Page 70 of Hidden Daughters

‘You should be,’ Grace snapped, indignation seeping out of her pores.

‘That’s enough.’ Bryan stood, mug in hand.

‘Sit down,’ Grace said, but he didn’t. She glared at Lottie. ‘You try to destroy everything that’s good in life, so you do.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lottie looked at her, bewildered.

‘You won’t destroy me and Bryan.’

‘I have no intention of doing any such thing.’

‘Enough,’ Bryan repeated hopelessly. He ran a hand through his greying mop of hair and held his empty mug hooked in one finger by his side. ‘I don’t want anyone falling out. I’ll talk to you later,mo ghrá.’

‘We talked last night,’ Grace replied frostily.

‘I know, but I need to tell you about something else.’

‘Tell me now.’ Her voice was laced with a touch of hysteria.

‘Later. I’ve sheep to see to.’ He put his mug in the sink, his shoulder brushing against Lottie as he passed.

She stared after him. Was that a signal for her to follow him outside? Did he want to talk to her? She felt Grace was angry enough at the moment without adding further fuel to that particular fire. Whatever Bryan wanted to say, it could wait.

She took a seat beside Boyd, raging that he hadn’t stood up for her, and spoke to his sister. ‘I’m sorry for any confusion I’ve caused. I had no intention of?—’

‘Whether you intended it or not,’ Grace interrupted, ‘I am properly confused.’

Boyd took his sister’s hand in his own. ‘Bryan asked Lottie to look into an event from his past, when he was a teenager. I don’t think it’s up to her to tell you about it. It’s up to him.’

She snapped her hand out of his. ‘Might have known you’d abandon your own sister in her hour of need.’

Lottie thought it was Bryan who had abandoned his sister, and his girlfriend, years ago, by not searching for them, butbefore she could retort, she caught Boyd’s eye. He was trying to defuse the situation and didn’t need her making it worse.

‘I love you, little sis,’ he said. ‘I will always look out for you, but this thing, whatever it is, is between you and Bryan.’

Folding her arms petulantly, Grace sniffed and said, ‘I’m calling off the wedding.’

Before she could utter another word, the door burst open and Bryan ducked into the kitchen. ‘Mooney is outside. Plus a squad car.’

‘Is it me he wants?’ Lottie asked, rising.

‘No, it’s me.’

Shit and fan came to mind as she followed him outside.

45

They took Bryan away without any explanation. He went quietly. A quick arrest for questioning only, Mooney had said. No cuffs. Bryan claimed he’d done nothing wrong.

‘Get a solicitor,’ Lottie whispered in his ear as he grabbed a jacket from the back of the door. ‘Say nothing until they join you.’

‘Can you help me?’ he’d asked.

‘I don’t know. I’ll talk to Mooney later.’

When the commotion had died down and Boyd had brought a sobbing Grace to the living room to console her, Lottie mulled over her earlier phone conversation with the sergeant. He must have got a DNA hit. So what? Bryan had admitted to lifting the board at the ruins, so that wouldn’t warrant him being taken in for more questioning. It had to be something else.

Damn. She hated not knowing. Or only knowing some of it. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

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