Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8)

by Deborah Coonts

  Mona.

  Mona was never quite what one expected.

  I figured hormones and an emotional hand grenade excused a momentary lapse in manners so I gave myself a pass. “Jean-Charles Bouclet, may I present…” A momentary blank—I’d forgotten more than my manners—“Miss Tawny Rose.” I kept a straight face, another epic win in a night filled with odd games.

  Jean-Charles raised an eyebrow, but that was it.

  “Miss Rose, may I present Jean-Charles Bouclet, my fiancé and a rather good chef who has a way with hamburgers and milkshakes.”

  “And a way with you.” Tawny gave me a knowing look.

  Maybe she’d been on the streets longer than I thought. “I don’t deny it. Jean-Charles, this is Tawny Rose.”

  He bent over her hand, making her blush. “Enchanté.” Then he invited us further inside before any awkwardness could get a foothold. “Come.” Turning back to his work, he scooped the patties off the coals, setting them on a rack to the side to rest. “I’ll be back in a moment.” Wiping his hands on a rag, he asked Tawny, “Chocolate or vanilla?”

  She gave a derisive huff.

  “Chocolate it is. I had you pinned as a chocolate girl.” With a circling motion, he indicated a high-top table with three stools next to the stove. “You sit.” Then he disappeared into the restaurant, heading toward the bar.

  To the side, Champagne chilled in a bucket of ice water. I chose a stool next to the Champagne.

  The girl picked the one on the opposite side from me and nearest the door. “Pinned?” she asked after boosting herself onto the stool.

  “Pegged.” I pulled out two flutes that Jean-Charles had upended into the ice as well, drying them with a bar towel looped through the handle of the bucket. I placed one in front of his stool and one in front of me, then I filled the flutes with Laurent-Perrier rosé—the good stuff. “English vernacular. He gets close most of the time.” Frankly, I found his struggle with idioms to be charming.

  Apparently, Tawny did as well. Color remained in her cheeks as she looked at me from under lowered lashes. “He’s…”

  I detected a hint of reverence bordering on adulation. “Indeed.”

  Somehow, my manners returning, I resisted the overwhelming urge to bolt the Champagne until Jean-Charles returned with an extra-thick chocolate shake. He handed it to Tawny with a bow, making her giggle. He raised his flute in a toast. “To friends.”

  “To family,” I said.

  The girl looked surprised as we clinked glasses. Underneath my Pollyanna shell lurked a solid pragmatist. If Mona had done something stupid, which was totally within her probabilities, we’d do what we always did: bitch and moan, and probably panic just a bit, then do the right thing.

  Jean-Charles plated the food, one burger for each of us, two for the girl, then joined us, straddling the last stool. Silence reigned as we fell to eating like ravenous wolves. I couldn’t remember my last meal. Last night? A birthday celebration? Then Jean-Charles had taken his son, Christophe, home and I’d gone to work. And I was still there. Tonight, Jean-Charles had been consumed by preparing food for his clientele and probably hadn’t taken time to eat. And Tawny, or whatever her real name was, had the feral look of someone for whom food was hunted rather than provided.

  Despite my hunger, I managed only a few bites before giving up.

  “Is the food not to your liking?” Jean-Charles’s question rode on an undercurrent of concern. He knew my aptitude for gluttony.

  “I don’t seem to have the energy,” I lied. Frankly, I just wasn’t hungry. Had that ever happened? I couldn’t remember. But, I still thirsted for a liquid diet. I peered at the bottom of my Champagne flute. The rosé had evaporated—that was happening to me more and more lately.

  “You have had no sleep, yes?” Jean-Charles asked. “And the adrenaline, it is gone now, no?”

  How did anyone ever figure out how to answer those kinds of questions? Yes, I’ve had no sleep. Or no, I haven’t had any sleep. They were like the thing with the air conditioner. If you turned it up, did that mean you made it colder? Or was it the other way around? Clearly higher thought was beyond my current competence, so I simply nodded, letting him jump to whatever conclusion he wanted.

