They continued to stand until Dorothy got Ms. Fanny settled into an old rocking chair. Understandably, she moved at a slow pace.
“Okay, now what do you want to ask me about Clarice?” Ms. Fanny asked in a quiet tone.
“The person we really want information about is Raphel Westmoreland, who we believe was an acquaintance of Clarice’s.”
Megan saw that sudden flash of distress again, which let her know she hadn’t imagined it earlier. Ms. Fanny nodded slowly as she looked over at Megan. “And Raphel Westmoreland was your grandfather?”
Megan shook her head. “No, he was my great-grandfather, and a few years ago we discovered he had a twin brother we hadn’t known anything about.”
She then told Ms. Fanny about the Denver Westmorelands and how they had lost Raphel’s only two grandsons and their wives in a plane crash, leaving fifteen of them without parents. She then told Fanny how, a few years ago, they discovered Raphel had a twin named Reginald, and how they had begun a quest to determine if there were more Westmorelands they didn’t know about, which had brought them here.
Ms. Fanny looked down at her feeble hands as if studying them…or trying to make up her mind about something. She then lifted her gaze and zeroed in on Megan with her old eyes. She then said, “I’m so sorry to find out about your loss. That must have been a difficult time for everyone.”
She then looked down at her hands again. Moments later, she looked up and glanced back and forth between Rico and Megan. “The two of you are forcing me to break a promise I made several years ago, but I think you deserve to know the truth.”
Nervous tension flowed through Megan. She glanced over at Rico, who gazed back at her before he turned his attention back to Ms. Fanny and asked, “And what truth is that?”
The woman looked over at her granddaughter, who only nodded for her to continue. She then looked at Megan. “The man your family knew as Raphel Westmoreland was an imposter. The real Raphel Westmoreland died in a fire.”
Megan gasped. “No.” And then she turned and collapsed in Rico’s arms.
* * *
“Megan,” Rico whispered softly as he stroked the side of her face with his fingertips. She’d fainted, and poor Ms. Fanny had become nervous that she’d done the wrong thing, while her granddaughter had rushed off to get a warm facecloth, which he was using to try to bring Megan back around.
He watched as she slowly opened her eyes and looked at him. He recognized what he saw in her gaze. A mixture of fear and confusion. “She’s wrong, Rico. She has to be. There’s no way my great-grandfather was not who he said he was.”
Rico was tempted to ask why was she so certain but didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was. “Then come on, sit up so we can listen to her tell the rest of it and see, shall we?”
Megan nodded and pulled herself up to find she was still on the sofa. There was no doubt in her mind that both Ms. Fanny and Dorothy had heard what she’d just said. Manners prompted her to apologize. “I’m sorry, but what you said, Ms. Fanny, is overwhelming. My great-grandfather died before I was born so I never knew him, but all those who knew him said he was a good and honest person.”
Ms. Fanny nodded. “I didn’t say that he wasn’t, dear. What I said is that he wasn’t the real Raphel.”
Tightening his hand on Megan’s, Rico asked, “If he wasn’t Raphel, then who was he?”
Ms. Fanny met Rico’s gaze. “An ex-convict by the name of Stephen Mitchelson.”
“An ex-convict!” Megan exclaimed, louder than she’d intended to.
“Yes.”
Megan was confused. “B-but how? Why?”
It took Ms. Fanny a while before she answered then she said, “It’s a long story.”
“We have time to listen,” Rico said, glancing over at Megan. He was beginning to worry about her. Finding out upsetting news like this was one of the reasons he hadn’t wanted her here, yet he had gone and brought her anyway.
“According to Clarice, she met Raphel when she was visiting an aunt in Wyoming. He was a drifter moving from place to place. She told him about her home here and told him if he ever needed steady work to come here and her father would hire him to work on their ranch.”
She paused a moment and then said, “While in Wyoming, she met another drifter who was an ex-con by the name of Stephen Mitchelson. She and Stephen became involved, and she became pregnant. But she knew her family would never accept him, and she thought she would never see him again.”
Ms. Fanny took a sip of water from the glass her granddaughter handed her. “Only the man who showed up later, here in Texas, wasn’t Raphel but Stephen. He told her Raphel had died in a fire. To get a fresh start, he was going to take Raphel’s identity and start a new life elsewhere. And she let him go, without even telling him she was pregnant with his child. She loved him that much. She wanted to give him a new beginning.”
Ms. Fanny was quiet for a moment. “I was there the day she made that decision. I was there when he drove away and never looked back. I was also there when she gave birth to their child. Alone.”
The room was silent and then Megan spoke softly. “What happened to her and the baby?”
“She left here by train to go stay with extended family in Virginia. Her father couldn’t accept she had a baby out of wedlock. But she never made it to her destination. The train she was riding on derailed, killing her and the baby.”
