Unforgiven--Includes a bonus novella Page 8

  “Oh…uh…yeah. The work thing is unrelated. I needed time to deal with my mother’s estate, and I wanted to pay proper respects to Conrad.” She looked at Kody and something soft worked its way into her familiar green gaze. “I wanted to introduce myself to his family and say thank you, even if it isn’t wanted.”

  “How did you know he was dead?” I kept my tone calm, but I was curious. There seemed to be something more behind her sudden leave of absence than she was saying. I could tell by the way her eyes shifted and how her fingers twitched involuntarily. The woman was hiding something.

  “I work in the medical examiner’s office in Ivy and sometimes in Austin when they’re shorthanded. News travels fast in the morgue. Conrad Lawton had a reputation. When his body hit the slab, everyone was talking about it. It was sort of a double whammy. I found out Conrad Lawton was my father and that he was dead all within a couple of weeks.” The fact that she was surrounded by death every single day explained a lot about her composure and coolness. A person had to be able to keep their head and stay focused when faced with the horrors humans could inflict on each other day in and day out.

  I felt Kody cringe when she mentioned the word slab. It was a good reminder that while she liked to pretend she was tough as nails, there was a very soft and tender interior under all that armor.

  Presley pushed off the car and smoothed a hand down the front of her suit. “I can see now is not the time to make amends. I’m sorry I intruded on a private family moment. I’m not exactly sure why I felt the need to come back here. I’m not usually so impulsive.” She cleared her throat again. “I’ll just be on my way.”

  “Can you give me a number to reach you and let me know where you’re staying? I have more questions. You can consider yourself officially part of the investigation into Conrad’s death.” It wasn’t the most tactful I’d ever been, but I had a feeling this woman was smart, and if she decided she didn’t want to be found it would be a problem.

  “Uh. Sure. Let me just get you my card.” She opened the car door and rooted around for a second before coming back with a business card. She handed it to me and pointed to a hastily scrawled number on the front. “I changed phone numbers recently, so use that one. I’m currently staying with a friend in Austin and don’t want to impose on her. So if we need to meet, call me and we can set something up.” Again I got the strong impression there was more to this woman’s story than she was letting on. Hearst and I had been by her very nice house in its upscale community when we initially tried to make contact. There had been no signs of renovation or other work being done, so why was she staying elsewhere? “I’m sorry I showed up unexpectedly. I was only thinking of myself. I didn’t stop to consider how any of this would impact the children who grew up knowing Conrad as their father.”

  Kody snorted and jerked herself out of my loose hold. I wanted to kick myself for immediately missing the heat of her body against mine. The only time she was ever going to get that close to me was when her defenses were down. The thought stung. I wanted her in my arms more than anything, but she seemed to constantly remind me they were the last place she wanted to be.

  “Be glad you don’t know what it’s like to have him as a dad. Caught between love and hate every single day of your life. Your timing does suck, but once things calm down, I’ll tell my brothers what you told me. We’ll decide together if we want to discuss anything further with you in the future. We make all those kinds of decisions as a family.”

  Kody was only speaking the truth, but the other woman flinched at the word family. Her icy mask of indifference slipped back in place as she nodded. “Okay. Sorry to intrude and bring such shocking news. I’ll just be on my way.”

  “I’ll be in touch, Ms. Baskin.” It sounded more like a threat than I’d intended, but something about this woman made me uneasy.

  She didn’t respond. She simply got into the Tesla and backed out of the long dirt drive. Kody and I watched the car in silence until it disappeared. Once it was gone and the dust had literally settled, I asked, “Are you okay?”

  Finding out you have a long-lost sibling who looks eerily like you has to be a shock, and it couldn’t have happened on a worse day.

  Kody let out a string of really dirty words and kicked at the ground in front of her. She looked like a toddler throwing a fit. The comparison almost made me smile. Maybe I would’ve if I hadn’t been so tired that staying on my feet actually took a fair amount of concentration.