  Without being asked, he refilled my flute. I didn’t complain. Normally, Champagne brought clarity. Of course, tonight would be the night that formula failed.

  Jean-Charles finished his burger and the girl ate her two, telling me I’d figured her situation accurately, at least as far as sustenance went.

  I pushed my plate toward her. “Here, finish mine.” Her milkshake mustache made me smile. She nodded and kept eating. I sipped my Champagne, trying to restrain myself with a modicum of success, while I waited for her to finish.

  Finally, she looked up from her food, her plate clean, her milkshake a memory. She cocked one eyebrow at Jean-Charles. “Dessert?”

  “As you wish.” He gave me a wink as he backed off his stool then disappeared into the walk-in cooler. Jean-Charles was playing to every chef’s dream, a ravenous, appreciative customer.

  The food had softened the girl’s feral look, so I decided the time was ripe for more questions. “Can you tell me where you’re from?”

  “Outside of Reno.”

  “Your grandmother’s ranch?”

  She nodded.

  “Her name?”

  This was where the rubber met the road. That’s the thing about lies, so hard to keep straight. I felt like adding “The truth will set you free,” but somehow, I didn’t think she’d get the reference—she hadn’t enough years to have amassed enough worthless references. And I really didn’t feel like being that self-righteous. No matter our age, we each had our own coping mechanisms. Lying wasn’t the best, but it was the one most often tried first.

  “Sara Pickford.”

  “Pickford?” Between Pickford and O’Toole there were far too many movie references in this family. You’d think that if fantasy was a family heirloom, someone would’ve created a better one.

  “Her fourth husband. Long story. But she kept trying.”

  “Your gram’s ranch is where the photo was taken?”

  “Yes, but long before I arrived.” Folding her napkin crease by crease absorbed her attention. She flicked her gaze to mine then back to her napkin.

  That math I could do for myself. I wanted to jerk her napkin away. “And the place is yours now?”

  Surprise flickered. “A lawyer is figuring it out. He said it would take a while.”

  “Do you live there?”

  “I did. Right now, I’m traveling with the rodeo, as you guessed.”

  “In what capacity?”

  This time she looked at me a fraction of a second longer, then her face started to close. “Just a helper.” Her need to tell the truth warred with self-preservation.

  “To whom?”

  She eyed me like my IQ had suddenly plummeted. “The horses.”

  I raised one eyebrow.

  “I muck out the stalls and shit.” She rewarded me with an eye roll.

  Rule Number One in the Amateur Interrogation Handbook: get under their skin. One and done. I resisted gloating as bad form—and ignored the fact I was barely holding my own in a contest with a sixteen-year-old. “Are you in school?”

  “I finished early.”

  “Finished? You mean graduated or left?” I’d keep pushing until I got stonewalled.

  “Graduated.”

  “And?”

  Her hands dropped in a knot to her lap. “I left.”

  “Why?”

  Pale replaced the pink in her cheeks. Her shoulders dropped as the attitude faded.

  The truth. So very close, I could almost taste it. I leaned forward slightly. Grabbing her and shaking would probably not get the result I wanted, but it would feel really good. Instead, I summoned my last bit of self-control and waited. The need to tell me shimmered off her in waves.

  I held my breath until I saw stars.

  Sh
e pulled in a deep lungful of air. Her gaze locked onto mine. She opened her mouth to speak.

  Jean-Charles breezed back to the table.

  Tawny clamped her mouth shut and painted on a smile.

  He slid a tray in front of us with a flourish. “A most excellent mille-feuilles. My pastry chef,” he put his fingers to his lips then made a kissing motion, “she is to kill for.”

  The look I threw him flew by my pastry-enraptured chef like a knife in a circus act.

  Good thing there weren’t any sharp knives within reach—this might be my circus, but it was not an act. A few more moments and I would’ve had…something, maybe even a hint at the whole truth.

  “To kill for?” Tawny, her chin still tucked, glanced at me.

  “To die for.” I settled back, letting the rancor go. I’d shake the truth out of her somehow.

