The Marriage Conspiracy
Christine Rimmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHRISTINE RIMMER

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been everything from an actress to a salesclerk to a waitress. Now that she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine is grateful not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves, who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma. Visit Christine at www.christinerimmer.com.

For those who sought friendship

and found lasting love…

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

It was hot, without a hint of a breeze. Mid-October and it felt like the dog days of August. The wedding guests wandered beneath the sweet gums and pecan trees that shaded Camilla Tilly’s backyard, faces shining with sweat, sipping cold drinks in which the ice melted too soon.

Joleen Tilly, Camilla’s oldest daughter and sister to the bride, stood at the cake table from which she’d just shooed away three frosting-licking children. Joleen felt as if she was melting in her ankle-length rose-colored satin and lace bridesmaid’s gown.

And she couldn’t help suspecting that the cake was melting, too. The icing looked thinner, didn’t it, in a couple of places? The cake had five layers, each bordered with icing swags and accented with butter-cream roses. Hadn’t the top four layers slid sideways the tiniest bit, wasn’t the whole thing leaning to the right, just a little?

Joleen shook her head—at the cake, at her own discomfort, at the whole situation. She had tried to convince her sister to rent a hall, but DeDe dug in her heels and announced that she’d always dreamed of getting married in Mama’s backyard. There was no budging DeDe once she dug in her heels.

So here they all were. Melting.

And way behind schedule. The ceremony was supposed to have started an hour ago. But Dekker Smith, the closest thing the Tilly sisters had to a big brother and the one who had promised to give DeDe away, had yet to arrive.

As Joleen stewed about the missing Dekker, about the cake, about the sweltering heat, her uncle Hubert Tilly wandered over, beer in hand. He stood beside her, leaned her way and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s about time we got this thing started, don’t you think?”

“Yes. And we will, Uncle Hubert. Real soon.”

“Good.” Her uncle lifted his beer to her in a toast. “Here’s to you, Joly. We all know it’s bound to be your turn next.” He threw back his big head and drank.

Joleen, who sometimes got a little tired of hearing how it would be “her turn next,” smiled resolutely and watched uncle Hubert’s Adam’s apple bounce up and down as he drained the can.

“Well, what do you know?” Uncle Hubert said when he was through guzzling. “It’s empty.” The can made groaning, cracking sounds as he crushed it in his beefy fist. “Better get another…” He headed off toward the coolers lined up against the garden shed. Joleen watched him go, hoping he wouldn’t get too drunk before the day was over.

She turned her attention to the cake again and decided that it should not sit out here in this heat for one minute longer. Her mother’s Colonial Revival house had been built in 1923. But thirty years ago, when her father bought it, one of the first things he’d done to it was to put in central heat and air.

She grabbed herself a couple of big, strong cousins—a Tilly, from her father’s side and a DuFrayne, from her mother’s. “Pick up that cake table,” she told them. “And do it carefully.”

The cousins lifted the table.

“Okay, good. This way…” Joleen backed toward the kitchen door slowly, patting the air with outstretched hands and speaking to her cousins in soothing tones. “Watch it…careful…that’s right….” She opened the door for them and ushered them into the coolness of her mother’s kitchen. “Watch that step. Easy. Good.”

Once she’d closed the door behind them, she led them to the little section of wall on the far side of the breakfast nook. “Right here, out of the way. Just set it down easy.” The cousins put the table down.

Joleen let out a long, relieved sigh. “Perfect. Thank you, boys.”

“No problem,” said Burly, the DuFrayne cousin. His full name was Wilbur, but everyone had always called him Burly. “When’s this thing getting started, anyway?”

“Soon, real soon,” Joleen promised, thinking about Dekker again with a tightening in her tummy that was a little bit from irritation and a lot from worry.

Dekker had called yesterday afternoon and left a message on the machine at Joleen’s house. He said he wouldn’t make it for the rehearsal, after all, but that he’d be there in plenty of time for the wedding. Joleen wished she’d been home when he called. She would have gotten some specifics out of him—like a flight number and an arrival time, for starters.

And maybe even an idea of what the heck this particular trip was about, anyway. Dekker had told her nothing so far. The last time she’d actually spoken to him, early last Wednesday morning, he would only say that he was leaving for Los Angeles right away. He’d promised he’d be back in time for the rehearsal—which, as it turned out, he was not.

Joleen assumed it must be a business trip. A lot of his clients insisted on strict confidentiality, so that would account for his being so hush-hush about the whole thing. And sometimes, she knew, his job could be dangerous. Was this one of those times?

Joleen pushed that scary thought right out of her mind.

She’d tried more than once to reach him on his cell. And each time she did, she got a recorded voice telling her that the “customer” wasn’t available and offering her the chance to leave her name and number. She had left her name and number. But she’d never heard back.

“Joly, you are lookin’ strained,” said the Tilly cousin, whose name was Bud. “You okay?”

“Well, of course I am.” She arranged her face into what she hoped resembled a confident smile. “Help yourselves to a beer. There’s plenty. Outside in the coolers. And right there in the fridge, too.”

Bud and Burly turned for the refrigerator. Joleen went out the kitchen door again, into the blistering backyard.

Her aunt LeeAnne DuFrayne, Burly’s mama, was standing under one of the two patio ceiling fans, holding the front of her dress out at the neck so that the fan’s breeze could cool her a little. As Joleen went by, Aunt LeeAnne let go of her dress and caught Joleen’s arm.

“You have done a beautiful job here, hon.”

“You’re a sweetheart to say so, Aunt LeeAnne. Too bad it’s so darn hot.”

“You can’t control the weather, hon.”

“I know, I know.”

“The backyard looks festive. And Mesta Park is such a lovely area. I always admire it so every time I visit.”

Mesta Park lay in the heart of Oklahoma City, a charming old neighborhood with lots of classic prairie-style houses and graceful mature trees. Joleen’s mother had owned the house on Northwest Seventeenth Street since she herself had been a young bride.

Aunt LeeAnne patted Joleen’s arm. “I do think we ought to start the ceremony soon, though, don’t you?”

“Soon,” Joleen repeated. What else could she say?

Aunt LeeAnne stopped patting. She gripped Joleen’s arm and whispered in her ear, “I see that you invited the Atwoods.”

Joleen made a noise in the affirmative and flicked a quick glance toward the well-dressed couple standing by themselves near the punch table. Bobby Atwood, the couple’s only son, had died just six weeks ago, in a power-skiing accident on Lake Thunderbird. Pictures of the funeral service had dominated the local news. Atwood, after all, was an important name in the state of Oklahoma.

In spite of what had happened between herself and Bobby, the sight of his grieving parents at graveside had proved too much for Joleen. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from reaching out to them.

“You have a good heart, Joly,” whispered Aunt LeeAnne. “There aren’t many who would be so forgiving.”

“Well, it seemed like a nice gesture, to ask them if they’d like to come.”

Aunt LeeAnne made a small, sympathetic noise and patted Joleen’s arm some more.

Joleen added, “And I do want Sam to know his father’s parents.”

Sam. Just the thought of her little boy lightened Joleen’s mood. She looked for him, caught sight of him with her younger sister, thirteen-year-old Niki, about twenty feet away, near the tall white picket fence that surrounded her mother’s backyard on three sides. Niki, in a rose-red dress identical to Joleen’s, had agreed to watch Sam so that Joleen could handle all the details of running the wedding.

Sam had his daddy’s hair, thick and straight and sandy colored. As Joleen watched, he threw back that sandy head and let out his almost-a-baby laugh. At the sound of that laugh, Joleen’s heart seemed to get bigger inside her chest.

Then she noticed that Bobby’s father was staring right at her.

Robert Atwood quickly looked away. But not before she saw a lot more than she wanted to see in his cold, gray glance. Her little boy’s grandfather did not approve of her. And he was looking down his snooty nose at the members of her family.

The Atwoods moved in the best circles. They hung out with the governor and his pretty wife, attended all the most important political and social events in the city. Robert Atwood’s expression made it painfully clear that he found this small-scale backyard wedding to be tacky and totally beneath him.

And now he was staring at Sam. So was his wife, Antonia. The woman wore a look of longing so powerful it sent a chill down Joleen’s spine in spite of the heat.

I probably should have listened to Dekker, Joleen thought. Dekker—who’d better show up soon or they were going ahead without him—had warned her to stay away from Robert Atwood and his wife.