  “My goddamn dad. Just when I think there’s an end to his jerking us around and messing with our lives, this happens.” She raked her hands through her hair, pausing to tug on the wild strands. “Am I surprised he cheated on my mother? No. I am shocked he didn’t use the affair to torture her and embarrass her, though. He really was the worst, wasn’t he?”

  It wasn’t a question she needed an answer to, so I kept quiet and watched her as she started to pace with short, sharp strides in front of me.

  “Only Conrad could make his funeral even more awful than it already was. Do you think she had something to do with his murder?” Kody’s head whipped around as she pinned me with a hard look.

  I shrugged and lifted a hand to cover a massive yawn. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” There was definitely something off with the other woman, and my natural curiosity would not let up until I figured out what it was. “Want to fill your family in now, or later? I’m sure they’re all huddled around the front window wondering what in the hell is going on.”

  Kody looked toward the old house with the faded paint and dead rosebushes. Sure enough the curtains flicked. “I’ll go in and tell them. You go find the closest bed and get some sleep. You looked exhausted earlier, now you look like you’re dead on your feet.”

  Maybe not the best turn of phrase at the moment, but she was correct. I was at my limit for being able to function properly. I needed an hour or two to recharge, but still, if she needed someone to lean on while filling her family in on Conrad’s latest transgression, I would muscle through and be there for her.

  “If you need me, I’m here.” And even if she didn’t need me. I’d always been there.

  Kody shook her head and reached out to give my shoulder a little shove. “Go to bed, Hill. I’m serious.”

  I grunted in agreement and turned to start walking toward my truck. I was brought up short by her hand landing so lightly on my forearm I had to double check to make sure it was there.

  “Thank you.” Her words were so soft I strained to hear them.

  “For what?”

  She shrugged. “For everything, I guess. For letting me cry all over you. For showing up in the first place when you are obviously exhausted. For being my punching bag…in more ways than one. You’re far better to me than I deserve.”

  I was so tired I started to wonder if I was dreaming. Kody Lawton did not speak to me this way. She never acknowledged that I let her get away with things I would destroy anyone else for. Not once since I’d known her had she ever acknowledged she might know just how special she was to me.

  Convinced my foggy, exhausted mind was playing tricks on me, I gave her a crooked grin and tipped the brim of my hat down in her direction.

  “Half the time I don’t know if I’m helping or hurting things where you’re concerned. I’m always trying my best to do right by you, Kody, trying to be all the different things you need me to be. I failed at that task once before. I don’t want to let you down again.” I cleared my throat when her eyes widened in shock at my unfiltered honesty. It was the first time I’d let even a sliver of the truth out. Pulling my gaze away from her shocked expression, I looked toward where the Tesla had disappeared. “Things sure are never boring around you Lawtons.”

  And my heart was never going to beat normally when I was around this particular Lawton.

  Chapter 7

  Kody

  I can’t believe someone put one over on the old man. I never thought anyone would beat him at his own game.”

&nbs
p; Case mumbled the words into the nearly empty rocks glass he was drinking from. We’d left the farmhouse not long after I sent Hill on his way. My brothers had demanded to know who the stranger was, which was a conversation I knew was going to require hard liquor and infinite patience. I had plenty of the first at the bar, and not much of the second. I called Lorenzo and asked him to kick the regulars out and shut down the bar early so my family had a quiet, safe place to digest the news that our father had been so much worse than we’d thought.

  “Do you think Mom knew?” Crew asked the question quietly. He was sticking to beer and didn’t seem nearly as far gone as Case was, but he was twice as pissed. Neither had taken the news that we had a half sister very well.

  I handed him another bottle of Corona with a shrug. “I don’t know. If she did, she never let on. She was great at hiding what was going on at home from everyone, even us sometimes.”

