“Find the funnel cakes. I’m hungry.” She set off, and Hallie and Brady followed her into the crowds.
“You’re doing better with her,” Hallie said.
“She’s doing better, thanks to you.”
“I haven’t done anything special. I just like her.”
“I imagine for her, that’s pretty special. Her mother, you may have noticed, isn’t particularly interested in her.”
She smiled at a familiar face, then pulled her camera bag around in front so she could unzip it and remove one of the two cameras inside. When she rezipped it, Brady extended his hand and she passed the bag to him. “I’ve been wondering about that. How did you happen to marry a woman as utterly self-centered, vain and mercenary as Sandra appears to be?”
He was silent so long that she was about to write the question off when he shrugged. “She knew what she wanted and I was the way to get it. I was…alone. I made it easy for her.”
Alone, she knew from her own experiences, often translated to lonely. Sandra had been poor, according to Lexy, and she’d wanted money, so she’d set her sights on the lonely rich kid, who’d probably had a miserable relationship with his parents, considering that even now, he couldn’t seem to bear any conversation about them without overwhelming tension.
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
That muscle in his jaw was twitching again, so she decided to lighten the conversation. “Oh, you must have been easy pick-ins,” she teased. “An eighteen-year-old boy with raging hormones, a beautiful and willing girl…. You didn’t stand a chance, did you?”
“I was an idiot and a fool.”
“Honey, that’s part of being an eighteen-year-old boy. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
They joined Lexy at the funnel-cake stand, where Brady paid for the fried batter cake laden with powdered sugar and calories. They walked and ate, window-shopped, traded hellos with people Hallie had met and some she hadn’t, and she snapped off a roll of photographs. They stood in the shade and watched part of the talent show, ate fried alligator and sno-cones and talked about things of no consequence.
Hallie couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a hot August Saturday.
They were looking at a rack of CDs—at least, Lexy was looking—three blocks from the courthouse when Brady’s cell phone rang. He spoke for a moment before disconnecting, then said, “I’ve got to go to the department for a minute. I’ll meet you guys around here when I’m done. You need any money, Lexy?”
“Nah. I’ve got some.”
Hallie turned to watch him go, following his progress through the crowd. She wasn’t the only female doing so, she noticed, and felt just a nibble of jealousy. She and Lexy were giving him no choice but to get out of his house once in a while and socialize, and when they were both gone, some other woman was going to benefit from it.
Life wasn’t fair.
“Isn’t he cute?”
“Hmm,” Hallie answered absently.
Lexy poked her in the ribs. “Not my dad. Him.”
Hallie turned to look at the CD Lexy was holding. It was the latest offering of one of the ubiquitous boy bands, and the member she was pointing to had dirty blond hair and a scruffy beard—largely because he was too young, Hallie suspected, to grow a decent one.
She looked from the CD to the headphones around Lexy’s neck. “You listen to boy bands?”
“Good God, no. But isn’t he cute?”
Hallie moved closer to hug the girl. “Yes, he’s cute. And thank heavens you don’t listen to that stuff.”
Just then she felt a tug on her camera strap, slung over one shoulder. As it slipped down her arm, she grabbed it in a tight hold, and felt the resistance immediately give. When she whirled around, two young men were trying to move away, but they were making slow progress, thanks to two women pushing baby strollers.
“Sorry,” the shorter of the two said. His look was guilty, his manner unfriendly. “My arm got caught when I was trying to get by.”
Lexy turned, her backpack swinging against Hallie. “Was that guy trying to steal your camera?”
“I don’t think so. I think it was just an accident, like he said.” But she had kind of a creepy feeling, and when the shorter man stopped before turning the corner and looked straight back at her, she shivered. “Unless you’ve found something you want, let’s see if we can find Brady.”
They ran into him coming out of the courthouse, then spent the next few hours wandering around and enjoying themselves. Finally, when the afternoon sun was at its hottest, they went to Brady’s house so Lexy could change into her swimsuit, and then they drove to Buffalo Lake outside Heartbreak.
At the location Brady chose, there were concrete picnic tables, a boat ramp and a small sandy beach. As Lexy headed for the water, Hallie and Brady sat down atop a picnic table under a corrugated tin canopy, a few feet of warm concrete and a small cooler of cold drinks between them.
When Lexy started to strip off her shirt and shorts, Brady apparently found the boat passing by way off to his left quite interesting. With a grin, Hallie said, “You can look now. She’s got her clothes off, and she’s quite decent.”
He gave her a steady look, as if he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“Come on, admit it. You were afraid she was wearing an itsy bitsy bikini under there, weren’t you?” She knew, because she’d expected something outrageous herself. But it was just your average maillot, designed more for serious swimming than anything else.
“Can you swim?”