“Unless you’re after a little of the Atwood money,” he’d said. “Sam is entitled to some of that.”

“It is not the money, Dekker. Honestly. We’re gettin’ by all right.”

“Okay. Then forget the Atwoods. They have too much money and too much power and, given the kind of son they raised, I’d say they’re way too likely to abuse both.”

She had punched him playfully on the arm. “You are so cynical it scares me sometimes.”

“You ought to be scared of the Atwoods, of the trouble they’ll probably cause you if you tell them about Sam. I mean it. Take my advice and stay away from them.”

But she hadn’t taken her friend’s advice. Robert Atwood sold real estate on a grand scale. He dealt in shopping centers and medical complexes and skyscrapers with a thousand and one offices in them. She had called him at Atwood and Son Property Development.

At first, Bobby’s father had refused to see her or to believe that his precious son could have fathered a child he didn’t even know about. In the end, though, the hope that there might be something of Bobby left on the earth must have been too powerful to deny. He had called Joleen and asked if he and his wife might meet Sam. And as soon as they set eyes on her baby boy, they knew who his father had to be.

“Joly, hon…”

Joleen looked into her aunt’s flushed face and smiled. “Hmm?”

“I just have to say this. I have got a powerful feeling that we will be watching you take your walk down the aisle very soon now.” Aunt LeeAnne beamed up at her.

Joleen kept her smile. But it did get old sometimes.

Here’s to you, Joly. We all know it’s bound to be your turn next….

I just know you are going to meet someone so special….

I see a man in your future, hon. The right man this time….

Those she loved would not stop telling her that true love and happily-ever-after were coming her way.

Joleen fully understood why they did it. None of them could quite believe that she, the levelheaded one, the both-feet-firmly-on-the-ground one, had gone and fallen for a rich boy’s honeyed lies.

They felt sorry for her. They wanted the best for her.

And to them the best meant a good man to stand at her side, a husband to help her raise her child.

“I don’t think so, Aunt LeeAnne.”

“Well, you just think what you want. I am right about this and you will see that I am.”

Oh, please, Joleen thought. As if she even had time for love and romance at this point in her life. She had a toddler to raise and a business to run—not to mention a recently delinquent thirteen-year-old sister and a stunningly beautiful fifty-year-old widowed mother who somehow managed to fall in and out of love on what seemed like a weekly basis. DeDe might be off her hands after today, but Niki and her mother still counted on Joleen to be there whenever they needed her.

And really, Joleen didn’t mind being the one they counted on. She was happy. She honestly was. With her precious little son and her beloved if somewhat troublesome mama and sisters, with the beauty salon she and her mother operated together and with lots of loving family and good friends—including Dekker, who in the past few years had become her closest friend.

Dekker, who was now so late she doubted he would make it at all.

Nope. It would not be Joleen’s turn next. Not for a decade or so, at least. Maybe more than a decade. Maybe never. In any case, not “next.”

But she didn’t tell her aunt LeeAnne that. Instead, she hooked her arm around her aunt’s round shoulders and gave a loving squeeze. “Whatever you say.”

By three-thirty, Joleen decided they had waited long enough. She left the drooping guests behind beneath the pecan trees, entered the house and climbed the stairs to her mother’s big bedroom on the second floor, which today was serving as the bride’s dressing room.

DeDe, who looked absolutely breathtaking in floor-length white satin, came at her the minute Joleen appeared in the doorway. “Where is he? Is he here yet?”

Joleen shook her head.

“Oh, no.” DeDe stopped in midstride and caught her full lower lip between her small white teeth. “How’s Wayne holdin’ up?”

Wayne Thornton was DeDe’s groom. “Wayne is great. He’s down in the kitchen right now, hanging out with Bud and Burly.”

“He’s not mad?”

“Wayne? Are you kidding?” Wayne Thornton was a veterinarian. He was also about the calmest, most easygoing person Joleen had ever had the pleasure to meet. “I promise you, Wayne is fine. Waiting patiently, swapping jokes with Bud and Burly.”

“I want to see him.”

“Well, all right, I’ll just—”

“Wait. Stop right there.”

Joleen did as her sister commanded.

“What do you think you’re doing?” DeDe accused. “You know I can’t see him. It would be bad luck.”

Joleen lifted a shoulder in the tiniest of shrugs. Of course, she knew that. But if she’d been the one to say it, her sister would have insisted that Joleen run down-stairs that instant and come right back up with Wayne. Like Niki, DeDe had had some troubled times in the past. She’d settled down a lot in the last couple of years, but she hadn’t gotten rid of her stubborn streak, of a certain contrariness to her nature. Joleen never locked horns with her if she could avoid it. Locking horns with DeDe almost never paid off.

DeDe sighed. “I’m goin’ nuts.” She whirled in a rustle of satin, flounced to their mother’s big four-poster bed, turned and plunked herself down on the edge of it. “Where is Dekker?”

Joleen approached and sat beside her sister. She took DeDe’s hand. “Honey…”

DeDe yanked her hand away. “Don’t say it. He promised he would be here and we are gonna wait for him.”

“Honey, we have waited. For over an hour. You have to think of your guests. They are dyin’ out there.”

“Well, I can’t help it. It wouldn’t be right to start without Dekker. You know that it wouldn’t.”

Joleen had no quick comeback for that.

The problem was, in her heart, Joleen agreed with DeDe. It wouldn’t be right to start without Dekker.

Dekker Smith might not be blood to them, but he truly was family. His mama, Lorraine, had been their mama’s best friend. Lorraine was gone now, and Dekker hadn’t lived next door since he graduated high school, but he looked out for them all, especially in the past ten years, since Joleen’s father had died.

Dekker spent his holidays with them. He had been the one who taught both Joleen and DeDe how to drive. He could always be counted upon to show up with his toolbox when something needed fixing—not to mention to stand up for any female named Tilly any time things got rough. Two years ago, when DeDe had her little run-in with the law, Dekker had gone with Joleen to the police station to bail her out and he’d made sure she got the best lawyer around. Same thing with Niki, when she’d been in trouble last year. Dekker was right there, to help out.

He was family in the deepest way, and of course DeDe wanted him there to see her married.

But they couldn’t wait all day to start the wedding march. “DeDe, I think we are just going to have to go ahead.”

“But we can’t go ahead,” DeDe cried.

“Yes, we can. And you know that Dekker will understand. You know that he—”

“I won’t understand. Don’t you get it? I want Dekker to give me away.”

“Well, I know you do, but he is not here.”

DeDe glared. “Oh, you, Joly. Always so logical. I cannot stand to hear logic at a time like this.”

“Well, I am so sorry to be reasonable when you would rather not, but—”

DeDe cut her off by bursting into tears.

Joleen closed her eyes and silently counted to ten.

When she opened them again, she saw her mother, Camilla, hovering in the doorway to the hall. “What is it, baby? What has happened here?”

“Joly says we have to go ahead.” DeDe sobbed. “She says we can’t wait for Dekker.”

“Oh, now, honey…”

“I want him here, Mama. I want him to give me away.”

“Yes, and we all understand that.”

“It won’t seem right if he isn’t here.”

“Oh, I know, I know…”

DeDe let out a frustrated wail. The cry brought Camilla out of the doorway. She rushed across the room, slender arms outstretched. Joleen slid to the side and got out of the way. DeDe stood. Camilla gathered her close.

“Aw, baby,” Camilla cooed. “Now, you know you are going to ruin your face, carrying on like this. Now, you just settle down….”

But DeDe was not settling down.

And Camilla had started crying, too. Tears filled her huge brown eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Sobs constricted her long white throat. Joleen backed away a few more steps, as her middle sister and her mother held on to each other and wailed.

“Honey, honey,” Camilla cried. “Don’t you worry. It’s okay. We will wait. We will wait until Dekker gets here. We’ll wait forever, if we have to. Till the end of time, I swear it to you….”

There was a gasp from the doorway. Joleen looked over.

Niki. She had Sam perched on her hip—and her hazel eyes were already brimming. Sam had a teething biscuit stuck in his mouth. He sucked it steadily, not much disturbed by all the excitement on the other side of the room.

But then, why should he be disturbed? His grandmother and his aunts never hid their emotions. He was used to lots of crying and carrying on.

“Mama?” Niki gulped back a sob. “DeDe? What is going on?”

Her mother and middle sister only cried all the harder. Niki’s face started to crumple.

