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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.
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