“Yeah, well,” she said, hating the gravel in her voice, “see, that’s the thing. I’m nobody’s sister. Okay?” Don’t deserve to be. Don’t you understand? I lost that right a long time ago.

“Pity,” Holt said softly, putting the Mustang once more into reverse. “These are some nice people. You couldn’t ask for a better family to be a part of.”

Yeah, right, Billie thought, and it was all she could do to keep from erupting in derisive laughter. Nice didn’t come anywhere close to describing the brother she remembered.

Then…something he’d said. Something that had been blasted out of her head at the time by the sound of that name: Brooke Fallon. But…she remembered now. He’d said brothers. Plural. But how could that be? She only had one brother.

“So, tell me about ’em,” she said, concentrating everything she had on keeping her tone light, making her interest seem only casual. Inside her head was a cacophony of thoughts, a jabbering madhouse of incomprehension and confusion, a babel of questions she couldn’t ask without giving herself away.

“Why should you want to know?” He tossed her a look as he headed out of the parking lot. “If you’re not, as you say, the person I’m looking for, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Panic seized her. It was only a few short blocks to the garden center; he’d be dropping her off in a minute or two. But she had to know. She had to know.

She could feel herself beginning to tremble inside. How much longer could she keep him from noticing?

She shrugged with elaborate unconcern. “Hey, it sounds like an interesting story, okay?” Paused at a traffic light, he looked over at her again, smiling sardonically. She gave him back her most winning smile. “I’d really like to hear it.”

Holt felt a quickening, a swift surge of exultation. He’d never been fishing in his life, but he imagined this must be what a fisherman experienced when he felt that unmistakable tugging on his line. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said with doubt in his voice. “Don’t you have to get back to work?”

There was a moment of absolute silence, yet he could hear her sigh of frustration like a faint breath, hear the crackle of tension in her muscles and joints like the rustling of fabric on skin. He wondered if it was because he couldn’t read her the usual way, with his eyes, that he seemed to be developing the ability to pick up on her with his other senses.

The garden center loomed ahead. Holt slowed, turned into the parking lot. He pulled into the first empty space he came to and stopped, leaving the motor running, then looked over at Billie. She was sitting motionless, facing forward, and from her profile he could see behind her glasses, for once. Her eyes were closed. For some reason that jolted him, and he saw her in a way he hadn’t been able to up till now.

Vulnerable.

“Yeah. Okay, sure.” She let out a careful breath and gave him a thin, empty smile-no dimples, this time. “Listen, thanks for lunch.” She opened the door, slid her legs out, then looked back at him. “And good luck finding her-the person you’re looking for.” She got out of the car.

He was in a quandary, letting her go. He wondered if this was what a fisherman would call letting the fish “run.” If it was, he decided he didn’t have the nerve for it. He had her hooked, he was sure of it. Had her almost literally in his hands. Yet, short of bodily kidnapping her, he couldn’t reel her in. Not yet, anyway. He couldn’t bear to let her walk away from him, but at this point, what choice did he have?

The funny thing was, he was pretty sure she didn’t want to walk away from him, either. If she was Brenna Fallon, as he was dead certain she was, her insides had to be a mess right about now. He’d just dropped a hand grenade into her life. She had to have a million questions she was dying to ask but couldn’t, not without admitting who she was. Or, to use another one of those damn poker analogies that seemed to be everywhere lately, folding.

Again, he couldn’t be sure, since he hadn’t watched her play very much, but he had an idea Billie Farrell didn’t fold very often.

She’d paused, standing in the V of the open car door, and in that moment he heard himself say, “I’m going to be around awhile…”

She ducked down to give him her knowing half smile. “Right-for your sister’s wedding.”

He gave her back a huff of unamused laughter. “If you really want to hear the story, come by my hotel after work. I’ll buy you a drink-or you can buy me one.”

“A drink?”

“A beer…martini…something with an umbrella in it-hell, I don’t care.”

Her smile broadened. “How ’bout a Diet Coke?”

“Whatever turns you on,” he heard himself say, and it wasn’t something he was in the habit of saying.

“Where are you staying?” Her voice was both husky and breathless, and the frisson of awareness took another meander across his skin.