“I live in California, remember? Of course I can swim. And surf. And body surf. Never did learn to water-ski, though,” she remarked as a boat towing a skier raced past. “Why?”
“Because if she gets into trouble, one of us ought to be able to help her.”
“You can’t swim?”
“Nope. I do well to manage showers.”
“Sounds like you had a traumatic experience.” She spoke softly, tentatively. If he wanted to talk, she would be happy to listen, but she didn’t want to push him. She’d learned well that bad memories had to come out on their own schedule.
For a long time he sat there, watching Lexy swim parallel to shore with strong, sure strokes. After a time, he turned his head to look at Hallie. “You could say that. When I was about five, my father—”
Abruptly he broke off and straightened, bracing his hands on the table on either side of him, pressing so hard his fingers turned white. “We had a pool, and one day he decided to teach me how to swim. I didn’t pick it up easily, so he kept me in the water for hours. I was sick from all the water and chlorine I’d swallowed, and I was so tired I could hardly hold my head above water. He got angry and…he left me there. If the housekeeper hadn’t been watching, if she hadn’t thrown me a float, then pulled me out….”
He would have drowned.
Hallie was horrified. She couldn’t imagine a father doing such a thing to a child. Her own father had been the sweetest, most loving man in the world, and most fathers she’d known were the same. Heavens, Brady himself was proving to be a good father to Lexy, and he didn’t even believe she was his child!
Because she didn’t have a clue what to say, she impulsively reached for his hand, coaxing and pulling and forcing it free. She wrapped both her hands around it, and after a moment’s hesitation, he held on.
“I’d give anything to hear that when your mother found out what he’d done, she killed the bastard, but I know that’s not the way the story goes,” she said quietly, fiercely.
“No. He’s alive and presumably well.”
“And that wasn’t the only time…” Hallie hesitated, considered changing the subject, then drew a deep breath and started over. “That wasn’t the only time he hurt you.”
His only response was to tighten both his jaw and his grip on her hand, but only for a moment. Obviously uncomfortable, he pulled loose and stood up, then fixed his gaze somewhere around her feet. “I shou
ldn’t have— Just forget all that, would you?”
“Sure,” she lied.
“I’m going to check in with the office. I’ll be back.”
As he stalked across the grass toward the truck, she didn’t point out that both his cell phone and the radio were there on the table beside her. Maybe he intended to use the radio in the SUV…or maybe he just needed a few minutes alone. Telling a story like that for what she would bet was the first time in thirty years had to be tough, especially for someone who kept to himself as much as he did.
And she couldn’t find the words to express how touched she was that he’d trusted it to her.
He’d been gone five, maybe ten, minutes when Lexy came splashing out of the water. She wrapped a towel around her middle, shoved her feet into her sandals and grabbed her clothes for the quick trek across the grass to the table. “Where’s Brady?”
“He had to call in and make sure all’s well with the world.”
Lexy slicked her hair back from her face. With her makeup washed away, she looked so young and innocent. She was a pretty girl, and she was going to break plenty of hearts someday. Hallie hoped one of them wasn’t Brady’s.
“You should have brought your suit,” she said, dripping water as she took a can of pop from the cooler. “Even warm, the water feels good.”
“You know, that’s exactly what every thirty-year-old woman wants—to show up in public in a swimsuit with a teenage girl in her swimsuit.”
“Brady would’ve appreciated it. He likes looking at you. You guys should go out tonight.”
Hallie took out her own pop and swallowed a long cool drink, then dryly asked, “You think?”
“They’re having a band at the Sidewalk Sale tonight, and dancing and everything. I heard some people talk about it. You guys should go.”
“And what about you?”
“I can stay home.”
“Alone?”
Lexy rolled her eyes. “I’ve done it plenty of times before.”
“Not while living with Brady, you haven’t. Wouldn’t you be afraid?”
“What’s to be afraid of? It’s Buffalo Plains, Oklahoma, and my father’s the acting sheriff. Hell—uh, heck, you’d only be a few blocks away. How long’s it take to drive? Two minutes?” Lexy grinned. “So…you wanna do it?”
“It’s a funny thing about going out—you need someone to ask you.”
“You could ask him.”
Of course she could. And he would probably turn her down, and she would feel like an idiot. Or worse, he would accept even though he’d rather not because he wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings, and he would spend the whole evening wishing he were someplace else.
Putting on a cheery smile, Hallie said, “My plans for this evening include luxuriating in a bubble bath, then lounging around in my air-conditioned house in my bathrobe and eating ice cream for dinner.”
“Dam—uh…”
“Darn,” Hallie supplied. “Dang. Drat. They’re all good substitutes.”
“Darn,” Lexy repeated, then stuck out her tongue. “How are you ever gonna get married if you insist on spending Saturday night home alone?”
“Honey, I’m not looking to get married again.” And she meant it. She honestly, truly did.
