Her Secret, His Child: A Little Secret by Tara Quinn (rosie project .txt) 📕

Please let him kick me out. She was barely aware that he'd stood up, that he'd walked to the front of his massive oak desk and rested his lean body against it.

She could get help if he kicked her out. There were places she could go—as long as she didn't have to worry about him coming after her. As long as she was free from the lies, the threats. The violence. Loretta had a huge room. Jamie could probably stay there. She could finish school. Get a job. If he'd just let her go…

"But then, I wouldn't be the man I am if I tossed your little butt out in the gutter where it belongs, would I?" he asked.

Of course not. Jamie's heart sank. How stupid could she be? He wasn't ever going to let her go. Because he'd look bad if he did. He could explain

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away her tripping on the stairs, falling during a family hike or being thrown from a horse. He'd never be able to explain leaving his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter homeless.

His eyes were gleaming as he watched her squirm in the doorway. Why did it always have to come to this? Why did she always end up reacting just the way he wanted her to? Like…like a helpless bug at his mercy?

"So, my dear daughter, you're going to have to earn your keep."

So, what else is new? The words almost escaped. She'd been doing the majority of the housework for years.

He came closer, slowly, gaining on her inch by inch, his height throwing a shadow on her in the doorway. Jamie didn't want to shrink from him. She forbade herself to give him that satisfaction. Not anymore. Her mother had gone to her grave a beaten woman. Jamie wasn't going to do the same.

"I'm curious." He stopped, pinning her with his cold stare. ' 'How does it feel knowing all of those people were crying today because of you?"

' 'What?'' She shifted away from the door frame.

"You killed her," John said.

His expression had softened and he smiled sadly as he gazed at her. Jamie's heart began to thud so heavily in her chest it constricted her breathing. But she still didn't shrink from him.

"I didn't," she whispered. She wasn't going to let him convince her of something so horrible. She refused to accept any guilt. She'd risked her life for

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her mother—many times. Sadie Archer had been the one person in the world who loved her. Jamie would have killed herself before she ever did anything to hurt her mother.

"Of course you did," John whispered hoarsely. He'd stopped a couple of feet in front of her and stood with his hands in his pockets. "Won't do you any good to pretend, Jamie. You killed her as surely as if you'd put a gun to her head."

"No!" Jamie felt the tears start to flow, deep inside, where no one could see them.

"That night you called to ask permission to stay later at the library."

"You said I could." Jamie hadn't wanted to leave her mother alone with John, but he'd been in one of his nicer phases. And she'd needed to get a few more references for an English paper she was writing.

"Yes, well, unbeknownst to me, your mother had already left to get you."

He was a raving lunatic, his story so obviously unfounded. "She knew where I sat in the library. If she'd come, she would've found me."

"Her car broke down on the way."

Thinking back to that night a couple of weeks ago, Jamie remembered her mother and John picking her up when the library closed. They'd been in John's car.

She wasn't sure where this was leading, but she was suddenly scared. Too scared to run. Too scared to move when John took a step closer.

"It was raining that night," he said.

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His voice was still soft, but Jamie trembled anew when she heard the lilt of victory in his tone. He advanced another step.

She was confused now, doubting herself. And if she'd had anything to do with the illness that had finally taken her mother's life, she didn't care if John hit her. She didn't care if he killed her.

"Your mother was exposed to that rain when she had to walk the half mile to a phone, then wait there for me to come bail her out of her troubles again," John said. His hands were still in his pockets, but the muscles in his forearms were bunched.

His dark hair left menacing shadows on his forehead.

' "The next day, as you know, she came down with a cold that led quickly to the pneumonia that killed her."

Jamie stared at him. Horror made her sick, weak. Surely she couldn't be blamed for the rain! Or the run-down state of her mother's car.

"If you hadn't been at the library, forcing Sadie out in the first place, she'd never have been exposed to that rain at all."

"But…"

"Or if you'd found another way home, a friend maybe, like most teenagers do, rather than relying on your mother all the time, she wouldn't have been out in that rain."

"But…" Desperate to end this nightmare, to be certain she wasn't to blame for her beloved mother's death, Jamie meant to tell John that if he'd only kept her mother's car in better shape, Sadie wouldn't

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have had to worry about the rain. But she never got the chance.

"Or—" he took another step "—if you'd called sooner, before seven, when she left to pick you up, none of this would have happened."

He was right. Dammit, he was right. She'd been so caught up in her reading that she hadn't noticed the time. Her mother always got her from the library at 7:30; it was a standing arrangement. Jamie should have called earlier, saved her the trip.

John took another small step, pulling one hand slowly out of his pocket.

Jamie shrank back.

Shivering, Jamie clutched her stomach with both arms, her gaze darting frantically