Emilie Rose - The Secrets of Her Past

The man on her front porch wasn’t her dead husband. It was his identical twin. Adam Drake. Adam so strongly resembled the man she’d once loved with every fiber of her being that looking at him made her chest ache.

Resignation settled over her like a smothering lead X-ray apron. She should’ve known her self-imposed exile couldn’t last. It had taken six years for the nightmare of her past to catch up with her. The Drakes had found her despite her changing names and relocating to another state.

Judging by his expression, Adam hadn’t forgotten or forgiven what she’d done. She couldn’t blame him. She couldn’t forget or forgive her actions that night, either. She pressed a hand over the empty ache in her stomach—a sensation that never seemed to abate.

With a face as rigid as a granite mountainside, Adam glared at her from the top step. She didn’t climb the treads to join him, and probably couldn’t have even if she’d ordered her gelatinous legs to move. Her run home in the sweltering heat had taken a lot out of her, but not nearly as much as this man’s presence. Her mouth was parched, her water bottle empty. She needed to rehydrate. But not so badly that she’d invite him inside her home.

“My father has lung cancer,” Adam stated without preliminaries—typical of him. Andrew had been the charming twin.

The bald statement punched the air from her. She struggled to wheeze enough breath to respond. “I’m sorry.”

“He wants you to run his practice while he undergoes treatment.”

No! Fear and guilt collided, sending razor-sharp fragments of pain slicing through her. She couldn’t let Danny Drake back into her life and her heart only to say goodbye to her father-in-law again. She’d already buried too many loved ones. Her parents. Her baby sister. Her husband. Her son.

She wanted to ask about Danny’s prognosis, but couldn’t handle knowing even that much. Distance, both emotional and geographical, was her ally. “I can’t.”

“You owe him.”

“I have a practice here, Adam. People depend on me.” Sweat snaked down her spine.

“In a backwater town this size you can’t possibly have enough business to operate five days a week.”

True. Quincey was a one-stoplight rural Southern township. But the slow pace gave her just enough time and money to work with her rescue animals. As if to reinforce that point, Bojangles’s nicker pulled her attention to the pasture beside the house.

The bay gelding shifted his hooves and pushed his broad chest against the board fence as if sensing her distress and wanting to come to her aid. She and the horse had a lot in common—they’d both been left behind by the people they loved. She’d taken enough psychology courses to know that saving the horse had been a substitute for saving the baby she couldn’t.

“I wish your father well, Adam. But I can’t help. Give Danny and Helen my best. Goodbye.”

He didn’t take the hint to vacate her porch. Fine. She’d go around back. She pivoted.

“You owe him, Madison.”

Her spine snapped straight under an icy deluge of guilt. Yes, she did owe the Drakes. They’d taken her in even before the tornado had killed her family. For years they’d been her surrogate parents, but then her mother-in-law had said things that still haunted Madison’s dreams. Neither Adam nor his father had witnessed Helen’s emotional explosion, but Madison had been shredded by the verbal shrapnel.

Reluctantly, Madison faced him again. Sweat-dampened hair clung to her forehead. She shoved it back with an unsteady hand. “Adam, you don’t want me there.”

“No. But I want my father alive. His wishes are the only reason I’m here.”

“What does Helen say about this?”

A nerve in his jaw twitched. “My mother will do whatever it takes to convince Dad to undergo the most promising treatment protocol. We both will.”

Hope that Madison hadn’t realized she’d been harboring leeched from her, leaving her drained, aching and empty. They didn’t want her back. She was a necessary evil, not a long-missed family member.

“I can’t, Adam.”

Disgust twisted his lips. “Andrew was right. You are a cold, selfish bitch.”

Cold, selfish bitch. The words sliced her like a new scalpel, reopening the gaping wound left by the hateful argument that night when she’d learned the man she’d loved had sabotaged her carefully made plans. Plans they had discussed. Plans they had agreed upon.

But she would never tell Adam or his parents about those final, horrible moments before the accident. Their memories of Andrew were all they had left and she didn’t want to spoil them.

Her nails bit into her palms. “Danny needs to find someone closer to Norcross. Quincey’s a seven-hour drive away.”

Adam descended the stairs and stopped a yard from her, bombarding her nerves in a dozen different ways. He looked so much like his brother—same dark hair, blue-green eyes, features and height. But he wasn’t the husband she’d loved, the one who’d betrayed her, the one she’d buried because she’d lost her temper and made a mistake that she couldn’t wash away no matter how many tears she cried or how many animals she saved.

Anger emanated from Adam. “You tell Dad to get someone else. I tried. He won’t listen to me.”

Although Adam’s voice was firm and authoritative, for the first time since she’d met him fifteen years ago she saw naked fear in his eyes. He was afraid of losing his father. She understood that fear all too well, since she’d already walked that lonely path. But she couldn’t allow herself to be vulnerable again. She might not make it out with her sanity intact this time.

She pushed away thoughts of the dark days after the wreck, of a cold, clammy hand and blood...so much blood.

“I’m sorry. I can’t,” she repeated and scrubbed her palm against her pants.

Tires crunched on the gravel driveway of her farm followed by the low rumble of a diesel engine pickup truck. Panic clawed up Madison’s spine. June, her friend and tenant, was home, and knowing the curious deputy, as soon as she parked her vehicle by the cottage she rented from Madison, she’d come over to investigate the strange car beneath the pecan tree.

She had to get rid of Adam before the tight-knit community of Quincey found out about the atrocity Madison had committed. No one here knew about her unforgivable sin—and she wanted to keep it that way. Otherwise the townsfolk might turn against her and cast her out of the sanctuary she’d created for herself.

Maybe all Danny needed was someone outside the family to make him see reason. She could afford to drive down to Georgia once. Then she’d come home and life would return to normal.

“I’ll come Saturday and talk to him.”

Adam’s gaze held her captive for several tense seconds, making her heart pound as she listened in dread for June’s approaching footsteps.

“You reverted to your maiden name,” Adam accused.

“Yes, I...” How could she explain that she’d wanted to erase everything about her marriage to his brother? She couldn’t. “Look, I can’t invite you in. I have plans this evening.”

A plan to clean cages, but that wasn’t how he interpreted it if the revulsion filling his eyes was any gauge. She didn’t enlighten him.

“Make sure you show up. Here’s the address and my number.” He pulled a business card from his pocket and wrote on the back, then thrust it at her. He strode to the sedan and drove away just as June rounded the house.

Madison sagged in relief, but the damage had been done. The scab had been ripped away. All she wanted to do was crawl into the farmhouse and tend her wound. She didn’t want to talk to anyone—not even a friend.