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“Sure can.”
“Then I’ll take it. And these, too.” She picked up several platters, then followed Stella to the checkout counter. A few minutes later, she was walking out the door, her platters in a bag and a Sold sign planted in the middle of her table.
She took the bag to her car and locked it in the trunk, then checked her watch. She still had a few minutes before she was supposed to meet Brady. Time enough for a quick walk through one more store.
Then lunch. With Brady. A part of her felt almost as giddy as a teenager going on her first date, but this wasn’t a date. A date would have been dinner, picking her up at the motel, taking her back there—or to his house—when it was over.
This was just lunch. Between friends. Innocent.
Exactly what she wanted, she assured herself.
The little voice inside her head didn’t agree, whispering a childhood taunt.
Liar, liar, pants on fire….
After a morning on patrol, Brady parked in his reserved space behind the courthouse, entered through the back door, then went into the sheriff’s department and headed for his office. He was almost there when the dispatcher stopped him.
“Someone to see you, Brady.”
He glanced at the cramped space set aside for a lobby, where the dispatcher gestured, expecting to see Hallie, a few minutes early for their lunch. The only one there, though, was a teenage girl. Though there was something vaguely familiar about her, he was sure they’d never met. Purple hair was hard to forget.
So were enough holes in her ears to make the wind whistle through. There was a gold bar and chain through her right eyebrow, a stud through her nostril and another in her navel, around which a circle in what appeared to be a Celtic design was tattooed. He didn’t even want to think about where else she might be mutilated.
He backtracked a few steps in her direction. “Can I help you?” he asked brusquely.
She was sprawled on one of the molded plastic chairs, her long legs stretching halfway across the room. Her boots were clunky, black and scuffed, her skirt was too short and rode low on her hips, and her lace top had been too small a year ago. A pair of headphones dangled around her neck, she wore way too much makeup, and her expression was 100-percent whiny adolescent pout.
Her insolent gaze started at his feet and moved up. By the time it reached his face, she’d curled one lip in complete disdain. “You Brady Marshall?”
“Yes.”
“A cop. Jeez, what a loser.” She stood up, her thin body looking like a stick figure unfolding. She was about five foot ten—not a bad height for a young woman. Not a great one for a barely-a-teenager girl. “Well, there’s my stuff.” With a hand that bore rings on every finger, she pointed in the direction of a duffel bag. “Let’s get out of here.”
Clomping on the wood floor, she got as far as the door before realizing that he wasn’t following. “We-ell?”
“Who are you?”
She clomped back to stand in front of him and sneered.
“Don’t you recognize me? Why, I’m your own little girl, and I’ve come to stay with you.”
Behind the counter, a clipboard clattered to the floor, and over by the coffeemaker, someone muttered, “What the—” Brady didn’t look at either eavesdropper. He didn’t take his gaze from the girl.
He never thought of himself as a father, not even as having been a father for a few short months. Even though he’d paid child support without fail for the past fourteen years, it was testament only to how desperately he’d wanted out of the marriage. Sandra had wanted money, and he’d agreed to give it in exchange for a quick divorce and escape to go off and lick his wounds.
Even after she’d admitted to sleeping with any man who was willing.
Even after she’d taunted him with the fact that he wasn’t the father of her little girl.
Even after she’d stripped him of even the slightest hope that the baby whose birth he’d been awaiting so anxiously could possibly be his.
He studied her, trying to reconcile this tall, skinny, odd-looking child with the tiny, cuddly baby he’d fed, rocked to sleep and changed diapers for. That baby had smiled sweetly and cooed whenever she saw him, and she’d clung to his finger every time he’d held her.
This one…
This one was waiting for some sort of response from him. So was everyone else in the squad room.
He moved a few steps closer to her. “What’s your name?”
“Les Marshall.” Then she rolled her eyes as if he were making unreasonable demands. “Alessandra Leigh Marshall. Can we go now?”
See? Sandra had explained, still woozy from giving birth. Sandra, Alessandra. Her pretty little girl could be named after her and yet still have her own name. Wasn’t she clever?
Cleverer than he’d been.
He glanced around at the curious faces in the squad room. No one even tried to pretend that they weren’t openly listening, and he couldn’t blame them. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Hallie he had deep, dark secrets. He’d worked with these people for more than six years, and this was the first any of them had heard of a marriage, a divorce or Texas.
Or a daughter.
