Yvonne Lindsay - The High Price of Secrets

He knew for a fact Tamsyn Masters had legally been an adult for ten years. What whim had finally driven her to seek out Ellen now? And, more important, why hadn’t she reached out to her mother sooner, when it could possibly still have made a difference to the other woman’s happiness?

“I—oh, well, I’m sorry to have bothered you. My information can’t have been correct.”

She reached into her handbag for an oversize pair of sunglasses and shoved them none too elegantly onto her face, hiding her tortured gaze from view. As she did so, he caught sight of the white band of skin on the ring finger of her left hand. Had the engagement he’d read of over a year ago come to an end? Had that been the catalyst to send her searching for her mother?

Whatever it was, it was none of his business.

“No problem,” he answered and watched as she walked back to her car and turned it around to drive back down the driveway.

Finn didn’t waste another second before reaching for his cell phone and punching in a number. It went straight to voice mail and he uttered a short sharp epithet in frustration while listening to the disembodied voice asking him to leave a message.

“Lorenzo, call me. There’s been a complication here at home.”

He slid his phone back in his pocket and closed the front door of his house. Somehow, though, he had the feeling he hadn’t completely closed the door on Tamsyn Masters.

* * *

As Tamsyn steered down the driveway, disappointment crashed through her with the force of a wrecking ball. The tears she’d battled to hold back while talking to the stranger now fell rapidly down her cheeks. She sniffed unevenly, trying to hold in the emotion that had been bubbling so close to the surface ever since she’d left Adelaide last night.

Why on earth had she thought it would be simple? She should have known better. Should have listened to Ethan, even, and tackled this another time—another day when she was in a stronger frame of mind. Well, she’d done it now, she’d gone to the address her late father’s solicitor had used to send her mother all those payments through the years and it had been the wrong one.

Disappointment had a nasty bitter taste, she’d discovered—not just once, but twice now in the past twenty-four hours. It just went to prove, that for her, acting out of character was the wrong thing to do. She wasn’t made to be impulsive. All her life she had weighed things up long and carefully before doing anything. Now she fully understood why she’d always been that way. It was safer. You didn’t get hurt. Sure, you didn’t have the thrill of taking a risk either, but was the pain you suffered when things went wrong worth it? Not in her book.

Tamsyn thought about the man who’d opened his door to her at the top of the hill. Over six feet, she’d been forced to look up at him. He’d had presence—being the kind of guy who turned heads just by entering a room. A broad forehead and straight brows had shadowed clear gray eyes the color of the schist rock used on the side of the house that was very definitely his castle. A light stubble had stippled his strong square jaw, but his smile, while polite, had lacked warmth.

There’d been something in his gaze when he’d looked at her. As if...no, she was just being fanciful. He couldn’t have known her because she knew full well she’d never met him before in her life. She would most definitely have remembered.

The sun was sinking in the sky and weariness pulled at every muscle in her body as all her activity, not to mention crossing time zones, over the past day took its toll. She needed to find somewhere to stay before she did something stupid like drive off the road and into a ditch.

Tamsyn pulled the car to the side of the road and consulted the GPS for accommodation options nearby. Thankfully there was a boutique hotel that provided meals on request about a fifteen-minute drive away. She keyed the phone number into her mobile phone and was relieved to find that while the room rate was on a par with the accommodation at The Masters, yes, they had a room available for the next few nights. Booking made, Tamsyn pressed the appropriate section of the GPS screen and followed the computerized instructions, eventually pulling up outside a quaint-looking early-1900s single-story building.

With the golden rays of the early-evening sun caressing its creamy paintwork, it looked warm and inviting. Just what she needed.

* * *

Finn paced his office, unable to settle back down to the plans that were sprawled across his wide desk. Plans that were going to go to hell in a handbasket if he couldn’t buy the easement necessary to gain access to the tract of land he wanted to use for this special project. He shoved a hand through his short hair, mussing it even more than usual.

The chirp of his phone was a happy distraction.

“Gallagher.”

“Finn, is there a problem?”

“Lorenzo, I’m glad you called.” Finn settled in his chair and swiveled it around to face the window, allowing the vista spread before him to fill his mind and relax his thoughts into a semblance of order. Thoughts that had been distracted all too thoroughly by his earlier visitor.

“What is it, my boy?”

Despite Lorenzo’s years in Australia, followed by the past couple of decades in New Zealand, his voice still held the lilt of his native Italian tongue.

“First, how is Ellen?”

The older man sighed. “Not good, she is having a bad day today.”

After Ellen began to show signs of kidney and liver failure, she and Lorenzo had relocated to Wellington, where she could receive the specialized care her advancing dementia required.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He could almost hear Lorenzo shrug in acceptance. “It is what it is. I have asked Alexis to make plans to return from Italy.”

“Ellen’s that bad?”

Alexis was Lorenzo and Ellen’s only child and had been working overseas for the past year. Currently, she was visiting with Lorenzo’s family still living in Tuscany.

“Si, she has no fight left in her anymore. If she recognizes me at all it is a good day, but they are few.”

Finn could hear the pain echoing in the older man’s voice before Lorenzo took another deep breath and continued.

“Now, what did you call me for?”

Choosing blunt statement over trying to find an easy way to say what he had to, Finn said, “Tamsyn Masters showed up here today wanting to see Ellen.”

“So, it has finally happened.”

“I told her Ellen Masters doesn’t live here and sent her on her way.”

Lorenzo gave a short laugh, the sound crackling like autumn leaves. “But you didn’t tell her that Ellen Fabrini does, I assume?”

“No,” Finn admitted. He hadn’t told an outright lie when he’d spoken to Tamsyn. Though Lorenzo and Ellen had never formalized their union, she’d always been known as his wife and had gone by his last name the whole time they’d lived in New Zealand.

“You say she left again?”

“Yes, hopefully to return to Australia.”

“Hmm, but what if she doesn’t leave?”

Finn’s lips firmed in a line as he considered Lorenzo’s statement. “What are you thinking?”

“You know I have no love for that family after what they did to my Ellen. I lost count of the hours she spent crying over letters she wrote to those children. It broke her heart a little more every single time. And did they ever write back, or even try to contact her when they were older? No. Yet as much as I would wish them all to Dante’s inferno, I know how much Ellen loved them and if she was to stabilize, if her mind was to clear just a little, she might benefit from a visit from her daughter.”

Finn fought to keep the incredulity from his voice. “You want me to keep her from going home?”