“My God,” Megan said, covering her hands with her face. “How awful,” she said. A woman who had given up so much had suffered such a tragic ending.
She drew in a deep breath and wondered how on earth she was going to return home to Denver and tell her family that they weren’t Westmorelands after all.
* * *
Several hours later, back in his hotel room, Rico sat on the love seat and watched as Megan paced the floor. After leaving the Bankses’ house, they had gone to the local newspaper office, and the newspaper articles they’d read hadn’t helped matters, nor had their visit to the courthouse. The newspapers had verified the train wreck and that Clarice and her child had been killed. There was also a mention of the fire in Wyoming and that several men had been burned beyond recognition.
There were a lot of unanswered questions zigzagging through Rico’s mind but he pushed them aside to concentrate on Megan. At the moment, she was his main concern. He leaned forward and rested his arms on his thighs. “If you’re trying to walk a hole in the floor, you’re doing a good job of it.”
She stopped, and when he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes, he was out of his seat in a flash. He was unsure of what he would say, but he knew he had to say something. “Hey, none of that,” he whispered quietly, pulling her into his arms. “We’re going to figure this out, Megan.”
She shook her head and pushed away from him. “This is all my fault. In my eagerness to find out everything about Raphel, I may have caused the family more harm than good. You heard Fanny Banks. The man everyone thought was Raphel was some ex-convict named Stephen Mitchelson. What am I going home to say? We’re not really Westmorelands, we’re Mitchelsons?”
He could tell by the sound of her voice she was really torn up over what Fanny Banks had said. “But there might be more to what she said, Megan.”
“But Fanny Banks was there, Rico,” she countered. “I always said there was a lot about my great-grandfather that we didn’t know. He went to his grave without telling anyone anything about having a twin brother or if he h
ad family somewhere. Now I know why. He probably didn’t know any of Raphel’s history. He could never claim anyone. I don’t know how the fourth woman named Isabelle fits in, but I do know Raphel—Stephen—finally settled down with my great-grandmother Gemma. From the diary she left behind, the one that Dillon let me read, I know they had a good marriage, and she always said he was a kind-hearted man. He certainly didn’t sound like the kind who would have been an ex-con. The only thing I ever heard about Raphel was that he was a kind, loving and honorable man.”
“That still might be the case, Megan.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, she said, “I have to face the possibility that the man my father and uncle idolized, the man they thought was the best grandfather in the entire world, was nothing but a convict who wasn’t Raphel Westmoreland and—”
“Shh, Megan,” he whispered, breaking in and pulling her closer into his arms. “Until we find out everything, I don’t want you getting upset or thinking the worst. We’ll go to the courthouse tomorrow and dig around some more.”
Sighing deeply, she pulled away from him, swiped at more tears and tilted her head back to look up at him. “I need to be alone for a while so I’m going to my room. Thanks for the shoulder to cry on.”
Rico shoved his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “What about dinner?”
“I’m not hungry. I’ll order room service later.”
“You sure?”
She shrugged. “Right now, Rico, I’m not sure about anything. That’s why I need to take a shower and relax.”
He nodded. “Are you going to call Dillon or Ramsey and tell them the latest developments?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. It’s something I wouldn’t be able to tell them over the phone anyway.” She headed for the door. “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Try to get some sleep,” he called out to her. She nodded but kept walking and didn’t look back. She opened the connecting door and then closed it behind her.
Rico rubbed his hand down his face, feeling frustration and anger all rolled into one. He glanced at his watch and pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket. A few moments later a voice came on the line. “Hello.”
“This is Rico. A few things came up that I want you to check out.” He spent the next twenty minutes bringing Martin up to date on what they’d found out from Fanny Banks.
“And you’re actually questioning the honesty of a one-hundred-year-old woman?”
“Yes.”
Martin moaned. “Ah, man, she’s one hundred.”
“I know.”
“All right. In that case, I’ll get on it right away. If the man was an imposter then I’ll find out,” Martin said. “But we are looking back during a time when people took on new identities all the time.”
That’s the last thing Rico wanted to hear.
After hanging up the phone he stared across the room at the door separating him from Megan. Deciding to do something with his time, before he opened the connecting door, he grabbed his jacket and left to get something to eat.
* * *
An hour later, Megan had showered, slipped into a pair of pajamas and was lounging across her bed when she heard the sound of Rico returning next door. When she’d knocked on the connecting door earlier and hadn’t gotten a response, she figured he had gone to get something to eat. She had ordered room service and had wanted to know if he wanted to share since the hotel had brought her plenty.
