What Are You Afraid Of? (The Agency #2)(85)

She flinched in disgust at his touch. His fingers felt cold against her skin, clammy. Like a fish.

“Why would you kidnap me?” she rasped.

He frowned, annoyed by her reaction. “You know why.”

“No, I truly don’t understand,” she breathed.

He narrowed his gaze. “Maybe you don’t.” Without warning he grabbed her chin and roughly forced back her head. He studied her like she was a bug beneath a microscope. “You look so much like your mother.”

She tried to jerk away from him, only to gasp when he squeezed hard enough to send shooting pain through her jaw.

“So I’ve been told,” she managed to say.

He continued to study her. “But you have your father’s smile. Or should I say our father.”

She stilled, all thoughts of murder and mayhem forgotten as she met his gaze. The pale eyes shimmered with an inner emotion Ronnie could barely contain. Anticipation?

“What did you say?” she forced herself to ask.

“Our father,” he repeated.

“Our?”

“Stuart Jacobs was my father,” he said. “And you, sweet Carrie, are my sister.”

Ronnie sat back on his heels, watching the stunned emotions that rippled over her face with avid fascination. Carmen barely noticed. She was grappling with his outrageous claim.

Stuart Jacobs was the father of Ronnie Hyde?

She mentally repeated the words over and over, trying to let them sink into her brain.

They refused to penetrate.

Maybe she was being foolish. After all, her father had murdered her mother. He was obviously capable of any atrocity. Including denying the existence of his own child despite the fact he practically lived beneath his own roof.

But Carmen shook her head. Whatever her father’s faults, there’d never been a second when he hadn’t been devoted to her. There was no way he would have treated his child with such a cold disdain.

“That’s impossible,” she muttered.

Ronnie’s face settled into sullen lines. As if he was disappointed by her reaction.

“Of course the precious princess would assume it was impossible,” he sneered.

She flinched at the venom in his voice. Why hadn’t she seen the bitterness that stewed deep inside him?

“My father would never . . .” Her words trailed away as his fingers dug into her face with bruising force.

“What?” he snapped, an ugly flush crawling beneath his skin. “Have sex with a mere housekeeper?”

“He would never have denied his own son,” she said, blinking back the tears of pain. She didn’t know if Ronnie realized he was hurting her, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. “Unless you’re claiming he didn’t know?”

Ronnie released his hold on her chin and surged upright. He stared down at her with a brooding expression.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said.

She released a silent breath of relief. Not just because the pain in her chin eased, but because the longer the crazy, delusional man talked, the longer Griff would have to find her.

“What kind of story?” she asked in what she hoped was encouraging tones. To her ears it sounded like a squawk.

Ronnie shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, aimlessly circling the small open space. They were at the back of the warehouse in an equipment bay. On each side of them were large forklifts. She assumed they were used to move the heavy stacks of lumber.

Ronnie, however, strolled across the cement like he was an actor crossing the stage. Carmen had a sudden suspicion that he’d desperately longed for the spotlight even when he was hiding in the bushes.

“It’s about a young, foolish woman who was born to a poor family,” he said with a dramatic flourish of his hands. “She didn’t have parents who indulged her every whim. Instead, she had to go to work when she was just seventeen in the fancy house on the edge of town.”

“Your mother?”

“My poor, innocent mother.” He sent her another one of those bitter glances. As if he blamed her for his mother’s lack of fortune. “She came to the house to work, but she was promptly seduced by the rich owner.”

Carmen frowned. She could still remember the way her father looked at her mother. Blatant adoration.

There’d been nothing of that when he was in the same room as the housekeeper. She didn’t think the two of them even spoke unless it was for her father to ask Ellen to perform some household task.

Surely there would have been some lingering affection if the two had been lovers?

“Why would she stay if my father took advantage of her?”

His features contorted with fury before he was visibly struggling to control his temper. Long minutes passed, his harsh breath the only sound to break the thick silence.

At last he regained control of his composure.

“This is my story,” he snapped.

She used his anger as an excuse to scoot away from his looming form, pressing her back against the wall. Not that she had to pretend to be afraid. Ronnie Hyde was scaring the crap out of her.

“I’m sorry.”

As if he was soothed by the sight of her cowering on the floor, Ronnie sniffed and returned to his pacing.

“Once she discovered she was pregnant, she couldn’t expect the man to do the honorable thing and marry her,” he said, the words falling smoothly from his lips. Carmen suspected he’d rehearsed this speech a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. “She was a servant. A nobody.”