Odd—there was a part of me that wanted to cry, but my eyes were as dry as dust. “Did Doc Carter know about my adoption?”
James met my eyes. “No one knew about it. I handled it myself. The first person I told about it was your sister.”
“And did it work? Did bringing just one baby home help Elizabeth to get better?”
“Yes. For a while she was fine, back to her old self. She loved Cameron, and told me more than once that she was glad I’d pressured her into having a child of our own. With all the drugs in her system during delivery, she didn’t remember having two babies. I thought everything was going to be fine. Then without warning, her bouts of depression returned. This time none of the medications worked. There were times when she couldn’t get out of bed. She couldn’t paint. That was what destroyed her. She felt that she’d lost her art. Then she committed suicide. Carter said it was postpartum depression. They were just beginning to recognize it as a disease. But that doesn’t change the fact that by pressuring Elizabeth to have a child, I killed her and lost you.”
There was silence in the room. So many emotions were pouring through me, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man who was sitting across from me.
Finally James spoke. “Can you ever forgive me?”
I studied him for a moment. “I think you’ve been punished enough. You made the best decision that you could, the one that you thought was right. And I have really wonderful parents.” But my hand shook as I set down my brandy glass.
Sloan rose and drew me to my feet. “She’s tired. I think she’s had enough for one night.”
James met his eyes. “She shouldn’t be alone.”
“She won’t be.”
I followed Sloan to the door before I remembered the other question I needed to ask. I turned back to find James watching me. “My P.I. friend found papers showing that both Cameron and I were adopted. Why?”
“When I sent you the letter, I also took care to plant the other papers. Over the years, I’ve contributed quite a bit of money to the agency. Partly because they do good work trying to place children in the right families, but also because I thought I might need them to do me a favor someday. So they obliged me. I was afraid that if you knew I was your father and gave you away, you wouldn’t come here. And I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
I went to him then and leaned down to kiss his cheek. “I would have come. I’m a McKenzie. I can’t help being curious.”
James hugged me then, tight. When he released me he said to Sloan, “You take care of her.”
“I will. And we’ll talk more in the morning.”
Once outside James’s suite, Sloan picked me up and began to carry me down the hall. “Your place or mine?”
“Mine’s closer,” I said.
And it was.
19
SLOAN POCKETED his cell phone. The state police so far had zip. None of the tire prints they’d taken from the two SUVs on the ranch or from Austin’s matched the ones they’d found on the cliff. But they’d identified the caliber of the bullet, and they were checking licenses to see who on the ranch might own a gun that would use it. First thing in the morning, they hoped to have answers.
He strode into the bathroom where Brooke lay with her eyes closed in the hot tub. Only her head was visible beneath the sea of bubbles she’d created. Once he’d undressed her and inspected the bruises himself, he’d insisted that she take a long soak to ease the stiffness she was sure to feel in the morning. She was the one who’d insisted on adding bath salts, but he’d lit the candles.
Hannibal was patrolling the edges of the tub, taking an occasional swing at a bubble or two. Whatever his original differences with Brooke, right now it looked to Sloan as if the cat were on guard duty. He knew the feeling. Three times today he’d nearly lost her.
He shifted his gaze back to Brooke. She was here. She was safe. And he was going to keep her that way. The little line on her forehead told him that she wasn’t sleeping. She was thinking, worrying. Odd. He’d only known her for what? Less than forty-eight hours, and he already knew that about her.
But then from the moment he’d nearly run her down on the bluff, he’d felt on some deep, instinctive level that he’d known her forever. James had mentioned the same feeling when he’d described how he’d fallen in love with Elizabeth—meeting that one woman you’re destined to be with.
It had struck Sloan then that he’d fallen in love with Brooke Ashby. Like Elizabeth, he hadn’t been looking for it, hadn’t wanted it really. Wasn’t that why he’d agreed to go along with the proposition that Cameron and James had presented to him in Kentucky? Marriage with Cameron would have been safe. No emotional risk, no fears of abandonment where she was concerned. She’d never leave him the way his parents had because he and Cameron had both loved the ranch.
Loving Brooke was a different matter. It made him vulnerable. He didn’t know how she felt about him. Oh, she wanted him, but she had her life and career in L.A. And while the chemistry between them was strong, it didn’t equal love. He’d decided that he didn’t want to lose her, but what did she feel? The urge to go to her now, to drag her out of that nest of bubbles and ask her was almost overpowering.
But he couldn’t. If nothing else those worry lines stopped him cold. James had given her a lot to think about tonight. She’d been kind to her father, kinder than he might have been. No, he couldn’t add to her burden right now. He watched the little line on her forehead deepen. He could imagine what she was feeling. Abandonment. He’d experienced that at an early age. They came from different worlds, yet they had that in common.
And he knew what he could do to make her forget about that, at least for tonight. Moving to the edge of the tub, he sat down. “Stop thinking.”
Brooke opened her eyes and met his. “That’s difficult advice to follow. I keep going over everything in my mind. That’s what I do sometimes when I’m working on a particularly tough plot twist. I’m trying to shift things around, juxtapose them so that I can dream up story lines from all angles.”
He dipped a hand beneath the bubbles to test the temperature of the water. “What particular things are you looking at?”
“The timing, for one. I think I understand why the would-be killer chose that particular day to follow Cameron out to the cliff and push her off. The two of you had had a quarrel. If her body had been found, the police would have had two theories to pursue. Suicide or murder. She either followed in her mother’s footsteps or you would have been the prime suspect.”
His brows shot up.
“It’s always the fiancé or the husband the police suspect first. And you did have opportunity. You were at the ranch the entire day. You would have made a great scapegoat.”
Leaning over, he ran a finger along her jawline. “What other angles are you looking at?”
“Motives. In all good mysteries the why always leads to the who.”
“In this case, we’ve narrowed the field to the people who were in the barn today and could have sliced your girth.”
“True. Beatrice, Marcie and Austin have alibis for the day that Cameron disappeared. That leaves Hal and Doc Carter. Unless they had accomplices. Take Hal. If the why was to make Austin the heir, it wouldn’t have worked if he didn’t have an airtight alibi. So Austin and Marcie go to Vegas and Hal slips away to push Cameron off the cliff.”
Sloan turned the tap on.
“What are you doing that for?”
“The water is cooling. Go ahead and tell me what your plot line is for Beatrice and Doc Carter.”
She sighed. “That one is a little less feasible, but I’m thinking it might work on Secrets—a torrid affair between Santa Claus and the Snow Queen.”
“Come again?”
After explaining her initial impressions of Doc Carter and Beatrice, Brooke went on. “In this one, the why is the same—to get rid of Cameron and make Austin the heir. I imagine that Beatrice might share Cameron’s frustration and resentment that the McKenzie men are such patriarchs. If Austin inherits, she has the satisfaction of knowing that the land passes on to her progeny rather than James’s.”
“The only problem is that Doc Carter was a very happily married man until a year ago, and I have trouble picturing him having a torrid affair with anyone.”
“Well, there is that. Not all story lines are equally good. And there’s always the possibility that the would-be killer’s motives had nothing to do with who inherits the ranch. Maybe it was personal. Maybe someone just wanted Cameron dead.”
“Take a break. Time enough to think about it in the morning.” After turning off the water, he lifted the cat off the edge of the tub, carried him through the bedroom, and put him out the door. “The state police hope to have some answers by morning,” he continued as he reentered the bathroom. Sloan filled her in on what he’d learned while he sat on the edge of the tub and pulled off his boots.
“There’s another plot line that I’m fooling around with, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything.”