“Here you go.” Josephine returned with their salads and the coffeepot. “You haven’t been in here before,” she said to Grant as she topped off their cups with steaming brew.
“No, ma’am.”
“You look familiar, though.”
“I hear that all the time.” He shrugged. “Got one of those everyman faces, I guess.”
Ali nearly snorted. Everyman? Please.
She waited until Josephine left before she picked up her fork and jabbed at a crisp slice of cucumber. The second she put it in her mouth, her stomach started growling.
Grant clearly heard and his lips twitched. “I knew I was right.”
She ignored him and shoveled a forkful of lettuce after the cucumber.
“So.” He leisurely shook pepper over his salad. “Tell me hypothetically how this sort of thing works. No names. No specific child. Just the process. What’s usually the next step?”
She swallowed. “Well, the judge has some leeway, but ultimately, the goal is to make sure the needs of the child—physical and emotional—are provided for as quickly and as permanently as possible in the best available setting. The child’s biological family takes precedence. If one parent is deemed unsuitable, the other parent is looked at. If that parent is unsuitable, then another family member. And so on. Aunts. Uncles. Grandparents and the like, until an appropriate familial setting can be found.”
“But if you can’t establish the identity of at least one of the parents, you can’t establish kinship, either.”
“Right. In that case—” she spread her hands “—the judge inevitably rules the child be placed for adoption. And he typically decides that within ninety days. Once he rules there is no acceptable parent-child or kinship relationship, he doesn’t like leaving that child in the system any longer than he has to.”
Grant paused for a moment. “So there’s a ticking clock, too.”
She nodded. “Look, I’ll be honest here, Grant. Assuming your sister is Layla’s mom, when we find her, she’s not going to automatically get back her daughter. She’ll be charged with child endangerment. And maybe once that’s been dealt with, she’ll be able to work with family services to regain some visitation and parental rights. But that’s only if we find her before the judge has already severed her rights altogether and if Layla hasn’t been adopted.”
“Layla’s a baby.” Grant’s voice was even. “Everyone wanting to adopt wants a baby. If things get to that point, it’ll happen in the blink of an eye.”
Had he been a baby when he’d been adopted? Considering his troubled expression, she was inclined to think he hadn’t been. Which just made her more curious than ever about him.
She focused on her small salad again—a few more bites and it would be gone. Fortunately, she knew from experience that lunch at Josephine’s was never a drawn-out affair. The rest of their meal would be coming soon. “Yes, it will happen fast and that’s part of the complication.” She glanced toward the door when it jingled. An elderly couple entered and took one of the tables in the middle of the room.
She looked back at Grant. “Let’s say the child is presently well cared for in a fostering situation. That this situation has been going on for, at a guess, an entire third of the child’s life. Then the child is awarded through adoption to a different family altogether. A family who has been waiting on a long list for a long time for just such a child. Much longer than the foster family, who has fallen in love with the child over the past month and whose name is now added to that long list, but at the very bottom of it. The only thing that can slow down this particular train wreck is bringing forward another biological family member.”
He considered that for about a nanosecond. “Your sister and her husband still wouldn’t end up with her.”
“No, but at least we’ll all know that we’ve done everything we can to get Layla to her rightful family. And maybe, at the very least, her new guardian will be open to letting the foster family stay in touch. If it’s a traditional adoption, that’s not likely to occur. There’re lots of reasons to want her with her rightful family.” She studied him. “Assuming that her rightful family wants her and can provide a suitable home.”
He pushed aside his now empty salad plate. It was perfect timing, because just then Josephine delivered their meals.
Ali studied him. She was still uncertain how he felt—if he would want Layla, should she turn out to be his niece.
Which was something that she now knew couldn’t be proven by something as definitive as a DNA test.
They would have to prove it by other means.
And with as little as they had to go on, they might as well be looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
“Seems stupid to pull a kid out of the only consistent environment they’ve ever had.”
Ali propped her elbows on the table, leaning toward him over her plate. “You truly have no idea where Karen might be?”
He shook his head. His eyes met hers. “If I did, I’d tell you. My sister’s always—” He broke off, shaking his head with a sigh. “I don’t know. Searching for something she can’t ever seem to find.”
When he looked at Ali that way, it was like being touched by a live wire. “What about your parents?”
He shook his head again. “Mom had breast cancer. She survived it twice. She didn’t make it the third time. And Dad died a few years after her. And to save you asking, no, there aren’t any other family members who might still be in touch with Karen. No other family members, period.”
“Why do you think she came to Wyoming? There must be some tie for both of you to land here.”
“The ranch I bought. I think she was probably staying there without anyone knowing. She was pretty bad about money.”
