Missing. Jasmine Cresswell
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positive. And with the threat of mad cow disease cutting into semen exports, the ranch is soaking up money. With a halfway competent divorce lawyer, Dad could have divvied up their assets so that Mom was left without a penny to run the cattle operation. Maybe she kept quiet and pretended not to know anything about his other wife so that she wouldn’t be forced to watch the ranch fall back into wilderness.”
Her mother loved the Flying W enough that she might have stayed in an unhappy marriage to protect the land, Megan conceded silently. But in a marriage where she knew her husband was married to another woman?
She shook her head, vehement in the strength of her denial. “Mom is way too honest to live in that sort of a sham marriage. She’d never condone bigamy, not for a moment, let alone for almost thirty years. I’m sure Mom had no clue. When Harry and I told her about Dad’s wife in Chicago, she was devastated. It took her a good fifteen minutes to get any of her protective barriers back in place even though the sheriff was with us and she clearly hated breaking down in front of him. She didn’t know Dad had another wife and daughter. I’d stake my life on it.”
Liam still looked doubtful. “I would never have believed a man could pull off that sort of deception without complicity from one wife or the other,” he said.
Megan thought for a moment. “Maybe the wife and daughter in Chicago knew.”
“Maybe. Although the same question applies. Why would they tolerate it?”
“I can’t imagine. But then, we don’t know the first thing about them, so we can’t possibly guess at their motives.”
“The bottom line is that like any other scam artist, Dad exploited the fact that we trusted him.” The bitterness was back in Liam’s voice. “I dare say he exploited the same thing with his other family.”
Megan looked at her brother. “Was that a random question you asked just now, or is there some specific reason why you thought Mom might have known about Dad’s bigamy?”
Liam remained silent a moment longer. “I knew,” he said at last. “I figured she must have known, too.”
“You knew?” Megan gripped the porch railing to steady herself. “You knew that Dad was a bigamist?” Her mouth was so dry that the words seemed to stick to her tongue. She felt betrayed all over again, first by her father and now by her brother. The betrayals were so huge that they annihilated all that was familiar, leaving her without signposts to guide her through the landscape of what had once been her relationship with her family.
“Yeah.” Liam gave a terse nod. “I’ve known for a few years.”
Megan’s world shattered and re-formed in a different pattern. So many things that had been difficult to understand about her brother suddenly became clear. His decision to leave the practice of criminal law and open his own firm specializing in divorce took on a whole new meaning. Talk about an in-your-face insult hurled at their father! And no wonder Liam had barely visited the ranch over the past few years. Obviously, he had been doing his best to avoid contact with his parents.
“How did you find out about Dad’s other family?” Megan demanded. “Have you seen them? Met them?”
“No, I’ve never met them.”
“Talk to me,” she said tersely. “Don’t retreat into one of your usual damn silences. Why did you keep quiet about something so incredibly important?”
“I was trying to protect Mom. And you.”
“Protect me?” Megan’s emotions had been in turmoil for forty-eight hours and Liam’s crazy excuse was enough to send anger boiling to the surface. “How the hell does it protect me if I’m allowed to go on believing a massive lie?”
She could see her brother retreat even further into himself as he always did when the emotional atmosphere heated up, but he did at least answer her. “You’re talking with the advantage of hindsight. I was making decisions and trying to guess the consequences for everyone—”
“In another month, I’ll be twenty-seven years old! For heaven’s sake, Liam, I’m not a kid sister you’re permanently obliged to protect. I’m an adult.”
“Sometimes habits die hard—”
“That’s a pretty pathetic excuse.”
“Cutting you out of the loop was an insulting decision, I see that now.” Liam gave an apologetic shrug. “I seem to have made a bunch of bad decisions over the past few years. But I was trying to do what seemed right. At least believe that….”
“You should have told me,” she repeated and turned away, still struggling with her anger.
He touched her on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Meg.”
She moved away from him. “You’ve been lying to me for years, at least by omission. That’s hard to forgive.”
“Don’t let this force a wedge between the two of us.” Liam’s voice had lost all trace of its usual ironic edge. “Dammit, that’s exactly what I was trying to avoid by remaining silent.”
“It’s bewildering—make that infuriating—to discover that two of the people I trusted most in the world were lying to me.” Megan shoved impatiently at her hair, feeling as if her entire body was misaligned and out of sorts. “I hate that you kept me in the dark.”
“I didn’t want to put you in a position where you would have been forced to lie to Mom. It was bad enough for me, and I only saw her a couple of times a year.”
“I wouldn’t have lied to Mom. I’d have told her the truth.”
“Yes, you probably would have done,” Liam said. “And that’s a big part of why I didn’t confide in you.”
“Why were you so determined to shield Mom from the truth? I don’t understand why you covered for Dad. Or why you felt Mom was in such great need of protection.”
“You think of Mom as a pillar of strength….”
“Yes, of course. Because she is.”
“She’s a pillar of strength here at the ranch, surrounded by everything she loves. Without the ranch, she’d wither away.”
Megan gave an impatient shake of her head. “You underestimate her. Just as you underestimated me.”
“Maybe. I wasn’t willing to put Mom’s happiness to the test and Dad exploited that vulnerability. Basically, he blackmailed me into keeping quiet. He warned me not to make him choose between his wives, because he swore that he’d choose Avery.”
Each new revelation seemed to bring a little more pain than the last. If Avery had been Ron Raven’s favorite wife, had Kate been his favorite daughter?
Megan pushed away the insidious jealousy. “How did you find out about his other family, anyway?”
“By chance. And even then, I practically had to be beaten over the head with the evidence before I put the pieces together.” Liam was visibly relieved to change the subject, even if only slightly. “Six years ago, I went to Atlanta for a business meeting. The night before I was due to fly home I happened to run into Dad at a political fund-raiser for one of the local senators—”
“In Atlanta?”
Liam nodded. “Avery’s family is from Georgia, and she was with him at the party. It was obvious that she and Dad knew each other well. It was equally obvious that he was desperate to shepherd her away before I could speak to her. She’s a beautiful woman, a few years younger than Mom, and I assumed they were having an affair.”
“Why didn’t you confront them before Dad could hustle her away?” Megan demanded.
“I was with the senior partner of the law firm where I worked in those days, and we were being hosted by one of our most important clients. I didn’t want to expose my own father in front of a client, so