Holt’s immediate reaction to think she was a con artist hurt and scared her. She struggled not to let that show, keeping her voice even and her expression bland. She had hoped finding his father would be over-the-top good news for him. Now she wondered if she’d wildly overstepped her bounds. “He’s not claiming any connection with you. I’m the one who thinks there may be one, and I thought you’d want to know.”
Holt frowned. “I know better than most how appearances can be deceiving. And the very people who are supposed to love and take care of you can turn on you in a heartbeat. An infant’s heartbeat, at that. Besides, you forget, my mother said my father died.”
“She might have thought so,” Caitlin replied, “or just said that because she didn’t know what happened to him. Or maybe that’s what her aunt told her. Maybe she didn’t want you to keep asking about him. If he went away…”
“Oh, he did that,” Holt bit out. “One way or the other.”
Caitlin stood and moved to the other side of the desk, needing some distance between them. It wasn’t fair that Holt and his mother had been treated so badly. Caitlin knew that. But she was not his great-aunt. And she was not trying to rip him off. “If I have the timing right, he left before your mother knew about you. He didn’t know he was leaving you, and I don’t know why he felt he had to leave her. But based on what I’ve seen of Doc Coates, he must have had a good reason.”
“Neither of us knows him. I’ve met him once, and you have spent, what, an hour with him in total? Two? That doesn’t make you an expert on him— or who we was in high school. Nor, despite what you’ve done here since you arrived, are you an expert on me and my family.”
“I care about you,” she insisted, hearing the bubbling anger in his voice. This was not the reaction she’d wanted to her news. She reached out a hand, then dropped it when his gaze shifted away. “I do care about you. Once you get over this shock, you’ll remember that and stop throwing around crazy accusations.”
Holt shook his head. “People have tried to scam me before. I spent the last six months in court because of a woman who got close to me and tried to steal my company’s secrets.” He stared off into space for a long moment. “I can’t let you be another.”
Caitlin held her breath, afraid to move. He was working himself up, and it was her fault. “Holt, if you don’t want to know if he’s your father, or anything else, thendinna fash. I’ll forget all of it. I thought I was helping you, but I see now I was wrong. Your past, your family, is none of my business. I’ll finish the catalog and be on my way back to Scotland and out of your life before ye ken it.”
Holt nodded, but something in his gaze reflected pain. Caitlin did not want to imagine its depth. He’d been abandoned by his father and his great-aunt before he was born. His mother’s early death was another abandonment. Then some woman at work betrayed him. Given that series of events, she could understand why he had no reason to trust another woman. To trust her. Except she’d told the truth when she said she cared about him. They’d grown close during their time together. He couldn’t deny that. He had feelings for her, she was sure of it, just as she had for him.
Then he grimaced and looked away. “Maybe it’s best if you leave now,” he finally said. “You want to be with your family for New Year’s. You can be there for Christmas, too.”
“What?” She could not have heard him correctly. Her belly filled with ice. “Go home? I haven’t finished my work here.”
She cared about Holt and believed he would remember he cared about her, if only he’d calm down. He must! She’d been a fool to think he would go along with her efforts to find his father. How could she have been so wrong? She should have known he’d have deeply buried pain. Instead, she’d clawed her way into wherever he’d kept it hidden and ripped away the indifference he used to keep it buried. And she’d done it here in this house he hated. Here, where he’d seen his mother subjected to misery and unspoken pain by the one person who was supposed to take care of her.
Caitlin realized she had made the man seem real who was the cause of all of that happened to his mother and to him. She’d effectively called his mother a liar by introducing the possibility that she had lied about his father’s death. Add that to all the horror the discovery of his family’s legacy in the attic had shown him, and she had been the one to bring it to light after it had been hidden away for decades.
“I only wanted to help bring you some happiness,” she told him, her voice low and gravelly. “Instead, I’ve ruined everything.”
“No, you haven’t.” He sighed, giving her a moment of hope, but he still didn’t look at her. “Maybe we need to turn down the heat for a while. Drop all of this and just think. I’m stuck here for the winter, but you’re not.”
Nay! This couldn’t be happening.
“You can finish the catalog anywhere,” Holt continued, his voice a sickening monotone. “I’ll fly you home for the holidays on my jet. I can have it here in the morning. You can take that damn apothecary cabinet with you when you go.”
“But…what if I need to come back?”What if you want me to come back?She couldn’t ask the question. Losing Holt was bad enough. Losing Holt under a cloud of suspicion? The blows coming one after the other nearly doubled her over. Her professional reputation and dreams of the perfect job fizzled in front of her eyes along with any belief that Holt cared for her. In his eyes, she was just another woman out to get him— or to get from him anything she could.
“We’ll deal with that after the first of the year. After you take a break and have a chance to look through what you’ve collected so far.” He turned his gaze on her, as cold and gray as the winter sky. “You’d better go pack.”
Holt looked miserable but resolute. He still wouldn’t meet her gaze, and that scared her. He’d talked himself into this. He meant it. Defeated, Caitlin left Holt alone.
What could she do? She had no choice but to do as he asked— and go.
* * *
The next morning, Holt was focused on clearing his email queue and keeping his mind off a certain Scottish lass when the office door opened. He didn’t look up from his laptop. “Yes, Farrell?” A boom of thunder rattled the windows, followed by a long, low rumble. Perfect. Just the weather to reinforce his rotten mood.
A higher voice than he expected answered, “It’s me, Holt.”
Caitlin. He kept his gaze on the screen in front of him, hoping if he ignored her, she’d go away. With that scheme to make him think she’d found his father, she’d opened old wounds yesterday, and ripped wider the wound he’d exposed in the damned gazebo. Hell, he’d even agreed to sending the apothecary cabinet to her cousin in the Highlands. Was she trying to take the most valuable piece for herself? He’d made it damned easy for her to scam him, complete with a convenient family curse she could use to make him want to get rid of it. Had she somehow faked the inscription, or just faked the image of it? He could clear that up himself by using his phone in the cabinet the same way she had. Okay, possibly one point in her favor.
But he’d let himself trust her when he should have known better. He’d been fooled before by a woman who professed to care about him. He’d be a damned idiot to let it happen again.
Yet he’d trusted Caitlin. He’d fallen fast for her. And if he took a breath and thought back over the time they’d had together, the discoveries they’d shared, he couldn’t stay angry with her. Disappointed, if his suspicions were correct. But now that he’d slept on it, he knew he had no real evidence. The curse would be hard to prove or disprove, but what did he care about one old cabinet? And DNA samples sent to a lab of his choice would provide irrefutable proof of her sincerity, and, possibly, his father’s. His reaction yesterday was all about his painful history— a history that had nothing to do with her.
Caitlin cleared her throat, pulling him from his spiral of disappointment and anger.
“Mrs. Smith asked me to pry you out of here, or I wouldn’t disturb you. She’s making pancakes.”
