Like the dead baby? He hadn’t mentioned that. But it must have something to with his paternity.
“If there isn’t anything else I can get you, then I should go. The chef—”
“Warned you not to get too familiar with me?” He kept watching her.
“Yes.” She couldn’t think clearly, not with him looking at her like that.
“I’m not trying to get you into trouble, Maya.”
No, she thought. He was waiting for her to come clean, to tell him who she was. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, and he didn’t ask her directly, just in case she was the wrong girl.
“Will you look after Lester while I’m gone?” he asked instead.
She frowned. “Lester?”
He pointed to the dog, and the puppy danced in a circle. “He was a gift from the Halloways. He looks a lot like my childhood pet. It was tough to resist him.”
She glanced at the mixed-breed. He was so ugly he was cute. “I shouldn’t—”
“Get overly familiar with my dog? What’s the harm in that?”
She wanted to trust Justin. She wanted to believe that he was as honest as he seemed. “No harm,” she said, taking a small chance.
He smiled, revealing a set of boyishly lethal dimples, making her wonder what she’d gotten herself into. He actually turned her knees weak. How sexy could he be?
“I’ll tell Brian I’m leaving Lester in your care.” The dimples faded. He was no longer smiling. “It’s going to be tough seeing my parents. I’ll be glad to get it over with.”
She tried to seem unaffected, but she couldn’t help thinking about her own parents and the secret they’d kept.
“Are you okay?” he asked, as a shiver sliced her spine.
She looked up at the man who’d promised to help her. A man whose new family she believed was responsible for whatever had happened to her dad. “I’m fine.” She glanced at the food he’d yet to eat. “Just put the dishes outside of your door when you’re done.”
He reached out to brush her arm. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes.” His concern, his deliberate touch, made her weak-kneed all over again.
A moment later, she left his room, anxious for him to return to the mansion.
And wishing to God she wasn’t.
Chapter 3
Justin sat on his parents’ porch. The red-and-white farmhouse was as familiar as the beat of his heart. Bluebonnets bloomed every spring, and a live oak in the front yard clawed its way to the sky.
But it gave him no peace.
He’d grown up at Elk Ridge Ranch: the five-star guest lodge, the rustic rental cabins, the grassy slopes, the limestone caves. His own house, a log dwelling in the hills, was his sanctuary.
Or so he’d thought. Today he felt disconnected from everything, even the loving, caring people who’d raised him.
He turned to look at his dad. At fifty-five Michael Elk was strong and well built. Although his hair was streaked with gray and had thinned a bit over the years, he still wore it long and banded into a ponytail, the way a lot of older Indians did.
Justin had expected to age just like him, to get sun-burnished lines at the corners of his eyes, to see a recognizable image in the mirror. But how was that possible? They weren’t related, not by blood.
He studied his mom next. Heather Elk. He remembered when she was pregnant with his sister. He’d touched her tummy and asked her if he’d lived inside of her, too. And she’d scooped him up and told him that he had. He’d cuddled in her arms, thinking she was the most beautiful mommy on earth, with her princess-in-the-tower hair and crayon-blue eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking.
“For what? Lying to me?” Justin was supposed to be part white because of her. But it was Beverly who’d given him his Anglo roots. And Reed who made him part Indian. His mom’s half brother was half-Cherokee. “How’d you fake my birth certificate?”
A strand of white-blond hair fluttered across her cheek. “It’s a legitimate document, but it was filed ten months after you were born.”
With phony information, he thought. “When I was a kid, you told me that the photo album with my early baby pictures had been lost. But that was a lie, too. There are no pictures. You couldn’t snap them while you were on the run.”
“No, we couldn’t,” she responded simply.
He pressed her, wanting answers, wanting to know about the other child. “Did your real son have a name? Did you give him one before you buried him?”
“You are our real son, Justin. We love you more than any parent could love a child.” She shifted in her chair, fought the tears in her eyes. “But no, I didn’t name him. Reed said we should name our children the Cherokee way, to wait until we saw them, until they were born. Reed delivered both babies. We couldn’t go to a hospital. We couldn’t take that chance.” She paused, still fighting tears. “You were born first. About a week later, I went into labor, but the child in my womb was stillborn. The umbilical cord got…”
Her words faded, and Justin glanced up at the sky. Soon the sun would be setting, melding into the clouds, getting darker, preparing for the coffinlike closure of night. He wanted to console his mom, to ease her pain, but his own hurt and anger blocked the way.
“I took you and your dad to the place he was buried,” she said suddenly. “After Reed went into WITSEC, after Beverly died. I took both of you there.”
He tried to envision the unmarked grave, but being switched with a dead baby only gave him a chill. “Why?”
“Because I needed to see where he was laid to rest,” his dad interjected. “And we wanted to tell you about him. You were too young to understand, only about a year old, but it mattered to us.”
“We told you that he had a pony just like yours,” Mom added. “That mattered, too.”
“The toy that Denny Halloway read about,” Justin said.
Dad made a tight face. “Denny was a snake. I’m sure he still is.”
“Yeah, but you should have told me the truth. Not when I was a baby, but when I was old enough to understand. I should have been given some sort of choice.”
“To do what? Meet Beverly’s family?” His mom exhaled a shaky breath. “They would have fought for custody. And with their power and law-bending privilege, they probably would have bribed a corrupt judge and won.”
“They got me now, didn’t they? They came into my life just the same.”
“By kidnapping you?” Dad’s voice turned hard. “I could kill them for that.”
“They didn’t hurt me.” He wasn’t sure why he was making excuses for his abductors. All he knew was that his world had been turned inside out and that his parents’ lie had triggered it.
Mom’s eyes filled up again. “I promised Beverly and Reed that I would keep their secret. They loved you. And they loved each other. They would have raised you if they could.”
Justin scowled, repeating what Brian had said. “Reed could’ve taken me into WITSEC with him. He didn’t have to give me up.”
“The FBI didn’t offer Reed a deal until after I brought Beverly home to die, until after she told the Halloways that you were mine. How would we have explained my son going into witness protection with my