Only a Millionaire (The Sinclairs #6.5)(26)

I looked at him sharply. “And they did?”

He shook his head. “Not intentionally. But when DNA and ancestry sites developed, I put a sample of my own DNA on every website I could find. It took a long time, but I finally got a match.”

“Noah?” I guessed.

“Jade,” he corrected. “Brooke’s sister has some impressive primitive-survival skills, and she was curious to know if she had any Native American blood, since she knew very little about her father. She didn’t find any Native American ancestors, but she found me. I matched her as a half sibling. We discovered each other right before the robbery at the bank. I didn’t have the chance to talk to anybody except Noah and Jade before it happened.”

“So Brooke was kept in the dark and shipped over to the East Coast?” I growled, hating the fact that her family had played God and hidden everything for almost a year.

“Do you think that’s what I wanted to do?” Evan snapped. “Brooke had been through hell. There was no way I could drop all of this on her.”

“So I take it she has a significant inheritance.” I had to admit it had been pretty damn nice of Evan to recognize them as possible heirs, even though he didn’t have to. But I was still pissed off at him.

“Do you care?” Evan asked as he stared intently at me.

“No. I have more money than we’d ever need.”

Evan rose. “I think I could use a drink. Can I get you anything?”

“Beer, if you have one,” I answered distractedly. I didn’t indulge very often, but tonight seemed as good as any to break my usual abstinence.

I leaned back in my chair, my entire body tense from absorbing Evan’s information.

He was back quickly, handing me a bottle of beer while he drank something that looked slightly stronger. He started to speak again as he took a seat. “Like I said, I was in a bad situation,” he said in a husky voice. “I wanted to tell Brooke, but I didn’t want to impede her recovery from something that most people will never have to see.”

“I get that,” I grudgingly admitted. “I guess what doesn’t make sense is the fact that they never knew who their father was.”

Evan shrugged. “Maybe their mother planned to tell them someday, and she got sick. On the other hand, I wouldn’t blame her if she never mentioned it. Her children were under the assumption that he was dead, which he was, but she never told them that the marriage she’d thought was legal was invalid. My father married Brooke’s mother in Vegas. He was probably drunk, and he must have known the marriage was illegal, but he was a pretty heavy drinker. I’m assuming he thought he would never get caught, and he didn’t care.”

“Did Brooke’s mother ever know?”

Evan nodded. “As far as I can gather from Noah, she found out when my father died. He said she cried a lot, but she was angry, too. I’m assuming she discovered that my father was already married and had a family. If she hadn’t learned that, she never would have let go of finding her supposed husband. My guess is that she found him after his death, and then discovered that he had a legal wife and other children.”

I took a deep breath and then let it out, wondering how in the hell that had to feel. Finding out that you’d borne your husband that many kids, and he wasn’t really your husband. “It had to have been hard for her,” I said sympathetically.

“I’m sure it was,” Evan agreed. “I just wish she had come to me.”

He sounded truly regretful, and I had to give him credit for his sense of responsibility. “Most billionaire families wouldn’t have talked to her,” I pointed out.

“The Sinclairs aren’t most families,” he answered. “My father didn’t define this family. His children do. All of them.”

My respect for Evan grew as I realized that he felt just as responsible for his half siblings as he did for his full-blooded sister and brothers. “Brooke said she grew up poor.”

“She did. I think my father probably gave her mother enough money in cash, when he saw her, to keep the family afloat. But once he died, the money stopped.”

“So he lived like a billionaire while half of his kids lived barely above poverty level?”

Evan nodded sharply. “After he died, they had nothing. Brooke’s mom really had no skills. She was young when he married her, and she died early from breast cancer. All she did was work, according to Noah. Until . . . she died.”

“What a miserable fucking life,” I cursed. “For all of them.”

“Strangely, all of them turned out to be decent human beings,” Evan informed me. “They worked hard to have a better life. They had to have been taught that by their mother. It certainly didn’t come from my father. In fact, I see very little similarity between any of them and my father.”

“They’re close because they helped each other,” I added.

Evan had a ghost of a smile on his face as he said, “They’re actually rather extraordinary.”

I noted that he looked pretty damn proud of the bastard Sinclairs, but I was more interested in what had happened to Brooke. “So why did Brooke have to go?”

“I’m afraid she’s a little suspicious of my motives. I’m not sure if it’s because she doesn’t trust me, or she was worried her whole family had changed while she was here in Amesport.”