Just because they’d been lovers, had a child ... and he was as sexy as all get out. “Stop it,” she growled, stretching her legs onto the ottoman. She had work to do. She wasn’t about to be distracted. Not by anyone. Including Elizabeth’s damnably sexy father.
The trouble was, she was no closer to finding her daughter this afternoon than she had been when she’d first gotten the envelope two days earlier. “Get a grip, it’s going to take time,” she said to the pale ghost of her reflection in her bedroom window. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out. She’d already missed nine years of her daughter’s life; how much more could she risk?
She considered hiring an on-line private investigator, but didn’t know which of the dozens listed would be reliable. As for her own efforts, she’d managed to locate a handful of Dr. Pritcharts flung far across the United States—none of whom had turned out to be the Ned Pritchart who had delivered her baby.
He could have hidden himself anywhere. Europe. South America. Or he could be dead.
Don’t think that way.
She glanced down to the backyard and the shimmering aquamarine water of the pool. Inviting. Cool. She hadn’t brought a swimming suit with her, but she could probably scrounge up something she’d left here years ago.
She was on her way to the bureau when she heard her father’s car roll into the drive. A glance at her watch told her it was after three. A busy man, the Judge. He’d come in late last night and hadn’t bothered to tap on her door as she’d expected, though, tossing and turning, she’d heard him arrive. He was gone again at the crack of dawn.
Shelby had been relieved not to have to deal with him, but she couldn’t put it off forever, nor did she want to. She was back in Bad Luck with a purpose, and her father was keeping secrets from her.
Sliding into a pair of sandals, she scooped a rubber band from the bureau, snapped her hair into a haphazard bun and took the back stairs to the kitchen.
“Niña.”
Lydia, determined to fatten her up, had a tray of fruit, cheese and crackers sitting on the center island. “I was just fixing your father a drink.” She smiled widely, showing off a bit of gold edging one front tooth. “What would you like?”
“I’ll get a glass of iced tea,” Shelby said, her sandals slapping as she crossed the terra-cotta tile of the floor to the refrigerator.
“Let me slice you a lemon—”
“Thanks, Lydia, really. I appreciate it. But I can do it myself.” Much as she loved the woman who had raised her from the time of her mother’s death, Shelby couldn’t stomach the thought of Lydia doting on her, as if she were a helpless child—or worse yet, the pampered, princess-daughter of a rich man. She’d been independent too long, lived alone and was used to taking care of herself. Ignoring the wounded look in Lydia’s eyes, she tossed a handful of ice cubes into a tall glass, poured tea from a chilled pitcher and sliced her own wedge of lemon before following Lydia onto the back verandah, where her father was already sipping a martini.
“So you decided to stay,” he said, obviously pleased, as she took a chair on the opposite side of the glass-topped table and the paddle fans that whirred overhead.
“I thought it would be easier to talk to you.” She swirled her drink.
Lydia, grumbling about the gardener, pinched off a couple of wilted petals of the petunias overflowing from the huge pots standing near the back door, then hurried into the kitchen as a timer buzzed loudly.
“I thought you didn’t want to talk to me.”
“I didn’t.” She took a sip from her glass. It was lots stronger and clearer than the cloudy liquid Nevada had passed off as tea yesterday. “I changed my mind.” She stared at him over the rim of her glass as she took another bracing swallow. Never a shy child, she was nonetheless intimidated by her father. Some things didn’t change over the years. “I hope you can help me.”
“I’ll give it my best shot.” Plucking a plastic toothpick from his drink, he sucked off one of the olives.
“Good. Then you need to tell me about Elizabeth.” She was calmer this afternoon, though no less determined.
“I don’t know anything about your child.”
“Don’t lie to me, Dad. I’ll go to the police.”
He chewed on the olive, then swallowed. “With what? A picture of a kid who looks like you? An anonymous note?”
“Yes.”
“You’d be opening a can of worms.”
“Already opened.”
He shook his head from one side to the other. “There will be lots of questions asked. Some of ’em you won’t like.”
“I’m not worried. Get this, Judge. I’m not a scared, confused little girl of seventeen who was ashamed that she was pregnant and not married. Not anymore.”
“This is a small town.”
“Amen.”
“It’s not like the city, where you can hide.”
“I’m not hiding, Judge, and I want the truth. You know what happened the night I had the baby. You had to have orchestrated it. No one, including Doc Pritchart or anyone else in the hospital, would have had the guts to pull this off alone. You had to have bribed them or coerced them somehow.”
“Bribery and coercion,” he said. “Tough accusations.”
She wasn’t going to be derailed. “Look, either you tell me what you know and we save a whole lotta time, or I keep digging on my own and any skeleton that happens to pop out of the Cole family closet will be out in the world for everyone to see.”
“You might think twice about that.”
“I have—and three times, and four and probably a hundred.”
He bit off another olive. “Heard you were with Nevada Smith yesterday.”
“I ran into him on the street.”
Graying, bushy eyebrows rose skeptically. “Fancy that, the first person you meet is the one you should avoid.”
“The father of my child.”
“Maybe.”
She felt her skin flush scarlet as she watched butterflies and bees flit from one overflowing pot of flowers to the next.
“There’s the rub, Shelby-girl. What if the kid isn’t Smith’s? As bad as that would be, it could be worse, y’know.”
She stood slowly and leaned over the table. She couldn‘t, wouldn’t let her father bully her. “The point is that the child is
mine.
That’s really all that matters. That’s why I’m back here. Now, you have a choice. Either you want to help me or you don’t, but either way I’m going to find my daughter.”
