Page 16 of The Secrets She Keeps

He’d thought Leena was asleep. He’d picked her up from the airport an hour ago, and she’d been so quiet he had been convinced she was just jetlagged. Or still fighting the virus and subsequent infections she had been battling for weeks.

“Not yet. A few more minutes. A few more streets over.”

He looked at his second-to-youngest daughter. He paid a pretty penny now to ensure she was well-educated and cared for while he worked, but the child had come down with first one virus and then another, leading to respiratory infections, and had been ill for the past three weeks—just for her three-week spring break to begin. And his plans had been ruined.

Now, he had her with him. It was a small setback, but she was his daughter, and he did love her. Adored her.

She definitely looked like her older sisters.

He was determined that he and the children he had left would form afamilyagain. His eldest daughter Brianna, his son Trey, and Leena. They were a family. Whether his kids liked it or not. They squabbled, but all siblings did.

He had lost his family twenty years ago. He would never get over that pain. But he would build a new one now.

Timothy waved on the young woman and the little girl waiting to cross in front of him. They were intent on something apparently very important. The little girl reminded him of his third daughter. She’d had hair that same rich dark brown, but hers had curled everywhere. Like Leena’s did now. Like Timothy’s own. That woman was a stranger to him, no relation, but she reminded him of what he had lost.

But the daughter in the back seat, she was his second chance. He hadn’t forgotten that. And he never would.

“We’ll be there shortly. Just be patient,” he told her.

She just grinned at him. Her mother’s grin. And stole his heart once more.

11

Powell had barely evenlistenedto her. And then those stupid Colesons had been there, smirking at her like they were so special and everything. And there had been people, attorneys or something, watchingthemall. Brianna had seen that stupid Bobby Frier watching from the window next door too. He’d always been beyond creepy.

She’d been angry ever since, and it had just gotten worse when she’d pulled into her drive six hours later and seen Timothy waiting.

Withher.

“I don’t want her here!” Brianna looked at the little girl standing there with Timothy, and her blood curdled. The last thing she wanted was Timothy’s little freak daughter inherhouse. For one thing, the kid was sick, which was completely disgusting. It was obvious; she was sniffling, and her eyes looked all glassy or something.

For another thing, how would Brianna explain a kid in her life out of nowhere?

Timothy had been waiting on her doorstep after she’d left Powell’s office. With her. Thiskid.Timothy didn’t come to herhouse very often. He did just show up sometimes, though. When he said he wanted to check on Brianna.

No one even knew she still had anything to do with her mother’s former lover. How would she explain babysitting his freak daughter? Timothy had been in his fifties when the kid was born. Who even did that? And just how he had gotten that kid was kind of weird too. She didn’t even have a mother or anything.

Leena had just sort of hatched out of nowhere.

“I need someone to take care of your sister while I work. And help Trey. He really needs my help right now.”

Of course, he did. Her half brother Trey was stupid. He was probably doing things he shouldn’t.

Jack had told her to stay away from Trey too, even though Trey and Jack were friends sometimes. Brianna didn’t know what Trey actually did, but he paid her money to use some of the businesses she owned because of Banks. It worked out, and she didn’t have to tell Bethany where the money came from at all. It was her money.

“I don’t take care ofkids.” She’d planned to hire a nanny when she finally married and had a baby. The most she was going to do was pop the kid out and be done with it. But this? Not going to happen. “Find someone else.”

“There is no one else unless you want me to go up the road and ask one of the neighbors?” Timothy said, using that voice Brianna absolutely hated. The one that said she was stupid and disappointed him and she just wasn’t as good as the rest of his daughters. “One of the Colesons perhaps?”

Of course. He was as fascinated by those stupid Colesons as just about everyone else in this town. “She can have a room here, but you need to call some sort of agency. Send over a nanny or something. Does she still wear diapers?”

“I’meight.I’m not a baby,” the little girl said. “I don’t like you,Pee-anna.”

“Well, I don’t like you either.” What a rude little monster.

“You are sisters. You will like each other, whether you want to or not. We are a family; I don’t take that lightly,” Timothy said. He had a bag over his shoulder. He dropped it in Brianna’s foyer. “You, young lady, will do what Brianna tells you to do. Brianna, just keep your sister alive for the next few days. While I deal with your brother. Then I will come get her and take her on a vacation or something. Which, you are welcome to join us if you like. We can do Dad and daughters go to Disney or something.”

Sisters? She knew they technically were. Half anyway. But she didn’t want to be sisters with this kid. Or that other one that Timothy was always complaining about losing. That one was just a baby or something—and Timothy was old enough to be that baby’s great-grandfather. It was kind of gross when she thought about Timothy making that baby.

---