  Case finished his drink and set the glass on the bar with a thump. He was lucky it didn’t shatter under the careless force. “Blackmail.” He shook his dark head and rubbed a hand across his mouth. “Part of me wants to believe the reason he ended up on the take in the first place was to cover the cost of that woman demanding money.” He huffed out an exaggerated sigh and reached out to clap Crew on the shoulder, nearly knocking him off the bar stool. “But Dad was an asshole from the minute he came into this world until the minute he left it.”

  Crew grunted in agreement. “Why would he pay to keep things quiet for so long? It’s not like he cared what anyone thought about him, especially his own family.” The bitterness was thick in his slightly slurred words.

  I pushed back my hair and leaned my forearms on the bar. “Because the position of sheriff is still an elected one, and Loveless still likes to pretend it’s based on family values. If news of an affair and a child out of wedlock made the rounds, the chances he would keep his position—and retain the fear and respect he spent his whole life cultivating—would be slim. There’s no chance Conrad Lawton would risk letting some woman, any woman, take his power away.” He was far too misogynistic and hardheaded for that.

  “So he paid to keep her quiet.” Case tapped the glass and I reluctantly refilled it. I wasn’t reluctant because I was worried about him drinking too much, but because he was so big, it was going to be a pain in the ass to haul him to the car when Aspen showed up to take him home. “Or she had more on him than the affair and the baby, and he had no choice but to pay up.”

  “More?” Crew leaped to his feet, sending the stool flying to the floor. “What else could there be?”

  Not realizing Crew was at the brink of being pushed too far, Case lifted the glass and muttered, “Who knows? Maybe he coerced the woman into having sex with him? Maybe he forced her? Maybe she threatened to tell Mom about the affair and the old man knew his house of cards was about to come tumbling down? There doesn’t seem to be an end to Conrad’s misdeeds.”

  Crew lifted his hands and tugged violently on his hair. “This is crazy. How could we have a sister we know nothing about? How could Dad provide for that woman—save her life—and not even shed a single tear when our mother, his wife, died? I thought things would be easier with him gone, but now everything seems even more complicated. Are we supposed to welcome this stranger into our family? Are we supposed to like her, to feel sorry for her since she also lost her mother and got stuck with Conrad Lawton as a father? I don’t know what to think.”

  Watching Crew work himself up, I knew he was on the verge of making a bad decision. We shared that trait, letting our emotions rule us and lead us into trouble. Crew liked to gamble, liked the risk and the thrill. What had started out as a hobby ended up with him in the grip of a full-blown addiction and in deep with some very bad, very dangerous people. He’d been on the straight and narrow since meeting Della, realizing there was more to life than the next bet, but I could see he was losing his grip on his restraint, and I refused to let him backslide.

  Discreetly texting Della that it was time to collect her man, I made my way around the bar and stopped in front of Crew. I reached up and put my hands on his shoulders, meeting his wild stare with a steady one of my own.

  “We don’t have to do anything tonight. It’s been one hell of a day and I think we’ve all held up as well as could be expected. Yes, this was a shock. We’ll deal with it together, just like we always do. I think it’s too early to worry about how this woman fits into our lives. She might not want anything to do with us once she gets the full picture of who Conrad was. Right now, he’s a man she feels indebted to. She doesn’t know he was a monster. Once she does, she very well could decide to steer clear of us.”

  The Lawtons were a lot to take on. You really had to have a lot of love for one of us to be willing to embrace our never-ending drama and disorder. The baggage we all carried around was heavy and unwieldy. You never knew when a piece of it was going to topple and crush whatever good thing we had going on in the moment. That woman with my eyes, my father’s eyes, didn’t seem like the warm and fuzzy type. I doubted she had a lot of patience for anything as high maintenance as the Lawtons.

  My brother continued to pull at his hair until tears filled his pretty blue eyes. “I feel like I’m going crazy. I swear this is all some kind of messed-up dream.”

  Case let out a dry, brittle-sounding laugh. “A nightmare. Hey, maybe we won’t want anything to do with her. Her mother was a blackmailer. Her father was a soulless, corrupt cop. Maybe she’s just as bad as them.”

