a relationship?”
“It’s also possible it was just a photo,” she retorted. “Not everybody is in love with my sister.”
He studied her for a long moment. “No,” he said, “not everybody is. I’m certainly not. But she seems like the type to attract lovers and leave the pathways strewn with them.”
“Yes,” she said. “She is like that.” And how interesting that Galen saw through Rebecca so easily. It made him a special kind of man.
“Is there any chance she might have let him think that Becky was his?”
“I don’t know,” she cried out in frustration. “Whatever she did is between her and whoever she did it with. I’ve deliberately distanced myself from my sister when it comes to her relationships.”
“Good choice,” he said. “That’s the safe thing to do. But now we have to figure out who the father is.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said wearily. “What matters is who thinks they are the father.”
“True.” He stared at her for a long moment. “In your heart of hearts, who do you think is the father?”
“Joe,” she said. “Joe and Becky both have the same birthmark on the back of their shoulder. But that still doesn’t mean that some other people don’t think they are her father too.”
Galen kept doing his research, then made an odd sound.
She looked at him. “What?”
He turned around his laptop and said, “Get this. Joe and James are brothers.”
She stared at the picture with a sinking heart and whispered, “Shit.”
“And based on this,” he said, “do you still think Joe is Becky’s father?”
She looked up at him, struck dumb for a moment. “They’re not only brothers by name,” she said, “but they look like brothers. So, no, I can’t be sure. Not now.”
He nodded, as he kept looking. His phone rang. It was Zack. “What’s going on, Zack?”
“Looks like they’ve turned in for the night,” he said. “I did get a photo of one of them. I’m sending it now.” He quickly sent it over, and Galen pulled it up on his phone, then turned and faced Gemma with it. “What about this face?”
“The picture’s not so great, but it looks similar to James’s shareholder photo online and resembles Joe too,” she said. “So I presume that’s the same James Clark then?”
“Could be—or a thousand other nondescript guys,” he said. “And it could very well be that Joe wasn’t killed for anything to do with the company but that his brother took him out.” She stared at him in horror, and he nodded slowly. “You know yourself about love-hate relationships.”
She winced. “Is it that obvious? I really don’t like discussing my past.”
He gave her a ghostly smile. “No, not at all,” he said, “but believe me, I understand. I had a couple relationships that, in hindsight, made me wonder where my head had been at the time. I don’t fall easily. In both of those cases, I jumped. As soon as my head cleared, I realized that lust had been mistaken for love. I’d been lonely and had made up a story that seemed to suit. But it was a story in my head and had nothing to do with the real-life circumstances around me.”
“Ditto, although I hadn’t thought of it that way. We really do write a story around us, and God help us when we reach the punch line.”
He chuckled at that.
She smiled slowly. “So what do we do now?”
“Well, first, we’ll have to rescue your sister, and we’ll have a plain talk with her,” he said. “And then we’ve gotta figure out how to keep her safe. Honestly, it’s not her as much as it’s Becky who we need to keep safe.”
“So what’s next?”
He sighed, stood, and said, “I’m heading back to Zack because we need to set up a mission. You stay here and look after your niece. I’ll have a talk with Tim before I leave.” He walked over and, in a surprise move, kissed her gently on the temple. She stared at him, wordless. He shrugged. “Stay safe until I get home, will you?”
“Of course,” she said faintly. “Why the kiss?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Because it felt right, I guess.” When she gave him that deep stare again, he laughed and said, “Keep looking at me that way, and I’ll do it again.”
She shook her head. “It’s not the time. This isn’t about you. It isn’t about me,” she said. “And, yes, it is about Rebecca, but, yes, more than that, it’s about Becky,” she said slowly. “We need to do