Aimpoint, Candace Irving [best love novels of all time TXT] 📗

"See?"

He reached out to tap her nose. "She's my sister; she doesn't count."

"Oh, I'm sure Beth will be happy to hear that." She was curious though. More than she should've been. "Older or younger?"

"Younger. By five years."

The affection in his voice made her envious. She'd always wanted a sibling. Perhaps more kids would've stopped her mom from checking out of the world the way she had. Though probably not. Her mom'd had bigger problems than an awkward, lonely child.

"Rachel?"

She glanced up from her still brimming plate. "Just dealing with my jealousy; I'm an only kid. Let me guess—Beth made up for the torturing she did when you were young by teaching you your mad culinary skills so you could impress women later in life? Not a bad trade-off."

He didn't laugh the way she'd hoped. If anything, her teasing had caused those murky shadows to return, along with an odd, palpable distance.

Her instincts zeroed in. For once, she wished they hadn't. She'd spotted a few of those particular shadows before—in that parking lot, last night. "Your sister's…okay, isn't she?" Carys certainly hadn't been.

If anything, the shadows intensified. But he sighed. "Yeah. She's good—now. For a long time she was lost to me though."

Lost? "As in…drugs?"

He shook his head. "Dead. Along with our mom. Or so I was told. Our folks divorced after Beth was born. I was five. Dad got the farm and me. My mom got her freedom and Beth. I guess my dad got sick of me crying for them because he finally told me they'd been killed in a car crash." His laugh was short and utterly devoid of humor. "He even managed to blame it on her. Said my mom hadn't belted either of them in."

"Jesus." That proprietary hand flashed through her brain. The one that had seated her in his car the previous night, then continued on to latch her belt. For her…or himself?

"Yeah. He was piece of work."

"How did…?" It was well past the bounds of why she was there tonight. But she needed to know. For herself—and him.

"How did I find out my sister was still alive?"

She nodded.

"My dad died. Tractor accident. I wasn't there. I'd joined the Army at seventeen. Had just made sergeant when I got the news. There was no way I was going back to Kansas, except to sell the place. While I was going through his papers, I found a bunch of letters from my mom, begging for information about me. She'd stopped writing when I was nine, but there were enough clues in them to start searching. By the time I found Beth, our mom had been dead for years. Beth was fifteen and living in a dump with a distant cousin I also never knew I had. I filed for custody the same day. The cousin fought it—for the social security benefits, I'm sure. But, as I said, I'd made sergeant, and as my legal dependent, Beth had access to Army schools and healthcare. I won."

"And Beth?"

"It took a while to win her over. But she pulled through, finished high school. Even went to college. Things are good. Beth married a buddy of mine last year. She's expecting their first."

"That's amazing." He was amazing. But he didn't see that. The pride in his face was all for his sister. Her jealousy returned, a hundred-fold. What would it have been like to have had someone like him in her corner?

She'd never know.

Hunger had fled. She reached for her now tepid tea to give her hands something to do. "She's lucky she had you. I can't imagine a parent doing that." And she'd had no prize-winners in that department herself. "How could he just…?"

"Pretend they were dead?"

She nodded. What kind of bastard did that? To his own son, no less. And for all those years? That seat belt flashed in again. It didn't even matter that Garrison had finally learned the truth; the damage had been done. To him and his sister.

"Who the hell knows? Lies just come easy to some people. It's their second nature." He sounded almost resigned to the thought.

"You haven't forgiven him, have you?"

"Hell, no." Another harsh laugh cut through the kitchen. This one as bereft of humor as the other, perhaps more so. "I haven't forgiven that man for a lot of things. But especially that." His appetite must've fled too, because he pushed his plate away. "Anyway…I have no idea why I just laid all that on you."

Silence thrummed between them. It should've been awkward, but it wasn't. It felt…natural. As did the need to reach out. Her fingers succumbed to the urge before she could stop them, and covered his.

"I'm glad you did."

He turned his hand in hers—and squeezed back. As she looked down at their fingers, his dwarfing hers as they lay on the table between them, now entangled, the panic that should've been there all along finally surged, and she jerked her hand away. The awkwardness set in then. With a vengeance.

They could both feel it.

"Would you like some coffee?"

"God, yes." Almost as much as she needed the physical reprieve from him and that dangerous contentment she'd just felt.

She held her breath as he stood and headed around the island, only letting the air escape when he was safely in the kitchen proper. She turned her attention to her plate. Her dinner was ice cold. Even if it hadn’t been, she couldn't have finished it. Not while desperately trying to digest the dismay and the guilt.

Of all the men to have hit on her in that bar.

But what other choice did she have but to see this through? The stakes were too high to pull out now. She had to find a way to get to LaCroix and figure out what he had planned before the general ended up dead—and worse.

She risked a glance at the kitchen. At Garrison. He kept his massive back to her as he moved along the counter to fill the coffee maker with water and