“Will he go to prison?”
“I think that’s a given. At this point, I suppose, just a question of how long.”
How would she face Judy? Taylor wondered. The poor woman would be devastated by everything her husband had done.
“Any word from Nick Sinclair about when Hunter will be able to come home?” she asked.
Wyatt laughed. “It’s not even nine a.m., Taylor. The man is good but you’ll have to give him a little time to work.”
“I know. I’m just eager.” She studied him, looking lean and gorgeous in the morning light. “I know I told you thank-you last night, but it’s not enough. It will never be enough to let you know how grateful I am for everything you did.”
He shook his head. “You’re the one with the tenacity of a bulldog, who just kept shaking and shaking until you worked out the truth. I didn’t do anything.”
“You helped me when no one else would.” She smiled at him. “You brought Nick Sinclair here. You stayed with me last night when I didn’t want to be alone. Thank you.”
At her words and her smile, his eyes darkened with some unreadable expression that sent her stomach fluttering, then he set his mug down on the coffee table and pulled her into his arms.
His kiss was tender and sweet and took her breath away, and she responded with all the emotion in her heart. They stood in that warm pool of morning sunlight for several long moments, their mouths tangled, and then he pulled away.
“Tay, I need to tell you something.”
Her insides tightened at the seriousness of his tone. About Kate? she wondered, bracing herself, but before he could say anything Taylor heard the clink of a key in the front door lock.
A moment later, Kate let herself in. She was wearing scrubs, her blond hair was yanked back in a tight ponytail and her eyes were bleary from a twelve-hour night shift, but somehow she still managed to look lovely.
“What are you doing still here?” she asked Taylor, surprise in her blue eyes. “I thought you had class this morning. You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.”
Her gaze suddenly landed on Wyatt and those tired eyes widened at finding him there so early. Taylor flushed at the speculation she saw leap into her friend’s expression, fighting the urge to explain that things weren’t what they appeared.
“Taylor’s decided to skip her morning class in light of all she went through last night,” Wyatt said.
To her dismay, he was staring at Kate as if he wanted to burn her image into his eyeballs—as if that emotional kiss he had just shared with Taylor had never existed.
Taylor’s mind flashed on that fax, about the investigation he had run on Kate, and she thought her heart would shatter.
“What is he talking about?” Kate turned to her, concern on her face. “What did you go through?”
Oh, heavens! Kate knew nothing of what had happened, about Martin or his confession. She pushed away her heartbreak for now. “You’re not going to believe it,” she said, then told Kate the whole story.
By the time she finished Kate had sunk down onto a chair, her expression stunned. “So Hunter will be coming home?”
Taylor nodded, ecstatic all over again.
“Soon, we hope,” Wyatt said, his gaze still glued to Kate. “Not overnight but soon.”
“Incredible!” Kate exclaimed. “I can’t believe I missed it all. You should have called me!”
“I’m sorry. Everything was so crazy last night, I didn’t even think of calling you.”
“This is amazing. I work one shift and come home to find that everything has changed.”
Not everything, Taylor thought. She was still in love with a man who didn’t return her feelings. As joyous as she was about Hunter, part of her heart grieved for what would never be.
The doorbell rang before either she or Wyatt could respond.
“I’ll get that,” Kate said. The exhaustion she had worn when she arrived home seemed to have disappeared amid the news about Hunter’s imminent release. She hurried to the door.
A moment later, Taylor was surprised to see Kate usher in Gage McKinnon, looking handsome and dangerous in a dark gray suit.
What was it with these McKinnon men? Taylor wondered in disgust. The man had been married for only a few weeks, had a beautiful wife and two gorgeous little girls, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Kate either.
“I heard about the excitement you had up here last night,” Gage said to Wyatt, though his gaze never left Kate. “When I couldn’t reach you at your apartment, I took a chance you’d still be here. And even if you weren’t, I would have come up anyway.”
Wyatt froze at his words, and Taylor watched as the brothers shared a look rich with layers of meaning, one she didn’t understand.
“Is she?” Wyatt asked. He seemed to hold his breath as he waited for his brother’s reply.
Gage looked first at Kate and then at his brother. “Looks like. The samples share both maternal and paternal DNA.”
Wyatt made a move forward, then seemed to check himself. Both men continued staring at Kate, who was starting to look extremely uncomfortable at their attention.
She began edging out of the room. “Um, I have some things to do before I try to sleep a little, if you’ll all excuse me.”
“No!” Both men reached out as if to stop her, and Taylor decided she’d had enough.
“Wyatt, what is this about? Does this have something to do with the background check you ran on Kate?”
“What?” Kate exclaimed. “What background check?”
“Maybe you’d better sit down,” Wyatt suggested. He moved to Kate’s side, staring down at her. “Hell, maybe I’d better sit down.”
“Do you mind telling me what this is about?” Kate asked, the beginnings of anger in her voice. “What test are you talking about? What background check?”
Wyatt and Gage shared another long look. “Where do we start?” Wyatt asked.
Gage stepped forward. “This might help explain.”