  “Yes, this,” Jean-Charles said, completely unaware of just how close death was. He dealt each of us clean plates, then gave me a small piece per my usual request and a whopper for our young guest.

  The kid was from Nevada. That surprised me—I was expecting someplace further away. Don’t know why other than folks who blindsided me in the past had tended to travel a great distance for the privilege.

  Teddie had been born in Boston.

  Teddie. Why was he first to spring to mind? And why did first loves hurt so much?

  Jean-Charles hailed from Provence.

  “Both your grandparents are gone. Do you have any other family?” I asked. Mona had never mentioned any family, and I’d assumed she would’ve had she had any. Right now, life rubbed my nose in the fallacy of that assumption—or at least the very real possibility that Mona had kept secrets. Oh, sure, I’d known she was famous for skirting the truth, but not from me. Not from her own flesh and blood, her own daughter.

  How could I have been so naïve? So arrogant in my place in her life?

  But hiding secrets? That never dawned on me. Stupid, in retrospect. Secrets were so a part of my mother’s way of dealing with reality.

  “No one. Just the lady in the photograph. Like I said.”

  “Mona,” I said to Jean-Charles to bring him into the conversation at least somewhat.

  Jean-Charles’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline as he cocked his head toward the girl and gave me a questioning glance. I gave him a little shrug. He knew how to interpret it—if he was looking for more, that’s all I had.

  “Other than your grandmother’s story, is there any other reason you believe she’s your mother?” I asked Tawny. I kept looking for a more solid answer, even though I knew she didn’t have one—or not one she would share with me anyway. Maybe she was holding the heavy artillery for Mona.

  She paused with a forkful of pastry halfway to her mouth. “Like what? A letter or something?”

  If I got the teenage nuance right, her tone told me she thought I was being lame. “A birth certificate?”

  Her façade crumpled, letting the scared come through. “I don’t have anything. No papers. Nothing to prove who I am or where I came from. My grandmother is gone. There’s no one else. All I have is that photo and a story.”

  “Your school?”

  “It was pretty casual.” She gave a shrug that implied a casualness not reflected in her tight, hard stare. “We lived in the country.”

  What secrets had her grandmother been hiding? And why? And why tell the girl Mona was her mother? Was Mona just a random kid in an old picture that the grandmother used to give the girl a story, a family?

  But where did she get the photo?

  Random thoughts swirled around in my head—bats in my belfry. Clearly, I was losing it. “Any idea who else was in that picture? Why they were torn away and discarded?”

  “No. My gram didn’t tell me much.” She looked over my right shoulder as if the tile wall behind me and above the stove was fascinating.

  Liars look up and to the left. I read that somewhere. Or maybe my bud, Detective Romeo, with the Metropolitan Police Department taught me that. Lately, he’d been teaching me more than I had him—a reversal in our relationship. Not sure I liked it, but that never stopped the Fates from interfering in my status quo.

  Jean-Charles opened his mouth to speak.

  I quieted him with a hand on his arm and a gentle squeeze. “Well, perhaps Mona can shed some light, but not now. It’s too late.” I ignored the crestfallen look. No way was I going to play my ace until I saw a few more of her cards. “We need to find you a place to stay.”

  “I’m good. I’m staying with a friend from the rodeo. What I’d really like to do is find Mona. That’s what I came here for.”

  “I know. We both need to hear what she has to say. But haven’t you accomplished a lot for one day?”

  Family. Weren’t they like the Fifth Level of Purgatory or something?

  Tawny looked terrified yet excited—that mix of adrenaline and fear the second before you leap with only a bungee attached to an ankle.

  “I’ll go see her myself.” The girl was like a tick on a dog.

  “Be my guest. Your funeral.” Mona was my one ace, and I wasn’t above playing it.

  Jean-Charles laughed, God bless him. Wise to my tricks, he played along. “Mona.” He gave a low whistle. “She’s got a nip, that one.”

  “Bite,” I corrected with a side-eye at the girl.

  “Yes, this.” Jean-Charles patted the girl’s hand. “And she is married to a very important man in this town. A man with many friends and many enemies.”

