His Brother's Bride

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Of course.”

  “Here’s Murphy.”

  Getting out of the Blazer, they both watched the police car pull into the drive. At Scott’s request, Murphy accompanied them inside. There still was no police investigation, no evidence other than an accidental death and hunches put together, no crime committed.

  As they entered the unrenovated side of the house Arnett had been calling home for the past month, following behind Murphy, Scott grabbed Laurel’s hand.

  She fell so naturally into step, taking his lead without hesitation.

  She might not respect him anymore, but she still trusted him.

  In all likelihood that trust was going to be the last thing she ever gave him.

  Inside, the house was as bad as he’d expected. Plaster hung from the walls, and there were gaping holes in the floor. It smelled like someone had forgotten to take out the trash. With the windows boarded up, the front room was dark and gloomy as they slowly picked their way behind Murphy.

  The police officer told them the landlord had described a boiler room in the basement that had cement walls and no windows. They were going to check there first.

  “Please, God, let them be okay,” Laurel whispered. Her breath tickled the back of his neck.

  She was so close to him he felt her words like impressions in his mind rather than heard the sound. He felt her desperation. It was as though they were one, creeping stealthily through the night. One being. One body. One energy.

  If determination could make things happen, they would get William and Cecilia out of this mess alive.

  Unless they were already too late—a possibility he couldn’t ignore.

  He didn’t respond, except to squeeze the hand he held. As much as he hated taking her into whatever hell lay ahead, he was glad to be sharing this with her. To be making this memory.

  Assuming it turned out well.

  It had to turn out well.

  As they neared the basement stairs, Scott felt a tug on his hand. “Scott?”

  Murphy started down the stairs without them as Scott turned, his face almost touching hers.

  “If anything happens down there...”

  He shook his head, holding her gaze in the shadowy house. Because the light was so dim, he wasn’t certain what he read in her expression. Wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  So he was not at all prepared when her mouth moved closer.

  Caught completely by surprise, Scott opened his lips to hers, taking hungrily what she seemed to be offering him. The urgency of the moment left no time for gentle coaxing. For asking—or waiting for an answer. His tongue met hers ardently, demanding and giving in equal fervor. Her taste was still so new to him, and yet his body felt right at home, connected to hers.

  “Laurel,” he whispered. There was so much he needed to say, yet he knew it had already been said.

  She shook her head and reached up to kiss him one last time. A soft, lingering kiss. Without a hint of passion.

  The impact of that gesture shook Scott more than anything that had gone before. The air left his lungs, and for one crazy second he wondered if he could take another step, go on to do the job that awaited him.

  Taking his hand, Laurel positioned herself behind him again, ready to face the future—the one that had become defined in those short moments.

  He might not yet know the fate of William and Cecilia, but he knew his own. Laurel had just said goodbye.

  Pulling her close once more, Scott positioned his mouth just over her left ear. “I’m going down alone,” he said. “You stay up here.”

  “But...”

  “Please, Laurel. Just until we know that Leslie isn’t down there holding a gun on them. Worrying about you will be a distraction.”

  Especially now, when he was one vacant ache inside where she was concerned.

  He waited for her nod, and then, before he did something stupid like kiss her goodbye, he left her.

  * * *

  LAUREL WAITED, BUT only until she heard Scott reach the bottom of the stairs. Then she followed him. She hadn’t come this far to stop now.

  Conscious of Scott’s peace of mind, she hung back, making certain that he didn’t know she was there. If something went wrong, if Leslie was in there armed, they needed someone to be able to call a backup crew.

  As the men neared the boiler room, Scott reached out and tapped Murphy on the shoulder. Laurel couldn’t hear what was said, but the officer stood back and let him go first.

  The reality of the situation was all too clear to Laurel. If someone was inside that door with a gun, Scott could be walking straight to his death.

  No!

  The reaction was instant.

  I love him, God! Laurel’s mind screamed silently. He can’t die. I love him. She’d never known she could cry inside. Never known something could hurt so much.

  She’d thought losing Paul had been the worst thing that would ever happen to her. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Heart pounding so loud she was afraid it was going to give her away, Laurel watched as Scott took a tool from Murphy and worked on the brand-new lock she’d only just noticed on the boiler room door. Murphy held a small flashlight for him.

  Please let him be okay. The prayer mingled with the one her heart had been whispering since they’d first started this journey a week ago. Please let them be okay.

  The lock gave way, and Scott swung the door open.

  Laurel held her breath as he stood poised in the doorway.

  “There!” The urgency in Murphy’s voice sent chills through Laurel. She could no longer stay put as both men disappeared inside. Just as she reached the door, she heard a moan. Relief flooded through her. Someone in that room was alive.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE MAN WAS LYING up against a wall. At first glance Scott thought he was dead—thought they were both dead. The woman was spooned up against him, her head on his shoulder. But as he got closer, he could see the faint rise and fall of both chests.

  They were breathing.

  While Murphy checked out the rest of the small room, Scott approached the sleeping couple. William was the first to wake, his face immediately filling with alarm as he automatically pulled Cecilia beneath him, shielding her. Still mostly unconscious, she moaned at the rough treatment.