Joleen reached Niki’s side in three quick steps. “Before you start,” she warned, “give me my baby.”

“Here.” Niki held Sam out. He reached for Joleen automatically, gurgling, “Mama!” And then his biscuit-gooey little hands encircled her neck, his soft weight was on her arm and his sweet, slightly dusty smell filled her senses.

With a hard sob, Niki flew across the room. Camilla and DeDe enfolded her into their embrace. The three hugged and bawled, their arms around each other, a sniffling, tear-streaked huddle of satin and lace.

Joleen stood a few feet from the door, resolutely calm as always, holding her baby and watching her mother and sisters wail and moan, wondering how in the world she would manage to calm them all now.

“What is this, a wedding—or a wake?”

Joleen turned toward the sound of that deep, wry voice. It was Dekker, in the doorway. He had made it, after all.

Chapter 2

Relief washed through Joleen—and a sweet rush of affection, as well. She should probably be good and angry with him for being so late, but how could she be angry when she was so glad to see him? And he looked so handsome in the nice lightweight suit they had picked out together just for this occasion.

He also looked…easy within himself and relaxed. Something good must have happened out there in Los Angeles.

“You’re late,” she muttered.

He shrugged. “Air travel is not what it used to be. I sat at O’Hare for ten hours.”

“Your cell phone—”

“Needs recharging. Sorry. I tried to call you.”

“At my house?”

“Right. From a pay phone, this morning around eight.”

“I left at seven-thirty.”

“And I also called here. Twice. Got a busy signal both times.”

She wasn’t surprised. The house had been full of people all day and the phone had been in constant use.

“Dek!” Sam shouted. He let go of Joleen’s neck and reached for the man in the doorway.

“Whoa, big guy.” Dekker stepped up and took him.

About then, DeDe stopped sobbing long enough to glance across the room. “Dekker! You made it!”

The three Tilly women broke from their huddle and rushed for the door. Joleen got out of their way again. They surrounded Dekker and Sam, all of them talking at once.

“Where were you?”

“We’ve been waiting for hours….”

“We were so afraid you wouldn’t make it.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Is everything—”

He chuckled. “Everything’s fine. There was just a little matter of a long delay between flights. But I am here now.” He had Sam on one arm. He wrapped the other around DeDe, who looked up at him through shining eyes. “And I am ready to give away this gorgeous bride.”

Twenty minutes later, down in the backyard beneath the pecan trees, the wedding march began. A blessed breeze had actually come up, so it wasn’t quite as stifling as it had been for most of the day. The ceremony went off without a hitch. And when Wayne Thornton kissed his bride, everyone could see that this was a true, love match.

Joleen had had her reservations, when DeDe and Wayne first announced that they would marry. After all, DeDe was only twenty. It seemed young to Joleen.

But looking at the two of them as they repeated their vows, Joleen let go of her doubts. Wayne was a good, steady man. And DeDe adored him almost as much as he worshipped her. In the end, Joleen supposed, the two had as good a chance as any couple at lasting a lifetime side by side.

She was pouring more ginger ale into the punch bowl, feeling kind of misty-eyed and contented for the first time that day, when Dekker appeared at her side.

“What the hell are the Atwoods doing here?” He spoke low, for her ears alone.

She gave him her most determined smile and whispered back, “I invited them.”

“Damn it, Jo. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me, too—and would you go in and get me some more of this ginger ale?”

Midnight-blue eyes regarded her steadily. “I wish you had listened to me.”

“I did listen—then I did what I thought was right.” She waved the empty bottle at him. “Ginger ale? Please?”

Shaking his head, he turned for the back door.

The afternoon wore on.

Camilla, on something of an emotional roller coaster this special day when her middle baby was getting married, had a little too much sparkling wine and flirted blatantly with anyone willing to flirt back.

“You probably ought to say something to her, hon,” advised Aunt LeeAnne as Joleen was putting the finishing touches on the buffet.

Joleen shook her head and took the lid off a chafing dish. “My mother is a flirt. Always has been, always will be. I have enough to worry about without trying to fight a person’s nature.”

“When your father was still with us—”

“I know. All her flirting was for him then. She never looked at another man. But he’s been gone for so long now. And she is still very much alive. She will never stop lookin’ for the kind of love she had once.”

“So sad…” Aunt LeeAnne looked mournful.

Camilla’s musical laughter rang out as she pulled one of the groom’s uncles from a chair and made him dance with her.

“I don’t know,” said Joleen. “Seems to me that she’s having a pretty good time.”

Aunt LeeAnne picked up a toothpick and speared a meatball from the chafing dish. “Mmm. Delicious. What is that spice?”

“Cumin?”

“Could be—or maybe curry?”

“No. I don’t think there’s any curry in those meatballs.”

Aunt LeeAnne helped herself to a second meatball, then shrugged. “Well, I suppose you’re right about Camilla….”

Uncle Hubert Tilly staggered by, yet another beer clutched in his fist.

Aunt LeeAnne clucked her tongue. “Now, there is someone to worry about. He has been drinkin’ all afternoon, and in this heat…” Aunt LeeAnne frowned. “He looks peaked, don’t you think?”

“True,” said Joleen. “He does not look well.”

“Someone really should talk to him….” Aunt LeeAnne gazed at Joleen hopefully. Joleen refused to take the hint, so her aunt added with clear reluctance, “Someone of his own generation, I suppose.”

“Be my guest.”

So Aunt LeeAnne DuFrayne trotted off to try to convince Uncle Hubert Tilly that he’d had enough beer.

Uncle Hubert didn’t take the news well. “What?” he shouted, leaning against the trunk of the sweet gum in the southwest corner of the yard. “I’ve had enough? What’re you talkin’ about, LeeAnne? There ain’ no such thing as enough.”

Aunt LeeAnne tried to whisper something into his ear. He shrugged her off and stumbled away. Aunt LeeAnne pinched up her mouth for a minute, then shook her head and returned to the buffet table.

“Well, I guess you are right, Joly. There is no savin’ that man from himself.”

“You tried your best.” Joleen handed her aunt a plate. “Taste those buffalo wings. And the pasta primavera is pretty good, too.”

Aunt LeeAnne took the plate and began to load it with food.

Out of the corner of her eye, Joleen could see Robert Atwood, standing at the edge of the patio, Antonia, as always, close at his side. Robert wore a look of aloof disdain on his distinguished face as he watched Uncle Hubert’s unsteady progress toward the coolers lined up by the garden shed.

“Joly, is that pickled okra I see?”

Joleen turned her widest smile on another of her father’s brothers. “You bet it is, Uncle Stan. Help yourself.”

“I surely will.”

With the buffet all ready to go, Joleen went to check on the punch table again. The bowl needed filling. She took care of that. Then she went back inside to look for those little frilly toothpicks that everyone kept using up the minute she set them out.

She got stalled in the kitchen for several minutes. Burly had a traveling-salesman joke she just had to hear. Once he’d told it and she had finished laughing, she found the toothpicks and headed for the back door once more.

Outside again, she discovered that her mother was dancing with yet another of the guests from Wayne’s family. And Aunt LeeAnne whispered in her ear that Uncle Hubert had gone behind the garden shed to be sick.

Joleen suppressed a sigh. “I’ll go see to him.”

“I think that would be best. I’d do it, of course, but you saw what happened the last time I tried to give the poor man a hand.”

When Joleen got to the other side of the shed, she spotted two little DuFraynes and a small niece of Wayne’s peeking around the far end. Uncle Hubert sagged pitifully against the shed wall, his head stuck in among the dark pink blooms of a tall crape myrtle bush.

She dealt with the children first. “You kids go on now.”

The three stared for a moment, then began giggling.

“I mean it. Do not make me get your mamas.”

The giggling stopped. Three sets of wide eyes regarded her. Joleen put on a no-nonsense glare and made a sharp shooing gesture with the back of her hand.

The three vanished around the end of the shed, giggles erupting again as soon as they were out of sight. The giggles faded away.

Uncle Hubert groaned. And then his thick shoulders shook. Joleen swallowed and pressed her lips together as she heard splattering sounds behind the bush.

She waited until that attack of sickness had passed. Then she dared to move a few steps closer. “Uncle Hubert…”

Her uncle groaned. “Joly?”

“That’s right.”

“Go ’way.” He spoke into the crape myrtle bush.

