Ready for Marriage?

by Beverly Barton; Ann Major Anne Marie Winston

  Although the Deep South often had very mild winters, this winter wasn’t one of them. Today’s temperature had dropped into the low forties and the clouds had a look of rain about them. Cold winter rain, perhaps even sleet or ice. Kate turned up the heat in her rental car as she headed down Main Street. Before she realized what she was doing, she turned off on Madison and drove slowly by the old Kirkendall house. The house had been fully restored, with fresh paint on the exterior and a new white picket fence had replaced the dilapidated one. Heavy white wooden rockers and a large swing graced the front porch. A decorative Christmas wreath still hung on the front door, nearly three weeks after the holiday. Some lucky family had purchased Kate’s dream house. Apparently whoever lived here loved the old place as much as she had and had restored it with tender care. Whatever family lived there, Kate hoped they were very happy. As happy as she had believed Trent and Mary Kate and she would have been.

  Emotion lodged in her throat. She willed herself not to cry. Now was not the time for tears. When she saw Trent again, she had to be in full control of her emotions. And when she faced Aunt Mary Belle, she had to show the old biddy that she wasn’t in the least bit intimidated by her.

  “Goodbye, dream house,” Kate whispered as she drove away from four-ten Madison.

  In no time at all, she pulled up in front of Winston Hall, a magnificent Federal-style mansion that presided over almost a whole city block. The black iron fencing circled the estate and the massive black iron gates always stayed open, welcoming the elite of Prospect to come calling. And at holiday open houses and during Pilgrimage Week, even the lowly were allowed admittance. She’d forgotten how much she hated this house and how miserable her ex- husband’s aunt had made her life for the two years of her marriage.

  Don’t look back, Kate reminded herself. Nothing can change the past.

  She drove her rental car up and around the circular driveway, stopped directly in front of the mansion and killed the engine. After taking several deep breaths, she got out and walked up the steps and onto the porch. She checked her watch. Four-ten p.m. Too early for dinner. Kate smiled at the thought of her being invited to dine with the family.

  She hesitated at the door, then garnered up all her courage and rang the bell. She barely recognized the elderly man who came to the door. His once-gray hair had turned white and his broad shoulders stooped just a little.

  “Guthrie?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His faded gray eyes focused on her face, studying her intently. “Miss Kate! That is you, isn’t it? Lord have mercy, it’s good to see you.”

  “Hello, Guthrie. How are you?”

  “Tolerable,” he replied. “You look mighty fine, Miss Kate. Hardly a day older than when you left here.”

  Kate laughed. She’d always been quite fond of Guthrie, who had worked for the Winston family since he’d been a boy. He served the household as a butler and a chauffeur and oversaw the other household staff, which when she’d lived there had consisted of a cook and a live-in maid for Mary Belle, and two daily maids who didn’t live on the premises.

  “I’m much older,” Kate told him. “Ten years older.”

  “Been that long, has it?” As if suddenly realizing he’d kept her standing on the porch, Guthrie snapped to attention and said, “Come on in out of the cold, Miss Kate.”

  “Thank you.” She entered the massive marble-floored foyer. When she glanced around, she noted that very little had changed. A spiral staircase took center stage in the room filled with antiques that had belonged to the family for generations.

  “I never thought you’d come back,” Guthrie said. “But Lord, have I prayed that you would. Mr. Trent, he’s—”

  “I’ve come to see Trent. Is he here?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he’s here. In his study.” Guthrie looked up the stairs. “Miss Mary Belle’s taking her Saturday afternoon nap.”

  Kate grinned. “Then perhaps I’ll be fortunate enough to conduct my business with Trent and leave before she wakes.”

  Guthrie chuckled. “Shall I announce you to Mr. Trent or—”

  “Since I no longer answer to the Good Manners Society—” Kate rolled her eyes toward the stairs “—why don’t I just barge in on Trent without being announced?”

