“Have you ever wondered why you wanted a sister so desperately?”
“Only-child syndrome,” she guessed, unconsciously echoing the label Joel had used a few days earlier.
“Maybe. Or maybe it went deeper than that.”
The throbbing in Riane’s head grew faster, stronger.
“Maybe you didn’t want a sister,” Ellen continued, “you wanted your sister.”
“What—” she swallowed “—what are you getting at?”
“According to Mr. Logan, you have a sister. She’s the one who hired him to find you.”
“No.” She shook her head furiously, refusing to believe it. “You’re lying.”
“Do you really think I’d lie about something like that?”
“You’ve lied about everything else!”
Ellen blanched. “You’re right. I’m not going to make excuses, because a lie of omission is still a lie.” She stepped toward her daughter; Riane stepped back. “I’m not lying about this.”
“I would remember if I had a sister,” Riane insisted, desperately needing to believe it.
But what if she was wrong?
“You weren’t even two years old when you came to us,” Ellen reminded her gently.
“If I have a sister, then you took me away from her.”
“No! We didn’t know. Camille never mentioned another child.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
Ellen was silent for a long moment. “I like to think so, but I’m not sure. I’d had four miscarriages in the three years before we went to Tavaria, and each one was more devastating than the last.”
Riane didn’t want to feel any sympathy. Her emotions were chaotic enough without the tug of empathy that responded to this admission.
“It was one of the reasons we decided to go overseas,” Ellen continued. “But I still couldn’t escape the sense of failure I felt. And when Camille called and said she’d found a child we could adopt—well, I probably didn’t ask as many questions as I should have.”
“Then you believe it’s true—I have a sister?”
“I don’t think Mr. Logan would have made such an allegation if he didn’t have the evidence to back it up.”
“Evidence,” Riane scoffed. “He didn’t even have my correct date of birth.”
“October second,” Ellen said softly.
“October second?” Riane echoed. “But my birthday is August twenty-fourth.”
“We changed your birth date to coincide with the date we adopted you,” Ellen admitted. “To celebrate the day you came to us.”
Riane shook her head. She couldn’t believe this was happening, that her whole life was unraveling before her very eyes. Not even her birthday was really hers, but an arbitrary date her parents had chosen.
How many more secrets would be uncovered before this nightmare was over? How many lies had been manufactured to cover the truth? How many deceptions had she unquestioningly accepted?
The questions swirled through her mind now. She wanted to demand answers, but she was afraid to know. She wanted to demand the truth, but she wasn’t prepared to accept what it might be.
Instead, blinded by a haze of confusion and tears, she simply walked away.
Not long after he’d left the Quinlan mansion, Joel received the call that he’d started to think would never come. From Felicia Elliott—or Reynolds, as she now called herself—the biological mother of Rheanne Elliott.
After he spent no less than ten minutes assuring the woman he hadn’t been hired by her ex-husband to track her down, she finally agreed to meet him.
It was ironic, he thought, that he’d chased this woman from Arizona to California to Michigan, only to find that she was now in Wheeling, West Virginia. Another bizarre coincidence in a case that seemed to be full of them.
He checked out of the hotel and met her at a public coffee shop. Despite the assurances about his reasons for tracking her down, the former Felicia Elliott was obviously still wary. It was apparent in the way she jumped every time the bell above the door rang, the way her eyes darted around the room, and in the way she was dressed.
There was no doubt that Felicia had once been a beautiful woman, but her thick dark hair was threaded with gray and chopped short, her deep brown eyes were shadowed and bare of makeup, her slender figure hidden beneath baggy pants and an unfashionable sweater. Considering the abuse she’d suffered for so many years at the hands of her second husband, none of this surprised Joel. What surprised—and disturbed—him was her careless habit of referring to the child she’d given birth to and given away as “the kid.”
And although he didn’t think she was deliberately withholding any information, her recollection about the events of twenty-two years ago was unclear. Joel took a sip of the bitter coffee and reworded his question. “Did you want to give up your baby, Ms. Reynolds?”
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “The kid was difficult. Cried all the time. Always hungry, fussing. I couldn’t handle her. My husband couldn’t handle her. We did what was best.”
“But you hadn’t considered adoption until you were approached by this woman?”
“Never thought about it,” she admitted. “What are you looking for, Mr. Logan? Do you want me to say that we felt pressured by this woman? That she forced us to give up the kid?” She shrugged again. “Maybe we did feel pressured, but we also felt relieved. Once she was gone, I didn’t regret my decision. I don’t regret it now.”
“Do you remember the name of the people who adopted your child?”
“I don’t recall that we were ever told.”
He pushed his cup aside, not sure if it was the caffeine eating a hole in his stomach lining or this woman’s blatant disregard for the child she’d borne. “It didn’t bother you, not knowing who would raise your child?”
“I had other things to worry about. And Gavin never really wanted the kid, anyway.”
No matter how many questions he asked, no matter how many times they went over the facts that she did remember, nothing changed. Desperate to jog her memory, Joel pulled a picture out of his wallet. “Do you remember when this was taken?”
