"Twins run in the Blackthorne family," Bella said. "That's Lady Rebecca Wharton painting her elder twin sister, Lady Regina."

"Her Grace has a twin, as well," Emily said. "Her younger sister, Lady Alicia."

Kristin saw the sharp glance Bella shot her assistant. This was the first Kristin had heard about Bella having a twin sister. In all their talks, Max had never mentioned an Aunt Alicia. Was the twin sister supposed to be a secret? She wondered if Bella's twin was still alive, and if so, where she was.

Flick asked the questions for her. "Does your twin look like you, Gram? Can I meet her?"

"Yes, we're identical," Bella confirmed. "I'm afraid you can't meet Alicia. My sister left Blackthorne Abbey, oh, I don't know how many years ago."

"Where is she now?" Flick asked.

"I don't know."

Flick turned to Kristin and said, "Mom, you know how to do searches on the internet. Maybe we can help Gram find her sister."

Kristin glanced at the duchess and saw a brief, panicked look cross her face. Kristin looked to Emily for guidance.

The duchess's assistant said, "I've tried to find Alicia myself through the internet, but I haven't had any luck."

"You have?" Bella said, obviously surprised. "I didn't know that, Emily."

"I thought you might want to see her before-" She stopped herself and finished, "I thought you might want to find out how she's doing."

Bella didn't look happy with the prospect of seeing her younger sister anytime soon. Kristin thought there must be a story there. But she wasn't going to stay around to dig it out. She needed to get settled in her hotel, which was a long train ride north of the Abbey in London.

Kristin put a hand on her daughter's shoulder and said, "The last train to London is leaving soon. I have to go, Flick."

"I can arrange a car for you tomorrow morning if you'd like to spend the night," Bella offered.

"No, thank you," Kristin said. She didn't want to be any more indebted to the duchess than she already was.

"At least come upstairs and see where Flick will be staying," the duchess said.

Kristin glanced at her watch. "All right. But I can't stay long."

"Lead the way, Emily," Bella said.

Kristin watched Emily hesitate until Bella shooed her forward. The young woman took Flick's hand and said, "Come on, Flick. Let's go see your room."

"You mean my dad's room," Flick said. "Are there pictures of him there?"

Emily glanced at Kristin for guidance.

Kristin agonized for a moment before nodding.

Emily looked down at Flick and said, "Yes, I think there are a few pictures of your father."

Flick had already asked Kristin for a picture of Max, but she'd denied having one. Flick had tried to find a picture of him on the internet but in the very few pictures of him she found, his head was turned sideways, or the ball cap he wore playing tennis hid most of his face. It would have been odd if she hadn't wanted to know what her father looked like.

Flick pulled free of Emily's hand and ran up the stairs. Emily hurried after her. Kristin stayed with Bella, who climbed the narrow stone stairs more slowly, but steadily.

"Have you seen Max since you arrived in London?" Bella asked.

"I'm supposed to meet him at Wimbledon tomorrow morning," Kristin replied. By the time they traversed the upstairs hall to Max's childhood bedroom, Flick had already found a photograph of her father and was holding it in her hands.

The room was surprisingly tiny. It had a child's single bed along one wall and a desk along another. The drapes had been pulled back from tall windows to let in the afternoon sun, which had warmed the room. A chest sat at the foot of the bed. Flick had apparently already opened it to reveal tin soldiers and other boyhood toys. Emily was sitting in the chair at the adult-size desk.

Obviously, Max hadn't stayed in this room since he was a very young boy. So where did he sleep when he came to visit his mother? The answer Kristin came up with startled her. Most likely, Max hadn't stayed in his mother's home since he was a young boy. He'd been away at school. Or in hotels around the world, when he'd traveled on the road playing tennis. Kristin knew from her time with Max on the tour, that he'd bought a house in London where he lived when he wasn't on the road.

"Look, Mom," Flick said reverently as she held out a framed photograph and pointed to one face among many in what appeared to be a family portrait. "Emily says that boy is my dad." She pointed to a young boy pictured with his family around a beautifully decorated Christmas tree.

In the photo, Bella was holding an adorable baby girl on her lap. Max stood beside his mother holding an adult size tennis racquet that dwarfed him. Bull stood with one hand on Bella's shoulder and the other hand on Max's shoulder. The tallest-oldest?-boy was standing beside an English racing bike. In front of him sat a grinning boy holding up a book about dinosaurs. A fourth boy sat cross-legged next to him, with a model sailboat in his lap.

"Max loved playing tennis," Bella mused. "We had a tennis court built on the grounds so he could practice."

Kristin wondered how much time Max had ever spent on it.

