Finding Family

Stopping abruptly, he shook his head. “Never mind. You don’t want to hear this. I think we should talk about decorating. What did you say you want to do in here? Add tables, I hope.”

“Definitely tables. But you were going to tell me what Ethan said about your mother.”

He sighed. Might as well get this over with, he thought. Rachel was bound to find out the truth if they became involved in a personal relationship, as he’d hoped.

“According to what Ethan told me, the woman who raised me kidnapped me from a loving family. Parents, and two older brothers. My—the woman I knew as my mother was the nanny. Thirty years ago, when I was barely two, she pushed her car into a flooded river and took off with me, leaving everyone to believe I was dead.”

Rachel looked as though she wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “Your mother…?”

He nodded grimly. “Wasn’t my mother, after all. According to Ethan Brannon, my real mother is very much alive and living in Alabama with my father, an orthodontist. They are still unaware that their youngest son didn’t drown as a toddler.”

Chapter Two

Rachel had heard stories like this on television talk shows and in newspaper feature stories. She had never dreamed something so bizarre could happen to someone she actually knew. “This is…hard to believe. Did he have any proof?”

“His story was verified by one of my former patients last night. Posthumously.”

The tale was growing more convoluted by the moment. “Posthumously? I don’t understand. How—?”

Pushing a hand through his already disheveled hair, Mark grimaced. “Trust me, I know how strange it sounds. I’ll try to tell you from the beginning—at least as much as I’ve figured out, myself.”

Taking a deep breath, he began, describing a young married couple and their three boys who lived happily in North Carolina. The father was an orthodontist, the mother a housewife and active community volunteer, and because of their busy schedule, they hired a nanny to help them with their children, particularly the youngest son, Kyle.

The nanny, Carmen Thomas, became a part of the family, bonding closely with the children, especially Kyle. Explaining that she was alone in the world, she had seemed to find a purpose in her job and had been highly valued by her employers.

And then one day when Kyle was two, Carmen took the little boy out in a terrible storm. Flash flooding in the area had already claimed two lives, and no one knew why she’d left the house that day. Her car was discovered later, upside down in a flooded ravine. Though no bodies were found with the crushed vehicle, it was assumed that both the nanny and the child had been swept away, their remains buried beneath debris.

“Those poor parents,” Rachel murmured, imagining how devastating it must have been for the Brannons to lose their youngest child.

Mark didn’t seem ready to focus on emotions just yet. He was still struggling to deal with the facts of his past. “Unbeknownst to the Brannons, Carmen must have been planning the abduction for some time. The flooding proved to be a convenient cover for her disappearance. An acquaintance met her at the side of a mountain road that afternoon and helped her push her car into the water. The acquaintance then drove Carmen and the child out of the state.”

“An ‘acquaintance’helped Carmen kidnap a toddler?” Rachel shook her head in shocked disbelief. “No matter how close they were, what kind of a person would do that?”

“A person with serious emotional problems of her own. A woman who was told that she was rescuing a mother and her child from a violent domestic situation. During the ensuing few days, she began to suspect that she had been duped, but by then she felt that it was too late to change her course. She left the woman and child in Georgia and went on her way, trying to put them out of her mind. As I said, she had problems of her own.”

“That still doesn’t excuse what she did.”

“No. And it haunted her for years, despite her efforts to forget. Years later, fate or…something brought her back into my life several months ago. She was the nursing home patient I told you about. She died yesterday, leaving behind a letter describing the role she had played in my abduction.”

Growing more confused by the moment, Rachel shook her head. “Wait. How did she track you down? How did she know it was you? How did she become your patient in the nursing home?”

“Some of those questions I can’t answer. The rest aren’t really important right now. The fact is, I think I believe what she said. I think I am—or was—Kyle Brannon. Though I want the DNA tests to prove it, there’s just something about it all that feels, well, true.”

