Read Online Yesterday's Lies by Lisa Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

and maybe Calvin Wilson would be alive now. And Trask wouldn’t be back in Sinclair, digging up the past, searching for some elusive, maybe even phantom, conspirator in Jason’s death.
    And now Trask had returned, actually believing that someone else was involved in his brother’s death.
    So it all came back to Trask and the fact that Tory hadn’t stopped loving him. She knew her feelings for him were crazy, considering everything they had been through. She loved him one minute, hated him the next and knew that she should never have seen him again. He could take his wild half-baked theories, anonymous letters and seductive smile straight back to Washington where they all belonged. Surely he had better things to do than bother her.
    “Just leave me alone, Trask,” Tory said with a sigh. “Go back to Washington and leave me alone...I don’t want to love you any more...I can’t...”
    * * *
    T HE NEXT MORNING , after a restless night, Tory was making breakfast when Keith, more than slightly hung over, entered the kitchen. Without a word he walked to the refrigerator, poured himself a healthy glass of orange juice and drank it in one swallow. He then slumped into a chair at the kitchen table and glared up at Tory with red-rimmed eyes.
    “Don’t tell me you’re dehydrated,” Tory said, with a teasing lilt in her voice.
    “Okay, I won’t. Then you won’t have to lecture me.”
    “Fair enough.” From the looks of it Keith’s hangover was punishment enough for his binge, Tory thought, and she had been the one who had insisted that he go into town last night. If he were suffering, which he obviously was, it was partially because of her insistence that he leave the ranch. She flipped the pancakes over and decided not to mention that Keith hadn’t gotten home until after three. He was over twenty-one now, and she didn’t have to mother him, though it was a hard habit to break considering that the past five years she had been father, mother and sister all rolled into one.
    “How about some breakfast?” she suggested, stacking the pancakes on a plate near a pile of crisp bacon and placing the filled platter on the table.
    “After a few answers.”
    “Okay.” Tory slid into the chair facing him and poured syrup over her stack of hotcakes. “Shoot.”
    “What have to decided to do about McFadden?” Keith asked, forking a generous helping of bacon onto his plate.
    “I don’t know,” Tory admitted. She took a bite from a strip of bacon. “Maybe there’s nothing I can do.”
    “Like hell. You could leave.”
    “Not a chance, we went over this yesterday.” She reached for the coffeepot and poured each of them a cup of coffee.
    “McFadden will come here.”
    “He already has.”
    “What!” Keith’s face lost all of its color. “When?”
    “Last night. While you were in town.”
    Keith rubbed his palm over the reddish stubble on his chin. “Damn, I knew something like this would happen.”
    “It wasn’t that big of a deal. We just talked.”
    Keith looked at his older sister as if she had lost her mind. “You did what?” he shouted, rising from the breakfast table.
    “I said I talked with him. How else was I supposed to find out what he wanted?”
    Keith’s worried eyes studied her face. “So what happened to the woman who, just yesterday afternoon, was going to bodily throw Trask McFadden off her land if he set foot on it. You know, the lady with the ready rifle and deadly aim?”
    “Now, wait a minute—” Tory’s face lost all of its color and her eyes narrowed.
    “Weren’t you the one who suggested that we point a rifle at his head and tell him to get lost?”
    “I was only joking...”
    “Like hell!” Keith sputtered before truly seeing his sister for the first time that morning. A sinking realization hit him like a ton of bricks. “Tory, you’re still in love with him, aren’t you? I can’t believe it! After what he did to you?” Keith stared at his sister incredulously before