“Actually Mom didn’t care either way. She just wanted me to be happy. And my father…was dead. He just would have wanted me to be happy, too.”
He’d heard some parents were like that. If pressed, he would have said that Jim and Rita had just wanted him for their own entertainment. Neither of them had had a paternal bone in their bodies, or if they had, it had long since been broken, the way they’d broken more than a few of his bones. Truthfully, though, Brady had gotten most of the fractures. It had taken them a while to realize that there were plenty of ways to inflict pain without risking the kind of injury that attracted the attention of the authorities.
He wondered idly who they’d taken their rage out on once Brady had left home. It was probably too much to hope that it had been each other.
Steering away from that line of thought, he refocused on Bailey. “Are you a good enough P.I. that you attract clients in other states or are you so lousy that you have to go looking for business in other states where they don’t know you?”
Her smile was small and sarcastic. “The agency is good enough that they don’t have to go looking for business at all. It finds them.”
“Then how did you wind up working for a kid in Oklahoma?”
She toyed with one of the stack of napkins that had come with their drinks, folding it, creasing it with one long, slender finger, then smoothing it flat again. Finally she pushed it away and met his gaze. “Lexy’s my niece,” she said reluctantly, as if it might make a difference.
Did it? It certainly explained her willingness to threaten, coerce and blackmail. This wasn’t just a professional intent on keeping her promise to a client but an aunt determined to make her niece happy, which would make her harder to shake once Mac had been taken care of.
Harder. Not impossible.
The pimply kid called their number over the loudspeaker, and Logan left the table to pick up their tray. After a stop at another counter to add tiny paper cups of ketchup, he returned to the table, passed her food to her and unwrapped the foil paper around his hamburger.
So her sister was married to his brother. That made them almost…nothing. Hell, he didn’t even admit to having a brother. He sure wasn’t claiming Brady’s family, and by rights, his wife’s family didn’t even exist in Logan’s world.
Except Bailey did exist. She was all too real and all too big a pain.
“Is there anything you’d like to know about Brady and the girls?” she asked, her tone cautious as she dipped a thick-cut French fry in ketchup.
“Nope.”
“You know, he might be able to help you with this search. He’s the under—”
“Which part of ‘nope’ did you not understand?”
“Come on. A smart man accepts help when he needs it. This is a tough job to try alone.”
“I’m not alone,” he pointed out dryly. “I’ve got you.”
That made her fall silent for a while, long enough to eat half her hamburger and most of the fries. Then she looked at him again, wearing the expression he was coming to recognize as her stubborn, not-gonna-give-up look. “Aren’t you at all curious about him? About how he left home? About where he’s been and what he’s done these past nineteen years?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, gee, that hurts my feelings.”
“He’s your brother.”
“Like that means something. These are good burgers, aren’t they?” He dipped the ragged edge of his hamburger in ketchup, then took a big bite. Food was one of the few pleasures he’d found since returning from the war. Endless months of MREs—the prepackaged “meals ready to eat” that were the mainstay of combat troops’ diet—and the periodic hot meals they were served while in camp had left him craving old favorites like pizza, hamburgers and doughnuts. He’d lived off junk food for the last six months and could probably do it for the rest of his life.
Being the stubborn, naive type, Bailey didn’t get the message that he was through with the conversation. “It means something to Brady.”
He slowly chewed another bite while scowling at her. “You’ve got a sister.”
“Three, actually.”
“And you’re just the best of friends with all three of them.”
“We’re close.”
“Goody for you. You wanna be best friends with ’em, fine. It’s none of my business. I don’t wanna be best friends with Brady, and that’s none of your business.”
Her cheeks flushed a pale pink. “I just don’t understand—”
“You shouldn’t mess with things you don’t understand.”
“What about your nieces? Aren’t you the least bit interested in them?”
He considered that while he polished off his burger. He’d never been a kid-friendly person, not even when he was a kid himself. Back then, pain, shame and the fear of discovery had kept him and Brady from getting close to other kids. As he’d grown up, he’d come to view kids as nuisances best kept at a distance. They started life crying, smelly and needy, before turning into a whiny, troublemaking subhuman species. Given a choice, he would never deal with anyone younger than eighteen. At least by then, they’d reached the point where they stood a chance of becoming a real person.
His silence brought a bit of hope to Bailey’s expression that he dashed when he finally answered. “No. Not the least bit.”
She scowled at him as she crumpled her wrapper with enough force that she was probably imagining it was his throat. “You’re a jerk—you know that?”
“A jerk,” he repeated, amused. “Now that really hurts my feelings. Is that the best you can come up with?”
Shoving her chair back so hard it would have fallen if not for the table behind them, she stood up, then leaned toward him. “No. You’re a selfish, self-centered, rude, cold-hearted, unfeeling bastard who doesn’t deserve to have someone like Brady, Lexy and Brynn in his life. You could go straight to hell for all I care, but I made a promise to Lexy, and you made one to me, and by God, we’re both going to keep them or I’ll kill you myself.”
With that, she turned on her heel and strode to the door. He watched her go as he finished his fries. If he was lucky, she would find her way back to Pineville, pick up her car and get the hell out of his life.
But he hadn’t been lucky in a long time.
He wasted another ten minutes before clearing his table and heading for the motel. As he rounded the back corner, the first thing he saw was Bailey, sitting on the sidewalk outside their room. It was hard to tell from her stony expression whether she’d cooled down. Not that he cared. Traveling with an unwanted companion was tough. Having her too pissed off to talk to him, though, just might make it bearable.
He unlocked the door, went inside and left it standing open. He was pulling back the covers on the bed nearest the door when she finally came inside.
“It’s not even eight o’clock,” she commented.
“You can tell time. Good.”
“You can’t be going to bed before eight o’clock.”
He bunched up the bedspread to one side, then untucked the sheets from under the mattress before facing her. “I got about three hours’ sleep last night and I’ve been dealing with a major pain in the ass today. I’m tired. I want to sleep. You can watch TV or read the Good Book—” he gestured toward the battered Bible on the night table “—or twiddle your thumbs. I don’t care. Just whatever you do, be ready to leave first