Damn it. Why didn’t he just let it go? “I was adopted. I just got in the habit.”

“You must not have been adopted as a baby if you don’t think about them as Mom and Dad.” Wes looked even more curious than before, and his eyes were scanning her face closely. “How old were you when you were adopted?”

He must just be one of those people who ask a lot of questions of new people they meet. That was the only explanation for his interrogation. He probably thought it was natural, normal, but it left Kelly feeling naked and exposed. “I was…” For just a moment her mind went blank with the kind of blind terror she’d felt in an oral exam her senior year in high school, like her whole future rested on one answer that she just couldn’t think of.

“I was…I was a kid,” she finished lamely. “What does it matter?”

Her tone must have been too snippy because his brows shot up. “It doesn’t. I was just curious. Caleb has never been serious about a woman before, and I wanted to know more about who had managed to enthrall him.”

“Sorry.” She looked again for Caleb and was relieved to see him approaching them again, three glasses of champagne in his hands. “I just don’t like to talk much about the time before I was adopted. I didn’t mean to sound rude.”

It was a good answer. It sounded convincing. She gave Wes what she hoped was an ameliorating smile, and he returned it, but she still felt like there was an unanswered question in his eyes.

Like she’d triggered a suspicion in him that was going to be a problem.

Caleb gave them both a glass and then pulled Kelly against his side again. She burrowed against him instinctively, feeling safer, almost protected, now that he was back.

He leaned down to give her a soft kiss on the lips. “What’s wrong? Has Wes been harassing you?”

“No,” she said with a smile, trying to hide her mood from both men now. “He’s been telling me that you’ve never been serious about a woman before and that I’ve enthralled you.”

Caleb shot a look at Wes, but he was smiling down at Kelly when he said, “Enthrall? Is that what we’re calling it?”

“It’s what I’m calling it,” Wes said, looking friendly and unconcerned, although his eyes kept going back to Kelly with that same lingering question. “There’s a mystery here, and I’m going to uncover it.”

His eyes met Kelly’s and his expression shifted just a little, as if his words were meant as much for her as for Caleb.

Kelly swallowed hard, realizing she’d messed up. A lot. She’d made Wes suspicious, and he was going to keep asking questions she didn’t want to be asked.

She bit her lip, feeling like cursing and wishing she could go back in time just a few minutes so she could fix that conversation.

It had been such a silly slip. Hardly anything. A person just couldn’t pursue perfect strategy every moment of the day. It wasn’t natural. But she might have ruined her entire plan in the one moment.

Caleb laughed and shook his head. “Good luck with that.”

Kelly was desperately relieved when a couple of other people moved their way and the conversation broke up. She wanted to get away from Wes. She wanted to never see him again.

She wanted Caleb to never see him again either, even though he was evidently one of the few real friends Caleb had.

Things had been going so well. She hadn’t made any mistakes that really threatened to expose her. Until now. And now she was vulnerable. Now it all might be on the verge of falling apart.

She took a deep breath as Caleb introduced her to someone else, and she reminded herself that, even if Wes wanted to find out who she was, the evidence of her identity had all been hidden.

She was okay. She would be done with this whole thing before he could uncover her identity.

She had to believe she hadn’t lost everything in one slip of the tongue.

Her mind returned to the situation at hand with a hard bump when the name of the man she was shaking hands with suddenly clicked.

Sean Moore.

An older, balding man with a plain face and very dark eyes. Caleb’s former supervisor at Vendella.

The man whose phone had been used to call a hit man just before her father’s death.

If Caleb wasn’t responsible for her father’s death, then this man was.

She pulled her hand away from his, wiping it discreetly on her dress. The man looked harmless enough, but she didn’t want to touch him, to be close to him in any way.

He might have killed her father. He probably had. It didn’t feel quite true of Caleb, but it felt true of this man.

This could be the real murderer, the absolute bastard who’d taken her father away from her.

This man. In front of her.

Kelly felt a wave of nausea overtake her as she saw again her father’s body on the trail in the woods, his blood soaking into the dirt.

She managed to smile and act like she was listening to the conversation, but all she could hear was a buzzing in her ears.

This party had become like hell, all of these fake, smiling people who were secretly her enemies. Even Caleb with his intelligent mouth and warm eyes and strong hands might be someone she could only hate.

She was surrounded by them—no way to escape—and she kept trying to fight the nausea as it grew increasingly difficult to act normal.

She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be around these people. They weren’t her friends. They would only hurt her.

All she wanted to do was get away, but there was absolutely nowhere she could go.

Except the bathroom.

The idea came to her like a gift, and she excused herself to go to the restroom before the growing feeling of panicked claustrophobia completely overwhelmed her.

It was a large individual bathroom, so she locked the door and went over to the sink. She stared in the mirror at her face.

Her hair was still slightly rumpled and falling in loose waves all down her back. Her cheeks had been flushed before, but now they were a little pale. It looked like she’d even broken a sweat.

She wanted to splash water on her face to wash away the helpless feeling and the fuzziness from the champagne, but she was only carrying a clutch purse, so she didn’t have all of her makeup with her to redo her face afterward.

So she washed her hands for a long time, trying to relax and pull herself together.

She didn’t want to go back to the party right away, so she pulled out her phone to check her email—just for something to do—and she was surprised to see a text message from her mother. From the same anonymous number she always used to contact her.

She pulled up the message and read, Why haven’t you finished this yet? Stop stalling and get it done.

Kelly stared at the words for a long time, feeling sick and guilty and angry—a conflicted mingling of all three.

If her mother hadn’t showed up in her apartment a couple of months ago, she never would have started down this stupid, torturous road. Her mother had told her then that she’d only had three months to live, but she’d been as good as dead to Kelly for a lot longer than that. Kelly could understand desperately wanting answers before she died, but it was hard to forgive the way her mother had put her in an impossible position.

It had happened, though, and Kelly had agreed to do this destructive, irrational thing. And her mother wasn’t wrong in recognizing how conflicted she’d become in her feelings for Caleb.

She kept telling herself she wanted to get this over with, but that might mean proving that Caleb was guilty of murdering her father.

And if she were honest with herself, she’d admit she didn’t really want to do that.

She deleted the message without answering it and slid her phone back in her little clutch purse, trying to pretend she’d never seen the text.

Trying to pretend she wasn’t so pitifully weak that she would stall in seeking justice for her father’s murder.