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There was no response.
Not then.
Not thirty minutes later when he arrived on the outskirts of the property owned by Wilson T. Steele, US District Attorney and the man Travis had hated since he was sixteen.
He stayed in the shadows created by the hedges as he looked across the carefully manicured lawn, lip curled in disgust at what he saw. A fucking party. Steele was always having these parties here, even flying in friends he wanted to impress, making his girls and wife dress up like living dolls to parade in front of people.
A slim, almost frail figure passed by and he recognized Mary Kate, felt a wash of protectiveness run through him. Steele called her and she nodded, heading over to her father without speaking.
Gripping one of the tall iron fence posts, he searched the crowd for Isabel, easily finding Ellen, Mary Kate’s twin. He grinned when he saw what she wore, suspecting she’d worn it solely to piss her dad off. Ellen couldn’t be more different from her more delicate twin, even though their looks were identical—at least on the surface. But nobody who reallylookedat a person would ever mistake one twin for the other. Ellen wore a dress that was probably better suited for a woman ten years older, a bold, blistering red that ended just a few inches past her butt and dipped low in the back—and the front, he realized when she turned around to wave at her father when he called her name.
Steele glared at her but she pretended not to notice before turning back to her conversation partner, a guy easily three times her age, who couldn’t keep his eyes off the neckline of her dress.
Travis wanted to scale the fence and go hit him, even though he’d never officially met Ellen. It was the right thing to do for a sister-in-law, though, wasn’t it?
“Finally ... the guest of honor!” Wilson called out, his voice carrying.
Everybody fell silent.
The hair on the back of Travis’ neck stood on end.
“Hey, kid. Fancy seeing you here.”
He shot a look to his right and saw Miles Hawkins, the FBI agent—or so the card had said. But he only made eye contact for a few seconds before Steele’s voice caught his attention once more.
“Honored friends and guests, my oldest daughter, Isabel.”
Travis saw her in the doorway and his heart twisted in his chest, the exact way it had done when he’d seen her for the first time three years ago. It almost hurt to breathe now, just as it had then, and he had to remind himself that breathing wasnecessary.
The crowd parted and his hand tightened convulsively on the fence post. Could he get her attention? Could he—
“What the fuck ... ”
Dazed, he grabbed a second fence post with his left hand, needing the support desperately as one of the guests went to stand next to Isabel.
As the tall man bent to kiss Isabel’s cheek, Travis felt his gorge rise.
When the guy put his hand on Isabel’s softly rounded belly, Travis felt everything in him crystallize, then shatter.
“They’re engaged.”
Travis had forgotten he wasn’t alone. Numb, he looked over at the older man standing next to him.
“She’s pregnant,” he said, voice barely more than a croak.
Hisgirl was pregnant. He had no idea how far along she was—he only knew the basics about pregnancy. Oh, and he knew how tonotget a girl pregnant. But hedidknow that baby couldn’t be his. Human pregnancies didn’t last a fucking year. Besides, the two of them had done a lot of fooling around the past summer, but they’d stopped just short of actually doing it—not because Travis hadn’t been ready, though. He was a guy—ofcourse, he was ready. But the girl he wanted—Isabel—hadn’t been. So when she put the brakes on, each time, he’d stopped.
She hadn’t stopped this guy, though.
“Yeah. They’ve been together since Valentine’s Day, according to my sources.”
Valentine’s Day. Travis wanted to hit something.
Instead, he turned on his heel and strode away.
