His Brother's Bride

All of the rooms were rented for that weekend, with more bookings than they could handle coming in. But they’d had a couple of cancellations, too, after the article that got out about William’s disappearance.

If something wasn’t resolved soon, or if it was and the news was bad, the future of Twin Oaks was going to be in serious jeopardy.

But that was down the list of Maureen’s concern. If any harm had come to William through Carl Nevil or his brother Owen, she was responsible.

And it wasn’t just William. Cecilia Hamilton and Leslie Renwick were missing, too. And what about their other guests? And the twins? And Clint and Keegan?

Maureen had to pull herself out of bed. At times during the past week, she’d wondered if she was losing her mind. She couldn’t focus. Couldn’t do any of the things she normally just took for granted.

She thought she’d found the solution by leaving New York. Changing her name. Having her records sealed. Quitting the profession she’d loved.

Instead she’d become a sitting duck. And she wasn’t sitting alone. She’d pulled a whole lot of innocent people up on the roost with her.

Maureen wasn’t sure how long she was going to be able to keep still. She couldn’t just wait around to be prey for Owen and Carl Nevil. She was a cop. A damn good one. She knew how to ferret out even the most obscure information.

If something didn’t break soon, she was going to have to go back to work.

* * *

LAUREL DID WELL at keeping up appearances—she’d had a lifetime of practice. Hiding from Scott was another matter entirely.

How could she pretend that what he’d told her didn’t matter? How did she convince him that losing the image of the family unit she’d imagined herself a part of wasn’t a big deal to her? How did she go back to not being vulnerable when he alone knew how vulnerable she really was?

Pulling on the undies and blouse she’d brought from Twin Oaks the evening before, zipping up the jeans, she felt completely naked. Exposed. She needed to hide from Scott. Yet he knew right where to find her. Literally and figuratively.

The Saturday newspaper was her solution for breakfast. Sitting across from him at the little coffee shop they’d found a couple of blocks from the motel, Laurel applied herself to the fact-filled print. She’d been a voracious reader of the news even back in high school, and since becoming an investigative reporter, she needed a newspaper in the morning more than she needed breakfast or coffee. Usually it helped her feel as though she was in control of all that was going on around her in her community, her state, her world. From weather to politics, she wanted a handle on it all.

But today the paper was also a hiding place.

“There’s another West Nile virus scare,” she read. “A couple more people have been infected.”

“It can generally be treated, though,” he said. Laurel heard his coffee cup land back on the table. He was on his second cup, but his bagel was sitting right where the waitress had left it.

He shared a few facts about the mosquitoes that carried the disease, but for once Laurel wasn’t fascinated by his wealth of information. She was too busy trying to figure out how to act around him. She took a bite of her own poppy-seed bagel, though swallowing it past her dry throat almost choked her. She was going to keep up appearances, though. They were all she had at the moment.

“Did you sleep well last night?”

Laurel’s skin burned. She couldn’t talk about last night. She was barely able to think about it.

Lowering the paper a couple of inches, she peered at him over the top of it. His gaze was direct.

And lifeless.

Scott was asking for nothing. As far as he was concerned, everything was over.

She found she couldn’t look away, but neither did she know what to say.

“Not too bad,” she finally said.

She raised the paper. Now was the time for her to ask him how he’d slept. But she couldn’t.

“I didn’t get much sleep, either,” he told her anyway.

She focused on her paper. Was he ever going to finish that coffee so they could get on with the business they were there to do?

To fill the awkward silence, she read him part of a story from the crime desk. A young man had killed his pregnant wife because she was leaving him.

“It’s a shame, you know?” she said, folding the paper and, dropping it on top of her unfinished bagel. “He not only killed his wife, but his baby, too. It’s strange what people do supposedly out of love.”