Switched At Birth. Christine Rimmer

in a small coastal town in Oregon called Valentine Bay. “Percy’s been trying to get in touch with you since last summer. He tells me he’s spoken to your personal assistant, your manager, your housekeeper and also someone at your agency, but he’s yet to get any of them to put him through to you.”

      “I’m sorry,” said Madison, and she was—a little. Really, though, a lot of people tried to get through to her: journalists, fans, screenwriters, would-be producers with projects to pitch her, stalkers and other crazies, too. Her people protected her. If this Valentine person hadn’t been able to get in contact, there was probably a very good reason her team had kept him away. “I work a lot and I’ve given orders that only high-priority calls get through.”

      “Which is why I’m here,” said Jonas. “Percy hoped that I might be able to accomplish the impossible and actually get a word with you...”

      Madison was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable and she wasn’t sure why. “Did this Percy Valentine happen to tell any of my people what he wanted to talk to me about?”

      Jonas answered carefully. “It’s sensitive information.”

      “So then, he never said why he needed to reach me?”

      “He did, yes. He explained everything to your personal assistant.”

      “Rudy or Valerie?”

      “Valerie Daws. Percy even sent proof of his claim. He never heard back. When he tried to call your PA again, he couldn’t get through.”

      Valerie had been very ill for a few months the previous year. She’d ended up having to quit and Madison had hired Rudy Jeffries, her current PA. It was possible that the information Percy Valentine had sent had slipped through the cracks, somehow. “What kind of claim are we talking about here?”

      Jonas slanted her the strangest look. “I think we should sit down.”

      Alarm flashed through her. People always suggested sitting down when they were about to come out with some horrible bit of news.

      Madison squared her shoulders. “Of course.” She gestured toward the nearest sitting area and followed him over there. He took an easy chair. Her knees wobbly now, she sank to the sofa. “All right. What?”

      The Bravo Billionaire just looked at her. For a really long time.

      “What?” she demanded again.

      He glanced away and then back. “I’m just going to say it.”

      “Please do.”

      “There is good reason to believe that you were switched at birth and that your biological parents were George and Marie Bravo of Valentine Bay, Oregon.”

      A gasp escaped her as her stomach performed a forward roll.

      It really was a good thing he’d made her sit down. If she’d still been on her feet, she probably would have crumpled to the floor—and it wasn’t true.

      It couldn’t be true!

      But before she could cry out that he had to be wrong, Jonas added, “Percy said to tell you that the switch took place on a ranch called Wild River not far from Astoria, Oregon.”

      Wild River Ranch.

      Okay, yeah. Twenty-seven years ago today, Madison had been born at Wild River Ranch. A few months after her birth, her dad had found another job in a different state and they’d moved on, like they always did.

      But after her father died, when she and her mom moved to LA, they’d made a detour to northwestern Oregon—not to the actual ranch, but to the area. So that Madison would know where she came from, her mom had said with the saddest, strangest look in her eye.

      In one of the few pictures Madison had of her father, Lloyd Delaney stood in front of the foreman’s cottage at Wild River, smiling proudly, cradling a pink-blanketed bundle: Madison herself, just a few days after her birth.

      No. It couldn’t be true. Lloyd and Paula Delaney might have had their problems. But they had loved their only daughter unconditionally. Her dad was always saying how she had that “Delaney” look about her. Madison had no doubt that she was everything to him and to her mom, truly theirs, in every way.

      “Yes,” she gave out grudgingly. “I was born at Wild River Ranch in northern Oregon. But that doesn’t mean—”

      “Just let me say what I came to say.” Jonas spoke very gently, silencing her arguments simply by being so patient, so kind.

      “All right.” She listened, her breath tangled, hot in her chest, her pulse racing, as the Bravo Billionaire shared what he knew.

      At first, his words were a blur to her. She tried to focus, to understand.

      Jonas said that a man named Martin Durand had made the switch. He did it because the other baby, the one raised by the Bravos, had been the result of Durand’s secret affair with Paula Delaney. Durand, now deceased, was a married man. He’d been afraid that Paula would come after him and demand a paternity test.

      “It was a totally out-there move on Durand’s part,” said Jonas. “The truth might very well have come out earlier if Paula had gone ahead and tried to prove Durand’s paternity. The test would have shown that you were not related by blood to Durand or her husband, Lloyd—or even to Paula herself. She would have remembered that Marie Bravo gave birth to a child at the ranch on the same day that she did, would have put it together that somehow there must have been a switch.”

      “But I don’t understand. If it all would have led back to Durand, anyway, why did he do it?”

      “Apparently, he was freaked. He didn’t stop to think it through. And then, after he’d switched you with Paula’s baby, he had no opportunity to switch you back. You grew up with the Delaneys, believing that they were your biological parents, and if Paula ever told Lloyd that she doubted you were his—”

      “Stop.” Madison put up a hand. “I get it. That’s enough, really.”

      “I understand. It’s a lot to take in.” Jonas stood from the chair. Moving on autopilot, Madison got up, too.

      He held out a thumb drive.

      She stared at it, shaking her head.

      “It’s all on there,” he said, “everything I just explained to you and more, including pictures of your large family in Oregon and Martin Durand’s final letter confessing what he did. I think you’ll agree that the resemblance between you and three of the Bravo sisters is especially striking—and of course, when you’re ready, there will be DNA tests providing conclusive proof. Also, you’ll find contact information for Percy Valentine and your Bravo brothers and sisters. My numbers are there, too. And my door is always open to you, Madison.” He took her hand.

      She let him do that, let him set the memory stick in her palm and fold her fingers around it.

      Was she dreaming? Her moorings to her life, her identity, her self—everything. It all felt torn loose and dangling.

      The oddest thought occurred to her. “So then, are you saying that we’re related, too, you and me?”

      “Yes. You and I are second cousins. Your grandfather and mine were brothers. The extended family is a large one.”

      When her mom died four years ago, she’d lost the last of her family—or so she’d believed at the time. “And you said that the family in Oregon is large, too?”

      “George and Marie Bravo had nine children.” He turned for the door.

      “Had?” she asked his retreating back.

      He paused in midstep and faced her again. “George and Marie were very fond of traveling. One of the children, Finn, was lost on a trip to Russia years ago. The family continues to search for him.”

      “And George and Marie Bravo, what are they