to cope with her own muddled thoughts, she put the name Craig Branson into Google and got several hits. There was more than one man by that name, but she quickly zeroed in on the right one.
He owned a private security company, which meant he thought he could go up against John Reynard. But he didn’t know Reynard.
She’d assumed she knew the man, but she was becoming more and more shocked by the things she found out. Not dark facts, but his attitude of owning her—and having her father enslaved to his will.
With a shudder, she put Reynard out of her mind and went back to the information on Craig Branson.
Searching back, she found a newspaper article that made her chest go tight. It was an account of the incident that had killed Craig’s brother. There was a picture of a smiling little boy, obviously a school portrait. He was what she’d imagine Craig would have looked like at the age of eight.
So it was true. He hadn’t made up the story. Her heart was pounding as she scanned the text, reading about the murder of a mob boss in a restaurant and how some of the innocent diners had gotten shot. Most had been wounded. The only fatality was Sam Branson.
The article told her something else. The target in the restaurant had been a mob boss. If John Reynard had something to do with his death, what did that make him? She pushed that question out of her mind because it was more than she could cope with. Which left her contemplating the tragedy.
She sat for a moment, imagining Craig’s reaction to the loss of his brother—and imagining what it must have been like for him to touch her and get back that kind of closeness. Lord, what would her life have been like if she’d had a brother or a sister she could communicate with that way? And what if she’d lost them?
But she’d never had a brother or a sister. She’d once heard her parents talking in whispers about her mom having trouble getting pregnant. She’d gathered that they’d gone to a fertility clinic, but she’d never directly asked about it, because it had seemed like something they wanted to keep quiet.
As she thought about it, long-ago memories came back to her. She remembered being in a waiting room with a lot of other children. Could that have had something to do with the clinic?
It didn’t seem likely because she hadn’t been a baby. Maybe she’d had some illness and her parents had taken her to a specialist?
She wasn’t sure, and probably it wasn’t important. Or maybe it was. She was getting married. Would she have trouble getting pregnant?
A shudder went through her. She wanted children. Maybe she could be close to her own children, the way she’d never been close to her parents. But did she want to have children with John Reynard?
The idea sent another frisson through her. She’d felt trapped the moment she’d agreed to the marriage with Reynard, but meeting Craig Branson had made it worse. Unfortunately, she was drawn to him as she’d never been to her fiancé.
She closed her eyes, willing those thoughts out of her mind. Thoughts of Reynard and of Branson. She had a more immediate problem. Men had come to her shop and threatened her, and she’d better talk to her father about it.
She turned off her computer and looked out the window, seeing the men in the car across the street. They were supposed to be protecting her, but her impulse was to slip away without their knowing it. Because she didn’t trust John? Or because she didn’t like the idea of his having her followed? And she had the feeling that would only get worse if they married.
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