Joleen edged a little closer. “Uncle Hubert, I want you to come in the house with me now.”

“I’m fine.” He groaned again. “Go ’way.”

“No. No, you listen. It’s too hot out here. You can lie down inside.”

“No.” He made a strangled sound. His shoulders shook again, but this time nothing seemed to be coming up.

Joleen waited, to make sure he was finished. Then, with slow care, she moved right up next to him. “Come on, now…” She laid a hand on his arm. “You just come on.”

“No!’ He jerked away, half stumbling, almost falling, bouncing with a muffled gonging sound against the metal wall of the garden shed. “Leave,” he growled. “Go…”

Joleen stepped back again, unwilling to give up but unsure how to convince him that he should come with her.

A hand clasped her shoulder.

Dekker. She knew it before she even turned to see him standing right behind her. She felt easier instantly. Between them they would manage. They always did.

“Need help?”

She nodded.

He raised a dark brow. “You want him in the house?”

She nodded again.

He stepped around her. “Hubert…”

“Ugh. Wha? Oh. Dek.”

“Right. Come on, man. Let’s go…”

“Ugh…”

“Yeah. You need to stretch out.”

“Uh-uh…”

Dekker took Uncle Hubert’s arm and wrapped it across his broad shoulder. Uncle Hubert moaned. He kept saying no and shaking his head. But he didn’t pull away. Slowly Dekker turned him around and got him moving.

Joleen went on ahead, warning the other guests out of the way, opening the back door, leading the way through the kitchen and into the hall. Uncle Hubert would probably be most comfortable upstairs in one of the bedrooms, but she didn’t know how far he’d be willing to let Dekker drag him. So she settled for the living room.

“Here,” she said, “on the couch.” She tossed away her mother’s favorite decorative pillows as she spoke, then spread an old afghan across the cushions. It would provide some protection if Uncle Hubert’s poor stomach decided to rebel again.

Dekker eased the other man down. Uncle Hubert fell onto his back with a long, low groan.

“Let’s get his shoes off,” said Dekker, already kneeling at Uncle Hubert’s feet. Before he had the second shoe off, Uncle Hubert was snoring. Dekker set the shoes, side by side, beneath the coffee table. “They’ll be right here whenever he needs them.”

Joleen stood over her uncle, shaking her head. “It seems like we ought to do something, doesn’t it? We shouldn’t let him go on hurting himself this way.”

Uncle Hubert had lost his wife, Thelma, six months ago. The heavy beer drinking had started not long after that.

“Give him time,” Dekker said. “He’ll work it out.”

“I hope he works it out soon. A man’s liver can only take so much.”

“He will,” Dekker said. “He’ll get through it.”

They were good words to hear, especially from Dekker, who had never been the most optimistic guy on the block. “You sound so certain.”

He winked at her. “I oughtta know, don’t you think?”

They shared a long look, one full of words they didn’t really need to say out loud.

Three years ago, Dekker’s wife, Stacey, had died. His mama, Lorraine, had passed away not long after. Dekker had done quite a bit of drinking himself in the months following those two sad events.

Dekker said, “Maybe you ought to start whipping up a few casseroles.”

It was a joke between them now, how Joleen had kept after him, dropping in at his place several times a week, pouring his booze down the drain and urging him to “talk out his pain.”

He wouldn’t talk. But she wouldn’t give up on him, either. She brought him casseroles to make sure he ate right and kept dragging him out to go bowling and to the movies. Good, nourishing food and a few social activities had made a difference.

It had also brought them closer. She was, after all, five years younger than Dekker. Five years, while they were growing up, had seemed like a lifetime. Almost as if they were of different generations.

But it didn’t seem that way anymore. Now they were equals.

They were best friends.

She said, “You still have not bothered to tell me why you thought you had to fly off to Los Angeles out of nowhere like that.”

“Later,” he said. “There’s a lot to tell and now is not the time.”

“Were you…in danger?”

“No.”

“Was it something for a client?”

“Jo. Please. Not now.”

On the couch, Hubert stiffened, snorted and then went on snoring even louder than before.

Dekker said, “I think we’ve done all we can for him at the moment.”

“Guess so. Might as well get back to the party. We’re probably out of frilly toothpicks again.”

Dekker grinned. “DeDe grabbed me a few minutes ago. Something about cutting the cake?”

“No. It’s too early. They’re still attacking the buffet table. But it is a little cooler now. Safe to get everything set up.”

“Safe?”

“That’s right. We can chance taking the cake back outside.”

“This sounds ominous.”

“A wedding can be a scary time.”

“Tell me about it.”

She took his big, blunt-fingered hand. “Come on.”

They left Uncle Hubert snoring on the couch and went out to the kitchen, where they enlisted Burly to help Dekker carry the cake back out to the patio.

Once the cake was in position for cutting, Joleen went looking for Niki and Sam. She found them on the front porch, building a castle out of Duplo blocks.

“Mama. Look.” Sam beamed her his biggest, proudest smile.

“Wonderful job, baby.” She asked Niki, “Did he eat anything yet?”

Niki nodded. “He had some corn. And that fruit dish—the one with the coconut? Oh, and he ate about five of those little meatballs.”

“Milk?”

“Yeah—and what’s with those Atwood people?”

What do you mean? Joleen wanted to demand. What did they do?

She held the questions back. Sam might be only eighteen months old, but you could never be sure of how much he understood. And she didn’t want Niki stirred up, either. She gestured with a toss of her head. Niki got up and followed her down to the other end of the long porch.

“What do you mean about the Atwoods?” Joleen kept her voice low and her tone even.

Niki shrugged. “I don’t know. They sure stare a lot.”

“Have they…bothered you?”

“I don’t know, Joly. Like I said, they just stare.”

“They haven’t spoken to you at all?”

“Well, yeah. Twice. They tried to talk to Sam, but you know how he is sometimes. He got shy, buried his head against my shoulder. Both times they gave up and walked away.”

So. They had tried to get to know their grandson a little and gotten nowhere. Joleen found herself feeling sorry for them again.

“No real problems, though?”

“Uh-uh. Just general creepiness.”

Joleen reached out, brushed a palm along her sister’s arm. “You’ve been great, taking care of Sam all day.”

“Yeah. Call me Wonder Girl.” Niki was good with Sam. She took her baby-sitting duties seriously. In fact, Niki was doing a lot better lately all the way around. She’d given them a real scare last year. But Joleen had begun to believe those problems were behind her now.

“Want a little break?”

“Sure—Can I get out of this dress?”

Joleen hid a smile. Rose-colored satin was hardly her little sister’s style. Niki liked black. Black hip-riding skinny jeans, equally skinny little black T-shirts, black Doc Martens. Sometimes, for variety, she’d wear navy blue or deep purple, but never anything bright. Certainly nothing rosy red.

“Go ahead and change,” said Joleen.

Niki beamed. “Thanks.”

They rejoined Sam at the other end of the porch. “Hey, big guy,” Joleen said. “I need some help.”

Sam loved to “help.” He considered “helping” to be anything that involved a lot of busyness on his part. Pulling his mother around by her thumb could be “helping,” or carrying items from one place to another.

Sam set down the red plastic block in his fist and leaned forward, going to his hands and knees. “I hep.” He rocked back to the balls of his feet and pushed himself to an upright position.

Joleen held out her arms.

He said something she couldn’t really make out, but she knew he meant he wanted to walk.

So she took his hand and walked him down the front steps and around to the backyard. When she spotted the Atwoods alone at a table on the far side of the patio, she led him over there.

Okay, they were snobs. And they made her a little nervous.

But it had to be awkward for them at this party. They didn’t really know a soul. Joleen had introduced them to her mother and a few of the guests when they first arrived. But they’d been on their own since then.

All right, maybe Robert Atwood had given her cold looks. Maybe he didn’t approve of her. So what?

She was going to get along with them if she could possibly manage it. They were Sammy’s grandparents and she would show them respect, give them a little of the slack they didn’t appear to be giving her.

And besides, who was to say she hadn’t read them all wrong? Maybe staring and glaring was just Robert Atwood’s way of coping with feeling like an outsider.

When she reached their table, Joleen scooped Sam up into her arms. “Well, how are you two holdin’ up?”

“We are fine,” said Robert.

“Yes,” Antonia agreed in that wispy little voice of hers, staring at Sam with misty eyes. “Just fine. Very nice.”

