The Lost Sheenan's Bride (Taming of the Sheenans Book 6) (8 page)

“The entire hotel was recently renovated.”

“I understand it stood empty for years before the renovation.”

She nodded. “Troy bought it because it was his mom’s favorite place. His mother used to take her little boys there for special events, back before the hotel went out of business.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Harley told me the hotel nearly bankrupted Troy, too. It was a huge multi-million dollar renovation but Troy believed in the hotel and I think it’s out of the red now. I hope it’s out of the red.”

“You’re full of information.”

She grinned crookedly. “You can’t help picking up bits and pieces of history when you’re here. My students are proud to be Montanans. Most of them love living in Paradise Valley and intend to make their homes here, too.” She shivered at a blast of icy wind. “I have to say, though, it’s cold here. Really cold. And that wind that whistles through the valley from Yellowstone. Brrr.”

“Let’s get you inside then.” He walked her up the steps of the porch. “So, eleven on Sunday? Or should we try for noon so you can attend church fist?”

“Noon would be great.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

“Maybe I’ll meet you there.” She made a face. “Just safer.”

“So the Sheenans won’t like you seeing me.”

“Um, no,” she admitted. “They won’t.”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t. I don’t want everyone upset with you. It’s not fair to you—”

“Or you,” she countered. “And I wouldn’t go if I thought I was hurting anyone, but I’m not. This isn’t about them. So, from a purely selfish standpoint, I want to go to brunch. I like your company and, you know, you’re the first person—outside of Kara and my family—who has reached out to me here, or included me. So really, you’re the first friend I’ve made in Marietta, and after five weeks, it feels good to be making friends.” She searched his face, wishing the porch light was brighter, wanting to better see what he was thinking, but the light illuminated just his jaw and mouth, leaving his dark eyes shadowed. “You know?”

He studied her for a moment, his lips firm and unsmiling, and then he nodded slowly. “I do,” he said quietly.

And then he leaned towards her and pressed a light kiss to her forehead, and then another light kiss to her lips, before letting her go. “Sleep well.”

“You, too,” she murmured, heart thudding hard, before unlocking the front door and slipping inside.

She liked him. Really liked him. And this was going to be a problem.

Kara was awake, waiting for Jet in the living room, watching TV, a glowing fire in the hearth, when Jet arrived home at eleven-thirty. Jet shot Kara a worried look as she peeled off her gloves and then her coat. “What’s wrong?”

Kara turned off the TV. “Your sister was here earlier. She waited for you for almost an hour. You didn’t have your phone on you, did you?”

“No. I left it charging and forgot it. What’s wrong? Did something happen to one of the kids?”

“No. It just seems like your whole family knows you had dinner with Shane and they’re not happy.”

“The Diekerhofs?”

Kara gave her a look as if to say Jet was being deliberately dense. “No, the Sheenans.”

Jet sighed. “The Sheenans aren’t my family. They’re Harley’s.” She laid her coat and gloves on the back of the couch and came around to sit on the opposite end of Kara. “And if Cormac had to go tell everyone…well, that’s rather sad.”

“The Sheenans are really upset about the book.”

“I gather. But why be so protective of McKenna? I’ve met her. She doesn’t strike me as all that fragile.”

“It’s not that she’s fragile, but there’s concern that a lot of money will be made off of a tragedy, and none of the money benefits the victims—”

“The Sheenans want a piece of the book?”

“No. They don’t want it written at all. They don’t want anyone to capitalize on the murders.” Kara rose and took a poker to the glowing embers, spreading them out. “It’s a sordid piece of Marietta history, and no one here wants to see it exploited. And beyond the financial side, it was truly a terrible time, with everyone under the microscope, and no one more closely than the Sheenans.”

“Why the Sheenans?”

Kara sat back down and drew her legs up under her. “The Douglases and Sheenans were neighbors. They shared a property line. In fact, you had to drive on the Sheenan ranch to get to the Douglas’, so whoever the killer was, he’d been on the Sheenan property, too. So when Rory went for help, he went to the Sheenans. Brock and Bill raced to the Douglas house, while one of the other boys summoned help.”

