He and his father had been close.
“If I’d known what was going on, Dad, I would have busted my ass to get home. To see you...” he said, looking at those bushes, remembering how happy his father had been when the colonel had retired and they could finally settle in a place they could really call home. A place where his father could watch something grow year after year. His father had babied those bushes and reveled in the berries they’d produced every summer, eating them as if they were a great delicacy.
If I had been here, I would have picked them for you and brought them to you in the hospital...
But picking his father raspberries and bringing them to him was hardly the only thing that Sutter hadn’t been able to do one last time. And all because of the way his mother had handled things. There was a lot he would have—should have—had the chance to do, to say, in those last weeks and days.
Instead he hadn’t even known his father was at the end of his life. And it pissed Sutter off something fierce.
Maybe that was part of why he and the colonel were at odds. Maybe he wasn’t hiding his feelings, his frustrations, as well as he thought he was.
But he couldn’t help resenting that the colonel had robbed him of any opportunity to say goodbye to his father. After all the years that his father had been there for him while the colonel was halfway across the world or just busy with one case or another; after all the years that his father had bent over backward to make every move, every transition, every new school as easy as possible for him; after so much time that he and his father had spent together, just the guys, the colonel had kept him from being there for his dad.
“Not the right call, Colonel,” he grumbled.
But what was done was done and now he had to deal with things the way they were. With the colonel the way she was. He had a mission here at home.
He and Kinsey Madison had a mission.
Kinsey Madison—also part of what had kept him up most of the night.
Her agenda.
Should he have agreed to help her get closer to the Camdens?
His gut said no.
He counted his cousin Beau as his best friend—more like the brother he’d never had. It had been that way since they were kids. But not only were Beau, Seth, Jani and Cade family, Sutter had strong feelings for all of the Camdens. GiGi had always treated him like her eleventh grandchild. They’d been good to him and he wouldn’t do anything that might cause them any harm.
But it was Livi who had recommended Kinsey, so they did already know her, he reasoned. And the way Livi had talked about Kinsey made it clear that Livi thought highly of Kinsey, so any overtures she made on her own would likely pan out with or without him.
He just didn’t like that, because of this deal he’d struck with her, he could be playing a part in anything that might bite them in the ass.
On the other hand, he thought, this did make it possible for him to keep an eye on her and what she was doing. It positioned him to protect them—maybe that was better than if she managed to sneak in on her own.
But he’d meant what he’d told Kinsey—if he got any inkling that she was up to something ugly, he’d sound the alarm and put a stop to it.
And he’d be careful about what information he did feed her. Nothing that wasn’t public knowledge or on public record.
But what about her claim to be half sister to Beau’s cousins?
As much as Sutter cared for and respected the Camdens of now, as sure as he was that they were all honest, trustworthy, ethical people, he also knew that the generations that came before had bad reputations. Bad reputations that the colonel said they’d earned.
She was open about the fact that she’d been leery of her sister’s marrying into the family at the time. She’d said that the men couldn’t be trusted, that H.J.—the founding father of the Camden empire, GiGi’s father-in-law—had been a modern-day robber baron, and that he’d instilled the same principles in his son and his two grandsons, the fathers of the current generation. That more than a fair share of the Camden fortune had been ruthlessly built on the backs of people who were swindled or hoodwinked or used without conscience.
If that was true, if the earlier Camdens were those kinds of men, was it a big leap to think that Mitchum Camden had cheated on his wife? That he could have had a second, secret family in the wings?
Sutter knew what the colonel would say—that it wouldn’t surprise her.
And to be honest, Kinsey Madison’s appearance also supported the claim. She didn’t look unlike a Camden. She was built like the rest of the Camden women—not too tall, maybe only three or four inches over five feet, and compact with just enough curve to her to make it rough for him not to take notice.
And she had the same coloring they all shared—her hair was as dark and rich a brown as the black coffee in his cup. She wore it longer than any of the Camden females, though—all the way to the middle of her back. Shiny and silky and thick...
And along with the hair, there was her fair skin and blue eyes—those blue eyes especially made it seem likely to him that she was telling the truth. Those eyes that people called the Camden blue eyes—so blue they almost didn’t seem real. Kinsey definitely had those.
She also had one of the most beautiful faces he’d ever seen. With flawless skin and a fine, delicate bone structure, with a perfect nose and lush, begging-to-be-kissed lips.
He’d grown up with the Camden females, tormented them alongside Beau the way he would have tormented sisters of his own, seen them through every awkward stage. So to him Lindie and Livi really were family the same way Jani was. But he recognized that his cousin and her cousins were beautiful women. As for Kinsey...he thought she had them all beat. By a mile.
But yes, she did resemble them.
Of course the likeness could be only a coincidence that she was trying to capitalize on. People could look like other people and not be related to them.
But she had claimed to be willing to do DNA testing. In fact there had been something that sounded like eagerness for it in her voice.
Or maybe he’d been sucked in by her. Maybe because she was such a knockout. He’d actually felt an impact from just sitting across from her—until he’d snapped himself out of it.
Kind of like he needed to do right then.
That just wasn’t how things were going to be around here, he told himself forcefully.
He’d said no fraternizing and he’d meant it. There wasn’t going to be anything personal between them. They would complete the mission—if the mission could be completed—and he’d be off again, far away and forgetting all about her.
But damn, she was hot...
“No fraternizing!” he commanded himself out loud, trying to put her in the same category he would one of his marines.
And failing because everything about her shouted soft and warm and sweet and certainly not marine.
It would probably help once he got the colonel home today. Then he wouldn’t be alone with Kinsey. Kinsey would just do her job, the lines would be clearly drawn and he would keep his distance.
Except that she needed to do his physical therapy.
And he’d agreed to answer questions about the Camdens.
And help her get close to them.
He could already see lines blurring and when it came to distance, there was going to be precious little of that.
But he was a marine, he reminded himself.
He was trained to persevere, to withstand anything he needed to withstand.
Anything.
Even