It all spoke to the privileged upbringing she’d enjoyed. He found it difficult not to feel bitter when he knew how hard her mother had scraped and worked for a decent life. Clearly the Masters family had looked after their own—they just didn’t look after those who walked away from them. Those who didn’t conform.
His gaze drifted back to her face where he noticed her full lips tremble slightly before pulling into a nervous smile.
“H-hello, I was wondering if Ellen Masters lives here?” she said.
Her voice was tight, as if her throat was constricted and in the late-afternoon sun that slanted across her face he could see telltale signs of tear tracks. Natural curiosity rose from inside him but he quelled it with his usual determination.
“And you are...?” he asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She held out a delicate hand. “I’m Tamsyn Masters. I’m looking for my mother, Ellen.”
He took her hand in his, noting instantly the coolness of her touch, the fragility in the bones of her fingers as his larger, stronger ones closed around hers. He struggled against the instinct to go into protection mode. There was something very not right in Tamsyn Masters’s world right now, but, he reminded himself, that wasn’t his problem.
Keeping her away from Ellen was.
Two
“There’s no Ellen Masters here,” he replied, letting go of her hand. “Was your mother expecting you?”
She had the grace to look shamefaced. “No, I kind of hoped to surprise her.”
Surprise her? Yeah, he just bet she did. Without sparing a thought to whether or not her mother would, or could, see her. How typical of her type, he thought angrily. Pampered, spoiled and thinking the world spun for her delectation. He knew the type well—unfortunately. Too well. They were the kind who’d always expect more, no matter how much you gave. People like Briana, his ex. Beautiful, seemingly compassionate, born into a life of opportunity—but in the cold light of day as grasping and as single-minded as Fagin in Oliver Twist.
“Are you sure you have the right address?” he asked, tamping his fury down.
“Well...I thought...” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and read off the address. “That’s right, isn’t it? I’m at the right place.”
“That is my address, but there’s no Ellen Masters here. I’m sorry. It looks like you’ve had a wasted trip.”
Before his eyes, every particle in her body slumped. Her eyes suddenly brimmed with unshed tears and a stricken look froze her delicate features into a mask of sadness. Again that urge to protect her welled within him—along with the compulsion to tell her of the well-concealed and unsealed driveway she’d have passed on the road here. The one that led to the cottage where Ellen and Lorenzo had lived for the past twenty-five years or so—but he just as determinedly pushed the impulse back.
He knew for a fact Tamsyn Masters had legally been an adult for ten years. What whim had finally driven her to seek out Ellen now? And, more important, why hadn’t she reached out to her mother sooner, when it could possibly still have made a difference to the other woman’s happiness?
“I—oh, well, I’m sorry to have bothered you. My information can’t have been correct.”
She reached into her handbag for an oversize pair of sunglasses and shoved them none too elegantly onto her face, hiding her tortured gaze from view. As she did so, he caught sight of the white band of skin on the ring finger of her left hand. Had the engagement he’d read of over a year ago come to an end? Had that been the catalyst to send her searching for her mother?
Whatever it was, it was none of his business.
“No problem,” he answered and watched as she walked back to her car and turned it around to drive back down the driveway.
Finn didn’t waste another second before reaching for his cell phone and punching in a number. It went straight to voice mail and he uttered a short sharp epithet in frustration while listening to the disembodied voice asking him to leave a message.
“Lorenzo, call me. There’s been a complication here at home.”
He slid his phone back in his pocket and closed the front door of his house. Somehow, though, he had the feeling he hadn’t completely closed the door on Tamsyn Masters.
* * *
As Tamsyn steered down the driveway, disappointment crashed through her with the force of a wrecking ball. The tears she’d battled to hold back while talking to the stranger now fell rapidly down her cheeks. She sniffed unevenly, trying to hold in the emotion that had been bubbling so close to the surface ever since she’d left Adelaide last night.
Why on earth had she thought it would be simple? She should have known better. Should have listened to Ethan, even, and tackled this another time—another day when she was in a stronger frame of mind. Well, she’d done it now, she’d gone to the address her late father’s solicitor had used to send her mother all those payments through the years and it had been the wrong one.
Disappointment had a nasty bitter taste, she’d discovered—not just once, but twice now in the past twenty-four hours. It just went to prove, that for her, acting out of character was the wrong thing to do. She wasn’t made to be impulsive. All her life she had weighed things up long and carefully before doing anything. Now she fully understood why she’d always been that way. It was safer. You didn’t get hurt. Sure, you didn’t have the thrill of taking a risk either, but was the pain you suffered when things went wrong worth it? Not in her book.
Tamsyn thought about the man who’d opened his door to her at the top of the hill. Over six feet, she’d been forced to look up at him. He’d had presence—being the kind of guy who turned heads just by entering a room. A broad forehead and straight brows had shadowed clear gray eyes the color of the schist rock used on the side of the house that was very definitely his castle. A light stubble had stippled his strong square jaw, but his smile, while polite, had lacked warmth.
There’d been something in his gaze when he’d looked at her. As if...no, she was just being fanciful. He couldn’t have known her because she knew full well she’d never met him before in her life. She would most definitely have remembered.
The sun was sinking in the sky and weariness pulled at every muscle in her body as all her activity, not to mention crossing time zones, over the past day took its toll. She needed to find somewhere to stay before she did something stupid like drive off the road and into a ditch.
Tamsyn pulled the car to the side of the road and consulted the GPS for accommodation options nearby. Thankfully there was a boutique hotel that provided meals on request about a fifteen-minute drive away. She keyed the phone number into her mobile phone and was relieved to find that while the room rate was on a par with the accommodation at The Masters, yes, they had a room available for the next few nights. Booking made, Tamsyn pressed the appropriate section of the GPS screen and followed the computerized instructions, eventually pulling up outside a quaint-looking early-1900s single-story building.
With the golden rays of the early-evening sun caressing its creamy paintwork, it looked warm and inviting. Just what she needed.
* * *
Finn paced his office, unable to settle back down to the plans that were sprawled across his wide desk. Plans that were going to go to hell in a handbasket if he couldn’t buy the easement necessary to gain access to the tract of land he wanted to use for this special project. He shoved a hand through his short hair, mussing it even more than usual.
The chirp of his phone was a happy distraction.