Texas Heroes: Volume 1

by Jean Brashear

  “Dev? What does he mean? Why would you want to—” Use me? She couldn’t say it. “After last night, I thought we—”

  Her father exploded. Whirled on Dev. “You were with her last night? Is there nothing you won’t do for revenge?”

  Dev’s eyes shot sparks. He glanced at Lacey, then back at her father. Guilt rode hard on his face.

  He turned toward her. “Lacey, don’t let him lie to you again. Remember what he did before. Last night has nothing to do with this.”

  She wanted to run, wanted to hide from the foreboding sinking into her bones. Wanted to vanish right now, this instant. She held on desperately to the fraying edges of her strength. “What doesn’t have anything to do with last night?”

  His green eyes darkened. His hands dropped to his sides. He turned to her father. “Do you tell her, or do I?”

  “Tell me what, Daddy?” Her heart was thumping so fast she felt dizzy. “Mother?”

  Her mother looked utterly confused. Her father said nothing.

  Dev crossed the floor then, came to her side. Grasped her arms and lowered her to the chair. His eyes looked so sad.

  Whatever it was, she already knew she didn’t want to hear it. Something deep and visceral told her she would never be the same once she did.

  “No.” She tried to rise, shaking her head. “No, don’t. I don’t want to know, whatever it is.”

  Dev looked so torn, so weary. “This doesn’t have to be bad, Lacey. There’s good news for you.”

  It didn’t feel good. Her father looked a hundred years old.

  Dev reached for her hands, clasped them tightly. His jaw tightened, and sorrow washed over his face. The green eyes she loved—

  Dear God. She was such a fool. He didn’t love her. He’d seen her heart tumble and he was—

  “Don’t,” he said, his voice unbearably gentle. “Don’t try to imagine. In all of this, you’re the innocent, Lacey.” Then his voice thickened. “But first, you have to believe me that last night was a miracle. It was a dream I’d given up on a long time ago. I want to believe that we laid a foundation that even this news can’t destroy.”

  She could barely concentrate on his words for the loud thumping of her heart. “I don’t understand.”

  Dev cursed softly. “I tried to figure out the right way to do this, but—”

  “Just do it, Dev. Stop scaring me.”

  “All right.” He pinned her with that green gaze, his eyes soft and gentle but dark with foreboding. “You’re adopted, Lacey. I’ve been hired by your birth family to find you. You’re not the natural child of the DeMilles.”

  For a moment she didn’t react at all. She blinked once, twice, then shook her head.

  Then she surprised herself. She laughed, though she could hear the sharp edge of hysteria. “What? You’re out of your mind. What kind of joke is this?”

  “It’s not a joke.” He shoved one hand through his hair. “You are the natural child of Dalton Wheeler and Jenny Wallace Gallagher, both deceased. These people—” He indicated her parents. “—paid a lot of money to hide your adoption and fake your birth records. You have a half-sister, Maddie Rose Gallagher—Dalton’s daughter—and two half-brothers, Boone and Mitch Gallagher, who are Jenny’s sons.”

  Lacey jerked her hands away from his, rose again to pace. “Stop. Stop now, Dev. This isn’t funny.”

  “I know it’s not, sweetheart. I—” He cursed softly. His eyes locked on hers. “Listen to me—they’re wonderful people, and they badly want to meet you. You’re all the family Maddie has left.”

  “My parents wouldn’t do that. My parents love me. You’re telling me they’ve lied to me all my life. You’re telling me I don’t belong to them, that my whole life is a sham.” She couldn’t look at them yet. She had to make him stop saying these things. Dev was making a mockery of last night, and she still couldn’t understand why he would want to do it.

  “It’s not a sham, sweetheart. You’re still the same person. Don’t you remember that you told me you never quite felt like you belonged?”

  “Don’t you dare use my own words against me.”