Joleen felt a tug of sympathy for the woman. A few weeks ago, when the Atwoods had finally agreed to come to her house and meet Sam, Antonia had shown her one of Bobby’s baby pictures. The resemblance to Sam was extraordinary.

What must it be like, to see their lost child every time they looked at Sam?

All the tender goodwill Joleen had felt toward them when she saw the newspaper photos of them at Bobby’s funeral came flooding back, filling her with new determination to do all in her power to see that they came to know their only grandson, that they found their rightful place in his life.

“Mind if Sam and I sit down a minute?”

“Please,” said Antonia, heartbreakingly eager, grabbing the chair on her right side and pulling it out.

Joleen put Sam in it. He sat back and laid his baby hands on the molded plastic arms. “I sit,” he declared with great pride.

Antonia made a small, adoring sound low in her throat.

Joleen took the other free chair at the table. As she scooped her satin skirt smooth beneath her, Robert Atwood spoke again.

“Ahem. Joleen. We really must be leaving soon.”

Protestations would have felt a little too phony, so Joleen replied, “Well, I am pleased that you could come and I hope you had a good time.”

Robert nodded, his face a cool mask. Antonia seemed too absorbed in watching Sam to make conversation.

Robert said, “I would like a few words with you, before we leave. In private.”

That got Antonia’s attention. A look of alarm crossed her delicate face. She actually stopped staring at Sam. “Robert, I don’t think it’s really the time to—”

“I do,” her husband interrupted, his voice flat. Final.

Antonia blinked. And said nothing more.

Joleen felt suspicious all over again—not to mention apprehensive. What was the man up to? She honestly wanted to meet these two halfway. But they—Robert, especially—made that so difficult.

She tried to keep her voice light. “Well, if you need to talk to me about something important, today is not the day, I’m afraid. I think I told you, this party is my doing. I’m the one who has to keep things moving along. There’s still the cake to cut. And the toasts to be made. Then there will be—”

“I think you could spare us a few minutes, don’t you? In the next hour or so?”

“No, I don’t think that I—”

“Joleen. It is only a few minutes. I know you can manage it.”

Joleen stared into those hard gray eyes. She found herself thinking of Bobby, understanding him a little better, maybe. Even forgiving him some for being so much less than the man she had dreamed him to be. Joleen doubted that Robert Atwood knew how to show love, how to teach a child the true meaning of right and wrong. He would communicate his will—and his sense that he and his were special, above the rules that regular folks had to live by. And his son would grow up as Bobby had. Charming and so handsome. Well dressed, well educated and well mannered. At first glance, a real “catch.” A man among men.

But inside, just emptiness. A lack where substance mattered the most.

“Joleen,” Bobby had said when she’d told him she was pregnant. “I have zero interest in being a father.” The statement had been cool and matter-of-fact, the same kind of tone he might have used to tell her that he didn’t feel up to eating Chinese that night. “If you are having a baby, I’m afraid you will be having it on your own.”

She’d been so shocked and hurt, she’d reacted on pure pride. “Fine,” she had cried. “Get out of my life. I don’t want to see you. Ever again.”

And Bobby had given her exactly what she’d asked for. He’d walked out of her life—and his unborn child’s—and never looked back.

She thought again of Dekker’s warnings.

Forget the Atwoods. They have too much money and too much power and given the kind of son they raised, I’d say they’re way too likely to abuse both….

She rose from her chair. “Come on, Sam. We’ve got to get busy here.”

Robert Atwood just wouldn’t give it up. “A few minutes. Please.”

Sam slid off the chair and grabbed her thumb. “We go. I hep.” He granted Antonia a shy little smile.

“Joleen,” Robert said, making a command out of the sound of her name.

Lord, give me strength, Joleen prayed to her maker. She reminded herself of her original goal here: to develop a reasonably friendly relationship with Sam’s daddy’s parents. “All right. Let me get through the cutting of the cake. And the toasts. Then we can talk.”

“Thank you.”

“But only for a few minutes.”

“I do understand.”

Joleen kept Sam with her, while DeDe and Wayne cut the cake and after, as the guests took turns proposing toasts to the happy couple. Then she handed Sam back to her sister, who was now clad comfortably in her favorite black jeans.

By then it was a little past seven, and growing dark. The breeze had kept up, and the temperature had dropped about ten degrees. It was the next thing to pleasant now, in the backyard. Joleen went around the side of the house and plugged in the paper lanterns that she and a couple of cousins had spent the day before stringing from tree to tree.

There were “oohs” and “aahs” and a smattering of applause as the glow of the lanterns lit up the deepening night. Joleen felt a glow of her own inside. She had done a good job for her sister. In spite of more than one near disaster, it was stacking up to be a fine wedding, after all.

Camilla had a decent stereo system in the house. And yesterday, after the lantern stringing, Joleen and her cousins had wired up extra speakers and set them out on the patio. So they had good, clear music for dancing. DeDe and Wayne were already swaying beneath the lanterns, held close in each other’s arms. So were Aunt LeeAnne and her husband, Uncle Foley, and a number of other couples as well—including Joleen’s mother. Camilla moved gracefully in the embrace of yet another middle-aged admirer.

“You did good, Jo.” Dekker had come up beside her.

“Thanks.”

“Welcome.” He was staring out at the backyard, his eyes on the dancers.

Joleen thought of Los Angeles again, wondered what had happened there. She was just about to make another effort at prying some information out of him when she remembered the Atwoods.

She supposed she’d better go looking for them.

Dekker sensed her shift in mood. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothin’. Much. I have to say goodbye to the Atwoods.”

His brows had drawn together. “I don’t like the way you said that. What’s going on?”

Teasingly, she bumped his arm with her elbow. “You are such a suspicious man.”

“When it comes to Robert Atwood, you bet I am. I don’t trust him.”

“I noticed. He wants a few minutes with me before they leave, that’s all.”

“A few minutes for what?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m sure he’s plannin’ to tell me. When he gets me alone.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Dekker. Chill.”

“‘When he gets you alone.’ What does that mean?”

“It means I am giving him five minutes. In Daddy’s study.”

“Why? I can tell by the way you’re hugging yourself and sighing that you don’t want to do that.”

“I want to make it work with them.”

“People do not always get what they want.”

“Dekker—”

He cut her off. “It’s pride, Joleen. You know it is. You’re ashamed that you had such bad judgment about Bobby. You want them to be different from him. But Jo, they raised him. You have to face that.”

“I was a fool with Bobby. This is different.”

“No. No, I don’t think it is.”

“You think I’m still a fool?”

He made a sound low in his throat. “Damn it, Jo…”

She stood on tiptoe and whispered to him. “It is only five minutes. Then they will leave and we can enjoy the rest of the party.”

“You are too damn trusting.”

She planted a quick kiss on his square jaw. “Gotta go.”

He was silent as she walked away from him, but she could feel his disapproval, like a chill wind on the warm night. She shrugged it off.

Dekker had seen way too much in his life. He’d been a detective with the OCPD before Stacey died. He’d quit the department during the tough time that followed. But before that he’d seen too many examples of the terrible things people can do to each other. Now he worked on his own as a private investigator, which gave him an ongoing opportunity to witness more of man’s inhumanity to man. Sometimes he saw trouble coming whether it was on the way or not.

Joleen put on a confident smile. She was going to do her best to make things work with the Atwoods. It was her duty, as the mother of their grandchild.

She could stand up just fine under Robert Atwood’s cold looks and demanding ways. What could he really do to her, after all? She held all the power, when it came to their relationship with Sam.

She would not abuse that power. But she wouldn’t let Robert Atwood walk all over her, either.

Joleen found the Atwoods waiting by the back door. They followed her into the kitchen and on to the central hall, where Uncle Hubert’s snoring could be clearly heard through the open door to the living room.

Joleen held up a hand. “Just one minute.”

The Atwoods stopped where they were, at the foot of the stairs. Joleen moved to the living room doorway. Uncle Herbert lay just as she and Dekker had left him two hours before, faceup on the couch, his stocking feet dangling a few inches from the floor. Gently she closed the door.

“This way.” She led Sam’s grandparents across the hall to the room her father had used as his study. She reached in and flicked the wall switch. Four tulip-shaped lamps in the small chandelier overhead bloomed into light.

The room was as it had always been. Samuel Tilly’s scarred oak desk with its gray swivel chair waited in front of the window. His old medical books and journals filled the tall bookcases on the inner wall. There was a worn couch and two comfy, faded easy chairs.

