“I’m not going to leave you out here to die.”

“Why not? I’m not good for anything. I’m useless. Taking up space, right?”

Jackson came to a sudden halt. Izzy wasn’t sure why, but she had a feeling that Nick had grabbed his bridle.

“What happened?”

His tone was soft, curious. The anger was gone.

“Nothing. Let me go.”

Jackson began to move again. Nick moved next to her.

“What happened?” he asked again.

“My father came to see me.”

“And?”

She sighed. “What do you know about Jed Titan?”

“He’s a successful businessman with a reputation for being ruthless.”

“That’s a good start. He’s determined, egotistical and only interested in how the world serves him. And that’s on a good day.”

“So he didn’t stop by to see how you’re doing?”

“No. He came by to see if I was still blind. Because if I am, I’m no good to him. I can’t even marry well. Not that he was going to leave me any of his considerable fortune.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I never wanted the money. None of us did. We wanted a father. Pretty dumb, huh?”

Nick didn’t say anything. Izzy drew in a breath.

“You’ve met my sisters. Lexi is the oldest. She’s a brilliant businesswoman. After college, she went to work for Jed, where she was pretty successful. But she quickly realized she would never have her own identity at his company, so she left and started her own day spa. Skye went to finishing school, if you can believe it. When she came home, she married the man Jed picked for her, had a perfect daughter, then used her inheritance to start a foundation that feeds hungry children.”

“Good for her.”

“Yeah. Good for her. I, on the other hand, barely graduated from high school. I’ve held a series of jobs that require minimal skill. The only thing they had in common was that they were dangerous. I knew I wasn’t the son my father wanted. Maybe going fast or higher is my way of getting his attention. Not that it ever worked. I guess I hoped I would be enough for him.”

But she wasn’t. She never had been. Lexi and Skye weren’t enough either, but somehow knowing that didn’t help.

“I was nine when my mother died. Prudence Lightly.”

“The actress?”

“That’s her. She left everything to Skye. I wasn’t mentioned in her will. And I’ll never know if she did that on purpose or if she just never got around to making the change. It’s not like I was six months old and she was busy, right? I mean eight-plus years is a long time.”

“Izzy, there could be a lot of reasons she didn’t change the will.”

“List five that don’t include me not registering on her radar.”

“Is that what you think?”

She stared at the blurry horizon. “What would you think?”

“I don’t remember my mother. She dumped me in foster care when I was four.”

She turned to him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I got over it.”

Had he? Did any child get over being rejected?

“What happened?” she asked.

“I grew up. I got lucky. I was in my first home nearly five years, so I had some stability. Joan, my foster mother, realized I was pretty smart and encouraged me in school. I skipped a couple of grades. Then she got sick and I was moved somewhere else.”

Losing his family all over again, she thought sadly. It put her pain in perspective.

“After that I moved around a lot,” Nick said. “It’s never easy being the smartest kid in the class. I buried myself in books, graduated at fifteen and got a full ride to Texas A &M.”

“At fifteen?”

“I was nearly sixteen by then.”

“Still.”

“It was better than foster care. I became an emancipated minor, so I was out of the system.”

Easy words, she thought. But a much harder life. Was his past the reason he kept everyone else at a distance? Was it the reason no one got close enough to touch any part of him? Or was she just looking for a way to mitigate the fact that he didn’t want to sleep with her?

“What happened after college?” she asked.

“I went to work for an oil exploration company a friend of mine owned.”

“So you raped and pillaged our natural environment?” she asked, teasing.

“I did my best not to. I had some ideas about drilling that were different. We tried them out.”

He paused for a long time. There was something about his voice, she thought, not sure what it was. Staring at his face didn’t help, either. She couldn’t really see any details.

“How did you get from oil exploration to here?”

“By car, mostly.”

“Very funny. You know what I mean.”

“I had some second thoughts about my career choice.”

She remembered Aaron telling her that Nick had a mysterious past. “Someone told me you traveled the world or something.”

“For a while.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Peace.”

“Did you find it?”

“No.”

“Before the explosion I would have told you I’d found what I was looking for,” she said.

“You would have been lying.”

“What? That’s not true.”

“You chase the thrill for a reason. What are you hiding from?”

