by Lisa Childs
“I screwed up seventeen years ago,” Rosemary said. And she told her daughter about the night she was conceived.
Genevieve shuddered with revulsion, and her throat moved as if she was gagging. “Oh, my God . . .”
“I’m sorry,” Rosemary said. “So sorry . . . if I’d known, I never would have given you to them. If I’d had any idea what kind of monsters they were . . .”
Genevieve shook her head. “No, I can’t . . . I can’t believe they raped you. God, you must hate me.” She shuddered again and tried to tug her hand free of Rosemary’s.
But Rosemary held tight. “No!” she exclaimed. “It killed me to give you up, but I was so young . . .” Tears coursed down her face now. “If I was older, I would have kept you. I would have raised you.”
“But how could you even look at me?” Genevieve asked, the tears continuing to flow. “Is that why you didn’t visit very often? Was it too hard to see me?”
“That was how Abigail wanted it, probably so I wouldn’t tell you about the trust.”
“I don’t give a damn about the money,” Genevieve said. “It’s all the lies and what they did to you . . .” Her voice was hoarse, maybe from her screaming earlier, maybe from the tears rolling down her face.
“I’m so sorry,” Rosemary said, wishing now that she hadn’t told her, that she’d waited until she was stronger. “I—”
Genevieve tugged free and ran from the room.
Rosemary had been so afraid that she’d lost her daughter when she’d spent the past two weeks worrying about where she was and what had happened to her. She hadn’t realized that after she’d found her she might lose her all over again.
* * *
Whit lost his breath as Genevieve slammed into him in the hallway just outside ICU. He grabbed her shoulders to steady her, and she flinched and cringed as if fearing he was going to hurt her. He wanted to hug her close, but he forced himself to step back from her. But he didn’t let her go either, not when seeing how upset she was.
“She told you,” he surmised.
Her tear-reddened eyes widened in horror. “You know?”
He nodded. “I was there when she found out. She let Dr. Cooke hypnotize her, so she could finally learn the truth. And it devastated her. Worrying about you, thinking that body we found could be yours, devastated her, too. She loves you—so much that she risked her life for yours over and over again.”
She flinched. “I didn’t want her to get hurt.”
“I know,” he said. “You saved her life today.” Or was it yesterday? The day had lasted so damn long.
“I love her,” Genevieve said through sobs.
“Then give her a chance to explain why she gave you up,” he urged her. “She was so young, and Abigail manipulated her.”
“I know that,” Genevieve said. “I know that better than anyone.”
“Then why are you running from her?” he asked. “Nobody loves you like she does. Nobody.”
“But how can she love me?” she asked, her pretty, bruised face twisting with a grimace of self-disgust.
“The same way my mother loved me,” he said. “I, too, was conceived in rape. My mother didn’t tell me until I was older than you are. And even then she only told me because she was dying and I begged her to tell me the truth about my father. . . .”
Genevieve gasped. “I’m . . . I’m so sorry . . .”
He’d hated now that he’d put his mother through that, but he’d wanted to know what the truth was in the rumors he’d heard so many years. “When she told me how I was conceived, I realized how much she loved me. So much that she kept working for the man who’d raped her so that he would support us.” Once he’d learned the truth, though, he’d vowed to never accept another dime from that man.
“I wish it was you,” Genevieve said. “I wish you were my dad. . . .” Then she broke away from him and rushed down the hallway.
He started after her—until he noticed that the sheriff had caught her. He would stop her from doing anything reckless. Whit needed to check on Rosemary now. As upset as Genevieve was, he could only imagine how bad Rosemary was feeling.
When he stepped into the room, he found her crumpled over in the bed, her face in her hands. Sobs racked her slender frame, making her shoulders shake. He put down the railing on the side of the bed, sat beside her, and pulled her into his arms. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “She’s going to be okay. She’s damn strong. So damn strong ... she gets that from her mother.”
Rosemary’s breath hitched then steadied, and she pulled her hands away from her face. “She’s going to need to be strong.”
“She has been,” he said. “She’s smart, too. She survived captivity with that kid.”
“What happened to him?” she asked.
He shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”
She gasped. “What happened to him? Did you kill him?”
“Not me.”
“Genevieve?”
“No,” he said. “Furniture isn’t the only antique the Pierce sisters have in that house. They had an old revolver, too.”
“Evelyn shot him?”
He shook his head. “No, Bonita was the one who snuck the gun out while Genevieve was arguing with him. And when I threw a chair through the window, she fired at him.”
“Oh no . . .” Tears pooled in her eyes again. “That poor woman. She’s already been through so much. And if he really was her grandson . . .”
“She actually seemed fine,” he assured her. “I’m not even sure she realized what she did.”
Rosemary sighed. “She and I have that in common. I’ve made such a mess of things,” she said. “With Genevieve . . . with you . . .”
“I’m here,” Whit reminded her. “And I’m not leaving you again—no matter what you say to me.”
“But—”
He pressed his finger across her lips. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you for all these years. I just didn’t think I deserved you, that I deserved any happiness ... since I lost Deborah and Isabella, too.”
“Why would you think that?” she asked, her blue eyes brimming with tears.
“I thought that I didn’t deserve happiness because I brought my mother so much pain,” he said. “Like Genevieve, I am also a product of rape. That’s why I could have never hurt you like that. It’s why . . .”
