Cold Case Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

his emotions, trying to avoid the elephant in the room that was her pregnancy, trying to be the gentleman and not ask, yet desperate to know who the father was, where he was. Why she was here alone.
    The fact that she was expecting a baby at all sliced Jett like a knife. He forced out a heavy breath of air. Civility be damned—they were beyond that. There was no way to be polite about what had transpired between them, no way to bridge the divide with small talk. So he chose a direct approach. “You never came to visit Gus,” he said quietly. “You didn’t even come home for the funeral. So why are you here now?”
    She studied him with those shrewd cat eyes for a moment. “I came to take over Safe Harbor Publishing, Jett. Gus left me the company in his will, along with this property.”
    He literally felt himself blanch. “You’re going to stay? ”
    Pain flickered over her features. “Maybe.” She inhaled deeply, bracing her hands on the back of a chair. “The will stipulated that I could sell the business, but only after a year. That means running it myself for twelve months, or hiring someone else to do it.”
    “So you’re here to hire someone?”
    “No. I’m here to run it.”
    “For one year?”
    “Look, Jett, I’m not going to get in your way, okay? I’m not going to cramp your style.” She hesitated. “I…I saw you down at the ferry dock this morning, with your son—” She wavered again, as if not quite trusting herself to say the next words. “And your wife.”
    Perspiration prickled across his lip. He’d made a mistake starting this conversation now. He set the mug down, getting up in the same movement, and he stalked into the hall. “I’ll just go wait outside for Officer Gage.”
    “Jett?” she called after him.
    He halted, hand on the doorknob.
    “What’s his name? Your son?”
    A strange emotion tore through him, raw and wild. Part of him didn’t want to give the name up to her, give any part of his boy to her. “Troy,” he said quietly, still facing the door. “Troy Rutledge.”
    She was dead silent for a long moment. “Troy was my father’s name.”
    “Your father was a good man, Muirinn. I was proud to name my son after him.”
    “I…it just surprises me.”
    He turned. “Why?”
    “Half the town—the union hardliners— hated my dad for crossing that picket line, your own father included. They called my dad a scab, called me terrible names at school, humiliated my mother in the supermarket. They hated my father enough to blow him and eleven others up with a bomb.”
    “It was a bad time for everyone, Muirinn.” Jett paused. “But no matter what people said, you know that I alwayscared for your father. If Troy O’Donnell hadn’t introduced me to model airplanes, to the idea of flying, I might have become a miner, not a pilot. He was the one who told me, when I was ten years old, that I could do something better with my life than go down that mine. He was a friend, Muirinn. I was twelve when he died, and I was also devastated by his murder. It ate my father up, too, regardless of what he might have said about your dad.”
    Emotion seeped into her eyes, making her nose pink—making her so damn beautiful. “Thank you, Jett,” she whispered. “I…I needed to hear that.”
    “It’s not for you,” he said quietly. “It’s for a man who knew honor, knew his home. Knew how not to deliberately hurt the people who cared for him.”
    She stared at him. “Do you really still hate me that much?”
    Wind rattled the panes. Rain smacked at the windows. “I hate what you did, Muirinn, to the people who loved you.”
    He closed the heavy oak door behind him with a soft thud that seemed to resonate down through her bones.
    Muirinn slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, and buried her face in her hands. If she’d known it was going to be quite so rough to see him again, she wouldn’t have come. If Jett only knew what she’d gone through since she’d left Safe