“Nothing I’m going to discuss with you. Besides, I’m not hiding.”

“Look at what you do with your life. Your extreme sports. What you do for a living.”

“I was a welder. That’s not dangerous.”

“An underwater welder.”

“Okay, sure, but it’s not all that different. And it’s not like I drowned. The explosion wasn’t my fault. I’ll admit it’s not a completely normal job, but it’s not totally crazy, either. As to the explosion…” She hesitated, not sure what to say. “I think it was deliberate.”

“What are you talking about? Someone trying to get the oil company?”

“Not exactly.” She drew in a breath. “It seems that Jed had an affair before he married Lexi’s mom. He had a child-a boy-with the woman. While he set her up with a lot of money, he wouldn’t marry her. It’s an old story. Flash forward thirty-plus years, the boy in question grows up and he’s pissed. Something happened to his mother. She had an accident or got sick. We don’t know, but she’s no longer completely normal. She’s sweet and lovely, but different. My sisters and I wonder if Jed’s responsible for that. We’re not sure. So maybe it’s that, maybe he was just born mad, but our half brother, Garth Duncan, is doing his best to ruin the entire family.”

Nick didn’t say anything. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

She frowned. “Is this boring?”

“No. Sorry. I was listening. What do you mean he’s trying to ruin the family?”

“You name it, he’s done it. He tried to take Lexi’s business, legally, but it was pretty ruthless. We think he’s responsible for doping Jed’s race horses, for sending a false tip to the district attorney that Skye’s foundation was a front for money laundering. He also planted a software program into the books at Skye’s foundation making it look like executives were paid bonuses and that Skye was taking money. It’s nasty stuff. Skye doesn’t even take a salary. So money that could have gone to feeding hungry kids had to go to legal counsel. He’s planted illegal arms in some of Jed’s international shipments, so now Jed’s being investigated for treason, and we’re guessing he’s behind the rumors of mad cow on the Titan ranches. I have to say, Garth isn’t my favorite person.”

“That’s a long list.”

“He’s a pretty bad guy. There’s been more. He’s come after everyone in the family, except for my niece and she’s only eight. Hopefully he isn’t going to do anything bad to a little girl. Two months ago I would have been a lot more sure, but then there was the explosion on the rig. And here I thought I didn’t have anything to lose.”

Nick heard the words and didn’t want to believe them. Not Garth. Garth was his friend. He’d said he was playing a game, that he wasn’t out to get anyone but Jed. He was just using the sisters to get their father’s attention. But what Izzy described was completely different. A dangerous vendetta that might have killed her.

Nick had met the Titan sisters. Lexi was pregnant. What was Garth going to do to her? Skye had a daughter. Who else was at risk? He swore silently. Had Garth really been responsible for the explosion that had nearly blinded Izzy? That could have killed her and anyone else on the rig at the time.

He wanted to say no. He wanted to say “not his friend.” Garth had always been one of the good guys. Like family. But how could he be sure nothing had changed? He and Garth had faced death together, but years had passed since then. Years of Garth channeling his anger, apparently toward the annihilation of the Titan family-innocent bystanders be damned.

“We know he has a plan,” Izzy was saying. “But we don’t know what it is. It started earlier this year.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe it was only a few months ago. This started in spring, it’s now late summer. By Christmas he could crush us all.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said sharply. “You’re not the type to be beaten.”

“I know. I’m being dramatic. We’ll be fine. It’s just we don’t have a good counterattack. Jed won’t talk to us about any of it. He’s doing his own thing. Sometimes it seems as if he’s almost proud of Garth. Like father, like son.” She sounded bitter. “So my sisters and I are on our own. Well, Cruz and Mitch help. Cruz is Lexi’s fiancé and Mitch is Skye’s.”

Jed wasn’t helping his daughters? Nick told himself not to be surprised. Based on the little he knew about Jed Titan, he only cared about himself. Everyone else simply got in the way.

“I never thought he’d come after me,” she said softly, looking sad. “When Lexi, Skye and I met to talk about Garth, I didn’t ever worry about myself. They thought I was safe, too. I guess we were mistaken.”

Anger burned inside him. Izzy had worked too hard to recover from what had happened to her to slide back now. He had to find out what was really going on. He had to know the truth.