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“Pardon me?”
“When she threatened about her hair. What did you say?”
He ran his hand through his own hair, determined to get the waitress back on track. “Never mind that. She’s a runaway.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
He scooted the picture across the table. “She’s been missing nearly two weeks, but we think she may be close by. I plan to find her and take her home.”
“Take her home, huh? How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
The waitress’s eyes filled with suspicion. “Not quite old enough to be off on her own. Why’d she run away?”
If he didn’t know better, he would think her tone held accusation that he was a poor guardian. But she wouldn’t have any idea he was raising his sister’s daughter.
“It’s really none of your business,” he said. “She has a family who loves her and wants her back.”
“So you won’t answer my question, huh?”
The impertinent waitress had just about frayed his last nerve. Not what he needed while wasting precious time. He glanced at his watch, thinking for a split second of the weekly loan committee meeting he was missing. “No, I won’t answer it.”
The woman’s gaze bore into his as if she were trying to decipher his thoughts. The air between them crackled with unspoken censure, and for a moment he feared she could see through to his worry that he was failing his sister yet again, even now, after her death.
He shook off the crazy, morbid thought. “So, have you seen my niece?”
“She may have passed through.” She stuck the pencil behind her ear. “Gotta put your order in.”
She walked to the end of the counter, leaned across it and yelled, “Grilled chick, dressed,” to the man with the shiny forehead and five-o’clock shadow. The sweaty cook acknowledged the order with a jerk of his head and then eyed the waitress; some kind of message seemed to pass between them.
Michael sat back in the booth, crossed his arms and settled in. He wasn’t going anywhere until he found out if the message had anything to do with Lisa. She wasn’t going to spend one more night alone on the streets. He would find her, even if it meant having to eat another meal in this dive.
After Josie delivered Michael’s water, she made a bee-line to the kitchen.
Lisa stood beside the door, chewing on her fingernail. “What did he say?”
“He’s searching for one Lisa Throckmorton, sixteen-year-old runaway.” She arched her brow at the supposed recently turned eighteen-year-old. “You showed me a fake driver’s license.”
“I’m sorry. I was afraid you’d send me back if you knew.”
“You’re right about that. I could probably go to jail for harboring a minor.”
Lisa squinched up her nose. “You didn’t tell, did you?”
“No. But I was tempted. You’d better not lie to me again.”
“I won’t. I promise.” She held her fingers up in a Girl Scout promise. “Did he leave yet?”
“No. He ordered a sandwich.”
“Great. Now I’m stuck here. I was invited to a gallery opening tonight up at the craft school.”
“This is serious, Lisa. I really should tell him you’re here. He must be worried sick.”
“Please, please, pleeease don’t. I guarantee you he’s not worried. He’d rather be off counting his money right now.”
Josie spun her Mickey Mouse watch around—7:00 p.m. “I want you to tell me the truth about your uncle. He didn’t seem like the monster you’ve painted him to be. He came all the way from Charleston looking for you, after all.”
“I told you before. He doesn’t want me. He shipped me off to boarding school a year ago, only a week after my mom died.”
“Well, maybe he thinks that’s best. The school has a really good reputation.”
Lisa’s eyes brightened, and she blinked away tears. “He doesn’t want me, okay? I heard him tell my grandmother the day after the funeral.”
Josie wanted to shake the man. “Does he call you or visit?”
“He always cancels. He’s too busy. And I hate that place.”
A sixteen-year-old girl whose mother had just died shouldn’t be shipped off to boarding school. She should be with her family. And Josie knew all too well about craving attention from family.
“What’s your uncle like? Not as a parent. As a person.”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “He’s always on the straight and narrow. Churchgoing. Law-abiding. Serious.” She thought for a second. “He, like, owns the bank. He’s worked there since he was five or something.”
“Sounds like a good role model to me.”
“You promised me, Josie.” She backed away, as if heading for the door. “If you tell him, I’m out of here. ’Cause he’ll send me right back to that horrible place and all those snobby kids who won’t have anything to do with me.”
“And you’ve told him how they exclude you?”
“I think I mentioned it.”
“You think?”
“I did tell him about the three girls on my floor who’ve spread lies about me. But he didn’t believe me, because he knows their parents really well.”
Well, that decided it. Josie wasn’t about to turn the girl over to an uncle who would deny a problem and pack her off to school with kids who mistreated her.
Then again, she probably shouldn’t take Lisa’s word for it. Josie would stall answering his questions about Lisa’s whereabouts until she could find out for herself what kind of guardian he was.
A serious, law-abiding banker, huh? He would be as easy to read as Bud’s menu.
Michael finished the last bite of his sandwich and had to admit the chicken was tender and spiced to perfection. However, after the exhausting day he’d spent driving without stopping to eat, anything would have tasted good.
The waitress with Josie printed on her name tag jangled as she hurried toward his table, waving a slip of paper. “I’ve got your check right here.”
She certainly was trying to rush him out the door.
