Lark nodded toward the room behind them, where Sydney could see that the chief was on the phone, and Mr. Rafferty was talking to Frank. “Do you think maybe you could have mentioned that in there?”
Sydney’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because it would remove the idea that you were in this for…financial reasons.”
Sydney knew she was probably gaping, but couldn’t help it. They thought she was after money? Was there even any? Had Lucas’s parents been rich?
“Either you’re a very good actress, or you had no idea there even was any money.”
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Even if I needed it, which I don’t.”
Sydney felt moisture start to pool in her eyes. Did Lucas’s foster father, and his friend the police chief, really believe that? Could they really think she was that greedy, that she would go after any child’s inheritance, let alone one she was related to?
Lark studied her for a moment. “I believe you.”
“About the money, but what about…the rest?”
“If Shane is putting his brother to work on it, the truth will out.”
She blinked. “His brother? Who works here at the inn?”
Lark smiled. “No. This is another brother, who’s a detective. A very, very good one.”
“A detective. To go with the saloon guy, and your fiancé. Interesting family you’re marrying into there.”
“They are,” Lark said rather blithely. “It will never be dull. But right now, it’s the Raffertys you need to focus on.”
“And what do I do about the fact that that—” she nodded toward the building “—Rafferty doesn’t trust me any further than he could throw me?”
A deep male voice answered from behind her, making her jump. “He’s used to tossing bales of hay and hundreds of pounds of squirming calf around. He could probably throw you pretty far.”
She spun around to see the police chief standing there. This close he seemed to tower over her, and she remembered the photo she’d found in her research, of him working on building a barn. Shirtless. And the caption deeming him a sex symbol. If she hadn’t seen Keller Rafferty first, she might have voted him the most gorgeous Texas man she’d met so far.
What was it with this town? Was every male here so…imposing? Intimidating? Impressive? Or maybe it was just Texas. Maybe the mythos was really true.
She summoned up all her poise and nerve. “And what would you do if he did, Chief?”
“Not an issue,” the man said coolly. “Keller would no more hurt a woman than he’d kick a puppy.”
“Not sure I’m liking your categorization. I’m not a helpless puppy.”
The chief didn’t even blink. “It was a comparison, not a categorization. Now, if you’re ready for the test?”
She realized he was holding out a small tube with a swab inside. “What, you carry one of those around with you?”
He raised a dark brow. “I had someone come by with it.”
“Ah. The perks of being chief.”
“My sister was already at the station.”
Sydney glanced at Lark. “There’s a sister, too?”
Lark grinned at her. “Oh, yes. And she takes them all on.”
Sydney found herself grinning back. “Good for her.”
She turned and took the encased swab. “Inside of the cheek will do,” Shane Highwater said.
He seemed to be looking at her somewhat differently, although she didn’t know why. Didn’t suppose it mattered, until this test came back. She used the swab, put it back into the tube, and handed it over.
“You realize,” he said, “this could come back inconclusive. Cousin matches are always iffy.”
“But it could show a relationship of some kind, right?”
“Yes. Or it could disprove the connection.”
She wondered for a brief moment what she would do if it came back a negative or inconclusive match. But that didn’t matter. Yet. “Then we need to know that,” she said firmly.
“Yes, we do.” He said it neutrally, but Sydney didn’t think she mistook what flashed in his eyes for a moment. More of that assessing, as if her response had been a checkmark on a list.
She held the man’s gaze a moment longer, then he nodded and left. And Sydney stood there silently wondering why, despite Chief Highwater’s position and obvious power, she still found Keller Rafferty much harder to face.
Chapter Eleven
Keller shoved his phone back into his hip pocket and stood for a moment, staring out the kitchen window, thinking.
He’d left the Buckley place as soon as Shane had collected the DNA swab. He hadn’t spoken to Ms. Brock, hadn’t wanted to. He was too unsettled, and too annoyed that the even keel he and Lucas had finally achieved might soon be upended.
And now he had this to process. Maybe it shouldn’t, but the bit of news Lark had just dropped on him seemed to change everything again.
“Problem?” His mother’s voice from behind him made him spin around, startled. She smiled. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were on another planet.”
“Just…distracted.”
“You have been since that woman showed up here yesterday.”
“Yeah. About that…” He hadn’t explained any of what was happening to her yet, and he knew he needed to. But they’d need every hand on deck for this, including his brothers, and he didn’t want to have to go through it repeatedly for each of them.
And Lucas. That, he was not looking forward to.
So instead he asked, “Have you ever heard of a company called The World in a Gift?”
She looked disconcerted, not an easy thing to do with Maggie Rafferty. “Yes, of course. I’ve bought a couple of things from them. Remember that carved toolbox I gave Rylan last Christmas? That was from them, an artist from New Zealand. And that travel bag out of Scotland that I love so much is one of theirs. Why?”
“I…we’ll get there. But you like them?”
“I like the whole idea of them. That they bring together craftspeople from all over the world, each one with their own specialty, and give them a worldwide market they might never otherwise have.”
