Kingsley Baby Trilogy: The Hero's SonThe Brother's WifeThe Long-Lost Heir

by Amanda Stevens

  “Why not?”

  “You said yourself, the person we’re looking for could be dangerous.”

  She saw him smile in the darkness. “So can I, if it comes to that.”

  Her chill deepened, but it wasn’t just from the breeze. Bradlee realized again how very little she knew about David. He was a stranger and yet she’d been waiting all her life for him to come home.

  They fell silent for a few minutes, then David nodded toward the mansion. “Are they always like that?”

  “Like what?”

  His tone was grim. “At each other’s throats.”

  Bradlee grimaced. Dinner had been extremely uncomfortable for her, too. “It was better when Andrew was alive. Iris adored him. He could always make her laugh.”

  “Somehow I can’t imagine ever doing that,” David murmured.

  “And Andrew’s wife was a doll,” Bradlee said. “Iris was devoted to her.”

  David turned to her. “What was she like?”

  “Hope? Very sweet, very quiet, very elegant.” Bradlee paused. “Actually, you’ve met her husband. Her new husband.”

  “She’s married again?” He gave a short laugh, one without humor. “That didn’t take long.”

  “Long enough. She and Andrew’s marriage was rocky for a long time, and she and Jake go back a long way.”

  “Jake?”

  “Jake McClain. The private detective who found you.”

  Bradlee sensed rather than saw his surprise. “Jake McClain is married to my brother’s widow?”

  “They were high-school sweethearts. When they broke up, Hope married Andrew. She stayed here for a while after he died, to be with Iris, and then later, she hired Jake to investigate the man claiming to be you.” Bradlee paused. “During the course of the investigation, I guess they found their way back to each other.”

  “How romantic.”

  “Don’t be cynical,” she scolded. “I think it would be wonderful to have a love like that. A love that never dies, no matter what.”

  “I don’t think there is such a thing.”

  Bradlee stared up at him in reproach. “You don’t think there’s one special person out there for each of us? You don’t think it takes fate and maybe a little luck for us to find that person?” She drew a long breath. “Oh, but when we do…”

  “When we do, what?” She couldn’t see his expression, but she could imagine one dark brow rising in skepticism. “Fireworks? Explosions? The earth moves?”

  “Yes,” Bradlee agreed. “All of that.”

  “So what happens if we don’t find that person?” he asked. “What if the fates are against us or our luck runs out?”

  She thought about that for a second. “Then I think we can love someone else. Maybe we can even be happy with someone else. But there’s only one person out there who can be the love of our life.”

  He was still staring down at her in the darkness. Bradlee sensed that something was different about him. Something had changed for him—an awareness that had caught him by surprise.

  There was a touch of regret in his voice when he spoke. “Love rarely works out the way we want it to, Bradlee. Real life is not a storybook fantasy.”

  “But why can’t it be?” she asked. “Why can’t we have the fairy tale?”

  “I think you’re asking the wrong person that question.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said softly. “If anyone deserves a happy ending, it’s you.”

  There was suddenly an electric pause. Bradlee shivered as she stared up at him. He reached out and touched her hair. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone like you.”

  She tilted her head to gaze up at him, and for a moment, they remained that way, no more than a heartbeat apart. And then slowly, David’s head lowered and he touched his lips to hers.

  It was hardly a kiss at all. No more than a feathery caress, but Bradlee felt it all the way to her soul. When he lifted his head, she murmured, “Don’t stop.” When he would have pulled away, she wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him back to her. Rising on tiptoe, she pressed her mouth to his, letting her tongue slip inside, grazing the edges of his teeth and beyond.

  His reaction was immediate. He groaned against her lips, and his arms came around her, lifting her, holding her so close their bodies were almost one. In another minute, Bradlee hoped they would be.

  She’d never experienced anything like this. His arms around her. His mouth on hers. His body against hers. It was almost a spiritual awareness of each other—a rightness that spiraled through every nerve-ending inside Bradlee. She wanted him and he wanted her. After all these years, after all they’d been through, what could be more perfect? What could be more destined?

  Abruptly he broke the kiss, and Bradlee felt herself sliding back down to earth. He forced their bodies apart, holding her at arm’s length as he stared down at her, his expression serious.

  “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Bradlee tried to calm her racing heart, tried to appear as though she experienced mind-blowing kisses every day. “What is it?”

  He hesitated, then his hands dropped from her arms. Bradlee felt as if they were suddenly a million miles apart. “I don’t have a right to kiss you like that.”

  “You do if I give you that right.”

  “You don’t understand.” He ran a hand through his dark hair, glanced away from her. “There’s someone else.”

  Bradlee couldn’t have heard him right. She thought he’d said there was someone else, but he couldn’t have, because…

  “Someone else?” she murmured.

  “I’m engaged.”

  The bottom dropped out of Bradlee’s world. She struggled for breath. “Engaged?”

  “Her name is Rachel. She’s an attorney. We met at a charity function a few months ago. We started seeing each other and…got engaged.”

  “Engaged.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”

  “Oh, well…” was about all Bradlee could muster. She shrugged.

