What Belongs to Her (Harlequin Superromance) (8 page)

Sasha’s heart beat out the silent seconds.

Eventually, he blew out a heavy breath. “It must have been agony knowing my father was using the place for drugs and God knows what else.”

She swallowed. “It was.”

“So, why would you turn a blind eye to it? How
could
you turn a blind eye to it?”

The snappish tone of his voice ignited her anger and split her wide open. She turned. “Are you accusing me of not caring after saying you understand my feelings about the place?”

Color darkened his cheeks and his eyes flashed with irritation. “Help me out here. What else am I supposed to think if none of this makes sense to me?”

“I
had
to turn a blind eye. I
had
to stay here. I couldn’t leave and let Kyle poison it from the ground up, otherwise what the hell would be left for me to build on when it finally became mine?”

He said nothing. It infuriated her to see his faint skepticism was blended with a supposedly genuine yearning to understand. “I’m not a fool and I’m not blind. Of course I saw the money exchanging hands and knew drugs were involved, but I kept out of it. I promised my...” She lowered her voice and slowly swiveled around. She ran her finger over granddad’s plaque. “I promised him I’d be careful and I was. I had to stay, no matter what. If Kyle forced me out of Funland, there was hell’s chance of me getting back in.”

“So you’re saying you acted ignorant, but if you really wanted to, you could tell me things I need to know?” He met her eyes. “Like who bought his drugs. Who sold him the drugs? Who the faces and names were that came through Funland before Kyle was sent down? I need to know who he really was. I need that as much as you need the fair. I can’t move on until I understand Kyle and the kind of man he was when he lived here.”

She frowned. “Can’t move on from Templeton?”

He tightened his jaw. “Can’t move on period.”

Empathy rose and nestled like a ball behind her chest. She considered what he said and fear rippled through her. Was he here seeking closure to something she knew nothing about? Was he asking her to join forces with him? Asking her to be a part of whatever it was Kyle wanted him to do? She turned toward the forest as nausea rose in her throat. Why did she get the feeling she’d gone from paddling in the fairly safe arena of Templeton’s lapping shoreline, to the acute danger of scuba diving in the Atlantic’s deep, dark waters?

CHAPTER EIGHT

J
OHN
DRAGGED
HIS
gaze from her profile to the ocean. The water glinted under the glare of the sunshine as seagulls dove and soared above the waves, searching for lunch. He exhaled. “This could be a new beginning for both of us.”

“It could also be the beginning of the end.”

He turned, and her jet-black eyes caught and tugged at his chest once again. Her gaze held a whisper of something different he couldn’t ignore. Who was she? Where was she from? “Kyle told me your family were immigrants. Is that true?”

She raised her eyebrows before huffing out a breath of dry laughter. She shook her head. “Only Kyle.”

“What?”

“My family is Romany. My grandparents and mother are Spanish, thus the dark hair and eyes.” She smiled. “We’ve lived in the U.K. forever. I was born here, and I’ve no idea why Kyle thought otherwise. Unless, of course, you take into account the man is steeped in so much ignorance and contempt for his fellow man, he wouldn’t know if someone were English, Irish, Bohemian or African. The man’s an asshole.” She grimaced. “Sorry.”

He smiled. “No need to apologize. We’ve just stumbled across another thing we agree on. Things are looking up.”

She laughed. “Maybe they are.”

Their eyes locked for a brief moment before she stared into the distance, a blush staining her cheeks.

John tightened his grip on the back of the bench as the urge to take her hand raced through him. “So...where do you suggest we go from here?”

“Do you mean as far as the fair and us is concerned? Or the next destination of this Magical Mystery Tour you’ve got going on?”

He smiled. The soft, ultrasexy huskiness in her voice washed over him and ran its caress across his groin. He shifted uncomfortably. “The fair and us for starters. We need to find a way to deal with this situation.” He inhaled. “I need to figure out what to do about Kyle’s demands, and I can’t do that without you. You want to get the fair back into your family, and you can’t do that without me. Surely we can work toward getting what we both want?”

“And what are his demands exactly?”

John drew in a shaky breath, released it. “I think ideally, he’d like me to carry things on as they have been.”

“And is that likely to happen?” She shifted a little away from him.

He shook his head and looked ahead once more. “I don’t owe my father anything. I’ll do what I want...once I’ve figured out what that is.”

“Right.” She cleared her throat. “So what do you think I know about Kyle’s businesses?”

“I think you know his suppliers, his customers and maybe his contacts.” He met her eyes. “On the other side of the coin, I hope you don’t know any of the people who’ve ended up dead through his actions.”

The seconds beat out like minutes. She pulled her mouth into a tight line as though trapping her words inside. He turned away. He didn’t want to look into her eyes and see she knew everything; that she was a part of all the bad Kyle was involved with. If he did, he was scared it would turn her astounding beauty ugly.

