I woke up, the sheet twisted around my body. “Ruby?”

Damn. My clock showed seven a.m. I had forgotten to set my alarm. I was late getting out to the fields. Where was Ruby?

Fear settled in my gut. Had she gone home? No, she wouldn’t have. She wouldn’t have put herself in danger. I sat up quickly and found my robe. I walked swiftly through the house. “Ruby?”

No answer.

When I got to the kitchen, I noticed Ricky sitting outside the door, on the deck. Then I saw Ruby sitting in the family room. I walked toward the sofa.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I figured I’d let you sleep. We were up pretty late last night.”

“I should’ve gotten up two hours ago,” I said.

“I only just got up about fifteen minutes ago. I fed Ricky and let him out, made a pot of coffee. I need to leave pretty soon to get to work on time.”

The thought of her leaving sent a spear through my stomach. Somehow, I had to convince her to move in with me. And that thought brought last night back to the forefront of my mind.

“Baby…”

“What?”

“I’m…sorry.”

“About what?”

“About trying to…fuck you into submission.”

She laughed. She fucking laughed!

“What’s so fucking funny?”

“You didn’t fuck me into anything, Ryan. I’ve told you many times before. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”

“Oh. Good. I guess.”

“I was actually going to wake you up soon,” she said. “We need to talk.”

Yes, we did need to talk, and I had to figure out a really quick way to get her to move in with me.

She stood. “Want some coffee?”

I nodded, and we walked back into the kitchen. She poured two cups and set them on the table. Then she sat down. I followed suit.

“Ryan, last night was… There really aren’t any words.”

“Does that mean it was good or bad?”

She smiled. “It was good. Very good.”

“Thank God.”

“And I want to tell you…” She bit her lip, looking down. Then she met my gaze, her blue eyes burning. “I love you, Ryan. I really do love you.”

Happiness surged through me. And a giant weight floated off my shoulders. Though I had wanted to hear those words last night, I’d had no idea how much they truly meant to me until they left her lips.

“Do you? Really?”

“I do. I have for a while. I just never in a million years dreamed that you could love me.”

I took her hand, entwining her fingers with mine. “I do. What I feel for you is something I never imagined. It’s almost an ache.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that. Since I have no frame of reference, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was feeling, but you just described it perfectly.”

“Then will you move in with me? Let me protect you?”

She closed her eyes and let out a breath of air. “I’m sorry, Ryan. I can’t move in with you.”

“Why? If we love each other—”

She held up her hand to stop me. “Because. Because I need to figure some things out about myself first. And quite frankly, you’re not ready for this either.”

“Ruby, I know exactly what I’m ready for.”

“Do you? You admit yourself that your life has just been upended. Don’t you need to work through all of that before you start a serious relationship?”

“I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed, Ruby. This relationship is already serious.”

“Because we love each other?”

“Yes, because we love each other. Don’t you know anything about relationships?” I regretted the words as soon as I said them. Of course she didn’t know anything about relationships. I was her first one. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay. But I think this is new for both of us.”

She had the right of that. “So it’s new. So what? I want you to move in with me. I want you to be safe.”

“Keeping me safe is not the best reason to have me move in with you,” she said. “I may not know much about relationships, but I do know that much.”

“Fine,” I said. “I love you. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”

“It’s a wonderful reason. I love you too, and a big part of me really wants to live here with you. But I just can’t. Not until I figure a few things out.”

“Can’t we figure them out together?”

“I wish we could.” She massaged the fingers of my right hand. “But there’s still a lot of my life that I haven’t dealt with, Ryan. I need to work through those things before I live with someone.”

I heaved a sigh. “I need to say it, baby. I don’t want you going back to your apartment.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m booking a hotel room for you in the city.”

“Ryan…”

“No arguments. I’m putting my foot down.”

She opened her mouth, and I expected a hell of an argument, but then she closed it.

“Okay.” She squeezed my hand. “I need to go to work.” She stood and turned, but then turned back almost immediately. “And you need to find out what your mother wants.”

Crap. I’d nearly forgotten that my mother had e-mailed Ruby asking to see me. I quickly texted my foreman and told him I wouldn’t be in the field until this afternoon. “All right. Do you want to go with me?”

“I would if I could, but I need to get to work.”

“All right, but we still need to talk.”

