Lie to Her (Bree Taggert) by Melinda Leigh

Author:Melinda Leigh [Leigh, Melinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Montlake
Published: 2023-01-16T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

An hour later, Bree parked in front of Adam’s place, a converted barn in the middle of a wide-open meadow. Mentally, she crossed her fingers.

Please be home.

“His truck is here.” Matt pointed to the ancient Bronco held together with body putty and prayer, one more thing Adam could easily replace if he desired.

Her brother was very successful. He’d supported their sister and the kids for years. He’d set up trust funds for the kids. Bree didn’t need to worry about paying for their educations.

He could afford to live in a much nicer home, but he chose to stay in this one. It met all his needs—light and isolation being the most important of those. His paintings had been hot on the art scene for a number of years, but his last work had been . . . She struggled to describe the raw emotions he’d captured on his canvas—a glimmer of hope amid violence and despair.

More than hope. His painting had made a promise: whatever darkness you’d experienced . . . something brighter was on the horizon.

Bree wasn’t the artsy type. She lived in a world ruled by evidence, science, and fact. But that painting had drawn her in like no other. All Adam’s work called to her with their rawness of emotion. Darkness was in her soul. She’d been born with it, something she’d always worried about. But while his previous paintings had called to the bleakness inside her, the last one had banished it like sunlight drove out vampires.

It was brilliant.

The art world clearly agreed with Bree. A collector had snapped up the painting immediately and loaned it and a few of Adam’s other works to a museum for an exhibition.

She and Matt stepped out of the vehicle. Clouds obscured the moon, casting the meadow in darkness broken only by the lights glowing in Adam’s windows. Bree had lived in Philadelphia from the age of eight until this past January. It was never really dark in the city. Light pollution brightened everything. But night in the countryside could be stark and unrelenting.

A thin coating of snow dusted the ground. It crunched under her boots as she approached the front door. Bree couldn’t explain how she knew, but the house felt empty. There was a stillness that stirred her anxiety and compressed her insides.

In the past, Adam had lost track of everything when he was in the middle of a project. He forgot to eat and sleep. He became obsessed with—no, possessed by—his work. Bree understood. She’d been the same way with homicide investigations in her previous life.

Before her sister’s murder.

Before Bree had essentially become a parent.

Before she’d reconnected with Adam. They’d grown closer over the past eleven months. The desire to provide home and family to Luke and Kayla had forced them to leave their confirmed loner statuses behind. Adam had improved his communication skills, and he made time to see the kids regularly even when he was in the middle of a painting. He no longer completely disappeared into his art.

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