He wasn’t budging. “I think I’d like some dessert. What’s the chef making today?”
The woman snorted a laugh. “Chef? If Bud over there is a chef, I’ll eat my orthopedic shoes.”
He glanced down at the old-lady shoes, which suited her personality about as well as a tiara on her head would. “Believe me, Josie, I had already deduced he wasn’t trained at Le Cordon Bleu.”
She smiled, but the tilt of her brows made her seem confused. She touched her name tag. “You know my name. What’s yours?”
“Michael Throckmorton.”
“Well, you’re a funny man, Mike.”
“It’s Michael. I’ve never been called Mike.”
“But Michael sounds so stuffy.”
“Maybe I am stuffy. Now, what’s on the dessert menu today?”
With a mischievous gleam in her eye, she parked one hip on the edge of his table, leg swinging, and pointed to the far wall. “The dessert menu’s on that chalkboard. Same today as yesterday and every day for the past year or so. Pecan pie, apple pie or chocolate cake?”
“Make it apple, with black coffee.”
“I figured you for an apple-pie man. Coming right up.”
Now what was that supposed to mean? “Would you please ask Bud to come take a look at this picture of Lisa when he gets a moment?”
“He’s real busy. But I’ll try.” She shoved her pencil, not behind her ear this time, but into her bird’s nest of a hairdo, then moved to wait on another table where she flirted with two men in dirty work clothes.
In observing her at a distance, he decided that somehow, miraculously, she equaled a whole lot more than the sum of her parts. Extreme jewelry, plus funky hair and rubber-soled shoes equaled…attractive waitress.
How could that possibly be?
When Josie returned with Michael’s pie and coffee, she slid into the booth across from him. She blew a pink bubble, then popped it with a loud snap. “So, tell me about you and your niece. Are you helping her parents search for her?”
He lifted Lisa’s photograph and stared at the innocent, trusting smile. A smile that used to come so easily before her mother’s drinking had gotten out of hand.
“My sister, Patricia, was a single mom. She died in a car accident a year ago.”
“Oh, no. Don’t tell me it was a drunk driver.”
“Yes. Her.” Way to go, Throckmorton. Tell her your life history, why don’t you?
His unintentional revelation was greeted with silence. And a pitying look—which he detested.
“Anyway, she specified in her will that I be named guardian,” he added.
“Why’d she pick you?”
He bristled. “Why not me?”
“Well, you appear to be single.” She waggled her left ring finger. “No ring.”
Yes, he was single. Definitely single since Gloria had dumped him. “An unmarried man can be a suitable guardian.”
“I didn’t say you were unsuitable. I’m just wondering why she chose you.”
Josie was acting a little too interested. As if she was stalling.
The longer this woman gave him the runaround, the more likely it was he would be stuck in Gatlinburg, missing his appointment with Tom Mason. And Throckmorton’s Bank needed Mason’s company to take out that construction loan.
He checked his watch. “You know, I really want to find her and get back to Charleston. I have an important meeting tomorrow. Do you have any idea where she could be?”
“So this is all about getting back to your important meeting, huh?”
He sighed. This woman was impossible. Since when was it a crime to work hard? “No. It’s about making sure my niece is safe. About getting her back to school—and round-the-clock supervision—where she belongs before she makes a stupid mistake.” Like her mother made sixteen years ago.
“What kind of mistake?”
“Some of her friends thought she might have left with an older boy. A troublemaker.”
Josie thought about her one encounter with the troublemaker boyfriend and said a quick prayer of thanks that the creep had ditched Lisa and hit the road—even if he had “borrowed” her car.
She figured another prayer for guidance wouldn’t be a bad idea either since Michael Throckmorton didn’t seem as awful as Lisa had made him out to be. In fact, he seemed downright concerned. Except for wanting to get back for a meeting. That bothered her.
But maybe she should at least let him know Lisa was safe.
But then Lisa would feel betrayed and might run again.
What a mess.
“You know, Mike, if you’ll hang around until I’m off tonight, I might be able to help you.”
His all-business, I’m-in-a-hurry-to-get-out-of-here scowl lit with a hint of hope. “I knew it. You do know where Lisa is.”
“Order’s up,” Bud called.
What should she do? Mike obviously cared for his niece. Maybe he just didn’t know how to show it. “Okay, I admit I’ve met her, and I can tell you she’s safe. But she doesn’t want to see you.”
He winced at the truth. “She’s made that fairly clear.”
Bud impatiently clanged the little service bell and nodded toward a customer. “Hamburger’s getting cold.”
“Look, I need to get back to work. I’m pulling a double, so I don’t get off till ten.”
She hopped up and went to pick up the order, but when she turned to take it to the table, she glimpsed the back of Mike’s broad back as he disappeared through the swinging door into the kitchen.
By the time she caught up to him, he stood alone in the middle of the spick-and-span room. Lisa was nowhere in sight.
“She’s not here.” He sounded deflated.