“Tell me something,” he said, gesturing from her spiked purple hair all the way down to her combat boots. “Are you making a fashion statement, or do you just enjoy making your mother squirm?”
The question took her by surprise. She blinked, then sneered, “That’s none of your business.”
Which meant she was making her mother squirm. Brady couldn’t begin to imagine how intensely Sandra hated her daughter’s look. She was the vainest, trendiest, most appearance-conscious woman he’d ever known, and it must have killed her every time Les walked into her line of sight.
Aware that everyone was still watching, he gestured toward the door. “Let’s discuss this outside.”
He hustled her out the door into the courthouse lobby, then outside. On the east side of the building, the lawn stretched across half a block, with sidewalks leading to park benches and war memorials. In cooler weather, retired old men and other folks with time on their hands often filled the benches, but thanks to the day’s heat, they were the only ones there.
He stopped in the dappled shade of a large oak. There was a breeze blowing, but all it did was rustle the leaves. It didn’t provide any cooling. “So you’re Sandra Whitfield’s daughter.”
With a put-upon sigh, she ticked off names on her fingers. “Actually, Sandra Whitfield Marshall Davis Thompson Valdez Napier. For the moment.”
So Sandra had five marriages and four divorces behind her. Of course, she wasn’t looking for a husband, a family or any of the usual stuff. She wanted money, security, an easy life. She was a beautiful woman and thought nothing of trading on her beauty to fulfill her goals. Even if it did make her little more than a very-high-priced hooker.
“And you’re my father,” Les went on. “Like it or not.”
She sounded pretty sure of herself—almost as sure as Sandra had been that he wasn’t. She’d had no doubts, and she’d left none for him.
Obviously, Sandra had lied—either to him or to Les. The question was, which one?
“Where is your mother?”
Shoving her hands into her pockets, she shrugged and leaned back against the tree. “Right after she put me on the bus to come here, she headed south of the border for her annual summer spa treatment. She won’t be back for a week…or two or three—though she promised she’d get home before school starts again. Until then, you’re stuck with me.”
Brady gazed across the park to a familiar little silver-blue convertible. For fourteen years his life had gone exactly the way he wanted it—no trouble, no entanglements, no complications—and he’d been perfectly…well, not happy, but satisfied with it. Then Hallie Madison had sat down at his table in the bar, and all his quiet loneliness and satisfaction had been shot to hell. And now this. Which gods had he pissed off lately?
“What about your stepfather?”
“Which one?”
“The current one.” His voice sounded testy, and he made a conscious effort to control it. “Is he home?”
“Yeah…but you can’t send me back there to him. Adam never lets me stay when Sandra’s out of town. He married her in spite of my presence in her life.”
“What about your grandparents?”
“You mean Jim and Rita? Your parents? You’d send me to stay with those grandparents?”
Brady’s jaw tightened until his teeth hurt. He wouldn’t let Jim and Rita Marshall have temporary custody of an angry copperhead. A copperhead’s venom had nothing on theirs.
“Then your mother’s parents.”
“He died years ago, and we don’t see Sandra’s mother. She’s poor, you know.”
Sandra had been, too, dirt poor, until she’d seduced her way into some money. And he’d made it so easy for her. She’d smiled at him, touched him, and he’d been a goner. Even when she’d told him the truth—about the baby, her affairs, her only reason for marrying him—he hadn’t wanted to believe her. He’d told himself she was lying, just trying to hurt him.
She’d succeeded, with her truths as well as her lies.
And if it turned out that her insistence that he wasn’t her baby’s father had been just one more of her lies, if she’d deliberately kept him away from his daughter for fourteen years, he swore he would make her so damn sorry she would never get over it.
“Listen—”
Les interrupted. “Sandra said you always made excuses for not ever wanting me to visit, but this time it ain’t gonna work. She’s gone, I’m here, and for a couple weeks, at least, there’s nothing you can do about it.” Her grin was mocking. “You can’t even turn me over to the cops because you are the cops.”
“I don’t even have an extra bedroom.”
“Well, I’m not sleeping on the floor. Better make some arrangements.”
Was he actually considering taking her into his home? he wondered, more than a little panicked, then answered himself immediately. What choice did he have? He was the only person in the entire state of Oklahoma with any sort of ties to her. It would only be until he could get hold of her mother or her stepfather and make arrangements to return her to Texas. Besides, if she was his daughter….
