ETHAN BLACKLOCK straightened, leaned against the handle of his shovel and wiped his dripping brow with one deeply tanned forearm. A baseball cap shaded his face, and dark glasses protected his eyes from UV radiation, but he had no particular fear of the sun — even on a hot June afternoon in Dallas, Texas.

He much preferred this heat to the hell of his teenage years.

Looking around in satisfaction, he noted that he had made quite a bit of progress today. The gardeners employed by his family when he was growing up wouldn't have accomplished as much in twice the time.

Not that there was anyone to take pride in his achievements other than himself. His twice-widowed mother, Margaret Hanvey Blacklock Jacobs, would rather die than admit to her friends that the son she had groomed to become an attorney like her father, then both her husbands after him, had become a mere "gardener," instead.

He snorted at the errant thought and tightened his callused hands around the shovel grip. Maybe his mother was ashamed of him, but he took great pride in the success he'd had with his fledgling landscape design business. With a grunt of exertion, he plunged the blade into the hard-baked earth, savoring the clean smells of dirt and sweat.

By the time he walked into his kitchen on that Monday evening, he was tired, filthy — and satisfied that the small, but profitable job he had completed that day had been a big success. Well worth the fourteen hard hours he'd put into it. The clients were pleased, the check had already been deposited, and he was ready to move on to the next project.

Life was good.

Maybe he would never get rich with his small business, but no one owned him. No one controlled him. No one tried to change him. He couldn't ask for more than that.

After washing his hands in the sink and drying them on a paper towel, he opened the door to the stainless steel refrigerator and pulled out a beer. He needed a shower and some food, but a few minutes of crash time in front of the TV sounded good first. He'd missed the early evening news, but there was probably a baseball game going on somewhere.

He had just walked into the living room when someone knocked on the front door. With a regretful glance at the armchair in front of the TV, he crossed the room and opened the door without bothering to check who was on the other side.

His caller was dressed in a suit that might as well have been embroidered "hand tailored." A good-looking man in a squarely built way, Sean Jacobs was a year older than Ethan's thirty-one. His sandy-brown hair was thinning at the temples, but had been styled by an expert. His shoes were Italian leather, and his tie probably cost more than Ethan's entire outfit of denim shirt, jeans and steel-toed work boots.

There had been a time when Ethan had dressed like Sean, himself.

"Sean," he said by way of greeting, stepping aside to allow his stepbrother to enter. "What brings you here?"

Sean's divorced father, Ferrell Jacobs, had married Ethan's widowed mother almost twenty years earlier. Ferrell died eight years after that. A heart attack — the same thing that had killed Ethan's father, Howard Blacklock, when Ethan was still very young.

Both of Margaret's husbands had been high-powered, workaholic attorneys, which some people blamed for their untimely deaths. Ethan had always figured his mother nagged them both into early graves. If he hadn't broken away from her during his senior year of college, he'd probably be dead, himself, by now.

Rather than answering the question, Sean took a moment to study him as they stood in the middle of Ethan's small living room. From the grubby, inexpensive clothes to the dried mud caked on the tops of Ethan's boots, Sean seemed to miss no small detail. "Been working today?" he asked with an awkwardness that was uncharacteristic of the usually glib lawyer.

"Yeah." Ethan made an ironic gesture toward Sean's work "uniform."

"You?"

Sean acknowledged the slight dig with a very faint smile. "Yes."

It had been several years since they'd seen each other. Their last meeting had been cool, though not acrimonious. The biggest obstacle between them was that they had absolutely nothing in common, other than having rather briefly been stepsiblings. Because he had nothing particularly against Sean, Ethan tried to inject a reasonable amount of warmth into his voice when he said, "Have a seat. Can I get you a beer? Soda? Or I could make some coffee, if you want."

"No, thanks." Sean chose a chair and looked around the room with open curiosity. He had never been to this house before, and it was obviously not what he had expected.

Ethan's tastes ran to 1950s retro styles. Tiered maple tables flanked a dark brown leather sofa with exposed maple frame. Throw pillows in olive, orange, gold and brown stripes were tossed haphazardly on the sofa. Two olive leather, cube-shaped ottomans sat side by side in place of a traditional coffee table. Two side chairs with maple arms, and seats and backs upholstered in the same stripes as the throw pillows were positioned so that they provided a view of the fireplace and the incongruously modern flat television screen mounted above it.

Ethan didn't often access the modest trust fund left to him by his paternal grandfather, but he'd done so to buy that state-of-the-art TV. After all, a guy had his needs, he had rationalized.

Framed 1950s posters and pop art covered the butter-yellow walls. Chrome lamps with bold, round shades sat on the end tables, along with art pieces crafted of brightly colored glass. Built-in maple bookcases crowded with novels, books on landscape design and die-cast metal hot rods flanked the fireplace. The retro style carried over into the kitchen, with its vintage chrome-and-orange vinyl dining set, stainless steel appliances and yellow porcelain sink.

