Chapter 19 #2
“Fought for you?” Jesse was confused. “I don’t understand.”
A hint of color touched Tegan’s pale cheeks. A genuine emotion?
“Of course you don’t, you stupid cow. How could you?” The blue eyes flicked over Jesse’s rumpled form with an icy hatred. “You’re the princess, right? The precious daughter who could do no wrong.”
Jesse’s heart missed a beat. She’d been wrong. So very, very wrong.
Tegan wasn’t lacking emotions. It was that she kept them so tightly suppressed that they boiled deep inside her, like the lava in a sleeping volcano, just waiting for the opportunity to spew out her toxic fury.
Jesse deliberately tilted her chin, knowing her only hope of getting out of the boathouse was to continue to provoke the younger woman.
“That’s not true,” she insisted. “My dad adored you.”
This time Jesse was braced for the blow to her face, ignoring the pain as her head was jerked to the side to concentrate on pulling the phone from her pocket.
She kept her hand behind her back, knowing she had to keep Tegan distracted as she pressed the buttons on the side and swiped her thumb over the screen.
She had no way to know if she’d activated the emergency call to 911, but she would try again in a couple minutes.
“I’ll tell you what’s true,” Tegan snapped, leaning over Jesse like a vulture. “Do you know why my mother married Mac Hudson?”
Jesse tilted back her head to meet the smoldering blue gaze. It was a question that had haunted her for years.
“Honestly, I don’t have a clue.”
“Because of me.”
“Why?”
“When we first came to Canton my mom did her usual routine. First she tried to land some gross rich dude who would give her the social standing she wanted,” she said, reminding Jesse that Victoria had dated the local banker before turning her attention to her dad.
“When that didn’t happen she started playing the field, dating every man around in the hopes of finding a sucker who had a ton of money and was willing to share it with a single mother and her darling daughter.
Eventually, she decided that the town was too small to attract the sort of mid-level criminals she usually ended up with, so she decided we were going to move on.
I was the one who said I wanted to stay. And that I wanted Mac to be my dad.”
The story fit with what Jesse had uncovered over the past week. “Why Mac?”
Tegan snorted. “Every man wanted my mother. I don’t know what witchcraft she used, but the minute they met her, they turned into mindless idiots desperate to get between her legs. It was disgusting. Like dogs in heat.”
Jesse blinked at the venom in Tegan’s voice. She clearly hated Victoria as much as Jesse. Maybe more.
“I remember,” she murmured.
“Most of them wanted me to disappear, of course. Who wants a brat hanging around when you’re trying to get a woman naked?
Some gave me money to stay in my room, and others threatened to beat me.
Only Mac actually made the effort to treat me like I was something more than a nuisance.
” Tegan’s icy features melted at the memory of Jesse’s father.
“He talked to me like I was a real person, and he listened to what I had to say. Or at least he pretended to.”
“No. He listened.” Jesse held her stepsister’s gaze. “Because he genuinely cared.”
A hint of vulnerability softened the blue eyes before Tegan was abruptly stepping back, her lips pinching together.
“My mother thought he was a local yokel who smelled like beer and had the charm of a turnip.”
Jesse flinched. “Then why did she marry him?”
“We’d run out of money and she was getting desperate. Mac Hudson was better than nothing.”
“So you got what you wanted.”
Jesse ground her teeth. How many wounds had Victoria inflicted on Mac with her constant bickering and icy disdain?
It was just like Bea said. The woman had broken his spirit before she broke his heart.
And why? Because she couldn’t bother to love her petulant daughter.
If Tegan hadn’t been desperate for a little affection, Victoria would have moved on from Canton and none of this would have happened.
“I would have if it hadn’t been for you,” Tegan snapped. “You ruined everything.”
“Me? What did I do?”
Tegan lifted her hand, but with a visible effort she resisted the urge to hit Jesse again. Instead, she stiffened her spine, as if regretting her display of temper. Jesse sensed that Tegan liked to pretend she was always in perfect control. In control of her temper, of her situation, of her future.
“Don’t treat me like an idiot,” she warned, her voice coated in ice. “We both know you squealed and bleated like a stuck pig if Mac gave me the slightest amount of attention.”
Jesse shrugged. She couldn’t deny she acted like a prima donna. “I was a child too. Of course I was jealous of having to share my dad.”
“You’d had him your whole life. You couldn’t give me a measly couple of years?”
Jesse wasn’t going to squabble over who’d been the bigger brat. If she had to be knocked over the head and held hostage by Tegan, at least she could get some answers.
“So you killed him.” It was an accusation, not a question.
Tegan’s lips parted, but before she could respond, the door to the boathouse was abruptly shoved open to reveal a form that was silhouetted by the late afternoon sunlight.
Jesse narrowed her eyes against the golden rays that flooded the cramped darkness.
Her first thought was that it wasn’t nearly as late as she’d first assumed.
The thick dust that coated the windows of the boathouse made her think it was at least dusk.
Instead, she’d only been unconscious a couple of hours.
Her second thought was that there was something intimately familiar about the slender body as it stepped over the threshold.
“He’s tied up in the boat—” Parker bit off his words as his gaze moved to discover Jesse sitting on the cot, staring at him with her mouth wide open. “Shit, she’s awake. What the hell? I told you to hit her with the chloroform if she started to wake up.”
Tegan shrugged. “Plans change.”
“Parker.” His name came out like a croak as Jesse struggled to accept what she was seeing. “What are you doing here?”
Parker rolled his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe how dense she was. Honestly, Jesse couldn’t believe how dense she was, either.
“Do I really have to spell it out?”
No. No, he didn’t. Her gaze moved from Parker to her smugly smiling stepsister.
“Oh my God. You and Tegan. You planned this together.”
Tegan’s laughter was filled with pure joy. “Very good, Jesse. You just earned another gold star.”