  “I’m not—” Dev wanted to touch her, to hold her. He’d botched this badly, and he needed to talk to her alone—but that wasn’t going to happen. “Think of what your father did to us.” The very thought still made Dev’s blood simmer. “Do you think a man like that would hesitate to lie to protect your mother’s all-fired superiority? He’s not going to tell the world that his blue-blooded princess isn’t his but the child of two poor country kids from Morning Star.” He stepped closer. “You should be glad you’re not his blood.”

  She heard her mother’s soft gasp, saw Margaret’s delicate hand jerk upward before she dropped it to her lap, clenched bone-white. For a second, Lacey thought she saw moisture gather in her mother’s eyes.

  Impossible.

  Desperately, Lacey turned to look at her father, to let him tell her it was indeed a sick joke. She was already preparing her rebuttal.

  And then her gaze met her father’s. She saw his face go ashen.

  Her parents exchanged one look, only one.

  But it was enough.

  She fell back a step, her own hand rising to her throat. “No—” she whispered, feeling bile rise.

  Dev stepped closer, reached for her.

  “Get away from me, Dev.” Was that her voice, so low and feral?

  “Let me hold you, Lacey. Let me tell you about your family. They’re wonderful people. Maddie was a well-known chef in Manhattan. I’ve eaten at her restaurant and it was the best food you ever put in your mouth.”

  She covered her ears, her voice turning shrill. “I don’t want to hear about them. They have nothing to do with me.”

  “She has your eyes. She’s your younger sister, and both of you have those same eyes, the same mouth. Don’t you want to meet her?”

  She’d backed against the wall, trying to escape the news. She sank to the floor, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  Dev couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear how her eyes looked so destroyed. He picked her up, but she came alive in his arms, striking out with nails, hitting his chest, her head whipping back and forth as strange little moans issued from her throat.

  “Stop it.” He shook her lightly, but she scratched his cheek with one nail. He bundled her into his arms, holding her so close that she couldn’t do any more damage.

  She went rigid against him.

  Then she started trembling.

  She jerked away, as though she feared him. Of all the things he’d imagined, he’d never imagined this. Hate me, Lacey. Hit me, hurt me—but don’t fear me.

  He let her go, something inside him dying.

  Lacey turned toward the door, heart racing. She heard her father’s voice, rough and cracking. “Good girl. Stay away from him. He’s out for revenge. He’s trying to blame his father’s disgrace on me.”

  Lacey whirled. “What?”

  “Leave her alone, DeMille. She doesn’t need that to deal with, too.”

  Her father seemed to have recovered some of his strength. “Ask Devlin if he didn’t come here today to threaten me. He’s out to avenge his father. He used you, just like he was using you when you were kids. He hated me then, he hates me now. Ask him. Ask him if he didn’t seduce you because you were my daughter. This is all about getting back at me.”

  Lacey shot a look at Dev. Saw the arrow hit its target.

  “Lacey…” Dev’s voice sounded wrecked. Desolate. “He’s responsible for my father’s death.”

  Not he’s wrong. Not he’s lying.

  He’s responsible for my father’s death. Ample motive for revenge. The best.

  Lies swirled around her. Lies and vengeance and horrible truths. She was a fraud. Her whole life was a lie.

  Dev was a lie. Last night was a lie.

  She was nothing. No one. And she was all alone. If she couldn’t trust her parents, who could she trust?

  She risked one look at
Dev. His dark, ravaged face softened with something that looked far too much like—

  Pity. He pitied her.

  “Lacey—” She’d never heard her mother sound lost or helpless. “Lacey, don’t leave…”

  She turned back, looking at two people she realized she had never really known.

  “But he’s not lying about my birth, is he? Why, Daddy? Was I so unacceptable as I was? Were you ashamed? How could you? My whole life, all of it, is a lie. You—” Before she broke down, she had to get out of here. Had to go somewhere she could think, could figure out what to do next. All she could think to do was move blindly toward the door.

  Dev followed her. “Lacey, let me take you home. You’re upset. I understand.”

  She slapped his hand away. Snarled. “Go to the devil, all of you. You don’t understand. None of you do. My whole life I’ve never been able to look in a mirror and see that I looked like someone I knew. I never understood why—but now I do, don’t I?”

