A Wolff at Heart

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He clasped his hands behind his neck and leaned back into the sofa, feigning relaxation, though his guts were in a knot. “I’m scared,” he drawled, only half kidding.

She uncurled her leg and sat up straight, both feet on the floor. “You don’t have to be,” she said, answering his attempt at humor with an adorably serious expression. “The truth may hurt when we’re not expecting it, but secrets are far more deadly. Trust me, Pierce. You’re doing the right thing.”

Five

Nikki winced at Pierce’s expression. She had no clue what he was thinking, but replaying her words in her head, she realized how she must sound to him. Insufferably sure of her own capabilities, and bossy to boot. It wasn’t a great tack to take with a man. A truth that had been pointed out to her on more than one occasion. But if she had to hide who she was to be part of a relationship, she’d pass, thank you very much.

Not that she and Pierce were in a relationship, but still...

Pierce picked up a sheet of paper. “No use putting it off.” He sounded more resigned than anything.

“Indeed.” She opened her laptop and prepared a blank document.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“I like to make notes as we go along. Memory is a tricky thing. So I document things I either want to go back to later or that may turn out to be key points. Nothing formal at this stage. More like a running commentary.”

“How do I know what I’m looking for?”

“You don’t. Not really. You can check the basic facts, of course. But if someone deliberately perpetrated fraud, I’m sure they will have tried to cover their tracks.”

“Great,” he muttered. “A needle in a haystack that’s been buried for thirty-plus years. No problem.”

She handed him roughly half of the pages she’d printed out. “Man up, Mr. Avery. All good detectives have to slog though the mud. For an outdoorsman, that should be right up your alley.”

* * *

Pierce read automatically, though with less than perfect attention. He noted details like birth weight and time of delivery and length of newborn, all of which he had seen documented in his baby book in his mom’s careful handwriting. Page by page, he scanned lines of medical jargon. There were sections about medicines administered, blood pressure recordings and body temps, both mom and baby.

Nothing jumped out at him.

After half an hour, Nikki handed him her stack. “Let’s swap. Maybe I’ll see something you missed, and vice versa.”

The new pages were no more helpful. He found anecdotal descriptions of his mom’s labor. According to the records, it had been normal in every way. But something suddenly struck him. “Why aren’t there copies of ultrasounds? Seems like that should have been in here.”

Nikki pursed her lips. “Good point. I’m friends with my ob-gyn. Let me give her a call. Maybe those records were stored separately in radiology.”

As Pierce continued reading, Nikki disappeared for at least fifteen minutes. When she returned, her expression was wry. “Not to make you feel old or anything, but apparently back in the early eighties, ultrasounds were by no means routine. As a rule, they were used only in high-risk pregnancy situations, and sometimes not even then, because the technology was new and expensive and no one was one hundred percent sure they were safe.”

Pierce was shocked. “Wow. I never thought of that. I assumed they had been around forever.”

“Me, too.”

“I can’t imagine not seeing those little black-and-white pictures. I have friends who framed theirs.”

“But now you know why they’re not in your record.”

Pierce sat up and rolled his neck. “This doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere,” he said, feeling the muscles in his back kink and burn. “I wanted to take you out on a trail near here this evening, one that has a beautiful view. But not with your foot messed up. How about a drive? I need to get outside and breathe.”

“You should go by yourself,” Nikki said. “You deserve a break, and we’ve done enough for one day. But if you’ll drop me at my place, I’d appreciate it.”

“Trying to get away from me?” It annoyed him that even the thought of her leaving was unpleasant. He enjoyed his own company and the peace and quiet of his home at the end of a busy day. Yet with Nikki ensconced on his sofa, drinking his wine and smiling at him with those eyes that seemed to shift from blue to pewter and everything in between, he found himself needing her company more than was comfortable.

She nibbled her bottom lip, her thoughts hard to read on her face. “Not trying to get away,” she said carefully. “But wanting not to outstay my welcome.”