A trembling finger traced the faces of the two young girls in the photo. “It was Arden’s ninth birthday. Rheanne was about eighteen months old.”
It was the first time she’d mentioned either of the girls by name, and the wistfulness in her voice made Joel realize that she had, at least at one time, loved her children. And if she had cared about them, she might have kept some mementos.
“Would you happen to have any other pictures of Rheanne?” Joel asked. He knew he was grasping at straws, but if he could get a better photo, he might be able to have it enhanced and computer aged. He needed something more than what he had in order to continue his search for Arden’s sister.
But Felicia shook her head. “We gave away the pictures with the kid.”
Riane kicked the tire of her BMW coupe, as if it was somehow the fault of the vehicle that she’d run out of gas. She knew it was her own stupidity. She’d been driving for hours since she’d left home, following the same path in and around Mapleview, never once looking at the gas gauge. But she wasn’t feeling very rational or logical at the moment. She didn’t know how or what to feel. Hell, she didn’t even know who she was anymore.
Except that she was alone. Completely and utterly alone, and stranded on the side of a road going to God only knew where.
She reached into her purse for her cell phone, resigned to calling the automobile club and admitting that she’d been a scatterbrain. It would probably make the papers: Senator’s Daughter Runs Out of Gas on Roadside. She gave a half laugh. Except that she wasn’t the senator’s daughter, not really.
Well, running out of gas wasn’t so bad. It could be worse—such as her cell phone battery being dead.
Riane threw the phone onto the passenger seat in disgust.
Damn Joel Logan, anyway. If he hadn’t started digging around, prying into her past,
she’d be at home right now in her nice warm bed.
She glanced around, could see nothing but thick trees lining either side of the gravel road. The sun was starting to go down, which meant it would be dark in about an hour. Riane sighed and looked down at her attire. She was still wearing the silk dress and high-heeled pumps she’d put on to pick her parents up from the airport. Now she was going to have to trudge down this dusty road in search of a phone.
But who was she going to call when she found one? The auto club was the obvious choice. They could tow the car or take her to a gas station. Then what was she going to do? She wasn’t ready to go home, but she had nowhere else to go.
She closed her eyes, irritated when her thoughts strayed to Joel once again. No. There was no way she’d turn to him for help. Not when he was the one responsible for this whole mess.
Joel was on his way back to Mapleview when he found Riane’s car, apparently abandoned, on the side of the road.
Riane, however, was nowhere in sight, and the night was dark and heavy. He drove along a little farther, but the street was deserted. He called the house, even though he knew she wouldn’t be there if her car was here. The senator reluctantly confirmed that Riane had left a few hours earlier, upset after a discussion they’d had.
He didn’t need to be told that Riane Quinlan was Rheanne Elliott, nor did he get any satisfaction from the fact. The only thing that mattered now was finding Riane.
He couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d felt when she’d realized that everything she’d believed in had been a lie. She was probably still angry with him, too, and he knew she had reason to be. It didn’t make him feel any better to know that he’d finally succeeded in doing the job he’d been hired to do. Which reminded him that he should contact his client to share the news, but not yet. Not until he found Riane and knew she was okay.
After several more miles had passed with no sign of Riane or any kind of dwelling, he turned around and went back in the other direction. He slowed his vehicle as Rusty’s Tavern came into sight. He couldn’t imagine that Riane would ever set foot in such an establishment, but he couldn’t disregard the possibility. She wasn’t the kind of woman who was easily overlooked, and maybe someone inside would remember seeing her.
He felt responsible, at least in part, for Riane’s disappearance. He wanted to blame her parents—the senator and her husband. After all, they were the ones who had lied to Riane for twenty-two years. But he knew it wasn’t that simple. And it had been his investigation that had precipitated the crumbling of the foundation of her whole world.
Was it some kind of white knight syndrome that made him want to lift her up from that crumbling foundation? Or had he really fallen for the senator’s daughter?
The strains of a mellow country-western tune drifted out the open windows of the tavern. He pushed open the door of the bar and stepped into the dimly lit interior.
A quick scan revealed most of the tables around the perimeter of the dance floor were occupied, as well as a majority of the stools that lined the scarred expanse of bar. And that was where he found her.
She was sandwiched between two men, her long dark hair falling straight down the back of the same peach-colored dress she’d been wearing earlier. She turned her head to respond to something the man beside her said, and her eyes locked with his.
He didn’t believe in déjà vu, but the sensation that curled in the pit of his stomach when she saw him was reminiscent of the night they’d first met at the charity ball. Unlike that first night, however, she didn’t smile. She didn’t make a move toward him. She just turned her head away, tossing her hair over her shoulder, dismissing him.
Joel moved purposefully across the room, leaning down to brush a quick kiss on her lips before she could avert her face. It was a tactical move, yet it gave him enough of a taste of her that he craved more. He knew that if he tried to take it, though, she’d probably deck him. So he smiled. “Sorry I’m late, sweetheart.”
When she turned to glare at him, he sent a meaningful look at the cowboy seated beside her. The other man took the nonverbal hint and pushed back his stool, moving on to search for other company.