  Guthrie chuckled again and gave Kate a wide, approving smile. “We’ve missed you, Miss Kate. We have missed you a great deal.”

  “Why thank you. I don’t know what to say.” And she truly didn’t know how to respond to Guthrie’s comment. We have missed you, he’d said. We? Surely he didn’t mean Trent. Of course not. Trent was too busy being the man about town, wasn’t he? Too busy charming all the ladies. But what if there’s a special lady? What if he’s found someone else? For all she knew, he could have remarried. But Mr. Walding at the Magnolia House hadn’t mentioned anything about a new Mrs. Winston.

  “Guthrie, Trent isn’t…that is, has he remarried?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Is he engaged?”

  “No, ma’am. And you, Miss Kate?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not married or engaged or anything.”

  Guthrie glanced down the hall in the direction of the library. “You know the way to Mr. Trent’s study, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “I do wish you were staying, ma’am.”

  He turned and walked away from her, down the hallway toward the kitchen, saving Kate from having to respond. The study, as Guthrie referred to the library at Winston Hall, was on the first floor, on the opposite side from the double parlors. When she reached the study, she found the door closed. Would the door be locked? she wondered. The only time Trent had ever locked the door was when the two of them had been alone in the study, making love. On the rug before the fireplace. On the massive Jacobean desk. On the leather sofa.

  Don’t do this to yourself. Stop remembering what it was like when you two were in love. But the memories washed over her like a tidal wave, sweeping away a decade of loneliness. And she had been lonely. So very lonely. She had dated a little in the past five or six years, a few really nice men, but try as she might, she hadn’t come close to falling in love again. God knows she’d wanted to love someone, had prayed she’d find the courage to trust her heart to another man.

  She lifted her arm, curled her right hand into a fist and knocked soundly on the closed door. Her heart fluttered maddeningly.

  “Yes, come in,” Trent said.

  The sound of his deep, distinctive voice sent shock waves through her body. He had a slow, lazy, south Alabama drawl that had always seemed so sexy. But then again, everything about Trent Winston had been sexy. And probably still was.

  Kate opened the door and took a hesitant step over the threshold. Trent sat in one of the massive oxblood leather armchairs in front of the fireplace so she could see only his left arm. He wore a cream sweater. Despite being modernized with central heat and air conditioning, Winston Hall kept a chill all winter. Old houses tended to be drafty.

  “Hello, Trent.” Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

  He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “I apologize for not calling first, but I—I—”

  Trent jumped to his feet abruptly and turned to face her. “Kate? Good God, it is you.”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  She stared at him. Blatantly. He had changed. Matured. His shoulders appeared broader. And there were lines around his eyes and mouth. A touch of gray mingled with the dark brown strands of his thick hair, mostly in his sideburns. He was still as handsome as ever, maybe even more so. Maturity certainly agreed with him. But then she’d always known he’d be a good-looking man in his forties and fifties, probably even in his eighties.

  “What—when…it’s been a long time,” he finally managed to say.

  “It’s been ten years since our divorce became final.”

  “What brings you back to Prospect?” He hadn’t moved an inch from where he stood by the leather chair.

  “Personal busi
ness.”

  “I didn’t realize you had any family still living here.”

  “I don’t.”

  He studied her curiously, his dark, pensive brown eyes surveying her from head to toe. “You look—” He cleared his throat. “You look well. The years have been good to you.”

  “To you, too.”

  He took a tentative step toward her, then paused. “Please, come in. Would you care for a drink?” He indicated the bar set up on a serving cart stationed beneath one of the two massive floor-to-ceiling windows on the side wall.

  “No, thanks.” She ordered her feet into action and managed to walk toward him.

  With their gazes locked, they met in the middle of the room, each stopping when less than three feet separated them. She could barely suppress the urge to reach out and touch him. They stood there for an endless moment, neither moving nor speaking.