He tossed the records on the table and stood. “I’ll let you know when that happens, I promise. Grab that afghan. I like the top down.”

Perhaps it was bragging, but he couldn’t wait to show her his 300 SL. He ushered her out to the garage, opening the double-wide doors to let her enter before him. Though he wasn’t a total automotive freak, he did own seven vehicles of one kind or another, everything from a vintage Kawasaki motorcycle to a John Deere tractor he used for mowing. But he waited for her reaction to the one car that was his pride and joy.

Fortunately, Nikki was suitably impressed. “This is beyond cool,” she breathed, sliding into the passenger seat and caressing the butter-soft burgundy leather.

Pierce averted his eyes from her sensual gesture and checked the gas gauge. “I thought you might like it. It’s a 1960 Mercedes-Benz roadster. The cream paint and chrome are original. I bought it at auction when I was seventeen and spent the next five years rebuilding the engine and tracking down authentic parts. My dad and I worked on it summers and weekends.”

Again, without meaning to, he had stumbled into painful territory. Nikki remained silent, no doubt picking up on his mental confusion. Each time he told her something about his dad, he couldn’t escape the subtext. His dad wasn’t his dad.

Jaw clenched, he came to a conclusion. He was tired of rehashing the same fruitless fact. For the rest of the day, he planned on enjoying Nikki’s company and forgetting why they had met in the first place.

As he backed carefully out of the garage and swung around on the driveway, she frowned. “What kind of seventeen-year-old kid can buy a car like this?”

Pierce grinned as he pulled out onto the highway and picked up speed. “First of all, you have to understand that the engine had been ruined by someone putting a foreign substance into the gas tank. And secondly, the guy selling it didn’t know what he had.”

“So you took advantage of him.”

Pierce shrugged. “I was a minor. He was a grown adult. I figured he ought to know better.”

“And your parents allowed this?”

“Not exactly. I took money out of my college account without asking.”

She half turned in her seat, a hand to the side of her head as the wind whipped her sunshine hair. “Oh, my gosh. I would have killed you.”

He chuckled, this memory a lighthearted one. “They nearly did. Dad tried to return the car, but that was a no-go. The seller was adamant. So as punishment, I wasn’t allowed to touch my new toy for an entire six months. And I had to make straight A’s on my next report card.”

“That shouldn’t have been too hard. You seem like a pretty smart guy.”

“I had undiagnosed ADHD. School was torture.”

“But you told me you even have a master’s degree.”

“Only because my parents pushed and prodded me all along the way. Tutors, bribery and lots of TLC. I was damned lucky.”

“Yes, you were.”

Even an obtuse man couldn’t have missed the irony in her voice. Pierce took the entrance ramp to Skyline Drive, north of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and settled into a safe speed. Given his druthers, he’d have pushed the car to its limits, but despite a few self-destructive tendencies in his adolescence, he now had a healthy respect for the laws of the land.

He glanced at his passenger. “We’ve talked way too much about me,” he said, pulling his sunglasses from the visor as the late-evening sun threatened to blind him around one curve and another. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her wrap the thin mohair afghan more tightly around her shoulders. “Nowhere you’ve ever heard of—a tiny town in the Midwest. That’s why I love these mountains so much.”

“Do you still have family back there?”

“No.”

His was a perfectly normal question. But between Nikki’s body language and the tone of her voice, he got the message. Not up for discussion. On the one hand, he could choose to be irritated, because she knew so much about him and he knew next to nothing about her. But the fact that he had asked her to delve into his past gave her carte blanche to poke and prod. He had no reason or right to cross-examine her, particularly when it was so clear that she did not want to share.

Instead of allowing the uncomfortable moment to ruin the evening, he chose to brush it off. Hopefully, she would learn to trust him enough to share her secrets. She’d claimed that secrets were deadly. He wasn’t so sure. Sometimes he was convinced that ignorance was bliss. And in his case, that adage might be truer than he wanted to admit.