Deception (12 page)

Mia’s eyes widened and she gasped. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Chapter Nine

Dylan’s eyes narrowed as he watched the hooded figure exit the battered car that had been parked down the road when he and Mia had arrived. He hadn’t noticed anyone in the car then.

His senses clicked into focus and he slid out of the car. If Rocco Vick could track down Mia, maybe others from the Lords could, too. He crept past the silent office and edged into the courtyard. The person with the hood was parked in the center of the courtyard, facing Mia, whose mouth gaped open.

That was all he needed.

He prowled across the cement, his gun drawn and positioned in front of him. “Stop right there.”

Two faces turned toward him, lit up by the overhead lights. Two almost identical faces. He blinked and a swirl of confusion claimed his brain.

Mia gave a cry and stepped in front of the other woman. “Dylan, put that away. She’s no threat.”

Still grasping his weapon, Dylan dropped his hand to his side, but continued forward. “Are you okay, Mia? Who is this?”

The woman, girl, stepped out from behind Mia and peeled the hood from her head. Dark hair, the light highlighting chestnut strands, tumbled around her face—a perfect face with high cheekbones, wide-set eyes and full lips.

Dylan took a step back. How many secrets did the
woman have?

“I-is this your daughter, Mia?”

“Daughter? No, no. This is my niece. This is Marissa’s daughter.”

Of course. This girl was a teenager. He knew Mia had never been pregnant in high school, but Marissa?

He blew out a breath and shoved his gun back into his bag. “I’m sorry. It’s just…” He waved his arms around. “What are you doing out here?”

“She just arrived.” Mia turned uncertainly toward the girl, who hadn’t uttered one word. “C-can we… Do you want to come inside?”

The girl nodded, and Mia led the way with Dylan hot on their heels. Niece or not, he didn’t trust this silent girl with the petulant pout.

They crowded into Mia’s small room, the TV blaring some reality show.

Mia’s hands fluttered. “Sit.”

Then she grabbed the remote and muted the TV, dropping to the bed as if her legs couldn’t support her anymore.

Dylan folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the door, his gaze tracking back and forth between aunt and niece. The air between them crackled with tension and unasked questions, unsaid words.

As the outsider, he might as well defuse the situation…or make it worse. He pushed off the door and stepped between them. “I’m Dylan Reese.”

The girl met his eyes with a fiery gaze, and gave him a strong handshake. “I know—the police chief.”

Mia sucked in a breath behind him. “How did you know that?”

Still without giving her own name, Mia’s niece bobbed to the side to make eye contact with Mia. “I’ve been here a few days.”

“You have? How did you know I was here?”

The girl tossed back her long hair. “I found out. It was easy.”

“I was going to contact you.” Mia’s tongue darted out of her mouth and swept across her lips. “I wanted to wait until I got here, and then my computer got damaged.”

This did not sound right. Dylan reached around the girl and drew up a chair, almost touching the back of her knees. He pressed an index finger on top of her shoulder. “You, sit down.”

Then he crossed to the mini fridge and swept out the remaining bottles of water and handed them around. He joined Mia on the bed. Her niece had rattled her somehow, and he didn’t plan on letting Mia sit over here on her own taking the heat from some teenager.

“Okay, why don’t we start from the top?” He tipped his water bottle toward the teen. “What’s your name?”

“Kayla Rutherford.”

“Rutherford?”

“My
adopted
name.” Her gaze darted toward Mia, and a scowl marred her pretty features.

Mia flinched beside him.

He nudged a knuckle beneath Mia’s chin and turned her head toward him. “Why didn’t you know that Kayla was here or coming here?”

She swallowed and folded her hands in her lap. “Kayla and I have never met before tonight.”

“Ah.” That explained the awkwardness. “But you knew of her existence?”

“She had emailed me a few weeks ago.” Mia tilted her chin and stared into Kayla’s eyes. “That’s the first I knew of Marissa having a daughter.”

Kayla snorted, folded her arms and turned her head.

“Young lady—” Dylan suddenly felt like his dad “—if your aunt told you she didn’t know of your existence, she’s telling the truth.”

Kayla whipped her head back so fast, her hood dropped to her shoulders. “How do you not know your twin sister is pregnant? Lame.”

