What was it his mother had once said, heaven protects fools, drunks and children? Devin wondered if Blair Stephens would react kindly to being placed in that kind of company.
“You know, it’s not very wise to say that sort of thing to someone you don’t know. There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there that are just waiting to take advantage of someone like you.”
Blair’s spine stiffened, her eyes narrowing a little too quickly as she felt the sting of his comment. Did he think she was a fool? Well, she was through being a dupe. Anyone’s dupe.
She pressed her lips together. “I can take care of myself.”
He’d stepped on a very sensitive spot, he thought, backing away. “Glad to hear it.”
He was patronizing her. For a second, she thought of leaving, but there was nowhere to go. He was the only detective she knew by name. So, exercising extreme control, she calmed herself down.
“You come recommended,” she told him.
He smiled, hoping to put her at her ease. “Glad to hear that, too. Is that why you trust me?” The ice in her eyes just barely hinted at the chill that surrounded her heart.
Trust, she was afraid, was something that was forever lost to her. She had been robbed of that at emotional gunpoint. “I don’t trust anyone.”
He believed her. And something stirred within him. Pity, swaddled in sympathy. He could only guess at how very lonely a place she found herself in. True, there were times when his back was to the wall and he didn’t know who to trust, but that was only professionally. In his personal life, there were no such barriers separating him from the rest of his world. From his family.
“That’s a little harsh,” he finally commented.
It was a lot harsh, she thought, but it was the way things were. And it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t wanted it to be like this. “It’s true.” “And why is that?” he pressed gently. “Why don’t you trust anyone?”
Natural inclination made her almost want to tell him. Until forty—eight hours ago, she had thought of herself as an open person. She didn’t like feeling this way, adrift, unable to find a harbor where she could feel safe. But she resisted the urge to confide, knowing that she would only be sorry if she gave in.
Blair rose, shoving the chair toward the desk and narrowly avoiding hitting his shin. Devin moved aside just in time. “I don’t think that has anything to do with your finding my sister.”
She’d grown up sheltered, Devin judged. And finding out she was adopted had undoubtedly sent giant fissures snaking through her world.
But he wasn’t just making small talk. It was important that she tell him everything. “You’d be surprised how many pieces don’t look as if they fit into a puzzle until you turn them around just right. Why don’t you let me be the judge of what’s pertinent and what isn’t?”
The green eyes were not only probing, they were kind and they made it difficult for her to resist baring her soul. She did her best and struck a compromise. She gave him an answer. “All right, I don’t trust anyone because I’ve been lied to.”
“It’s a very large club, Blair,” he said quietly.
She wasn’t comfortable with his using her first name. It felt too intimate—too personal, somehowand she didn’t want to get personal, not with anyone. She wanted distance, space, until she was able to sort out all her hurt feelings and make them right again. If she ever could.
“Lied to by everyone,” she amended.
He made his own assessment of her story. Maybe everyone was just trying to protect her. She had the kind of face that made a man want to take up a sword and shield, saddle up a white charger and go riding off to her defense. He wondered if she knew that.
“Numbers just got smaller,” he allowed. Devin prodded the wound a little more, wielding his scalpel delicately. “Do you mean they lied on a regular basis, or just about your being adopted?”
He was good at this, maybe too good. “Yes,” she answered impatiently, without bothering to qualify her reply.
Blair Stephens looked like a stick of dynamite a second before the lit fuse burned itself to nothing and set off an explosion. Devin couldn’t remember when he’d felt this sort of excitement coursing through his veins.
He moved a little closer to her. “You mean you were lied to, on a regular basis, about your adoption. No one told you, no one even hinted, and now you feel as if you were on the receiving end of a conspiracy of silence.”
He was good at putting it together, she thought with grudging admiration. Although she didn’t want to talk about it, about herself, she had to give him his due. Hal was right when he’d told her that she couldn’t go wrong coming to Quartermain. Her cousin had assured her that if anyone could find her twin, the detective could. Hal had all but slapped the card with the man’s name and address into her hand.
Hurt, upset, she hadn’t wanted anyone’s help, but her cousin had refused to go away. He’d told her that he had found out about her being adopted at the same time she had. That put him on her side of the lie—if she believed him. But Blair didn’t know whether she could.
She didn’t know if she could believe anyone ever again.
Quartermain was waiting for an answer. She supposed it would do no harm to let him know he was right. “Yes,” she answered quietly. “That’s exactly how I feel.”
No, not a dynamite stick, Devin amended. She was more like a fragile rose spun out of glass, ready to shatter at the slightest possible jarring. He didn’t want to jar her, but there were things he had to know, blanks that needed to be filled in as best he could if he was to know exactly what he was up against and where to go from here.
There was also the fact that he sensed the lady needed a friend in her corner. Badly. Preferably an impartial one who hadn’t been part of the painful scene she’d just gone through.
He made a decision. “Have you had breakfast yet?”
Blair shook her head, then looked at him in surprise as Quartermain crossed to the door and opened it for her.
