done a number on her. Sadly, Blake wasn't sure how deep her wounds were. He made a mental note to find out.
****
Samantha's head no sooner met the pillow than Blake was waking her. After a long hot shower and a small meal, because face it, eating simply made her nauseous at this point, the honeymooners were on their way to Albany. The thought of Blake's family watching her every move spread shivers up her spine. Samantha knew she'd dodged Blake's mother's initial inquisition. There was no telling if Linda would be as easily put off once Sam was on the woman's home turf.
Dressed in a rust colored skirt and dress jacket, she prepared herself to meet the family.
Blake didn't even question why she'd shoved her jeans and shirt into the garbage can at the hotel. He simply noticed the outfit there and offered a laugh.
Whatever! She shouldn't have brought it to begin with... then she wouldn't have been wearing it when Linda made her appearance. Not willing to be caught in anything but her best again, Samantha made certain the only clothes with her were on par with the former Duchess of Albany, maybe a few decades younger in style, but worthy of what the woman on Blake's arm should be wearing.
The rain let up during their afternoon drive to the country. As London faded away, and the rolling hills spread before them, Samantha tried to relax in the seat beside Blake.
He spoke of his sister, who was about Samantha's age. "Gwen's always wanted me to settle down."
Sam felt her stomach twist with Blake's words. "Doesn't it worry you..." Sam let her words trail off, her gaze shifting to the driver in the front seat. She wanted to ask if he worried about his sister becoming attached to her new sister in the short span of their marriage.
Blake flinched, uncertainly skirted over his face. "You and Gwen will get along fine. She's very kind. Perhaps a little spoiled, but never mean spirited."
Samantha dropped her discussion about Gwen's attachment to a temporary sister-in-law for a time when the two of them could talk alone. The thought of deceiving all the people she was about to meet started to weight on her. The memories of her father, of the time right before he was placed in handcuffs, surfaced in her mind.
As a business major, Samantha spent many hours outside class discussing her father's success with her professors. Even her boyfriend at the time, Dan, seemed to want to know everything about Harris Elliot and his small empire of wealth and property.
Dan was charming, charismatic, and more sly than a fox at a hole waiting for the rabbit to peek it's soft, fuzzy head out.
Sam was the rabbit who didn't know she was being played.
To think she'd slept with the man who eventually put her father behind bars. How stupid she'd been. They'd dated, studied, or so she thought, and rumpled a fair number of sheets. All the while Dan recorded their conversations, asked seemingly innocent questions, and helped the prosecution make their case against her father.
Even now, years later sitting beside her temporary husband, Samantha felt ill. Not that she'd knowingly given the prosecution evidence against her father, but the sins of her father snowballed into the death of her mother and Jordan's wasted life.
Samantha remembered the day Dan confronted her with the truth about who he was. He stood beside a Federal Agent who threatened Samantha with her mother's incarceration if she didn't cooperate with their investigation.
The agent and Dan revealed some of the holes in her father's business practices and informed her about the bugs throughout her house. "We have reason to believe your mother knows more about your father's crimes. We need you to find proof otherwise or we'll be forced to put them both behind bars."
Samantha knew her mother was clueless, and was too shocked at the time to question why a Federal Agent would make a daughter prove a mother's innocence. In the end, Dan and his friends simply used Sam to nail her father. They knew Martha had nothing to do with Harris's schemes.
Samantha had questioned many things her father did over the years. He had silent partners, or so he said, but Samantha never met one. It really wasn't until her business professor in her first year in college asked about her father's profession that Sam became suspicious. She couldn't give a concrete answer as to what her father did to make money... only that