Blood Ties by Christine Pope

Author:Christine Pope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Valentine Press

11

Because he’d traveled so much when working for DHS, Randall didn’t have any problem sleeping in a strange bed. Or rather, although he’d been plagued by insomnia for most of his adult life — except, it seemed, when he was sleeping next to Joanna Wilcox — he could at least be somewhat comfortable in surroundings that weren’t familiar.

Not tonight, however.

He lay on the king-size bed and stared at the ceiling, thoughts unsettled, darting this way and that. Although he tried to tell himself he wouldn’t be much use if he didn’t get at least some sleep, he knew better. Far too often, he’d been forced to get through his day on only two or three hours of sleep, so he knew he’d be functional the next morning…if not precisely happy.

Everyone had done their best to make him feel welcome, like he was a part of the family, but Randall couldn’t shake the impression that neither of his cousins — first cousins, he reminded himself, since he guessed he must be related to Victoria and Karl’s spouses as well, if only very distantly — were less than pleased to have him brought back into the fold, so to speak.

The inheritance, he supposed. Greta hadn’t gone into any detail, and he hadn’t imagined she would, not at the dinner table like that. No, she’d hinted that she would speak with him in private on the subject, and he’d nodded and let it go for the moment. He could already tell that Greta Van Horn was someone who did things in her own time and in her own way.

Would Karl and Victoria be shocked if he told them he didn’t care about the money, and that he only wanted to go back to Flagstaff? No doubt if it were up to them, they’d cheerfully put him on the next nonstop flight to Phoenix.

But it wasn’t their decision. Greta ruled the roost around here, and so Randall guessed he would have to wait and see what she planned to reveal…and when. It was a good thing he’d cultivated patience during his time at DHS, because otherwise, he would have already been demanding to return to his life in Arizona.

As much as he worried about Joanna, and what she must be thinking about his disappearance, he also knew he wasn’t quite ready to go back to Flagstaff. He’d learned of his mother’s identity, true, but that was only half the mystery.

Who was his father?

The answer to that question had to lie somewhere here in New York. Although he supposed it was possible that Alicia Van Horn had left the city to seek romance elsewhere, everything he knew about witch clans told him that didn’t seem very plausible. Witches just didn’t travel. No, they stayed in their own territories, for the most part.

Which led him back to the possibility he’d already considered, that his biological father was a civilian. If Alicia had been rebelling at what he guessed was her family’s heavy-handed rule, then having an affair with a civilian was a pretty perfect fuck-you.

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