“Ryan, I told you—”

“No, not about you moving in. About that theory you said you had. The one you think I’m not going to like.”

---

My mother looked more tired than usual. Still, I saw beauty in her. I wasn’t sure why. I had seen pictures of her when she was young, and she had been quite beautiful. Now, if I looked at her objectively, I saw a sixty-something-year-old woman with brown greasy hair and gray roots. She did have nice eyes though. They were blue, lighter than Ruby’s and not as sparkling, but deep and soulful. When she looked at me, her face lit up, and I could see what my father had seen in her.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, smiling.

“Ruby tells me that you hijacked one of your doctor’s e-mail accounts.”

“I do what I have to do.”

“If you keep this up, and you get caught, they’re going to take away what few privileges you still have.”

“Don’t you worry about me, my darling. I have everything under control.”

“Do you? Because it seems to me that if you had everything under control, you wouldn’t be in here.”

She laughed softly. “My dear, your father never understood how my life worked, and I see you don’t either.”

That was for sure. “Speaking of my father, I have a lot of questions for you.”

“Ask away. I keep no secrets from my son.”

First lie of the day. She had been keeping a secret from me my entire life until recently, but now was not the time to call her on that. “We found a death certificate in my father’s papers. A death certificate in the name of John Cunningham, who just happened to have the same date of death as my father and who happened to have the same physical characteristics. That same certificate is in the Colorado database under my father’s name. Same number and everything. Only the name was changed.”

“Yes?”

“So my father is alive, then?”

“Of course he is. Haven’t I already told you that?”

“Wendy, you lie as much as you tell the truth. How am I supposed to know the difference?”

“I would never lie about your father, Ryan. You and he are everything to me.”

“Then where is he? Why did you let me think he was dead all these years?”

“I don’t know where he is, Ryan.”

“That’s bullshit. Why are you keeping me from my father?”

Her blue eyes misted. “I wish I did know where he is. I do know that he’ll come for me one day and get me out of here.”

“Can you get in touch with him?”

“I have something for you,” she said.

“Don’t change the subject on me, Wendy.”

“Please. Could you call me mother?”

When hell freezes over. “Fine.” I would do whatever it took to get the truth. I had to force the word from my lips. “Mother.”

The orderly sitting next to her handed her a jewelry box. She slid it across the table to me. “For you.”

I opened the box. Nestled on cotton was a sapphire bracelet set in platinum or white gold. I couldn’t tell which.

“What is this? And what am I supposed to do with a woman’s bracelet?”

“Your father gave it to me the day you were born. He said it belonged to his mother. I’ve never worn it. I could never bring myself to. Every time I looked at it, I thought of you and what I had given up. So I want you to have it. Keep it as a way to remember me.”

My immediate reaction was that the bracelet was tainted. Tainted with the betrayal of my father, my mothers. Yes, both of them. Daphne Steel had furthered the deception. Nothing good could come from anything Wendy could give me.

But then I looked at my mother. Wendy looked genuinely sad. Her eyes were sunken and glazed over. Without meaning to, I actually felt a sliver of pity for her.

Maybe the way to get her to do something was to treat her as my mother. To feign love for her. I hated the idea of it, but I needed information. So I took the bracelet from the box and fingered it. Had it truly belonged to my grandmother? She’d died before I was born, and Talon and Joe would be too young to remember whether she’d ever worn a sapphire bracelet.

“It’s a beautiful piece,” I said. “My father must have loved you very much.”

I had no idea, but maybe he had. Maybe… I never really knew Bradford Steel. None of us had. Maybe this woman had truly known him, and not just in the biblical sense. Maybe she was the key.

“Thank you for saying that,” Wendy said. “We were each other’s true loves.”

Then why didn’t he go to you after our mother died? The question hovered on my lips, but I didn’t ask it. Mentioning Daphne Steel wouldn’t get me where I needed to be right now.

“This is an expensive bracelet,” I said. “Why did you keep it? You could have sold it.”

“I couldn’t part with it, and I didn’t need any money. You know that.”

True. She’d said my father had paid her five million dollars to give me up. But the timing didn’t quite coincide. The five-million-dollar transfer had left the Steel account twenty-five years ago, around the time Talon was taken. I’d been born thirty-two years ago.

“If you couldn’t part with it, why didn’t you wear it?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Then help me. Help me understand…Mother.”