Secrets, Lies & Loves

by Judy Duarte

  There was a very special seat in the hottest corner of hell reserved for him, Mark decided as he quickly walked away from the warm, inviting glow of Brooke and her house and toward his car. If there hadn’t been already, there was one now.

  Telling himself that he was only working a case, that he was trying to further the cause of a very good man—a man who was being denied his birthright due to circumstances beyond his control—hardly did anything to assuage his conscience.

  There was no way to sugarcoat the fact that he was deliberately using Brooke. Not ruthlessly, but still, for his own ends, not hers.

  The fact that he meant her no harm didn’t alter the fact that he was kissing her under false pretenses. She thought he was some romantic knight in rusty armor while he was actually behaving like someone far less noble. He knew exactly how someone as impressionable, as innocent as Brooke Ross would see it. Once she discovered his true identity and his real purpose in being here, she would be crushed by the deception.

  That settled it, he promised himself as he got into his vehicle. His lips were not going to touch hers again. Never mind that she tasted of sweet, ripened strawberries with the first kiss of the summer sun on their skin. He had no need of strawberries. A man who had nothing to offer had no right sampling strawberries.

  From now on he was going to conduct this investigation by the book, the way he always had before. And no one was going to be hurt.

  That meant keeping her at a proper distance.

  Easier said than done, he thought the following morning as he walked into Buy the Book.

  He had purposely waited until after the store was officially open for business before coming in. He wanted Brooke to be busy so that he could seek out her father and see if he could learn anything more, perhaps see if the man was willing to admit to ever “meeting” Walter Parks. All it took was properly manipulating the conversation in the right directions. He figured he could accomplish that better without Brooke around as a distraction.

  But the moment he walked into the store, he saw her. It was as if he had his own built-in radar and it was tuned to her.

  Brooke’s long, shiny black hair was loose about her shoulders, and for all her innocence and young age, she looked like a temptress. He found himself wanting her the moment her eyes turned in his direction. The moment her lips peeled back into a smile that could rival the sun that was shining so brightly just outside the store’s front door.

  Murmuring something to the customer she was with, Brooke apparently excused herself and made her way over to him. The wattage from her smile increased. He could almost feel the rays.

  Or was that just a precursor to the fires of hell he’d thought about last night?

  “Hi,” she said brightly. “So, what’ll it be today?”

  He realized he was staring at her and forced himself to focus. “Excuse me?”

  “What’ll it be?” she repeated. “Are you interested in exploring San Francisco’s past history or its current one? Because we just received a book this morning that my father got in an estate sale. It was a diary of someone written in the first half of the twentieth century. It might be just the thing you need to look over if you’re really interested in San Francisco’s history.”

  He’d already done a little boning up on the subject before he’d ever approached Brooke and her father in his present guise as a writer. And yesterday had contained a great deal of reading material he’d had to go through the motions of perusing. As far as he was concerned, he was full up on history, but he knew that the person he was pretending to be would have been fairly enthusiastic about the find she was describing.

  “I’d like to see it, if your father wouldn’t mind.”

  She liked that he was so mindful of her father’s feelings. Liked a lot about him, she thought.

  “We haven’t had a chance to unwrap it yet.” She nodded toward the rear of the shop. “It’s in the storeroom.” With that, she turned on her heel and started to walk back.

  He tried not to notice the way her hips swayed as she led the way.

  Chapter Seven

  Music softly playing in the background was the only sound that Tyler Carlton heard within the small San Francisco apartment he now called home. That and the occasional shuffling of papers as he turned a page. He wasn’t even sure what kind of music it was. It didn’t matter. He’d flipped on the radio as a block against an all-pervading silence as he did what he did every night after he came home from work. He waded through a mountain of old papers. Searching.

  Tyler’s frown made him appear far older than his twenty-four years. He felt far older, at least, he had these past few weeks.

  It wasn’t that he’d exactly had a life of hardship up to this point, but dealing with the emotional issues that had swept over him recently without warning like a mile-high tidal wave had definitely taken their toll on him. In a way he was still reeling, even as he desperately tried to tread water.

  He and his twin brother, Conrad, were the younger two in a family of four siblings. From the day he was born, he’d grown up fatherless, but with a mother he adored. Marla Carlton had been the best mother he could have asked for. But he’d always felt that she was harboring some sort of secret. A secret that made her eyes look so sad in unguarded moments, even when she was laughing and playing with her children.

  Up until the week before her death, he’d always felt that the sadness had been due to his father’s untimely death. Marla Carlton had been widowed early in her life. Her husband, Jeremy, the man Tyler had always believed to be his father, a solid, hardworking man in the up-and-coming diamond import company he had founded, had just begun to see the true measure of success when he had suddenly died under extremely mysterious circumstances. His father had left her widowed and pregnant with twins at the age of thirty.

  Rallying, his mother had moved her tiny family to Colorado and made a life for them all as best she could. Granted, while he was growing up, they hadn’t been what could be termed well off, but they’d been happy and had never lacked for love.