"I recognize you, Gram," Flick said. "Who are these other people?"

"Your aunt and uncles," Bella said. "And your other grandfather."

"I have another grandfather?" Flick said in wonder. "Where is he? Can I meet him?"

"He doesn't live in London," Bella said. "I'll let him know you'd like to meet him."

"How is that going to work out, exactly?" Kristin said, aware, as was the rest of the world, that Bull and Bella Benedict were separated, and not amicably.

Bella waved away her concerns. "Honestly, that's unlikely to happen on this visit."

Bella sat down in a wooden rocker in the corner of Max's bedroom, and called Flick over to stand beside her as she identified each of the boys in the photo. "Your uncle Oliver is standing beside the bicycle. Your uncle Riley is holding the book about dinosaurs. Your uncle Payne is sitting cross-legged with the boat. The little girl on my lap is your aunt Lydia."

"She's just as pretty as you are, Gram," Flick said.

Kristin saw the duchess was flustered by the compliment.

"Why, thank you, Flick," she said.

Flick surveyed her grandmother through narrowed eyes and said, "You have a lot more wrinkles now than you did then. But I still think you're beautiful."

Kristin saw tears well in Bella Benedict's eyes and watched her blink them away. Kristin saw something she couldn't have imagined happening, considering what she knew about the Mean Witch's behavior toward Max.

The duchess reached out and caressed Flick's head.

"That's the nicest thing anybody's said to me...in a while," the duchess said. "Thank you, Felicity."

To Kristin's further surprise, Flick brushed the duchess's skirt aside and edged her tiny fanny into the small space between her grandmother and the edge of the rocker.

"Tell me about my dad," she said.

Kristin would have given anything to stay and listen. She wanted to hear what sort of stories-fantasies- Bella concocted to describe the time she'd supposedly spent with Max growing up. During the years Kristin had known him, the Mean Witch had been a big black nothing in his life.

"I have to leave, Flick," Kristin said.

Instead of crossing the room to give her mother a good-bye hug and kiss, Flick nestled closer to her grandmother and said, "Will you bring Dad when you come back, Mom?"

Kristin did what mothers everywhere did when they didn't want to start an argument with their child by saying no. She smiled cheerfully, waved good-bye to her daughter, and said, "We'll see."

11.

"Hello, Princess."

Kristin turned on the grass tennis court at Wimbledon and found Max standing before her. He was dressed in white shorts and a white sleeveless shirt, which revealed the powerful biceps she'd only suspected when he'd been wearing a suit. He'd obviously already been hitting balls for a while. His sweat-soaked shirt clung to his body, revealing impressive muscular abs.

Her throat ached at the sudden memory of the last time she'd seen him here at the All England Lawn Tennis Club when they were teenagers. She recalled the utter disbelief-and devastation-she'd felt at seeing Max kissing another woman the morning after he'd made love to her for the first time. How could she still feel so much pain?

She swallowed over the awful lump in her throat and said, "Hello, Max." It came out sounding wistful. She hardened her voice and said, "As I told you on the phone, I'm only here because my boss suggested it after I got suspended."

She'd called Rudy to tell him she was accepting the assignment from the CIA, so he'd know how to contact her when word came back from SIRT on how they planned to treat the second shooting incident. She was praying there would be no further disciplinary action required.

Before she'd left Miami, she'd also hired a lawyer to defend her in the civil suit. He'd told her nothing would be happening on the case until the SIRT recommendation came down. He'd also promised to find out whether the boy's family would be willing to settle out of court and if so, how much they wanted.

"I wish I could say I'm sorry you felt coerced into coming to London," Max said. "But I'm not. I need your help, K."

Could any words be more designed to appeal to everything feminine and nurturing inside her? For years she'd been so sure she was over Max, that she'd gotten him out of her head and her heart. But he'd been in her thoughts constantly since she'd seen him in Miami.

Especially after her meeting with the duchess. The mere idea of Max proposing to her was preposterous. Even the suggestion that the two of them might "kiss and make up" made her uncomfortable in her own skin.

Why hadn't she simply told the Mean Witch to take a flying leap off a steep cliff?

Desperation. Yes, she was desperate for money. But there was a more compelling reason she'd agreed to spend more time with Max. One that had kept her awake for too many nights over the past ten years. Regret.

What if she'd answered his phone calls ten years ago? What if there were some simple explanation for why he'd been kissing Elena? What might Max have done if he'd known she was carrying his child? Would he have asked her to love him and live with him forever? And the most wrenching question of all: Had he ever really loved her?

None of that mattered now, because she had turned him away. As she would turn Max away if he decided he wanted to pick up where they'd left off.