  “You said you’re in Prospect on personal business. Since you’ve come to Winston Hall, am I to assume that business concerns me in some way?”

  “Yes, it concerns you.” Don’t drag this out. Dammit, just tell him. “I work for the Dundee Agency. It’s a private security and investigation firm based in Atlanta.”

  “You’re a private investigator?”

  Trent grinned and her stomach did a crazy flip-flop.

  “Yes. And before I worked at Dundee’s, I was an Atlanta police officer.”

  Trent shook his head. “You must have changed a great deal. I can’t imagine my sweet Kate as either a policewoman or a P.I.”

  His sweet Kate? Dammit, Trent, I haven’t been your sweet Kate in a long, long time.

  “Recently, a colleague and I were sent to Maysville, Mississippi, a town about an hour’s drive from Memphis,” she told him. “A two-month-old baby boy had been kidnapped and my colleague was the child’s father.”

  Trent’s face paled. “You work on child abduction cases?”

  “On this one, yes. I went to Maysville with the kidnapped baby’s father and helped him and the child’s mother through some difficult days.”

  “What happened to the baby?” Trent’s jaw tightened.

  “He was rescued,” Kate said. “And returned to his parents.”

  “That’s good.” Trent turned away from her. “I’m happy for them.”

  “The FBI agent working on the case was the head of a sting operation that the bureau had in the works for several years,” Kate explained. “You see, there was an infant abduction ring working in the southeast and these people had been stealing babies for the past twelve years.”

  Trent whirled around and glared at her. “Damn, Kate, don’t tell me you’ve somehow convinced yourself that Mary Kate was taken by the same abduction ring.” He came toward her, fury in his eyes. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “I had hoped that after all this time you would have accepted the fact that our little girl is lost to us forever.”

  Kate gritted her teeth in an effort to stem the tide of tears gathering in her eyes. “Dante Moran was the FBI agent in charge of the operation. He’s an objective professional, someone without any connection to Mary Kate. He—he believes that there’s a very good possibility that our daughter could be one of three baby girls stolen from southeast Alabama the same month and year that Mary Kate was taken.”

  After loosening his tenacious hold on her shoulders, Trent narrowed his gaze and glowered at Kate.

  “There are hundreds of children who were sold to desperate adoptive parents during the past twelve years,” Kate said. “These people, the ones in charge of the abduction ring, kept a file on each infant. The state and sometimes even the city where the child was abducted was noted on records, as was the month the child was supposedly given up for adoption. The FBI is in the process of notifying the adoptive parents of every stolen child, and they’re searching for all possible birth parents, too.”

  “And this FBI agent, this Mr. Moran, believes Mary Kate is one of these children?” Trent gripped Kate’s shoulders with gentle force.

  She nodded. “There are three eleven-year-old girls who were taken by this abduction ring as infants from this area of Alabama, and given to adoptive parents within a month after Mary Kate was taken. The FBI has already pulled a copy of Mary Kate’s birth certificate and the next step is to give the FBI lab a DNA sample. Then they’ll compare it to a sample they will take from each of these girls.”

  Trent caressed Kate’s shoulders. “And if none of these little girls turn out to be Mary Kate, what will you do then? Will you finally give up and let her go?”

  “Please, Trent, try to believe in the possibility that Mary Kate is alive and we could find her and—”

  “And what? Even if by some miracle one of these girls is Mary Kate, what would we do? Rip her away from two loving parents, perhaps from brothers and sisters? And if we did, what do we have to give her—divorced parents fighting over custody?” Trent released Kate and stomped across the room. “No. I don’t want to hear this. My daughter is dead. She’s been dead for eleven years.”

  “Don’t say that. Mary Kate is alive. And I’m going to find her. I came here hoping you’d want to go with me to find our little girl. But I see now what a terrible mistake I made. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  Kate ran from the study and down the hall, not stopping when Trent called her name. Tears blurred her vision as she rushed outside and hurried to her rental car. She got in, started the engine and headed down the driveway. When she reached the street, she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw Trent standing on the porch, his arms crossed over his chest.

