Theo was twenty-five when he discovered something that would change his life -- his adoption certificate, with any information about his birthmother other than her given names, Lilliana Nichole, blacked out. His father is dead and his mother away on business, so he can't ask them why they hadn't told him he was adopted ... and why the certificate had been defaced. He decides his only recourse is to hire a private detective agency to search for Lilliana.<br><br>It doesn't take long for Ric Baron of Moore Investigations to determine that locating Lilliana might be impossible. But he's more than willing to give it his all for the interesting young man who asked for the agency's help.<br><br>Soon after Ric begins his search, he receives a threatening email from someone who wants him to stop looking for Lilliana. From there, things escalate as Ric and Theo deal with the aftermath of the threat and their growing interest in each other. Can they learn the man's identity before he discovers Theo is Lilliana's son and goes after him? Only time will tell.

A Secret Uncovered

Tuesday morning he awoke knowing what he was going to do—or not do. The more he thought about it, the more he knew why they had never told him. He was certain it had to do with the fact that his father had been adopted, too. He’d told Theo more than once about what had happened when, at the age of ten, his parents had finally told him.


“I hated them for the longest time for keeping it a secret. It made me feel as if they thought I was too stupid to understand, or that I wasn’t as good, I suppose, as I would have been if I was their natural child. It took me a long while to realize they were afraid that…well, that I’d react the way I did, I guess. Of course because they’d waited so long it made it seem worse than it was, at least in my mind. If they’d told me when I was young, and made a big thing about how they had chosen me because I was special, I’d have accepted it with no problem.”


Chapter 3