“The article you sent.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, well, I found your address on the Internet and almost wrote you a long time ago. It was too bad what happened to Audra, but the way she was living, something was bound to happen sooner or later, you know?”
Harley leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “What do you mean? How was she living?”
Tank sent his daughter off to play in her room, then moved closer to Harley. “She wasn’t the same girl we knew in high school,” he said. “She got into crack pretty heavily, went downhill from there.”
Crack? Audra? Harley couldn’t imagine her stern, overbearing father allowing Audra to get involved with drugs, at least not to the point of addiction. But then he remembered how much she liked to party in high school—and how much she’d always resented her father. Maybe she’d done it to fight back, to establish her freedom. Wasn’t that what had drawn her to him, someone her father had designated as off limits?
“I didn’t know,” he said.
“I figured you didn’t, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to know. I mean, what could you do about it?”
He could have come and taken his son. That was why he’d come here now, wasn’t it?
“So who’s been caring for Brandon? The sister?”
Tank smiled wistfully. “Little Lauren. Talk about opposites. You couldn’t find two sisters less alike.”
Harley had to agree with him there. “She’s pretty serious.”
“She’s a straight arrow, man. All responsibility.”
“I bet it was hard on her to watch what was happening to Audra.”
“I guess,” Tank said. “She keeps a stiff upper lip, like her parents. Doesn’t say much.”
“So Lauren still lives with them?”
“Yeah, why not? There’s space enough in that house for an army.”
“Didn’t she go to school?”
“Graduated from Lewis and Clark in only three years. Since then she’s worked for her father in the corporate office or done community stuff.”
“She never married?” Harley asked.
“No. Damien used to date her. That’s how I know about Audra. But he just couldn’t get her to respond to him.”
Harley didn’t have a hard time believing that, not after hearing Lauren say, “He doesn’t need you.” The woman didn’t hesitate to go for the throat. He doubted she needed anybody, either. “She’s a lot more attractive than she used to be,” he said.
“Yeah, well, the braces are gone, and she’s not so scrawny anymore. I think she’s a knockout.”
Harley didn’t like her well enough to concede anything stated that strongly, so he said nothing.
“Damien was crazy about her for a while,” Tank continued, “but he could never make any headway with her. Just getting her to kiss him was like breaching Fort Knox.”
“What happened between them? Did Damien finally break it off?”
“No, I think he would’ve kept on trying as long as she let him. She broke it up, saying she just didn’t feel anything more than friendship for him. But you know?” Tank glanced down the hall, where they could hear his daughter talking in a high voice, playing house. “I think she’s still a virgin. I’d bet money on it.”
At twenty-seven? “Wasn’t she just a year younger than us in high school?”
“Yeah.”
“Most women have some experience by twenty-seven.”
“Not Lauren. After what happened to Audra, her father’s been even more protective. And already she was a daddy’s girl. Anyway, Damien never got anywhere with her.”
“Did he ever see Brandon?”
“All the time. Audra started with the drugs when Brandon was still a baby, and Lauren stepped in so her parents wouldn’t have to. They have legal guardianship, but he’s like her child now. She takes him everywhere with her, volunteers in his classroom at school, drives him to karate lessons, takes him and his friends to the mall, you name it. She’s very devoted.”
Devoted enough to want to keep Harley out of the picture so she could have Brandon to herself? She’d called his desire to take his son selfish, but what about her desire to keep him?
“Does he seem happy?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. She’s doing a good job, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Harley wasn’t particularly worried about that. He would have expected nothing less from an HA—high achiever—like Lauren. She’d been in every honors class their school offered and, if he remembered right, Audra had once laughingly told him that her sister won every short story contest she entered. Not that he understood why anyone would enter a short story contest, especially a teenager. But people like Lauren did that sort of thing. They usually set up exhibits at the science fair, too. “What’s her father doing these days?”
“He’s still a bastard. Damien hates him, but he left for Europe last I heard. He and Lauren’s mother spend a couple of months there every spring.”
Interesting information. It was only mid-May; there were still a few weeks of spring left. Was that why Lauren hadn’t called her father down on him this morning? “You think he’s still in Europe?”
Tank shrugged. “Don’t know. Damien doesn’t call Lauren very much anymore. He’s trying to get over her. Why? Are you going to take Brandon home with you?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Harley said. But he knew if he tried to get custody of his son, the Worthingtons weren’t giving up without a fight.
CHAPTER TWO
LAUREN SAT in a plastic chair at the small, glass-fronted karate school where Brandon took lessons, enveloped in the unpleasant smell of mildew, perspiration and discarded tennis shoes. She stared at the card Harley Nelson had given her that morning. Judging from the logo embossed in fancy script below his name—“Burlingame Harley Davidson”—he was a motorcycle salesman.
How fitting, she thought, picturing him in his leather jacket, jeans and boots. It was probably the only kind of work he could get. He didn’t have a degree. He’d barely graduated from high school. And his occupation would certainly explain the expensive bike she’d seen in her driveway. Harley probably blew every dime he made on his two-wheeled transportation and couldn’t afford a car.
“Too bad you didn’t spend more time in the library,” she muttered, feeling vindicated for his less-than-flattering comments that morning. “I guess an education is a little more important than an excitement factor, huh?”
“Did you say something, Lauren?” Kara, Brandon’s classmate’s mother, had been sitting next to her for the past thirty minutes, looking for an opportunity to start a conversation. She was a nice woman, even if she did love the sound of her own voice, but Lauren wasn’t in the mood to listen to her today. Quickly averting her eyes, she mumbled something about talking to herself and retreated back into her own thoughts.
Should she let Harley meet Brandon or not? She’d asked herself that a hundred times over the past six hours, but she couldn’t come up with a good answer. Bottom line, she ran risks either way. If she let Harley see Brandon, it could snowball into something big and ugly and difficult. If she refused, it could snowball into something big and ugly and difficult.
She sighed, and saw Kara in her peripheral vision trying to catch her eye, but Lauren didn’t look up. She had to call Harley, had to say something, she decided,