St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

so that they could stand side by side. By tacit agreement, he hadn’t mentioned the Senator’s name or his scattered children in his mother’s presence. Tonight, she had asked to see him.
    To talk about the Senator.
    “Where’s Gus?” Dan asked.
    “I told him to go home,” John said. He looked at Carly.
    “She’s family,” Dan said simply. “She stays with me.”
    Diana smiled, sad and beautiful. “So you know,” she said to both Dan and Carly.
    “Yes,” Dan said. “Does Dad?”
    Instead of answering, John looked searchingly at Dan. “Thank you.”
    “For what?” Dan asked.
    “Still calling me Dad.”
    “Sperm donors make babies,” Dan said, stepping forward to hug John hard. “Fathers raise them. That makes you my father in every way that matters.”
    “I should have told you,” Diana said, tears running down her cheeks. “But I couldn’t. John knew I was pregnant when we married, but he didn’t know who the father was or any of the rest. I didn’t know how to tell him. Or you. I felt… unclean .”
    “Hush,” Dan said, scooping his mother up in a big hug. “Telling your son that his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were one and the same incestuous son of a bitch would be a hard thing to do.”
    Diana clung to Dan. “He—the Senator—”
    “You don’t have to tell me anything, ever,” Dan said fiercely. “It’s enough to know that somebody as good and clean and loving as you came out of the hell that man created.” He kissed her and set her gently on her feet. “That’s all that matters. The person you are, not what he was.”
    “I was afraid that knowing, that if I told you, it would destroy you,” she said simply. “It almost destroyed me.” She looked up at John and smiled. “John’s love saved me.”
    “You saved yourself,” John said, smiling. “You let me love you.” Then his smile faded. “I’m glad the Senator is dead. I’d hate to spend the rest of my life in jail for killing him.”
    Something savage flared in Dan’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have had the chance.”
    Diana tugged at her husband’s shirt. “Come, love. It’s time to leave them alone so that he can ask—that is, it’s time to go home.”
    “It is?” John asked, surprised. “But I thought you wanted—”
    “To go home,” Diana interrupted firmly. She kissed Dan, hugged Carly, and said to her son, “Let me know right away.”
    Puzzled, Carly watched Diana hurry her husband out of the house. When Dan closed the door behind his parents, she asked, “Was it something I said?”
    Dan’s smile reminded Carly of just how much Diana’s son he was. “No, it’s something I’m supposed to say. To you. My mother, the gentle, loving bruja, already knows what I’m going to ask you.”
    “About what?”
    “Children. Marriage. I’d prefer marriage first, but I’m open to sexual bribery.”
    Carly stared at him with wide, smoky gold eyes. “I’ve always wanted it that way, too.”
    “Sexual bribery?”
    She laughed and stepped into his open arms. “Marriage before children. But sexual bribery works,” she added, nibbling along his chin. “As long as you’re the one doing the bribing.”
    “You sure?”
    “About your brand of bribery? Absolutely.”
    “No. About marriage.” Though he was smiling at her, his eyes were serious, hungry, waiting.
    “That, too,” Carly said.
    He kept waiting.
    “That’s a yes on my side,” she said, touching the faint scar where he’d been shot. “What about your side?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    His cell phone rang. He took it out and looked at the caller ID: St. Kilda Consulting.
    Carly stopped tasting Dan’s neck long enough to ask, “Who is it?”
    “Wrong number,” he said, tossing the phone across the room.
    The phone kept ringing.
    Neither of them noticed.

About the Author
    ELIZABETH LOWELL’s acclaimed suspense novels include the New York Times bestsellers The Color of Death, Die in Plain Sight , Moving Target , and Running Scared , as well as the four books featuring the Donovan family, Amber Beach , Jade Island , Pearl Cove , and Midnight in Ruby Bayou . Lowell has more than thirty million books in print. She lives in Arizona and Seattle, Washington, with her husband, with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym.

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Also by Elizabeth Lowell
    T HE C OLOR OF D EATH
    D EATH I S F OREVER
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