Heir in a Year by Elizabeth Bevarly

Author:Elizabeth Bevarly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-04-10T18:46:14+00:00

Chapter Seven

All through her account, Bennett had watched Haven carefully, bathed in the golden light of the fire, her eyes dark and her expression haunted. And he wondered when, exactly, everything in his life—everything in the world—had changed. When she’d first started describing what happened to her the summer after he graduated from Barnaby, he’d wondered just how much she’d had to drink before he got home. When he realized she was sober, he’d wondered if she was lying. Or just flat-out delusional.

Then he’d remembered how much his cousin Everett loved pranks and how his cousin Cricket had taken the term “mean girl” to new heights. Although Bennett truly hadn’t ever been wedded to the feud between the Haddens and Moreaus the way the rest of the family had, he’d never exactly divorced himself from it, either. Certainly, he’d never said anything against any other family members who perpetuated it. Even at school, where he knew his cousins sometimes gave Haven a rough time, he’d never stepped in. He hadn’t wanted to make waves in the family. And, hey, Haven was a Moreau. Why should he show any concern for her or her family when she and her family had never shown any concern for him and his? But had he realized just how badly his cousins were mistreating her, he would have—

—what? he asked himself. Told them to knock it off? As if that would have actually worked? Like most of his family, his cousins were total narcissists who didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Like most of his family, they despised the Moreaus. He didn’t spend that much time with his extended family anyway, since he’d never really liked any of them that much. But he had known they weren’t very nice to Haven. And he’d never said or done anything about it. Which, maybe, had given them the impression that he would think a prank like the one they’d pulled was as funny as they’d clearly found it themselves.

“Moreau, I’m sorry,” he said. “They had no right to do that to you. It was inexcusable.”

Instead of looking at him, she looked into the fire. He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. He’d never been bullied himself. On the contrary, he’d traveled in all the best social circles at Barnaby. He’d hung out mostly with the populars because, duh, he was a Hadden. But he’d been at home with the jocks, too, thanks to his excelling on the lacrosse and polo teams. The arty kids had welcomed him because he liked books and movies. He’d run around with the brains sometimes—not because his grades were that great, but because the teachers loved him, so the scholarly students did, too. He’d even gotten along fine with the counterculture types—the goths, the burnouts and the loners.

The one group he hadn’t had anything to do with was the geeks and nerds. Haven’s group. Not that she’d really been welcomed there, either, he knew, thanks to her blue-collar background. Even the outcasts at Barnaby had cast her out.

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