A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

by Joan Johnston

  “The girth was cut,” Sloan said as he took one of my hands in his. “The run created too much stress and it tore the rest of the way.”

  I gripped Sloan’s hand tighter, but I kept my gaze on Doc Carter. “Who saddled my horse?”

  His eyes widened. “I don’t know.”

  “You were there. You and Beatrice came out of the stable with Austin and the Lintons.”

  Now Carter was frowning. “Beatrice, Austin and the Lintons were in the stables when I arrived. A call had come in for Austin and Elena asked me to deliver the message. The horses were already saddled when I got there.”

  “I’ll have Gus check into it,” Sloan said.

  “Well.” Doc Carter closed his bag. “I want you to take it easy for the next day or so. Don’t go to sleep for a while.”

  I made the mistake of nodding and pain sliced into my head again. “Aspirin?”

  He took a bottle out of his case and shook two pills into my palm. I swallowed both of them dry before he handed me a glass of water.

  Doc turned toward James. “Shall I tell Beatrice to hold dinner for you?”

  “No,” James directed. “Tell her to go ahead and serve dinner without us. Elena will bring something up when we’re ready.”

  None of us spoke again until Doc Carter left the room. Then Sloan looked at me. “We’re going to tell James everything.”

  I opened my mouth, but Sloan held up a hand. “First someone shoots at you, then your saddle girth is cut. I’m putting a stop to your masquerade right now.”

  “No need to argue about it,” James said. “I already know who she is. She’s Brooke Ashby, and she’s here because I sent her that letter telling her that she was adopted.”

  Minutes later, I was still trying to absorb what James had revealed. He’d forestalled questions, insisting that Sloan pour us each some of the brandy he kept in his desk.

  I waited for Sloan to sit down beside me before I asked the question that was foremost in my mind. “Do you know what happened to Cameron?”

  “Yes, I know.” His face and his tone were grim. “But what I say stays in this room. Agreed?”

  “All right.” I nodded.

  Sloan looked angry. “I’m not promising anything.”

  James studied him for a minute. “Her life and Cameron’s life might depend on your silence.”

  “She’s alive then?” I linked my fingers with Sloan’s. “Where?”

  James took a sip of his brandy. “She’s safe in L.A. I’ve hired security for her.”

  “So she did run away,” Sloan said. “And you knew all the while where she was.”

  “I knew where she was. But she didn’t run away. The morning after you quarreled, she went to that spot she loves so much by the ocean. She told me that morning that she was having second thoughts about going through with the wedding.” Frowning, he waved an impatient hand. “Not because she was falling for that Linton character. She wasn’t. The gal was too smart for that. She was keeping tabs on him like I asked her to.”

  He paused to take another sip of his brandy. The light was beginning to fade outside, and Sloan reached to turn on a lamp.

  “She was upset that morning,” James continued. “She told me that she believed Linton was really falling for her, and that was causing her to have second thoughts about settling for a marriage of convenience. Said maybe the both of you deserved better. I’ve no doubt she would have come around and done the sensible thing. She always does. But while she was out there on the cliff, someone came up behind her and pushed her over.”

  I tightened my grip on Sloan’s hand.

  “Brooke figured that much out this morning,” Sloan said. “She climbed down and found Cameron’s locket on the ledge.”

  “Smart gal.” He shot me an approving glance. “The ledge saved Cameron’s life. But it knocked her out for a while. When she came to, it was dark. She had her cell phone in her pocket and she called me, told me what happened and drove herself back here. We sat right in this very spot and decided what to do next.”

  “So she drove her car back here and not the would-be killer?” I asked.

  “Yes.” There was a ruthless light in James’s eyes now. “I wanted the bastard to worry and wonder how that car had gotten back here. And whether or not Cameron could still be alive.”

  “So you let us all believe that she’d gone away to think about the wedding,” Sloan said.

  James nodded. “Then I waited for someone to show their hand.”

  “And you didn’t think I had a right to know where she was?” Sloan asked. His voice was soft and tight with anger.

