Searching for Cate

Numb because there were no foundations beneath her feet, no walls around her to protect her. She was bare and exposed. Completely and utterly adrift in dark waters. And for the first time in her life, she had no sense of identity. She had no idea who she was, or who she might have been meant to be.

She wouldn’t know anything until she found the answers to the questions that had been battering her brain for the past two and a half weeks.

Ever since that day in her mother’s hospital room.

Just before the end, her mother had begged her to forgive her and of course she had. She bore no malice toward the people who had done everything in their power to make her feel loved and secure. But it didn’t negate her desire to discover her birth parents and, with them, her roots.

Cate realized that the priest had stopped talking. The ceremony was almost over. Someone handed her a white rose. She went through the motions, kissing a petal and then throwing the flower onto the deep-mahogany casket that lay nestled in the freshly dug grave.

As she looked down, she felt her heart tightening within her chest.

Julia Kowalski had died three days ago. And now she and Big Ted were together again.

And she was alone. Completely alone. With no family to fall back on.

Neither one of her parents had had any siblings. Cate had always thought of herself as the only child of only children. Now she no longer knew what to think, what to feel.

Except for alone.

Everyone gathered at her parents’ house after the funeral. Betsy Keller, her mother’s best and oldest friend, had taken over and handled all the arrangements. Had insisted on it.

“You have enough to deal with, poor thing,” she’d clucked sympathetically several times during the past three days.

The mother of six and grandmother of nine, Betsy took to traffic control easily. Rather than call in a caterer, she’d summoned the collective resources of all of Julia’s friends. The women had brought over casseroles, pies, cakes and enough food to feed two armies.

“You’ve got to eat something,” Betsy insisted. She paused to deliver the same entreaty every time their paths crossed within the crammed house filled with people who had loved Julia and Ted.

And each time, Cate would respond the same way. “Maybe later.”

Betsy would peer at her through her red-rimmed glasses. “All right, but I’ll be watching you.”

Cate forced a smile to her lips. She tried to cheer herself up with the fact that her mother had been well loved by a great many people. Both her parents had been. And she was going to miss them terribly, but it was going to take her some time to get over the fact that they had deceived her. That they hadn’t had enough faith in her to know that she wasn’t about to pick up and go searching for her birth parents the moment she knew of their existence.

She wouldn’t have then. But, she had to now. Now that she had no roots. No family to call her own. Maybe it was a failing, she thought, but she needed to feel part of something. Something other than the bureau.

She made eye contact with James, who was there with his wife and oldest son. Her partner started to come over, but she shook her head and James faded back, giving her space.

As she stood, looking at people exchanging pleasantries, catching up on one another’s lives, she became aware that someone had come up to join her. She began to move away but felt something being slipped into her hand.

“What’s this?” Cate looked down at the brown manila envelope Doc Ed had just given her.

“Everything that I know about your adoption. It’s not much, but it might give you a start.” Slipping his arm around her slim shoulders, he said, “I know you people at the bureau have ways of finding things out as long as you have some kind of starting point.”

The envelope was light. It couldn’t contain much. “We don’t use government resources for personal ends.”

His gray eyes twinkled for the first time in three days. He gave her a fatherly squeeze. “Yeah, and I’m sure there are ways around that, too, Catherine. Now, eat something before I have you strapped down to a gurney and fed intravenously.”

She looked down at the manila envelope again. The smile that rose to her lips was only slightly forced, far less than what she’d been displaying all day as well-wishers pumped her hand, gave their condolences and told her stories about her parents.

“Yes, sir.”

He took hold of her arm and steered her toward one of the two tables laden down with food. “If you think I’m going to be taken in by that, then you don’t really know me, either.”

She appreciated the irony he’d tossed her way.

Chapter 5

Dr. Lukas Graywolf quietly tiptoed up behind his wife in the Wedgwood-blue tiled bathroom of their modest Southern California home. He slipped his arm around her waist and buried his face in the nape of her neck. Taking a deep breath, he inhaled the fragrance that still clung to her skin from her morning shower, an event he sorely regretted missing.

“So how’s the bureau’s sexiest extra-special agent this morning?”

He’d startled her. Lost in thought and rushing, Lydia Wakefield Graywolf hadn’t realized that her husband was behind her until she’d seen his reflection in the slightly fogged mirror a second before he’d wrapped his arm around her waist.

Lucky for him that she had, otherwise he might have found himself sprawled out on the floor, flat on his back. She wasn’t trained for pleasant surprises, only the other variety.

Lydia had had every intention of going in to the office early today. Certain new things had come to light regarding the case she was working on and she wanted to go over the details. And they were getting in someone new today, a Catherine Kowalski from up north. The assistant director wanted her to take the woman under her wing as if she was some kind of mother hen instead of one of their top operatives.

She didn’t have time to babysit anyone.

She didn’t have time for this, either, Lydia thought, but she allowed herself to linger for a moment in the embrace of the man she loved more than life itself.

His bare chest pressed against her back and heat penetrated the bath towel she’d wrapped around herself. She could feel the heat stirring her. Tiny tongues of desire began to burn away at logic and resolve. Her mascara wand slipped from her fingers.

Lydia smiled at his reflection, their eyes meeting as she covered his arm with her hand. “The bypass surgery went well, I take it?”

He hadn’t mentioned the operation to her yesterday at breakfast. Their schedules were so busy lately, especially hers, that they barely had time to see each other. He didn’t want to waste what time they had together with shop talk. Neither did she.

He wished they could both take some time off and just spend it with each other, going away to some reclusive beach where the next warm body was miles away.

She’d probably go stir crazy within two days, he thought with a silent laugh. Lydia always had to be doing something. Most of the time that involved making the country safe for tomorrow.

Pressing a kiss to the side of her neck, Lukas thought for the umpteenth time how lucky he was to have found Lydia. Everything had changed since she’d come into his life, including him. He never knew he could feel like this, that love could be so uplifting, so empowering.

He felt her sigh as it rippled through her. “You add clairvoyance to your job description, Special Agent Graywolf?”

With a small laugh, Lydia turned around to face him, her body brushing against his as she did so. Her heart quickened a little, the way it always did when they were so close together.

Her husband had the vaguest hint of stubble on his rugged, handsome face, and there was still a trace of sleep in his vivid blue eyes. Right now, he looked more like a boy than the skilled surgeon that he was. She didn’t know who she loved more, the boy or the man.

Because her towel felt as if it was slipping, she tugged it back into place, then threaded her arms around his neck. “Not that I couldn’t use that kind of an added boost, especially with this case, but clairvoyance has nothing to do with it. You always act like this whenever a bypass goes well.”

He didn’t mind being predictable, but she’d aroused his curiosity. “Like what?”

She cocked her head. Her smile bathed over him. “As if you just won the brass ring and all’s well with the world.”

“All is well with the world and the brass ring I won doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Sellers, the man whose life yours truly saved yesterday.” His sentence was punctuated with two light, almost chaste kisses, delivered to first one cheek, then the other.

A sound akin to a purr escaped her lips. Lydia moved her hips against his, her body silently teasing him, drawing him out.