Maybe she was just naturally more skeptical than he. After all, she had a history of rescuing people from messes they’d gotten into as a result of being too gullible. Not that she thought of Mark as gullible, exactly, but still…

“If I were you, I would be very careful until after the DNA results become available. You said yourself that your former patient had emotional problems. The fact that Aislinn Flaherty claims to be psychic makes me very nervous. And you don’t know this guy who suddenly appeared on your doorstep, claiming to be your brother. For all you know, this could be some sort of elaborate scam.”

His lips twitched in a pitiful excuse for a smile. “Trust me, Rachel, I’m not quite as naive as you seem to fear. I’ll insist on the DNA tests, and I won’t do anything until after I’ve seen the results.”

She studied his face, trying to read beyond the wry expression. “How do you feel about all this?”

After a rather lengthy pause, he cleared his throat. “I don’t know, exactly. I’m having trouble processing everything.”

She nodded, completely understanding why he would feel that way. All-too-familiar words left her mouth then, her typical, knee-jerk reaction to seeing anyone in distress. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

She couldn’t imagine anything she could do, of course. This was so far beyond her realm of experience. And it wasn’t as if she knew Mark particularly well, herself.

“Actually, there is something…”

She tried to hide her surprise. “Um, sure. What is it?”

“Join me for dinner tonight?”

“You want me to have dinner with you?” She couldn’t see how another dinner date would help him with his family problem.

He nodded. “I’m supposed to meet Ethan and his girlfriend for dinner tonight. We all agreed it would be best to get together after I’d had a few hours to think about what they’d told me. It would be a really big help to me if you’d go with me tonight—you know, sort of moral support.”

She cleared her throat. “I don’t know, Mark. That sounds rather awkward.”

“It would be even more awkward for me to have dinner with Ethan Brannon and his girlfriend without having anyone there who’s on my side.”

“Your side? You make it sound like a confrontation rather than a getting-to-know-each-other evening.”

“I’m not expecting a confrontation. I just…well, I’d like to have someone there who knows me as Mark Thomas, you know? Not some missing kid named Kyle Brannon.”

“You have plenty of friends you could ask. People who have known you much longer than I have.”

“True. But you’re the only one I’ve told,” he replied with a disarming smile. “And I wanted to ask you out again, anyway. I was hoping to do so sometime during our meeting today—though, admittedly, I didn’t have anything like this in mind at the time.”

Nor had she envisioned that their second date would involve her going along as a buffer between him and his newfound brother. Definitely an awkward situation, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to get involved. She searched for the words to politely decline.

Before she could speak, her telephone vibrated against her waist. She glanced at the screen, grimacing when she saw that her sister was calling again. It seemed that she had a choice of how to spend her evening—either entertaining Mark’s brother or refereeing yet another of her own family squabbles.

“Okay,” she said abruptly, pushing her phone back into its holder. “What time?”

“That’s a yes?” He seemed rather surprised that she had accepted, as if he’d realized how close she had come to declining.

She nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

His smile was wry. “I’m sure there are plenty of reasons why you’d have liked to pass, but I’m not going to argue. I’ll pick you up at seven, okay?”

She nodded even as she ignored the renewed vibration of the phone at her waist. “I’ll be ready.”

At least as ready as she could be, she added silently.

“C’mon, Rach, you’ve got to help me out. I don’t know how I’ll get through the evening without you.”

Holding her phone to her ear with one hand while she unzipped her slacks with the other, Rachel wondered absently when Robbie’s voice had taken on this rather shrill, whining tone. She was sure he hadn’t sounded that way when they had dated back in college. And it hadn’t been quite this bad before their three-year marriage had broken up, though it had certainly become more common as their relationship had slowly dissolved.

“I’m sorry, Robbie. I told you, I have plans for tonight. I can’t change them now.”

“But what will I do? Kaylee just doesn’t feel like working tonight. I can’t have an empty hostess stand.”

“Then you’ll have to find someone else to fill in, because I can’t do it tonight.”

Robbie wasn’t used to having Rachel stand her ground when he begged. Usually he could count on her to cave if he laid it on thickly enough. But not tonight, she vowed. She was already doing a favor for Mark. This time Robbie was going to have to find his own solutions to his problems.