He held out a folder and opened it to reveal some photographs. The first one he pulled out was a picture of a woman in a dated wedding dress that could have been Kate at a costume party. He propped it up on the coffee table, and Kate looked at it, a baffled expression on her face.
“Who is this? I don’t know this woman.”
“Try this one,” Gage said. He held out a family photo, and Taylor recognized Sam and Lynn McKinnon, two boys who had to be Gage and Wyatt, and a little blond girl with curls and a sweet smile.
“This is us with our little sister, Charlotte. She was kidnapped when she was three years old, about two months after that picture was taken,” Gage said.
Gage set a third picture on the table. “And this is an age-progressed photograph we had an artist create a few years ago to show what Charlotte might look like today.”
Taylor stared at it, speechless. Like the first picture Gage had presented, this one could have been a photograph of Kate—right down to the smile. Kate made a tiny gasping sound, then lowered herself into a chair. She looked as if Gage McKinnon had just plowed a fist in her gut.
“You think I’m this…this Charlotte?”
Gage shook his head. “No. We don’t think anything. We know. We ran a DNA test from a sample Wyatt took when you had lunch together and compared it to his blood type. The two samples definitely share the same parentage. You’re Charlotte.”
The color leached from Kate’s features, and for a moment Taylor was afraid her friend would pass out.
His sister! Wyatt was obsessed with Kate because he thought she was his missing sister! All the pieces of the puzzle seemed to click into place—his stunned expression at lunch, his probing questions into her childhood, the background check.
“You’re wrong.” Kate shook her head. “You have to be wrong. I…I wasn’t kidnapped. It’s impossible! Don’t you think I would remember something like that? I don’t remember! My mother’s name is Brenda Golightly. I never knew my father but she said
his name was Billy. She’s all I can remember.”
“You were only three when you were kidnapped, young enough that you probably don’t have many memories of us,” Gage said. “But that little girl in that picture is definitely you. You can run more DNA tests to prove it if you need corroboration—we’ll do anything you want. But I can tell you right now, the results will be the same.”
“How can this be—?” she asked, her voice cracking on the last word.
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said, and the joy on his face—on both their faces—was almost painful to see. “I only know that the moment you walked into that restaurant, I knew you had to be Charlotte. You look just like Lynn—our mother. Your mother.”
“This is my…my mother?” Kate stared at the photograph of Lynn on what must have been her wedding day. She shifted her gaze to the family portrait of the five McKinnons. “And my father? I have a father?”
“And two brothers who love you,” Wyatt said earnestly. “Two brothers who never stopped looking for you, who never gave up hope that someday they would find you.”
Taylor saw tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, and Gage’s too, and emotion clogged her throat. These big, masculine men who walked the dark side of the human condition every day had just been handed a miracle. They looked like they would burst from happiness—and though Kate was still looking pale and shocked, Taylor knew when she had time to get used to the idea, she would come to love all the McKinnons.
Just as Taylor did…
“I couldn’t tell you, Tay. I wanted to a hundred times but I didn’t dare until I had proof.”
A half hour later, Taylor returned downstairs after her quick shower—where, she had to admit, she had indulged in more weeping—to find the house quiet. Wyatt was sitting on the couch, still wearing that look of stunned joy. There was no sign of Gage or Kate.
“I had to be sure,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t want Kate to know anything until I had proof one way or the other, just in case I turned out to be delusional.”
“I didn’t know what to think when I saw that fax,” she admitted. “Especially after we’d just made love.”
“I should have told you.”
“I thought—”
“I know what you must have thought,” he murmured. “I’m sorry if you were hurt by it.”
She flushed, embarrassed that she’d been so stupid. If she had paid attention, she would have seen the resemblance between Kate and Lynn. She remembered thinking that Wyatt’s mother reminded her of someone, and now that the connection had been made, she couldn’t believe she had missed it.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Gage is taking Kate to meet Mom right now. The plan is that they’ll call Sam when they get to Liberty so he can fly up from Las Vegas. Mom doesn’t know anything of this. I hope it doesn’t give her a heart attack when they show up like that.”
“Don’t you want to be there?”
“Yes.” He paused, then knew he couldn’t delay telling her any longer, despite the nerves jumping around inside him. “But I want you to come with me.”
Her eyes widened. “Me? I don’t belong with your family right now at such a joyful reunion. All I am is Kate’s roommate.”
“I hope you know you’re more than that—to Kate and to me.”
Other than taking a quick breath, she didn’t answer him, she just knitted her fingers tightly together as if she didn’t quite know what to do with her hands.
“Kate could probably use your support. She is a little overwhelmed by all this.”
She blinked at him and he thought he saw disappointment there.
“Oh. Of course. Kate.”
He reached for one of those hands, untangling it from the other so he could squeeze her fingers. “And I want you there, Taylor. I want to share this joy with you just like I want to share every other joy in my life with you.”
“What—?”
“I love you, Taylor. I’ve been trying to tell you that for a while now but I can never seem to find the right words.”
