Page 135 of The Jealous Girl

Unsettling but nice.

‘So,’ Ben said, ‘who at Blackwater has it in for you, to set up a fake bank account?’

‘Denise,’ I said automatically. ‘She’s never liked me. She made that clear from the first moment she met me.’

Ben scrunched his nose. ‘She doesn’t have the knowledge, though, to construct that fraud. Or the access. She gives riding lessons and leads trail rides. But she’s never been involved in the business side. That’s always just been Martin and Ryan.’

I shook my head. ‘It can’t have been Martin. He was in hospital when I arrived.’

‘Only for a few days,’ Ben pointed out.

‘Yeah, but then he was laid up in the house, recovering. Do you really think he was plotting against me from his sickbed?’

‘That just leaves Ryan, then.’

I stared at him. ‘You can’t seriously think he would do this?’

‘Someone in that family did.’

‘Ryan and I were together, we were…’

‘What?’ Ben asked, when I stopped abruptly.

‘We were engaged.’

His eyes widened. ‘I had no idea.’

‘No one did.’ I shrugged like it hadn’t mattered.

But it had.

‘He proposed in Malta. In fact, we were about to be married. The call about Martin’s heart attack came two days before our wedding.’

‘Wow,’ Ben said.

Silence settled between us, the magnitude of what I’d said filling the room.

‘So, you’d have been a Blackwater.’

‘Yep,’ I said, taking a sip of tea and wincing slightly as it burned my lip.

‘And you’re sure no one knew?’

‘Ryan hadn’t even told them he had a girlfriend, let alone a fiancée.’ I scoffed. ‘You should have seen Denise’s face when he introduced me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said softly.

‘What for?’

‘The wedding. The plans you had. Everything you gave up to come and help Ryan’s family.’

I shrugged. ‘It was nothing.’

He shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t nothing. It was important. And that makes the way they treated you even more sickening.’

‘We don’t know that the family were involved. The vet could be wrong⁠—’

‘I’m not talking about the bank account. I mean, that’s a whole other level of bad. But the way that family treated you from the second you arrived was awful. We all heard them. The way they spoke to you. The contempt. The condescension.’