“You’re doing this to punish me, aren’t you? Because I forgot to call you on your birthday last week. I know it hurt you that I didn’t remember, but I’ve been overwhelmed with everything that’s going on here. And Kaylee hasn’t been much help—even though I guess she really does feel lousy, having a cold and all—but I’ve apologized to you over and over, Rachel. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Rachel sighed loudly as her clothing fell to the floor at her feet. “I’m not mad at you for missing my birthday. I just can’t help you out tonight. I have other plans. You’re going to have to find someone else. Mary can handle hostess responsibilities tonight. You’ll have to call in one of the day staff to take up her serving duties. Call Hilary. She’ll do it, if you pay her overtime. She needs the extra money.”

“Mary’s too impatient to be a good hostess. She doesn’t have enough tact.”

“She’ll get better with practice. Or you’re going to have to hire someone else if Kaylee continues to bail on you. The point is, you can’t keep depending on me to come to your aid, Robbie. I have my own career. My own life.”

“The restaurant was your dream, too, at one time,” he reminded her, sounding more sullen than whiny now.

“It was never my dream. It was always yours. But I tried to support you in it—until you found someone else to be your cheerleader.”

“So that’s what this is about? You’re still jealous about Kaylee?”

She nearly tripped over her fallen clothing. “Are you kidding me? I will always be eternally grateful to Kaylee. If you hadn’t dumped me for her I might have spent years trying to hold our marriage together out of some misguided sense of loyalty and responsibility. This isn’t ‘about’ anything, Robbie. I just can’t help you tonight. I have a date, and I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry. I’m hanging up now. I suggest you get on the phone to Mary and Hilary while you still have time to prepare for the dinner rush.”

“A date? You didn’t say you have a date. Who is the guy? Can’t you reschedule for another—”

“Goodbye, Robbie.” She snapped her phone closed and headed for the shower.

Mark didn’t know why he was so nervous as he parked in the lot of Rachel’s apartment complex. It was just dinner, right? A double date of sorts, over a nice meal. He’d been on dozens of outings like that. No big deal.

Of course, this would be the first time he’d dined with a man who claimed to be his brother. And the guy’s sort-of psychic girlfriend. Not to mention a woman Mark, himself, had hoped to woo into his bed—once she’d selected a bed for him.

Wondering which of those factors made him most uneasy, he tugged at the collar of his deep blue shirt as he strode down the hallway of Rachel’s apartment complex. He hadn’t been sure what to wear. The restaurant where he and Ethan had agreed to meet wasn’t a jacket and tie sort of place. He’d settled on a blue dress shirt, open at the collar, worn with khakis and brown oxfords.

And because he so rarely obsessed about his clothing, that was just another sign of how rattled he was this evening.

Rachel opened her door with a smile that made him forget any qualms he’d had about inviting her.

“You look great,” he said.

“Thank you. I forgot to ask where we were going, so I wasn’t sure what was appropriate to wear.”

Only then did he notice what she had on, a sleeveless black dress with a knee-length hem. A small diamond pendant lay nestled in the tasteful amount of cleavage revealed by the V-neckline of the dress. Just enough of a glimpse to make him fantasize about seeing more.

“You look…great,” he said again, unable to think coherently enough to come up with a new compliment.

Shallow dimples appeared in her cheeks, then quickly disappeared. Captivated by them, he simply stared at her until she cleared her throat and said, “Um, would you like to come in?”

Chiding himself for his uncharacteristic awkwardness, he shook his head—both to clear his mind and as a negative to her invitation. “We’d better go, if you’re ready. Traffic’s pretty heavy this evening.”

“Just let me get my purse.”

She returned after only moments with a small black bag tucked beneath her arm. Locking her door behind her, she smiled up at him, and only then did he see the slight hint of nerves in her eyes. “I’m ready.”

It made him feel somewhat better to know that he wasn’t the only one with hesitations about this outing. “Yeah. Me, too. And thanks again for going with me tonight, Rachel.”

“Actually, you’re helping me out, too,” she confided, falling into step beside him.

“Yeah? In what way?”

“My mother and sister are squabbling and they’re trying to put me squarely in the middle. I’d have had to spend the evening refereeing a family confrontation. I’d much rather deal with your family problems than my own tonight.”