  He glanced down at her. “From now on, maybe it would be best if we…you know, keep our distance.”

  Bradlee’s gaze flew to his. Keep their distance? That was the last thing she wanted. Didn’t he know that? Couldn’t he see that?

  I’m thirty-five years old. I can’t wait for you forever! she wanted to scream.

  But instead she said calmly, “If we’re going to find out who was in the nursery that night, we’ll have to see each other occasionally. We’ll have to talk.”

  “Not if you leave all this to me.” He turned back to her in the darkness. For a moment, Bradlee thought he was going to take her in his arms again, but he didn’t touch her, and she suddenly felt bereft. “I never wanted you involved in this in the first place. It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s more dangerous for you than for me,” she reminded him. “No one except you and Dr. Scott know I’ve been having the nightmares again. There’s no reason for anyone to suspect I know anything.”

  His tone hardened. “And I’d like to keep it that way. From now on, let me handle this in my own way.”

  “But I have an appointment with Dr. Scott on Monday,” Bradlee said. “You don’t want to go with me?”

  “I don’t want you to go. Whatever secrets you have locked inside your head are probably best left there.”

  She gazed up at him accusingly. “You don’t believe that.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. All I know is that my life has changed so much in the last six weeks, I hardly recognize myself. Sometimes I wonder if David Powers even exists anymore.”

  “Would it be so terrible to become Adam Kingsley?”

  He turned to stare at the mansion, a looming shadow in the nightscape. “I think it might be.”

  “You wouldn’t have to be like them,” she sai
d softly.

  “But what if I am?” His gaze met hers, and in the moonlight, Bradlee saw something in his eyes that made her shiver.

  * * *

  SHE STOOD ON THE BALCONY off her room in the mansion and gazed down at the garden. Was he still down there somewhere? Was he thinking about her, the woman he was engaged to?

  He’d called her Rachel, and the name summoned up an image of a beautiful seductress. She was an attorney, he’d said, so she was also smart and sophisticated. Bradlee could understand why he would be attracted to a woman like that—a woman his equal in every way—but…was he in love with her?

  There had been nothing in his voice to indicate that he was. No softness when he spoke of her. No huskiness when he said her name. He might have been telling Bradlee about a business associate. But Rachel was his fianc;aaee. They were engaged to be married.

  Engaged.

  The word had never sounded so final.

  You’re being ridiculous, she told herself, closing her eyes as the night wind drifted across her face. You don’t even know him.

  She was thirty-five years old. It was high time she stopped believing in fairy tales.

  Maybe it was as her father had said at lunch. She’d always had some sort of fixation on Adam Kingsley. The kidnapping and her subsequent nightmares had made it impossible for her to forget him. That was all this was. Some sort of regression because he’d finally come home.

  Keep telling yourself that, a little voice taunted her. You might actually start to believe it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In spite of everything David had told her, Bradlee was determined to keep her appointment with Dr. Scott three days later.

  This wasn’t just about him, she reasoned. The kidnapping had affected her life in ways she was only now beginning to understand. The nightmares, her parents’ divorce, and the underlying fear of being kidnapped herself had left her deeply traumatized. She’d put her life on hold for years because she’d been terrified of trusting the wrong person.

  But it was David who had been taken from his home, David who had been raised by a stranger, David who had been manipulated and lied to. It was David who had the most at stake here.

  As much as Bradlee wanted to understand what he was going through, she knew she would never be able to. How could anyone? The only thing she could do for him was to help him learn the truth. In some ways, she needed that truth as much as he did. Perhaps that would be the one thing to give her the closure she’d never been able to attain.

  Dr. Scott greeted her at the door, ushered her into the office, and they got started right away. This time the hypnosis went even more smoothly because Bradlee knew what to expect. The moment Dr. Scott began to speak, Bradlee felt herself relax. The next thing she knew, she was sitting up on the couch, trying to smother a yawn.

  “What happened?”

  “You still couldn’t identify the shadow, I’m afraid.”

  Bradlee frowned. She felt a little disoriented, not at all like she had the last time. “What do you think that means, Dr. Scott? Will I ever be able to remember?”

  Dr. Scott stood and moved back to her desk. “Perhaps. But you have to face the very real possibility that you won’t remember. That you’ll never be able to put a face on that shadow.”

  That wasn’t exactly what Bradlee wanted to hear. She licked her lips nervously. “Why?”

  Dr. Scott sat down behind her desk, as if putting a barrier between them. “Because the shadow may not be a real person. It may simply be—as I’ve always thought—a manifestation of your terror.”

  “But why have the nightmares come back now?” Bradlee asked. Rather than feeling relaxed, the session had drained her this time. She pushed herself up off the couch. “Why am I seeing that shadow now, after all these years?”

  “Because Adam Kingsley has been found.” Dr. Scott studied Bradlee intently. “And because you still have emotions and fears you’ve never dealt with.”

  “You don’t know how much I wish that were true.” Bradlee massaged her temples with her fingertips. “But I don’t think it is. I think that shadow is very real, and unless I can remember who it represents, unless I can remember who was in the nursery that night, I’m very much afraid Adam Kingsley’s life will be in danger.”