But she'd better watch her step. If she wasn't careful, the charming rogue would slip past her defenses. She didn't want to get hurt again.

She could feel Max's eyes on her, assessing her. Had he ever asked himself the same questions she'd been asking? Did he also wonder what would have happened if...?

When she turned and met his intent gaze, she felt off kilter. It was unsettling to realize how attractive Max still was to her. How very blue his eyes were. Benedict blue. She remembered, during their one night of love, kissing his square chin, his sharp nose, his chiseled cheekbones. He'd made her blood heat and her body ache with need.

Funny how those feelings of love-and those first stirrings of teenage desire-were still so vivid after all these years. No wonder she was still alone, when she'd measured her response to every man she'd met since Max against the powerful passions evoked by her robust teenage hormones. What mortal man could compete with a perfect fantasy?

Except, Max wasn't a fairy-tale character. If only he had been she might have banished him. No, he'd been real, all right. Her feelings of love for Max had grown and ripened over the three years she'd known him, growing especially strong during the year after she'd dropped her robe and stood naked before him. She'd been more than ready, when the moment came, to go from being friends to lovers.

Strange, how the reality of physical intimacy with Max was so far from what she'd expected. The lovemaking had been awkward. Since she was a virgin and nervous-and Max was uninformed about the true state of things-the act itself had been physically painful. Still, she'd hugged the knowledge of their ultimate closeness to herself as she fell asleep alone in bed that night.

She'd wondered for years afterward if Max had felt the euphoric connection to her that she'd felt toward him. In retrospect, it seemed unlikely. Those three years she'd been secretly in love with him, he'd been dating-and bedding-a bevy of other women. Max had never revealed what it was that had finally caused him to take them from friends to lovers. Kristin would never have had the self-confidence, in light of Max's vast experience, to suggest sex herself. Strangely, she'd never asked him why he was physically attracted to her, when he had all those other, more experienced and fuller-bosomed women to choose from. She'd wondered if their night of love had fallen short of his expectations, too. Maybe she just hadn't pleased him in bed.

Since they'd parted ways after their single night of sex without speaking to each other again, she'd been left emotionally battered and bruised-and wondering-all these years.

The worst part of not knowing what had brought him to urge her to have sex was that, no matter how hard she'd tried, she couldn't forget him. Any chance she'd had to move on to a healthy and loving relationship with another man was stifled by leftover feelings for her first love.

Which was why she planned to use their time together now to kill those feelings once and for all. Unfortunately, she found herself fighting the temptation to be Max's friend again. That, she knew, was a slippery slope. Going from friend to lover could be a very short trip.

Kristin tightened her grip on her tennis racquet and focused on adjusting the strings with her other hand. She couldn't afford to fall in love with Max again. There was too much at stake. She planned to earn the Blackthorne Rubies, find the presidential assassin-if one existed-and go home.

At some point, she might be forced to introduce Max to his daughter. But not if she could help it. She felt sorry her daughter had grown up without a father, but Flick was better off without a man like Max in her life. That is, a man who put pleasure first and everything else far after.

Well, she could use that to her advantage.

The object was to play this match with Max without losing her heart. She had to make sure she didn't let her grown-up hormones rule her head. Which meant she had to guard against falling prey to his good looks. His very good looks. He appeared magnificently fit in tennis whites, his shoulders broad, his hips narrow, his belly flat. Her eyes followed the line of black down from his navel into the low-slung shorts.

Kristin realized what she was doing and jerked her gaze back up to meet his. She flushed when she realized Max was making a perusal of her every bit as thorough as the one she'd just done of him. She had on a fitted white tennis dress with a short, flirty skirt that showed off her trim waist and long legs. Her breasts were nothing to shout about, never had been.

Max seemed happy enough with the size of them when he held them in his palms, an insidious voice reminded her.

"You look good," he said at last. "Fit."

"You, too," she replied. Well, it was the truth.

"I've missed you, Princess."

She hadn't expected that. She didn't say she'd missed him, too. But Max had been a tough act to follow. She'd been engaged once but had called it off before the wedding. Frustrated in love, she'd focused on her daughter and her job. She'd put youthful things-tennis and Max Benedict-behind her.

"How do you want to do this?" she asked, swinging her racquet in a small circle over her shoulder to warm up her arm.

"We'll hit a few to warm up."

"The last time I played was with one of Harry's students," Kristin said.

"How is Harry?" Max asked.

Harry had been a good friend to Max-until she'd turned up pregnant. She hesitated, then admitted, "Dad had a stroke a few days after you came to Miami. His right side is paralyzed."

"That's too bad."

She had to admit Max looked truly concerned.

"What's his prognosis?" he asked.