“And they’re successful, as far as you know?”
She was looking more and more puzzled, but didn’t push him. Yet. She would, if she felt she had to, he knew that. And soon; he sensed she was about at the end of her patience for vagaries.
“Very, I think,” she said. “When I first found them, a few years ago, they were fairly small. Now they’re huge, but they’ve hung on to that personal touch, and that says a lot, I think. Now, why?”
He let out a long breath. Grimaced. And said, “I need to call a family meeting.”
Her brows rose. “Oh? When?”
He glanced at his watch. Only an hour until school let out, and then another half hour before Lucas was here. “Now,” he said flatly.
She didn’t even blink, or ask any further questions, she just went into Mom mode, as they’d always called it, and started organizing. “Rylan’s in his studio, and you know he’ll have his phone off, so I’ll go get him. Cody’s out testing one of his flying contraptions, but he’ll have his phone, so call him. Then we’ll try for Chance.”
“Maybe the drone Cody’s testing works well enough to deliver the message,” Keller said. “And if not, he can just go over and get him, since he’s already out.”
“Good.” She turned to go, still without asking a single other question. When he’d said the magic words family meeting, something none of them tossed around lightly, it had galvanized her. Because nothing, but nothing mattered more to his mother than her family.
“Mom?” She looked over her shoulder at him from the doorway. “I love you.”
She gave him the smile that had warmed his heart for his entire life. “Back at you, boyo.”
He watched her go, then pulled his phone back out and called up Cody’s number. And started thinking about what he was going to say when they all got here.
*
“Morning, Mark,” Keller said to Mark Latham, Shane’s uber-efficient aide. He left off the “good” in the greeting. He wasn’t sure if it was. He’d been sleepless too much of the night, worrying. The family meeting had gone well enough, with everyone ending in agreement that they would protect Lucas above all else, but he was still jumpy.
“It is,” Mark answered, telling Keller he hadn’t missed the omission.
“Is he in?” Keller asked.
“Yes, he is but…his wife is in with him at the moment.”
Keller grinned, with raised brows. He’d known Mark for a few years, and felt safe teasing him. “Meaning I don’t dare go in there?”
“I wouldn’t,” Mark came back quickly. “I get embarrassed easy.”
They both laughed, and were still grinning when the inner office door opened and Lily Highwater stepped out. The former reporter, now becoming a well-known human-interest essayist, pulled the door closed after her. Keller noticed her long, red hair was a bit tousled, and her mouth looked a little bit…
Yeah, good thing he hadn’t gone belting in there.
“Keller,” she said, with a wide smile when she spotted him. “Have you changed your mind about that profile I’d like to do?”
He frowned. Surely Shane wouldn’t have talked about this with her, spiking her interest even more? Yes, she was his wife, but this was…well, private. For now, anyway. And he’d like to keep it that way, at least until the tests came back and he knew if he had to give…that woman access to Lucas.
“What makes you ask that?” His voice was a little bit sharp.
Lily looked startled, then her brow furrowed as she responded, “Because I always ask you? Ever hopeful and all that.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She was still looking a bit puzzled, and he regretted his tone. She might have left crime reporting behind, but she was still a bulldog when it came to something she wanted. Shane could attest to that. And she wanted to do a profile on him, and how, as she put it, “a rising rodeo star gave it up to come home for the sake of his family.” She’d been after him to sit down with her even before Lucas, but now she was really avid about it, because she said it would add even more depth and texture to the piece. Whatever that meant.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like and admire Lily’s work. She’d managed to make the intimidating Mrs. Valencia, the icon of Creekbend High School, not only human but even more admirable than she’d already been, and that took some doing. Considering the last piece he’d read of hers had been on Sage Highwater’s war hero fiancé, Scott Parrish, he was flattered she’d even want to, but hardly thought himself worthy of that heady territory.
All Keller had done was what had to be done. And when Lily told him he didn’t realize how rare that was, he couldn’t quite believe it.
“I’m not giving up,” she warned him.
“I have it on good authority you never do,” he said wryly. But he smiled when she grinned at him.
Lily turned back and pulled the office door open again, and called out, “Keller’s here.”
“Well, that’s a comedown,” Shane drawled from inside.
“No question,” Keller responded easily, and winked at Lily as he stepped through. She laughed and waved as she left, stopping, Keller noted, to speak to Mark for a moment before she headed for the outer door. “You know,” he said as he pulled the door shut behind him, “I both envy you and don’t want to be you.”
Shane grinned at him. “She keeps life interesting.”
“And worth living?” Keller suggested, seeing the pure love practically glowing from his old friend’s eyes.
“Yes,” Shane said simply.
Then, as was his way, he turned briskly to business. They sat on the leather couch that was against the wall opposite his desk. It was a new addition to the décor, and thinking of Lily, Keller couldn’t help wondering if Shane had added it for less than official reasons. That office door did have a lock, after all.
