Slow Burn (Dynasties Seven Sins #7) - Janice Maynard Page 0,3

some exercise. For three blocks, Joshua didn’t say a word. Jake tried to wait him out, but his patience evaporated quickly. “Why are you being so mysterious?”

Joshua halted suddenly, beneath the soft illumination of a streetlight. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“What? Am I dying?”

“This isn’t funny.”

“How am I supposed to know that? You haven’t said anything yet.”

Josh leaned against the light pole, his features betraying tension and exhaustion. For a man in love, he didn’t look all that carefree.

He shrugged. “When that article came out back in the spring, the story omitted one very big bombshell.”

“Oh?” Jake shoved his hands in his pockets, trying not to react to the gravity in his brother’s voice.

“Sophie had DNA evidence proving that I had fathered a child.”

“Hell, Joshua. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“At first, she wouldn’t reveal her source, but when she and I got closer, she finally admitted that Zane Patterson had given her the DNA analysis.”

Jake was more than shocked—he was suspicious. “Zane Patterson from prep school? He was a year behind Oliver, right? What would he have to do with any of this?”

“Zane received the report from an anonymous source. He was still angry about everything his family lost when Dad disappeared with the money. So Zane saw this as a chance to stick it to me and Black Crescent. Only Sophie decided not to include Zane’s info in the article.”

“But surely, you’ve had time to prove it’s a hoax. That’s been, what? Six months ago? It’s bogus, right?”

Joshua shook his head slowly, his jaw tight. “The report wasn’t fabricated. It was the real deal. Somewhere out there is a four-year-old girl who shares my DNA. So I discreetly began investigating any woman from my past who might have matched the timing of this pregnancy. The list wasn’t that big. I came up with nothing.”

“So it is a fake report then.” Jake was starting to feel as if he had walked into an alternate universe. Joshua wasn’t making sense.

His twin straightened, giving Jake a look that made his stomach clench and his skin crawl with an atavistic recognition of danger.

Joshua’s expression finally softened, revealing the oddest mix of sympathy and determination. “The report is legit, Jake. But I’m not the kid’s father. You are.”

Nikki Reardon glanced at her watch. In half an hour she would have to pick up her daughter, Emma, from Mom’s Day Out at a local church in their tiny town of Poplar Ridge, New Jersey. Emma loved her twice-a-week preschool and had made several sweet friends.

The classes had also given Nikki some valuable alone time. Between her job as assistant manager at the diner four days a week, caring for her daughter and dealing with her mother’s needs, it was hard not to feel stretched thin. When Nikki worked the overnight shift, her mother came and stayed.

It wasn’t the best arrangement in the world, but it sufficed for now. Sometimes Nikki felt guilty about using her mother for a babysitter so much of the time, but she also believed that being with Emma gave her mom a healthy focus in a life that was empty.

Nikki’s attention returned to her iPad, where she was reading a story that brought up too many bad memories. A few days ago she’d discovered that Vernon Lowell wasn’t dead. Today’s front-page article claimed he’d been found hiding out in the Bahamas. After a speedy extradition, Vernon now waited in federal custody for his trial.

She wanted to talk to him. He was the only person who knew the truth. Vernon and her father, Everett, had been best friends and business partners. But her father was dead. She had seen the body, suffered through the funeral. The world thought Vernon was dead, as well. But now he was back.

Thinking about the Black Crescent scandal inevitably made her think of Jake. Beautiful, stubborn, wandering Jake. Her first boyfriend. She understood why he left. Reporters had made his life miserable. She had only seen him once in the intervening years.

It had been both the best and worst night of her life.

A loud knock at the door demanded her attention. Sometimes the UPS guy did that. But this knock sounded more peremptory than a package delivery.

Cautiously, she peered through a crack in the inexpensive drapes. Dear God. It was Jake. In the flesh. Why was he here? His family still lived in Falling Brook, but that was over an hour away. Why had he come? Her secret threatened to choke her with anxiety.

She