Never Too Late (2 page)

Relieved to be able to focus on someone else’s problems for a change, she studied him in the moon’s glow and the twinkling lights. He looked tired, she thought, and the doctor in her wondered how he’d been sleeping since his release.

“How are you doing? I mean, really doing?”

He was quiet for a moment, as if not very many people had asked him that. “When I was first released,” he finally said, “I wanted to do everything I’d been dreaming about inside that miserable cell for thirty-one months. I wanted to climb the Tetons again and feel the water rushing around my waders as I stood in a stream with a fly rod and ski every single black diamond run I could find.”

“Did you?”

His laugh was rueful and a little bitter. “The first week. Now for some strange reason I can’t seem to generate enough energy to do anything but sit out here and breathe the mountain air.”

She knew exactly what he meant—his discontent and malaise mirrored her own.

“You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. It’s going to take a while to adjust to normalcy again. Give yourself a little time.”

Hunter had to smile at that crisp, professional note in her voice. “Thank you, Dr. Spencer. I don’t believe I realized psychiatric medicine was your specialty.”

He watched as color climbed her high cheekbones and wondered if Taylor had any clue how very much she resembled Lynn McKinnon.

“You know it’s not,” she said. “But in family medicine you need to do a little of everything. Sorry for the uninvited advice. Hazard of the profession. I’m afraid I always think I know what’s best for everyone.”

“No, I appreciate it. Intellectually I know you’re right—I just need more time to adjust. But I’ve never been a particularly patient man and I’m having a hard time trying to figure myself out right now.”

He paused, uncomfortable talking about this with anyone, but especially with Kate Spencer, and decided to change the subject. “Taylor tells me you’re doing well with your residency.”

“Right. I just finished an E.R. rotation and on Christmas Day I start one in the neonatal intensive care unit at Primary Children’s Medical Center.”

He hadn’t been a cop for a while now but even his rusty detective skills could hear the definite lack of enthusiasm in her voice and he wondered at it. As long as he had known her, Kate had been focused on only one thing—becoming a doctor. It had been the strongest tie binding her to his sister, the common ground that had led them to becoming friends.

“You don’t sound very thrilled about it.”

“I am. I’ve been looking forward to working in the NICU. I know I’ll gain valuable skills there.”

“But?”

She sighed and turned back to the ghostly mountains. “But just like you, I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for anything right now.”

“You’ve had a wild few months, I guess.”

“We both have.”

They drifted into a comfortable silence. After a moment, she stirred next to him and he caught the scent of her, that mouthwatering smell of vanilla sugar, and suddenly became
very
uncomfortable.

With her blond hair piled up on her head and that slender green dress, she looked elegant and graceful and delicious. He wondered what Dr. Spencer would do if he gave in to his sudden urge to yank the pins out of those luscious curls, bury his fingers in them, and pull her toward him.

He hadn’t had much to do with women since his release and his body was loudly reminding him of the fact.

That had certainly been on his to-do list, one of those things he’d dreamed about in prison—sex with a different woman every single day for a month.

But the reality was, he didn’t enjoy meaningless sex. He’d had plenty of offers since his release from prison but all from the kind of women who didn’t appeal to him at all, the kind who found his dark history a turn-on and wanted to make it with an ex-con, even an innocent one.

He cleared his throat and tried to figure out how he could escape without being rude.

“Do you think you’ll take your old job back?” she asked, unaware of his torment.

If any question could deflate his fledgling lust, it was that one. He stared out into the night. “That’s still one of those things in the undecided column. I don’t know.”

“You were a good cop, Hunter.”

“Yeah, I was.” He didn’t say it out of ego. “I loved it. But I have to admit I don’t have much faith left in the system.”

How could he, when that system he’d worked so hard to uphold had failed him so miserably? Despite an unblemished—even stellar—career with the Salt Lake City Police Department, he had first been arrested and then convicted of taking three lives, one of them an unborn child, one a dying cancer patient and one the woman he thought he loved.

