She realized that he was shepherding her toward his truck. “Outside of town a few miles.”
“No way.”
“You’d rather talk here?” he asked, stopping short on the sidewalk where two kids rode their bikes past a row of parking meters and half-a-dozen cars and trucks were pulling away from or easing up to the curbs. Several curious glances were cast in their direction.
One man wearing aviator sunglasses and an Oilers cap pulled low over his eyes stared with undisguised interest from the open window of his flatbed truck.
Shelby felt suddenly as out-of-place as she looked.
“People do recognize you, you know,” Nevada warned.
“Oh, I know.” She hesitated only a second. “Let me take my car, okay?”
He dropped her elbow. “Follow me.”
She didn’t need any further incentive. As the guy in the flatbed shot a stream of tobacco juice onto the pavement, Shelby hurried to the rented Caddy and unlocked the door. The interior was blistering. Cranking the air-conditioning to high, she rolled down her window, then pulled a U turn. As Nevada’s old truck eased away from the curb, she tucked in behind him.
Right on his tail and swearing under her breath, she donned her sunglasses again.
This is insane,
she told herself. What do you think you’re doing, going to Nevada’s place, for crying out loud? Teeth clenched, she followed him through town and west into the open hill country, where the air-conditioning finally kicked in.
The surrounding ranch land was guarded by barbed wire, and sumac trees vied with the live oaks. Herds of goats, sheep and cattle roamed the dry, dusty acres grazing on sparse grass and weeds. Miles flew by. Past a dry gulch where there had once been a stream, Nevada turned his pickup into a thicket of live oaks, where a lane of gravel and potholes led to the heart of his ranch.
The Caddy bounced over weeds that grew between the twin ruts and scraped the underside of her car.
“Great,” Shelby muttered under her breath, her hands clenched over the wheel.
So this was where Nevada had ended up.
A scrap of a ranch with a cabin that defied the definition of rustic and a few hundred fenced, dry acres. A smattering of longhorns ambled through the fields and a few horses sporting dusty hides tried to graze while their tails switched at the ever-present flies.
Not exactly heaven on earth.
She ground the Cadillac to a stop by a small pump house and rammed the car into park. While the dust from her car was still settling and before her confidence could flag, she dragged her briefcase with her and climbed out of the car.
Nevada was waiting for her.
So was the dog. He started barking his fool head off.
Nevada leveled his shaded eyes in the animal’s direction. “Crockett, hush ! It’s all right.” The mutt of a dog stood, legs apart, the hairs at the scruff of his neck bristling, his teeth flashing as he growled low in the back of his throat. “Enoughl” The snarling abated, but dark, suspicious eyes didn’t leave Shelby. Every muscle beneath his rough black-and-white coat was still stiff and taut, ready should he be given the command to spring. “I mean it,” Nevada warned, then reached down and scratched the dog behind his ears. “Come on in,” he said, opening a screen door. The mesh had been patched and the paint was beginning to peel.
Shelby walked into a house that wasn’t any cooler than outside. The furniture was worn and tossed haphazardly around a rag rug that covered a linoleum floor. Nothing matched. Everything was secondhand. If Nevada Smith had a dime to his name, it wasn’t invested in creature comforts. A few magazines were strewn across a coffee table that had seen better days but didn’t have enough class to be called retro.
He walked her past a postage stamp of a kitchen and through a back door. The porch was shaded, enclosed with screens and gratefully cooler by at least ten degrees. A faded Burma-Shave sign that had to be over seventy years old was tacked to the siding on one side of the door, and next to it a thermometer, starting to rust, registered a sweltering ninety-three degrees.
. “Sit,” he suggested, and she slid into a plastic chair near a small table. “Iced tea?”
“You got?” She was surprised. She really didn’t want any bit of hospitality from him, but her throat was parched and she was as nervous as a bumblebee landing on a Venus flytrap.
“I can make it. Instant.”
“Fine.”
He disappeared inside and Shelby had a chance to scan the backyard, where scattered patches of dry grass surrounded a horseshoe pit and a stone barbecue that was beginning to crumble. A clothesline stretched from a comer of the house to a pole in the yard. Beyond the fence a couple of horses, coats gleaming in the sun, were drinking from a cement watering trough. The screen door creaked, the old dog thumped his tail and Nevada emerged from the kitchen. He carried two mismatched glasses filled with ice and a cloudy amber liquid that she doubted most people would consider any relation to tea.
He handed her a glass. “Now, you were telling me about your baby.” Expression unforgiving, he settled into a chair and rested the worn heel of his boot on the top of a barrel near the door.
“Our
daughter.”
Shelby’s shoulders stiffened a fraction. She wasn’t going to be intimidated and plowed on. “That’s right, Nevada. As I said, I thought she was dead.”
“Weren’t you there—didn’t you see her delivered?”
“I ... I was medicated.”
“Hell.” He tossed her a look that said volumes, then rotated his wrist quickly, indicating that she should continue.
Shelby cleared her throat. “I have copies of a birth certificate and a death certificate.”
“Who gave ’em to you?”
“I got both signed by Doc Pritchart at the hospital.”
“The guy’s a crook.”
“The guy’s missing,” she replied, then took a sip from her tea. Condensation dripped down the sides of the glass.
“He left town not long after you did.”
“Figures.” Fishing in her briefcase, she found the manila packet that had changed her life. “Take a look at these,” she said, handing him the file and wondering why she was making the mistake of letting him look over the documents, letter and picture of Elizabeth Jasmine Cole, the name she’d given her daughter.