  “It’s okay, William,” Scott said softly. “We’re police officers, here to help you.”

  “Oh.” The older gentleman slowly sat up, pulling Cecilia with him.

  “What?” the woman cried out in fear and confusion.

  Leaning down to her, William said, “Shh. It’s okay, my love.” He looked up at Scott. “They’re here to help.” The older man’s voice broke and tears filled his eyes.

  “Help?” Cecilia asked, still obviously dazed.

  “We’re saved,” William said. “We’re saved.”

  “Saved?” Seemingly unaware of the other people in the room, Cecilia stared up at William. “Are you sure?”

  William smiled at her and nodded, then turned her face toward Scott. “See?”

  “Oh.” The woman looked, blinked, and looked again. “Thank God,” she whispered, and then started to cry.

  Murphy stood beside Scott, both of them grinning.

  Then William looked behind Scott as though something else caught his attention.

  “Laurel? Is that you, child? Or am I dreaming things again?”

  “It’s me, William,” Laurel said, coming forward. She was crying, too. And as much as Scott knew he should be mad at her for not following his orders, he was inordinately pleased she was there.

  She needed this. Deserved it. He couldn’t believe, after all she’d been through with him this week, she was still there, believing in happily-ever-after. She was the stronge
st woman he’d ever known.

  Yet when he met her eyes briefly, there was a longing in them. He foolishly, briefly took hope, thinking that it was for him.

  On her knees, with one arm around each of them, she hugged William and Cecilia. “I’m so glad we finally found you,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion. “Glad that you waited for us.”

  Murphy said he was going to call the paramedics, and then, when the captives had had a couple more minutes to orientate themselves, Laurel helped both of them to their feet. After a week in captivity, William and Cecilia were weak, and Scott stepped forward to help, but Laurel took their weight as though they were rag dolls.

  Cecilia was a slender woman, dressed in what must have been a very elegant and expensive dress when she’d put it on the week before. Her silver hair was now completely matted to her head.

  William’s suit was torn and wrinkled, his face stubbly with a week’s growth of beard. What little hair he had was sticking straight out.

  As Scott watched Laurel help the couple stand, he knew he’d been wrong about that longing look.

  Laurel was a professional. Capable. Strong.

  She didn’t need him.

  * * *

  IT WAS A LITTLE late for introductions, but as they stood together in the boiler room that had been home to the couple for an entire week, William introduced Cecilia to Laurel, who, in turn, introduced Scott.

  “So how long’s it been since you’ve had anything to eat or drink?” Scott asked. Laurel was relieved when he moved forward to help shoulder the weight of the older couple.

  “I think it’s only been dark under the door once since we finished off the last of the bread and fruit that bastard left us,” William said. “There’s still a little water, but only because we’ve been rationing so carefully.”

  Cecilia cringed and started to cry, burying her face against William.

  “You’re talking about Dennis Arnett,” Scott said.

  “Cici’s little brother, yes,” the author said, and there was no doubting the bitterness he felt toward the man.

  Scott figured the news of Arnett’s death could wait awhile.

  “By the way, do you have any idea how long we’ve been here?” William asked, frowning.

  “Today’s Saturday. You’ve been missing a week.”

  Cecilia still shaky, but steadier than she had been, turned to Scott. “Our daughter’s here,” she said, her gaze focusing as though she were only now coming to her senses.

  “Your daughter?” Laurel and Scott asked at once.

  “Yes, our daughter,” Cecilia said. “I wish I’d had the courage to say that thirty-five years ago.” Her eyes filled with tears again.

  “Shh, you promised,” William said softly, his eyes earnest as he looked down at Cecilia. “We aren’t going to waste time going backward.”

  Scott and Laurel exchanged a glance that warmed Scott in places he’d grown accustomed to being cold. They might have hit on the hiding spot correctly, but there were obviously some other things they’d had grossly wrong.

  William was a father. And any fool could see there was no way this man was blackmailing this woman.

  “When we got Dennis’s letter with the picture of him and Leslie together, we knew we had to get to her as soon as possible to tell her the truth,” Cecilia said. “She couldn’t date her uncle.”

  “But when we got there, Dennis was waiting for us with a gun,” William said. “We didn’t have a chance. He’d already taken Leslie away.”

  Scott could feel Laurel’s closeness as he asked, “Where’d he take her?”

  “Here,” Cecilia said. “He’d been on his way to New Ashford to find out why, after all the pressure he’d applied, I wasn’t calling him. He was driving through Cooper’s Corner and saw William and me together. He said he couldn’t take a chance on us getting to Leslie, she was his backup ace, so he went to her place and forced her to leave with him. He locked her up and then went back to Leslie’s to wait for us. He knew we’d come.”

  The woman seemed to wilt from the effort the long speech cost her.

