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“You can’t be serious!” Caleb said, shaking his great head and even managing a nervous laugh. “I don’t know anything about your son’s disappearance other than what you told me on the phone this afternoon.”

He was standing near the fireplace in his living room and looking at Dani and Chase as if they were out of their minds.

“Why did Jenna leave?” Chase demanded.

“I told you, I have no idea.”

“I talked to her daughter. She said that when Jenna left the woman was beside herself. Jenna apparently had an argument with you and something happened to make her leave. It had something to do with someone you’ve hired recently . . .”

Caleb’s eyes grew cold. “We had words,” Caleb admitted.

“About?”

The old man stepped forward, close enough that he could reach forward and touch Chase. Instead he rubbed the back of a leather couch and concentrated on the hard angles of Chase’s face. The younger man was regarding him warily, silently accusing him with those damned indifferent eyes—eyes so much like his own.

Dani, her arms wrapped around her torso, felt suddenly cold; a premonition of what was to come. “I just want to find my son,” she interjected, looking from the face of one angry man to the other. Tension radiated between them.

“Just as I wanted to find mine all those years ago,” Caleb said evenly.

“Pardon?” Dani said. “Your son? But I didn’t think—” She broke off midsentence and saw the unspoken message pass from Caleb to Chase.

Beneath his tan, Chase blanched, all of his muscles tightening in revulsion, his back teeth clamping together in denial. “What are you trying to say, Johnson?”

“It took me a long time to find you. Ella hid her tracks well,” Caleb said.

“You’re out of your mind!” Chase said angrily.

“Face it, boy: I’m your father!”

“What the hell is this, Johnson?” Chase demanded, getting hold of himself and eyeing the older man with a deadly calm that belied the raging torrent of emotions roiling deep inside. “This is just another ploy to avoid the subject—”

“It’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up for some time.”

“Like hell!” Chase’s anger boiled to the surface. “I’m sick of your lies. Come on, Dani!”

He turned to go, but Caleb’s words stopped him. “This is no lie, boy. Jenna guessed the truth and knew how you felt about me. Seems you’d had a discussion earlier. When I told her that I was going to spring the news on you, she had one helluva fit. Told me to leave well enough alone.”

Chase’s eyes narrowed to hard, glinting slits. His back and shoulder muscles bunched and it took all of his control to keep his hands off Caleb’s throat. “You’re wrong!”

“Why do you think I went to the trouble of finding you? There were a dozen other companies I could have contacted. Eric Conway underbid you by thirty-five-hundred dollars. You can check it yourself, in the study. It’s all in the files. But I wasn’t interested in the lowest bidder,” he said with chilling clarity. “I wanted you, and don’t flatter yourself thinking it was because you were the best!” Laughing at his own weakness, he said, “I had this stupid, mortal desire before I died to meet the only son that I’d sired.”

Hatred and fury radiated from the younger man. Chase grabbed hold of Caleb’s shirt, the clean, starched fabric wrinkling in his angry fists. “You’re lying. This is just one more of your cheap tricks to blow smoke in my face!” His nose was pressed up to Caleb’s, and his furious blue eyes burned into those of the older man. “Now why don’t you tell us the real reason Jenna left. While you’re at it, you can tell Dani how you’re involved with her ex-husband and where the hell her son is.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re pushing it,” Chase warned through clenched teeth.

Caleb glanced nervously at Dani and then fixed on Chase. “Let go of me and I’ll prove it.”

Chase hesitated and his nostrils flared. “Go ahead.” He unclenched his fist and Caleb smoothed his shirt.

Without a word Caleb walked out of the living room, crossed the foyer and walked into his study. He was gone several minutes. When he returned he carried a faded photograph in one hand and a stack of letters banded together in the other.

He dropped everything on the glass-covered table near the fireplace. Dani stared at the picture in disbelief. It was a grainy photo of a man and woman, their arms linked, a cocker spaniel pup at their feet. She didn’t recognize the short, blond woman in the picture, but the man was Chase—or someone who looked enough like him to be his brother. Or his father! Shock waves rippled through her as she accepted what Chase couldn’t.

“Isn’t that your mother?” Caleb demanded, pointing at the woma

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