The master bedroom was done in a similar retro style, in brown with avocado and persimmon accents. The second bedroom served as his home office, and was filled with more 1950s memorabilia in addition to his desk, drawing table, filing cabinets and other business necessities. The bungalow had only one bathroom, which was decorated with yellow porcelain and multicolored ceramic fish that matched the colorful fish printed on the vinyl shower curtain.

His mother would absolutely hate the place. Which, he supposed, was part of its appeal to him.

Ethan would bet Sean was comparing this rather quirky little house to the mansion filled with soaring ceilings, marble floors and European antiques in which Ethan had grown up. It was a different world — exactly what he had wanted.

As much as Ethan got a kick out of haunting flea markets and junktique sales, Sean had always shown a taste for the elegant antiques and designer decor favored by Margaret's high-profile social set. Ethan remembered being dragged on an antiquing outing with Margaret and Ferrell when he and Sean were maybe thirteen and fourteen, respectively. He had been bored out of his mind, interested only in a collection of dusty old die-cast toys he'd found in one secluded corner.

Sean, on the other hand, had examined every piece of old furniture and china, looking for markings and dates, much to the pride of his rather pompous and pretentious father. Margaret had just been annoyed that her own son would rather be throwing a football or digging in the dirt than learning the fine details of antiques appreciation.

"I assume there's a reason for this visit? I doubt you were just in the neighborhood and wanted to check out my decorating skills."

The smile faded from Sean's face, leaving him looking so grim that Ethan was now convinced beyond doubt that this was no social visit. "There is a reason, of course. First, I want to express my sincere condolences for your loss. I know you and your mother have been estranged for a number of years, but I'm sure her death has been difficult for you."

Very slowly, Ethan placed his half-empty beer can on a black granite coaster on the nearest end table. "My mother is dead?"

Looking stricken by Ethan's reaction, Sean groaned. "Surely your cousin called this morning to tell you Margaret passed away. He told me he would."

Ethan kept his face impassive. "No. But I haven't checked phone messages yet today. What happened?"

Sean answered quietly, "She fell down the stairs. The housekeeper had gone to her daughter's house in Tulsa for the weekend, and she found Margaret at the foot of the stairs when she returned early this morning — sometime around 6:00 a.m. The police were called, of course, but there was no reason to believe it was anything other than a tragic accident. The doors were all locked, the security system was set and there was no evidence to indicate that anyone else had been in the house. Apparently, your mother made a misstep at the top of the stairs — probably during the night, in the darkness — and broke her neck when she fell. She'd been having balance problems lately. Betty told the police it was the third time Margaret had fallen in the past few months, though she escaped with nothing more than bruises before. Betty was devastated, having been with Margaret so long. She felt guilty for taking the weekend off, though I assured her no one could possibly blame her. Margaret was always so stubbornly independent."

Ethan hadn't known about the earlier falls, but that was no surprise to either of them, since he hadn't been a part of his mother's life in a long time.

"I'm sorry you weren't notified sooner," Sean said, when Ethan remained silent. "As Margaret's attorney, I was the first one Betty called after the police, and then she called your cousin Leland. We tried dialing your number here, but there was no answer. Leland assured everyone he would track you down and let you know. But maybe we simply misunderstood. Maybe Leland assumed I called you, as I thought he had."

"I was at the job site by five-thirty this morning. But I had my cell phone with me, as I always do. It wouldn't have been that hard to dig up the number." Ethan wasn't particularly surprised that his cousin hadn't called, since they'd despised each other since childhood, but he would have thought someone would have bothered to pick up the phone.

"I'm sorry, Ethan," Sean said again, awkwardly.

"So, this is a sympathy call?"

"Partly, of course," Sean agreed too quickly. "I am sorry for your loss."

"Right." Since they both knew he hadn't talked to his mother in more than three years, and that conversation had been loud and angry, Ethan figured there had to be more to this visit than simple protocol. "When's the funeral?"

"There won't be one. Your mother left explicit instructions that she was to be cremated quickly, without ceremony. She had become quite reclusive in the past few years, so there weren't a lot of friends to notify."

Ethan shrugged. "I'm sure Leland will take care of everything quite competently. And if you think he just accidentally forgot to call me today, then you're more naive than I remember. Leland and I were never what you would call friends."

Sean grimaced. "I remember. You called him a brownnose and he usually referred to you as 'the Neanderthal.'Those were the more flattering of the nicknames you had for each other, I believe."

Being in no mood for stories about his less-than-idyllic past, Ethan abruptly changed the subject. "You said sympathy was 'partly' the reason for this visit. What's the other part?"

Sean cleared his throat. "You know, of course, that the firm handled all of Margaret's legal affairs."

Ethan resisted the urge to respond with the juvenile and rather dated, "Well, duh." After all, his mother's father had started the law firm in which both of her late husbands, and now her stepson, had all practiced. It had been her fondest, and vehemently expressed, desire that Ethan would follow in their footsteps, which had led to their most frequent and most heated arguments.