“I didn’t want to put all this junk in an email, Kayla.” Mia bounced forward on the bed until her feet braced against the floor. “Your mother studied abroad her junior year of high school. Our grandparents must’ve hidden her pregnancy that way, and nobody bothered to tell me. By the time Marissa came home—” Mia flattened a hand against her belly
“—she’d already given birth.”

Dylan raised his hand. “I can verify that. Marissa did go away that school year. Don’t you think everyone in this small town would’ve talked about a pregnant teen if she’d been living here?”

A fat tear rolled down Kayla’s cheek. “She didn’t even tell her own sister, her twin?”

When the tear dripped to Kayla’s chin, Mia launched off the bed and crouched next to her niece. “I feel the same way. Your initial email stunned me.”

The girl swiped at her face with the back of her hand. “Is that why you waited so long to meet me?”

Mia fell back on her bottom, wrapping her arms around her legs and rocking. “Two weeks? You send me an email announcing you’re my long-lost niece, and you expect contact faster than two weeks?”

“I expected… I expected…” Kayla shook her head and rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand.

Mia crossed her legs and grasped Kayla’s knees. “I know. You expect everything right now.”

“My father’s here.”

This was gonna be good.
Dylan hunched forward. Did Mia know who Kayla’s father was?

“You’ve contacted him?”

Yep, she knew.

“No. I just found out where he was and followed him around for a few hours.”

Had she been following Mia around, too? “Who’s your father?”

Mia twisted her head over her shoulder. “It’s Charlie Vega.”

That made sense after the way Mia reacted to him tonight at dinner. “Does he know?”

“I—I haven’t told him yet.”

“I’ll come with you when you tell him.” Mia’s hand hovered above Kayla’s knee as if to pat her and then dropped it in her own lap.

“That’s okay. I’m going to do it myself.”

How long had this girl been wandering around town and why the attitude? “Where do you live and how’d you get here? Where are you staying in Coral Cove?”

She widened heavily lined eyes. “You sound like a cop.”

“We already established that. You got any answers?”

“I live in Arizona. My parents let me take a road trip with some friends after I graduated from high school. I didn’t have to twist my friends’ arms to come out to the beach in California.”

“Where are you staying?” Mia worried her bottom lip, looking like a concerned aunt.

Kayla waved one arm toward the window. “We’re camping at that campsite down the coast. I’ve been taking the car or hitching a ride to get into town.”

Mia sucked in a breath and jerked her head up. “You shouldn’t be hitchhiking. We’ve had some murders recently in Coral Cove.”

“Well, I have the car now.” The girl scrambled out of the chair. “And I have to get back before the campsite closes.”

“I’ll walk you out.” Dylan pushed up from the bed.

Mia hopped to her feet. “Me, too.”

Kayla shrugged and yanked up her hood, but not before Dylan saw a pink blush creep onto her cheeks beneath the makeup.

When they reached the car on the street, Mia enfolded Kayla in a hug and slipped a piece of paper in her pocket. “That’s my cell phone number. Call me anytime, and maybe—” she glanced at Dylan “—maybe Chief Reese and I can buy you dinner tomorrow night?”

“Maybe.” She slipped into the car and cruised away from the curb.

Mia expelled a long sigh. “Wow.”

“Why does she have a chip on her shoulder? I mean, other than the fact that she’s a teenager.” Dylan steered Mia back to her room.

“We exchanged a couple of emails. She’d been trying to locate Marissa—like everyone else. Failing that, she tracked me down. After her initial introduction she went off on me for trying to
disown her
—her words.”

“I assume she was adopted through the normal channels and not left in a basket on the side of the road?”

Mia plucked a couple of dried flowers from the bougainvillea in the courtyard. “From what I could gather, she had a nice, middle-class upbringing.”

“So what’s her problem?”

“Ah, the old St. Regis curse.” She rolled her eyes at him and tossed the flowers into the air. “Kayla not only found her birth mother, she found out about her birth mother’s family and all the wealth and power.”

“And the crazy stuff?” He grabbed her key and shoved it into the lock. “Did she find out about all the crazy stuff, too?”

“That never seems to matter once they discover the money and property.”

