A Treasure Worth Seeking by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

love?
    That possibility seared her brain and shook the foundations of her soul. She stepped away from him, suddenly afraid of the very real physical threat he posed. She must have imagined that momentary gentleness on his part, for when she looked into his face, it was hard and set in the grim lines she had come to recognize.
    She heard him mutter a curse as he turned around and stalked down the hall.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Erin was leafing through photograph albums when Lance came back into the room several hours later. It was not quite eleven o'clock, but her body was working on Houston time, and in light of the events of the day, she was exhausted. Somehow though, she couldn't lie down on the sofa and seek the oblivion of sleep.
    She pored over the pictures in the albums, searching each one for revealing traits of her brother's personality.
    Melanie had brought her the albums when she had carried in an armload of blankets and pillows.
    "Mr. Barrett asked me to bring these things to you. I offered to let you sleep in the guest bedroom upstairs, but he said no."
    "That figures," Erin grumbled.
    "I remembered these albums were stored in our bedroom closet. Would you like to look through them?"
    "Thank you, Melanie. I can't tell you how boring these four walls have become. Besides, I want to learn all I can about Ken."
    Displaying an understanding that surprised Erin, Melanie said, "I'd love to stay and talk to you, but I think I should leave you alone. There are over thirty years of Ken's life that you need to catch up on."
    Impulsively Erin went toward her sister-in-law and kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you for accepting me. I know that when they find Ken, everything will work out for the two of you. I'll be available if you need any help."
    "Oh, Erin, Ken is going to love you. I know he is." She sounded like an innocent child again.
    Erin took her shoes off and curled her feet under her as she sat in the corner of the leather sofa and began studying the photographs. There were pictures of Ken with a nice-looking couple whom Erin supposed to be his adoptive parents. She laughed over one photograph featuring a Ken about nine years old wearing an enormous pair of Mickey Mouse ears standing outside the gates of Disneyland. For the next brief hours, his whole life kaleidoscoped before her eyes. She reached out and touched a recent photograph taken on Fisherman's Wharf. Ken's dark hair was windblown, his smile rakish, his long legs in the ragged cutoffs were tanned and muscular.
    Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids as she prayed that soon she would see this man who was the only person on earth she knew of with whom she shared a bloodline. With the back of her hand, she whisked away the tears as the door opened and Lance walked in.
    He stood in the doorway for a moment and allowed himself the luxury of staring at the woman folded into the corner of the couch. Either she 's who she says she is, or she'sone hell of an actress, he thought grimly when he caught her brushing away the tears.
    Her fatigue was all too evident as she looked up at him, but he thought the hollows under her cheekbones added a waifish quality to her face that was beguiling. The faint lavender shadows under those wide, fathomless eyes made them even more haunting. Any man with an ounce of sense would run as far and as fast as he could from them.
    He swallowed the lump that unexplainably formed in his throat when he noted the slender legs tucked under her hips. Her skirt had ridden up over the knee and accom-modated him with an unrestricted view of a smooth, slim, silk-encased thigh.
    Hell! he thought. If he didn't know the muscles of his face were frozen into that implacable mask, he'd be making a fool of himself. He felt like a schoolboy seeing his first copy of Playboy. He wished he didn't remember how her mouth tasted.
    "Mr. Barrett?"
    Her hesitant question brought him to the surface again.
    Maybe his face hadn't been as unreadable as he imagined.
    "I thought