by Jennie Marts
Easing onto the edge of the desk chair, she pulled the top page toward her and studied his figures. It took her a few minutes to familiarize herself with how the reports worked and to follow his train of thought in his notes, but she got the idea that cattle were sold by the pound and that Logan had about three hundred head on his ranch.
Grabbing a fresh sheet of paper, she started from scratch, trying to duplicate his thought process, yet still decipher where he might have made a mistake.
Her heart leapt when she saw it. It was so simple, yet changed so much. He’d transposed two numbers, changing the price per pound from a dollar fifty-four to a dollar forty-five. It was such a tiny mistake, only nine cents difference. But nine cents difference in a seven-hundred-pound cow equaled sixty-three dollars a head, and when she multiplied that by three hundred head of cattle, it came out to nineteen thousand dollars!
This was Logan’s error. It was perfectly clear to her. But his brain could have twisted the numbers again and again, making the error impossible for him to find. If he wasn’t so stubborn and embarrassed about his learning disability, he could have asked his sister, or her, to look over his figures or talked it through out loud, and they could found the error and saved him the worry and anguish he’d been going through.
She had to tell him. This would make his night. She pulled out her phone and scrolled to his number. He was still in practice, and she was sure he wouldn’t answer, but she could leave a message and he’d get it as soon as he got off the ice.
She could barely contain her excitement as she waited for the beep. “Logan, hi, I know you’re still in practice, but I couldn’t wait to tell you that I found the error you’ve been looking for with the cattle. And you’re not really out twenty thousand dollars. I know I shouldn’t have been in your office, but I followed the kitten in here and saw your calculations on your desk, and don’t be mad, but I just took a quick peek to see if I could spot the issue. And I found it! It was in the price per pound. You switched two numbers around. The beef price is really a dollar fifty-four per pound, not a dollar forty-five like you’d written. That nine cents difference equals almost twenty thousand dollars. I’ll show you when we get home, but I had to call and leave you this message. I’m so, so happy for you. Okay, can’t wait to see you. We’ll celebrate with the leftover frosting. Bye.”
She snapped her phone shut, a grin splitting her face. He was going to be thrilled. And she had been the one to figure it out. Her math skills had done something good. They’d helped someone instead of being responsible for swindling them out of their profit.
The timer sounded, and she practically danced her way to the kitchen to check the cupcakes. She took them from the oven and set them on a wire rack for five minutes, then stuck them in the fridge for another five so they’d be cool enough to frost.
She mixed the carton of white frosting with half a container of whipped topping, then scooped the mixture into a Ziploc bag. Cutting the corner off the bag, she piped the whipped frosting onto the chocolate cupcakes, then stuck a mini Oreo in the center of each to resemble a hockey puck. It was the best she could do in the limited amount of time.
After giving the frosting another five minutes to set, she packed the cupcakes into a covered nine-by-thirteen pan and snapped on the lid. She glanced up at the clock and saw she had fifteen minutes to get the cupcakes to practice. Perfect.
Checking her reflection in the mirror by the door, Harper smoothed her hair and wiped the stray mascara smudges from under her eyes. It had been quite a day, but she didn’t look half bad. Her hair was clean and in surprisingly good shape for being in a ponytail half the day and smooshed on the pillow when she’d fallen asleep with Logan. Running around the kitchen had put a little color in her cheeks—at least that’s what she was contributing the color too. It could also be from a raucous afternoon in bed and the excitement of sharing some great news with a guy she couldn’t wait to see again.
That thought should have scared the hell out of her. But tonight, she felt invincible, as though things were actually going her way for once. Besides all the great stuff going on with Logan, she had a job she enjoyed and a roof over her head—a temporary one, but it was a home. And she had a place for her son to sleep.
As she pulled on her coat, she made the decision that she was going to tell Logan about Floyd tonight. No more secrets. She’d tell him about her son and Michael, and how she’d tried to save her home and got sucked into the scam with her mom and ended up in jail. She wasn’t a victim; she didn’t want him feeling sorry for her. She would take responsibility for her part of the embezzlement charges, own up to what she’d done. But Logan had made mistakes too. And she knew in her heart he’d forgive her. He had to.
This was her night. She could feel it. After falling so far off the rails for so many months, her life felt like it was finally back on track. She felt happy, and she dared to hope for the first time in a long time.
She was going over to Judith’s after she dropped off the cupcakes. This time she wasn’t taking no for an answer. She wanted to see her boy. And she wasn’t going to let anyone stand in her way.
She picked up the red scarf. A few days ago, she’d thought she didn’t need any more red in her life, but maybe it was exactly what she did need. Not any more danger—she’d had enough of that in that last few months—but maybe a little more risk, a little more daring. Maybe the answer wasn’t to calmly play along with Judith, but instead to boldly stare her down and tell her she was ready to take back her son.
She wrapped the scarf around her neck, picked up the cupcakes, and pushed back her shoulders. She was armed with a full heart and a pan of perfectly frosted cupcakes.
I got this. Bring it on, world.
