Blackmail & Secrets. Кейт Хьюит

a red sports car pulled up to the curb.

      “Mind your own damn business!” Ryder snarled.

      “You haven’t changed a bit since college, you know that?”

      Ryder held up his fists. “You want to put your muscle where your mouth is?”

      “This isn’t the time or place for these kind of antics,” Rob said. “Use your head. Philip just got married.”

      Ryder shoved Rob’s shoulder so hard that Rob stumbled backward. Ryder said, “What’s wrong, brother? Chicken?”

      Rob, apparently pushed to his limit, tore off his jacket and threw it on the grass. Ryder did the same. As the two of them squared off, Amelia murmured a silent apology to her unborn child. Some gene pool she’d chosen.

      Before a punch was delivered, Ryder did a quick double step, and with his usual cunning and agility, bolted back to the car and got behind the wheel. Amelia watched as Rob sprinted to the passenger door and tore it open, still arguing with his belligerent brother, begging him not to drive. The engine started with a roar, the car lurched forward, and Rob flung himself into the empty seat.

      The car barreled past Amelia who was stunned speechless and motionless at what she’d witnessed. Neither man seemed to notice her, but she would never forget the sight of the two of them, father and uncle-to-be, speeding away from the country club, away from her, away from her child.

      Amelia spent the night on the sofa, encased in a sleeping bag. It was her last night in the apartment she had rented furnished for the past three years, and as the morning light stole into the room via the big window over the table, she looked around. The place seemed bare and lonely without her personal belongings, most of which she’d packed in the car the day before. All that remained to be done was to roll up her sleeping bag and throw a few last-minute items into a suitcase.

      She snuggled deeper in the folds of flannel, reluctant to get up and begin the long drive to Nevada. She hadn’t been back since burying her father the year before. But now that her student teaching job was over and she’d earned her teaching certificate, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to return to her dad’s old house and have her baby with her favorite aunt and uncle to help. This was not how she had dreamed of starting a family, but she was determined to make the best of the situation.

      A little kick deep within her body brought a smile to Amelia’s lips and an overwhelming feeling of contentment. The pregnancy was unplanned, sure, but that didn’t mean the baby was unwanted. “Kick away, little one,” she murmured. The baby complied.

      For an instant, Amelia thought about Rob and the disturbing physical reaction she’d had to a man who turned out to be a virtual stranger. That was the way it had started with Ryder, too. She’d met him after her father died and she needed legal advice. Later she learned that Ryder was an up-and-coming star at his firm, way too hot to handle her measly problems, but he was pinch-hitting that day for a co-worker. At first, she’d thought it was fate that threw them together.

      In the beginning, he had seemed like the answer to her prayers—he’d been warm, kind, loving. It took far too long to realize that his behavior was self-serving.

      Underneath the good looks and the compassionate words, down in his core, was Rob like Ryder? Did he start out irresistible and slowly turn selfish?

      What did it matter? In a couple of days, she would be miles away. Ryder was history…and Rob? No doubt he was another smooth-talking Hogan intent on looking out for number one.

      As she tried unsuccessfully to button slacks that had fit a few days before and were now too tight in the waist, the phone rang. For several seconds, she stared at it in surprise. She’d been under the impression the phone service had been turned off the night before. She could think of no one she wanted to talk to, but the darn thing was persistent.

      “Thank God you’re home,” Nina Hogan’s voice cried.

      Amelia slid a hand through her shaggy, blond hair, brushing the long bangs off her face. As much as she cared for Nina, she didn’t want to talk to her, not now, not until Ryder had had a chance to do it himself. Or maybe he already had! Maybe that was why Nina’s voice sounded so distraught.

      Amelia steeled herself. “I’m sorry, I was just leaving—”

      “You’ve got to come, Amelia. Say you’ll come.”

      Amelia felt a stir of alarm. “Come where, Nina? What’s wrong?”

      “We’re at the hospital.”

      Amelia’s first thought was of Ryder’s dad. She sank down on a kitchen chair. “Is it Jack? Is it his heart?”

      “No,” Nina cried. “Oh, Amelia, it’s Ryder. He’s been in a terrible automobile accident. Please say you’ll come—”

      Amelia found she was standing again. She mumbled, “Ryder?”

      “I saw you and him talking at the reception. I know you two were trying to patch things up.”

      “Well, Nina, actually—”

      But Nina interrupted with a swallowed sob. “Philip is off on his honeymoon, and Jack looks so awful he’s scaring me half to death. I don’t know who else to call—”

      “Where’s Rob?” Amelia said automatically, though she was already shrugging on her blouse and searching the room with her eyes for her purse. Of course, she’d go, if not for Ryder, then for Nina and Jack.

      Nina gasped. “Oh, Amelia, that’s…that’s the worst part. Ryder and Rob left the reception together. Ryder was driving…there was an accident way out of town…the car ended up in a ravine and no one found them for hours and hours and even then no one could figure out who they were because neither one of them had his wallet. They took the boys to a small clinic while they traced the car back to Ryder’s firm. Ryder is unconscious but his brother…our Robby…oh, dear God in heaven, Amelia, Rob is dead.”

      Amelia stood, stunned, frozen. The image of Ryder and Rob speeding away from the reception together was so clear in her head that she could almost reach out and touch it.

      And then a profound ache pierced her heart. Ryder was badly hurt. Rob was dead.

      “I’m on my way,” she whispered.

      “Good Samaritan Hospital. ICU. Hurry.”

      “I’m on my way.”

      Chapter Two

      The hospital corridor was long and straight. In her haste, Amelia had run across the grass outside, grass which was wet from a sprinkler, and now the soles of her shoes squeaked against the spotless linoleum. She stopped at the nurses’ desk to ask the way to the ICU, but before she could form the question, she caught sight of Jack Hogan leaning against a wall at the far end of the hallway. She started toward him.

      He looked up when she was within twenty feet. Amelia’s pace faltered; the change in Jack’s appearance from a few weeks before when she’d bumped into him at the grocery store just about broke her heart.

      He was tall like his sons, but stooped today, his skin, always pale, now waxen and dull. He stared at her with the brown eyes he’d passed along to his children, eyes he might very well have passed down to the child Amelia carried inside her. Those eyes were now blurred by unshed tears.

      She took his hands and they stared at each other without speaking. His grief was so tangible, it seemed to seep through her skin. She was afraid to ask about Ryder. After a long pause, she finally whispered, “I’m so sorry about Rob.”

      He nodded as the tears rolled down the creases in his cheeks. She cried along with him.

      Nina came through the opaque glass doors, closing them quietly behind her. When she saw Amelia, her composure cracked. “I knew you’d come!” she sobbed as she threw her slight frame into Amelia’s arms.

      Amelia