“Clint and I were in the middle of a conversation,” Riane said coolly, picking up the glass of beer in front of her.
“Your parents are worried about you,” he said.
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Partly.” He straddled the now-vacant stool beside her, ordered a draft beer. “I was worried about you, too.”
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine.”
“You’re drinking watered-down beer in a country-western bar,” Joel said mildly. “I don’t think you’re fine.”
“I like this place,” Riane told him. “The people are friendly, the mood is mellow, the beer is cold.”
“How much of that beer have you had?” he asked, passing a few bills to the bartender for the glass set in front of him.
“Not enough,” she said.
“Drinking yourself into oblivion isn’t the answer, Riane.”
“It’s a start.”
“Why don’t we go somewhere to talk about this?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. And I definitely don’t want to talk to you.”
“You can’t blame me for something that happened more than twenty years ago.”
“Maybe not,” she acknowledged. “But I can, and I do, blame you for what’s happening now.”
“I was only doing my job, Riane.”
“I hope that helps you sleep at night.” Then she slid off her stool, not looking entirely steady on her feet, and moved to the other end of the bar where the cowboy she’d been speaking to earlier had relocated.
Joel sipped his own beer. He’d be damned if he’d chase after her. He had only been doing his job. This wasn’t his fault; she wasn’t his responsibility. And yet he knew he couldn’t leave her here. It had taken only one glimpse into those dark eyes of hers to see that she was feeling alone and vulnerable. And the cowboy was looking decidedly encouraged that Riane had sought out his company again.
Resigned to settling in for the night, Joel finished his beer and went outside to make a phone call.
Riane wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that she’d managed to brush Joel off so easily. She didn’t want him here; she didn’t need him. And yet, even in the crowded room, she felt alone.
And she felt like a coward. It wasn’t in her nature to run away from something just because it was unpleasant. Her parents had taught her to take a stance, adhere to her principles. People had often commented that she was a lot like her mother—strong and determined—and she’d always been proud of that fact. But Ellen Rutherford-Quinlan wasn’t really her mother.
She sighed and finished the last few drops of beer in her glass, still stunned by the realization that the truth about her parentage had been hidden from her for so many years.
The song on the jukebox changed to something softer, slower.
“Dance with me,” Clint said, rising to his feet.
It wasn’t really an invitation, but Riane didn’t care. Maybe dancing would help get her mind off other things. That’s really all she wanted right now—to forget. Forget that everything she’d thought and believed about herself and her life had been a lie.
The cowboy pulled her into his arms, a little too close for comfort, but she didn’t protest. She laid her cheek against his shoulder, closed her eyes. It was nice to feel his arms around her, to lean on his strength. He wasn’t Joel, but—
She pushed aside the thought. She didn’t want to be with Joel. If she should be thinking about anyone right now, it was the man who was holding her. The man whose hand was inching lower, from her waist to her hip, from her hip to the curve of her behind, lower still, until he was cupping her buttock. He pulled her closer, tighter against him, until she could feel the evidence of his arousal. Panic began to rise inside her, slowly, steadily, as he ground his pelvis against her.
He dipped his head to skim his lips over her ear. His breath was hot against her neck. He was an attractive man; she should be attracted to him. But she wasn’t. Because he wasn’t Joel. And she mentally cursed Joel Logan again for being the first thought on her mind. It wasn’t fair that he’d gotten to her so effortlessly, turned her entire life upside down and walked out again.
She forced her attention back to the cowboy. Clint, that was his name. He was sweet and attentive. Okay, he was a little too free with his hands, but maybe what she really needed to forget this whole mess that was her life, was a night of mindless sex. It always seemed to work in the movies, anyway. And cowboys always had starring roles in romance novels. She wondered if they made love with their boots on, and giggled at the thought.
Giggled?
Riane didn’t giggle. Ever.
She giggled again.
Maybe she’d had more to drink than she’d thought. She couldn’t really remember how many times the bartender had set a new glass in front of her.
The hand that was on her butt squeezed lightly again, the other moved along her side, skimmed the side of her breast. Riane felt her stomach lurch, and she pushed away from him.
“Hey,” Clint protested, grabbing for her again. “What’s the matter?”
Riane shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t— I…I have to go.”
He didn’t let go of her. “You’re not going anywhere, honey. Your car’s broken down on the side of the road, remember?”
She closed her eyes, groaning softly. She had forgotten. She was well and truly stranded.
“Why don’t you come home with me, honey? We’ll come back out here in the morning and take a look at your car.”
She knew it was a bad idea, although her brain seemed pretty foggy right now and she wasn’t sure exactly why it was a bad idea. “Can’t you look at my car now?” she asked.
“It’s too dark out there to see what’s wrong,” he told her.
“I think I just ran out of gas.” Yes, she was sure she remembered now. She’d been driving a long time and had forgotten to monitor the gas gauge.
“Then we’ll come back in the morning with a can of gas,” he said. “You’re in no shape to drive home tonight, anyway.”
Some Kind of Hero Page 13