Page 38 of Rufus

Molly’s smile lacked real humor. “It’s also true. Besides,” she said, sobering, “telling you the truth earlier would only have meant you hated me all the sooner.”

“That simply isn’t true. I could never hate you.” He deliberately softened his voice.

Yes, he had been shocked by what he’d learned today, but he had never, not for one moment, blamed Molly for what had happened in the past. Nor would he.

“I’ve already told you, I will never blame you for something your mother did,” he insisted as he took a light grip of her arms. “Molly, I know we’re only just starting out, but I already know there’s something special between us. I know you feel it too.”

She didn’t meet his gaze. “I can’t allow myself to.”

“Why the hell not?”

She released a heavy breath. “Because I know that every time you looked at me in future, you would think of what my mother did to you. To Mia.”

“You are as much a victim of that woman’s cruelty as anyone. Nothing I’ve learned today has changed the way I feel about you. Nothing. Nor will it do so in the future.”

“You— You can’t?—”

“Molly, dear sweet Molly, I can and I will. I’m falling in love with you,” Rufus admitted softly.

He hadn’t thought he would ever allow himself to fall in love in the way he knew he was with Molly.

He and Beth had shared an affection, one that had deepened on the birth of their daughter, but he didn’t believe he had ever been in love with her or her with him. They had been friends and were both making the best of being married for the sake of the daughter they shared. Even so, Rufus had been thrown into the depths of grief when he believed both Beth and Emily had died in that crash.

Which had him questioning, and fearing, how much more deeply he would have suffered if he had loved Beth with the single-minded passion of a soul mate.

The sort of love he already knew he felt for Molly?

God, yes!

Even the thought of Molly just up and leaving was enough to cause a hitherto unknown panic to rise inside him.

Apart from his cousins, and until Mia returned to his life two years ago and now Lilybeth, he’d had nothing and no one to love, and so no one to lose again either.

He already feared he would lose every part that truly mattered to him if Molly were to leave his life.

She stared at him. “How can you still feel that way after all that you’ve just learned?”

“Not one of those things changes the fact you were, as I’ve already said, just another victim of Serena Jenkin’s greedy machinations—” He broke off abruptly, staring at her.

“What?” Molly looked at him searchingly as he released her to step back. “Rufus, what were you going to say?”

He shook his head slowly, knowing it was too soon to voice what were only speculations.

“We’ll have time to discuss all that again later,” he dismissed. “Because right now, after all these years, I am finally this close—so fucking close—to apprehending the woman who is responsible for Beth’s death and stealing our daughter.”

Molly nodded heavily. “I can’t fault you for feeling that way, I would too in the same circumstances.”

Rufus nodded. “I also want to be there when she’s arrested and put in cuffs, before she’s taken away and locked up in a cell until her trial. Then I want to sit in the court as all the evidence against her is presented to the judge and jury. Even if she gives up the dates and places of where she abducted those children in hope of a lighter sentence, I still believe any jury will ensure she serves years of time in jail, or possibly a mental institution if she really is a psychopath, for the crime of abducting Emily, Ronan, and—and all those other children she took from their parents.”

Rufus not only wanted to see that happen, he was going to do everything in his considerable power to ensure that it did.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rufus had been searching for two years, two fucking years, for any clue that might tell him how Emily could have survived the inferno that had killed her mother.

Learning Sarah Harper/Serena Jenkins had taken Emily before the accident even occurred had answered so many of those questions.

Rufus was determined to learn everything he could about all the events of the past, before he and the law ensured that evil bitch was thrown into the deepest, darkest hellhole from which he hoped she would never, ever be able to escape.

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