Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

Max Tanner's mother had landed him with a new mother and younger sibling who were demanding all the time and attention his father could spare after endless ranch work.

A moment of camaraderie with a casual friend, hardly a blip in Ethan's life.

Until now.

He picked up a pencil and circled the name he'd found. "She raised him," he murmured. "Her name is here as his birth mother. So why did he say his real mother was dead?"

"You haven't said a word about me contacting Galen."

Nell didn't look up from the copies of the birth records she was studying. "What was there to say? You made a judgment call, probably the right one. We had reached the point where it was undoubtedly best to meet and compare notes." She paused, then added wryly, "Though it taught us both a valuable lesson in being undercover. Next time, we'll make damned sure our cell phones don't allow just anyone to access the menu or redial options."

"I thought that might have been overlooked."

"Yeah. Well, we live and learn."

"If we live."

Nell hadn't been surprised that Max had — without comment or explanation — remained behind when the others had left. He had helped Shelby clear away the remains of the Chinese takeout she and Justin brought along for everyone, giving Nell the chance to speak quickly and privately to Galen, and then had made a fresh pot of coffee while the others said their goodbyes to Nell.

The coffee told her he expected to be here awhile.

He had been watching her more or less steadily most of the evening, and she had been highly conscious of it. He hadn't said much about the blackout, beyond asking her if she felt better, and since Galen had been present and Justin and Shelby had arrived very soon afterward, there had been no opportunity for them to continue the discussion that the blackout had interrupted.

Something for which Nell had been deeply grateful.

He and Galen had appeared to be perfectly comfortable with each other, which hadn't surprised her; Galen could make himself agreeable when he wanted to, and since he wasn't the type to play macho games with other men, Max had undoubtedly found him both informative and easy to talk to.

Informative. Nell hadn't yet had the nerve to ask exactly what the two men talked about while she was out cold upstairs, but the possibilities worried her.

Still, Max had seemed calm. Surprisingly so, really, given how much her blackouts seemed to upset him. Even the revelation that Nell had known from the beginning that Justin Byers was working for him hadn't seemed to bother Max too much, though Shelby's participation had startled him, at least initially.

But Nell didn't have to look at him now to read his increasing tension; she could hear it in his voice.

"You and Ethan seemed to get along fairly well today, all things considered," she noted, ignoring his comment. "When are you two going to make peace?"

"Whenever he's ready. I've been more than willing for years. But then, I'm not the one who felt wronged."

Nell did look up then, gazing across the table at Max with lifting brows. "It was hardly your fault or even your choice that his father left you the ranch. Besides which, Ethan would have made a lousy rancher, everybody knows that. Even Ethan knows it."

"I gather it's the principle of the thing. Or a question of fairness. The ranch was in the Cole family for three generations."

"And he would have sold it if he had inherited it. Anyway, his father did leave him other properties and holdings. The estate was fairly divided between the two of you."

"I was the stepson, yet I inherited what his father loved most. It bothers him. There's nothing I can do about that."

"So the peace is his to make." Nell sighed.

"Would you make peace with Hailey if she was standing here in front of you?"

"I don't know," Nell answered honestly. "I'd like to ask her why she made some of the choices she made in her life. If she got involved with all those abusive men because in some twisted way she thought it was punishing our father for not loving her. Or punishing herself for being unworthy of his love."

"Is that what you think?"

"It makes sense. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe Patterson seduced her or lured her into that basement playroom of his when she was a kid, starting her down a path she has to follow for the rest of her life."

"But?"

"But I don't think it was that simple. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was her seducing Patterson rather than the other way around."

"Seriously? That young?"

Nell hesitated, then said, "When she was even younger, she… saw things in our house. Things that would have given her a very twisted idea of how relationships between men and women are supposed to be."

Max was silent for a moment, then said, "What about you, Nell? How did living in that house affect the way you look at relationships?"

"I got away."

"When you were seventeen. But any psychologist will tell you that most of our attitudes and ideas are formed before we reach adulthood. So how twisted are your ideas of relationships between men and women?"

Nell knew he was deliberately goading her — but she also knew it was a real and honest question, and she did her best to answer it honestly.

"I lived in my own little world, Max, you know that. Even at a young age, I knew there was something wrong with my father, something unnatural in how he treated all of us. So while Hailey was watching avidly and trying her best to be what he wanted or what she thought he wanted, I was trying to pull away."

"And me?"

"What about you?"

"Why were you drawn to me? Why was I able to get close to you when no one else could?"

Nell dropped her gaze finally to the records on the table in front of her. "I don't know. I don't even remember knowing you until — until you came home from college that summer."

"The summer before. When you were sixteen."

She nodded. "By then I stayed out of the house as much as I could. During the summer, that meant riding a lot. Exploring the fields and trails, the woods. I'd creep out of bed early every morning and throw a couple of pieces of fruit and a sandwich in a paper bag, then bridle my horse and ride away. Most days I didn't come home until sunset."

"It didn't bother your father that you'd stay gone all day?"

"He didn't like it. But by then I had made it such a habit there wasn't much he could say about it. When I was younger, sometimes I'd be out riding and hear something — and there he'd be, in his car or on another of the horses, watching me."

Max drew a breath and let it out slowly. "Which explains why you were always so tense and nervous even miles away from this house."

"By the time I was sixteen, he'd stopped following me so often, I guess he'd learned that I was always alone and never doing anything he could have objected to. But every once in a while, he'd still turn up without warning, checking on me. So I knew he could. I knew I couldn't let my guard down for long."

"Jesus." Max shook his head. "Do you realize it's a goddamned miracle you let yourself get involved with me?"

"Is it?"

"Well, from my point of view. Maybe from yours it's more like the one huge mistake you made in your life."

Nell flinched slightly. "I never said that."

"No. You just ran out of my life without a backward glance. And after —" He drew another breath and, again, let it out slowly. But his voice was still strained when he finished," — and after we'd made love for the first time that very day. We'd made love, and while I was still trying to cope with the unexpected… aftershocks of that, you were gone."

"I told you why."

"Twelve years later, you told me why. Then… all I knew was that you were gone. You were seventeen years old and, as far as I knew, completely alone in the world. I can't begin to tell you how many nights I woke up in a cold sweat, terrified that you were lost somewhere with nobody to help you, maybe even pregnant, having to do God knew what just to stay alive."