The Hopechest Bride. Kasey Michaels

Joe, Jr. Patsy had admitted that he was hers, the product of a casual liaison with some unknown man. She’d admitted that she’d left Joe, Jr. on the Colton doorstep, knowing he’d be taken in, knowing she planned to join him in a few short weeks. The deviousness of the woman, the near-brilliant manic imagination of the woman.

      In exchange for Meredith and Joe continuing to raise the boys as their own and hunting for the baby she had named Jewel, Patsy had talked for hours, for days, outlining her deception, filling in blanks with a sort of fierce pride that just emphasized her mental illness.

      She’d tried to poison Joe the night of his sixtieth birthday, had hinted that there had been other plans for other attempts on his life. That had been a shock, a very big shock. She’d laughed as she admitted to being surprised to learn that she wasn’t the only one who wished Joe dead, that Emmett Fallon had also been trying to kill the man.

      But her most particular glee had come in exposing Joe’s brother, Graham, as the father of her son, Teddy. She’d even admitted to blackmailing Graham in order to keep her silence.

      Poor Joe. Poor, deluded, betrayed Joe. He hadn’t wanted to tell Meredith about Graham, but after one horrible nightmare from which she’d had to wake him, he’d finally blurted it all out. He told her that Rand knew, and he knew, but nobody else knew, and Meredith urged him to keep silent, for Teddy’s sake, at least for now. She didn’t know if this was the right or wrong thing to do, whether it was fair to Graham’s other children, Jackson and Liza, but she did know that Joe, Jr. and Teddy were Coltons by name, and Portmans by birth. She would raise both boys as if they were her own, and with no regrets.

      Meredith stopped in front of the fountain, the one that had haunted her dreams and begun her long road back from the amnesia that had plagued her since the accident Patsy had engineered so many years ago. She put out a hand, catching the cool water as it ran over the rim, listening to the gentle sound of it.

      “It’s a lot bigger than the fountain back in Mississippi,” a woman’s voice said from somewhere behind her, “but I think we could have put it together the way we built that one, given enough time and a few margaritas. Hello, Meredith. Your husband thought maybe I ought to visit here for a while, if that’s all right with you?”

      “Martha!” Meredith wheeled around to see Dr. Martha Wilkes standing on the patio, shivering in her thin coat not made for a raw November California day. The psychologist was smiling, her dark face lit with humor even as her brown eyes measured Meredith, her patient of five years.

      Joe had invited her? What a wonderful man! Just what she needed, to talk with Martha, the one person who understood everything, the one person who wouldn’t demand answers because she knew, she knew it all. The one person Meredith could talk to without reserve, without worrying that she might say something hurtful, might have forgotten something important to the other person. The one woman who might be able to help Emily. Meredith’s heart swelled with hope.

      “Well?” Dr. Wilkes asked with a smile. “It’s been a long trip, Meredith. Is that all you’re going to say? ‘Martha?’”

      Meredith launched herself into her friend’s arms. “Oh, my God—Martha!”

      Emily knew more than her parents thought she knew. She’d gone to Rand when she learned that Patsy Portman had made a full confession, and she’d railed at him, pleaded with him, until she’d learned everything, including the knowledge that her conversation with Nora Hickman had directly led to that good woman’s death. Well, Rand hadn’t exactly told her; she’d guessed most of it. It had been easy to think badly of herself, blame herself for anyone’s misfortunes.

      She also knew now that Silas Pike had followed her when she’d fled the Hacienda de Alegria, and had found her in Keyhole, helped by Patsy’s description of her unique, long chestnut-red hair.

      The hair Toby had so admired. The hair that had been her vanity, so that she hadn’t cut it, hadn’t worn a wig, hadn’t disguised herself. She’d been so sure she was safe. She should have cut her hair. Dyed it. Done something.

      The guilt she felt was crushing, debilitating. And never-ending.

      Emily admired her mother’s courage, the woman’s ability to look for happiness where she could, embrace the family that had not seen through Patsy’s deception for ten long years. She was amazed as she watched her mother slide almost effortlessly back into the ebb and flow of daily life at the ranch, her smile always bright even if her eyes were sometimes sad and wistful, her strength of will so obvious to anyone who looked.

      Emily envied her mother’s courage as well, because she had none of her own. She used to, she was sure of that, but she still had horrifying nightmares about Silas Pike, nightmares where he walked toward her with his curious limping gait, his eyes cold and hard, his Fu-Manchu mustache not quite hiding the leer of his smiling mouth and the large gap between his two front teeth. He walked toward her relentlessly, a gun in his hand, saying, “Well, if it isn’t little Emily Blair…or would you rather I call you Emma Logan?”

      She felt stripped naked, not just to her real name, but to her fears, the fears that had followed her ever since the night she’d first seen the outline of a man in her bedroom and known that he’d come to kill her.

      But that lingering fear was nothing compared to the guilt. Toby had trusted her, Toby had loved her, and yet she hadn’t trusted him enough to confide in him, leaving him unprepared to enter her motel cottage and come face-to-face with Silas Pike and his cocked pistol.

      So much guilt. Because she hadn’t told him. Because she hadn’t loved him.

      Emily dug the toe of her ancient cowboy boot into the dirt as she stood alongside the corral fence, wishing she could find the shutoff switch to her brain, locate the erase button to the tape that rewound and rewound inside her head, day and night, night and day.

      She was supposed to talk to Dr. Wilkes later today, and had promised her mother that she would, but she knew it would be a fruitless exercise. Nobody else could erase that tape for her; she was going to have to live with what she’d done, what she hadn’t done.

      She was glad Dr. Wilkes could be so helpful to her mother, but her mother had been a victim, and she had no guilt. Emily knew she herself had not been a victim. She’d been proactive all her life, always stating her case firmly if not believably, and then protecting herself as best she could, fighting her own battles.

      Right up until the moment Toby Atkins had stepped in to fight her largest battle for her, and died saving her stupid, stubborn life.

      Emily turned away from the fence rail, knowing she’d left it too late to take a ride, try to clear her head at least for a little while, and bumped smack into a tall, hard body that blocked her way.

      “Emily Colton?” the man asked as she looked up into Toby Atkins’s blue eyes.

      She blinked, swallowed, stepped back a pace. “Who—who are you?”

      “The name’s Atkins,” he told her, his eyelids narrowing around Toby’s blue eyes— No, not Toby’s eyes; Toby’s eyes smiled. “Josh Atkins. Ring any bells?”

      Emily took yet another step backward, her spine colliding with the rail fence. She’d run out of room, had nowhere to run, no place to hide. “Josh…Josh Atkins? Toby’s brother?”

      No wonder she’d seen Toby in his eyes. But that was all of Toby that could be seen in this lean, hard-eyed man. He wore a huge, sweat-stained Stetson with the front brim folded up on both sides, as if he often rolled the brim between his hands when the hat wasn’t shoved down hard on his head. Instead of a sheriff’s uniform, like his brother’s, he wore heeled cowboy boots, dusty stovepipe-legged jeans that fit like a second skin, a sky-blue cotton shirt and a brown leather vest that skimmed his belt buckle.

      If he’d had a six-gun strapped to his thigh, she wouldn’t have thought it seemed out of place, as he had the look of a real, old-time cowboy about him, a cowboy about to face off in the middle of a dusty street, guns blazing.

      His