  “Leslie’s locked somewhere close by,” William interjected. “Up until it got dark the last time, we’d been calling out to each other. The first couple of days we talked a lot—she was almost as thrilled to find us as we were to finally find her. She said she’d been looking for us for a couple of years, but kept reaching dead ends. Anyway, as the days wore on and we had less and less to drink, we decided not to talk as much to keep our throats from getting so dry and sore. The last day or so we only talked enough to make sure we were all okay and to promise one another to hang on. The last time we called out to her, there wasn’t an answer.”

  “She’s probably asleep,” Cecilia said. “That happened a couple of times before when she didn’t answer.”

  “Do you have any idea where she is?” Scott asked. He had to force himself to be patient, to remind himself that Cecilia and William were light-headed, suffering from disorientation, hunger, shock, and probably completely unable to feel any urgency.

  “In a room next door,” Cecilia said.

  Laurel looked at Scott, brow raised. “I don’t think there is a room next door. This is the basement.”

  “It might not be right next door,” Cecilia said, her voice growing stronger. “But she’s close.”

  It only took Scott a couple of minutes to locate a small traplike door just outside the boiler room that appeared to be some kind of closet. It took another couple of minutes to get the door open.

  The young woman huddled in a ball on the floor woke up instantly when light flooded into her cell. She’d managed to fashion a bowl of sorts out of what looked like some kind of tin, half filled with water. As she stood, she stepped in it, tipping it over.

  “Thank God,” she said. “I exercised every day—rationed the food the bastard left me. He said he’d call Murphy to come get us as soon as he got to the airport but I gotta tell ya, I was starting to lose hope....”

  At that she burst into tears.

  With a strength Scott could only marvel at, Cecilia pushed her way through to Leslie and, for what had to be the first time in her life, held her daughter in her arms. Looking at Cecilia, he could easily believe that she was never going to let go again.

  Scott had been fairly stoic up until that point. But when he saw William join his two girls and heard Leslie sobbingly ask if everything they’d told her that past week was true and not just some dream to get her to hold on, and then heard William tearfully tell her yes, even Scott choked up.

  Somehow Laurel was there then, sliding her arm through his, pressing against his side as together they watched one family get a happy ending.

  * * *

  THINGS WERE CHAOTIC after that. The paramedics arrived and Leslie convinced her parents to allow themselves to be strapped to the gurneys just long enough to be carried up the stairs. She won their agreement only when she promised to stay right there with them. And then they were all on their way to the hospital for checkups and probably rehydration IVs.

  It wasn’t until a couple of hours later, in a private hospital room that now had two beds, that Scott and Laurel finally heard the whole story. After filling out reports at the police station and checking out of the motel, they stopped by the hospital on their way back to Cooper’s Corner. They stood together, though carefully not touching, at the end of Cecilia’s bed. Once she’d received the older couple’s permission, Laurel switched on her tape recorder.

  Just as they’d guessed, Dennis had come to Cecilia for money when he was released from prison. What he hadn’t known was that after years of buying him out of every scrape, William Sr. had made Cecilia promise that she would never give him another dime of their money, even after his death. He did it to protect Cecilia. He knew he wasn’t going to be around f
orever and knew, too, that Dennis would take everything Cecilia had if he could.

  “When Dennis seemed to calmly accept my decision, I was overjoyed,” Cecilia said. She was propped up in bed against a pile of pillows. William was sitting on Cecilia’s bed, holding her hand.

  Scott envied them that familiarity. Laurel’s fingers were only inches from his—he could practically feel them there—yet she suddenly felt so off-limits they might as well have been on different continents. Was it only hours ago that she’d kissed him?

  Kissed him goodbye.

  “I thought prison had finally done what my husband and I and all of my love could never seem to do,” Cecilia was saying. “Mature him. It never even occurred to me, when I got a copy of Leslie’s birth certificate with her adoptive parents’ names blocked out that Dennis was behind it.”

  Scott could have told her that some men never change. Or mature. After all these years, all the guilt and grief, the confession and rejection, he was still in love with his older brother’s woman.

  “You thought it was from William,” Laurel guessed.

  “Yes.” Cecilia nodded. “I thought he’d crossed out the Renwicks’ names because he and I were Leslie’s parents. I thought it was an olive branch. I’d sent him a note a couple of years before telling him his father had passed on, and I just thought it had taken him that long to forgive me for marrying his dad.”

  “You knew William before you married Mr. Hamilton?” Laurel asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Cecilia said, exchanging another look with William. “I was in love with him.”

  “But you married his father.”

  Laurel’s voice held no censure, only a nonjudgmental encouragement to Cecilia to tell her story. Scott was impressed. If circumstances were different, he’d have saved the thought to mention to her later.

  “Dennis was in trouble,” Cecilia said. “I’d gotten him a job at Hamilton Lending and he’d stolen from the company. He was only sixteen. William’s dad threatened to press charges unless I married him.”

  “My father was not a very compassionate man,” William said, his voice less forgiving than it had been moments ago. “He knew what he wanted and how to go after it.” And then, obviously shaking off distasteful memories, he continued his story. “A few weeks ago, when Cici called me and told me we had to meet, I thought she was the one offering the olive branch. I knew if I met her, it could appear that I was really after my inheritance.”