“You never saw the baby?” His voice held no inflection, but a muscle worked near the corner of his jaw.
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, I was drugged, not conscious when the baby arrived.” Tears of outrage stung the back of her eyelids, but she refused to break down. She didn’t have time for self-pity. Not now.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re saying that there was some kind of conspiracy against you, that—what? Doc Pritchart slipped something into your IV?”
“No ... I don’t think so. I mean ...” She didn’t want to go into the details and slid her jaw to one side. “I was stupid, all right? I went horseback riding in my eighth month, took a spill and the baby decided to come early.” She looked away to the haze gathering over the low hills and a solitary hawk circling over a cropping of mesquite. No reason to explain about the pain, the fear, the river of blood that had scared her to death. He didn’t need to know about the ambulance ride that her father hushed up or the fact that Doc Pritchart had smelled of alcohol, or the simple truth that for ten years she’d felt as guilty as sin for the death of her child.
“When I woke up, everyone told me that the baby was dead, and my father, who was still my legal guardian as I was underage, had ordered the autopsy and cremation.”
“And you didn’t question it?”
“I was seventeen.” Turning, she pinned him in her furious glare. “I didn’t think he’d lie.”
“That was your first mistake.”
“Not my first.” Frost chilled each one of her words, and she noticed the muscles at the baae of his neck constrict. “I seem to have made more than my share back then.”
“Didn’t we all?”
Her heart twisted, but she hid it. She’d come to tell him the truth and having done that, there wasn’t a lot more to say.
He studied the glossy picture in his hands as if looking for some kind of evidence that the child was his. “Have you talked to the Judge?”
“You bet.”
“And?”
“He denies it all.”
“But you don’t believe him.”
“Not for a second.”
“You’re learning.”
“Let’s hope so.” She finished her drink in one swallow and set her empty glass on the table. “I’ve grown up a lot since this all happened.” Standing, she reached for the snapshot and papers.
“Who sent these to you?” He took one last look at the smiling girl in the photograph, then slid the photograph and other papers into the envelope.
“That’s why I’m here. To find out.”
Eyebrows coming together thoughtfully, he flipped the packet over and eyed the postmark. “San Antonio.”
“Yep. Not far from here.”
He slapped the envelope into her waiting palm.
“So I can’t help but wonder if she’s around Bad Luck ... if by any chance Elizabeth grew up here or in the next town, or on some ranch in the country, or if the postmark was a deliberate red herring meant to bring me back here when really she’s in California or Mexico or Quebec or God only knows where....” The painful old lump filled her throat again, the same thickness she’d felt throughout the years when she’d thought of the daughter she’d lost. But falling apart now would solve nothing. She slipped the envelope into a side pocket of her briefcase.
“You gonna talk to the police?” He stared up at her from his insolent position in the chair, but, she guessed, despite his outwardly calm demeanor, he was turning every piece of this new information over in his mind.
“The police? I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just received the envelope yesterday. Who would I contact? The San Antonio police? The Sheriff’s Department? The Rangers?” Her headache throbbed as she thought about it. “No ... I think I’ll handle this on my own right now. I don’t want the press involved until I do some checking on my own. I only told you because I ran into you.”
“Surprised you did.”
“Why?”
One arrogant eyebrow raised. “I really didn’t think you had the guts.”
“Then you don’t know me very well, do you?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned his chair back against the weathered siding beneath the porch light and gave her the slow once-over. Down. Up. His gaze finally ended up where it began, at her eyes. “I know you well enough.”
“Did, Smith. Did. I was just a kid then.”
“A pretty nice kid, if I remember right.”
“I was certainly naive,” she said, refusing to be seduced by his words, “and probably stupid.”
He stood and rubbed the stubble of his chin. “You didn’t waste much time gettin’ here.”
“Nine years. Long enough.” She picked up her briefcase as if to leave.
“You stayin’ with your pa?”
She hesitated. “Don’t know.”
“Call me when you make a decision.”
Her spine stiffened and she glared at him through her dark lenses. “Why?”
“I’d like to keep in touch.”
“I don’t think that would be such a hot idea. Really.”
“Well, I don’t see how it can be avoided.”
“The town isn’t that small.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. You just breezed into Bad Luck and dropped a bomb at my feet—told me I might have a kid somewhere. If that’s true—”
“It is,” she said vehemently, feeling her cheeks burn.
“If that’s true, then I’d say I have a stake in it.” Steely eyes assessed her. “I’ll want to meet my daughter.”
“I’ve got to find her first.”
“Correction: we’ve got to find her.”
“But—”
“And we will.” He said it so matter-of-factly. “I want copies of everything you’ve got.”
A drop of dread slid down her spine. She didn’t want to get caught up in the trap that was Nevada Smith again. No way. No how. The man was a loser—still sexy, she’d grant him that, but no one she wanted to deal with. And yet he seemed as immovable as granite, standing in front of her, all male, muscle and determination. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“No, Shelby. You’ll do it.”
Her back teeth clenched. The man’s gall was unbelievable. But then, it always had been. “Let’s get one thing straight, Nevada. You can’t order me around.”
One side of his mouth lifted—as if he enjoyed the challenge. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he drawled. “Could I have copies of everything.” A pause. “Please?”
Blatantly mocking her, he smiled with that thousand-watt Texas grin she’d fallen victim to so many years before. Pinpoints of amusement suddenly lighted his eyes.
“I’ll think about it.”