“Have a seat.” Joleen closed the door.

The Atwoods did not sit.

They stood in the center of the room, between the couch and her father’s desk. Robert looked more severe than ever. And Antonia, hovering in his shadow as always, looked nothing short of bleak—too pale, her thin brows drawn together. She had clasped her hands in front of her. The knuckles were dead white.

Joleen said, “Antonia? Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Fine. Just fine…”

“But you don’t look—”

Robert interrupted, “My wife says she is fine.”

“Well, I know, but—”

“Please. I have something of real importance to propose to you now. I’ll need your undivided attention.”

Joleen did not get it. Antonia looked positively stricken, and all her husband could think about was what he wanted to say? A sarcastic remark rose to her lips. She bit it back. “All right. What is it, Mr. Atwood?”

Robert cleared his throat. “Joleen, after the spectacle I have witnessed today, I find I cannot keep quiet any longer. I have come to a difficult but important decision. It is painfully obvious to me that my grandson cannot get the kind of upbringing he deserves while he is in your care. Antonia and I are prepared to take him off your hands. I’m willing to offer you five hundred thousand dollars to sign over custody of young Samuel to me.”

Chapter 3

Joleen forgot all about Antonia’s distress. She could feel her blood pressure rising. So much for trying to make it work with the Atwoods.

She spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I could not have heard you right. You did not just offer to buy my baby from me—did you?”

Antonia squeaked. There was no other word for it, for that small, desperate, anguished sound. She squeaked and then she just stood there, wringing her hands.

Robert, however, had no trouble forming words. “Buy your baby? What an absurd suggestion. Of course, I’m not offering to buy Samuel. What I am offering you is a chance. A chance to do the right thing. For your child. And for yourself, as well.”

“The right thing?” Joleen echoed in sheer disbelief. “To sell you my baby is the right thing?”

Robert waved a hand, a gesture clearly intended to erase her question as if it had never been. “I know that you have never attended college—except for a year, wasn’t it, at some local trade school?”

“Who told you that?”

“I have my sources. Now you will be able to finish your education. You’ll be able to do more with your life than run a beauty shop.”

“I happen to like running a beauty shop.”

He looked vaguely outraged, as if she had just told an insulting and rude lie. “Please.”

“It’s true. I love the work that I do.”

He refused to believe such a thing. “I am offering you a future, Joleen. You are a young, healthy woman. You will have other children. My son only had one. Antonia and I want a chance to bring that one child up properly.”

“Meaning I won’t bring Sam up properly.”

“My dear Joleen, you are twisting what I’ve said.”

“I am not twisting anything. I am laying it right on the line. You don’t think I will bring my son up right, so you want to buy him from me.”

“You are overdramatizing.”

Joleen, who, since the loss of her kind and steady father a decade before, had always been the calmest person in her family, found it took all of her will not to start shrieking—not to grab the brass paperweight on her father’s desk and toss it right in Robert Atwood’s smug face.

“My offer is a good one,” Robert Atwood said.

Joleen gaped at him. “I beg your pardon. It is never a good offer when you try to buy someone’s child.”

“Joleen—”

“And what is the matter with you, anyway? Your ‘offer’ is bad enough all by itself. But couldn’t you have waited a day or two? Did you have to come at me on my sister’s wedding day?”

“Please…” croaked Antonia. She looked as if she might cry.

Robert put his arm around her—to steady her or to silence her, Joleen wasn’t sure which. He held his proud white head high. “Once we’d made the decision, the sooner the better was the way it seemed to me. Might as well make our position clear. Might as well get you thinking along the right track.”

A number of furious epithets rose to Joleen’s lips. She did not utter a one of them—but she would, if this man went on saying these awful things much longer.

This conversation can only go downhill, she thought. Better to end it now.

“Mr. Atwood, I’m afraid if you stay very much longer, I will say some things that I’ll be sorry for. I would like you to leave now.”

Antonia made another of those squeaky little noises. Robert squeezed her shoulder and said to Joleen, “I want you to think about what I’ve said.”

I am not going to start yelling at this man, she told herself silently. She said, “I do not have to think about it. The answer is no. You cannot have my child. Not at any price.”

Robert Atwood stood even taller, if that was possible. “My dear, I would advise you not to speak without thinking.”

“Stop calling me that. I am not your dear.”

“Joleen, I am trying to make certain that you understand your position here.”

Joleen blinked. This had to be a nightmare, didn’t it? It could not be real. “My position?”

“Yes. You are an unwed mother.”

Unwed mother. The old-fashioned phrase hurt. It made her sound cheap—and irresponsible, too. Not to mention a little bit stupid. Someone who hadn’t had sense enough to get a ring on her finger before she let a man into her bed.

Maybe, she admitted to herself, it hurt because it was all too true. She had not been smart when it came to Bobby Atwood. Which seemed funny, at that moment. Funny in a sharp and painful way. A tight laugh escaped her.

“Don’t try to make light of this, Joleen.”

The urge to laugh vanished as quickly as it had come. “I promise you, Mr. Atwood. I am not makin’ light. Not in the least.”

“Good. For child care, you rely on your family members, and they are not the kind of people who should be caring for my grandson.”

Joleen thought of that paperweight again—of how good it would feel to grab it and let it fly. “You better watch yourself, insultin’ my family.”

Robert Atwood shrugged. “I am merely stating facts. Your mother, from what I understand, and from what I witnessed today, is sexually promiscuous. Your younger sister has been in serious trouble at school and was arrested last year in a shoplifting incident. Your other sister has had some problems with the law, as well. None of those three—your mother or those sisters of yours, are the kind I would trust around my grandson. If it comes down to it, I will have little trouble convincing a judge that females like that aren’t fit caregivers for Samuel, that he would be much better off with Antonia and me.”

Joleen couldn’t help it. She raised her voice. “‘Females like that’?” she cried. “Just who do you think you are, to call my family females like that?”

“You are shouting,” said Robert Atwood.

“You’re darn right I am. I was warned about you and I should have listened. But I didn’t, and look what has happened.”

“Joleen—”

“That is all. That is it. You won’t get my baby, don’t think that you will. And I want you out of my mother’s house.”

Right then the door to the front hall swung inward. It was Dekker, all six foot three and 220, or so, very muscular pounds of him. “Joleen. Everything okay?”

The sight of her dear friend calmed her—at least a little. She said quietly, “Everything’s fine. The Atwoods were just leaving.”

“You’ll be hearing from my attorney,” Robert Atwood said.

“Fine. Just go. Now.”

Apparently, he’d said all he came to say. At last. With great dignity he guided his wife toward the door.

Which Dekker was blocking. “What’s this about a lawyer?” he demanded.

Robert Atwood spoke to Joleen. “Tell this thug to step out of my way.”

Joleen longed to tell Dekker just the opposite—to ask him if he would please break both of the Atwoods in two. But, no. It wouldn’t be right to kill the Atwoods. Not on DeDe’s wedding day, anyway.

“It’s okay, Dekker. Let them go.”

Dekker, who had a fair idea of what had been going on in Samuel’s study, stepped aside reluctantly. The Atwoods left the room. He followed them, just to make certain they got the hell out.

Once they went through the front door, he shut it firmly behind them. Then he returned to Joleen.

She was standing by her father’s desk, a pretty woman in a long dress that was not quite pink and not quite red. Her heart-shaped face was flushed, her full mouth tight. A frown had etched itself between those big brown DuFrayne eyes.

Dekker quietly closed the door.

Her mouth loosened enough to quiver a little. “Please don’t say ‘I told you so.’”

Just to make sure he had it figured out, he said, “They want to take Sam away from you.”

He hoped that maybe she would tell him it wasn’t so. But she didn’t. She picked up a brass paperweight of a Yankee soldier on a rearing horse from the edge of Samuel’s desk. “I thought about smashing Robert Atwood in the face with this.”

Dekker shook his head. “Bad idea. And, anyway, violence is not your style.”

“Right now I feel like it could be. I feel like I could do murder and never think twice.”

“You couldn’t.”

She clutched the brass figure against her body and looked at him with fury in her eyes. “He called my mother promiscuous, Dekker. He said Mama and DeDe and Niki weren’t fit to take care of Sam. He raised a shallow, sweet-talkin’ lowlife like Bobby—God forgive me for speakin’ ill of the dead—and he has the nerve to come in my mother’s house and say that my people are not good enough to do right by my child, that I am not good enough, that—”

In two long strides, he was at her side.

