At least Lucas hadn’t killed Rachel’s uncle—and he was uncomfortably aware of what a close call that had been.
He knew Rachel was a grown woman, that she’d been making her own decisions for a long time, but was she really ready to choose him over her only remaining family? Especially when they had been reunited for just less than a week, and a traumatic week at that.
Everything had happened so fast. So intensely. He didn’t want her decisions influenced by volatile emotions—especially gratitude. If she said she loved him now, only to change her mind when she’d had more time to think about what she was doing—well, he didn’t know if he could say goodbye to her again.
He had to give her time. He had to know, this time, that things wouldn’t end badly. He had to be sure.
RACHEL WAS WELL AWARE of just how closely disaster had been averted Saturday evening. She didn’t want to think about what her uncle might have done to her, had Lucas and the others not found her in time. And she didn’t want to think what Lucas might have done to her uncle, had she not managed to calm him down.
Lucas McBride still had a fiery temper, she realized. He’d learned to control it, but it still simmered in that rebel heart of his. She knew without a doubt that he would never turn that temper against her. But he would always be willing to fight for the people he cared about.
She had known fifteen years ago that she had fallen in love with a dangerous man.
After all that time, some things hadn’t changed.
By noon on Sunday, the gossips of Honoria were having a field day. A steady stream of visitors came by Rachel’s grandmother’s house on the pretext of offering sympathy and support, when many of them just wanted the juicy details of the latest McBride-Jennings scandal. Though the truth was bizarre enough, it was still embroidered in the retelling Rachel heard. Rumor had it that guns had been drawn. Shots fired. Bodies found. That Chief Davenport and Tara McBride’s dashing P.I. husband had barely prevented Lucas from killing Sam Jennings.
With startling small-town fickleness, some people had transformed Lucas from a shadowy murderer suspect into a bold, bad-boy hero who had come home to protect his sister and had daringly saved Rachel’s life. And it didn’t hurt his standing in the community that word had leaked out about the sizeable fortune he’d made with his own computer company. Wealth and success had an amazing way of polishing a tarnished reputation.
Some correct information was also distributed. Sam Jennings had been arrested for assault and battery and the subsequent imprisonment of his niece. He was being questioned in connection with the break-in and assault on Emily McBride several months earlier. There were also questions about whether he’d been involved in the disappearance twenty-four years earlier of his brother Al and Al’s lover, Nadine Peck McBride. It was even possible, some whispered, that Sam had pushed his nephew to his death.
Rachel’s grandmother had been so upset that she spent most of Sunday in bed, recuperating. Rachel’s mother, Jane, became completely hysterical when Rachel tried over the telephone to discuss what had happened. She sounded almost as disturbed by the news that Lucas McBride had rescued Rachel as by everything that Sam had done.
“So she would rather have had you die in that car trunk than to have me be the one to find you there?” Lucas asked when he called just after her difficult conversation with her mother Sunday afternoon.
“No, not quite that bad. Mother just didn’t know you and I were dating before Roger died and it was a shock for her to find out we’ve been seeing each other again while I’ve been back in town. Don’t forget, for the past fifteen years she’s considered you a suspect in her son’s death—thanks, in part, to Sam’s blaming you so adamantly,” she added bitterly.
She and Lucas hadn’t had much chance to talk after he’d pulled her out of her car. Dazed from the shock of everything that had happened to her—as well as from the blow that had rendered her unconscious long enough for Sam to bind her and stuff her into her trunk—she hardly remembered anything that had happened after the rescue. Lucas had insisted on taking her to the emergency room of the nearest hospital, where she’d been examined and released, and then he’d brought her to her distraught grandmother, where he’d left her to rest. She knew he’d gone straight to the police department when he left her, wanting to know exactly what penalties Sam would pay.
“Has my uncle talked?” she asked Lucas, clutching the receiver in a hand that was suddenly unsteady.
“Not much,” Lucas replied, his voice grim. “Wade can’t even get him to admit now that he stuffed you into your car trunk—though, of course, he won’t get away with that one.”
“No, he won’t,” Rachel agreed, her voice hard. “Was any other evidence found to connect him with my father? Or with Roger?”
“Wade found some letters Sam had stashed away. Several were from Nadine—steamy love letters, a few containing hints for gifts or money. Some were written before her marriage to my father... and the rest were written afterward.
Rachel gasped. “Nadine was seeing both my uncle and my father after her marriage?”
“Apparently.” Lucas sounded utterly disgusted with his stepmother’s behavior. “Sounds as if she was playing them all for fools. And it’s pretty obvious that Sam, for one, was obsessed with her.”
“Do you think Roger found out?”
“Wade also found a letter Roger wrote to Sam a few days before he died telling him the same theory Roger had given me—that my father was a murderer. In the letter, he told Sam he’d found the bracelet and Al’s wallet and that he was going to be spending a lot of time looking for more evidence. He said he wanted it in writing in case anything happened to him—he apparently thought either my father or I would be a threat to him.”
“Where was the letter found?” Rachel asked, stunned by the implications. “Why on earth wou
ldn’t Sam have destroyed it?”
“It was in small safe hidden in one of Sam’s closets. Apparently, Sam thought it might be useful against the McBrides someday. Remember, it implicated my father, not Sam.”
“But my father’s car was in his garage.”
“He told Wade Al gave it to him before he left.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Neither do I. Not considering everything else we’ve found. The bracelet is going to be hard for him to brush off. Wade recognized it immediately, as you did. Emily will identify it as the one she was wearing when she was attacked.” Lucas paused. “Wade and I looked very closely at that bracelet last night, after I took you home. There was something about it none of us had noticed before.”