Ethan stood at the pasture fence and watched his animals. The geese that he’d inherited when he bought the place and the two Appaloosas he’d purchased four years ago. He’d named them Faith and Tim, after his foster mother’s favorite country singers, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
Since Faith was in foal, she would soon be adding another member to his small ranch. But neither the geese nor the horses needed any special tending from him. Because of his hours at work, Ethan paid someone to take care of that. But watching them soothed him.
Well, sort of.
Nothing was going to do a decent job of soothing, but at least out here he could take in the crisp November air to help clear his head. And he could give Livvy a little privacy to get settled into her temporary quarters.
After Eden had delivered that bombshell about the woman, Anna, and her six-year-old daughter, Ethan had gotten behind the wheel of the cruiser and driven them here. He hadn’t peppered Livvy with questions or speculation. Not when she’d had that stunned look on her face. He had just gotten her to his house and led her to the guest room, where he’d suggested she get some rest.
Like soothing, rest probably wasn’t in the cards either, but maybe Livvy could use this time to mentally process what she’d learned. Of course, then the speculation would kick in. The questions without answers.
Was Livvy Anna’s daughter?
Had Ivy actually used the daughter to get back at Paul and Anna?
Hell, did Anna and her daughter even exist?
Basically, that was the account of a dead woman, Ivy, and even that was iffy. It was entirely possible that Anthony had constructed the diary. Ethan didn’t know why the man would have done that.
Not yet anyway.
But he was hoping Grace would get to the bottom of it when she brought Anthony back in for questioning. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t happen until tomorrow morning. Anthony’s lawyer had seen to that by insisting he needed to gather some background info before his client was “grilled” again by the cops.
Grace and some of the deputies were gathering info as well. Anything and everything on Anthony, New Hope itself and former clients, surrogates and employees. So far, that number was already over the one hundred mark and growing. Proof of that was the text from Rory that Ethan had gotten just minutes earlier with several pages of names.
Ethan glanced down now at that text, and he sighed. Time to go back in and get started on some research. Maybe he wouldn’t wake Livvy if she had indeed managed an afternoon nap.
But no such luck.
He heard the geese squawking—the feathered security system that alerted him that someone was coming. As usual, they were spot on. He turned toward the house and saw Livvy making her way to him. And he got that punch of heat that he didn’t want. His body wasn’t interested in listening to his brain about that. His body wanted Livvy.
Yeah, even now.
Even with all the guilt that he felt over sleeping with her and getting her pregnant. And now they had the added stress of thisdamn investigation. One that threatened to rattle Livvy to the core.
As she got closer, their gazes connected, and while she didn’t smile in greeting, at least it didn’t look as if she’d been crying. That was something.
“Did you tell everyone to keep me out of the text loop for a while?” she came out and asked.
“I did,” he admitted. “Hard to sleep with beeps and rings going off every few seconds.”
“Hard to sleep, period.” On a heavy sigh, she walked closer, stopping right next to him and shifting her attention to the horses. “Any chance that Faith and I will be having our babies around the same time?”
He liked the change of subject. Not exactly neutral, but maybe talk of horses and babies would help ease the tension he could practically feel thrumming off her body.
“I think Faith’s offspring will be a little later than yours. Ours,” he corrected, and that was somewhat of a victory for him to be able to say that aloud and not think of only the grief.
Now Livvy did smile just a little. It didn’t last, of course.
“Anthony must have thought this Anna had something to do with his mother’s murder,” she said, voicing what was already on his mind. “And I suspect it’s possible that Anthony knew exactly what was in the diary, and he wanted the blame pointed right at me. Maybe punishment by proxy if he thought Anna was my mother and that I was somehow involved in Ivy’s death.”
Again, that had occurred to Ethan, and if it was true, then it meant Anthony was playing some kind of dangerous game.
“It’d be a needle in a haystack to look for women named Anna who gave birth to a daughter thirty-four years ago,” Livvy went on. “But that’s what I started doing instead of taking that nap. No luck,” she let him know.
She followed that with a soft sound of…well, he didn’t know. But the alarm zinged through him when she pressed her hand to her belly.
“Are you all right?” he couldn’t ask fast enough.