He would still be in that cell on death row if not for his sister’s unwavering faith in him. God knows, his former buddies on the force had all turned on him. The system of justice he had built his life around had failed him with disastrous consequences, and he didn’t know if he could ever believe in it again.

And if he didn’t believe in it, he sure as hell couldn’t pick up his detective shield again and take up where he had left off before his arrest nearly three years earlier.

“So what will you do?” Kate asked.

He shrugged. “For now, I guess I’ll just stay out here and watch the mountains.”

She laughed a little, then shivered as a cold gust of wind blew across the porch. “We’re both going to turn into blocks of ice if we stay out here much longer.”

“I suppose we’d better go inside.”

He was surprised to see her expression become guarded, reluctant.

“Why the hesitation? That’s your family in there.”

“I don’t know. I must be crazy, right?”

He gave a harsh laugh. “Believe me, I know crazy. You can’t spend thirty-one months behind bars and not get real good at telling the nuts from the wackos. You’re neither—in fact, you’re one of the most sane women I know.”

“Not the last six weeks. I’m a mess, Hunter.”

She faced him then and he was stunned to see tears gathering in her vivid blue eyes. He didn’t know what to do for a wild moment, then he placed a hand over hers, struck by her icy fingers.

He squeezed her hand and she gave him a tremulous smile. They stood there for a moment, then she slipped her hand away and returned to the deck railing.

“I should be happy. I
know
I should. I’m suddenly surrounded by this wonderful family, people who love me and want me to be part of their lives. I want that too but I’m just so damn angry.”

“At what?”

“Whoever did this to us! I’m filled with rage toward the person who kidnapped me, who took me away from a sane, normal, happy family and dragged me into…”

Her expression closed up and he wondered about her childhood after she was taken from her family, about what she might have been through to put that bleak look in her eyes. “Into a world far removed from the safe, happy life I likely would have known as Charlotte McKinnon.”

Someone had kidnapped her more than two decades before. He hadn’t been so self-absorbed that he didn’t know all about that. Who was it? he suddenly wondered. And had they paid for the crime that had devastated the lives of so many people?

For the first time since his release—hell, since the shock of his arrest three years ago—he found himself concerned about someone else’s problems, found himself actually interested enough to want to solve the mystery.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to care, but he had been a cop too long to turn it off completely.

“Any idea who kidnapped you?”

“Until six weeks ago I thought my mother was a woman named Brenda Golightly. She’s all I can remember until I was taken away from her and put into foster care when I was seven.”

“And you think she was the one?”

“She must have been. My earliest memories are of her—driving beside her along a lonely stretch of highway. Sleeping in some dingy motel somewhere. Eating peanut-butter sandwiches and washing them down with warm soda. She’s the one listed on all my records as my mother. I have a birth certificate and everything. I don’t know how she did it but my name was Katie Golightly until I changed it at eighteen to Kate Spencer.”

At least she had a name. He could work with a name. “Any idea where she is?”

“We don’t exactly exchange Christmas cards. Brenda was a prostitute and a junkie, stoned more often than she was sober. After I was taken from her, she used to write or phone me once in a while but by the time I was in high school, she seemed to have lost interest—the letters and calls had trickled down to maybe once every couple of years. I was glad she didn’t seem to want much to do with me. It was easier that way.”

She paused, and again he wondered what dark images she was seeing in her memory.

“Anyway,” Kate went on, “I haven’t heard from her in nine years, since I left for college, but last I knew she was living in Miami somewhere.”

He could drive to Florida in two days if he pushed it. The thought sneaked into his mind and Hunter drew in a sharp breath. Now who was the crazy one, contemplating a drive across the country on what was probably a fool’s errand?

On the other hand, he didn’t have anything else to do right now. He was restless and edgy and a road trip might be just the thing to help him figure out what to do with himself.

“Either she kidnapped me herself,” Kate went on, “or she had to know who did it. I only want to know why. Why me?”

He studied her there in the moonlight, this small, beautiful woman with shadows in her eyes. He could help her. Like she said, he’d been a damn good detective once. Maybe he could be again. He had considered going into private-investigator work, the logical second career for a burned-out cop. This could be a way to test if he had the temperament for it.

