The Hidden Years

“They’re alive?”

Again Cassidy nodded.

Son of a bitch! Jake stood so fast that his chair crashed to the floor. If Frazier Atkins had stood before him now, it would have taken all of Jake’s considerable control not to strike him.

Jake paced, fuming. “Your old man could have saved me ten years of searching. Ten years of not knowing whether my sisters had lived or died. Ten years of waking up every morning and going to sleep every night wondering if I had any family left or if I was all alone in the world.”

“I’m sorry, Jake. My father never told me the truth, either.”

Although Jake had never found his sisters, he’d never given up searching. Would never give up. But he had no more to go on now than he’d had ten years ago, when the day after he’d graduated from high school, he’d looked up Frazier Atkins. Jake had hoped the attorney who’d handled his custody arrangements could help find his sisters. But Cassidy’s father had stubbornly refused to tell him anything.

Jake paced, needing an outlet for his anger. Frazier had deliberately kept him apart from his sisters. How dare he separate a family? Jake wanted to strike out and hit something to relieve his frustration. But long ago he’d learned to master his anger, and within moments, he’d replaced burning rage with simmering control. Reaching down, he lifted the chair and replaced it exactly where it had been.

Cassidy’s voice pleaded with him. “You have to understand. A lawyer’s first obligation is to his client.”

“And just who was the client?” Jake asked, folding his arms over his chest and watching Cassidy closely.

“I’m not…sure.”

“Let me get this straight. Frazier Atkins couldn’t tell me how to find my sisters because…”

“Because the custody matters were sealed. Ditto for the adoption records, unless both parties ask for the records.”

“You’re saying my sisters were adopted?”

“Yes.”

“They’re together?”

As she heard the concern he couldn’t mask, Cassidy shook her head, regret in her gaze. “I don’t believe so.” A tremor of distress tinged her voice. “The records indicate that all three of you were split up.”

Jake frowned hard. He knew that the state generally tried to keep siblings together. Maybe he’d been an ornery little boy that no one wanted—too old to interest a family, too old for parents to love, and so he’d never been adopted. Couples came to the orphanage seeking toddlers and babies. But his sisters had been young.

“Surely it wouldn’t have been that difficult to keep two little girls together.”

Cassidy seemed to gather her wits and spoke with authority. “The entire adoption proceedings were very unusual. Names were changed. The girls were sent to different parts of the state before families were found for them.”

“Why?”

Cassidy shrugged and this time a hint of darkness clouded her eyes. “I don’t know. I haven’t gone through the box’s contents that carefully. As soon as I saw that—”

“Your father’s silence has kept a family apart.”

“—you would be interested, I just drove over.”

So coming here had been an impulsive act. He’d been right that her spontaneous nature hadn’t changed, but it gave him no satisfaction. Too many memories spun through his mind. Frazier Atkins and his damn secrets. Cassidy and what she’d once meant to Jake. All the memories in murky shadows, except his one bright hope that someday he could fulfill his childhood promise to his father. Find his sisters. Bring them together again. Only then would he be free to start a family of his own.

“I thought I could help you track down your sisters from these old addresses,” Cassidy said as she turned to the box and began to open it.

“Why?” Jake snapped the question as hard and fast as the crack of a whip.

At his tone, Cassidy jumped as if he’d slapped her hand away from the box. Her eyes flashed with guilt and heat. “I feel bad that my father never gave you…” Her hand fluttered over the box.

He stared at her, fascinated by the changing hue in her eyes, by the tightening of her lips and the questioning arch of her brows. And fury filled his soul, fury that she thought she could just prance back into his life, insert herself into his thoughts. Invade his privacy. Witness his pain and failure.

“I don’t need your help,” he told her without bothering to keep the bitterness from his voice.

“You’re angry?”

Anger wasn’t the right word for what he felt right now. Rage, white-hot rage, cascaded through him, rage at not just Frazier Atkins, but at the injustice done to a child who still carried a man-size guilt.

He’d failed to find his sisters. He’d promised his father. And failed.

Frazier Atkins’s silence had kept him at a dead end for ten years. But he’d never stopped searching. He’d wasted hours, days, months, years. All because of Frazier Atkins.

As rage rose up to mock him, Jake knew he was close to losing control. And he didn’t want Cassidy to know how badly her father had hurt him. Didn’t want her to know how much she could still disturb him by being here and witnessing his pain.

He kept his voice cool and clipped. “I think you’d better go.”

Her eyes shimmered with sadness and determination. “But I want to help.”

“Your family has helped me enough,” he sneered, and watched her face go pale.

Raising her chin, she squared her shoulders and met his gaze with a level one of her own. “You’re not being fair.”

“Like your father was fair to me? By hiding my sisters’ location from their only brother?”

Exasperation tinged her tone. “I already explained. A lawyer’s first obligation is to his client.”

“Yeah, right. A nonexistent client.”

She nodded coolly, as if giving him a point in a debate. “I can’t find the record of who hired him. He was paid in cash.”

“How convenient.”

Jake ached to clench his fists. He didn’t, fearing if he did he might follow through and punch the wall. Instead, he forced his tone to remain crisp and precise. “And maybe, just like your father, you’re keeping the truth from me now. Maybe you know exactly who hired your father to split up my family.”

She flinched. If he hadn’t been a sizzling mass of emotions and so eager for her to go before she could witness his pain, he’d have admired the gumption it took for her to look him in the eye. But right now, all her courage did was feed the flames of his rage and resentment.

Cassidy locked gazes with him, as if she expected him to read her sincerity. “I’d like to make up for what my father did.”

Her concern only stoked his anger. He didn’t want her help, her pity or her compassion. He couldn’t bear for her to know how much her father’s silence had hurt him. And he was too proud to tell her how hurt he’d been when she’d left for college and never once called him. Or how just her presence flayed open old scars and brought the hurting back.

Jake needed to be alone, needed time to lick his wounds. “This isn’t your concern.”

“I was concerned enough to bring you the box.”

“So you salved your conscience, Sunshine.”