Chapter 3

He held out the package to her, and Morgan took it with dread boiling in her stomach. She knew that handwriting.

Dear God, how had he found her here? And so quickly?

No!

Hands shaking, breath short, she opened the envelope and extracted the contents. As she did, red rose petals with moist centers and dead edges fluttered downward, skittering across the blond hardwood floor. They looked faintly like fat drops of blood splattered all around her.

Morgan gasped. He knew she was here. How had he found her?

Then her gaze fell to the photos. Pictures of her, one arriving at LAX the day she’d fled to Houston. The next of her in Brandon’s backyard wearing thin sweatpants and a tank top with nipples teased hard by a cool morning breeze. The last a photo of her in her sage silk-and-lace shift with matching robe, kissing Brandon’s cheek as they stood in the driveway before he left for work. Just this morning.

Fear biting at her belly, Morgan didn’t protest when Brandon grabbed the photos from her numb fingers. He flipped through them with a snarled curse.

“These are from your stalker, aren’t they? He’s been here. Son of a bitch!” He raked a hand through his brown hair, ruffling the banker’s cut. “I’m calling the police.”

God, she wished it was that simple. “They can’t do anything. The police in L.A. told me he was going to have to do something illegal before they could spend any energy finding him. Taking pictures isn’t against the law.”

“He’s been on my property.” Brandon held up the photo of her in the backyard of his rambling Houston home, his big fingers wrinkling the photo. “My backyard is private. The only way he could take this picture is by trespassing. There’s a law broken.”

He grabbed the nearest cordless phone and dialed 911. Morgan just shook her head.

While Brandon was right, she doubted the Houston police were going to be any more motivated to do something than the cops in L.A. Whoever this was hadn’t stolen anything, vandalized anything. He hadn’t hurt anyone—yet. Morgan could feel his anger building in the frequency of his contact, the fact he’d followed her to Texas. And the police wouldn’t care what her gut told her.

Brandon hung up the phone. “They’ll be here soon.”

Morgan just shrugged. . .and tried to calm the panic bubbling inside her.

With nothing to do but wait, she started to shove the pictures back in the envelope. When she encountered an obstruction, she realized something else lay inside. She stuck her hand between the layers of paper, perplexed. Usually the disturbed bastard only sent pictures—disconcerting, disturbingly private pictures, but nothing more.

Not today.

Out of the benign brownish envelope she yanked a scrap of paper with a scrawl of ugly black writing.

You belong to me. Only to me.

Morgan swallowed a huge lump of fear. Now he was communicating with her. To her. Conveying his possessiveness, his fury that she might have another man in her life. This lunatic didn’t know that Brandon was her half-brother. He’d bought the cover story Brandon concocted, as much to explain her presence at his house to others, as to warn off her overzealous psycho.

While the thought of being alone little scared Morgan, part of her was glad Brandon had to leave tomorrow. If something happened to him, it wouldn’t be because her stalker had decided to get the “competition” out of the way. In the three weeks Brandon would be gone, she’d figure something out, find somewhere else to go, so that when he returned, she didn’t endanger the only one of Senator Ross’s sons to give a rip about her.

Maybe, like Reggie suggested before she left L.A., she needed a bodyguard…

“You really have no idea who this creep is?” Brandon growled, staring at the note over her shoulder.

“None.” She shook her head. “I wish I did. I have no disgruntled co-workers that I’m aware of. My ex-fiancé left me, not the other way around.”

“Someone who’s watched your show? A fan who doesn’t know where to draw the line?”

Morgan shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve received odd fan mail before, but nothing this threatening or privacy-invading.”

“I’m going to find someone to get to the bottom of this, kiddo. I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he vowed.

At times like this, Morgan wondered how she and Brandon were descended from the same loins as Senator Ross’s other sons. They were nothing like the man and his other greedy, powerhungry offspring.

“Damn it,” he cursed suddenly into the silence. “I wish like hell I didn’t have to go tomorrow. The car is picking me up at ofive hundred, and the timing couldn’t be worse. Shit! Uncle Sam can be a demanding mistress.”

Morgan didn’t know exactly what Brandon did; he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. From things he’d said in the three years since he’d found the skeleton in their father’s closet and tracked her down, she’d guessed he was in Intelligence. She had no idea who for.

“If you hate the job so much, and you want to run for office as badly as I know you do, why don’t you just do it?”

For the first time she could remember, Brandon wouldn’t meet her gaze. He turned away, fists clenching.

He unclenched them with obvious effort, then said, “I can’t.”

The following day, Morgan dropped down into a wroughtiron chair at a little sidewalk café in a quaint cluster of unique shops. The February afternoon hung thick, lazy, and surprisingly sultry all around. Fighting off exhaustion after a nearly sleepless night, she glanced at her watch. Three o’clock. She’d made good time on her drive from Houston. Master J should be here very soon.

Her stomach tightened at the thought.

That wasn’t the only reason, though. She also felt eyes on her, watching, assessing, probing. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She looked around, scanned the crowd. Nothing.

Morgan took a deep breath, trying to quell her uneasiness. It wasn’t hard to imagine that if a psycho would follow her from Los Angeles to Houston, he’d go the extra mile to trail her to Lafayette. She was probably safe sitting here in the middle of a sunny public square, but if he recognized her, he’d see her with Master J and make assumptions that would make him even angrier than the appearance that she was marrying Brandon. Then when night fell, and she was alone in Brandon’s house…

No, she couldn’t think that now. She would have to keep this all business, so that if her stalker identified her and watched this meeting, he wouldn’t assume anything sexual between her and Master J.

She adjusted the scarf and hat to make sure they completely covered her hair, and pushed the sunglasses up on her face. Maybe she was being paranoid. No one should be able to recognize her like this. Maybe after this interview, she would slip away to that cozy European-looking bed and breakfast she’d seen on her way into town and catch up on sleep so she could figure out how to shake this stalker.