Grady watched her face. She was upset, yes, but he was sure it was more than that. Betrayal too. She'd been betrayed by the one person that should have been there for her. Grady didn't have any idea what he'd do without one or all of his brothers. Before he could offer her any kind of sympathy, something he was sure she'd not want, she spoke again.
"Winnie said that it wasn't as if anyone would miss me if I didn't show up for my morning cereal. She had taken care of my mail, and had someone water my plants. Then she told me that I should have thanked her when she'd gone out of her way to make things better for me. Bitch. And on top of that, she called me a deadbeat." She laughed bitterly. "Winnie doesn't like being told no, I guess."
"I'm so sorry. No one should have been treated that way. And the fact that she did this regardless of your feelings shows just what sort of person she is." Harper looked at him, and he could see that she was more hurt than she was saying to them. "We'll get through his, Harper, I promise you we will."
"When I first woke up, I thought that I'd contracted this rare disease or something like that. Something that would spread all over the world, and they were using me to make a serum or something. Never in a million years would I have thought that she'd go this far. That was when I found out that they were testing me to find out when I'd be ovulating. As soon as I hit peak time, or whatever it's called, I was put under by something in my food and this happened. I woke up tied to the bed then, monitors all over my body." He asked if she was all right now. "I suppose so. If you discount the fact that I'm carrying a child that I neither wanted nor had much in the way of say in. It's like they raped me. You know what I mean? Did this to me without permission. And Winnie is responsible."
"I would have thought they'd keep you there until you were to term." Grady wanted to hit Kenton when he spoke. "I'm sorry. That was callous of me, but I would like to know why they let you out. I'm assuming that your sister had a change of heart? Or did she get pregnant?"
"Oh, she had a change of heart all right. When she found out she was carrying her husband's child about three months into this shit, she had a lot of them. First of all, she didn't want it or the one that she'd paid so much to have planted in me. And her husband, he was pissed off because-and this is a quote-he 'did not want to deal with it.' I haven't any idea what they might have done when the baby was actually theirs. Dealing with it, as he said, would have been a lot harder. So she told me that I had ten days to come to an arrangement with being pregnant. It took me a bit longer than it should have to realize that she wanted me to abort the baby. I guess that was her way of dealing with it." Harper looked at him as she continued. "I've not spoken to her since I got the first registered letter from her attorney. She had the nerve to send me a bill for what she did as well. All one hundred and forty grand of it. As if I had some say in any of this. Telling me that since she no longer had a use for the child, and since I wasn't going to get rid of it, that I needed to sign off on paperwork that said that it wasn't her husband's, and that I'd never try and get anything from them for as long as the child was alive. Also, I was to never tell anyone what happened. She didn't want it to get around that they'd had a change of heart concerning a baby. What sort of person does that? I mean, who would tell me to get an abortion after all they'd done to get me this way? Christ, I really didn't like her before. I positively hate her now."
"Do you want to keep the child now?" Instead of answering him, she looked out the window. "Harper, is she trying to hurt you about the money and the child?"
"She hurt me the moment she kidnapped me." He nodded, but knew that she'd not seen him. "I'm not sure where you guys are taking me, but if you could just pull over, I'd really like to get out. I really appreciate you helping me, but this is not your problem. As nice as you've been to me, I don't want her dragging you down as well."
Grady said nothing to her. She was crying again and his heart hurt for her. Reaching out to Dalton, he told him what he'd been able to gather from her and asked him to see what else he could find. He'd hit on the names right away.
Says here that Winnifred and Jake Patrick have filed a judgment against your mate. It doesn't say much, only that she needs to pay them for services rendered. Just a hair under a hundred and forty grand, it looks like. And they're pushing it pretty hard to recoup their losses, as they're calling it. There is also another article that I'm looking at that says the couple had been married for four years. Both seem to have very successful careers and have had some pretty lavish parties. Jake was up for partner in his firm, and Winnie, as she goes by, is on the cover of a lot of magazines and- His brother was laughing when he started talking again. Grady, your mate is pretty famous herself. More so than her sister, I think. She is an artist. Her work is right up there with Jorden's. Accolades from all over the world for her work, which can be seen in a few galleries both here and around the world.