  It wasn’t until his mother was on her deathbed nearly eight months ago that she’d told them all something that completely rocked his world and tore out the carefully laid foundations from beneath him.

  Looking pale and worn, her beautiful green eyes silently asking for forgiveness for the lie she had allowed them to believe all these years, she’d told his brother and him that the sisters they’d grown up playing with were only their half sisters. That she’d had a brief affair with Walter Parks and that Tyler and his twin were the result of that affair.

  It had been a bitter pill to swallow, and at first he’d thought that maybe it was the illness playing with her mind, making her believe things that weren’t true. But it wasn’t. His mother had been very lucid that afternoon. And very determined to tell them everything before there was no more time left.

  He’d held her hand in his and let her talk. And let her shatter his world.

  He’d grown up loving a father whom he’d thought had been taken from him. Now, sitting here at his kitchen table, old correspondences and papers spread out in all directions, he was looking for proof that his father wasn’t dead, and if not noble or kind the way he’d always believed, at least alive.

  He had mixed feelings about that. Mixed feelings about giving up his hold on Jeremy Carlton and admitting to the world that he was actually the product of an illicit affair between his impressionable mother and a man who was feared by many and well thought of by none.

  Tyler didn’t like the idea of being Walter Parks’s son.

  If it were up to him, he would have let the matter slide, the way Conrad had after their mother’s funeral. But his conscience wouldn’t let him. His mother had begged him to find proof that would allow his brother and him to claim their heritage from a man who had destroyed their lives. She made it clear to them that in her heart she felt that Walter Parks, the man who had pretended to love her, to be mesmerized by her, had done it all with an
ulterior plan.

  He’d done it to gain her help in preventing Jeremy from exposing him as a thief and a smuggler. He’d done it to get hold of Jeremy’s thriving business. She was convinced that the man she’d taken to her bed was responsible for her husband’s death. And, she had whispered, there was proof.

  She’d begged him on her death bed, and he had given her his word to do everything possible to bring all the hidden facts to light.

  No matter how much he ached to continue believing that the kind, upstanding, honest man whose picture was on the mantel was really his father, he knew he had to follow his mother’s wishes. And, in so doing, to claim what would have been his mother’s due.

  With any luck, once that was accomplished, he could also bring the man who had given Conrad and him life to justice.

  The frown on his lips softened into an ironic smile. A smile that held no humor behind it. Life was very strange and twisted sometimes.

  Tired, Tyler leaned back and took a moment to sip from the can of beer he’d taken from the refrigerator. Dinner. According to his mother, he had an uncle he knew nothing about. An uncle who could help him prove what she had told him and his brother and sisters. Uncle Derek Ross, her younger brother.

  It was hard picturing his mother as an older sister, he thought. She’d probably been more like Sara than Kathleen, he mused. Bossy, with a heart of gold.

  His mother had long since lost track of Uncle Derek and had only a photograph taken of the two of them some twenty-five years ago to offer him.

  When he’d looked at it for the first time, he’d experienced a strange feeling undulating through him. The man looked like his mother.

  She’d died less than a week after extracting her promise from him. The pain hadn’t lessened any. Pulling strings, he’d seen to it that his mother’s obituary had been printed in all the major newspapers in the country, citing where and when the funeral would be held. He’d done it hoping to flush out Parks and perhaps this mysterious uncle.

  Parks had been a no-show. No real surprise there, Tyler thought. But there had been someone at the funeral who’d looked a great deal like the computer-aged photo he’d generated of Derek Ross. He’d only noticed the man at the back of the crowd at the cemetery right after the service was over.

  But just as he’d started to approach him, the man he thought was his uncle had abruptly walked away. By the time he’d caught up to where he’d been, the man had pulled away in a taxicab.

  Not about to give up this slim lead, Tyler had managed to track down the cab driver who had brought the mysterious mourner to the funeral and then driven him away. The cabby had told him he had no idea who his fare was, only that he had taken the man straight to the airport after the funeral and that he’d said something about catching a plane for San Francisco. The cabby said the man made it sound as if he lived there.

  Since San Francisco was also where his alleged father lived, it seemed like the place to go. Tyler had called a family meeting, proposing that they pool their resources and move to San Francisco. But Kathleen and Conrad hadn’t wanted to pursue this, hadn’t wanted to possibly drag their mother’s name through the mud. They preferred leaving things just as they were. With their mother gone, who would be the wiser?

  But all he could do was remember that he’d held his mother’s hand in his and given her his word. So he and Sara were left to continue this crusade on their own. Together they’d moved to San Francisco, to do what needed to be done.

  But somewhere along the line, Sara had dropped out, too. In an attempt to get close to the family, she’d wound up falling for Parks’s son, Cade. That left only Tyler to bring Parks to justice and avenge the wrong done to his mother.

  He didn’t intend to get sidetracked.