  When he answered, James’s voice was tired. “Cameron didn’t see who pushed her. The noise of the sea and the wind blocked any sound. I wasn’t about to trust anyone.” He met Sloan’s eyes steadily. “You’ll have to forgive the overprotective-ness of a father.”

  A tense silence followed.

  I took a sip of my brandy to ease the tightness in my throat. “Why L.A.?”

  James met my eyes, and I saw regret and something else, something that I’d seen before when he looked at me. Hunger? “She wanted to see you, to be close to you.”

  “She knew about me?”

  “I told her that night when we were deciding what to do. I’d been thinking of getting in touch with you, but it was her idea that I send you that letter. We figured that you’d make an appearance here and that would stir things up.”

  “The return of the long-lost twin?” I asked around the tight ball that had formed in my throat. “How could you have been so sure I’d take the bait?”

  James gave me a steady look. “You have McKenzie genes in you. I knew that curiosity would bring you here. But I wasn’t expecting the memory loss story—that was a stroke of genius. I had to move up the wedding to really force the attacker’s hand.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Sloan rose to answer it. The interruption gave me a chance to play James’s words over in my mind. “You have McKenzie blood.” What I’d suspected but never quite believed had turned out to be true. I was James and Elizabeth’s daughter. And my sister was alive.

  Elena came in pushing a cart, and for a while the only sound in the room was the clink of china and silver as she set out dinner on James’s desk. When she’d lit the candles and pushed the cart out of the room, James said, “Shall we eat?”

  I put my brandy snifter down. “I can’t. Not until you tell me why you gave me up for adoption.”

  Sloan returned to his place beside me and took my hand in his. “You’re going to have to explain that to me, too.”

  James kept his eyes steady on mine. “I gave you up for adoption because I loved your mother, and I thought it would save her life. I thought I was in love with my first wife, Sarah, too. But we met in our teens, and during the ten years we were married, we changed, grew up I guess. She wanted something besides ranch life. I wasn’t surprised when she ran away. The surprise was that she chose my best friend.” He nodded to Sloan. “Your father.”

  “That must have been hard,” I said.

  “I told myself that it happens. Lancelot was Arthur’s best friend, and Guinevere fell for him. I hoped that they would be happy together.”

  “They were in love, then?” I asked.

  “Why else would they have run off together?”

  “You didn’t try to find them?”

  “Sure.” James frowned. “But the P.I. I hired never found a trace.”

  I gripped Sloan’s hand harder. Because we were talking about his father, and it didn’t sound as if James had really wanted to find them.

  “I was fifty-five when I met Elizabeth Cameron, and it was love at first sight for both of us. I took one look at her and thought this was the woman I was meant to be with. It was the same for her. She’d never wanted to marry, never considered it until she met me. What we shared was a rare and special kind of love—the kind that you experience when you meet the mate that you were created for. If you haven’t expe
rienced it, you won’t understand what I’m saying.”

  I thought I knew what he was talking about, but I didn’t dare look at Sloan, didn’t dare think about it.

  “Elizabeth was thirty-five when we married, twenty years my junior. The one bone of contention between us was that I wanted children and she didn’t. She didn’t want anything else to interfere with her art. In her mind, marriage had interfered enough. But I persisted. I’m not sorry about that. In the end she gave in and agreed to give me one child.”

  James took another sip of brandy, then set the glass down. “From the beginning of the pregnancy, she was plagued with depression. I took her to the best doctors, and finally we ended up in a clinic in Switzerland where they supposedly had some expertise. But they could do nothing for her. When the doctor told me we were having twins, I didn’t dare tell her. I know it sounds unbelievable now, but when the person you love is sick, you become desperate. Your mother’s psychological condition was too delicate, too precarious. I was afraid that another baby might push her over the edge.”

  He drew in a breath and let it out. “That’s when I made the hardest decision I’ve ever made. I brought you back here on a separate plane and arranged for your adoption through a private agency. I selected your parents because I recognized in your mother the same kind of dedication to work that I’d seen in Elizabeth. And I suppose that giving you to them helped me to live with the guilt I felt for pressuring Elizabeth into having you and Cameron.”

  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.

  Chapter 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.