House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) Read Online Free PDF

not to become involved with any Delaney kin, even a kissing cousin. His kissing cousin actually, although he had no idea how to figure out their relationship. He had a job to do, a promise to fulfill, not only to Tante Helaine, but to his mother.
    So Trey Delaney used the office with the bear outside. Paul would have to find out the story behind that bear. Might give him an excuse to start asking questions about Trey at the café. He very much wanted to meet Trey. Always a good thing to know your enemy. And they were, after all, kin.

CHAPTER THREE
    B Y THE TIME Paul got back to his motel after dinner in a fast-food restaurant, all he wanted was a hot shower and bed. His damn shoulder was no longer just an ache, but a throbbing pain, and he still had his physical-therapy exercises to do. The hit he’d taken from Ann’s dog hadn’t helped any.
    He turned on the television, muted the sound, picked up the telephone and dialed Giselle’s number. A moment later a youthful male voice answered.
    “Harry, it’s Uncle Paul. May I speak to your mother?”
    Without replying, the teenager yelled, “Mom, it’s Uncle Paul.”
    He heard the telephone drop with a clunk and his cousin’s voice. “Harry, you have the manners of a tarantula! And turn down that music!” Then a moment later, “Paul, why didn’t you call last night? I’ve been so worried.”
    “Sorry, Giselle. Landed too late to disturb you.”
    “Was your car waiting for you? No dents?”
    Paul laughed. “Yes, Giselle. You can tell Harry that his buddy seems to have driven all the way down from New Jersey without so much as a speeding ticket. He also washed the car, cleaned the inside and left it sitting beside the airstrip with the keys under the fender in the magnetic case.”
    Giselle gave a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven. I hadvisions of Kevin doing a Thelma and Louise somewhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway.”
    “He even left me copies of his gas charges on the front seat. Very responsible young man. Tell Harry I’ll send both him and Kevin a bonus.”
    “Have you decided to give up this madness and come home where I can look after you?”
    “You’re already looking after two teenage sons and a husband. I’m fine on my own.”
    “Humph,” Giselle said. The sound came out with a Gallic flavor. Giselle spoke both English and French without accent, but her wordless expressions still sounded more French than English. “You don’t belong down there. What good is it going to do? You won’t find anything. That Paul David Delaney is dead, assuming he is the right Paul David Delaney.”
    “Oh, he’s the right Delaney—my honorable father, pillar of society, richest man in the county, the man who married and abandoned my mother and then killed her when she found him.”
    “I know you and Maman believed that, but you could be wrong. The detective said a serial killer or someone could’ve picked her up along the way. You don’t even know for certain whether she even met your father after she went down to Memphis.”
    “Tante Helaine, your mother, never believed that my mother was murdered by a stranger at the precise moment she was due to confront my father, and neither do I. Too big a coincidence. No, he killed her all right. I’ve always known it in my heart. I had no way to check it out before.”
    “No one has ever found her body….”
    “That’s another thing. I want to find what he did with her, give her a decent burial if that’s possible.”
    “After thirty years? What would be left to identify? Besides, you can’t bring a dead man to justice.”
    “Well, I want someone to pay. I want to rub the noses of every living Delaney in the muck of what Paul Delaney did. I want them to admit in public that my father was a murderer.”
    “The present generation had nothing to do with it. Anyone who might have known about it is long dead.”
    “The present generation benefited from my mother’s death. Why should they live out their lives thinking