“Grace.” Maia sounded mortified, but I couldn’t care less. I did not like Layla’s influence on her.

“I’m not sure you’re a good influence on Maia.”

“You’re not her mum,” Layla huffed. “You’re just a nosy, skinny English bitch.”

“That’s it.” Logan stalked past us, and we watched as he spoke to the doorman at the club. The doorman nodded, and Logan pulled out his phone. He returned to us a few seconds later. “There is a cab on the way for you two,” Logan said to Layla and Leigh. “And that huge bloke behind me is going to make sure it takes you home. You” – he pointed at Layla, and she blanched at the anger in his eyes – “stay away from my daughter from now on.”

He walked around me and grabbed Maia’s arm. “We’re going home.”

“Dad —”

“Don’t push me, Maia.”

Thankfully, she didn’t.

Logan was seething as he marched her home through the Meadows, and I hurried to keep up. “Is this the person you want to be?” he suddenly asked her, his voice filled with disbelief. “Irresponsible?

Childish? Immature? How could you do this tonight, Maia? I’ve been worried sick.”

“I knew you wouldn’t let me go if I asked,” she said quietly.

“You’re damn right. You’re fifteen. That club is for eighteen and overs. Not to mention it’s a bloody dive.”

“I just wanted to spend time with my friends.”

“Oh, and some friends they are.” He snorted in disgust. “Did you hear how she spoke to Grace?

After everything Grace has done for us, you’re okay with one of your friends speaking to her like that? Disrespecting her?”

Maia pulled her arm out of his hand, her face suddenly red with her anger. “And what does Grace care? She’s not our friend anymore!”

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. “What the heck does that mean?”

Eyes bright with tears, she stopped, and we halted. “I just want things to go back to how they were.

When it was the three of us.”

Logan looked dumbfounded. “Is that why you’ve been acting like this?”

She shrugged. “It’s the only way to get you two to spend time in the same room together. Before…

well, it was like we were a family.”

“I don’t understand.” Logan scratched his beard, appearing confused. “Are you and I not a family?”

Maia’s lips trembled, and I could tell she was very close to crying. “Aye, of course.”

“Good.” Logan started walking again. “As head of this family, I’m grounding you for two weeks.”

“But, Dad…” Maia hurried to catch up with him.

“No ‘But, Dad’ anything. You ever pull anything like this again and it will be a whole month.”

I followed slowly after them, listening to Maia try to talk Logan into lessening her sentence. My heart was beating fast again as I started to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Logan had missed it, but I hadn’t.

Maia wasn’t pissed off that Logan flirted with other women because she wanted all of his attention.

I thought of her annoyance when I announced I was going out on a date. Of how upset she got when she overheard me talking to Shannon in the kitchen about Logan.

Maia MacLeod didn’t like Logan flirting with other women because she’d already chosen the woman she wanted in his life.

Me.

Maia was playing matchmaker.

Bloody hell.

CHAP TER 16

T he day after Maia’s irresponsible venture to the nightclub – which I now realized was a deliberate act to get Logan and me in the same place because she wanted us to be a couple, and I still didn’t know how to talk to Logan about it – I was in my sitting room with my laptop doing one last read-through of a manuscript before I returned it to the author. In a moment of procrastination I flicked to my home page and a news article jumped out at me.

DANIELLE BENTLEY’S CANCER FIGHT?

My heart leapt into my throat as I clicked on the headline.

There was a picture of Gabriel and Danielle Bentley up in the corner of the article. They were both dressed in evening clothes, suggesting they’d been at some well-to-do event. Gabriel, as always, wore a solemn expression on his handsome, rugged face. There was more gray in the hair combed precisely back from his temple than I remembered and a few more lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. As always, he was dressed immaculately in a tailored tux from some expensive designer.

All the old feelings of neglect, rejection, and anger flooded me as I stared at the picture of my mother and father. And just as suddenly as I was hit with the overwhelming crush of them, I was hit with the massive feeling of failure.

I’d truly thought they didn’t have that power over me anymore. Or at least not so much.

But there they were on my screen, and I felt like the little girl they’d abandoned all over again.

My eyes scanned the tabloid article.

Inside sources have revealed that the wife of world-renowned London-based media tycoon and business entrepreneur Gabriel Bentley has been diagnosed with breast cancer. A spokesperson for the family has neither confirmed nor denied the rumor.

I knew what that meant. It meant my mother was sick and she didn’t want anyone to know she was infallible.

The same inside sources also revealed that estranged daughter, Gracelyn Bentley, has still not returned to the homestead to be by her mother’s side. Rumors surrounding Gracelyn Bentley’s split from the family have circulated for years, but as yet the truth behind her departure remains within the family fold.

In a state of shock I somehow got myself to the bathroom. I felt the bile rise up in my throat and flipped the lid on the toilet seat. I coughed it up, but no vomit followed it despite the roiling in my stomach.

A cold sweat broke out over my skin, and I flopped back against the bathroom wall, pulling my knees up to my chin. I couldn’t stop trembling.

I wished I could stop trembling.

Stop trembling!

My mother had cancer. Possibly dying?

And now the press were finally interested to know where the Bentleys’ only daughter, Gracelyn Bentley, had disappeared to. I knew there had been rumors at first – family staff who couldn’t keep their mouths shut, most likely – but after a while the press weren’t really that interested. There were children of British rock stars up to far more scandalous and nefarious things, whereas Gracelyn Bentley was the quiet, studious girl with doe eyes who didn’t do anything of significance to capture their attention.

That’s how Gracelyn had been described once in the press.

But I wasn’t Gracelyn Bentley anymore. I’d legally changed my name to Grace Farquhar. Though I imagined if the press were really interested, it would be easy enough to find me.

I shivered at the thought.

They wouldn’t find the girl with the doe eyes anymore.

I’d worked hard to become my own person and not a shadow of the girl lost in the manipulations, cruelty, and neglect of her family.

If the press went searching for Gracelyn… they went searching for a ghost.

Or was she?

I squeezed my eyes shut and tears leaked out under the light pressure. Just like that the sob rose up from deep in my gut and I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t stop it.

My mother most probably had cancer and my father hadn’t reached out to tell me. And he knew where I was; he knew my surname. Farquhar after my grandmother on my father ’s side. She’d died when I was eight, but some of my happiest childhood memories were when I was with her. She represented real family to me. She represented everything I wanted and hoped to someday have for myself.

My mother had cancer and I couldn’t go to her because they hadn’t asked me to.

They didn’t want me to.

And the horrible, awful truth was… I didn’t know if I wanted to go to her.