A Family, At Last. Susan Crosby

in the SUV followed—or lose him in traffic?

      Karyn inched past the bakery. All the street parking was taken. She weighed the risk of the parking garage nearby and rejected it after another quick glance at her mirror. Headlights and Christmas lights created a dark, distinctive silhouette of the driver.

      “Man Wearing Cowboy Hat, you are following the wrong girl.”

      This was Karyn’s turf. She knew how to zip through the side streets of Beverly Hills efficiently. It didn’t take her long to leave the SUV in the dust and make a quick retreat to her Hollywood duplex, its garage tucked in the rear. She’d never been so grateful for that privacy before.

      Grabbing her packages, she rushed upstairs to her unit, let herself in and slammed the door shut. She left the lights off, set down her bags on the kitchen table, then waited in the dark for fifteen minutes, going from window to window, peering through the blinds. Finally she turned on the living room light and sat on the sofa, her legs bouncing. Why would someone follow her? In the land of Hollywood-star wannabes, she was the least likely person to stalk.

      Then again, maybe it was her imagination, a fanciful notion of her overtired brain. It was six days before Christmas, hell week in her line of work. She was exhausted, so maybe her mind was playing tricks on her.

      Of course. That had to be it.

      Shrugging it off, Karyn headed for the kitchen. The doorbell rang.

      She froze.

      When it rang again she stealthily made her way to the front door and looked through the peephole. She hadn’t turned on her porch light, but she could make out the silhouette. A man in a cowboy hat.

      “Ms. Lambert?” he asked through the door. “I know you’re there. I just want a few words with you.”

      Not a snowflake’s chance in—

      “Please. I’m a lawyer. I’m looking for your brother, Kyle.”

      Stunned, she covered her mouth with her hand and took an involuntary step back.

      “Turn your outside light on and look through the peephole. I’ll show you my identification.”

      “Why do you want Kyle?” she asked.

      A beat passed. “He’s not in trouble, Ms. Lambert, but I also don’t want to shout personal information through your door. I don’t need much of your time.”

      She flipped on the porch light. “Prove who you are.”

      His driver’s license told a basic story. Name, Vaughn Ryder. Six-foot-one, 180 pounds. Lean and rangy, she thought. Brown hair, blue eyes. Thirty-eight years old. Organ donor.

      “What else have you got?”

      He held up a business card. Under his name was a list: ranch and farm contracts, conservation easements, estate planning, water and power rights. His address said Ryder Ranch, Red Valley, California, with a P.O. box, phone numbers and an email address. She couldn’t begin to imagine what a cowboy lawyer would want of Kyle, but she was curious enough to invite him in.

      Karyn opened the door then stared for a few seconds. He was a cowboy all right, from his black hat down to his fancy stitched boots. A pristine white dress shirt with silver snaps was set off with a gorgeous bolo tie of silver and black. His black jeans were snug—

      Definitely a man. And truly a cowboy, apparently, who matched his business card.

      “Want to pat me down?” he asked, humor in his voice.

      She struggled to look him in the eye. “What?”

      “For weapons? I’d like to speak to you privately, and if you need to check me for weapons before you’ll invite me in, I’m okay with that.” He held his arms out, his briefcase dangling from one hand.

      She took a couple of steps back and gestured him indoors, feeling heat in her face at being caught eyeing him. “You’ve been following me since I left Disneyland,” she stated, noting his graying temples and the intensity of his blue eyes as he swept off his hat.

      “Guilty. Actually, I’ve been behind you since you first left here this morning.”

      “Why?”

      “I wanted to get a sense of your life. You shop a lot.”

      She laughed at the wonder in his voice, and it felt good, breaking the tension. “It’s what I do for a living. I’m a personal shopper.”

      “That pays enough to make a living?”

      “Are you implying that I make money some other way?” Ice coated her words. “I assure you everything I do is aboveboard.”

      “My apologies,” he said with sincerity. “I didn’t mean to imply that. Ignorance, that’s all. May we sit?”

      She sat, forgiving him for not understanding her business, which encompassed much more than shopping. Her task list was even longer than those written on his business card.

      “Why do you need a sense of my life?” she asked. “You said you’re here about my twin brother.”

      “What I have to say involves you, but primarily Kyle, and he’s the one I’d like to speak to first. I’ve been hunting for him but haven’t come up with an address.”

      “You can’t....” Karyn’s throat burned as memories assaulted her. Hot, painful tears pressed at her eyes with such suddenness and force she barely managed to get words out. “You can’t find him because he died, Mr. Ryder. He was killed in combat three years ago in Afghanistan.”

      She sat there for a moment, trying to tamp down the emotions that were still raw and unfiltered, even after all this time, but especially hard at Christmas. When she couldn’t pull herself together, she hurried to her bedroom, shutting the door, leaning against it before falling on the bed, not caring that a stranger sat in her living room.

      * * *

      Vaughn stood automatically, then sank slowly into the chair when he realized she wasn’t coming right back. Kyle Lambert is dead. Relief swept through him first. His life had just gotten much easier. Then he recalled the fresh grief in Karyn’s eyes. He couldn’t imagine losing any of his five siblings. The pain would be overwhelming.

      Of course, none of it mattered at all if Kyle turned out not to be the man Vaughn was seeking—or even the right Kyle Lambert. But seeing Karyn’s curly light brown hair was its own kind of validation.

      Unable to sit still, Vaughn wandered the room. A table was stacked neatly with wrapped Christmas presents, a color-coded tag on each one, but otherwise her apartment wasn’t decorated for the holiday. On the wall were numerous paintings, mostly landscapes and floral themes. When he looked closer, he noticed Karyn Lambert’s signature in the corner.

      There were no photographs of any kind, not of people or places or events, which he found odd. Most women displayed pictures.

      After a while a door clicked open. Karyn came into the living room, her eyes still damp. She was an attractive woman, not Hollywood-slim but nicely curved, more girl next door. Her height was a mystery because she was wearing very high heels. He’d noted her sexy walk all day as he’d followed her.

      “I’m sorry,” she said.

      “I knew he was a marine, but I didn’t know he’d passed away. I should’ve waited for my private investigator to dig deeper when I was given Kyle’s name. He was out of the state on a job, and I was in a hurry to get results. I—I’m sincerely sorry for how I handled this.”

      “Dig deeper for what, Mr. Ryder?” she asked.

      “Vaughn, please. Ms. Lambert, I believe your brother may have fathered a child with Ginger Donohue six years ago.”

      She dropped onto the sofa, her eyes wide. “Kyle has a child? A piece of him is still here?”

      “It’s a possibility.