She pressed her hand over her mouth to either hold back another gasp or a cry. Fresh tears glistened in her beautiful eyes. “I’m so sorry I ever thought that about you. And when I told you that you were forcing yourself on me, I just wanted you to leave so you wouldn’t get sucked into a scandal.”
“I know that now,” he said. That she’d been protecting him . . .
“I still don’t want that for you,” she admitted. “My life is such a mess now. I don’t know if Genevieve will ever forgive me.”
“I already talked to Genevieve,” he said. “She’s worried about you forgiving her—”
“For what?”
“For being a constant reminder of your rape,” he explained. “I told her about my past and about how much my mother loved me even after what happened to her. I assured her that you love her like that, more than anything.”
She shook her head. “Not more than you . . . but, Whit—”
He leaned over and pressed his mouth to hers, kissing her deeply. Loving her totally. But she pressed her hand against his chest and pushed him back.
“But your campaign, your career—”
“Means nothing compared to you,” he said. “I won’t let you push me away again. I won’t give you up. And if you care for me at all, you won’t ask me to do that.”
“I love you,” she said. “That’s why I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’ll only hurt me if you keep pushing me away,” he said. “I love you too much to lose you again.”
“You won’t,” she assured him. “But do you mind if I stay on the island for a while? I feel like I should keep working
at the hall, like I can do some good there, maybe with Genevieve if she’ll stay, too.”
“Let’s ask her,” he said as he caught a glimpse through the glass of the young girl. He motioned for her to join them as she’d motioned for him earlier. As slowly as the wall of glass slid open after Genevieve pressed the button that activated it, she moved, but she joined them.
If she had any lingering doubts about how her real mother felt about her, Rosemary dispelled them when she reached up from the bed and hugged her daughter closely.
Genevieve clung to her, too, until Rosemary pulled back and cupped her bruised face gently in her hands.
“I love you,” she told her daughter. “So I’m leaving this up to you. I’d like you to stay here and live with me.”
“You want me to stay with you?” Genevieve asked, stunned.
Rosemary nodded. “Of course.”
“With us,” Whit said. He had no intention of letting Rosemary go again.
“If that’s okay with you,” Rosemary told her daughter.
Genevieve nodded and wrapped her arms around Rosemary again, hugging her close.
Whit would have hugged them both . . . if he wasn’t worried that Genevieve would recoil. She was fragile yet. But Rosemary wasn’t. She was strong and certain.
Over her daughter’s head, she told him, “I love you.”
“And I love you.” So much that he cared only that they were together from now on—no matter where the hell they were.
* * *
The sheriff stared at the screen of his laptop until it went black. Despite or maybe because of all the notes he’d taken, he had no idea what to include in his report. Evelyn claimed she’d fired the fatal shot, but that wasn’t what Whit and Genevieve had said.
Or Bonita . . .
“I hit the target,” she’d told him with a cheery smile.
The target had been Teddy Bowers’s heart.
“Bullseye,” she’d murmured. “He’s not my baby. Not my baby . . .”
Evelyn had shaken her head. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. . . .”
Maybe that was true. But Whit and Genevieve knew. Bonita had probably fired the fatal shot, but she’d done so in self-defense and in defense of the others. Deacon had no intention of pressing charges against her or Evelyn, so it didn’t really matter which one he listed as the shooter.
He sighed as he held his fingers over the laptop keyboard. Genevieve hadn’t been too choked up about her kidnapper dying. But she didn’t believe he’d been involved in the death of the other girl.
Deacon glanced down at the report lying under the notes on his desk. The coroner’s report ...
While he didn’t know who that girl was, he knew she’d been murdered. Despite the condition of the corpse, the coroner had found evidence of a wound through her skull that the coyotes couldn’t have caused unless they’d had a special tool.
What the hell kind of tool had it been? Ice pick? Letter opener? He needed to find it for a match. He needed to find a killer, too, if he shared Genevieve’s belief that Teddy Bowers wasn’t responsible for this murder.
She’d claimed that he’d been really sweet with her at first—until she’d wanted to leave him. Then he’d gone crazy, especially when Rosemary had showed up trying to find her. He’d focused all his attention on trying to kill Rosemary because he’d already felt like he’d been denied other things that were his birthright.
Like the hall ...
Who the hell would want to stake a claim to that or to being a Bainesworth? The kid must have been crazy. Eventually Deacon would find out once Whittaker Lawrence helped him get those warrants for DNA.
Deacon sighed and tapped his keyboard until the laptop screen flickered back to life. And if the guy was so crazy that he’d tried to kill Rosemary, he might have killed that other woman.
Whoever she was ...
But if Teddy Bowers wasn’t her killer, then there was another murderer on the island. And maybe the corpse Deacon had found hadn’t been his only victim.
What about his wife ... ?
Had she really killed herself?
At least Deacon could wrap up the case regarding Genevieve . . . thanks to the Pierce sisters. But as for the other deaths ...
Deacon had a lot of work left to do, a lot of investigating. . . but he wasn’t the only one investigating. That damn reporter was sticking around, too.
Look for the next thrilling romantic suspense novel
by Lisa Childs,
coming from Zebra Books in Fall 2021!
Lisa Childs is an award-winning and international best-selling author of more than seventy novels. She loves spinning dark and twisty stories that keep readers awake because they’re either too busy turning pages or too scared to sleep. In addition to romantic suspense, she also writes women’s fiction, paranormal, and contemporary romance.
Lisa loves to hear from readers, who can contact her on Facebook, and through her website www.lisachilds.com.