Dylan froze, his hand still gripping the key and door handle. “Kayla knows about the St. Regis money and…Columbella House?”

“Yeah, maybe she has a future as a research assistant or a librarian. She’d done her homework before contacting me.”

He pushed open the door and propped up the doorjamb as Mia squeezed past him, her sweet scent tickling his nostrils. “Are you going to verify her identity?”

Laughing, Mia poked him in the chest. “You thought she was my daughter. Is there any doubt she’s a St. Regis? She looks just like us at that age, except she got Charlie’s height.”

His face burned. For a minute, he’d forgotten the strong family resemblance. “So she’s interested in getting her hands on the St. Regis riches?”

“What makes you say that?”

He poked her back in the chest. “She brought it up, didn’t she? She’s disgruntled that you’ve been holding out on her.”

“Sort of.” Mia backed up a few steps and took a swig of water from the bottle she’d left on the nightstand. “What’s your point?”

“You know my point. She’s been in town for a while. She’s had an opportunity to leave that doll at your door, maybe throw a rock at you.”

Mia choked on the water, spewing it down the front of his sweatshirt, which she’d pulled on outside. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Do you think she had something to do with Peter’s death, too?”

“You don’t think Peter committed suicide?” He studied her as several different emotions struggled for dominance on her face. Confusion won.

“I don’t know, but you seem to be laying all the sins of Coral Cove at Kayla’s feet. I thought I’d throw one more on the pile.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going to go all goo-goo-ga-ga sentimental about Marissa’s daughter and give her Columbella House, are you?”

She tossed back her hair. “When have you known me to go goo-goo-ga-ga?”

“You have a point.” Those tears she’d shed for Peter had probably been the first bout of waterworks he’d ever witnessed from her.

“Of course,” she added, peeling a corner of the label from the water bottle, “I am going to give her something.”

“That makes sense. What do you think Charlie’s going to make of having a teenage daughter? More to the point, what’s his wife going to think?”

“I don’t know. Charlie’s an easygoing guy, and what’s his wife going to say? His fling with my sister happened seventeen years ago.”

“When he was twenty-six.”

“Not going to look good, but that girl is hell-bent on making up for lost time.”

He reached out and caught her around the waist. “Be careful. Make your decision about Columbella and get out of town.”

Her body stiffened beneath his hands and she blinked her eyes rapidly. Damn. He hadn’t meant it to come out like that.

“There’s too much turmoil surrounding that house, and your long-lost niece has just added to it.”

She shrugged out of his grasp and tossed the empty water bottle into the small trash can across the room. It hit the rim and bounced onto the floor. “Don’t worry. I’ll make my decision and then I’m outta this dump.”

“Mia—”

“You know what I don’t get?” She spun around, her arms clenched over her chest, her eyes bright. “What the hell are you doing back here? When you were growing up, you swore you wanted big city lights and big city crime. You never wanted to be another Chief Reese of Coral Cove. I guess it was just easier, huh?”

“I…”

She gripped his sweatshirt and with flushed cheeks in her sexy black bra, she tossed it at him.

He made a grab for it, but it fell in a puddle at his feet. He bent over, scooped it up and headed for the door. “Yeah, it was just easier.”

* * *

M
IA PUNCHED HER PILLOW
. It wasn’t Dylan’s face she was pummeling but her own. Why did she have to be so prickly? Sure, Dylan had told her to go home, but he meant for her own safety. Didn’t he?

Both of their parents had died young in a plane crash in South America, and she and Marissa had grown up with their grandparents. Their grandfather had always warned them that people would want to get close to them because of their money. He’d even been convinced his son and his wife had been murdered.

So Mia had always made sure nobody got too close so she wouldn’t have to question their motives. Then she spent most of her time buying friendships and loyalty just so she could keep things straight and stay in control. And it had worked with everyone…except Dylan and maybe his sister, Devon.

Dylan didn’t want her stuff—didn’t want to drive her Porsche, didn’t want to cruise on the family yacht, didn’t want invitations to the big parties with the live bands and fabulous guest gifts.

He had offered her friendship and protection over and over without ever asking for anything in return. No wonder she’d fallen head over heels in love with him.