“Jack?” she repeated. I saw the expression on her face shift from surprise to anger, and then all that red color faded from her skin. Her lips trembled and her knees weakened. I caught her in my arms as she was about to fall over. She wriggled out of my grip with disgust, pushing me away. That’s when it dawned on me why she’d said my father’s name with so much bitterness in her voice.

“Your father’s name is Jack?” she repeated and I reached for her. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again.”

“Kate, please…”

“You knew I was looking for Jack, and you didn’t say anything about your father?” Her face again darkened with rage.

“Do you know how many Jacks there are in the country? Why would I think that your mother had anything to do with my father?”

“I don’t know, Cam. Why did I trust a priest?”

I recoiled.

“Sounds like there are some more questions you can’t answer, Cam,” she spat out. Despite her anger, her spirit awakened something inside me. Kate had that feisty spark that had drawn me to her in the first place and made me want to grab her, throw her over my shoulder, and take her to the bedroom. Fuck, if it were just the two of us here, I’d take her in the same spot she was standing and I’d make her take her anger out in a different way.

“Hold on a minute.” My father raised his arm to interrupt. “Hope, why were you looking for me? How is Anna? How is Xavier? Where are they?” He sat down on the couch and patted the seat beside him. Kate looked like she could tolerate him at the moment more than me, so I let it go.

“How do you know my parents?” she asked.

Keen to know the answer myself, I stepped closer. She shot me a warning look before her attention shifted back to my father, so I kept my distance.

“Xavier was my best friend. I’ve known him since childhood. Your mother ran away from Pace when she was pregnant with you. I found her almost dead, and since Xavier used to be a doctor, I called him in. That’s how they met.”

“She ran away from Benjamin Cortez. Father John told us that she burned a house down – but why?”

“Father John?” my mother asked. She exchanged a quick glance with my father, and I knew what they were thinking. They’d confirmed what I’d been thinking all along. They confirmed what Kate was probably afraid to talk about.

“Ahm, yes. Wait, if you knew my mother when she was pregnant… was…” she stopped, fidgeting. I saw her the vein at the side of her neck pulse quicken and followed its downward path to her cleavage. She caught my stare and I immediately felt like a jerk. Here she was, looking to me for assistance in asking the inevitable question, and I was thinking about licking down that vein all the way to her pink, ripened nipples.

“Who’s Kate’s biological father?” I finally asked.

“Stop calling her Kate. She’s Hope,” my mother scolded.

Kate glanced at me and for a moment I thought I saw sympathy in her eyes. Did she still like me calling her Kate?

“John didn’t know your mother was pregnant. He covered Anna’s tracks when she fled. Anna was afraid Ben Cortez would take away her unborn baby because she burned down his house.”

Kate swallowed hard, and all I wanted to do was to take her in my arms and comfort her.

“My father’s a priest,” she whispered, and my parents nodded. I was afraid that after this ordeal, Kate would have trouble trusting any priest.

After long enough pause to let the information sink in, my father continued. “She wanted to go back to tell John the truth, but she stayed with us instead. A series of events, including both your births, prevented her from traveling back to John. She sacrificed herself for our newborn son. She saved Cameron’s life.”

I thought back in time to when I was little and my parents always told me about Auntie Jo, who had saved my life when I was an infant by donating one of her kidneys. I’d never met her. I was only told me that it was impossible to meet her, and by the time I was old enough to understand my father’s line of business in bounty hunting, I also knew that some subjects were off the discussion table, Auntie Jo’s location being one of them.

“Is Kate’s mother my donor?” I asked. “You called her Auntie Jo.”

My mother confirmed my question with a slight bob of her head. I’d heard the story a thousand times and still couldn’t believe it. “You were young. We couldn’t take the chance of anyone connecting us. It was safer this way.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that I knew Kate as a child?” My eyes grew wide. Both my parents smiled.

“You shared your first cookie.”

I caught Kate’s quick glance and what I thought was a smile as well.

“So it’s true, then. Father John is my father, and he doesn’t know it. Why did my mother burn that house?”

“Anna held Ben Cortez responsible for your little brother’s death. He was dragged by a bull across the city. Anna said that Ben had tampered with the gates that broke and let the bulls into a market full of people.”

“About that…” I interjected. “There’s no body.”

“What?” Kate whipped her body sideways, toward me, the quick bounce of her breasts briefly diverting my attention elsewhere before I caught the question again in her eyes.

“In that small coffin in the chapel,” I explained. “There was no body. I opened the coffin and checked. There was only a note: My blood, my flesh, my bones. It was signed by Ben Cortez.”

“When this this happen? And why would you even…”

She was looking at me as if she didn’t know me; which truthfully, she did and didn’t at the same time. I saw a spark of curiosity in her eyes.

“The morning I came to get you at church. The day after our potluck.”

Watching her cheeks turn a brighter shade would never get old.

“I had a hunch from my conversation with Father John, and it checked out. It was the same day Aaron Cortez arrived in Pace.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“We didn’t exactly have a lot of time. I was trying to save your life. I was looking out for you.”

“Maybe you should have tried telling me the truth about being a priest instead of kissing me in a confessional.”

I saw regret in her eyes as soon as she said the words.

“Cameron?” My father raised his voice.

Shit!

“It was the only way to get full access to the town’s papers.”

