His gaze drifted back to her face where he noticed her full lips tremble slightly before pulling into a nervous smile.
“H-hello, I was wondering if Ellen Masters lives here?” she said.
Her voice was tight, as if her throat was constricted and in the late-afternoon sun that slanted across her face he could see telltale signs of tear tracks. Natural curiosity rose from inside him but he quelled it with his usual determination.
“And you are…?” he asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She held out a delicate hand. “I’m Tamsyn Masters. I’m looking for my mother, Ellen.”
He took her hand in his, noting instantly the coolness of her touch, the fragility in the bones of her fingers as his larger, stronger ones closed around hers. He struggled against the instinct to go into protection mode. There was something very not right in Tamsyn Masters’s world right now, but, he reminded himself, that wasn’t his problem.
Keeping her away from Ellen was.
Two
“There’s no Ellen Masters here,” he replied, letting go of her hand. “Was your mother expecting you?”
She had the grace to look shamefaced. “No, I kind of hoped to surprise her.”
Surprise her? Yeah, he just bet she did. Without sparing a thought to whether or not her mother would, or could, see her. How typical of her type, he thought angrily. Pampered, spoiled and thinking the world spun for her delectation. He knew the type well—unfortunately. Too well. They were the kind who’d always expect more, no matter how much you gave. People like Briana, his ex. Beautiful, seemingly compassionate, born into a life of opportunity—but in the cold light of day as grasping and as single-minded as Fagin in Oliver Twist.
“Are you sure you have the right address?” he asked, tamping his fury down.
“Well…I thought…” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and read off the address. “That’s right, isn’t it? I’m at the right place.”
“That is my address, but there’s no Ellen Masters here. I’m sorry. It looks like you’ve had a wasted trip.”
Before his eyes, every particle in her body slumped. Her eyes suddenly brimmed with unshed tears and a stricken look froze her delicate features into a mask of sadness. Again that urge to protect her welled within him—along with the compulsion to tell her of the well-concealed and unsealed driveway she’d have passed on the road here. The one that led to the cottage where Ellen and Lorenzo had lived for the past twenty-five years or so—but he just as determinedly pushed the impulse back.
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?