The Rebel's Return by Gina Wilkins

Author:Gina Wilkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

7

RACHEL REALIZED that her jaw had dropped. She closed her mouth, then shook her head. “That’s insane. What makes you think Roger believed such a thing?”

“He told me. The night he ordered me to stop seeing you. He said he wouldn’t allow his sister to be involved with the stepson of a whore and the son of a murderer. When I asked what the hell he was talking about, he told me his crazy theory. And then he pulled out what he claimed was proof that he was right.”

She could hardly believe what she was hearing. “What kind of proof?”

“A gold bracelet. It was covered in dirt and dried mud, but I recognized it. It had belonged to Nadine. She never took it off.”

“Where did Roger find Nadine’s bracelet?”

“He said he’d been walking in the woods behind the rock house—which is where he claimed your father and my stepmother used to secretly meet. He claimed his dog dug up the bracelet. From that evidence, he concluded that Nadine and Al were buried somewhere in those woods.”

“This is crazy,” Rachel murmured, shaking her head in dazed disbelief. “I know Roger had a hard time accepting our father’s disappearance, but how could he have come up with this ridiculous theory?”

“He refused to accept that Al would abandon his children for Nadine. It was easier for him to believe that your father was dead than to admit Al cared so little about the two of you that he would simply disappear from your lives forever.”

“I didn’t like admitting it, either,” Rachel replied. “And I doubt that Emily likes knowing that her mother ran off when she was just a baby. But this...”

Lucas nodded grimly. “That’s pretty much the way I reacted when Roger threw this tale at me. I thought he’d lost his mind. I told him my father was a bastard, but he wasn’t a murderer. My father never cared enough about anyone to be driven to that point.”

“Nadine must have dropped the bracelet by accident. Finding it in those woods is no proof of anything.”

“That’s what I told Roger.”

“And what did he say?”

“That he had more proof.”

“What?”

Lucas shook his head. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said I would believe him when he found...”

“When he found what?” Rachel prompted.

“The bodies.”

She pushed her plate away, leaving her lunch half-finished. “That’s what he was doing in your woods that night? Looking for my father’s body?”

“Either that or hoping to catch you meeting me there so he could force a confrontation. I don’t know.”

Scrubbing a hand over her face, Rachel sighed. “Why did you tell me all this?”

“Because I thought you had a right to know. And because...”

Again, he hesitated. Again, Rachel prodded. “What?”

“A couple of months ago, someone broke into Emily’s house. She walked in and was knocked unconscious. When she woke up, she found her room had been ransacked and some of her jewelry was missing—including the bracelet she was wearing when she entered the house.”

Rachel was horrified. She’d been told there’d been a series of break-ins around Honoria, but she hadn’t heard about the attack on Emily.

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