He laughed, as she had obviously intended for him to do. “Caught between a rock and a hard place, huh?”

She smiled up at him as he opened the passenger door of his car for her. “Not quite. You said you were planning to ask me out again today even before your brother showed up last night? I have to admit that I was hoping you would.”

Pleased, he held the door while she slid into the seat. All of a sudden, he wasn’t nearly as uneasy about the upcoming evening.

* * *

Rachel was struck immediately by the resemblances between Mark and Ethan Brannon. In his late thirties, Ethan was more sternly carved than Mark, with a few more lines around his dark green eyes and his mouth. And yet the similarities were so strong that most people would probably assume at first glance that they were related.

Their coloring, their build, something about the way they moved and spoke…within minutes she became convinced that the DNA tests would confirm Ethan’s assertion. While she supposed it was possible that the resemblances were coincidental, it was highly unlikely.

As for Ethan’s companion, Rachel thought Aislinn Flaherty was possibly one of the most beautiful women she had ever met. Perfect skin, gleaming waves of dark hair, exotically shaped dark eyes. Though she was drawn to Aislinn’s warm smile and friendly manner, she sensed a reserve in the other woman that went very deep. A protective wall, perhaps.

Mark had called Aislinn a psychic, though his tone had made it clear that he was skeptical of that term. Rachel agreed. She had never put much stake into any suggestions of extrasensory abilities, figuring that most people who made such claims had a mercenary reason for doing so. But even after a few minutes she could tell that there was something different about Aislinn.

Sitting at a quiet table with drinks and appetizers, Rachel, Mark and Aislinn chatted politely about the nice weather they’d had that day. Ethan didn’t seem the type to engage in small talk, judging by Rachel’s early impression of him. He sat quietly watching them, and she suspected that he was the kind of man who chose to stay on the sidelines of life, observing more than participating. She doubted that he missed much of what went on around him, though he probably kept most of his thoughts to himself.

In that respect, he was very different from Mark. Mark was a participator, someone who could be found at the very heart of most activities, the middle of any crowd. From what she had gathered during their short acquaintance, small talk came easily to Mark, usually, though he seemed to be struggling a bit with Ethan. Mark was a people person, gregarious and concerned, both of which served him well in his job as a physician. Ethan, she learned, was a self-employed small-business consultant who worked out of his home in Alabama, spending more time with a computer than with his clients.

Ethan waited until the subject of the weather was exhausted before he joined the conversation, and then he jumped straight into a more serious topic. “I’m sure you’ve thought a great deal about everything you learned yesterday,” he said to Mark.

“I haven’t been able to think about anything else today,” Mark admitted with a wry glance at Rachel. “As Rachel can attest. She and I were supposed to talk about furnishing my house today and I couldn’t even concentrate long enough to pick paint colors.”

“I’m a professional decorator,” she explained when Ethan and Aislinn looked at her. She figured that was all they needed to know about her relationship with Mark at the moment.

Aislinn looked as though she would like to follow up on that tidbit, but Ethan stayed on topic. “I still haven’t told the rest of the family that we found you. I knew you wanted time to think about everything first.”

Looking a little nervous, Mark nodded. “I think we should wait until the DNA results come back before you break the news—just in case.”

Ethan shrugged. “I don’t have to wait. I know what the tests will show us.”

“So confident,” Mark muttered.

“I was old enough to remember when you disappeared. I remember what you looked like then—and I can see who you look like now. You look like a Brannon.”

Rachel could almost hear Mark swallow hard in response to that blunt comment. She knew he was still trying to adjust to his new identity, that he didn’t think of himself as a Brannon. She doubted that he knew how to think of himself at all now.

“That’s not exactly indisputable evidence,” he insisted. “We should wait until we have the test results.”

“But that could take weeks.”

“Ethan.” Aislinn gave him a stern look. “Stop trying to railroad him. Give him time to come to terms with all of this.”

“I gave him all day.”

She snorted delicately. “One day to process having his entire life history changed? Seriously?”

