Texas Heroes_ Volume 1(197)

Lacey couldn’t stifle her gasp.

Dev glanced at her, then went on. “My father was a good man. An honest man. We never—” He glanced away. “We could never understand, never believe that it was true what they said about him.”

His eyes locked on hers again. “He made some mistakes. My mother liked pretty things. Liked going places. She was a beautiful woman, and you knew, just watching them, that he would give her the world if she asked.”

“That sounds very romantic.” Not at all like her mother’s—like Margaret’s stiff propriety. She could never even imagine her parents kissing. She’d never seen it, not once.

“He worked for your father, did you know that?”

Shocked, she shook her head. Then she felt subtly ashamed. She’d never thought about where Dev had come from before he’d appeared in her life. Those magical weeks when they’d been so young, she hadn’t cared. She only knew that he was exciting, that he made the world sparkle, made her blood run hot. Made her feel so very alive. “What did he do?”

“He was a junior partner on the rise. Then the economy fell apart in Houston and accountants were being laid off right and left.” His thumb rubbed absently over his jaw. “I didn’t know a lot of this until after the night—” He shot her a glance. “—the night you and I…”

He looked away, seemed to gather himself. “One day our lives were fine. Camps and toys and the new car he’d promised me when I could drive. Then everything changed.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

So young. She ached for that boy.

“Things hadn’t been all good. Dad worked long hours and was tired all the time. I could tell he was under pressure, but all I really worried about was how soon I’d get to drive—” His voice went tight. “I should have seen. Should have known something was wrong.”

“No one pays much attention to anything but themselves at that age.”

But Dev wasn’t buying. “I was the oldest. He always told me he knew he could count on me if anything ever happened.”

Something had. She didn’t know what, but she could see the strain of it on his face.

“One day he came home early. Too early. I heard my mother crying. Saw him sit outside in the dark for hours.” Dev looked up at her then, and his eyes were dark holes of anguish. “I didn’t go outside. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. I’d never seen him look defeated like that.”

“You were only a boy, Dev.”

He faced the window, jamming his hands in his pockets and looking outside, his face all stark angles and lonely shadows. “Sometime in the night, he died.” She saw a muscle flex in his jaw. A shudder ran through his frame. “I never knew he had a history of heart problems.”

“You couldn’t have done anything.”

When he turned to face her, his eyes were hot and angry. “It was the disgrace that killed him. He’d been indicted for fraud.” His nostrils flared. “Everything he did, he did because Charles DeMille forced him to do it. It was the price of keeping his job. Your father promised that no one would ever find out, but when the heat came down, my father was the sacrificial lamb.”

“I’m so sorry, Dev. I don’t—no wonder you hate him.”

“That’s not all he did, Lacey. Maybe you don’t want to hear.”

She didn’t. But she would. “Tell me.”

“I tried to be the man of the house, to take care of all of them as my dad had asked. But he’d cancelled all but one tiny insurance policy, and their lifestyle—our lifestyle—had drained any savings. Overnight, everything changed. We had to move into this dinky little nothing house, and the newspapers had been full of the scandal. Our name was ruined. There was nowhere to go that people didn’t whisper. Our so-called friends vanished. And my mother started drinking. She couldn’t handle it—or the kids.”

“Oh, Dev…” Lacey grieved for the boy who’d tried to take all of that on his shoulders. “You were so young.”

He whirled on her, agitation filling his frame. “I tried to handle it—I was handling it. Maybe not like we were used to, but I was doing the best I could. Then your father comes sweeping in and makes my mother think he’s some kind of savior. He brushed me aside like I was nothing. That’s what he told me I was: nothing. Just a kid. He would make it all better.”

The bitterness still lingered in his voice. She could feel a proud teenager’s impotent fury. She had no idea what to say, so she remained quiet, wishing she could think more clearly, wishing she knew what to do.