Read Online Never Too Late by RaeAnne Thayne - Free Book Online Page B

important, like mountain biking.”
    “You’ve been a good friend to Taylor,” he said after a moment.
    “She’s been good to me,” Kate said simply. “I’m glad she’s going back to finish her last year of med school. It’s been so wonderful these last few weeks to have the old Taylor back.”
    “What do you mean, have her back? ”
    She regretted her words as soon as she uttered them but it was too late to backpedal. She picked her next words more carefully. “You know how she’s been since your arrest. She was driven before as a medical student—both of us were, that was the big link between us. But when she switched to law school to help with your appeal, Taylor went beyond driven.”
    “She was obsessed with the case. You don’t have to sugarcoat it.”
    “ Obsessed is a strong word and I’m not sure it’s the right one, but she didn’t allow much room in her life for anything else.”
    “For anything but trying to bail out her jailbird brother.”
    The bitterness in his eyes pierced her like a lancet. “No,” she said firmly, earnestly. “Trying to right a terrible wrong. Trying to save the life of an innocent man.”
    He didn’t say anything for a few more miles. She was just about to ask if he wanted to listen to another CD when he finally spoke.
    “What about you?” He made his voice quiet, deceptively casual. “Did you think, like everyone else, that I was guilty as hell, that Taylor was wasting her time?”
    “Never. Not for one single moment.”
    The vehemence in her voice stunned him enough that he shifted his gaze from the road to look at her. He saw no dissemination in her columbine-blue eyes, no hint of doubt. Only pure trust, absolute certainty.
    He jerked his gaze back to the road, his mind barely registering the passing yellow lines under his tires. “How could you be so sure? You barely knew me. My closest brothers on the force thought I was guilty.”
    Men he had worked beside, would have taken a bullet for. Of all the crushing betrayals of the last thirty months, that had been the worst, that more police officers hadn’t been willing to stand with him.
    “They all thought I did it,” he went on. “How could you be so sure I didn’t?”
    She paused so long he finally looked at her again. What had he said to put that light blush across her cheekbones? he wondered.
    “I saw you with Dru,” she murmured. “Even though you were angry that she refused to marry you after she found out she was pregnant, you still treated her like fragile, priceless glass.”
    “The prosecution would have said that was all the more reason for me to be furious when I found out she was cheating on me, when I found out the baby wasn’t mine. All the more reason for me to kill her in a jealous rage—because I had been a blind, besotted fool.”
    “Whatever Dru did—no matter how she treated you—you never would have hurt her. And you absolutely would never have done anything to harm that baby. Never .”
    That solid, unwavering faith shook him to his core, somehow managed to sneak under all those hard, crusty protective layers he had worked so hard to build these last thirty months. The cold, hard knot that had been tangled around his heart, his lungs, eased just a little and he almost thought he could breathe just a little easier.
    Except for Taylor, he had felt completely alone in prison. Even Taylor’s unwavering support had been small comfort, he was ashamed to admit. As his sister, she was supposed to believe in him. He had both needed and expected her faith in him.
    Kate definitely wasn’t his sister but she had believed in him, too. He shouldn’t have found the knowledge so achingly sweet.
    But he did.

    Hunter was quiet for a long time after she uttered her fervent declaration, so long Kate wondered if she had embarrassed him by it.
    Maybe she shouldn’t have been quite so ardently enthusiastic in her support of him. She couldn’t help it, though. She was so angry at what had