Breaking Free

“Oh, that is low.”

She was so close, he could smell her, kiss her if he dared, and she was making him hot enough to do it. “If you didn’t come for the inheritance, Megan,” he said, his voice thick, low, “then why are you really both here out of the blue?”

She blushed, eyes flickering.

And Dylan knew a liar when he saw one.

He’d stomached his fair share in police interrogation rooms, and her reaction made his heart turn cold, his unbidden lust for her simply hardening his resolve to win this one.

“How much do you really know about your aunt, anyway?” he said, watching her eyes closely, waiting for them to give her away again, trying to ignore the faint scent of sun lotion that lingered on her skin, reminding him of family summers at Bateman’s Bay, of happier times. “Because I suspect I know Louisa a helluva lot better than you do, Megan Stafford. I know just what she is capable of. I’ve seen the Thoroughbred set close ranks around their own. I’ve seen her and D’Angelo’s father buy ‘justice’ before.”

He’d seen it thirty years ago, when he was eight years old, and his brother Liam eleven. It had been the incident that tore his family to shreds, forcing them from their modest home in the Hunter.

It was what had ultimately made Dylan become a cop. And now that he was back, now that it was within his power, he was not about to let her kind get away with murder—again.

“If you want to be a part of the Fairchild team, if you want to take me down personally, then, Megan, you and I are going to be at war.”

He turned and headed for the doors, heart thudding. He needed to focus. He needed to cut Megan from his mind. She’d already proven an emotional distraction he couldn’t afford right now. His priority was to find officers he could rotate on twenty-four-hour guard outside Louisa’s door, and he knew it was going to be an issue. He couldn’t use Peebles. He was a probationary cop. It was against protocol.

His phone rang as he reached the hospital doors. He unhooked it from his belt, snapped it open. “Hastings,” he barked.

It was an officer at the Scone station. He said a Scone patrol officer had picked up Heidi on her bike. She’d had an accident, but she was fine.

Dylan froze on the spot. “Where is she?”

“We took her home.”

Confusion spiraled through his brain. Heidi was supposed to have been at home, asleep. “What happened?”

“She was cycling along a dark section of Burumby Road a couple of hours ago when an oncoming sedan swerved to avoid a wallaby, running her bike into a ditch. The vehicle didn’t hit her, but she’s quite shaken up. The driver called it in, tried to help her. He was worried about a young girl that age being out alone at night on that stretch of road.”

White-cold fear and anger lanced through Dylan.

He shot a look at Megan, who was watching him intently from the nurses’ station. And he felt suddenly, inexplicably, naked. Vulnerable.

Furious.

With himself. With her. With everything.

He hadn’t realized just how much he’d needed to talk, to lean on someone with his family issues. She had made him feel that need.

And suddenly her compassion, her interest, the way she’d drawn him out, felt deceptive. Deceitful. He felt cheated. Lured.

He spun on his boot heels and stormed through the hospital doors into the pale dawn, the threads of his life unraveling at his feet.

Be damned if he was going to let the Fairchild clan take him down again.

He wasn’t going to lose what little control he still had left over his family.

Over himself.

This time his family would not run. He would stand up and fight. And this time there would be only one winner.

Him.

His family.

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