“Brock and Mr. Sheenan were the first on the scene?”

Kara nodded. “Another neighbor, rancher Rob MacCredie, was next, and then the sheriff, fire, and ambulances. But because Bill and Brock were first on the scene, they were questioned again and again—”

“There is no way Brock was part of that.”

“Of course not. But he saw it all, and an investigation always zeros in on family and neighbors. No one escapes unscathed.” She was silent a moment. “I was only six or seven at the time, but I remember how tense everyone was. How
scared
. No one felt safe anymore. It honestly took years for people to feel comfortable in their own homes.”

“Were any of the Douglas kids in your class?”

“I was the same age as one of the boys that died, but he went to your school, in Paradise Valley, and I attended Marietta Elementary.”

Jet couldn’t even imagine how terrifying it’d be to discover that a child your own age had been murdered in his home, and that the parents couldn’t even protect him. That the parents had been killed, too.

“Why do you think Shane wanted to rent the Sheenan house?” she asked Kara.

“It’s convenient. It’s right there where everything happened.” Kara rose and stretched. “But just because something is convenient, doesn’t make it right. Not when something has caused so much suffering in this community.”

“I would think the community would want justice for the Douglases.”

“I don’t think that anyone really believes the crime can be solved. It’s been too many years. The evidence—” She broke off, sighed. “Listen, I became a district attorney because I couldn’t stand to think that bad guys got to get away unpunished. The bad guys should be held accountable. My entire career is based on righting wrongs, but in this case, there is no identifiable bad guy, and I don’t think there ever will be.” She covered a yawn. “I’ve got to go to bed. I’m heading to Billings tomorrow to see my grandmother, but
please
call your sister in the morning. I don’t want her thinking I didn’t tell you, and Harley is pretty anxious about talking to you.”

All the more reason Jet wasn’t looking forward to the call. “I’ll call her. I’ll phone after breakfast. I promise.”

But once in her room, Jet didn’t want to think about Harley or the Sheenans or the horrific murders on the Douglas ranch. She wanted to think about Shane, and the kiss, and how he made her feel…

Of how she felt right now.

Ben had crushed her and she’d thought she wasn’t ready for anything but somehow, inexplicably, she found herself hoping…

Hoping Shane might like her a little bit.

Hoping he’d want to see more of her, not just Sunday, but after Sunday.

Hoping she could get Harley and Cormac and the rest of the Sheenans to respect her friendship with Shane, because really, that was all it was right now.

Yes, he made her feel all excited and fizzy on the inside, but at the same time, she didn’t want romance without a real friendship. Friendship was important. If her breakup with Ben had taught her anything it was she couldn’t have a relationship without honesty and respect and communication.

Changing into her pajamas, she washed her face and then brushed her teeth and climbed into bed.

Tomorrow she’d call Harley and then would go to school and prepare her lessons for the coming week and then Sunday would be brunch…

A little quiver of excitement shot through her. She smiled in the dark.

She shouldn’t like him this much. She shouldn’t.

But he was so fascinating…absolutely larger than life. He wasn’t just ruggedly handsome and intellectually stimulating, but he had a smoldering intensity, which she’d never encountered before, and a sizzling intensity made her so curious.

She wanted to understand the attraction. She wanted to understand
him
.

Who was Sean Shane Swan Finley? And why did his parents change his name on the birth certificate? And who was the beautiful mother that used to visit him and then vanished so abruptly from his life?

S
hane had waited
outside the small, yellow house until Jet was safely inside. He’d watched the front door until the porch light was turned off and only then did he return to his truck, start the engine, and pull away from the curb.

At the corner he flipped a U-turn and headed back down Bramble to pick up Highway 89 north of the high school.

It’d take him at least twenty minutes to get to the Sheenan ranch, and he drove slowly, mindful of the black ice on the road. He was in no great hurry to return to the old two-story log cabin. The old Sheenan homestead wasn’t his home, and the longer he was there, the more uncomfortable he became.

He did not belong.

He wasn’t supposed to be there.

His certainty had little to do with Cormac and the other Sheenan brothers, but the heaviness that filled him every time he entered the house.