He gave her the name of his hotel, a good-size one located well off the Strip. She nodded. “I know where it is.” She straightened and firmly closed the door.

Holt watched her walk away, watched a stiff November wind lift the blond feathers of her hair to catch the desert sunlight. And, after a while, let go of the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

He was driving back to his hotel when his cell phone rang. Since he wasn’t a big fan of people who tried to talk on their cell phones and drive at the same time, he picked it up and glanced at it to see if it was somebody he could ignore. When he saw who it was, he thumbed it on, said, “Hang on a minute…” and pulled into a strip mall parking lot. He turned into the first vacant spot he came to and turned off the motor, then picked up the phone again.

“Brooke-”

“Have you seen her? Is it her?” Her voice was high and anxious, on the edge of tears.

“I’ve just come from having lunch with her-”

“Oh God…”

“-and, to be perfectly honest, I can’t be sure. She says she’s not your sister, but…”

Now her voice dropped to a husky mutter. “I don’t understand.”

Holt sighed deeply. “Look, I’m pretty sure Billie Farrell and Brenna Fallon are one and the same. She’s probably got her reasons for not wanting to admit it. I imagine it wasn’t easy being on her own at fourteen. She’s learned to be careful about who she trusts.”

“Did you tell her-” Brooke expelled a breath in an impatient hiss and reined herself in. “Yes, okay. But the pictures I gave you-has she changed so much?” Her voice was wistful, close to tears again.

He ran a weary hand over his eyes; he was beginning to feel the effects of a night without sleep. “Hard to tell. If I could just see her eyes…” He gave a huff of frustrated laughter. “But she wouldn’t take off the damn dark glasses.”

Brooke laughed, too, a small gulp. “I know, I keep watching the poker game over and over, screaming at the TV screen, Dammit, Bren, take off the damn sunglasses!”

There was a long pause, and then she said softly, “She has very distinctive eyes, Holt. Not like mine, or Cory’s. Hers are…I guess they’re what you call hazel. But they’re sort of golden, actually. Almost the same color as her hair.”

“According to Cory,” Holt said, “those are your mother’s eyes. Your brother Matt has them, too.”

Billie was in her bathroom, huddled under the warm shower spray, trying to think.

She’d asked for the afternoon off, pleading illness, and since she’d never done such a thing before, ever, her boss had not only given it to her, but had expressed his concern for her health.

“Probably just a bug-one of those twenty-four-hour flu things,” Billie had told him. And the truth was, she did feel kind of sick to her stomach.

She didn’t know what to do. She really had not seen this coming. The thing with Miley, yeah; she always had suspected her past would come back to haunt her one day. She just hadn’t thought the ghosts would come from so far in her past.

Every instinct she had was telling her to get the heck out of Dodge-she’d even gotten her old suitcase down out of the overhead storage in her parking garage, but had left it sitting empty beside the back door. Because what was the point? Holt Kincaid had managed to find her once, and he’d surely find her again, no matter where she ran. She couldn’t go back on the streets where she could vanish into the legions of anonymous dispossessed; she wasn’t fourteen anymore-she was a grown-up member of society, fully documented and therefore traceable.

What was she going to do? What could she do?

It was at that point in her panic that she’d headed for the shower. She did some of her best thinking in the shower.

So. What were her options?

Running would always be her first choice, but in this case, probably a bad one. Not only would it be futile, at best only postponing the inevitable, but there was the thing about brothers. Holt Kincaid had said brothers.

Admit it, Billie, you’re dying to know what that’s about.

And, the man with the answers is dying to tell you.

So why don’t you do it? Go see the man, buy him that drink-or let him buy you one-and see what he has to say. What are you afraid of?

Afraid?

That did it. She turned off the water and yanked back the shower curtain. Grabbed a towel and scrubbed her skin rosy and her hair into layers of spikes, every movement jerky with anger. If there was anything in the world Billie hated, it was being afraid. She was done with being afraid. Done long ago with feeling scared and helpless. Knowledge was power, right? These days, Billie Farrell was all about having the power. Which meant she had to have the knowledge.

And the man with the knowledge was Holt Kincaid.