  Two

  Kate prepared herself a cup of hot tea. She always carried a box of Earl Grey with her whenever she traveled, which in her line of business was most of the time. Wearing her raspberry-pink cotton flannel robe over matching pajamas, she walked out of the bathroom and over to one of two lounge chairs flanking the small table near the windows. After placing the white mug with the Magnolia House emblem—appropriately a magnolia blossom—on the table, she picked up the TV remote control and flipped on the one local station. She hit the Mute button to silence the commercial’s chatter, then eased down into the chair and propped her feet on the edge of the nearby bed. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten any supper. But she’d been so upset, so damn angry when she left Winston Hall, that she wouldn’t have been able to keep a bite of food down if she had eaten.

  My daughter is dead. She’s been dead for eleven years. Trent’s words echoed inside her head…inside her heart.

  His firm conviction that Mary Kate was dead and her equally resolute certainty that their child was still alive had been the single major issue that finally ended their marriage. Of course it hadn’t helped that they’d both blamed themselves for their child’s abduction or that she’d suffered a nervous breakdown at the time. And Mary Belle Winston’s constant interference had only added fuel to the fire that destroyed any hope of them being able to salvage their relationship.

  Why had she bothered coming back to Prospect? What had she been thinking? She should have known that even bringing Trent news of what she considered a miracle wouldn’t sway him from his stubborn stand. How could he not want to find Mary Kate? She didn’t understand his reasoning. But then, she never had.

  Dante Moran had given her the basic facts which led her to believe that Mary Kate was one of the girls who’d been adopted over eleven years ago. Even Moran thought it was highly likely. And his was an objective opinion. So why couldn’t Trent believe? Why couldn’t he open up his heart to the possibility?

  A fierce ache gripped Kate’s chest, emotion so deep and powerful that it took her breath away. Mary Kate was alive. She’d always know in her heart of hearts that her baby girl wasn’t dead. Now, within a few weeks, she might see Mary Kate, touch her, hold her, tell her that she loved her.

  Once again Trent’s words tormented Kate. Even if by some miracle one of these girls is Mary Kate, what would we do? Rip her away from two loving
parents, perhaps from brothers and sisters? And if we did, what do we have to give her—divorced parents fighting over custody?

  Needing to comfort herself, Kate lifted her feet off the bed and drew her knees up toward her chest, then hugged her arms around her legs in a fetal gesture. Since the moment Dante Moran had shared the FBI’s information with her about the abduction ring’s confidential files, she’d dreamed of the moment she would hold her child in her arms again. And she had pushed every negative thought to the back of her mind. But Trent had reminded her of the reality of the situation. Mary Kate wouldn’t know her, wouldn’t think of Kate as her mother. Her daughter would have been raised by other people. She might already have a mother and father she loved. Where would Kate fit into Mary Kate’s life?

  Kate keened mournfully, the sound little more than a whimper. Oh, God, her little Mary Kate wouldn’t be Mary Kate. Her adoptive parents would have given her another name.

  What do we have to give her—divorced parents fighting over custody?

  Get out of my mind, damn you, Trent, she screamed silently.

  Wouldn’t it be enough to know that her daughter was alive? Wouldn’t it be enough to see her? she asked herself. It should be enough. But would it be?

  Special Agent Moran had pointed out that this case would turn into a legal nightmare once all the adoptive parents were informed their children had been stolen from their biological parents and not given up freely. Both sets of parents would have rights. Lawyers would be hired. Court battles would be fought, won and lost.

  What would she do if she found that Mary Kate was a happy child, living with loving parents and perhaps even had siblings? Stop it! Don’t keep torturing yourself this way. She could make those kinds of decisions later, after she knew for sure that one of the little girls actually was her daughter. First things first..