“I know this little place that makes the best home fries.” He took her arm, ushering her out. “You’d never know it by the looks of the place, but that’s part of the beauty of—”
Blair shrugged off his hold. “I didn’t come here to eat, Mr. Quartermain.”
“No,” he allowed, “it would have been odd if you had, but I need to talk and I always do better on a full stomach.”
She found herself out in the hall. “What about your doughnut?”
He grinned, locking up. “Doesn’t have all the essential food groups.”
She let him lead the way to the elevator. As she saw it, she didn’t exactly have much of a choice. “Does this mean you’re taking the case?”
“Absolutely.” He pressed the down button and the opaque arrow turned crimson beneath his thumb. “But I need to ask you more questions.”
Didn’t he think that if she knew something, she would have volunteered it? “I already told you, I don’t know anything.”
The elevator arrived, empty and smelling faintly of the brunette on the fourth floor’s perfume. Devin took Blair’s arm and ushered her in. “And I told you, you’d be surprised how things wind up fitting together. I need a little background on you and your family.”
She set her mouth hard, her eyes staring straight ahead as she watched the battleship—gray doors seal themselves shut. “I don’t have a family.”
That was hurt and shock doing the talking. “All right, then, the people who hung around to raise you. It’ll be painless, I promise.”
The look in her eyes when she turned them in his direction had Devin swallowing his words. There was a wealth of pain there, in a place he couldn’t touch. The jauntiness faded from his smile, to be replaced by compassion.
“I really do promise,” he reaffirmed quietly.
Blair lifted a shoulder and let it drop. Maybe he meant it. She didn’t know. The only thing she did know was that she wanted to find the other half of her, and right now he was
her only hope.
“All right,” she replied. “I’ll try to answer your questions.”
He wasn’t trying to impress her. Blair knew that the minute Quartermain pointed the place out. It wasn’t anything fancy; it wasn’t even a restaurant. It was a long, cylindrical aluminum can that he referred to as a diner as he opened the door for her.
Inside, the air was warm, stirred lazily by several tired overhead fans. He called the woman behind the counter Rosie.
The buxom woman with improbably bright red hair years too young for her seemed to come to life when she saw him. She moved faster than Blair would have thought possible for a woman of her size, bringing with her a pot of coffee and two cups. She met them at the booth, announcing the first cup was on the house. Her eyes, a deep, inquisitive gray, were fixed on Blair as she said it.
Blair had the feeling that she was being sized up and judged, especially when Rosie returned with a menu for her, then cackled and nodded at Quartermain as if answering a question that Blair hadn’t heard asked.
She didn’t feel much like talking—and even less so with an audience, so Blair waited for Rosie to leave again, staring without interest at the lone cup of coffee sitting in front of her. She’d declined his offer of breakfast twice.
“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” she said when Rosie finally left them alone.
Though he’d traded banter with Rosie, he’d been watching Blair with some fascination. “For starters, you can tell me if you always drown your coffee that way.” Her saucer was filling steadily as she stirred the concoction she’d created, overflowing the confines of her cup. “You’ve put enough cream into it to satisfy your calcium requirement for an entire week.” He cocked an amused eyebrow. Coffee for him wasn’t fit for consumption unless it was as black as coal. “You really intend to drink that?”
Blair saw her coffee for the first time and almost smiled. She pushed the cup away. Nerves had made her oblivious of what she was doing.
“No,” she murmured.
Rosie returned with a plate of French toast dusted so heavily with powdered sugar that it looked as if the bread had fallen victim to a snowstorm. Several of the home fries he had bragged about fell off the plate onto the pristine floor.
The smile on her wide mouth made Rosie look almost maternal. “Why don’t you tell Dev what’s bothering you, honey?” she urged. “He’s as good at listening as he is to look at.” The last was a confidence whispered in a voice that would have made a stage actor proud.
Devin gave the older woman a look that told her that was enough, but Rosie was nearsighted when she chose to be. She rested a fist on one ample hip, reminiscing.
“He and his brother used to hang out here when they were going to college.” Her mouth was soft as she nodded in Devin’s direction. “This one would break my heart, the other would just try my patience.” She passed her ever—present rag over a corner of the table, clearing away imaginary stains and crumbs. “You can’t do better than Devin for my money.”
Devin could feel Blair’s discomfort solidifying. If Rosie didn’t leave soon, Blair was going to clam up completely. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Rosie, but I’m already working for her.”
Rosie eyed Blair’s expression. “Then I’d suggest working with her and see how that goes.” The wink was broad and spoke volumes. The look on Devin’s face had the woman withdrawing. She knew when she’d overstayed. “I’m going, I’m going,” she promised.
Her retreat was marked by another cackle.
Devin pretended not to notice that Blair looked as if she wanted to shoot out of the booth and go running from the diner. Casually, he cut a corner of the French toast and popped it into his mouth.
