Summer Lovin'

Ryan wasn't sure what to believe. 'Yet you lied and told us all that Faith stole money from you to run away.'

'That wasn't far from the truth. She stole the key to my briefcase along with false insurance papers documenting a shipment worth more than the actual goods.'

Ryan narrowed his gaze, confused. 'You'd been helping her. Why would she turn on you before leaving?'

Russ spread his hands wide. 'She was a drug addict, Ryan. Who knows why she did what she did?'

'Why did you continue the scam over the years?' Ryan asked.

Russ frowned. 'Who says I did?'

'You did. Through your actions.' Though Ryan laughed, he recognized the hollowness in the sound. 'If you'd done it once to help Faith, you wouldn't have been in a panic when you saw Sam's key. Your actions were screwed-up, but sort of justifiable and eventually forgivable.'

'I don't see you believing in me at the moment,' his uncle said, his voice laced with bitterness.

'That's because Faith's letter indicated you made money off the scheme more than that one time. It seems she kept those papers in the locker for a year or so, adding to them on occasion.'

His uncle opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally said, 'How the hell would she have known?'

'Because like you said, she was a drug addict. She needed drugs after she ran away and turned to her 'friend' to supply her before she finally took off for New York. He must have filled her in.'

'Good Lord.' Uncle Russ turned toward the window.

'Yeah,' Ryan muttered. 'So what the hell was going on?'

Russ faced them again. 'It was supposed to be one time. Then a year later, they called on me again. Between their veiled threats to reveal my insurance scam and the fact that the extra money in my pocket helped my lifestyle- '

'You're hardly hurting for cash from the business,' Ryan pointed out.

'And neither is your father or brother and they don't work nearly as hard as I do. After a while, it seemed like I wasn't getting what I deserved from Baldwin's,' he admitted. 'Who was it hurting?'

'How about the small-business owner who sees insurance rates skyrocket year after year?' Zoe said, making her presence known.

Not that Ryan had forgotten.

Uncle Russ scowled, but the slight incline of his head acknowledged her point. 'I heard from your sister from time to time.'

'What?' Ryan asked in shock.

'She'd call collect or drop me a note. She'd remind me of what she knew and I lived in abject fear of her revealing all. But then after a while the threats stopped. It seemed as if she was cleaning up her act and I was able to justify sending her away. But then it was silent for too long. I was petrified of her going back on drugs, or exposing me. That's when I began my investigation into her whereabouts.'

Ryan's head pounded and he braced himself for his uncle's next admission.

'I found out she'd died in a drug dispute,' he said, his voice cracking.

'You kept that from my parents? From me? You let me investigate and search and hope?'

Russ nodded. 'Please hear me out. When I first found out, the guilt nearly killed me. I blamed myself and I stopped my part in bilking the insurance company. It helped that the feds were cracking down and the guys I dealt with wanted to lay low and focus on other things.'

'And with Faith gone, so was the threat of discovery,' Ryan said.

Russ nodded. 'I stayed clean and focused on you, but the guilt never went away. Guilt over sending her away, over her death, over keeping the news from you, but I couldn't see what good it would do to tell you. I couldn't hurt you that way.'

'Or deal with my reaction to your role in it.'

Russ hung his head. 'That, too.'

'But then I started investigating on my own. With only partial information to go on, since you withheld the important things, like my sister's death,' Ryan said with contempt.

'Guilty as charged,' Uncle Russ admitted dully.

Ryan leaned back in the chair, his body heavy with the weight of everything he'd just heard.

'How did you feel when Ryan found out something you hadn't? When he found Sam?' Zoe's voice startled Ryan and he glanced her way. She was face-to-face with his uncle.

Uncle Russ merely shook his head and Zoe continued. 'I can answer that. You got nervous that maybe she knew something or had something that could implicate you, isn't that right?'

Ryan's gaze shot back to his uncle. 'Is she right?'

Uncle Russ nodded and nausea churned in Ryan's gut. He'd had enough revelations today to last a lifetime, but Zoe obviously wasn't finished.

'You were so nervous this child of Faith's might know something or have something of her mother's that you hired someone to break into my family's home and tear the place apart, starting with Sam's room,' she said, accusing him of something that had never even crossed Ryan's mind. While he'd been consumed with the past, Zoe had been focused on the present.

'She's right about this, too, isn't she?' Ryan said, knowing the answer before he'd asked the question.

Defeated, Russ merely nodded. 'But how did you know?'

'The guy's in jail in Boston and we found out he has a mob connection to the same people involved in the truck robberies. I also had my brother-in-law run a check on you during Faith's troubled years.' She shot Ryan a regretful glance, but he wasn't about to be angry at her.

'Do you know how badly I wanted to be wrong?' she asked Russ. 'Ryan loves you. He believed in you. I didn't want to think that you were capable of something so low,' Zoe said, her anger and fury evident in the clench of her fists and the barely controlled tone of her voice. 'Do you realize you scared a fourteen-year-old girl half to death and you violated my parents' home, all to save your sorry- ' She stepped forward.

Ryan rose and grabbed her by the waist to prevent her from going after his uncle. Her Mediterranean blood was fired up and though he'd like nothing better than to let her take care of the man, he was compelled to protect her from her own anger.

When her breathing slowed and he knew she'd calmed down, he released her, holding her hand to be sure.

'You also pretended to extend an overture to Sam just so you could get your hands on her keys,' Zoe said in disbelief. 'She's a child and you violated her trust in the worst way. But then you'd already done the same thing to her mother, so why should Sam get in your way?'

With each word, with each revelation, Ryan's stomach rolled in sick disbelief. 'I don't know who you are,' he said, glancing at his uncle.

'Sometimes I don't know the answer to that, either,' Russ said.

Zoe's hand still in his, Ryan pulled her toward the door.

'Ryan,' his uncle called to him.

Ryan paused.

'I've always loved you- you and Faith,' Russ told him. 'And I pray that someday when you've had time to think this over, you'll see through my weakness and stupidity and realize that.'

Unable to see anything at the moment, Ryan strode through the door with Zoe without looking back.

Chapter Fourteen

ZOE FOLDED HER LAST TANK TOP and placed it into her suitcase. A few more items and she'd be good to go. She glanced around the small guest room she'd called home for a short time and realized she'd always felt comfortable here. Not just here in this room, but here in Ryan's apartment and in his life. Surely that was because he hadn't been in his normal routine any more than she'd been in hers.

As she'd told him already, they needed to return to their jobs, their friends, their lives and then their differences wouldn't just be apparent, but dramatically so. Of that she was sure- no matter how