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“Do I?”
“Here.” She handed him a cup of coffee. “Now, sit.” At the table were two place settings complete with orange juice, toast, ham, eggs and hash brown potatoes.
“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled in his best Texan accent, and she laughed, the sound as musical as wind chimes in a summer breeze.
They ate and talked as Blue sat on the floor at Katie’s side, his brown eyes following each morsel that she forked into her mouth. Every once in a while, she’d toss the dog a tidbit, and he’d deftly catch the treat with a snap of his jaws.
It felt comfortable and right in the cozy kitchen. In her fluffy bathrobe and slippers, Katie was innocently seductive, expressive with her hands and eyes as she talked about her job, her son, her ambitions and her family.
“So it’s all rather complicated,” she admitted as she poured the last cup of coffee. “All those years I’d grown up with and tolerated my half brothers, never dreaming that I’d end up with not one, but two half sisters.” She grinned, showing off the sexy overlap of her teeth. “Kind of weird, when you think about it. How about you? Any siblin
gs?” She munched on a bite of toast.
“Nope.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“So where are your parents?”
He felt his eyebrows quirk and drained his cup. “My mom took off with some other guy when I was two, and my old man was killed in Vietnam when I wasn’t much older.”
He noticed the color drain from her face. “I was kicked around between a couple of aunts and pretty much raised myself.”
“I—I’m sorry.”
“Nothin’ to be sorry about.” He saw the pain in her eyes and refused to let her pity him. “Trust me, it was harder on them than it was on me. I was in and out of juvenile homes for a while until I met my wife.”
“Your…wife?” she repeated, stunned.
“Ex-wife.” He shoved his chair back. “I’ve been divorced for years.”
“Oh.” She forced a smile that didn’t seem genuine, and tiny lines deepened between her eyebrows.
“It’s over, Katie. Been over a long time.” Why he felt compelled to explain, he didn’t understand. “We didn’t have any kids together, and the last I heard, Celia had divorced her second husband and was on her way to marrying a third—not that I care. I don’t even know where she’s living now.”
She seemed troubled, and he felt something tug at his heart. Katie Kinkaid, for all her tough-as-nails-investigative-reporter inclinations, was soft inside, couldn’t stand to see anyone hurt.
He went to her chair, reached under her arms and drew her to her feet. “Thanks for breakfast,” he said, bending down so that the tip of his nose brushed hers.
“Thanks…thanks for staying here last night.” Katie could scarcely breathe. His hands, big and possessive, held her on either side of her rib cage. One corner of his mouth lifted into that smile she found so damnably sexy.
“My pleasure, Ms. Kinkaid.”
“Mine, as well.” Cocking her head to the side, she looked up at him, heard a deep, heartfelt groan develop from somewhere around his lungs, then gasped as he pulled her roughly to him and pressed hard, insistent lips against hers.
In a heartbeat her blood was rushing through her veins, her bones began to melt, and she sagged against him, only to be released quickly. She nearly lost her balance and glanced up to find his eyes a smoky blue. “I gotta go,” he said.
“Y-yes.”
With another quick kiss to her cheek, he turned and walked through the back door. Katie was left with her heart pounding wildly, her thoughts tumbling disconcertingly and a new hunger burning deep in the most womanly part of her. She dropped into her chair and held her head in her hands as she realized that she was starting to fall in love with a man she barely knew.
“Don’t,” she warned herself, and Blue gave out a bark of agreement.
But she feared it was already too late. Much too late.
* * *
A few days later Luke stared at a copy of Josh Kinkaid’s birth certificate. Luke smoothed the official paper open on the scarred maple table that had come with his apartment in the carriage house. The name of Josh’s father was missing, but the birth date was perfect. With a little math, Luke figured Katie had gotten pregnant about a month to six weeks before Dave Sorenson had left Bittersweet.
It wasn’t proof positive, of course; she could have had another lover, but Luke had the painful sensation that he knew for certain that Josh Kinkaid was Ralph Sorenson’s only grandchild. His jaw tightened, and he wondered where the feeling of satisfaction he’d anticipated in figuring out this mystery was. He was about to earn the money he’d been promised, about to give an elderly man a ray of hope before he died, about to betray a woman he thought he could all too easily fall in love with.