Her gaze flew to his and he had to admit, relief coursed through him when he saw the emotions that chased across her features—shock and wariness and then a slow, hesitant wonder.
“Those three are enough,” she murmured, and stepped into his waiting arms. “More than I ever dreamed of hearing.”
“I love you,” he repeated. “I think I’ve loved you from those early days of the trial, when you stood by your brother, tall and loyal and courageous. Even though the rest of the world turned on him, you never gave up.”
She framed his face with her fingers and kissed him with a sweet tenderness that sent every other thought in his head scattering.
Several moments later, when his head stopped spinning, he gave her one more swift, fierce kiss, then stepped away. “When I arrived here last night and thought you were lying somewhere bleeding and hurt up on that mountain, I think I stopped breathing. Everything inside me seemed to seize up. When I think about what could have happened to you up there, I’m sick.”
“I could only think of two things when I thought Martin was going to kill me—that no one would ever know Hunter was innocent, and that I’d never have the chance to be in your arms again, to tell you how much I love you.”
He groaned and pulled her to him. He wasn’t sure if his poor heart could contain any more joy—first finding Charlotte after all these years and then finding this woman. His brave, beautiful, incredible Taylor.
“Will you come with me to Liberty, Taylor?”
She smiled that soft smile he loved so much and he decided his heart could always find room for more.
“Of course,” she said. “And anywhere else you want to take me.”
Epilogue
“Stop fidgeting with that tablecloth, Taylor. I promise, everything looks great.”
“Great isn’t enough,” she told Wyatt, one eye on him snatching olives out of a bowl and one on the table bulging with food. “It has to be perfect.”
He laughed and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “The man has been incarcerated for thirty months, two weeks and three days. I don’t think he’s going to mind if the folds of the tablecloth aren’t just so.”
She pressed a hand to her fluttery stomach. “I’m nervous. Why am I so nervous?”
“Because he’s your brother. Because you love him. Because you want to make everything he’s been through disappear with a snap of your fingers and one fancy dinner. You can’t, though, Taylor. You know you can’t. His prison time will always be part of who he is, just like everything you’ve been through helps make up the incredible woman I’m crazy about.”
She sighed and slipped into his arms. “You’re not supposed to be so smart,” she murmured against his mouth.
“I know. It’s a curse.” He grinned, then kissed her.
It had taken longer than she’d hoped to free Hunter. A week had passed since the night Martin tried to kill her. In that time, Nick Sinclair had been working feverishly behind the scenes to have Hunter’s conviction voided and to see him walk free.
Today was the day. Though Taylor had wanted to be standing outside the prison doors with banners, noisemakers and a big brass band, that wasn’t what Hunter wanted. He had asked her to stay here at their family cabin in the canyon.
He wanted no celebration at the prison, he said. He just wanted to walk out those doors quietly, unnoticed, and slip into the car Sinclair had arranged for him. He wanted to drive himself here for their reunion and a small dinner with the few friends who had stuck by him.
As hard as it was waiting for him, she knew she had to respect his decision. For two and a half years Hunter had had little control over his world. She wouldn’t take this small victory away from him.
“Is he here yet?” Kate asked from the doorway, and Taylor tugged her mouth away from Wyatt’s.
“Not yet,” Wyatt answered, smiling at his sister, though he kept Taylor in his arms.
“Nick called
and said Hunter left the Point of the Mountain about twenty minutes ago. He should be showing up any time now.”
Kate sighed and wandered to the window. Wyatt followed her progress, as he always did. Whenever they were together, Wyatt couldn’t stop looking at her, as if he still didn’t believe she could really be there. Gage was the same way.
Taylor didn’t mind—she found it terribly sweet that these two macho men could turn so gooey over the little sister who had been returned to them. She knew Kate wouldn’t mind it either eventually, but for now, her friend was struggling to deal with all that had happened, to build a tentative relationship with the family that had been stolen from her.
Kate was undoubtedly Charlotte McKinnon. Follow-up DNA tests had proved it without a doubt. And while Kate accepted the physical proof, Taylor knew her friend was having a difficult time coming to terms emotionally with the sudden shift her life’s journey had taken.
It was hard for her, Taylor was sure. Though Wyatt and Gage and their parents had kept their love for little Charlotte alive in their hearts, they were strangers to Kate, people she hadn’t known existed until a week ago. She couldn’t be expected to fit right in to their family overnight as if those twenty-three years apart had never been.
It would come, Taylor knew. Once Kate had time to adjust, she would grow to love them.
“I hate this sweater,” Kate said after thirty seconds of staring out the window with the restlessness that had been a part of her for the past week. “I think I’ll go change.”
“Again?” Taylor asked with baffled laughter in her voice. Kate usually didn’t pay any attention to her clothes but she had already changed sweaters twice.
“You know, I’m sorry for what Hunter has been through,” Wyatt said after Kate left the room. “But if Dru and Mickie had never been murdered, Hunter wouldn’t have gone to prison and I would never have met you. If I hadn’t met you, we would never have found Kate.”
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