She looked at him with a kind of bewildered surprise—that he had moved so fast, or maybe that, in moving, he had distracted her from her rage. “What?”

“Better give me that.”

She only gripped the paperweight tighter. “He offered me money, Dekker. Money for my baby. Five hundred thousand dollars to let them have Sam.”

Dekker swore. “I’m sorry, Jo. You shouldn’t have had to listen to garbage like that.” He put his hand over hers. “Come on. Put this thing down….”

She allowed him to pry her fingers open. He set the paperweight back in its place on the desk. Then he took her by the shoulders.

“What else?” he asked, when she finally met his eyes.

She swallowed, shook her head as if to clear it of so much hot, hurtful rage. “When I…when I told him no, that I wouldn’t take his money and he could not have my child, he started talkin’ lawsuits, how he would not have any trouble convincing a judge that Sam would be better off living with him and Antonia.”

Predictable, thought Dekker. He said, “Anything more?”

Those big eyes narrowed. “He knew. About how Niki got picked up for shoplifting last year. And he seemed to know about DeDe, about her little joyride in that stolen car.”

In fact, it was one of Niki’s friends from the bad-news crowd she’d been hanging around who’d actually tried to walk out of the department store with a cashmere sweater under her coat. But Niki had been there. She had known of the attempted theft and done nothing to stop it. And before that, there had been a series of incidents at school, bad grades and detentions, minor vandalism of school property and truancies, too.

As for DeDe, between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, she had been a true wild child. She went out with bad boys, she drank, she experimented with drugs. She’d ended up before a judge after the incident with the car, when she’d hitched a ride with a boy she hardly knew. The boy had shared his bottle of tequila with her and taken her down I-35 at a hundred miles an hour.

She’d gotten off easy, because it was her first arrest and because she hadn’t known that the car was stolen and because, by some miracle, the judge had believed her when she swore she hadn’t known. But she’d come very close to doing some time. After that, she’d cleaned up her act.

The problem with Niki and DeDe, the way Dekker saw it, was losing their father—and not getting enough attention and supervision from their mother. Camilla loved her girls with all her heart, but she’d been sunk in desperate grief for the first year or two after Samuel’s death. And since then she was often distracted by all the boyfriends. She also worked long hours at the salon that she and Joleen now operated together.

Joleen had done her best to pick up the slack, to be there for her sisters, to offer attention and to provide discipline. She’d taken a lot of flack from both DeDe and Niki for her pains. They’d acted out their resentments on her; they’d fought her every time she tried to rein them in.

But recently things had started looking up. Niki had left the bad crowd behind. She took school seriously, was getting As and Bs rather than Ds and Fs. And DeDe had really settled down, as well. Joleen had dared to let herself think that the worst part of raising her own sisters was behind her.

Not that the reform of the Tilly girls would matter one damn bit to a self-righteous bastard like Robert Atwood.

“Oh, I cannot believe this is happening.” Joleen pulled away from Dekker’s grip and sank to one of the faded easy chairs. For a moment, she stared down at her lap, slim shoulders drooping. Then she pulled herself up straight again. “When I asked him how he knew those things about my sisters and my mother, he said he had his sources. Dekker, that man has had someone snooping around in our lives.” She said it as if it were some sort of surprise. “Why, I would not put it past him to have hired someone, some private detective…”

“You mean someone like me?”

She let out a small, guilty-sounding groan. “Oh, Dekker, no. I didn’t mean it that way….”

“It’s okay. I did. I’m damn good at what I do. When I dig up the dirt on someone for a client, I get it all. I’m sure whoever Robert Atwood hired has done the same.”

She put up a hand to swipe a shiny golden-brown curl back from her forehead. “Dekker, it won’t work, will it? He couldn’t get Sam by claiming that my mother and sisters are unfit. Could he?”

Dekker wished he didn’t have to answer that one.

Joleen picked up his reluctance. “You think it could work, don’t you?” Her shoulders drooped again. “Oh, God…”

He dropped to a crouch at her feet. “Look. I’m only saying it might work. Your sisters and your mother all pitch in, to take care of Sam when you can’t.”

“So? Good child care costs plenty. If I had to hire someone, I couldn’t come close to affording the kind of care I can get from my family for free.” She leaned toward him in the chair, intent on convincing him of how right she was—though somewhere in the back of her mind, she had to realize she was preaching to the choir. “They are good with him, Dekker, you know that they are. And as for Niki and DeDe, it’s been a long time since there’s been any trouble from either of them. And Mama—well, all right. She likes men and she loves to go out. Is that a crime? I don’t know all her secrets, but I know she is not having affairs with all of them. She is no bed hopper. She loves the romance of it, that’s all. She loves getting flowers and going dancing. But then, after way too little time with each guy, she can’t pretend anymore. She admits to herself that the latest man is not my father. So she moves on to the next one—and what in the world does that have to do with how she is with Sam?”

“It’s got nothing to do with how she is with Sam. The truth is, Camilla is a fine grandma. You know it and I know it. But I’m trying to get you to see that it’s not the truth that matters here.”

She blinked. “Not the truth?”

“No, Jo,” he said patiently. “It’s the way things look. The way Robert Atwood and the lawyers he gets will make things look. It’s appearances. A war of words and insinuations. Atwood’s lawyers will take what your sisters have actually done and make it look a hundred times worse. They’ll leave out any extenuating circumstances, minimize things like recent good behavior. It will be their job to make it appear that DeDe and Nicole are a pair of hardened criminals. And they’ll make your mama look like some kind of—”

Joleen put up a hand. “Don’t say it, okay? She’s not. You know she’s not.”

“That’s right. I know. But my opinion doesn’t count for squat here. You have to come to grips with that.”

She just didn’t want to get it. So she launched into a renewed defense of Camilla and the girls. “They’re great with Sam, Dekker. All three of them. He is nuts about them, and they take wonderful care of him. They—”

“Joleen. Listen. The point is not what good care they take of Sam. The point is, what is a judge going to think?” He caught her hands, chafed them between his own. “If the Atwoods hired me to work up a negative report on Camilla and your sisters, I could get enough together to make them look pretty bad.”

She swallowed again and tugged her hands free of his. “Oh, I hate this.”

Should he have left it at that? Maybe. But he had to be sure she understood the true dimensions of the problem. “Jo.”

She made a small, unwilling noise in her throat.

He laid it on her. “There’s also the little problem of Robert Atwood’s influence in this town. He has power, Joleen. Lots of it. You have to face that. He’s contributed to a hell of a lot of big-time political causes and campaigns, and he has supported the careers of a number of local judges.”

“What are you tellin’ me? That some judge is going to give my little boy to the Atwoods as payback on some political favor?”

“It could be a factor.”

“Well, that’s just plain wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter that it’s wrong.”

“But—”

“I keep trying to make you see. Right and wrong are not the issues here. It’s money, Joleen. Money and power. You can’t underestimate what big bucks and heavy-duty influence can do.”

She swiped that cute brown curl off her forehead again. “Oh, why didn’t I listen to you? I never should have called him. I never should have—”

“But you did. And even though I thought it was a bad idea, I do know that you did it for the right reasons. For Sam’s sake. And to give the Atwoods a chance to know their grandson.”

“It was also pride, Dekker,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve got…a problem with pride. I want to do right. I want to do right so bad, I get pigheaded about it. And I, well, it’s exactly what you said earlier. I’m ashamed. I was supposed to be the one with both of my feet on the ground in this family. But look at me…”

He couldn’t help reaching out and running a finger along her soft cheek. “You look just fine.”

She caught his hand, squeezed it, let it go. “You know what I mean. I ended up with a baby and no husband, got myself ‘in trouble,’ made the oldest mistake in the book. So when I called Robert Atwood, I was hopin’…to make up for that, somehow. To be bigger than the mess I got myself into. To get past my own bad judgment in falling for Bobby by reachin’ out to his folks in their hour of need. It was pride, Dekker. You were right. Just plain old pigheaded pride.”

“And now it’s over and done with. You need to let it go and move on.”

“How can I let it go when I am so furious at myself?”

