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Susanna went slightly pale at Alice’s last words.
“Please believe me,” Alice said quietly, earnestly.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe or don’t believe.” Susanna stuffed her hands into her coat pockets, everything about her rigid, serious, determined. And scared, Alice thought. Susanna Galway wasn’t one who liked admitting she was scared. “I don’t want you anywhere near my grandmother or my daughters.”
Alice nodded. “All right. I understand.”
But her tone didn’t come out quite right, and she could see that Susanna had read her words the way Alice had really meant them—defiant and in-your-face defensive. She didn’t have to stay away from anybody. She was a free woman. She hadn’t threatened Iris or Maggie and Ellen Galway. She hadn’t stalked them. She hadn’t broken the law. Her presence in Susanna’s neighborhood was provocative, yes. But it wasn’t illegal.
“Stay away from my family,” Susanna said.
Alice didn’t argue, although she couldn’t imagine not seeing Iris again—at least to explain who she was, why she’d lied to her. She didn’t want Iris to think badly of her. She didn’t know why, but the old woman’s opinion mattered to her.
Susanna swept out of the bar, and Alice looked up at Jim Haviland, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “I suppose you think I’m pretty awful.”
“I think you’re scaring the shit out of Susanna Galway and used an innocent old woman—”
“I’d never hurt Iris. Never. I consider her a friend.”
But she could see she wasn’t getting anywhere with him, and down the bar, Davey Ahearn looked ready to take her out and shove her face into a snowbank. She jumped off her stool and tossed money on the bar, next to her barely touched bowl of chowder. She mostly choked down the clams, anyway. She couldn’t understand why New Englanders had clam chowder contests. It wasn’t even in the same universe as a good bowl of chili.
She sniffled, knowing she wasn’t eliciting an ounce of sympathy from either man. “I’m a free woman,” she said. “I can come and go as I please.”
“Then go,” Davey Ahearn said with an edge of sarcasm. “Please.”
She did, grabbing her parka but not bothering to put it on. One of them would call Jack Galway. Jim, Davey, Susanna. Jack wouldn’t stand by while a woman he’d put in prison, a corrupt fellow officer of the law, slipped into the neighborhood where his wife and daughters were living. It didn’t matter what was going on between him and Susanna. He’d be on the next plane out of San Antonio the minute he found out.
Alice pushed out the door into the cold night. There was a time when she’d wanted to stick it to Jack Galway for what he’d done to her, when she’d have been happy to think he was worried sick about his family because of her.
That wasn’t what this was about, she told herself. Revenge was pointless. This was about money for Australia and her new beginning.
Not that it’d make any difference to Jack Galway, Texas Ranger, but it did to her. She had a higher purpose in mind.
If he was about to find out she was up here with his wife and daughters, Alice couldn’t fool herself. There were no two ways about it. The squeeze was on, and she was running out of time.
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