“If you’re looking for the DNA results, you’re a bit early,” Shane said. “Maybe way early.”
“I figured. But…maybe way early?”
Shane’s mouth quirked. “According to Sean, looking for cousins is trickier. He gave me some long rundown on STR versus the more recent SNP testing.”
“STR versus SNP? Sounds very…Sean.”
Shane laughed. “Yeah. All I’ve ever worried about before was if it worked as evidence for court.”
“But this is different?”
Shane nodded. “STR is…tandem repeats or some such jargon. But the SNP checks all the chromosomes instead of just the X and Y, and gives more definitive results out as far as even second cousins.”
Keller went still. “Meaning it could actually confirm her story?”
“Looks like. We’ll have to send it to a different lab than our usual, though, and it’ll take a little longer.” Shane gave him an apologetic look. “Especially without a case number attached to it.”
Keller nodded in understanding. Then went to what he’d really stopped by for. “What’s your take on her, now that you’ve had time to process?”
Shane leaned back on the couch cushions and rested one ankle on his other knee. Keller couldn’t read anything in his expression, because now he had his work face on. Nothing, but nothing—except Lily—ever got to this man when he was in that mode.
“She comes off as very sincere.”
Keller heard the guardedness in his tone. “But?”
“But the very best con artists always do.”
“Yeah,” Keller said glumly, not exactly sure why that fact bothered him so much.
“Look, if she’s a scammer, if she’s crooked, we’ll find out. Sean’s on it now, so you can take that to the bank.”
“I know that. I’m just worried about what damage she might do in the interim.”
Shane nodded. “Understandable. But given that we’ll find out if she’s lying, what about if she’s not? What if everything she told us is true?”
“Then she’s had a hell of a life.”
“With parents I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” Shane said.
“That, too.” Keller shook his head slowly, remembering what she’d said about her parents’ fears they’d get landed with Lucas, and complaining it was bad enough they’d been stuck with her. “I just don’t get it. How parents can be like that. And I’m very glad I don’t.”
“You and me both.”
Keller knew that some would say he and Shane had had more than their share of sadness in their lives. But he also knew that both he and Shane counted themselves more than lucky to have had the fathers they’d had for as long as they’d had them. It was their example that had driven them to do what had to be done, Shane leaving school and coming home to see to his family, and Keller giving up his rodeo dreams for the same thing.
“By the way,” Shane said, “I got a phone call this morning with some interesting information.”
Keller blinked. “So did I, but you first.”
Shane lifted a brow but nodded slightly. “It was from Mrs. Heidel, at the middle school.”
Keller went very still. “And?”
“It seems your maybe Ms. Brock went there yesterday, before our meeting, and tried to see Lucas.” Keller swore with a grimace. “She wasn’t allowed to, of course.”
Keller met his old friend’s gaze. “Thanks for the heads-up on that, then. Obviously you were right.”
Shane gave him that “It was nothing” shrug he had down to perfection, and that just about everyone he’d ever gone out of his way for—which was probably half the population of Last Stand—had seen.
“What was your call?” Shane asked.
“It was from Lark. Ever heard of a company called The World in a Gift?”
Shane frowned. “Sounds vaguely familiar.”
“It’s an online gift shop place. Carries stuff from artists around the world.”
He left it at that and waited for Shane’s prodigious
brain to put it together. Which it did, as usual, quickly. “She’s connected to that? All the traveling?”
“She is that,” he said flatly.
He pulled out his phone and called up the website from the search he’d done after talking to Lark this morning. He handed it to Shane, who took one glance at it and murmured, “Ah. That’s why it was familiar.”
“What?”
“Lily’s laptop bag has that logo on it.”
Keller gave a wondering shake of his head. “Does every woman around shop there?”
“A lot, I’d guess.”
Shane was reading the page Keller had opened for him, about the company’s founder, one Sydney Brock, and her colorful history. The bio was mainly about her travels and how she’d had the idea of giving all the wonderful artisans she’d met in her nomadic life a worldwide marketplace. Many of them had limited Internet access, or little knowledge of how to utilize the possibilities of the web, so she had begun simply as an intermediary. Her small idea had morphed into an international success. The short bio ended with some figures on the company’s size when she’d started it, and its size and scope now.
When he’d finished, Shane looked up at him. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Keller said.
“If this is true,” he began.
“Then obviously she’s not after Lucas’s little bit of money.”
“And it would be a lot harder to impersonate someone with this high a profile.”
Keller let out a long, audible, nearly disgusted sigh. “Yeah. Which means it’s likely really her.”
“And narrows the odds of her lying about her connection to Lucas.”
“But her scummy parents could still have been lying.” Keller tried not to sound too hopeful.
“Could have.” Shane gave him a level look. “You really don’t want this to be true?”
And that quickly Shane found the button to push, the one that made Keller feel a bit scummy himself. “I guess I kind of got more attached than I expected,” he muttered.
“Easy to understand. He’s a good kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Lily thought you might be thinking about making it permanent. Adopting him yourself.”
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