been too furious with her when he’d discovered that she’d been duping him—only getting close for a damn exposé for her father’s media organizations. Once Brendan had figured out her pen name, he’d found the stories she’d done. No one had been safe around her, not even her classmates when she’d been at boarding school and later at college.
None of her friends had been safe from her, either. Maybe that was why she’d had few when they’d met. Maybe that was why it had been so easy for her to leave everyone behind.
Including him.
Except her father. That was why she’d come to the hospital after he’d been assaulted. Perhaps they hadn’t actually severed contact, as she had with Brendan—never even letting him know he’d become a father.
She probably didn’t know the identity of her would-be killer or she wouldn’t have had to stay in hiding all this time. But he asked anyway. “Who do you think was trying to kill you?”
She answered without hesitation and with complete certainty, “You.”
Maybe Josie was as tired as her son was. Why else would she have made such an admission? Moreover, why else would she have let him drive her here—of all places?
She should have recognized the route, since her gaze had never left the road as he’d driven them away from the hospital. She had driven here so many times over those months when they had been seeing each other. She’d preferred going to his place, hoping that she would find something or overhear something the police didn’t know that could have led her to a break in his father’s murder investigation.
And she hadn’t wanted him to find anything at her apartment that would have revealed that she was so much more than just the empty-headed heiress so many others had thought she was. Things like her journalism awards or her diploma or the scrapbook of articles she’d published under her pseudonym.
But it didn’t matter that he had never found any of those things. Somehow he’d learned the truth about who she was anyway. And after the ferocious fight they’d had, the attempts on her life had begun.
“How could you think I would have tried to kill you?” he asked, his voice a rasp in the eerie silence of the vehicle. Even CJ wasn’t making any sounds as he slept so deeply and quietly.
Brendan had pulled the SUV through the wrought-iron gates of the O’Hannigan estate, but they had yet to open the car doors. They remained sealed in that tomblike silence he’d finally broken with his question.
“How could I not think it was you?” she asked, keeping her voice to a low whisper so that she didn’t wake her son. He didn’t need to know that tonight wasn’t the first time a bad man had tried to hurt his mommy. Even the authorities had suspected Brendan O’Hannigan was responsible. That was why they’d offered her protection—to keep her alive to testify against him once they found evidence that he’d been behind the attempts. “Who else would want me dead?”
He turned toward her, and since she still leaned over the console, he was close. His face was just a breath away from hers. And his eyes—the same rare blue-green as her son’s—were narrowed, his brow furrowed with confusion as he stared at her. “Why would I want you dead?”
“I lied to you. I tricked you,” she said, although she doubted he needed any reminders. And given how angry he’d been with her, she shouldn’t have reminded him, shouldn’t have brought back all his rage and vengeance. He might forget that she was the mother of his son. Of course he had earlier mentioned those things to their son. He’d included stealing, too, although she’d stolen nothing from him but perhaps his trust.
Despite how angry he’d been, Brendan literally shrugged off her offenses, as if they were of no consequence to him. His broad shoulder rubbed against hers, making her skin tingle even beneath her sweater and jacket. “I’ve been lied to and tricked before,” he said.
She doubted that many people would have been brave enough to take on Dennis O’Hannigan’s son—the man that many people claimed was a chip off the block of evil. She still couldn’t believe that she had summoned the courage. But then she’d been a different woman four years ago. She’d been an adrenaline junkie who had gotten high on the rush of getting the story. The more information she had discovered the more excited she had become. She hadn’t been only brave—she’d been fearless.
Then she had become a mother, and she had learned what fear was. Now she was always afraid, afraid that her son would get sick or hurt or scared. Or that whoever had tried to kill her would track them down and hurt him.
And tonight that fear, her deepest, darkest fear, had been realized. She shuddered, chilled by the thought. But the air had grown cold inside the car now that Brendan had shut off the engine. His heavily muscled body was close and warm, but the look on his ridiculously handsome face was cold. Even colder than the air.
“And,” he continued, “I never killed any of those people.”
With a flash of that old fearlessness, she scoffed, “Never?” All the articles about Brendan O’Hannigan alleged otherwise. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“You, of all people, should know better than to believe everything you hear or read,” he advised her.
Growing up the daughter of a media magnate, she’d heard the press disparaged more than she’d heard fairy tales. Fairy tales. What was a bigger lie than a fairy tale? Than a promise of happily-ever-after?
“If it’s coming from a credible source, which all of my father’s news outlets are, then you should believe the story,” she said.
He snorted. “What makes a source credible?”
As the daughter of a newsman, she’d grown up instinctively knowing what a good source was. “An insider. Someone close to the story.”
“An eyewitness?” He was the one scoffing now.
She doubted anyone had witnessed him committing any crime and lived to testify. She shivered again and glanced at their son. She shouldn’t have put his life in the hands of a killer. But the gunman in the garage had given her no choice. Neither had Brendan.
“Even grand juries rarely issue an indictment on eyewitness testimony,” he pointed out, as if familiar with the legal process. “They need evidence to bring charges.”
Had he personally been brought before a grand jury? Or was he just familiar with the process from all the times district attorneys had tried to indict his father? But she knew better than to ask the questions that naturally came to her. He had never answered any of her questions before.
But he kept asking his own inquiries. “Is there any evidence that I’m a—” Brendan glanced beyond her, into the backseat where their son slept peacefully, angelically “—a bad man?”
She hadn’t been able to find anything that might have proven his guilt. She’d looked hard for that evidence—not just for her story but also for herself. She’d wanted a reason not to give in to her attraction to him, a reason not to fall for him.
But when, as a journalist, she hadn’t