Scared his gut was wrong and she was party to
everything
that went on at Funland. Scared he’d see her desire to make the place her own was really imbedded in financial greed and power rather than loyalty to her ancestry.

“I know
some
people.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Who?”

“Well, I know faces, not names. I could recognize a few people in a lineup, I suppose. I also know from Kyle’s sentencing that the cops only confiscated a tiny part of the drugs that have passed through the fair over the past six years.”

He faced her. “Kyle’s been dealing through the fair for that long?”

Sadness mixed with anger in her gaze. “Maybe longer. He bought the fair from my granddad over seven years ago. Eventually, the same faces started showing up and with them, Funland slowly changed from a place full of families and laughing children to a place of lost teenagers and men who had no place being there.”

“I see.”

“I knew what was happening, but you have to understand my position. I was powerless to stop it. I couldn’t risk Kyle kicking me out. I had to stay.”

He nodded. He liked her. He understood her. He’d not stopped thinking about her yesterday and her absence had only strengthened his fondness. He looked to the sky and concentrated on the birds soaring past the pure white clouds. He’d only known her for a matter of days, yet the overwhelming urge to kiss her, touch her face and smell her hair encompassed him.

They sat in silence. If she was part of Kyle’s circle and he let her see his growing attraction toward her, he risked leaving himself wide open to manipulation. He had zero reason to trust his father or her. He’d yet to uncover why his father—or Sasha’s grandfather—included the clause that Funland wasn’t to be sold back to anyone in the Todd family. Would that still hold now he held ownership?

Kyle’s limited instructions reeked of sabotage and spite.

Pushing abruptly to his feet, John turned his back to her and paced a few feet away, creating some much needed space. “It’s going to take more than your say so for me to believe you had no involvement in the drugs. I’m sorry.” He drew in the cleansing sea air, hating his inability to trust anything or anyone in the place where Kyle had settled for longer than anywhere else.

A long moment passed before he heard her soft footsteps. She stood so close, the breeze whipped her scent to him.

“I understand you’ve no reason to believe me. Just as I’ve no reason to believe you’ll do the right thing in the end, but I’m telling the truth. That’s all I know.” She sighed. “I’m sure Freddy knows a whole lot more than I do.”

He turned to face her. “I
will
do the right thing in the end, you know.”

“Will you?” She raised her eyebrows, her gaze dark. “Then I guess we need to trust each other. Because as it stands now, neither of us has anyone else we can turn to with this problem.”

He stared at her mouth; he couldn’t help it. “What do you know about Freddy’s background?”

“Nothing. Why?”

He curled his hands into fists inside his pockets. “He met my father in prison.”

“Freddy was in prison, too?” She laughed drily. “My God, I work in one of the best places ever, don’t I?”

“What was he in there for? That’s the question.” John scowled. “For all I know, the man could be a psycho.”

Her cheeks darkened. She looked rattled by his blunt revelation. Guilt he’d blurted out Freddy’s history so insensitively rolled through him. “You honestly didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Does it change the way you feel about him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really feel anything about Freddy. We work together and then go home in opposite directions. I’d say his bark is a whole lot worse than his bite and he’s never given me reason to be afraid of him.” She smiled. “In fact, the first time I saw him have an emotional reaction to anything was when you turned up.”

“And that makes you smile?”

“Sure. It does me good to see Freddy teetering on his imaginary pedestal.”

John smiled but his mind raced with questions. Why had Freddy served time? Just how dangerous was he? If he had been locked up in the same high-security prison as Kyle, it made sense Freddy had also been there for murder. Or maybe armed robbery. What had Freddy done to get along so well with Kyle?

Sasha coughed, breaking into his thoughts. “So what happens next?”

She was so much shorter than him, yet strength came from her in waves. He curled his fingers tighter as the overwhelming urge to cup her jaw in his hands rocketed through him. He stared at her mouth...again. “I don’t know.”

Her gaze wandered over his face, her dark lids falling to half-mast. A look so sexy and confident, it sent his arousal soaring. She lifted her eyes to his and they sparked with mischief. “Why not just sell Funland to me and to hell with everyone else? I’ll be happy to take the burden from you. No problem at all.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Why couldn’t you have been a bullheaded adversary who looked like a witch with warts and stringy hair?”

She stepped back and jauntily planted her hands on her hips. “As opposed to looking like Pocahontas in a skirt and low-cut top?”

“Exactly.”

She punched him playfully on the arm. “The Pocahontas reference was a joke. As my older sister likes telling me I look more like a miniature long-haired terrier. She says I’m always snarling and foaming at the mouth about something.” She lifted her shoulders. “Which is probably true.”

