Prologue

For as long as I could remember, the only person I could share my deepest secrets with was Luke Casteel, Jr. It was as if I were truly alive only when he was with me, and in my secret putaway heart, I knew he felt the same way, even though he had never dared say anything about it. I wanted to look at him, look into his soft dark sapphire eyes forever and ever and tell him what I really felt, but the words were forbidden. He was my half brother.

But there was one way I could look continually at him and he at me without either of us being self-conscious about it or feeling someone would discover our secret, and that was whenever I painted him. He was always a willing subject: With the easel between us and my world of art serving as a window, I could stare closely at his perfectly shaped, high-cheeked, bronze face and I could capture the way those unruly, jet-black strands of hair always fell over his forehead.

Luke had my aunt Fanny's hair, but my father's deep blue eyes and perfect nose. There was strength in the lines of his mouth and in his sharp, smooth jawline. I couldn't help seeing the clear resemblances to my father, and even to myself. He had the same tall, lean build Daddy had and kept his shoulders back the same way. The resemblances always saddened me because they reminded me that Luke wasn't simply my half brother, he was my illegitimate half brother, born out of a passionate indiscretion between Daddy and my aunt Fanny, my mother's sister, something we all understood was best kept unmentioned.

We tried to leave it behind us, stuffed away in the shadows, even though we both knew people whispered and gossiped about us in Winnerrow. Although my family was the most prominent in Winne