“My history changed, too,” he reminded her with a frown.

“Yes. But it’s different for him. You’ve always known exactly who you are.”

Mark cleared his throat. “I am still here.”

Aislinn sent him a quick smile. “Sorry. We didn’t mean to talk about you as if you weren’t.”

Rachel sighed when her cell phone rang in her purse. She’d forgotten to silence it again. At least she had the volume turned down low so that few people around would be bothered by the rings. Apologizing to her dinner companions, she fumbled in her purse, thinking that she would check the readout—just in case it really was important—and then mute the sound for the rest of the meal.

“It’s your sister,” Aislinn said. “I don’t think it’s an emergency.”

“It’s never a real emergency with Dani,” Rachel replied in resignation. “Only in her own—”

She stopped abruptly as the significance of the number on her caller ID screen suddenly hit her. “How did you know it was my sister?”

Looking suddenly sheepish, Aislinn grimaced. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I guess I’m a little nervous, myself, tonight. I spoke without thinking.”

Dropping the muted phone back into her purse, Rachel studied the other woman a bit warily. “Mark told me you’re a psychic.”

Aislinn winced. “I don’t really like that word. I don’t consider myself a psychic. I just get feelings sometimes that usually prove to be true.”

“From what you told me, it’s more than that,” Mark interjected. “Ethan said you knew I was still alive after looking at a picture of me as a toddler, taken before I was…taken. You somehow sensed that I hadn’t died in that flood, as my family believed.”

Ethan nodded somberly. “It took her a while to convince me,” he admitted. “I didn’t know her very well when she first sprang it on me, and to put it bluntly, I thought she was trying to run some sort of scam on me. I probably wouldn’t have even given her a chance to change my mind if she hadn’t been my sister-in-law’s longtime best friend. My sister-in-law’s a cop—I figured she’d know if her best pal was a con artist.”

“So you just thought I was crazy, instead,” Aislinn said wryly.

Ethan gave her a look that was so blatantly intimate it made a funny little shiver run down Rachel’s spine. Maybe it was a touch of envy, she decided, wondering what it would be like to have a man look at her quite that way.

“You managed to convince me otherwise,” he murmured.

A slight touch of color tinged Aislinn’s cheeks as she returned the look. There was no doubt in Rachel’s mind that this couple was very much in love. It would have been interesting to watch that relationship develop, she mused, thinking of Ethan’s initial skepticism of Aislinn’s motives.

“You said your sister-in-law is a police officer?” she asked. “She’s married to your other brother?”

Looking away from Aislinn, Ethan nodded. “Her name’s Nic. She and Joel have only been married a couple of months.”

“What does your brother do?”

With a faint smile, Ethan glanced at Mark. “He’s a doctor. A pediatrician.”

“It must run in the family,” Rachel remarked, struck by the coincidence. “And you said your father is an orthodontist?”

He nodded. “And Mom’s practically a professional community volunteer. The whole family is into taking care of other people. Which makes me the oddball.”

“That’s not true,” Aislinn argued loyally. “You’ve helped dozens of small business owners in your consulting practice. Not being as social as the others doesn’t make you an oddball.”

“Who’s the older brother?” Rachel asked. “You or Joel?”

“I’m the eldest. Joel’s three years younger and Kyle, here’s, a year younger than Joel.”

Mark frowned. “I, uh, would rather you’d call me Mark. I know it wasn’t the name I was given at birth—hell, it was given to me by the woman who stole me from my family—but it’s the name I’ve used for thirty years.”

“Sorry,” Ethan said. “You have the right to answer to any name you like. The family will get used to thinking of you as Mark.”

Looking somewhat grim, Mark reached for his water glass. “We’ve all got a lot to get used to.”

Rachel rested her hand lightly on his knee beneath the table. It was a gesture of support and understanding rather than flirtation, and from the way Mark covered her hand with his own, she could tell that he accepted it that way. She could imagine how conflicted he must be about his eventual meeting with his parents and his other brother.

“It’s going to be all right,” Aislinn assured him kindly. “You have a very nice family. I’m sure you’ll all develop a close friendship with time.”