One of them at least ought to be able to put some ghosts aside and move on. With a sneaking suspicion that he was going to have some serious regrets later about ever opening his mouth, he took the plunge.

“You want to know why you were taken,” he finally said. “Why don’t I find this Brenda Golightly and ask her?”

Chapter 2

K
ate stared at him. He looked perfectly rational, his eyes dark and intense as he stood there in the cold night air with the soft snow sifting down around him like powdered sugar. But looks could be deceiving, she thought.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? She’s probably in Florida! The last address I had was Dade County.”

“Sunshine sounds nice right about now.”

No wonder, she thought. Since his release, sunny days had been few and far between in Utah. The state had seen a wet, cold fall—a boon for the ski resorts but probably not so enjoyable for someone who had been incarcerated for more than two years.

She had to admit, though she had grown to love the Utah mountains, the first place she would head if she had just been released from prison would be somewhere with an ocean view. Somewhere she could bask in the sun and lick salt from the air and dig her toes into warm sand.

But how could she ask him to travel across the country for her on little more than a whim?

“I haven’t heard from Brenda in nearly a decade,” she said. “She might not even be in Florida anymore. Heavens, for all I know, the woman could be dead.”

“Then I’ll find out where she’s gone. Or at least where she’s buried.”

He said the words with complete confidence. She would have thought it an idle boast if he hadn’t been such an outstanding detective. But if Hunter Bradshaw put his mind and energy into finding someone, he would. He had been dogged about his job, completely focused on it.

She had so many unanswered questions. Since finding out she had been kidnapped, her mind seemed to be racing on an endless loop of them.

Why had she been taken? Not for ransom, certainly, since the McKinnons said no one ever contacted them. And why
her?
What about Kate had made her a target of the kidnapping?

If Brenda had taken her, why had she then just surrendered Kate to the foster-care system, keeping only enough contact to ensure that no one could adopt her?

Finding the answers to those pressing questions was tantalizing. But the idea of Hunter Bradshaw offering to help her baffled her.

She was nothing to him, only the roommate of his younger sister. She couldn’t even say she was a friend. Before his arrest and imprisonment, he had always been distantly polite to her but never more than that. She had even wondered if he disliked her because he seemed to go out of his way to avoid situations where they might be alone.

Yet here he was offering to chase after her past.

“Why would you do this for me?” she asked.

“Why not?” Hunter asked. In the dim light, his eyes wore an inscrutable expression. “You deserve to know the truth. I know how frustrating unanswered questions can be, just as I know what it’s like to be punished for someone else’s sins. I’d like to help you find out why.”

She wasn’t sure why—perhaps something in those shadows in his eyes—but she sensed another reason, something deeper. “What else?”

Hunter turned away from her to lean his forearms on the deck railing and gaze out at the shadowy mountains.

“Because I can.” His voice was low and without inflection but suddenly his offer of assistance made perfect sense. It had nothing to do with her at all, she realized, but with him and his new freedom.

He had spent nearly three years of his life behind bars, where his choices had been severely limited. Others told him what he could eat, where he could go, even how he could dress. What a heady sense of control he must find in the idea that he could pick up and drive across the country on a whim!

“I see,” she murmured.

He slanted a look at her. “Do you?”

“You know, you could take a trip wherever you want without having the burden of tracking down a drug addict and a prostitute who could be anywhere.”

“I’ve been at loose ends since my release. I could use a distraction. This is a good one.”

“It might take weeks, Hunter. I can’t ask you to give up so much of your time.”

His shrug rippled the fabric of his well-cut suit. He had always been a good dresser, she remembered. Back when he was a detective, he always took care with his clothing.

Before his arrest, he would sometimes stop by Taylor’s house after work for some reason or other. Even with his tie loose, a hint of dark shadow stubbling his jaw and his white shirt perhaps not as crisp and starched as it had likely been in the morning, he had been enough to make her mouth water. She had always thought Hunter Bradshaw was strong and masculine and gorgeous.