He hadn’t believed in spirits before he moved in. He did now.

He was most definitely not alone in the house. His mother’s ghost—sad but benign—and another one, far more aggressive. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was his father’s spirit as it seemed to go out of its way to make him feel unwelcome, reminding Shane he didn’t belong. That he’d never belonged. And yet whenever he felt the hostile presence, the other one was there, too, as if trying to be a buffer, determined to protect Shane.

God, he’d love to know the truth.

Why was he given away? Why had his father’s name been stripped from the birth certificate—because Bill Sheenan was his father, the DNA test four years ago proved it—but Shane had waited too long to confront his father? Bill Sheenan was dead. The brothers had all abandoned the family homestead. And now Shane was here, still the outsider, still the interloper.

Shane hadn’t expected a warm welcome from the Sheenan brothers, but he had thought maybe—and now he could see how silly he’d been—just maybe, they’d help him. He’d thought they’d be civil, possibly friendly. He’d thought he could get them to trust him and sit down and talk to him about what had happened leading up to the massacre on the Douglas property.

Before signing the lease, he’d hoped he’d get to know these brothers, not as brothers, but as people. Men. There was no need for a big, bonding thing, and no need to become close as they’d never be a family, but he hadn’t anticipated the freeze-out.

To be fair, Dillon had been friendly enough when Shane had talked to him about leasing the house. He’d enjoyed their lunch at the Graff. Dillon had been somewhat guarded and Shane hadn’t known if that was just Dillon’s personality or a family thing. Nine months later Shane knew it was a family thing.

There was nothing soft about the Sheenans. They’d obviously been raised with a firm hand…taught from birth what it meant to be a Sheenan, and a man.

More than once Shane had tried to imagine growing up in that house, as a Sheenan. In terms of the lineup, he would have been near the end, sandwiched between Cormac and Dillon.

His birth date was less than a year after Cormac. He and Cormac were Irish twins, with Cormac’s birthday on April fifth, while Shane’s was fast approaching, February twenty-seventh. Cormac would have been just a couple months old when their mother conceived again.

Shane had wondered if that might have been part of the problem, if there had just been too many babies too quickly. Perhaps the family had been having some kind of financial difficulty or his mother had been ill, necessitating the need for her mother to step in and help take care of the new baby.

So odd to think of how it might have been, the lineup and pecking order—Brock, Troy, Trey, Cormac, Shane, and then Dillon.

For the first two weeks of his life, he’d been a Sheenan, and then mid-March the birth certificate was amended and he became a Swan.

Bill Sheenan was not crazy. He was a tough man but smart, successful, and respected by all but neighbor Hawksley Carrigan.

Why would he remove his name from the birth certificate?

For him to do that, he had to be sure that Shane wasn’t his.

Except Bill Sheenan was wrong. The private investigator Shane had hired four years ago had been able to run a DNA test off a Starbucks coffee cup that Troy discarded after a meeting with a potential investor—Shane’s investigator—and Troy was a ninety-nine percent match for a sibling, which meant Shane was as much a Sheenan as Trey and Troy, since they were identical twins.

Arriving at the ranch, Shane parked in the gravel area between the house and barn and headed for the two-story log cabin.

He discovered a white envelope tacked to the wooden front door.

Cormac, he thought. Cormac had put the notice in writing.

Shane removed the envelope, unlocked the door and stepped inside to read the paper. He’d been right. Thirty-day notice. In writing.

For a moment Shane didn’t know what to think. He’d been expecting this for awhile but, now that it had come, he was numb.

These past nine months hadn’t been easy or comfortable. But what had he hoped? That living in his parents’ house would heal something inside of him? That sleeping in his brother’s bed would knit that gaping hole in his heart?

Irritated and frustrated, he walked through the house, flipping switches until the entire downstairs blazed with light. But it wasn’t enough. The house seemed to be listening, waiting for something, and Shane synced his phone with his Bluetooth speakers, filling the house with Aerosmith, upping the volume until the glass figurines in the dining room’s china cabinet rattled. Nothing like a good, old 1973 classic to wake the house up. And the ghosts…if they were sleeping.