Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) by Janice Kay Johnson Page A

that’s who she was.  He’d seen her
listening to customers, touching them, always saying the right thing.  Maybe he
knew her better than he’d thought.
    “Yeah.”  He’d never told anyone about this, not even his
mother.  Then, he’d kept his mouth shut and smoldered.  Now – damn it, now
something he didn’t understand drove him to keep talking.  “It let me be mad at
my mother, too.  If she was lying to me, I had to be, right?”
    There was nothing but understanding and warmth in Hannah’s
eyes.   “You said he’d left ‘us’.  Do you have siblings?”
    Here’s where he should have deflected, and yet Elias
hesitated only momentarily.  What did it matter if he told her one more dark
piece of his past?
    “I meant Mom and me.  But I did have an older sister.”  He
sounded hoarse.  “Marika.  She died of leukemia when I was four.  Sometimes I
think I remember her, but probably all I’m seeing is a picture.  Mom has this
pile of albums.”  Plus handsomely framed photos of all of them – Elias, Dad,
Marika – arranged on a white wall in her new condominium.
    “Your parents didn’t try to have another child?”
    “I asked once.  My mother said it would have felt too much
as if they were trying to replace Marika.  As if they thought she could be
replaced.  So they chose not to.”
    “I understand.  If I lost Ian…”  Hannah shuddered.
    Elias squeezed her hand.  “I shouldn’t have started this.”
    She focused on his face again, expression apologetic.  “No,
I’m the one who keeps feeling…”  She frowned.  “As if a ghost walked by or
something.”
    He scanned the dining room again.  Nobody seemed to be
paying any attention to them.  Probably she was just on edge, which was
understandable, but humans had the same instincts of an animal in the wild that
knew when something or someone dangerous was watching.  Talking about a child’s
death was probably what had set her off – but there was a lesser chance they’d
been followed from her house, where he picked her up.
    “My fault,” Elias said.  “Given what’s been going on with
you, we should have kept this lighter.”  Too bad he didn’t know how.  There was
a reason critics pointed to the darkness of his vision, the way his paintings
had of making the viewer feel alone.  Fun and games, he wasn’t.
    Which threw him back to thinking he was selfish when it came
to Hannah, and not just because he should have waited to start something up
with her.  He needed her warmth, but what did he have to offer her?  All he’d
succeeded in doing so far was ramping up the danger stalking her.
    As an all-too familiar icy chill crept over him, he gently
disengaged his hand from Hannah’s.  “Do you want some dessert?”
    “Oh.  No.”  Her smile looked false.  She’d read his change
of mood. “I eat entirely too many desserts.  Occupational hazard.  And Ian
isn’t used to me going out evenings, so I’d rather not be out late.”
    Elias only nodded, even though it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. 
The sun was only just setting in an iridescent blaze across the horizon.  Under
other circumstances he might have suggested they go down to the beach to watch
the spectacle.  As it was, he signaled the waiter, paid, and ushered Hannah
out, his hand on her lower back.
    They didn’t talk much on the drive back.  He concentrated on
his driving except when the view would suddenly open to the ocean far below and
the orange glow skimming the curve of the earth.  As always, he found himself
trying to store that exact tint and reaching mentally for the paints in his
pallet.
    As they crossed Mist River and reached Cape Trouble, he
glanced at Hannah’s averted face and said abruptly, “I’m sorry.  I don’t
usually talk about my father or my sister.”  Especially his sister, whose
death, he had always known, had stolen the happiness from their home, made it a
silent place where hugs and laughter were rare.  Where