She wasn’t sure which she preferred, that slightly rumpled end-of-day Hunter or this elegant man in evening wear.

“You didn’t ask, I offered,” he said in answer to her earlier comment. “Anyway, my time is my own now.”

“So take a cruise around the world if you want to go somewhere!”

Kate knew that like his sister, Hunter didn’t need to work. He could spend the rest of his life traveling the world if he wanted to. Both of them had fathoms-deep trust funds that would support them forever if they wanted to live lives of luxury and ease.

Their parents had come from old money, although like Taylor, Hunter had always shunned the accoutrements of wealth. He had become an underpaid Utah public servant and lived quietly here in the family ski cabin.

“Let me do this, Kate. You’re looking for answers and I’m looking for something to fill all this free time I’ve suddenly got. Seems to me this is a good way for both of us to get something we want.”

She looked inside the house and caught a glimpse of her family. Wyatt danced with their mother now, Lynn small and delicate next to his lean rangy height. Gage stood in one corner talking to Sam, with a tired-looking Anna in his arms.

A gust of wind blew across the deck, sending the fairy lights dancing, and Kate shivered.

She should be inside with her family. They would be looking for her soon. But despite the cold out here and the snow that was swirling around a little harder, she dreaded returning to that happy, bright group inside. The joy that lit their eyes whenever they caught sight of her scraped along her spine like a chipped fingernail.

She couldn’t be the daughter and sister the McKinnons wanted and her own failure to be open and relaxed around them sat heavy and thick in her chest.

Brenda Golightly had stolen twenty-three years of her life. She had taken so much from Kate—didn’t the woman who had caused such horrible pain in so many lives deserve to pay for what she had done?

Perhaps if Kate could find answers to some of the questions that had haunted her for six weeks since learning her true identity, she might at last be free to accept the love and nurturing this family seemed painfully eager to shower on her.

Didn’t she owe it to the McKinnons and to herself to try and reclaim some of what had been taken from her?

She blew out a resigned breath. “It won’t be easy to find her,” she warned. “She could be anywhere. Brenda was always good at slipping under the radar.”

Hunter gazed at her for a moment, his expression unreadable, then he nodded, recognizing she had decided to let him help her.

“If you have a previous address for her, I can work with that. I can leave tomorrow and start digging. I should be able to call you with information by the end of next week.”

She looked at him standing in shadow, then shifted her gaze to that bright, gleaming window again. Laughter and music spilled out into the night. Would it always be this way? Would she always be on the outside looking in, separated from her family by the walls a stranger had erected between them by snatching her away so long ago? Would she always be unable to let herself partake of the love the McKinnons so wanted to give her because of her anger and bitterness?

That restlessness prowled through her again, edgy and fretful, and she blew out a breath and turned to face Hunter again in the shadows.

“You won’t need to call me to report your progress.”

He frowned. “Why not? Don’t you think you’ll want to know how things are going.”

“Absolutely. That’s why I’m going with you.”

His mind already busy mapping a route and making plans, Hunter barely heard her. When her words pushed their way through his crowded thoughts, shock just about sent him toppling over the deck railing. She wanted to go along? Yeah, right!

He would never have suggested helping her if he thought for one second it might involve spending time alone with Kate Spencer.

“Really, that’s not necessary.”

Not necessary and not at all appealing.

“It is to me. This woman stole my life. My identity, my family, everything. If you can find her, I believe I have the right to confront her to find out why.”

Okay, he would give her that. If he had been in Kate’s shoes, he would have moved heaven and earth to locate this woman who had wreaked such havoc in her life.

He understood her need for answers and her desire to be involved in finding those answers but he didn’t think she quite comprehended the implications.

“If I were flying out there for a quick trip,” he explained, “I would have no problem with you going along. But I won’t be taking a plane. If I go, I’m driving.”

For one thing, he couldn’t leave Belle, especially with Tay and Wyatt leaving for their Cozumel honeymoon in the morning. Since his release, his Irish setter clung to his side like a mother hen watching her chick. Though normally calm and well-mannered, she turned into a nervous wreck if he left her alone for even a few hours.