That muscle in his jaw clenched again. “How can I get in touch with Sandra?”
“You can’t. I told you, she’s on her annual keep-me-beautiful spa retreat.”
“Spas have telephones.”
She smiled her mother’s smug smile. “Not this one. No telephones, no televisions, no e-mail or faxes. Just days of pampering.” She shoved her hands into her pockets. “Look, it’s hot, I’m hungry, and I’d like to get cleaned up. Traveling by bus sucks big time. Let’s get outta here.”
He removed his hat and dragged his fingers through his hair, then glanced at the courthouse. Four faces hastily ducked out of sight at the sheriff’s department windows. He couldn’t even get angry with them for being curious. “I’m meeting someone for lunch. After we eat, I’ll…uh…”
He didn’t want to leave her alone for the afternoon in his house. He didn’t have much that was really private there, and the most important of those items was locked up in the gun cabinet in his bedroom. Still, he didn’t know this kid. He didn’t have a clue how much of a problem child she really was. He could come home and find the place cleaned out, trashed or burned to the ground.
The answer to this problem—possibly—came out of A Moment in Thyme across the street, stopped at the Mercedes, then crossed into the park. She smiled when she saw him, then the smile slowly faded as she noticed Les.
“Hi, Brady,” she greeted him when she reached them. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No, not at all. Hallie Madison, this is Les…Marshall.”
Les gave Hallie a bored look, then grunted a greeting. Hallie looked at her, then back at him. “And Les is your…?”
He figured she was hoping he would say sister, niece or cousin. He wished he could, but truth was, he couldn’t say anything.
After a moment of awkward silence, Les sarcastically said, “He has trouble saying the word—which isn’t surprising since he hasn’t been around for fourteen years to practice. I’m his daughter, and I’ve come for a visit.”
That surprised Hallie. Her hazel eyes widened, and her delicately arched brows arched even higher. Brady had no doubt she was remembering that just twenty-four hours ago, he’d told her he didn’t have any kids. And now here one stood, in the all-too-bizarre flesh.
But almost immediately Hallie smiled, a bright practiced smile that could have fooled any one of her sisters but not him, and she offered her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Les.”
Grudgingly, the kid shook her hand, then pulled back right away.
“This is quite a surprise,” Hallie went on. “If you need to cancel lunch, Brady, I understand—”
“No. Les is hungry, too. There’s a place a block away called the SteakOut. We can go there.”
“A cop eating at a place called the SteakOut?” Les rolled her eyes dramatically. “How…small-town.”
Brady scowled at her, then pointed north. “It’s that way, if you don’t mind walking.”
As they started toward the intersection, he glanced at the department windows again, and saw even more faces pressed up against them. First they found out he apparently had a daughter no one knew about from a marriage no one knew about, and now he was meeting the sheriff’s new sister-in-law for lunch. He was going to be the subject of gossip so intense it would probably get back to Reese and Neely all the way down in the Caribbean.
He really did have the damnedest luck.
Chapter 4
The SteakOut was the perfect ranch-country steakhouse, Hallie thought as they followed the hostess to a table. The walls were paneled with what looked like old barn siding, and the chandeliers were made from wagon wheels. Various brands hung on the walls, along with other cowboy stuff—lassos, horseshoes and blankets, a few rodeo champion belt buckles. The food smelled wonderful, making her realize how hungry she was, but apparently it wasn’t enough to distract the other diners from them.
“Damn, all these hicks look like they’ve never seen a kid before,” Les muttered.
“More likely, they’ve never seen a kid with him—” Hallie nodded toward Brady, who looked as if he’d rather be staked to an anthill under the desert sun “—who wasn’t in handcuffs.”
And they probably hadn’t seen him in here with a woman before, either. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first time he’d been in the place.
“Yeah, well, if they don’t quit staring, I’m gonna—”
“What?” Hallie asked. “Give ’em something to stare at?”
Les looked at her belligerently for a time before letting a smile slowly form. “This isn’t the worst I can get, you know.”
“I know. I was your age once, too.”
“Yeah, but that was a long time ago.”
Hallie returned the smile. “Not so long that I couldn’t wrestle you to the ground and tickle you till you pee your pants.”
On her left, sitting at the head of the table, Brady cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. Hallie exchanged looks with Les, then said, “I believe your father wants us to be quiet.”
“You be quiet. I gotta go to the bathroom.” Les pushed her chair back, then headed back toward the entrance.