“With everything you’ve told me that’s gone on over the past seven years, I think you’ve had good reason.”

She looked toward the forest, her smile dissolving. “I can’t let the fair go. It’s all I want. It’s all I’ll
ever
want.”

Regret yanked at his chest and guilt clawed at his conscience. He didn’t want to hear those words from her. He hated that the fair appeared to be her only source of happiness and it was Kyle who had taken it away.

Kyle’s letter to him reverberated in his mind....

I need you, son. I need you take care of things in Templeton Cove. I’ve worked too hard to lose it all. Everything is now yours. People want me dead. I can’t trust anyone. I did what I had to as far as your mother is concerned—and I’ve done everything I can for you since she died. You have to understand what people are capable of when they’re in love. I’m not the bad man you think I am. I promise you. Sell the other businesses, do what you will, but the fairground is not to go to the Todds. Not under any circumstances.

I need to know things are okay between us. That I’ve done the right thing by you come the end.

Heat simmered in John’s gut as his resentment caught and burned.
Done the right thing by me?
Christ, his father had no clue. No idea what he’d done to his only child. John clenched his jaw as he tried to get a handle on his rising temper. Once again, Kyle had put him in an impossible situation and sent him off to sink or swim. The only difference? This time he was an adult and not an eleven-year-old boy desperately flailing for an anchor.

The one thing that remained clear was he couldn’t start to look into overturning the contract clause until he knew for sure Sasha wasn’t involved in the illegalities of Kyle’s business. What evidence did he have that he could trust her? His gut wasn’t enough. He had to protect his control over Kyle. For the first time in almost twenty years, he could break his father. Make him pay for what he’d done—or hadn’t done.

He glowered at the beach below. “Whatever happens, just bear in mind I’m considering your offer...and I’m nothing like Kyle.” He turned.

She studied him. “What happens if I do everything you ask of me only to have you keep the fair and throw my generosity back in my face?”

John tightened his jaw. He wouldn’t make her any promises he wasn’t sure he could keep. Kyle had owned Funland for almost seven and a half years and this woman had always been there. Had played a part, no matter how small, in supplying drugs to men, women and undoubtedly, children. She’d admitted she turned a blind eye to a lot of what was going on at the fair. Who did that? He scowled. Who could be that irresponsible at a place where children came to have fun? He cleared his throat. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Trust you?”

“That’s the best I can say right now.”

Tears glinted in her phenomenal eyes, sending his negative thoughts about her into a tailspin. She shook her head. “Well, I feel a million times better now we’ve had this chat.”

“I’m sorry, but until I know more about your role in the whole sordid deal Kyle clearly had going on here, I can’t give anyone, including you, an inch.” He tilted his head toward the direction of the parking lot. “We should go.”

Disappointment flashed in her dark eyes and then her shoulder brushed his chest as she stormed past him and down the hill. John’s hatred of Kyle seeped ever deeper. No father put his son in the position of having the monopoly on what did and didn’t happen with regards to other people’s lives. Then again, Kyle wasn’t a true father.

* * *

S
ASHA
SWIPED
AT
her tears as she marched across the parking lot toward John’s car. Who the hell did he think he was, practically accusing her of being involved in Kyle’s illegalities? Surely her dislike of the man showed on her face and in her words? Yet, a horrible sense of shame blended with her anger because what John accused her of wasn’t entirely unwarranted. She’d known what Kyle was doing to some degree. She’d seen money exchange hands. Seen packets of white and brown powder being loaded into trunks after nightfall.

She tipped her head back as further tears threatened. “God damn you, Kyle.”

The locks of John’s car shunted open, and she jumped. The crunch of his footsteps on the gravel sent her heartbeat into overdrive. She yanked open the door and slid into the passenger seat. The tension between them would only grow worse as time went on. Not to mention the sexual tension heating up faster than a flint on a line of paraffin.

He got into the car and as she was unable to trust her body’s reaction whenever she looked into his solemn gaze, Sasha belted up and faced the side window. He had eyes bluer than the ocean. A jaw so defined, it was as though it was chiseled from marble. God, she even loved the way he towered above her when, before John, she’d hated feeling small and delicate in front of anyone. With him, it felt right....

“Sasha?”

She briefly closed her eyes before turning to face him. “What?”

“We have to be honest with each other if we stand any chance of coming to a mutually satisfying arrangement.”

“A mutually satisfying agreement?” She shook her head. “Why do you have to speak like that? This isn’t a civil conversation across a conference table. We’re talking about my life. The entirety of what I want to do with it.” She angrily swiped her hand at the hair that dared to fall in her eyes. “God damn it. I don’t want you here.”

His eyes flashed with anger and distrust. His cheeks were red and his jaw tight. He faced front and turned the ignition. The powerful engine roared to life and he reversed.