“And if you do?” The third olive slid easily into his mouth, and he stared at her with the same determined gaze that he’d leveled at many a recalcitrant witness from his position on the bench.
“If
the girl is alive,
if
she’s yours and
if
you find her, what then? Are you going to rip her away from the parents she’s known for nine years? Tear her away from a mother, father and siblings, all so
you
can rest easy? Is that what would be best for her?” He washed the olive down with a long sip from his glass and Shelby felt sick inside. “Or is it what’s best for you?” The very doubts he’d voiced had plagued her from the minute she’d opened the envelope from San Antonio.
“One step at a time,” she said, refusing to melt under his harsh glare. “First I find her.”
“You’re playin’ with fire here, Shelby.”
“Well, it never stopped you, did it?” She forced herself to remain cool. “Now, either you help me, or I go at this myself, but believe me, I am going at it.” She finished her iced tea and set the glass aside. “Who would send me that picture?”
“Don’t know.” His eyes didn’t leave hers and not one of his graying hairs was out of place. His suit, shirt and string tie looked as fresh and crisp as if he’d just donned them while she was sweating buckets in a T-shirt and shorts. His ivory-handled cane lay across his lap, more an adornment than a crutch.
“Okay, then who adopted my baby?” She wasn’t going to leave this alone.
“Still don’t know.”
“How can you sit there and tell me a bald-faced lie? You
had
to know.”
Slowly, his words dropping out of his mouth syllable by syllable, he said, “I don’t know what happened to the baby. I didn’t ask.”
“But you knew she survived.”
“Nope. I only knew that she wasn’t born dead. Other than that, I didn’t see any reason to do anything more.”
“She’s your granddaughter!” Even though Shelby had expected the truth, it hit her hard.
“And you’re my daughter. I’ve always done what I thought best.”
She couldn’t believe her ears and then wondered why she was even trying to reason with him. He’d always been a man who played by his own rules, bent the law to serve his own purpose and rationalized his actions. “Oh, God, I can’t believe this.” She flopped back against the meshed caning of the patio chair. “You’re insane.”
“Practical.”
“Manipulative. Oh, Lord.” Grabbing her tumbler, she pressed the sweating glass against her forehead as the ice cubes melted. How could this man, this self-important ogre, be her father?
“What about Smith? Did you tell him about the baby?”
“I had no choice.”
“You always have choices.”
“Not when someone you trust manipulates you.” She dropped the glass onto the table.
The judge’s jaw slackened. A sudden sadness crept into his eyes as he watched the flight of a flock of starlings taking off from a cypress tree on the far side of the pool house. “Oh, Shelby,” he sighed, running big-knuckled hands through his hair. The wrinkles lining his brow and etching his mouth deepened and he seemed suddenly an old man. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” she said firmly, refusing to be shaken. “What I’ve done is the right thing.”
“You find out anything today?”
“Not enough. But I will,” she promised as she scraped her chair back. And in a sudden inkling of insight, she knew just where to start.
Chapter Five
Nevada notched the ear of the last calf, slapped it hard on its dusty rump and sent it bawling and running toward the herd. Yanking off his gloves, he glared at the setting sun and wondered why he stayed here, barely scraping out a living in a place where even in these politically correct times he’d heard himself referred to as a half-breed.
Not that he cared. It wasn’t the fact that his mother was part Cherokee that bothered him; nope, it was the simple notion that she’d taken off when he was three and he couldn’t remember her to save his soul. He’d never known what had become of her; he hadn’t felt the need to find out.
Yet he’d decided to stay here, on the outskirts of Bad Luck. He had never fit in, and didn’t really give a damn. In the back of his mind he knew that someday things would be easier.
And besides, this was home. Such as it was. He glanced to the north edge of the ranch and the land that he’d bought two years before, doubling his acreage and picking up a rock quarry and a peach orchard in the process. It had cost him big-time, but it was starting to pay off and the red ink he’d been drowning in was ebbing a bit, bleeding into black.
At the watering trough, he stopped long enough to twist the faucet and duck his head under the water, warm from the pipes. It cooled down and he splashed it over his neck and shoulders before taking a long drink. Yeah, this place, such as it was, was home.
Shaking the excess drops of water from his hair, he walked into the machine shed. There his tractor, four years older than he, lay idle, the rubber on its big tires cracked, its headlights dim. The rig’s coat of paint had long since lost its luster in the endless hours of chugging up hills and pulling equipment under an unforgiving Texas sun.
But there was still life in the John Deere and he checked the oil, knowing that he’d keep the tractor until it died in a field. Wiping his hands, he considered the fact that he was now—if Shelby Cole could be believed—a father. He’d never thought he’d have any kids. Probably because he’d never found a woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Wouldn’t put a kid through the pain of growing up the way he did.
Now he had a daughter. Shelby’s child. He’d spent a day digesting the news, even gone so far as to phone an old Army buddy who had become a PI in Houston.
He’d tried to keep his mind from straying to Shelby. She was trouble just waitin’ to happen. Always had been, always would be. But then, he’d never been one to back away from trouble; in fact there was a time when he’d gone lookin’ for it.
Years ago.
He’d thought he was long over her, that he’d gotten her out of his blood.
But some things never changed.
One look at her and he’d felt that same old heat in his loins, that gut-wrenching tug deep in his soul. His jaw tightened, and he headed back to the house. No woman, not even Judge Red Cole’s sexy daughter, was going to get to him again the way she’d done ten years ago.
Whistling to Crockett, he climbed up the back porch, kicked off his boots, took off his half-drenched shirt and used it as a towel, then downed a beer. He was about to step into the shower when he heard the sound of an engine and saw a plume of dust through the front window.