Shadow Lover by Stuart Anne

Author:Stuart, Anne [Stuart, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 1611943779
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
Published: 2013-12-31T08:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 13

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He'd been a hellion all his life, and he knew it. When he was a child Sally had been alternately indulgent and absent, and no one had been able to ride herd on him. From the dubious vantage point of his thirties he could look back and wonder where all that anger had come from. He'd had no father—Sally had always told him her husband had decided he didn't want to be married or have the responsibility of children, and he'd left, severing all ties, never wanting to see either of them.

But hell, other kids had it worse. He had a mother who doted on him, gave him everything he wanted. He had enough extended family to make him secure, he was smart and well coordinated and too damned good looking for his well-being, according to Sally.

But he had been a monster and a half as a kid, and he knew it. Had known it, even as he couldn't help some of the things he'd done. A vein of anger had run through him, so deep and unshakable that nothing he could do would drive it away.

Carolyn had gotten the worst of it. He could still remember the day Sally had brought her home, a solemn, enchanting child, not much more than a baby, looking around her with huge, oddly passive blue eyes, as if she already knew far too well that she was at the mercy of a capricious fate.

Odd, he'd never thought of her as a little sister, and Sally had never encouraged that perception. They had grown up together, with years and a gulf of anger separating them, and he'd always known deep inside that neither of them really belonged.

Maybe that was why he'd tormented her over the years, trashing her dolls, teasing her friends, taunting and torturing her when he had nothing better to do.

That, and the fact that she would look up at him with a mixture of adoration and hurt.

He didn't deserve to be adored, but nothing he did seemed to convince her of that. She was passionately loyal to her family, even though they never chose to make her legally theirs. Passionately loyal to Sally and her devil-child, no matter how badly they treated her.

Not that Sally was ever deliberately cruel. She dispensed a distant, maternal air with democratic charm, and Carolyn had accepted it with pathetic gratitude. It used to piss him off, how she'd drop everything for Sally, putting her life, her interests, in the background.

It pissed him off to come back, eighteen years later, and find she was still doing it.

She deserved better than that. Better than the tepid kind of love Sally dispensed. Love on her terms. He had no doubt at all that Sally really did love her, as much as she was capable. But Carolyn Smith deserved to be loved with reckless passion. She needed to get away from this damned group of selfish bastards who had bled her dry in the name of family.

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