It was a logical enough explanation, though it didn’t tell Ali why he’d bought a ranch in Braden in the first place, only to let it sit there vacant for years before deciding to occupy it. “What about her friends? When she was younger? Before you fell out of contact?” She sat forward again. “Where’d you grow up? Maybe I can reach out to former classmates or—”
“Portland, Oregon. She’s ten years younger than me. She wasn’t the kind of kid who brought home her school friends—at least not when I was still living there. For that matter, she wasn’t the kind who went to school all that regularly. But she did graduate high school.” He picked up his sandwich, only to set it back down again without taking a bite. His expression was grim. “I wasn’t there to see it. She didn’t go to college at all.”
Ali couldn’t help herself. She reached out her hand and touched his arm briefly. “It’s not your fault, you know.”
“Don’t be so sure. The last time I saw her, I was pretty pissed.” For a moment, he seemed like he would say more. But then he merely nodded toward her untouched plate. “Eat.”
She picked up her sandwich. “I will if you will.”
His faint smile held no amusement. But he picked up his own sandwich and they ate in silence for a few minutes.
Ali knew her allotted lunch break was drawing to a close. But she was reluctant to end it. Not necessarily because she thought she could divine some relevant nugget about Karen, either.
It was all because of him.
“So. What drew you to Wyoming?” She kept her voice deliberately light. “Work or woman?”
He seemed equally glad to lighten the mood. “Both. But drove would be more accurate than drew.”
“Ah.” She nodded sagely. “Escaping a sticky situation?”
“Not sticky. Just unacceptable.”
“What did she do? Cheat on you?”
At that, he let out a short laugh and all she could do was sit there, feeling bemused. “Nice to see you can laugh.”
He shook his head slightly. “Do you always speak what’s on your mind?”
She made a face. “If I
did, Growler would have fired me by now for sure.”
The fine lines beside his eyes crinkled. “Gowler.”
“Right.” She smiled. “Well, whatever reason drove you to Wyoming, I’m glad you’re here now.”
“Because of my supposed niece?”
She waited a beat. “Of course.”
His aqua gaze lingered on her face and his smile widened. “Of course,” he murmured.
She darn near sighed out loud right then and there.
Chapter Six
Grant pulled the truck off to the side of the highway and parked. Then he got out his cell phone and checked the signal. He’d learned all too quickly that the only places where a decent, solid cell signal existed were in the middle of Braden and in the middle of Weaver. Since his house was not in either town, that had been a problem. He wanted away from his old life, but that didn’t mean he could avoid everything altogether.
He’d discovered this particular sweet spot on the highway when his phone had rung while he’d been driving.
The sound had been so foreign since he’d come to Wyoming that he’d damn near run off the road. By the time he found the phone—it had slid under the bench seat between an ancient toolbox and a rat’s nest of rope—the call had ended and he’d gotten the little ping notifying him that he had a voice mail.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t been Karen, suddenly reaching out to him after all this time. The message had been from his agent, Martin.
He’d deleted the message without listening to it, pulled back onto the highway and continued driving into town to hit the library for some plumbing books and earn himself a parking ticket.
Now, he sat here on the side of the road while the truck engine rumbled noisily, tapping the cell phone with his thumb and absently noticing the smear of white paint on the back of his hand.
Then he muttered an oath and quickly dialed. It was Sunday afternoon. It would be two hours ahead in New York. But he knew she’d still be at the office, even on a Sunday. Because she was always at the office. That had been part of the problem. She’d worked too much. And he’d cared more about the air force than her.
No wonder they hadn’t lasted.
It rang only twice before his ex-wife picked up. “About time you came to your senses,” she barked.
“Hello to you, too, Chels.”
She made a faint sound that he knew would be accompanied by a roll of her blue eyes. She’d be pushing back in her expensive-as-hell chair, putting her bare feet on the corner of her expensive-as-hell desk and tugging the expensive-as-hell glasses off her face to dangle them at her side. “Hello, Grant,” she finally said. “Where are you? Are you calling me from Nowheresville, USA? You didn’t have to bug out of the cabin just because the Rules Rabble had started camping outside your door, you know. All you needed to do was hire a decent security team! And to move without even telling me? Or Martin? You know he’s been trying to reach you.”
The day that he’d met Ali hovered in his mind. When he heard her pounding on his door, he’d automatically thought she was just another of the rabid fans who’d invaded his remote Oregon retreat to such a degree that he’d taken the drastic action of escaping to a small Wyoming town where nobody would expect to find him. The only person he’d notified about his move had been Claudia Reid. “Martin doesn’t have anything to tell me that I want to hear. And it’s obviously not Nowheresville here or you wouldn’t have been able to get that box of books to me when it was returned to you. You shouldn’t have bothered. Waste of postage.”
She snorted softly. “I’m your publisher, darling. I have a contractual obligation to get those copies to you.”
She’d been his wife before she’d been his publisher. That particular promotion hadn’t come about until after their divorce and his second book. “Don’t make me tell you what you can do with your contractual obligation.” They both knew good and well that the contract she cared about most was for the next CCT Rules installment. The contract he refused to even discuss.
