Heir to Murder

His life felt surreal. He’d been talking to his mother all afternoon, and she was a stranger.

He wished he could talk to Emmaline, the woman who’d raised him as her son. When the DNA results had been confirmed, she’d disappeared. How could she hide at a time like this? Noah had so many questions only she could answer.

But then she’d kept a stolen baby that belonged to her brother, hiding the secret for thirty-seven years. It would explain why she’d isolated him from the rest of her family for so long. There had to be a law against doing that. When she’d been found out, she probably ran, afraid of going to prison.

His mind was churning and he didn’t want to go home. He surveyed the scene below him. The bistro was perched on a hill overlooking the beautiful harbor town of San Diego, and Noah thought of Rachel.

She lived in the city, only a few short minutes away. After he’d kissed her that afternoon, Noah wondered if she’d want to see him again. She calmed his soul at the same time she stoked the flames of desire.

The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to see her. Perhaps she could help him make sense of his life. Even if she couldn’t, he wanted to explore where their relationship was going. One kiss wasn’t enough with Rachel.

Digging his cell phone out of his pocket, he entered her number and waited.

She picked up on the second ring. “Hi, Noah? Did you have a nice visit with Ruby?”

“I did.” He ran his fingers through his hair, his pulse pounding in his veins. He’d never asked Rachel out on a date, having felt he wasn’t in her social stratosphere. She might still consider him nothing more than the hired help and turn him down. But if he didn’t ask, he’d never know. “Look, I’m still in town. Would you like to have dinner with me?”

“As in a date?”

Noah drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Yes.”

She laughed. “I thought you’d never ask. I’d love to have dinner with you, but let me do the cooking. You can come to my place. I grill a mean steak.”

“I didn’t mean for you to have to cook.”

“I love to cook. So is it settled? You’re coming to my place.”

“When?”

“Two hours.”

“Good, I have a few errands to run while I’m in town.” His heart lighter than it had been in days, he smiled into the phone. “I’ll see you then.”

His world might have turned upside down, but the one person he knew he could count on and trust was Rachel.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_ca10b4b8-02f5-5bdc-8888-6dd47edb7c08)

“Why didn’t you tell him over the phone?” Landry Adair asked.

Rachel glanced around her beautiful apartment, decorated with homey touches and cheerful artwork, unlike the estate she’d grown up in only a few miles away. The home her parents left her was large, sprawling, lavishly decorated and made her feel achingly lonely. She only lived there when she entertained others of the socially elite.

Any other time she stayed in her apartment in a quaint, older section of San Diego. The apartment was just the right size for a single woman.

Realizing that she was stalling, Rachel sighed.

“Like I said, I started to tell him while we were out riding, but...well I got sidetracked.” He’d kissed her and every thought of telling him that she’d been spying on him had flown out of her head. By the time she could think again, they were back at the barn and his mother was there. “And I refuse to tell him over the telephone. I’ll tell him tonight.”

“At least we made good progress on the plans for Elizabeth’s baby shower. Don’t forget, we need to get together soon with Georgia to finalize them. Why don’t you come out to the ranch later this evening?”

Rachel knew they needed to finish planning, but she had a different commitment for the evening. “Noah’s coming to my apartment tonight.”

“That’s interesting.” Landry’s bright blue eyes sparkled as she swept the long brown hair with the soft gold highlights back from her forehead. “How’d that come about?”

“He asked me out to dinner. I thought it would be better if we had dinner at my place.”

“I didn’t know you two were dating.”

“We weren’t. This is a first. I could have gone out to a restaurant with him, but just couldn’t. If he gets angry, and we’re here alone, it’s just me, not a roomful of strangers staring.”

Landry chuckled. “And if he walks out, you don’t have to worry about finding a ride home.”

“Something like that.” Rachel paced across the floor of her living room, her cell phone pressed to her ear. The sun shone bright through the ground-level windows of her town house apartment. The sky was crystal clear and the harbor, with the mix of motorboats and sailboats, couldn’t have been more beautiful. Still, those things didn’t hold her attention. All she could think about was the fact she had to tell Noah that she had been spying on him for Landry and her brothers.

Georgia Mason, Carson’s fiancée, had been the one to notice the similarity between her stepmother’s and Noah’s facial structures and cleft chins. Until she’d pointed it out, none of them had seen it. They knew Noah as their cousin. Landry, Whit and Carson had decided it would be best to keep an eye on him. If he was the long-lost son Reginald Adair had been searching for almost four decades, had he known and was he aware of the inheritance his father had left him? They wanted to be sure he wasn’t some gold digger looking for a way to claim money that didn’t belong to him.

When she’d hired Noah to give her riding lessons, Rachel didn’t know much about him. Spying on him seemed harmless and a way to help her friend and the family she cared so much about.

What she hadn’t counted on was falling in love with the kind and gentle man who knew his way around horses more than he did around humans. He was patient with the animals, and with her and all her questions. She hadn’t told him she already knew how to ride, pretending she’d only done so on the rare occasion and that she was nervous around the large animals.

They’d ride out for hours, several times a week, stopping to rest by the creek she’d found him skinny-dipping in earlier that day. God, she’d wanted to join him, to feel his naked body against hers.

With the whopping lie between them, she didn’t feel she had the right to slip into the water and seduce him. Hadn’t she already tricked him into revealing so much of his heart and soul to her?

His comment about not knowing who to trust had struck far too close to home.

Rachel couldn’t go another day without confessing. If he refused to see her again, it was the price she paid for not being up-front with him to begin with.

“Why do you have to tell him?” Landry asked.

“I’d rather he heard it from me than finding out from someone else.”

“Whit, Carson and I wouldn’t tell him.”

“Not intentionally.” Rachel couldn’t risk it. And she wouldn’t feel right being with him when a lie stood between them.

“Look, Rachel, since I was the one who roped you into spying on him, I should break it to him.”

“No. That would make it worse. I own up to my mistakes. The sooner the better.”

“If that’s the way you want it,” Landry conceded. “Just promise you’ll let me know how it goes.”

“I will.” Rachel ended the call and glanced at the clock, her heart ratcheting up a notch. One hour and thirty minutes before Noah arrived.

She hurried around the apartment, straightening bright yellow and red throw pillows, dusting surfaces of the rich mahogany antique curio cabinets and occasional tables. Some of them had come over from Europe with her great-grandmother. She’d found them hidden in the attic of her estate, collecting dust. They would never have matched the elegant, modern furnishings of the larger estate. But they were perfect for her little apartment. She’d pulled them out of the attic, lovingly repaired what was broken and moved them into her apartment, giving them the home they deserved. And she’d collected over the years. She liked that her furniture had seen many generations of use. With a final swipe of the dust cloth over her already immaculate living space, she admitted it was as good as it would get.

* * *

Later, with less than an hour to spare, she began preparation of their meal.