“Look at it this way. It’s very likely, even if you hadn’t told them they had a grandson, that the Atwoods would have found out about Sam eventually. We may not travel in their circles. But word does get around.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah.” He rose to stand above her. “Now. Are you finished giving yourself hell?”

She blew out a long breath. “Oh, I guess.”

“Then we can start thinking about what to do, about how to fight what they’re going to be throwing at you. The main attack is going to be on the fitness of your child care, the way it looks now.”

She stared up at him. “What are you telling me?”

“I think you know.”

For an endless few moments, neither of them spoke. Noises from outside the study rose up to fill the quiet—a woman’s laughter beyond the high leaded-glass window that looked out on the side of the house, the music on Camilla’s stereo, something slow and bluesy and sweet.

“All right,” Joleen said at last. “I’ll find someone else to watch Sam when I’m working. It will be tight, but I’ll manage it.”

“Good.”

“And then somehow I will have to tell my mama and my sisters why they are suddenly not to be trusted with the little boy they all adore.”

“You don’t have to tell them anything tonight. You’ve got a little time to think it over. You’ll come up with a good approach.”

“It doesn’t matter what approach I take, there will be hurt feelings. There will be cryin’ and carryin’ on—and then I’ve got to get a good lawyer, right?”

“Yes. But don’t worry there. I’ll find you the right man.”

“And then I have to pay the lawyer. Oh, what a mess. There is no way around it. This is going to cost a bundle.”

Dekker knew that Joleen made an okay living, working with her mother. She supported herself and Sam and she did a decent job of it. He also knew that there wasn’t much left over once all the bills were paid. Quality child care and a good lawyer would stretch her budget way past the breaking point.

But it was okay. Money, after what had happened in Los Angeles, would be the least of their problems. Dekker wanted to tell her as much. However, that would only get her started asking questions about L.A.

Right now, they had a limited amount of time before someone would be knocking on the study door, demanding that Joleen get out there and deal with some other minor crisis. When he told her about L.A., he didn’t want to be interrupted.

“Don’t look so miserable,” he said. “We’re just getting it all out there, so we can see what we have to deal with.”

“I know.” But she didn’t know. He could see by her worried frown that the money problem was really bothering her.

He strove to ease her fears without saying too much. “The money issue can be handled.”

“I don’t see how.” She looked down at her lap and shook her head.

“Jo, I’ll help out. The bills will get paid.”

“Oh, no.” She glanced up then, her frown deeper than before. “You work hard for your money. And we both know you don’t have much more of it than I do.”

Joleen was right—or she would have been right, as of a few days ago. Before the trip to Southern California, Dekker would have had to rob a bank to be of much use to her financially. He’d gone into something of a downward spiral, right after his wife, Stacey, died. He’d quit his job and sold his house. He had not worked for several months while grief and guilt did their best to eat him alive. With Joleen’s help, he’d pulled himself out of it. But by that time he didn’t have a whole hell of a lot left.

For almost two years now he had operated a one-man detective agency in a one-room office over a coin laundry downtown. It paid the rent and put food on the table, but that was about it.

Or it had been. Until he’d flown to L.A. and learned that he had money to burn. He was a rich man now, and he had every intention of spending whatever it took to help Joleen fight the SOB who thought he could take her child away.

“I have a few extra resources,” he said. “I mean it. Don’t worry about money.”

“Dekker. You are not listening.”

“No. You’re the one who’s not listening.”

“I couldn’t take money from you.”

“Sure you could—for Sam’s sake.”

“No. It wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t live with myself if I—”

Someone knocked on the door. “Joly?” It was DeDe’s voice. “Joly, are you in there?”

Joleen glanced toward the sound and sighed.

Dekker said softly, “It’s all right. We’ll talk more. Later. After the party’s over and everyone’s gone home.”

“You know that’s going to be good and late.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be available.”

“Thank you,” she said. Even if he hadn’t been a brand-new multimillionaire, the look she gave him then would have made him feel like one.

“Joly?” DeDe knocked again.

Joleen pushed herself from the chair and smoothed out her skirt. “Come on in.”

The door swung inward and DeDe demanded, “What are you doing in here? I have been looking all over for you.”

“Well, you have found me.”

DeDe glanced from her sister to Dekker, then back to Joleen again. “What’s going on?”

Dekker laughed. “None of your business. What do you need?”

DeDe wrinkled her nose. “Oh, it’s Uncle Stan. He wants some special coffee.” In the Tilly and DuFrayne families, special coffee was coffee dosed with Irish Cream and Grand Marnier.

“And?” Joleen prompted.

“I can’t find the Bailey’s.”

“Did you look in the—”

DeDe groaned. “I looked everywhere. Would you just come and find it?”

“Sure.”

“And it’s almost eight. I think I should throw the bouquet pretty soon.”

“Good idea.”

“I want you to stand about ten feet, in a direct line, behind me when I do it. Understand?”

“DeDe.” Joleen looked weary. “The whole idea with the bouquet is that everyone is supposed to get a fair chance at it.”

“Too bad. It’s my wedding. And my big sister is catchin’ my bouquet.”

Chapter 4

Joleen did catch the bouquet.

It wasn’t as if she had a choice in the matter. DeDe, after all, had made up her mind that Joleen would be getting it. And there was just no sense fighting DeDe once she’d made up her mind.

Cousin Callie Tilly, one of Uncle Stan’s daughters, who worked at a bank and had just hit the big three-oh with no prospective husband in sight, was a little put out at the way DeDe went and tossed those flowers at the exact spot where Joleen stood. Callie grumbled that she was older than Joleen and she needed that bouquet more.

But her own father told her to quit whining and have herself a little special coffee. Which cousin Callie did. And then one of Wayne’s friends, a handsome cowboy in dress jeans and fancy tooled boots, asked Callie if she would care to dance. Her attitude improved considerably after that.

Joleen put Sam to bed upstairs in her old room at a little after nine o’clock. When she went back outside, she did some dancing herself. She danced with Uncle Stan and Bud and Burly. And with another friend of Wayne’s, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow who ran an oyster bar in Tulsa. He told her she had beautiful eyes and that she knew how to follow. He claimed there were way too many women who tried to lead when they danced. Joleen smiled sweetly up at him and wondered if he was casting some kind of aspersion on modern women as a whole.

Then she decided she was just too suspicious. A guy called her a good dancer and she started thinking of ways to take it as an offense.

But then again, after what had happened with Bobby Atwood two years ago and with Bobby’s father just this evening, well, was it any wonder she had trouble trusting men?

After the oyster bar owner from Tulsa, she danced with Dekker. Thank God for Dekker. Now there was a man that a woman could trust. She was so very fortunate to have a friend like him, who came straight to her aid anytime things got tough.

Of course, she would never take the money he insisted he would give her. But it meant the world, that he would offer—and that he always came through for her and her mama and her sisters, too.

Anytime any one of them needed him, he was there.

And did she ever need him now. She needed his clear mind and his steely nerves—not to mention all he knew from being first a cop and now a private investigator. Dekker saw all the angles. Yes, he was way too cynical—but right now she needed someone who looked at the world through wide-open eyes. Someone to show her how to fight Bobby’s father at his own game.

Joleen closed her eyes and laid her head on Dekker’s broad shoulder.

“It’s going to be all right, Jo,” he whispered against her hair.

Something in his tone alerted her. She lifted her head and looked up at him. “You’ve thought of what to do. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Could be.”

She couldn’t read his expression. “What are you thinking?”

“Later.” He guided her head back to rest on his shoulder. “After everyone’s gone home. We’ll talk about it then. About all of it….”

At eleven DeDe and Wayne took off for Wayne’s house. They’d spend their wedding night there and then leave in the morning for a twelve-day honeymoon at a two-hundred-year-old inn on the Mississippi shore.

Wayne’s new peacock-green SUV had been properly adorned for the occasion, with Just Married scrawled in shaving cream across the rear window, Here Comes the Bride on the windshield and tin cans hooked to the rear bumper by lengths of thick string.

Joleen had the bird seed ready, wrapped in little rose-colored satin squares and tied with white bows. She passed it around and DeDe and Wayne ducked through a rain of it as they raced for the car. Then everyone stood on the sidewalk beneath the Victorian-style lamps that lined all the streets of Mesta Park, waving and calling out last-minute advice.

“Good luck!”

“Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!”

“But if you do, take pictures!”

Wayne revved the engine and pulled away from the curb. The handsome SUV rolled off into the night, tin cans rattling behind.

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