  She started to leave, but when she got to the door, Dr. Scott called her name. Bradlee glanced back.

  The psychiatrist was staring at her worriedly. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “You seem a bit…dazed.”

  “I’m just disappointed,” Bradlee said. “I really wanted to remember.”

  “Try not to be so hard on yourself,” Dr. Scott advised. “There may not be anything to remember.”

  * * *

  BRADLEE LEFT DR. SCOTT’S office and was almost to the elevators when she realized she’d forgotten to make another appointment. She hesitated. She really wasn’t feeling very well, and the thought of getting out of the building into fresh air and sunshine was suddenly very appealing. But she knew if she left now she would just have to call later for the appointment, so she turned and retraced her steps down the corridor.

  The receptionist had stepped away from her desk when Bradlee returned, and there were no other patients in the outer office. Dr. Scott’s door was slightly ajar, and Bradlee crossed the carpeted floor to knock. As she lifted her hand, she heard voices coming from the inner office. She thought at first the psychiatrist was with a patient and she started to turn away. But then Dr. Scott’s voice rose in anger, and Bradlee paused in spite of herself.

  “Look, I’m telling you the truth. She hasn’t remembered anything. You have nothing to worry about.”

  There was a pause, then, “I did what you told me, but I don’t like it. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake.”

  Bradlee’s heart pounded as she stood outside the door listening. Was Dr. Scott talking about her?

  “Convincing Mary to move away with her back then was one thing, but this—”

  A noise in the hallway alerted Bradlee that the receptionist was on her way back. As quietly as possible, Bradlee crossed the room and stepped out into the hallway. The receptionist was returning from the copy room and nodded as they passed in the corridor. Bradlee smiled and then hurried toward the elevators. When the doors slid open, she rushed inside, then leaned against the wall, eyes closed, head reeling as the car descended to the lobby.

  “Convincing Mary to move away with her back then was one thing, but this—”

  She had to have been talking about Bradlee’s mother, Mary Fitzgerald. It would be too much of a coincidence to think otherwise, especially considering the other part of the conversation Bradlee had overheard. “Look, I’m telling you she hasn’t remembered anything. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Who had Dr. Scott been talking to?

  Bradlee put a hand to her mouth. The implication of that conversation was terrifying. Dr. Scott had convinced Bradlee’s mother to move away with her—not for Bradlee’s well-being, but because someone had somehow coerced her into doing so. Just as someone was pressuring her now to make sure Bradlee didn’t remember. “I did what you told me, but I don’t like it. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake.”

  What did you do? Bradlee’s mind screamed.

  This time when she’d come out of the hypnotic trance, she hadn’t remembered anything about the session. She hadn’t felt relaxed and refreshed, but disoriented and confused. What had Dr. Scott done to her while she’d been under?

  Bradlee trembled all over. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so vulnerable. So betrayed. So manipulated.

  Her life had been torn apart back then. She’d been uprooted from her home, separated from her father, and why? Because someone had wanted her gone. Someone had wanted her out of the way because of what she might have seen the night of the kidnapping. She’d always thought her parents’ divorce was all her fault, but now it seemed to have been part of a deadly scheme.

  For the
first time, Bradlee had an inkling of what David must have felt when he’d learned the truth of his identity. The two of them had been nothing more than pawns in someone’s sick game back then. But who? Who was behind the manipulations? Who was the shadow in Bradlee’s nightmares?

  Out on the street, she paused, gulping in the fresh air, hoping it would clear her head, but her thoughts whirled chaotically. She wondered again what Dr. Scott might have done to her while she’d been under, and suddenly Bradlee couldn’t wait to get miles away, put as much distance as she could between herself and the psychiatrist.

  Her car was parked a few blocks away, and by the time Bradlee got there, she was breathing heavily. Her hands were clammy as she opened the door and slid behind the wheel. Starting the powerful engine of the Porsche, she merged into traffic. A horn sounded behind her and Bradlee glanced in the mirror, realizing she’d pulled out in front of someone.

  Her hands gripped the wheel. Concentrate, she told herself. Don’t think about what happened. About what you heard.

  For a while it worked. She concentrated on her driving, but then the queasiness she’d been experiencing since she’d come out of the trance deepened. Her head spun dizzily, and Bradlee started to panic. She had no business being behind the wheel of a car. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt someone, but the thought of maneuvering the Porsche through lanes of traffic in order to pull over was terrifying.

  Horns blared all around her. Cars passed in colorful blurs of confusion. Bradlee had no idea where she was going, only that she had to get off the road.

  She veered across the center line, and tires screamed behind her. Whipping the car back into her own lane, she somehow managed to merge right and ease the car to the curb. She killed the engine and sat with her stomach churning and her head spinning wildly out of control. She’d never felt so sick. Or so frightened.

  She didn’t know how long she’d remained like that, eyes closed, head against the steering wheel, when she became conscious of someone knocking on her window. With an effort, she lifted her head to gaze at the policeman peering down at her.

  Bradlee rolled down her window and he bent to gaze inside the car. “What seems to be the problem, miss?”