  He joined the police force shortly after arriving in San Francisco. That was where he met and struck up a friendship with Nick Banning, who told him about his brother, Mark, a former NYPD detective who now earned his living as a private investigator. Tyler knew that he couldn’t do this all on his own, that he needed help. One meeting with Mark Banning told him he had the right man for the job.

  So he had hired Mark to find Derek, telling him as much as he could about the case, hoping that between the two of them he could fulfill his mother’s dying wish, if not resolve matters to his own satisfaction.

  And if they did find Derek—even if the man couldn’t be convinced to tell all he knew about Parks in a court of law—when this was over he would have at least gained an uncle.

  Gaining a notorious, much-disliked father was another matter.

  He sighed as he continued going through the box of correspondence he’d discovered in a strongbox amid his mother’s things. It was a hunt he took no pleasure in, but then, revenge was a dish best served cold.

  And, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time, he was doing this for his mother, not himself.

  He took another sip of beer and then settled in to get back to work.

  Hearing her laugh, Mark glanced up from the book he’d been leafing through for the past hour.

  Brooke was at the far end of the store, talking to a customer, charming them without even knowing it. He doubted she was aware of the kind of effect that she had on people. That’s what made her even more charming.

  Five days had passed.

  Five days in which he had steadily gotten himself more and more entrenched in the lives of these two unsuspecting people who were ultimately going to be deeply—and, no doubt, harshly—affected by his discovery.

  There was almost no doubt in his mind that Derek Moss was the man he’d been sent to find. Even so, he felt he needed a little more evidence to back up what his gut already knew to be fact.

  Gut instincts were not admissible in court.

  And circumstantial evidence was the first to fall prey to an able attorney.

  He wanted more. According to the story that Tyler Carlton had told him, twenty-five years had gone by, so a few more days wouldn’t hurt. After all, it wasn’t as if they were involved in some kind of race against time. Walter Parks wasn’t going anywhere.

  Mark gave himself a myriad of reasons for his need for more evidence, not once admitting that perhaps the true reason he was taking such painstaking time with this case was because he was enjoying Brooke’s company. Enjoying the company of a woman when he had ceased to believe that pleasures like that were possible for him.

  He didn’t want it to end.

  And once he told Derek that he knew who he really was, once he made the attempt to convince Marla Carl-ton’s brother not only to allow his nephew to get in contact with him, but to talk to the D.A. about what he knew, the charade would be over. And Brooke would be out of his life.

  Permanently.

  It was like asking a prisoner who had recently been released from a cave to willingly give up the sunshine he’d discovered and return to darkness. Mark knew he had to, that it was inevitable, but he wanted just a little more time in the light. So that when the prison of darkness was a reality again, he could look back and remember what it was like to sit in the sun, to feel its warmth along his skin. To pretend that he was able to enjoy life’s innocent pleasures just like everyone else.

  He didn’t think it was too much to ask.

  Sending the customer on his way, Brooke turned on her heel and began to walk toward him. She nodded at another customer who said goodbye and then left the store. She seemed to be sweeping the place clear.

  Mark closed the book he hadn’t been reading and moved it aside on the table. As he stood up, she picked the book up. “Not to your liking?”

  “Some of the others are more in keeping with what I’m looking for,” he lied.

  She nodded, accepting his excuse and went to put the book back on the shelf. He followed in her wake. It occurred to him that there were only a couple of customers left in the shop and that they were now in the checkout line.

  “Are you closing up early?” he asked.

  She knew Mark was referr
ing to the reading they were holding tonight. It was scheduled for six-thirty. A great many of their regulars were expected, people whose fancies were still stimulated by the power of the spoken word. People who needed no visual aides to help their imaginations take flight. She’d always looked forward to readings, but now she was looking forward to the one tonight for a different reason.

  Always before, the authors who came to read here would captivate her so that by evening’s end, she would be more than half in love with them. But tonight all she wanted to do was share the experience of a dramatic reading with Mark.

  She wanted to watch his face, to hopefully see something stirring within him the way it did within her every time she attended a reading. She supposed that what she wanted so desperately was proof to substantiate her belief—her hope—that they were kindred spirits.

  “Just a little earlier.” She picked up another book that had been left behind and placed it in the right order on a shelf. Looking around, she satisfied herself that the store was neat. Behind her, the front door opened and closed as another customer left. “I need to set up the chairs.”

  He placed his hand on her shoulder, stopped her before she could run off. “Why don’t you take care of whatever else needs doing? I’ll set up the chairs.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” she murmured, pleased. She didn’t particularly like having to drag out all the chairs. “If you wouldn’t mind doing it—”

  “Consider it done,” he told her.

  She watched him walk back to the storeroom, a smile spreading on her lips.

  So this was what it felt like, she thought. This was what it felt like to have someone you cared about doing things for you. And she cared about Mark, maybe had even fallen for him. Not in the same fanciful way she always found herself falling for whatever struggling poet or writer her father would invite for a reading, but for a flesh-and-blood real man.