Loyalty Under Fire - Trish McCallan Page 0,2

must have left her the book as a surprise. When he’d been in residence at his La Jolla Farms estate, he’d hid toys or treats in the desk for her.

She eased the leather-bound book out and turned it over. A blue, tear-shaped stone was embedded in the middle of the front cover, encircled by a sphere of stitched leather. Antique clasps of tarnished bronze kept the book closed. It was somewhere around six by eight inches, the leather exterior carved with clusters of what looked like mistletoe. But the cover and spine held no title or author…. Odd…

Settling cross-legged on the carpet, Becca carefully pried the two clasps apart and spread the book open. Familiar, looping writing filled the white sheets of paper—her mother’s handwriting. Her throat tightened. She turned the page. A hummingbird feeder surrounded by a flock of hummingbirds took life in front of her. The sketch was in pencil and so detailed and realistic the birds appeared to take flight beneath her hands. Her throat tightened even more and started aching as sorrow rose.

Her mother’s art.

Her mother’s writing.

Her mother’s diary.

Becca sat there frozen, her mother’s words and memories lying heavy in her hands. It felt wrong to turn the pages, to read the words, absorb these memories that weren’t her own. It felt like a violation of privacy. Her mother must have hidden this journal for a reason…

But maybe, just maybe this diary would provide some answers to the questions that had haunted her for the past decade and a half. Like why? Why had her mother committed suicide, abandoning the child she professed to love? Why had she doomed her child to a hellish existence beneath her lover’s roof?

By taking her own life, her mother had abandoned Becca to that god-awful house, full of those god-awful people. Beyond taking her in, her father certainly hadn’t stepped up to protect her or bothered to put an end to the vicious pranks pulled by her half brother or the constant bad-mouthing by her martyred stepmother.

Was it any surprise she’d latched onto Rio when he’d returned to town? After all, he’d been gorgeous, five years older and experienced—with an aura of danger that rode him like a leather jacket. As a member of SEAL Team 7, he’d been one of the Navy’s elite warriors, a proverbial knight in shining armor.

In other words, a foolish girl’s wet dream.

All it had taken was one look from those piercing blue-gray eyes and she’d fallen in love with him—utterly in love. She’d been so starved for affection by then. Starved for someone to love, for someone to love her. Desperate for someone to believe her, take her side, help her chart a course through the quicksand she’d been floundering in.

Desperate to be rescued.

Bitterness rose, but she sighed and gave it wings. If she’d used her brains back then instead of relying on teenage emotions and hormones, she would have known that intense interlude with Rio would end badly. He’d been best friends with Adam, her lying, vindictive half brother. Not to mention Rosaria, Rio’s grandmother, had been best friends with Lena, her father’s martyr of a wife. Adam’s insidious lies aside, it didn’t take much imagination to guess what horrible things Lena had said about her, which would have filtered through Rosaria and burned into Rio’s subconscious like black, pitchy tar.

She’d never stood a chance with him. Too bad she hadn’t figured that out before he’d turned his back on her and shattered what remained of her heart. With a deep breath, she pulled away from those painful memories. She’d survived a lot during those four excruciating years between her fourteenth and eighteenth birthdays… but Rio’s abandonment had almost destroyed her.

Flipping back to the beginning of the book, she began leafing through the pages. Maybe the answer to why her mother had killed herself was finally at hand.

With each flip of her wrist and rustled page, her mother’s dynamic personality sprang to life. The writing was vibrant, full of descriptions and textures and humor, liberally laced with love. That was the one thing Becca still remembered vividly about her mother—the one thing that hadn’t been grotesquely skewed—how full of love she’d been, how full of life. The writing and sketches emphasized that memory. She could almost hear her mother’s thick Irish brogue whispering from the pages. The brogue that her father’s family had found so abhorrent, at least when it came to the unwelcome youngest addition to their family.

Sketches and whimsical stories littered