Now she felt fed and relaxed and more in control of her emotions. And what she appreciated more than anything was that when she had needed him the most, Rico had been there. Even while in the basement of the newspaper office, going through microfilm of old newspapers and toiling over all those books to locate the information they wanted, he had been there, ready to give her a shoulder to cry on if she needed one. And when she had needed one, after everything had gotten too emotional for her, she’d taken him up on his offer.
He had been in his room for no more than ten minutes when she heard a soft knock on the connecting door. “Come in.”
He slowly opened the door, and when he appeared in her room the force of his presence was so powerful she had to snatch her gaze away from his and train it back on the television screen.
“I was letting you know I had returned,” he said.
“I heard you moving around,” she said, her fingers tightening around the remote.
“You’ve had dinner?” he asked her.
From out of the corner of her eye, she could see him leaning in the doorway, nearly filling it completely. “Yes, and it was good.”
“What did you have?”
“A grilled chicken salad. It was huge.” Just like you, she thought and immediately felt the blush spread into her features.
“Why are you blushing?”
Did the man not miss anything? “No reason.”
“Then why aren’t you looking at me?”
Yes, why wasn’t she looking at him? Forcing herself to look away from the television, she slid her eyes over to his and immediately their gazes clung. That was the moment she knew why it had been so easy to let her guard down around him, why it had been so effortless to lose her control and why, even now, she was filled with a deep longing and the kind of desire a woman had for the man she loved.
She had fallen in love with Rico.
A part of her trembled inside with that admission. She hadn’t known something like this could happen this way, so quickly, completely and deeply. He had gotten to her in ways no other man had. Around him she had let go of her control and had been willing to let emotions flow. Her love hadn’t allowed her to hold anything back. And when she had needed his strength, he’d given it. Unselfishly. He had an honorable and loyal spirit that had touched her in ways she’d never been touched before. Yes, she loved him, with every part of her being.
She sucked in a deep breath because she also knew that what she saw in his eyes was nothing more than pent-up sexual energy that needed to be released. And as she continued to watch him, his lips curved into a smile.
Now it was her time to ask all the questions. “Why are you smiling?”
“I don’t think you want to know,” he said, doing away with his Eastern accent and replacing it with a deep Texas drawl.
“Trust me, I do.” Tonight she needed to think about something other than her grandfather’s guilt or innocence, something other than how, in trying to find out about him, she might have exposed her family to the risk of losing everything.
“Since you really want to know,” he said, straightening his stance and slowly coming toward her. “I was thinking of all the things I’d just love to do to you.”
His words made her nipples harden into peaks, and she felt them press hard against her pajama top. “Why just think about it, Rico?”
He stopped at the edge of the bed. “Don’t tempt me, Megan.”
She tilted her head to gaze up at him. “And don’t tempt me, Rico.”
“What do you know about temptation?”
She became caught up by the deep, sensuous look in his eyes. In one instant, she felt the need to look away, and then, in another instant, she felt the need to be the object of his stare. She decided to answer him the best way she knew how. “I know it’s something I’ve just recently been introduced to,” she said, remembering the first time she’d felt this powerful attraction, at Micah’s wedding.
“And I know just how strong it was the first time I s
aw you. Something new for me. Then I remember our first kiss, and how the temptation to explore more was the reason I hadn’t wanted it to end,” she whispered softly.
“But I really discovered what temptation was the night you used your mouth on me,” she said, not believing they were having this sort of conversation or that she was actually saying these things. “I’ve never known that kind of pleasure before, or the kind of satisfaction I experienced when you were finished, and it tempted me to do some things to you, to touch you and taste you.”
She saw the darkening of his eyes, and the very air became heated, sensuously so. He reached out, extending his hand to hers, and she took it. He gently pulled her up off the bed. The feel of the hard, masculine body pressed against hers, especially the outline of his arousal through his khakis, made her shiver with desire. When his hand began roaming all over her, she drew in a deep breath.
“I want to make love to you, Megan,” he said, lowering his head to whisper in her ear. “I’ve never wanted a woman as much as I want you.”
For some reason she believed him. Maybe it was because she wanted to believe. Or it could be that she wanted the feeling of being in his arms. The feeling of him inside her while making love. She wanted to be the woman who could satisfy him as much as he could satisfy her.
He tilted her chin up so their gazes could meet again. She was getting caught up in every sexy thing about him, even his chin, which looked like it needed a shave, and his hair, which seemed to have grown an inch and touched his shoulders. And then he leaned down and captured her mouth in one long, drugging kiss. Pleasure shot to all parts of her body, and her nerve endings were bombarded with all sorts of sensations while he feasted on her mouth like it was the last morsel he would ever taste.
At that moment, she knew what she wanted. She wanted to lose control in a way she’d never lost it before. She wanted to get downright wild with it.
She pulled back from the kiss and immediately went for his shirt, nearly tearing off the buttons in her haste. “Easy, baby. What are you doing?”
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