* * *
Harper’s bravado faltered as she approached the doors of the ice arena. She knew small towns were a hotbed for rumors and speculation. There were probably already reports of a strange woman working at Rivers Gulch. She’d need to play it cool with Logan, let him take the lead on how he wanted to act in public. He’d been fun and flirty with her all afternoon, but that was just in front of Bryn and Zane, and they were friends.
This was different. This was the community.
So she’d be cool. She could do that. She shook out the tension in her shoulders and pushed through the doors.
The arena was chilly and filled with the sounds of kids laughing and the sharp scrapes of skates on the ice. Her gaze traveled around the room, over the faces of parents and the excited heads of the kids on the team as she searched for Logan.
But her heart stopped when her gaze landed on a familiar face—a face she knew better than her own.
Floyd.
Chapter 23
Harper’s son was standing twenty feet in front of her. All she had to do was call his name, walk toward him, and sweep him into her arms. But her throat had closed up, and her feet were frozen to the floor. She couldn’t move.
What if he didn’t want to see her? What if he was angry with her for abandoning him? She’d thought her heart had broken when they’d taken him away from her the night she was arrested, but if he didn’t want to see her now, it would shatter. That would break her.
She thought she had it all together—like everything was going so well—but now the curtain had been lifted, and she could see she didn’t have anything together. Yeah, she had a job and a place to live, but her job was as a temporary housekeeper, and she lived in a bunkhouse, a place normally inhabited by sweaty cowboys.
Floyd looked good. His hair had recently been trimmed, and he wore new clothes she’d never seen. He had on a nice ski jacket and expensive tennis shoes, brands she could never afford, and he held a hockey stick and was laughing with two other boys on the team. On the team? She just realized Floyd was here because he was on a hockey team. He was playing hockey. Just as Michael had always dreamed he would.
Emotion burned her throat, and tears
pricked her eyes. Harper pressed her lips together to keep from sobbing.
What was wrong with her? She’d dreamed of this day—had spent the last two months wishing and praying for this day to come—and now she couldn’t move.
“Floyd?” Her voice was hoarse as she croaked out his name. She said it again as she took a tentative step toward him. “Floyd?”
There was no way he could have heard her. But somehow, some way, some instinct must have had him turning his head, and his eyes widened as his face lit with joy. “Mom!”
Joy. He was glad to see her.
“Floyd,” she said again as relief flooded through her. Her knees gave way, and she sank to the floor as her son ran toward her. A quiver ran through her whole body, and her hands were shaking so badly, the cupcakes slipped from them. The lid popped off, and two of the cakes tumbled out as the pan skidded across the floor. Her heart thrummed against her chest as she opened her arms.
Floyd fell into her lap, crashing into her body and almost knocking her over as he threw his arms around her neck. “Mom. Mom. Mom. You’re finally here.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she sobbed into his precious, sweet neck. He smelled like sweaty boy and some foreign shampoo, but underneath that, he smelled like Floyd, like her child. “I’m here, Baby. Mama’s here.”
She pulled his head back and kissed his face, one side, then the other. His cheeks were wet and salty. He was crying too. “Let me look at you,” she said, her voice trembling as she took in every one of his features.
He raised his hands to her cheeks, holding her face as well, just the way he’d done since he was a toddler. A grin split his face, and she noticed the gap on the side and the new tooth pushing through. “You lost a tooth.”
He nodded as he lifted his lip to give her a better view. “It was already loose, but it got knocked out by another kid’s stick at hockey practice. It bled and everything. But the tooth fairy gave me five dollars for it, so she must have felt bad about the blood.”
“Five dollars?” Harper’s heart swelled, taking up all the space in her chest, and she feared her body might split apart, not able to hold all the love she felt for this priceless child.
“Yeah, and I wasn’t expecting her to come at all ’cause last time I lost a tooth we were in Kansas, and I wasn’t sure if she would be able to find me in Colorado. But she did.” The smile on his face fell, replaced by a frown. “How come the tooth fairy could find me here, but you couldn’t? I’ve been waiting for you to come and get me.”
Her heart, which seconds ago had been full to bursting, shattered into tiny shards of glass. “I’m sorry, Baby. I got here as soon as I could.”
His small voice trembled, and tears filled his beautiful blue eyes—Michael’s eyes. “I missed you so much, Mom. I prayed for you every night. But you never called me or anything. Didn’t you miss me?”
“I missed you with every ounce of my soul. I missed you so much sometimes I thought my heart would stop beating, it hurt so much.”
“Then why didn’t you come get me? Why didn’t you even try to talk to me?”
“Harper?” A strangled voice spoke her name, and her head jerked up to see Logan staring down at her, a pained expression clouding his face.
She’d thought it had already splintered into a million slivers, but seeing that hurt and the look of anguish in Logan’s eyes had her heart crumbling to dust.
But she couldn’t deal with Logan right now, or the few other boys and parents from the team standing around them, including Judith, who stood at Logan’s elbow and glared down at her. Not with Floyd in her lap asking why she hadn’t tried to reach him, when she knew that she’d tried to call every single day.
Judith had been the one who hadn’t let her talk to him, who’d convinced her that he was busy or he was at school or that her call would only upset him. Judith was the one who had kept them from speaking. And now that woman stood above her, her lips pinched in an expression that combined anger with fear that Harper had finally broken through her barricades and found her son.
