Read Online Unbreakable Bond by Rita Herron - Free Book Online Page A

sound more pathetic and desperate?
    She hated to look pathetic in his eyes.
    But how could she explain the voices she heard at night? The little girl’s voice singing to her? The sense that she was singing so Nina would come for her…
    The words to the song, her soft soprano voice, was like an angel’s, the voice mesmerizing her just as the Pied Piper’s flute had enthralled the children.
    The silence became painful during the drive, Slade’s withdrawal hurting more than she could imagine.
    â€œTell me about Mitzi,” he finally said quietly.
    Embarrassment heated her cheeks. Mitzi had married William…and made a fool of her.
    She licked her dry lips and sucked up her pride. If she wanted his help, and she did, she had to be honest. Pride be damned.
    â€œShe was Miss Popular in high school and came from a prestigious family. Her father worked abroad so she traveled and studied in prep schools all over the world before they moved back to Raleigh her senior year.”
    â€œShe seemed to be jealous of you,” Slade commented.
    Nina gave a sardonic little laugh. “Jealous? Why would she be jealous of me?”
    â€œBecause you slept with William and had his baby.”
    Nina chewed her bottom lip. “ Jealousy isn’t the word I’d use. She hated me.”
    Memories flooded her. “Mitzi was one of the it girls. Plastic, if you know what I mean. She served on every school committee, led the dance squad and was voted prom queen.” She sighed. “All the boys wanted Mitzi.”
    â€œAnd Mitzi?”
    â€œShe wanted William.” Nina picked at a piece of lint on her shirt. It was so long ago, it shouldn’t still hurt. But she’d been young and foolish and naive.
    â€œSo you fought over him?”’
    Nina laughed. “Not really. In fact, William never showed any interest in me until after Mitzi broke up with him.”
    â€œ She broke up with him? ”
    â€œThey had some kind of stupid fight a week before prom, and so he asked me. I realize now he only wanted to get back at her.”
    She felt his eyes boring into her face, but she couldn’t quite look at him. “It’s really such a cliché. Shy girl goes to prom with the big guy on campus. Gets pregnant. He goes back to the girl he really loves.”
    Slade muttered an obscenity. “But Mitzi didn’t take the pregnancy so well?”
    She laughed again. It was either laugh or cry. And she would never cry again over Mitzi or William Hood. “No. She spread the word at school that I was a whore. That I’d thrown myself at William and promised him sex if he’d take me to the prom.”
    In spite of her resolve to overcome the bitterness, it resonated in her voice. “That’s when my father moved me out of town.”
    Another dark, seething look passed over his face, settling into his deep brown eyes. Eyes that looked permanently angry at the world.
    And now angry at her.
    She stiffened her spine. She didn’t give a damn if he was angry with her or not. She’d hired him to do a job.
    And she’d put up with anything he threw at her, even his ridicule, his pity, his disbelief, as long as he followed through.
    Finding out the truth about Peyton was the only thing that mattered.
    Â 
    S LADE CONTEMPLATED WHAT he’d learned about Nina, William Hood and his wife, as they wound up the mile-long drive to Nina’s father’s estate.
    Hood was a first-class bastard, his wife a major bitch.
    But that didn’t necessarily mean they were lying, just that they’d been young, selfish, immature and relieved to be free of an unwanted child.
    He tried to put himself in their places, but empathy wasn’t his style, not for spoiled rich kids whose priorities were majorly skewed.
    And not when they were so callous toward an innocent baby.
    Especially Hood, who’d shared the child’s blood.
    Slade surveyed Nash’s house as he pulled