The Substitute Sister. Lisa Childs

it safe to go to the house at all? “Annie…”

      “Her nanny will be there. She’ll watch her while you and I talk to the lawyer.”

      “Nadine had a nanny?” She couldn’t understand any of it. How did Nadine afford an estate? A nanny for her child?

      “She kind of came with the estate. She used to be Mrs. Scott’s nurse.”

      “Mrs. Scott?”

      “Nadine inherited the estate from her a couple of years ago. Some people have disputed Nadine’s inheritance.”

      “Could that be why she was murdered?” Sasha asked.

      He shook his head. “Someone waited two years to kill her? To accomplish what? You inherited. It doesn’t make sense.”

      None of it made sense to Sasha. Besides Annie, there was so much more Sasha had to learn about her sister’s life and death. Her head spun with all the information the sheriff had just thrown at her.

      “I don’t understand…” And with him so close, she couldn’t think.

      If she’d kept in touch with Nadine, she would have known all about her life. And although she had no proof that her presence in Nadine’s life would have prevented her sister’s murder, guilt nagged at her. So much guilt…

      “I’ll let the lawyer explain everything to you.”

      He was waiting for her at the house Nadine had left to her. “I don’t want anything from Nadine,” she said because she’d given Nadine nothing, not the forgiveness she should have, not the friendship, love…and possibly the salvation.

      “Nothing?” he asked over the little girl’s curly head.

      Possessiveness tightened her arms around the child. “Just Annie.”

      “Angel.”

      “What?”

      “That’s what Nadine always called her, her little angel.” Sadness passed through Reed’s green eyes and pulled at his sculpted lips. And finally he released his hold on the child, so that she settled securely into Sasha’s arms. He stepped back. Somehow Sasha knew that step cost him a lot and was quite significant.

      She didn’t fool herself into thinking he trusted her to care for the child, especially not after her admission to him. But he was a lawman, and as such he had to respect Nadine’s last wish that Sasha raise her daughter. Not him.

      He hadn’t said anything, but she knew he believed he should have been Annie’s guardian. Last night and at their first meeting, she’d felt his resentment that Nadine had named her instead, and now she had witnessed his tenderness with Annie.

      He more than cared about this little girl…he loved her.

      Sasha found the courage to ask the question that had been burning in her throat since she’d met him and Annie. “Is she yours?”