Page 10 of Shattered

She turned a little in her seat to look at him. “So…your sister contacted me.”

The quiet admission blindsided him, bursting the warm, happy bubble he’d been floating in since Taya had arrived at the airport last night. Anger and denial punched through him, an instinctive and unstoppable reaction to the news.

He clenched his left hand around the steering wheel, suspicion coiling in the pit of his stomach. “When?” he demanded, jaw tight. Maybe he’d heard wrong.

Her expression turned worried. “Yesterday morning, just before checkout. She emailed me.”

She’d looked up Taya’s email address? “What? How the hell did she even find out about you?” They’d only been married a couple months, and he sure as shit hadn’t told Dara.

“She said she saw an interview of mine on TV and looked me up. She contacted me through my website.”

His jaw flexed. He didn’t like the feel of this. “What did she want?” There had to be an angle. With his sister, there always was, and always would be. Three years older than him, she’d been raised from the cradle to be a master liar, manipulator and user. A carefully trained carbon copy of their mother.

“Nathan,” Taya chided at his harsh tone.

“No.” He didn’t care if he sounded like an asshole. Taya didn’t get it. Always the peacemaker, wanting to smooth everything over, fix it all. Well, some things couldn’t be fixed. Or forgiven. And never forgotten. He pulled in a steadying breath and fought to hold onto his patience. “What did shewant?”

“She wanted to verify that I really was your wife, and then she asked about you.”

“What about me?”

She shrugged. “Just general things. How you were doing, where we were living.”

He shot her a look, rattled at the news. “Tell me you didn’t answer that last one.”

“I just said we were in the D.C. area. Okay, I shouldn’t have told her even that much, but I didn’t think it was that big a deal since it’s vague, and she knows you must be close to here anyway because of your job.”

Nate sucked in a deep breath through his nose and tried to calm down, but it was no use. The last time he’d heard from Dara was when their mother had died last year. Because she’d had no way to contact him she’d reached out to the FBI to pass along the message that she was looking for him.

He hadn’t answered. Hadn’t even attended the funeral, no matter how much Taya had tried to reason with him, saying it would bring him a sense of peace and closure. Always trying to see the best in people and give them a second chance. But why would he go, when the woman who’d given birth to him had been dead to him for years now?

“She wants money,” he said flatly. That was usually Dara’s prime motivation.

“You don’t know that.”

“Idoknow that.” And it pissed him off that Taya would question his judgment on this. She didn’t know Dara, hadn’t grown up with her. He’d purposely cut his mother and sister out of his life a long time ago, back when he’d left and joined the Air Force, and it was the best thing he’d ever done, other than marrying Taya.

A week after the funeral, Dara’s lawyer had sent him paperwork about his half of the inheritance, less than two thousand bucks that Nate hadn’t collected. Dara wanted it, and she wouldn’t stop until she got what she wanted. And even then she’d keep going, keep searching, see what else she could get from Nate or anyone else she might be able to collect from. It made him sick.

At his angry tone Taya went quiet and turned away to look out her window. Nate reined in his temper with effort. He wasn’t mad at Taya. But the news had taken him off guard and hit a raw spot inside him. It infuriated him that his sister would stoop to try and weasel her way back into his life now through Taya, who didn’t realize she was being taken advantage of. Dara smelled that kind of opening a mile away and seized on it like the predator she was.

“If she contacts you again, ignore her.” It was important Taya understand how toxic his sister was. “Dara is selfish and a user, on top of being an expert manipulator.” She’d learned it all from the best, after all. No one played people or the system like Janet Schroder had. “I don’t want her in my life, period, and especially not now. I don’t want her to touch us. Ever.”

“I was just being polite. It’s not like I asked her to come up and visit us.”

He didn’t care. “Swear you won’t talk to her again.”

Taya gazed at him a long moment, studying him, then relented with a nod. “All right,” she said, her voice soft. “I promise. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir up trouble.”

He knew that. But her promise to avoid contact with Dara only mollified him a little. He was still stewing about his useless and calculating relative when they got home. Taya met him around the front of the truck, her gray eyes searching his.

If she was waiting for an apology for his reaction or stance on the issue, she was in for a disappointment. The shit he’d gone through with his family for all those years ran too deep and he wasn’t going to change his mind about this, not even for his wife.

But instead of pressing him for answers, Taya slipped her arms around his neck and hugged him, pressing her sweet body into his. And just like that, Nate calmed, a long exhalation rushing from him as he wrapped his arms around her. After a few moments, the worst of the anger drained away. He held her to him, breathing in her cinnamon-vanilla scent, drinking in that uncanny sense of peace she always had about her.

This was honest and real. The past couldn’t touch them anymore, unless he allowed it to.

“I hit a nerve there, huh?” she murmured against his shoulder.

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