Harper held Floyd to her, wanting to tell him she’d tried, that she’d called him every day, but that look of fear on Judith’s face kept her from opening her mouth. Did she really want to taint this relationship her son had with his grandma? He’d already lost so much. Could she really take this away from him too?
Judith might have been a cow to her, but she had been good to Floyd. She’d taken him in on a moment’s notice and had given him everything. It was obvious Floyd was doing well.
She kissed the top of her son’s head, then took his face in her hands and tried to convey everything she felt without knowing exactly how to express it. “I wanted to. I wanted to call you every day, but it wasn’t possible.”
“Because they don’t let you have phones in jail?” he asked. A sharp gasp sounded from one of the bystanders standing around them, but Harper didn’t look up to see who it was.
If Logan didn’t seem hurt and confused enough that she had a kid, his head had to be spinning now that he’d just learned an ex-con had been frying him bacon and scrambling his eggs.
“I know it’s hard to understand,” Harper continued. “But I left Kansas as soon as I got out and had enough money to buy a bus ticket to get here. I’ve been doing everything I can to make it so that we can be together.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Judith said, stepping forward and reaching for Floyd. Her voice was probably shriller than she’d meant it to be, and her eyes had a bit of a wild cornered animal look to them. “It’s getting late, and we need to get home. Tell your mother good night, Floyd.”
His arms gripped her neck. “No. I don’t want to go.”
“You don’t have to,” Harper told him.
“Yes, he does. This isn’t the time or the place to do this.” Judith’s voice was firm, and she clamped a hand on Floyd’s shoulder. “And you don’t want to make promises you can’t keep.”
“No,” Floyd cried, clutching his mother.
“Judith, can’t we talk about this?” Harper said, trying not to turn this into any more of a scene than it already was. She could hear the desperation in her voice, but now that she had her boy in her arms, she didn’t want to let him go.
Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe she could just take him and run. It wasn’t kidnapping if she was the mother. Except that she didn’t technically have a vehicle—unless she stole Logan’s old truck—so they really would have to run. And she hated running, so they wouldn’t make it very far.
Judith aimed her next words at the group of onlookers. “Don’t you people have homes to get to? There’s nothing to see here.” Most of them took the hint, and their kids, and turned to leave as Judith spun back to her grandson. “Come on now, Floyd. You’re making a scene. It’s time to go.” Her tone was stern, commanding, and the boy slid out of Harper’s lap and took his grandmother’s hand.
“No, wait.” Harper tried to reach for her son, but her hands missed his coat, and she fell forward, her hands striking the concrete floor of the arena. Frosting from the spilled cupcakes splattered across the floor, grazing the side of her hand as she tried to scramble to her feet.
Pain swirled through her, from her bruised hands and her battered heart, and she couldn’t seem to get her feet under her. Stumbling, she pitched forward, falling against Judith and taking them both down in a heap.
“Help!” Judith screamed. “This woman is attacking me.”
“I’m not attacking you. I tripped,” Harper explained, trying to untangle herself from the other woman.
“Get off me,” shrieked Judith, flailing her arms.
“Harper, get off the woman.” Logan’s voice instructed from behind her.
“Is there a problem here?” another deep male voice said from behind her as a hand gripped her arm.
“No, we’re fine,” Harper said, jerk
ing her arm away and landing her elbow right in the chest of whoever had grabbed her.
She heard an oof, then the hand seized her again, this time with more force as its owner hauled her to her feet. She tried to pull away and turned to see the man holding her was a cop.
“Why don’t you come with me, ma’am?” he asked, but it wasn’t meant as a question.
“Mike, thank God,” Judith said, collapsing on the floor with a melodramatic flare. “Arrest this woman. She assaulted me. And she’s a felon. She’s barely out of prison.”
“It wasn’t prison,” Harper said, trying to explain. “It was just county, and I wasn’t assaulting her. It was an accident. I tripped.”
“She didn’t trip. She purposely tried to harm me so she could kidnap this boy.”
“That boy is my son,” Harper cried, but the scowl on the officer’s face told her he was taking the word of the local pillar of the community over some stranger in town with a criminal record who he’d just pulled off said pillar.
The cop, whose name tag read Officer Michael Russo, had a firm grip on Harper’s arm, while another one of the parents helped Judith to her feet. “Are you okay there, Mrs. Benning? You hurt?”
Judith cradled her arm. “I think she broke my arm. I heard a crack. You’ve got to arrest her.”
“Are you saying you want to press charges?” Mike asked.
“Yes, get her out of here.”
“Mom?” Floyd spoke for the first time. He’d been huddled next to Judith, but now he rushed forward and threw his arms around Harper’s waist. “Don’t go, Mom.”
“We’re gonna need to go down to the station and get this straightened out.”
“Straightened out? I didn’t do anything. I tripped,” Harper stammered, attempting to explain to the cop while also trying to soothe her son.
“This woman says you attacked her. And I could make a case that you assaulted me.” He leaned forward and said quietly into her ear, “You don’t really want to make me cuff you in front of all these people, and your son, do you?”