Page 36 of Irish Betrayal

She wasn’t sure where she would end up studying but knew it couldn’t be close to Peter or Daniel.

The latter because she’d hurt him grievously with no reason given. She was still hurting him.

The former because she despised him and what he’d done to her, what he was forcing her to do now—keep quiet. She waffled daily on whether or not to go to the police…tell her family…seek counseling. If she went to the police, her family would know eventually anyway.

The thought of everyone knowing, including her friends, was a concept she couldn’t fathom. It seemed an impossible choice—until she thought about Peter doing what he’d done to Mindy and Blair to another child. Though she admitted to herself, it was highly unlikely. Blair practically lived at Trinity’s greenhouses. She would have noticed a STEM learning student hanging around.

Blair was cerebral. She considered a problem from every angle, following each possible solution until the best one emerged.

She’d been tracking a solution since that day. It was like the path she needed to follow, the only one she could follow, was missing.

Even after understanding that Peter had clearly been altering her reality for years, she was struggling to make a single decision on her own. Normally, she would talk any problem over with him.

Her gut twisted with revulsion and shame. And there it was again. The cycle she’d been circling for weeks.

Shame. Regret. Anger. Despair.

Mostly…indecision.

If Daniel found out what she’d allowed Peter to do to her, he would be shocked and disgusted. Of course, he would. Any man would feel that way, and she already had so many things against her—her lack of curves and hearing impairment.

If her past ever came out, Daniel would be relieved that she’d stopped things the way she had.

Still, there really was no choice. She had to tell. Someone. It was the right thing to do. The only thing.

Not today. Soon.

But first, Blair would be the best advocate for the rare species she was trying to save in Oklahoma.

The plant that Katy discovered growing along the Arkansas River bordering the Stanton compound was the endangered, native Ouachita Indigobush. It was an exciting opportunity for Blair. Not only could she have a hand in saving an indigenous species from complete extinction, but she could wow the university professors, which would look damned impressive on her CV.

She loved Scotland and Ireland, loved her family and her friends. She wanted nothing more than to work for Ulf Griffiths, father of Dagr Griffiths, Bébhinn’s husband. Ulf oversaw a conservation reserve in Wales that was doing groundbreaking work in animal and plant preservation and land restoration.

Blair spent a few months last year interning under the grumpy Griffiths and loved it. Unfortunately, it was just too close to home.

Too close to something Blair wished to escape.

Too close to someone Blair wished to escape.

Dreams of her and Daniel getting their happily ever after had evaporated three months ago when she’d fled Dublin and felt her heart crumble and burn as her plane had stormed down the runway.

Instead of changing her plans after meeting Daniel and accepting Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru’s offer to work full-time at their reserve while completing her master’s thesis, she stuck with the plan she’d made before him and ran halfway across the world to America.

But so had he.

Peter had rejoiced in emailing her—she kept her phone off a lot now—that he had taken a sabbatical from Trinity College and somehow finagled a botany position at OSU, helping a woman mid-semester finish her classes while she went on maternity leave.

Her time was now spent between work, research, writing papers, and avoiding him.

Home meant facing Daniel, but the refuge Oklahoma had offered had become yet another prison since Peter had come four weeks ago.

The eight weeks before his arrival had been good despite her never-ending guilt over Daniel.

She wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with either man, she thought, as she bent next to the rocky riverbed that ran the length and beyond of the Stanton property.

Blair felt a flair of satisfaction zip up her spine. Weeks of taking specimen samples and studying historical precipitation data from Oklahoma—so many lines of data, her eyes still felt the strain—had gotten her to this point.

All morning she’d been looking at old land surveys overlapping the current landscape. She believed she found the area of the Arkansas River that had been diverted. There had to be a reason why it was done, though the history of it was lost long ago. Presumably, the man-made course correction was intended to reduce flooding, allowing for more accessible animal grazing. The rocky soil wasn’t good for growing crops.