Royal Heir. Alice Sharpe

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СКАЧАТЬ face reflected none of the pain the gash must have inflicted. He said, “It’s nothing.”

      Tucking one end of the scarf under the makeshift bandage, she narrowed her eyes. “What do you have to do with the disappearance of Leonardo Chastain?”

      “Nothing, I swear,” he said.

      She stared hard at him, the weaker part of herself wanting to believe him, wanting to think he was as he portrayed himself. But he’d already lied to her.

      She said, “I was late today picking up Leo because some doofus on the freeway stopped to help me when my tire blew. I couldn’t get rid of him and he didn’t know what he was doing. And then right after I found out Leo was gone, you appeared and led me on a merry chase up and down the elevator—”

      “I led you?” he said. “You were the one leading.”

      “And now Leo is gone and you show up again—”

      “You’re forgetting the car that came within inches of killing you just now,” he said, his voice tight. “The one I saved you from.” Brow wrinkled, he addressed his next comments to himself. “I don’t get it,” he mumbled. “Who was driving that car?”

      “A bad driver—”

      “I don’t think so. I’ve been watching you since you got off the elevator and began walking this way. You’ve been preoccupied. That car came out of the shadows, headed straight for you. And that doesn’t fit—”

      Julia, digging in her shoulder bag for her keys, kept moving toward her car, aware he followed. She zeroed in on the blue elephant. “Fit what?” she said.

      No answer.

      Keys in her fist, arranged as a weapon with one poking out between each finger, she faced him. She said, “If you take one more step—”

      He stopped, holding up his hands. He smiled then—the first smile she’d seen. If he thought she was one of those women who rolled over when a handsome man smiled at them he was in for a surprise. Julia had been smiled at many times by men she didn’t know and seldom had anything good come of it. But then she’d been weaker, smaller, more frightened—a victim. She reached inside herself, reclaiming the gutsy broad she’d had to become to survive. “Go away,” she said.

      “Julia, listen to me.”

      She couldn’t remember giving him her name. It jarred her into mumbling, “I’m listening.”

      “I came here to see you. I came to get Leo back.”

      “I knew you were in on this!” she said, tightening her grip on the keys.

      “You don’t understand,” he said.

      “How can I understand? You haven’t said anything.”

      He looked down at his feet and then at her. Eyes smoldering with an intensity that unnerved her, he repeated, “I came to get Leo back.”

      “Get him back? If you didn’t know he was going to be kidnapped then how—”

      “I didn’t know about the kidnapping. I came to get him back…from you.”

      “From me?”

      Staring into her eyes, he added, “Of course I came for him. I’m his father.”

      Chapter Two

      Julia absorbed this latest shock for a moment before mumbling, “Are you saying that the late William Chastain wasn’t Leo’s father?”

      “No. I’m telling you that I am William Chastain.”

      “He’s dead,” Julia said.

      “Well, no.”

      “Nicole called me the week before she died and told me he was killed when his boat blew up.”

      “And his body?”

      “Between the explosion and the river currents, what body?”

      “Exactly. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I didn’t die on the river. I escaped.”

      Julia shook her head. “Preposterous. Why would Nicole say you were dead if you weren’t?”

      “Because she didn’t know I wasn’t.”

      Julia shook her head again. “This is crazy—”

      “I know it sounds nuts. But I can explain.”

      “So do it.”

      “Not here.”

      She stared at him.

      “Listen, Leo has big blue eyes and fuzzy reddish hair, like his mother. Like she had. He has a little mark on the back of his neck, a birthmark. You’re Julia Sheridan, Nicole’s cousin. You’ve just known Nicole a couple of years. I believe she took advantage of your generosity by calling on you to watch Leo when she flew down here to party with her pals. Am I close?”

      “Close,” Julia said. “Trouble is, the people who took Leo knew all about me, too.”

      “Then ask me something unique about Nicole.”

      Julia rubbed her temples. Would this confusion never stop? She looked into his eyes and once again resisted the pull to trust him, to take him at face value. She said, “Why don’t you just show me some identification?”

      He smiled again, but this time the thought crossed her mind that the gesture was fueled by frustration. “I don’t have any identification,” he said. “My wallet was in my suit jacket when my boat blew up. I wasn’t wearing it at the time.”

      “Of course you weren’t,” she said.

      He waved aside her sarcasm. “If I understood what was happening in there with the lawyer, the kidnappers produced all sorts of fake documents, right? If I was one of them, don’t you think I’d at least have made myself a nice official-looking Washington state driver’s license?”

      He had a point.

      “Look at me,” he added.

      She did as he asked and for the first time, she noticed the details that she’d been too preoccupied to notice before.

      “What happened to you?” she said. “Why are you wearing someone else’s clothes? What happened to your forehead and cheeks? When’s the last time you slept?”

      “The clothes belong to some poor guy who left his car unlocked and his dry cleaning in the backseat.”

      “You stole a suit?”

      “I just wish he’d been a taller man,” he said and they both glanced down at the pant legs, which were too short. The sleeves were, too.

      “What about СКАЧАТЬ