe that Dr. Phoebe Jones was anything but vulnerable.
A loner, controlling, brusque, devoted, a rigid professional…those