  Okay, he was starting to overplay. “She’s not easy to get to,” I said, cutting off Jean-Charles, or making his point, as I preferred to look at it.

  “Yes, this.” He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest.

  “She can’t be mad at me,” the girl whined. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “She’ll certainly be surprised.” I wasn’t feeling the normal delight I had when I one-upped my mother, which was rare indeed. This drama had a human heart element to it that was tragic no matter how it turned out or what the truth was. I quit overplaying my own hand. In my gut, I knew that even though this was my problem, it wasn’t my fight. “But mad? I don’t think so.”

  The sight of her. The plaintive unhappiness in her voice. I wilted. And I went with my instinct and wrapped her in a hug. She stiffened for a moment then relaxed into me. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered against her hair. “We’ll figure it out. You’re here now, and, family or not, we’ll take care of you.”

  The girl needed a friend, a champion. Playing that role was in my wheelhouse. I released her but kept an arm looped around her shoulders. “Let’s go. We’ve prevailed upon Chef Bouclet’s kindness long enough. Let’s get you a shower and some shut-eye, then we can handle all of this tomorrow when our strength is at full throttle.”

  “I’ve got a place; I told you that.” The girl backed off her stool.

  “Well, if you’re with me, then whoever is looking for you won’t be able to find you.”

  She froze, still as a statue. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “In my office, you were as twitchy as a rabbit in a greyhound race. Once we got into the elevators and came up here where no one else can come and no one would think to look, you calmed down. That tells me you’re running from someone.”

  She opened her mouth, then clamped it shut, her eyes bugging as she looked over my shoulder.

  “She’s running from me.”

  I whirled around. Detective Romeo.

  Standing in the doorway, he looked stern. Well, actually he looked only slightly older than twelve, his sandy hair a trifle long—something my youngest assistant, Brandy, probably had a hand in. His boyish face unmarred by the shadow of a beard, his overcoat shrouded his thin frame, while his cowlick stood at attention from the crown of his head, a flag waving in surrender.

  When we’d first met over a woman who was pushed out of a tour helicopter at a very inconvenient time and altitude, he’d been a greenhorn. I’d taken h
im under my wing, shown him the ropes. While he still didn’t have the connections a Vegas brat like me had, he’d worked his way up the food chain to where he had the audacity to consider himself my equal. Although it galled, he was probably right. Either way, we had each other’s backs.

  Regardless, somehow I’d been left off the invitation list to his graduation, so his new attitude still took me by surprise.

  “Well, don’t you sound officious and dull?” I put myself between him and the girl. I wasn’t aware of it until I’d done it.

  Romeo looked nonplussed, tilting his head in an invitation to get out of his way.

  Seriously? That was as effective as chiseling stone with a chopstick.

  While I appreciated his competence, I missed his happiness. “You do know you can do your job and still actually like it, don’t you?”

  His bluster melted a bit when he ran into the heat of my glare, which deepened when I saw who was with him.

  Paxton Dane muscled in beside the young detective looking lean, luscious, and less than trustworthy, all traits that, unfortunately, I’d discovered the hard way. A long, tall Texan who had wooed me while he was still married, managed to get his estranged wife killed, then left.

  Recently, he’d returned acting as if all was forgiven. I was still struggling with the distinction between forgiving and forgetting.

  Thankfully, I hadn’t fallen for Dane’s act, nor succumbed to his charm. So, I wasn’t struggling with forgiving myself…for once.

  My history with handsome men would flesh out an entire line of Harlequin romances without the happy endings, but Dane wouldn’t be a chapter.

  “Why is she running from you?” I asked the young detective.

  Romeo waved my question aside, which usually meant he was committed to the wind-up before throwing the pitch.

  Surprisingly, I found one last erg of patience.

  “That girl, there.” He lifted his chin toward the girl who now cowered behind me. “We tailed her here, then Dane got Security to trace where she’d gone in the hotel.”

  “We got to your office, but you weren’t there,” Dane added.

  I gave him a look intended to wither steel. “Brilliant deduction, Watson. Am I supposed to be impressed?”