"There is something I want to talk with you about."

"I assumed there was. Have you had dinner?"

"No."

"Good. We'll talk while we eat."

They went in through the side of the house, climbing onto a redwood deck flanked with pots spilling over with impatiens and going through a wide glass door directly into the kitchen. It was all royal blue and white, and as sleek and glossy as a page out of a high-fashion magazine. Sebastian went directly to a small glass-fronted refrigerator and chose a chilled bottle of wine from a rack inside.

"Have a seat." He gestured to a stool at the tiled work island. After uncorking the wine, he poured her a glass. "I need to clean up," he said, setting the wine on the counter in front of her. "Be at home."

"Sure."

The moment he was out of the room, she was off the stool. Mel didn't consider it rude. It was innate curiosity. There was no better way to find out what made people tick than by poking around their personal space. And she desperately wanted to know what made Sebastian Donovan tick.

The kitchen was meticulously neat, spotless counters and appliances, the dishes in their glass-fronted cupboards arranged according to size. The room didn't smell of detergent or disinfectant, but of… air, she decided, fresh, faintly herb-scented.

There were several clusters of herbs hanging upside down in front of the window over the sink. Mel sniffed at them, finding their aroma pleasant and vaguely mysterious.

She opened a drawer at random and found baking utensils. She tried another and found more kitchen gadgets neatly stacked.

Where was the clutter? she wondered as she frowned around the room. And the secrets one always found jumbled with it?

Not so much discouraged as intrigued, she slipped back onto the stool and picked up her wine a moment before he came into the room again.

He wore black now—snug coal-colored jeans and a black shirt rolled up to his elbows. His feet were bare. When he picked up the wine to pour his own glass, Mel realized he looked like what he claimed to be.

A wizard.

Smiling, he tapped his glass to hers, leaning close to stare into her eyes. "Will you trust me?"

"Huh?"

His smile widened. "To choose the menu."

She blinked, took a hasty sip of wine. "Sure. I'll eat most anything."

As he began gathering ingredients and pots and pans, she let out a slow, relieved breath. "You're going to cook?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I figured you'd just call out for something." Her brows drew together as he poured oil in a skillet. "It's an awful lot of trouble."

"I enjoy it." Sebastian snipped some herbs into a bowl. "It relaxes me."

Mel scratched her knee and gave the mixture he was making a doubtful look. "You want me to help you?"

"You don't cook."

She lifted a brow. "How do you know?"

"I got a glimpse of your kitchen. Garlic?"

"Sure."

Sebastian crushed the clove with the flat of his knife. "What did you want to talk to me about, Mel?"

"A couple of things." She shifted in her chair, then rested her chin on her hand. Odd, she hadn't realized she would enjoy watching him cook. "Things turned out the way they were supposed to for Rose and Stan and David. What's that you're putting in there?"

"Rosemary."

"It smells good." So did he, she thought. Gone was the sexy leather-and-sweat scent he'd carried with him after the ride. It had been replaced by that equally sexy forest fragrance that was both wild and utterly male. She sipped her wine again, relaxing enough to toe off her boots. "For Mr. and Mrs. Frost back in Georgia, things are pretty awful right now."

Sebastian scooped tomato and garlic and herbs into a skillet. "When someone wins, someone usually loses."

"I know how it works. We did what we had to do, but we didn't finish."

He coated boneless chicken br**sts before laying them in a pan. He liked the way she sat there, swinging one leg lazily and watching his culinary preparations with a careful eye. "Go on."

"We didn't get the one who matters, Donovan. The one who arranged the whole thing. We got David back, and that was the most important thing, but we didn't finish. He's not the only baby who's been stolen."

"How do you know?"

"It's logical. An operation that slick, that pat. It wasn't just a one-shot deal."

"No." He topped off their glasses, then poured some of the wine onto the chicken. "It's not."

"So, here's the way I see it." She pushed off the stool. Mel felt she thought better on her feet. "The Frosts had a contact. Now, they might have been able to turn the feds onto him, or he could be long gone. I'd go with long gone." She stopped pacing to tilt her head.

Sebastian nodded. "Continue."

"Okay. It's a national thing. A real company. Got to have a lawyer, someone to handle the adoption papers. Maybe a doctor, too. Or at least someone with connections in the fertility business. The Frosts had all kinds of fertility tests. I checked."

Sebastian stirred and sniffed and checked, but he was listening. "I imagine the FBI checked, as well."

"Sure they did. Our pal Devereaux's right on top of things. But I like to finish what I start. You've got all these couples trying to start a family. They'll try anything. Regulate their sex lives, their diets, dance naked under the full moon. And pay. Pay all kinds of money for tests, for operations, for drugs. And if none of it works, they'll pay for a baby."

She came back to the island to sniff at one of the pots herself. "Good," she murmured. "I know it's usually on the up-and-up. A reputable adoption agency, a reputable lawyer. And, in most cases, it's the right thing. The baby gets a loving home, the biological mother gets a second chance, and the adoptive parents get their miracle. But then you have the slime factor. The sleaze-ball who always finds a way to make a buck off someone else's tragedy."

"Why don't you put a couple of plates on the table by the window? I'm listening."

"Okay." She puttered around the kitchen, following his instructions for china, for flatware, for napkins, as she continued to theorize. "But this isn't just any pennyante sleaze. This is a smart one, slick enough to pull together an organization that can snatch a kid from one coast, pass him along like a football crosscountry and bounce him into a nice, affluent home thousands of miles away."