Whatever the hell his brother had done, whatever he was denying, it wasn’t sitting well with him. And despite his apparent fascination with e-mail, his mind wasn’t really on it.

“Did we manage to get the report in on John Haggard’s application?” Cam asked his brother several minutes later.

“No.”

Cameron almost laughed. Bullshit. He’d seen it on Chase’s desk that morning and just hadn’t picked it up.

“He’s going to be anxious to get his application through,” Cam stated. “He’s had his deposit in for a year now while we put him through the wringer. Do you think we could rush it?”

“I’m on it.”

Cameron craned his neck, checked to see what Chase was so absorbed in, then shook his head pitifully.

Those damned cell phone pictures Courtney had taken of Kia going through the lingerie.

Yeah, Chase had it pretty damned bad.

He rose to his feet and moved to his brother’s desk, almost grinning again as Chase minimized the screen.

“What the hell do you want?” Chase asked.

Cameron reached down to the desk slowly and grinned knowingly. “The Haggard file.” He picked it up, then chuckled as his brother scowled. “She’ll be at the Edgewood ball next week, I bet. Maybe you should come with us.”

Chase lifted his lip in a snarl and Cameron had to snicker. Poor Chase. A goner, for sure.

11

Two days later Kia entered her parents’ three-story mansion, strolling into a marble foyer that was nearly the size of her apartment. Sunday brunch with her parents was not to be missed. If she missed it, her mother would pout at her, but her father would make a habit of dropping by her apartment, spur of the moment, for weeks, just to check on her. It was as bad as missing holiday dinners. Something else Kia didn’t dare attempt.

They worried about her, she knew, and no amount of arguing against it would ever change the fact that, in their eyes, she was still their baby.

Her parents were older when they had her. Her father was already in his late thirties, her mother nearly thirty-five herself. Now, twenty-seven years later, they still wanted to treat her like the twenty-one-year-old who had left their home on her husband’s arm.

Brunch on Sundays and holidays was a big thing for her mother. The one day when her husband and child were both at the table with her. Cecilia Rutherford insisted they dress up for the event. Kia wore sedate pearls at her ears and neck. A plain gold wristwatch, black wool slacks, and a gray sweater complemented the leather jacket her father had gotten her last Christmas.

Kia was dreading this particular brunch. She knew her parents. They were constantly trying to fix her up with someone, always worried about her unmarried state and her lack of babies. As though all she needed to be happy was a husband and a couple of children.

“There you are, dear.” Her mother, Celia, refused to go gray. Even at sixty-two her hair was still the same champagne blond it had been when she married, with a little help from her beautician.

Her father on the other hand, Timothy Rutherford, had aged like fine whiskey. He wasn’t overly tall, just right at five feet eleven inches, against his wife’s five-foot-four frame.

Unfortunately, Kia had inherited that small delicate body. She would have much preferred to be tall, slender, and svelte.

“Hi, Daddy.” She reached up and kissed his cheek as he rose from the round glass table in the now heated sun room.

He was dressed in Sunday casual. Sharply creased dress slacks and a white dress shirt. Her mother wore her pearls as well, and a silk dress.

All for Sunday brunch.

Kia remembered her years growing up when she hated dressing for dinner. Sometimes she’d longed to order pizza and watch television as she ate. Strictly forbidden in the Rutherford household.

It had been a good place to grow up, though. She had been sheltered and protected. She went to the right schools, and all her friends were from the right families, and the Rutherford princess had never known a moment’s pain.

Until she married the reigning prince of her father’s offices. And what a disaster that had been.

“You’re looking beautiful, sweetheart.” Her mother turned her cheek up for a kiss. “Isn’t she beautiful today, Timothy?”

Her father grunted in a no-response tone while sneaking Kia an amused wink.

“He’s no help whatsoever,” her mother fussed as they sat down.

“I was supposed to be helping?” Her father’s lined face wrinkled into a pretend scowl.

Her mother shooed at him before turning back to Kia.

“I saw you leave the ball the other night with Chase Falladay. Are you two seeing each other now?”

That was her mother. She never put off to tomorrow what she could be nosy about today.

“Chase and I are just friends, Mom,” she told her firmly, but it hurt. Oh how it hurt. Deep inside, in a place that had never known pain until Chase.

“Just friends?” Her father’s voice rumbled in that fatherly, warning way. “I’m not so old I don’t remember what that means.”

Kia leaned back in her chair as the maid placed coffee and water in front of her before her assistant came bearing food.

“Just simply friends, Daddy.” She gave him a firm look of her own. “Chase is a very nice gentleman.”

God was going to strike her dead for that one.

“Hmphf.” Her father grunted again and gave her a knowing look, though he dropped the subject.

“Well, that’s too bad,” her mother said. “We’re not getting any younger, Kia. Grandbabies would be nice.”

“A husband would be nice first,” her father growled. “The other fathers are carting their sons-in-law around like extra baggage. Where’s mine?”

“And the other mothers in my bridge club have grandbabies,” her mother told her. “They babysit.” Her mother sighed. “I would make an excellent babysitter, Kia.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. I’ll run right out to the husband store and then to the baby store and take care of that before I head home today.”

She was unaware of the edge in her voice. She tried to keep it light and amusing, and she missed the look her parents shared. Full of concern and confusion.

They were parents. They knew their daughter. She had shadows under her eyes, and there was an edge of disillusionment that even Drew hadn’t been able to put there.

Timothy sipped at his water, his gaze sharper on his only child now. He would never forget receiving that call, two years ago, that his daughter was in trouble and her husband was possibly abusing her.

He had rushed to her apartment, found her in her bathroom, hysterical, wrapped in a towel and begging him to get her out of there.

The need to destroy Drew Stanton rode him often. The little bastard still worked for him, but only because the son of a bitch was still paying her alimony. And if Timothy heard of any more shenanigans going on where Kia’s charity functions were concerned, some heads were going to roll.

Not that his daughter deigned to tell him about it. No, he had to play games to learn the information from others. She was too independent, too determined. She always had been.

“She’s getting cheeky, Timothy,” Celia pointed out.

“Yes, I heard it.” He nodded, giving his daughter a mock glare. “Perhaps we should go shopping with her, Celia. A family effort, so to speak, so she doesn’t take too long making up her mind.”

Finally, a spark of laughter lit Kia’s gemlike eyes, and she lowered her head, a light laugh passing her lips.

“You two are impossible,” she groaned.

“We’re parents,” he reminded her. “Now, eat your food. I heard your aunt has you busy with the party tomorrow night. Don’t let her wear you down.”

“And your dress arrived here by mistake Friday,” her mother informed her. “You can take it home with you tonight. We’ll send Farrell with a limo to pick you up. You are not arriving in a cab. I don’t want to hear about it.”