“Don’t tell me our little Ava’sstillhalf in love with Gray?” Skye said. “Did she really run off to lick her wounds now that your brother’s finally gotten around to sowing some wild oats?”
Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “Wild oats?”
“I can hardly blame you for indulging,” Skye told Grayson. “But she’s a no one from nowhere. What else could it be?”
Toby responded before Grayson could: “That’s enough, Skye.”
Enough to tell us she has no clue whatsoever where Avery really is, Jameson thought.Not even a trace of suspicion.
“Toby,” Skye replied, “my darling brother, I always knew you were far too stubborn to die in a little fire.”
Jameson knew the agony the wordslittle firemust have caused Toby, but their uncle didn’t even bat an eye.
“You thoughtmetoo stubborn to die but not the old man?” Toby waited for that to land. “His death, you believed?”
“You know something.” Skye’s eyes widened. She stood, caftan flowing, looking down at them. “All of you. You know something. About Daddy?”
Bait, taken. And it wouldn’t have been if she knew about Alice, about the Gilded Blade, if she was aware, on any level, that the old man was never truly the real player in the family.
“We don’t know a damn thing,” Nash said, and Jameson could practically hear him thinking,And neither do you.
“You can’t fool me, Nash Hawthorne,” Skye insisted. “None of you boys ever could. I’m yourmother.”
“Are you?” Toby said. “Becauseourmother—she was there for us, Skye. Alice wasn’t perfect, but she wasthere. Wehada mother. We were loved.”
Jameson saw what Toby was doing, bringing up Alice just to see what his sister would say.
“And what good did our mother’s love ever do us?” Skye asked. “It was Daddy’s that mattered, and he left everything toa strangerin the end—if itwasthe end. You all obviously came here for a reason.”
“We came here,” Nash said, rising from his chair, “so I could tell you that Libby and I are expecting twins.”
So far, Alisa had managed to keep a lid on that in the press, but Libby was starting to show. It wouldn’t be much longer before the story broke. Still, Jameson hated that Nash had been forced to use that for cover. They all knew that Skye was never getting anywhere near his girls.
Nash nodded toward Skye’s protruding stomach. “I hope she calls youMama, the way we never did. I hope that this time, you bandage knees and kiss away tears and tuck her in at night. I hope youstay.”
“She’s going to love me.” Skye’s voice shook just a little. “I’m going to name her Skyla, and she’s going to beeverything—and no one’s but mine.”
The muscles in Jameson’s throat tightened. Skye liked to act like she’d had no choice but to give them to the old man, but Jameson and his brothers had always known that she wanted her father’s money and his favor more than she’d wanted them.
“Love her more than she loves you,” Nash told Skye. “Let it be hard this time. Letherbe hard.”
“I don’t know how,” Skye said, and the admission was so unlike her that Jameson believed it.
She doesn’t want a daughter because she needs a female heir.Jameson was as sure of that as was humanly possible.She just thinks a baby will fix things—the same way she always has.
“Love her enough to figure it out,” Jameson told Skye, standing and making his way to the door.
“And if you don’t,” Grayson said, following Jameson’s lead, “if you can’t—you bring her to us.”
Chapter 65
JAMESON
Impressions?” Jameson said, once they were back in the SUV, Nash in the driver’s seat and Toby riding shotgun.
“She doesn’t know a thing,” Nash said, starting up the engine. “Hell, I almost wish she did. Would’ve been an explanation for why she kept having babies, why she was never around.”
Silence descended. Jameson resigned himself to breaking it. “Is there any chance,” he said slowly, “that it’s Zara?”