He wouldn’t put her through the stress of a lonely kennel for a week or two, nor was he willing to subject her to the trauma of putting her on an airplane. The one time he had taken her on a plane before his arrest, she’d been a quivering mess for a week afterward.

He had to admit, Belle was part of the reason behind his sudden desire to drive, but she was by no means the only reason. The thought of taking off across the wide expanse of the United States with the road in front of him and Utah in his rear view mirror seemed just the thing to shake this malaise he’d suffered from since his release.

Those months he had spent on death row sure his life would end there in that miserable prison, he used to dream about hopping on his Ducati and zooming off across the country. When he would lie awake at night in that thin, lumpy cot staring up at cement walls, he had grieved for the trips he had never found time to take, for the scenery he would never have the chance to savor.

The Ducati would have to wait since December wasn’t the greatest time for a motorcycle trip—not to mention the minor little detail that he hadn’t yet taught Belle how to hang on behind him. But he could enjoy a cross-country trip from inside the brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee he’d bought just days before.

What better way to celebrate his newfound freedom than loading up his dog and trekking across the country—eating in greasy diners, blasting his favorite songs on the radio at top volume, outrunning his past with every white line passing under his tires.

He would have thought his announcement would be enough to dissuade her, but Kate didn’t seem at all fazed by his declaration. “Driving is fine. I don’t mind a road trip,” she answered.

Damn. So much for his peaceful jaunt across the country.

“Don’t you have to work?” he asked, not willing to give it up just yet. “I thought residents worked sixty hours a week without a day off.”

The Christmas lights sparkled in her glossy hair as she shook her head. “I’m free until I start my new rotation on Christmas Day. That gives me two weeks of freedom. This is a perfect time for me to go. I should have thought of it myself.”

Now what the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn’t just come out and tell her she couldn’t go. For one thing, he was oddly loathe to hurt her feelings. For another, from his admittedly limited experience with Kate, he knew she was enough like Taylor that she would push and poke at him until she pried out the reason he didn’t want her along.

He was well and truly stuck. He should have kept his big mouth shut about the whole thing.

It would take them a bare minimum of two days to drive to Miami. Two days alone in a car with Kate Spencer. For a man who hadn’t been sexually intimate in nearly three years, that prospect was guaranteed to be a recipe for disaster.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t sleep with his sister’s best friend just to slake his hunger. If he did, he would be exactly the kind of beast he’d been trying to prove to the world—and himself—that he wasn’t.

“Look, Kate—” he started to say, but his words were lost when the door opened and Lynn McKinnon walked out onto the deck, her lovely features concerned.

“There you are, Charlotte!” She winced and reached for Kate’s arm. “I’m so sorry, Kate. I keep forgetting. It’s just that I’ve thought of you as Charlotte for so long. But I’ll get it, I promise.”

“It’s fine,” Kate murmured. The animation of the last ten minutes was gone from her features as she gazed at the small, energetic woman who looked so much like her.

“You’re going to catch your death out here! Is everything all right?”

“We were just enjoying the snowstorm.”

“Your father is still waiting for his dance.”

“Of course.” Even in the pale light, Hunter thought her smile looked strained. “I just need a few more minutes of air, okay? And then I’ll be in.”

Lynn’s mouth softened as she gazed at her daughter, and Hunter thought she would have reached up and grabbed the moon for Kate if she asked for it. “Take as much time as you need, darling. Sam will be there whenever you’re ready.”

Kate managed another smile before her mother slipped back inside, though Hunter was surprised to see a bleakness in her eyes.

He muttered a string of curses in his mind. He couldn’t leave her here twiddling her thumbs while he went off dragon hunting. This was her
life
.

Of all the people at this wedding gig, he could certainly understand her need to take back some kind of control over the circumstances that had buffeted her for the last six weeks. If finding and confronting her kidnapper would help her achieve some measure of peace—would help her move past her pain and be ready to accept the McKinnons’ love—how could he deny her that?