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The High Price of Secrets(5)

By:Yvonne Lindsay


                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.

                * * *