  Her heart cracking inside her chest, Lacey looked at them, thinking with a crazy kind of clarity that she finally understood why being a DeMille was such a struggle for her.

  “I’m not really one of you,” she marveled. A hollow little laugh escaped her throat. “No wonder I can’t be perfect like you, Mother.”

  “Lacey, we’re your parents. We’re your family. Don’t listen to him. We’ll talk,” her mother soothed. “You’ll understand—”

  Her father broke in. “You can’t possibly take the word of this good-for-nothing—”

  “Leave her alone,” Dev roared. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to her? Stop making her choose.”

  “Stop it—all of you, stop it!” Lacey’s stomach was on fire. “Leave me alone. Just—leave me alone.” She flung open the door and raced through it. Ran to her car as though demons chased her.

  Demons did.

  As her tires screamed down around the curve and onto the street, Lacey wondered. Who am I?

  But there was no one to give her the answer, except the couple who had betrayed her…and the man who had ruined her life for revenge.

  And at the scene of her devastation, Dev cast one heated glance backward.

  Margaret DeMille had abandoned her proud posture. Bent like an old woman, she sobbed softly. Dev could almost feel sorry for her—almost. Then he thought about the last look on Lacey’s face.

  He turned to the man who had wreaked such havoc. “I hope you’re happy,” he growled.

  “You stay away from her. This is all your fault.”

  Dev’s jaw clenched. “You go ahead and try to believe that. She’s turned herself inside out to please you, and it was never enough. You’ve robbed both of us of years of happiness.” Dev headed for the door, desperate to follow her.

  At the door he turned back, pinning his oldest enemy with a glare that could melt lead. “If you ever hurt her again—ever lie to her again to save your own hide—I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you never see her again. She’s got a good family waiting for her. They’ll accept her and love her, just as she is.”

  “She won’t want to see you, either, Marlowe.” DeMille wasn’t giving up without a fight.

  “Maybe not.” Dev drew in a deep breath and tried not to think about the pain of losing her once more. “But she’ll have to tell me that herself. I’m not abandoning her, ever again. I should have fought you harder last time, but I was just a kid and you held all the cards.”

  His fists clenched. “You have no power over me now, DeMille, and I’m not leaving. I’ll protect her from a distance, if that’s how it has to be—but I am never, ever walking away from her again.”

  Not until Lacey herself tells me she doesn’t want me.

  And even then, not without a fight. He’d missed too many years with the other half of his heart.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lacey didn’t go home. There she would have to see the bed where Dev had made love to her with such power, with a tenderness that even now ripped all the way to her heart. She would have to see him in every corner, smell his scent on her pillow, remember his touch, his taste—

  A car stopped suddenly in front of her, and she jerked herself to attention. Her whole body was shaking, and she needed to get off the road before she fell apart. But where to go?

  She was so alone. So adrift.

  She didn’t know anything anymore. Who to trust, what to believe. Her life was quicksand, and no one was around to save her.

  Lacey looked around and realized that she was near the foster home where Christina was living. To hold that sweet child, to bury her face in Christina’s bright hair, to cuddle her close and let the child’s kindness soothe her—

  No. She couldn’t show up, this distraught. Christina had too much to contend with already.

  And Lacey understood, in a way she never had before, just how the little girl felt. Abandoned. Alone. Everything familiar lost.

  She pulled to the curb, realizing that her dream of adopting Christina was only a fantasy now. She had no job to support her. She didn’t feel right about keeping her trust fund, her townhouse, her car—they belonged to an impostor. All of it should go back to the people who’d been so ashamed of who she really was.

  They’d loved her, she’d thought. But they’d lied to her with every breath. Everything she thought she knew about herself was a hoax. She was no princess, no River Oaks DeMille. She was a phony, a child who’d been given away. They’d considered her unworthy of the truth.

  So where did that leave her? What was the truth of her life? If she wasn’t Lacey DeMille in blood and bone, who was she?

