that. We needed the work and I didn’t want him to figure he wouldn’t want us around. So I went along with it and let everybody think we were married. It was easy enough. We have the same last name and all. And it made her happy.”
“What about you? Didn’t you ever want to get married yourself, have a family of your own?”
“I never had time to think much about it. I had to take care of her. And frankly, after hearing her talk about weddings and marriage all this time, it kind of put me off the whole thing.”
Adam supposed he couldn’t blame him for that, but there were a hell of a lot of other things he could. “You had to know it was a bad idea to have her here once we started having weddings.”
“I was hoping I could keep an eye on her well enough to keep her out of trouble. I was hoping it would be all right.”
“You should have told me the truth.”
“She’s my sister. I was just trying to do right by her.”
“What about the people she hurt? You obviously knew she was responsible for what happened to Courtney Miller.”
“I didn’t know for sure,” the man protested weakly.
“But you had to suspect. And when Jillian ‘fell’ down the stairs? Did you know Rosie pushed her? Or was that you, trying to ‘scare’ her?”
“I wouldn’t do that! I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.”
“You were just willing to stand by and do nothing while Rosie did.” As the man had implied earlier, Adam could certainly relate to the instinct to do right by his sister. But what the man had done—what he’d apparently let Rosie get away with—was in no way justifiable, sibling loyalty be damned.
From the way the man wouldn’t look at him and didn’t bother trying to defend himself, he knew it, too.
But Ed wasn’t the real problem here. Knowing exactly how disturbed Rosie was, Adam was no longer sure Jillian could be safe as long as she wasn’t alone. He didn’t want Meredith anywhere near the woman, either.
A sense of foreboding suddenly filled him, every instinct going on alert.
“I need to find out where Rosie is. Now.”
* * *
JILLIAN STARED AT the woman in bewilderment. “What are you talking about?” she said weakly. Even her voice sounded faint. “Take care of me?”
Moving with an unmistakable sense of purpose, Rosie stalked toward her. “I can’t let you go ahead and get married, can I? Not when you don’t deserve it. Not when you’re nothing but a tramp.”
The words didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. “I don’t understand.”
Before Jillian could protest, the woman bent down and hooked her arm around Jillian’s back, hoisting her out of the chair and fully upright. Jillian couldn’t seem to get her legs under her. It didn’t seem to matter as Rosie practically carried her toward the door, Jillian’s feet barely touching the ground.
“You’re just like the last one,” Rosie muttered, her voice thickening with anger. “No, you’re worse. I saw the way she looked at Zack, with lust in her eyes. She was going to put on that beautiful white dress and marry someone when she was panting after somebody else. But at least she didn’t go to bed with him. Unlike you. You slept with Adam, and you still sat there, planning your wedding, preparing to marry one man when you had the stink of another on you. Whore.”
The woman’s insults didn’t even penetrate the haze clouding Jillian’s mind. The only thing that did was one stark fact. “You killed Courtney.”
“I had no choice, now did I?” Rosie said, with what almost sounded like pride. “I couldn’t let her desecrate the sanctity of marriage. I couldn’t let her make a mockery of those sacred vows she clearly didn’t respect. Neither of you deserve that ceremony. You don’t deserve those vows. I did. I saved myself. I never looked at another man. And I never got that beautiful wedding. I never got to be a bride, or a wife.”
“But you are married,” Jillian protested, trying to make sense of the woman’s rambling.
“Lies,” Rosie hissed practically in her ear. “It’s all lies. Lies so nobody would know my shame. I had to pretend Ed was my husband to keep anybody from knowing my disgrace. Knowing that I was living with my brother, that I didn’t have a husband and never had. I had to live this pale imitation of a real woman’s life, everybody thinking