“You’ll have to forgive Rosie—she’s known me since before I could see over the counter.” He nodded at the long Formica counter bordered by a squadron of red vinyl stools at the rear of the establishment. Rosie’s Diner was one of a kind in Newport Beach, an oddity amid fancy—named restaurants with their specialized cuisines. “She and her late husband, Sam, came from New York around thirty years ago. He built this place to console her because she was so homesick. One of my first memories was of being brought to this place.” He smiled as he remembered.
“That counter looked like the wall of an insurmountable fortress to me at the time.”
His words brought an image to her mind. One of her first memories was of being held in her mother’s arms. But which mother, she now wondered. The one she had just buried, or the one she had never known?
She shivered unconsciously. Devin saw.
“But Rosie’s right.” He put his fork down. “I am a good listener.” He couldn’t force her to talk; he could only urge and hope for the best.
Though Rosie seemed to be busy with the trio at the counter who had just walked in, Blair could see that she was still eyeing them.
“Doesn’t seem like you’d have much of a choice around her,” Blair commented.
Rosie was a very special woman. “She does run on,” he admitted with a laugh. “But she’s got a good heart, not to mention that she’s a great cook.” He slid a piece of the toast over a streak of syrup before eating it.
Because he sensed it would make her feel better, Devin took out a notebook from his breast pocket and placed it on the table beside his plate. He flipped the well—worn cover over, opening the book to a clean page.
Blair looked at it. A blank page. Blank, just like her life. “Is that for me?”
He nodded, taking out a pen. “Anything you want to tell me,” he acknowledged. “Anything at all. It’ll be held in the strictest of confidence.”
When she looked up again, her eyes met Rosie’s across the length of the diner. The woman didn’t even make a pretense at looking away. Instead, she gestured with an upturned palm, silently urging Blair to talk.
“Rosie won’t wheedle your secrets out of you?”
He saw the slightest hint of a smile on her lips. Lips that looked as if they could easily pull back into a smile. She liked to laugh, he thought. Except that she’d been temporarily robbed of that inclination. It seemed a sin.
“She’ll try, just for the sport of it,” he told her, “but she knows better.” Rosie loved her gossip and lived vicariously on the stories he and other customers told her. But she knew when not to push. “Whatever you choose to tell me doesn’t go any further.”
“You sound like a priest.” Aunt Beth had urged her to turn toward someone, a counselor, a priest, anyone who could help her get rid of this restlessness. That was when Hal had told her about Devin. The detective was the only sort of trained professional she felt could help her get through this.
He grinned at the notion. There were a few people in his life who would beg to take exception to the comparison. “We do keep the same hours.”
She thought of the fee they’d discussed on the way over here. Hal had warned her it wouldn’t be cheap and had offered to help out, but she had stubbornly refused. This was something she was going to do alone.
“Except that you didn’t take a vow of poverty.”
There was humor there despite the somber set of her mouth. And where there was humor, he thought, there was hope.
Devin wanted to keep her talking. The longer she talked, the more comfortable she would become. And the more he would learn from her and about her. Every piece of information was important, and not just what she said, but how. The look in her eyes, her inflection, the way her head tilted when she said something particularly personal. It all went into the composite he was compiling.
He drained his cup before answering. “Digging is expensive,” he allowed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rosie approaching with the coffeepot, but he slowly moved his head from side to side. This wasn’t the time to be interrupted.
“Am I paying for that?” Blair asked suddenly, indicating his plate.
“No, I have to eat whether I’m working or not. But, indirectly, I guess you can say you are.” With one pi
ece of French toast in his system, as well as a few of the home fries he had extolled, Devin got down to business. His pen hovered over the empty page. “Did you talk to anyone about finding the photograph?”
The events of the last forty—eight hours swam in Blair’s head, all vying for the same space, coloring one another. She paused to sort through them and find some semblance of order.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “My aunt Beth, and then the others.”
“Others?” he prodded.
She could see them, crowding around her, concern on their faces. But if they’d really been concerned, they would have told her sooner. Someone would have told her. Someone should have told her.
“Aunts, uncles, cousins,” she recited almost as if it was an indictment.
The inflection was not lost on him. “I’ll need their names.”
Her tone changed instantly as her eyes narrowed. She’d thought he’d decided to go along with her wishes not to pull them into this. “Why?”
Was that defensiveness or protectiveness? Either way, it boiled down to the same thing, he thought. It was obvious she was angry at them, but she didn’t want these people being bothered by a stranger, either. Her feelings for the people in her life ran deep. He could identify with that.
“To ask questions,” he pointed out mildly. “Find out if one of them has any information that might help me find your twin.”
“No.”
“No, they don’t, or no, you won’t give me their names?” He studied her face and thought he had his answer.
“No, they don’t,” she replied almost curtly. Did she look as inept as he made her feel he thought she was? In case there was any doubt in his mind, Blair added, “I asked.”
He was sure she had. “Maybe they don’t realize they know.” She was ready to dismiss that, he thought. Perhaps too quickly. “You know, information in the right hands can look different”
Desperately Seeking Twin... Page 3