  Her stomach was on fire. She curled into a ball against the pain and willed herself to stop thinking. Slow, deep breaths. Calm down. Have to calm down.

  She had no idea where she would go, where she belonged. She wanted to go back, to forget what had happened, to resume the life she’d once found wanting, but that life was forever beyond her reach. How could she possibly face anyone in her old life now? She was a fake.

  One step. One thing at a time. Drive back. Get some sleep. Don’t try to figure it all out yet.

  Boneless with exhaustion, Lacey put the car in gear and headed for the place that was no longer home.

  Dev was going crazy. Houston was huge, sprawling for miles in every direction. He’d been by her house three times, driven everywhere he’d ever seen her go. He couldn’t find her, didn’t know where she was or what she was doing in her ravaged state.

  A chill invaded his bones at the thought that she was out there somewhere alone. He’d seen her devastation, seen the way she’d held that fragile body together by sheer will as she escaped. He wanted to hold her, to shield her, to protect her from the pain.

  It was one of life’s nasty little ironies that he’d proven to be the chink in her armor. That he’d been the one to bring her down from princess to peasant, who’d been the bridge from heaven to hell. It seemed a century ago instead of only last night that she’d been naked beneath him, that he’d held her heart in his hands. That they’d been one.

  Dev knew all about how a life could shatter. That he would be the instrument of her destruction was a cruel joke, but he wouldn’t lie to himself about who was at fault. It had been his desire for revenge that had first brought Lacey into the line of fire between himself and her father.

  He’d never expected to fall in love with the princess years ago.

  Nor wanted to find out last night that love had not died.

  And now here she was, the innocent sacrificed to pay for old debts, old anger, old betrayals.

  The one most hurt—and the only one blameless.

  Dev’s jaw clenched as he turned to head back toward her townhouse once more. He had to find her. Had to replace the family he’d torn away with the family he knew would envelope her with love.

  She wouldn’t want to see him. DeMille was right. And it was only fair that his own heart pay the price.

  Whatever he must pay, even if it be
Lacey’s eternal hatred, he could not rest until he’d given her back a life to replace the one he had destroyed.

  It would be the worst kind of torture to be near her, knowing he could never have her, but he’d forfeited his right to her heart by his own actions, by setting the wheel in motion years ago to gain revenge without considering who might be hurt.

  Revenge is a dish best served cold. He’d heard that somewhere. But no one had ever told him what it could cost the revenge-seeker.

  Charles DeMille must be laughing now. In the end, he’d taken everything Dev had ever wanted, including the only woman Dev would ever love.

  She moved toward her bedroom, but stopped dead-still in the doorway. Just looking at that bed and the shambles she and Dev had made of it hurt so badly she could barely breathe.

  Memory after memory rolled over her in waves. The strength in his arms, the hot, sweet passion of his touch. The feel of him inside her after so many years’ waiting—

  She’d given herself to him so trustingly, welcomed him to her deepest self. How could he betray her like this? He’d known, all along, about the truth. Every second that he’d spent heating her skin with his kisses, driving the breath from her lungs with the power of his wanting—

  He’d known. Known it would hurt her. During that magical date, he’d looked at her over and over, yet all she’d seen was longing.

  Because that’s what she’d wanted to see?

  Backing away from her bedroom as though it were a den of snakes, Lacey all but crawled to the sofa and huddled against a chill that couldn’t be explained by the sixty-odd degrees outside.

  Who was she, if she wasn’t a true DeMille?

  It would explain everything, if it were true. Why she’d never felt like she truly fit. Why her mother pressed so hard for her to be perfect.

  Because she was a mongrel of some sort.

  Two poor country kids from Morning Star. Was that what he’d said?

  Where was Morning Star?

  And who did she come from? Why had she been so easy to give up?

  Lacey thought she remembered Dev explaining, but her mind had been careening like a drunk. She’d missed most of what he said as the litany fired through her brain. It’s not true. It can’t be true. I know who I am—why are you lying?