She laughed lightly. “Always the same, dear Grant. I would never put up with you if you weren’t such a gifted writer.”
He wasn’t gifted. After getting out of the air force, he’d written the first CCT Rules because it had been cheaper penning the stories that kept him from sleeping at night than paying for counseling. Their marriage might have been crumbling, but that hadn’t stopped Chelsea from deciding the handwritten scrawls were worth something. She’d nagged him into putting it in actual story form and then ran it past the editorial team where she worked.
Within months, he had an agent, a book deal and a wife who wanted a divorce. Despite that, she was more responsible for the success of the series than he was. She’d certainly benefited from it more than she’d ever benefited from being married to him. His unexpected catapult up the bestseller list, as the first book was followed by another, and another, had been accompanied by her even more meteoric progress up the ranks at work.
“I’m not calling to talk about CCT Rules.”
“Pity, when it’s the only thing at all that interests me.”
“Ever honest, even when it hurts, right, Chels?” It was too easy to fall into nasty old habits. “Have you heard anything from Karen lately?”
“Aside from the occasional piece of mail that ends up getting forwarded from wherever? No. I haven’t.” Fortunately, the sarcasm left her voice.
Once the gloss of “opposites attract” had worn off, Chelsea had been a witch of a wife. To be fair, he hadn’t been much of a husband. But for reasons Grant had never understood, his ex-wife had always had a soft spot for his sister.
“I hope you’re not lying to me, Chels. This is important.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Grant,” she snapped. “Have I ever lied to you?”
True. They’d been married for seven years. She’d told him everything that was good and everything that was bad. In excruciating detail. She’d often said that she had a closer relationship with her battery-operated boyfriend than she did with him. And, in the end, that it was preferable to him altogether.
“Just tell me what’s happened,” she said impatiently.
“Nothing good. When’s the last time you did talk to her?”
“I didn’t actually speak with her, because I was traveling, but when I got back from the Frankfurt Book Fair last October, my assistant told me that she’d called. She didn’t leave a number or any particular message, but you know Karen. She rarely does.”
“Any hint at all where she was calling from? Like a city? A state?”
“No idea. I did send her some money about six months ago, though.”
“Chels—”
“Don’t even think about lecturing me. I could always tell whether or not she was sober, and she was. She’d met some guy but it hadn’t worked out—”
“Because it never works out.”
“And she needed to get out of the situation. So I wired some money to her in Montana. Butte. But given her restlessness, I doubt she was still there when she called me again last October.”
It was still more information than he’d had. Maybe the situation his sister had alluded to was her pregnancy. “She happen to say what Butte boy’s name was?”
“No, but she gave me the address where she was crashing. I needed it for the wire. I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere. I’ll email it to you.”
“I haven’t checked my email for months. I don’t even have a computer with me here.”
She clucked her tongue. “You’re taking this no-more-writing thing a little too far, don’t you think? If you’re holding out for more money for the fifth book—”
“I’m not writing a fifth one, Chelsea. I’ve told you that a dozen times. I’m done.”
She sighed again, even more noisily. “You’ll change your mind and sign another contract, just like you changed your mind and
signed the last one. The money’s just too damn good. We’ve got momentum on our side, Grant. You don’t want to lose that. The usual networks have been clamoring for interviews...”
He hadn’t changed his mind about the last one. Karen’s forgery of his signature had. And if Chelsea hadn’t enlisted Karen’s help to convince Grant to sign by luring her with a shopping spree, Karen wouldn’t have cared less about the contract. As much as he wanted to blame Chelsea, though, he blamed himself more. He should have been a better big brother when Karen had been growing up. A person couldn’t set an example in someone’s life if they just weren’t there. He hadn’t been there for her when Talia died. And two years later, when Cal followed, instead of leaving the air force when he’d had the opportunity, Grant had just re-upped.
He’d been more concerned with trying to prove he was a real chip off Cal Cooper’s block than he’d been with taking care of his wild-child sister.
“No interviews.”
“But—”
“I said no, Chelsea. You’ve got the book. That’s all you need.”
“You know, for a hard-ass air-force hero, you’ve turned into quite the prima donna.”
“I wasn’t a hero,” he said flatly. “Text me that address. And if you do hear from her, find out where she is. Or tell her to call me.”
“Do I get to know why?”
“Because I think she had a baby and she left her on the doorstep of a stranger, rather than reach out to me for help.”
“What?”
“Just text me that address in Montana.” Before Chelsea could say anything else, he ended the call.
Then he rubbed his forehead, where the headache always formed when he spoke with his ex-wife.
Prima donna.
Hardly.
But he had no intention of telling her the truth. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to write another CCT Rules. He was afraid he couldn’t write another. For one simple reason.
He had no more words left inside him.
Show Me a Hero Page 7