“No, it wasn’t. I had access as well. You could have asked me.”

Was she seriously throwing me under the bus? I wished we were alone. I wished I could tell her how much she infuriated me.

“You were a secretary,” I said between my teeth. “I didn’t know if I could trust you. God, I didn’t even know you existed.”

“All right, you two. Stop it,” my mother interjected. “You can bicker some more after we have all the facts. Now, Hope, where are your mother and Xavier?”

“My father disappeared ten years ago. He was legally declared dead. I think Lola may have more information on him than I do. As soon as my mother realized he wasn’t coming back, she got scared, but she wouldn’t tell me why. She just told me that there were bad people looking for him and for us and she didn’t want them to find me. We moved to Long Island because she said it was one of the few places she’d ever felt safe.”

My mother smiled. “You’ve been living here the past ten years?”

“Yes.”

“I told you, Jack. I told you we didn’t have to cut our ties to the point of no return. We could have helped Anna and Xavier. For goodness sake, Xavier’s like a brother to you, and if I know him the way I do, then he’s alive. He’s alive somewhere and needs our help. I never understood why you’d give up on your brother; but then again, you give up on everyone in the family, one by one, don’t you? Is that a trademark of yours, or do you purposefully try to screw up everything in your life?”

I felt my muscles spasm in my jaw and my neck stiffen. I loved my mother because she loved us to the bone, but sometimes I wasn’t surprised that my parents were no longer together.

“We did what we had to at the time,” my father replied. “So Anna’s on Long Island? We need to call her. I have to make sure she’s safe.”

“She’s fine.” Lola’s voice sounded from the front door. Brook stood beside her.

My mother eyed her carefully and smiled. I immediately knew that the two of them would get along.

“You must be Lola. Brook has told me so much about you.”

A little bit surprised, Lola tilted her head to the side. I knew my brother had dipped his fingers in her life, if not more. Truthfully, I couldn’t blame him. She was a gorgeous woman, but she wasn’t Kate.

“She’s still in North Carolina. Xavier hired me to look after Hope and get her to safety when needed. He told me to get in touch with you, and that’s how I found Brook.”

“Why is she in North Carolina?”

Lola’s gaze flew to Kate, who bit her lip. I could tell she was struggling on the inside. Whatever she had to say, it must have been a big secret, and it was important to her. My mother sat down beside Kate. She took her hands into her own and rubbed them. Kate seemed to trust her. A lot of people did.

“What happened?” she asked.

“She fucked us over, that’s what happened.” I saw Brook step through the front door.

“Brook, watch your mouth,” my mother scolded.

“There were a half dozen unscheduled surgeries that night in all of New York. One of them was to remove a cancerous mass from the lungs. Now, why would such surgery be unscheduled? I found that odd, and what do you know? Joanna Black was listed as a patient. Except there were no other documents. No follow-up appointments, no record of chemo or radiation, and no doctor name who performed the surgery. Whatever happened in that operating room was illegal, or… did your mother have cancer removed, Hope?” The sarcasm on my brother’s voice could have made the Pope’s eyes roll.

“No, I… I was going to—”

“Wait until Cortez found us and killed us? Guess what, now that you pulled off that little stunt, it’s only a matter of time before he comes for me and my family. Aaron Cortez will find us, and he’ll kill us all.”

I wished my brother was exaggerating, but when I saw the somber look on Kate’s face, I knew he was telling the truth. What stunt had Kate pulled? Her lip trembled and eyes glossed over.

Was she the woman we’ve been looking for?

“This can’t be true. Please tell me it’s not true,” I said to her.

Kate lowered her head, and that’s when truth dawned on me. It was her.

“My mother’s heart was failing, and she needed a transplant. We were on the list, but she just didn’t have a lot of time. I made a deal with Aaron Cortez for a heart. I sold our house to get the money, and we went away for one last trip together. When we came back, the house burnt down and the insurance company wouldn’t pay out right away. We didn’t have time to wait for the money.”

Jesus Christ!

I shut my eyes and said a quick prayer. I asked God for Kate’s story to change. I asked him to stop her from talking and saying what I thought she was saying, but my prayer wasn’t answered.

“I ambushed the exchange and stole the heart from Cortez without paying.”

My parent’s eyes grew wide and so did mine. The only person who didn’t seem surprised was Lola.

Kate took a deep breath and continued. “It all went wrong. I stole the heart, but a truck full of other organs and millions in narcotics blew up. I got away, my mother received her transplant, and… the transplant went well, but the only two words she’s said since the house burnt down are ‘Jack Pace.’ I had no choice but to flee with her, and I knew I couldn’t look for Jack Pace with her under my care. I took a leave of absence from my job in New York, left my mother under care in North Carolina, and went to Pace.”

She looked up at me with her beautifully golden eyes. The woman I’d been looking for was sitting in my living room. She’d been under my nose the entire time and I didn’t know it. Brook would never let me live this down. Hell, I wasn’t sure I could.

“You know the rest,” she said to me. “I didn’t know my mother knew Cortez. I never told her about the illegal heart. She didn’t know anything.”

My father didn’t get his heart because of her.

My family was forced into hiding because of her.

My house was blown up because of her, and I had to pretend to be a priest because of her.

Everything was her fault.

“You’re the one who stole my father’s heart? You’re the one we’ve been hunting.”