  This was spiraling out of control. “Enough.” I gave Crew a little shake. “We don’t know anything about her, and she doesn’t know anything about us. That isn’t going to change tonight. We all need a breather. We can decide what we’re going to do when our heads are clear. Right now you need to go home to your women. Let them take care of you.”

  I would be forever grateful they’d both found women up to that task, because it was never going to be easy.

  Case clumsily got to his feet and stumbled his way to where Crew and I were standing. He nearly knocked Crew over when he tossed a heavily muscled arm across the other man’s shoulders. Crew was no petite flower, but Case was a giant in comparison. A big, drunk, sloppy giant. Aspen was going to have her hands full when she got here. Luckily she’d sent a text not too long ago saying she was on her way. I figured Della must have sent out an SOS. Thank goodness for future sisters-in-law.

  “Who’s going to take care of you, Kode? That used to be our job, but you don’t let us do it anymore.” Case sounded sulky and put out. He’d definitely had more than his limit if he was openly talking about his feelings. The man was usually a brick wall when it came to discussing emotions.

  I sighed and struggled to stay on my feet as his other arm wrapped around my neck, pulling me in for a hug that was nearly strangling.

  I pushed ineffectively against his broad chest and called his name. “Case! Let me go. I can’t breathe.”

  A smacking kiss landed on the top of my head, and I felt him rest his cheek on top of my curly hair. “I worry about you, kiddo. No matter what, you’re always going to be our baby sister. I only want you to be happy.”

  I thought I heard him sniff. If Case started crying, I had no idea what I was going to do. He was the strong one. He was the one always in control. He was the one who refused to show weakness. Crew was right, this was like some kind of dream where everything was upside down.

  “You and Crew did a good job raising me and loving me. I don’t need anyone to take care of me because you guys taught me how to take care of myself.” I liked being independent and self-sufficient. It felt less risky than relying on someone else. I’d trusted Aaron to stay by my side and help me navigate the treacherous waters of growing up and building a life together, and in the end he’d left me alone to figure it out by myself. I’d also believed that Hill would be there forever to make sure nothing bad happened to his brother…or to me. It was honestly devastating when he proved me wrong. As a result, I tried not to
lean on anyone. That way the only person letting me down and disappointing me was myself.

  Case pulled back and grabbed my face between his hands. He squished my cheeks and made my mouth pucker in a way that had Crew cracking up and me trying to shake him loose.

  “What about Hill?” Case’s clearly unfocused gaze suddenly had a dangerous gleam sparking in its icy blue depths. “He’d take good care of you if you let him.”

  I froze instinctively. There was no way Case could know that relying on Hill Gamble again was my greatest fear, something I’d fought against since I’d lost Aaron. I still remembered the heavy, sinking feeling deep in my gut the first time Hill didn’t answer one of my panicked calls in the middle of the night. I could tell something was different when we talked. I always tried to ask how he was, checked to see if he was taking care of himself and enjoying life outside of Loveless, before diving into whatever was going on with Aaron. But Hill had been curt, making each call shorter and shorter. He would listen to whatever I had to say about Aaron, would offer his opinion and advice, but the easy conversation, the friendly touching base, was withering away. Eventually I felt like I was bothering him, even harassing him each time I called, so I started sending him text messages instead. He always responded, but often with one-word answers that came hours later. I missed having contact with him. Missed his voice. Missed his promises that things with Aaron would work out. I flat-out missed him, and felt horrible anytime Aaron asked what I was sulking about. I was trying my best to save one brother while secretly wondering why the other was forcibly pushing me out of his life. They were both breaking my heart, and I couldn’t tell either one why.

  “Of course you think that. He’s your best friend. Hill and I have nothing in common, and he rubs me the wrong way. I’d kill him before he got around to taking care of me.” I scoffed and shook loose of my oldest brother’s hold. “Plus, did you get a good look at him today? He’s barely taking care of himself right now.”