Just maybe not quite so much as she had a week ago.
“Don’t you want to have kids and someone to grow old with?”
“I got married three times wanting those things, and all I got was three divorces and a heart that can’t break anymore. I plan to be an adoring aunt to all the kids my sisters will have, and—” she put on a wicked smile “—if I feel the need for a man to grow old with, I got enough cash from this last divorce to buy one.”
Lexy crumpled her soft drink can and tossed it in a high arc into the nearby trash pail, then looked past her. “I was just telling Hallie that I think you guys should go back to the Sidewalk Sale this evening for the dance. There’s this movie on HBO that I’ve been wanting to see, but you wouldn’t like it, so you guys can entertain each other at the dance while I watch it.”
Hallie shifted positions so she could see Brady standing on the opposite side of the table. His hands were on his hips, and he’d gotten a pair of dark glasses from the truck to hide his eyes…and his embarrassment that he’d confided in her? Or was it regret?
“You’re too young to stay home alone.”
Lexy mimicked his position. “I stay alone all the time.”
“Not in my house.”
“Shi—sheesh. Whaddya think—someone’s gonna come arrest you for it?”
They stared at each other in stiff silence, and for the first time Hallie saw a resemblance between them. Lexy’s scowl matched Brady’s point for point, and her jaw was just as taut, just as obstinate. Even the way their mouths flattened in a thin line that quirked up on one side was the same. Of course, it could be written off as learned behavior on Lexy’s part or mere coincidence, but…it could also be evidence of that indefinable something passed down from parent to child along with the usual hair color/eye color/body type.
Brady caved first. He drew a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. “They’ll be providing free baby-sitters in one of the empty stores tonight for the people who are attending the dance. You can help out there.”
“Or I could stay home and watch my movie.”
“Or we can both stay home and watch your movie.”
Lexy’s gaze narrowed, probably calculating her odds of winning, Hallie thought. Then she shrugged. “Okay. It’s a deal. I’ll help take care of the little hoodlums, and you guys can go to the dance.”
“Excuse me,” Hallie said and, after a moment, they both looked at her. “Remember me? Home, bubble bath, ice cream, bathrobe?”
“Ask her to go to the dance,” Lexy instructed.
“Do you want to go to the dance?” he obediently asked.
Oh, yeah. The last time she could remember wanting to go to a dance as much as she did this one, she was in high school and it was prom time. And that was exactly why she should stick to her plans for a quiet, lazy evening home alone. Wanting something that much wasn’t good.
Wanting to be in Brady’s arms that much wasn’t good at all.
Oh, but the actual being there was fantastic. And could it really hurt? It wasn’t as if it was even a real date—heavens, if Lexy hadn’t pushed it, he never would have asked her. And considering he’d danced only four times at Neely and Reese’s reception, once with the bride and once with each Madison sister, she was likely to spend most of the evening standing on the sidelines or dancing with strangers.
So she’d be an idiot to go on a real date with him, but this kind of fix-up to make the kid happy would be harmless. It would be like going out with a good friend. No risk, no danger, just fun.
Inwardly Hallie grimaced. She was feeding herself such a line of bull. Apparently, idiocy and foolishness weren’t the sole province of eighteen-year-old boys.
“Yes,” she said against her better judgment. “I’d like to go to the dance with you.”
She hoped she didn’t live to regret it.
By the time the music started at nine o’clock, the crowd had thinned considerably. All the booths and displays were gone, and the only vendors who remained were selling cold drinks, hot dogs and ice cream. Except around the bandstand, the only activity downtown was in the storefront that had once housed a fix-it shop. Now it was filled with teenagers and grandmothers riding herd on rambunctious kids.
Brady glanced at Hallie beside him. She’d changed into a summery dress that was red and fitted snugly to every one of her curves, and she’d fixed her hair up on her head in some soft, feminine style. She was by far the prettiest woman at the dance.
Definitely the prettiest woman not dancing.
“Well?” He gestured toward the section of pavement that was serving as dance floor.
She smiled at him. “In a minute. Tell me about some of the people here. Which ones are your friends?”
He
didn’t need to gaze across the crowd. “None of them. I have no friends besides Reese, Neely and Jace.”
“And me.”
“And you.” But he didn’t want her for a friend. He wanted…more.
It seemed he’d lived his entire life wanting more. For a time with Sandra, he’d thought he’d hit the jackpot—a beautiful wife, an adorable daughter, enough money to make their every wish come true. And then he’d found out the beautiful wife loved his money but not him, and the adorable daughter belonged to someone else, and what did money matter if he didn’t have someone to spend it on?
He wanted…
A grim feeling settled over him. He wanted. That said it all.
“Okay, so tell me about these people you won’t let be friends,” Hallie said.
His first impulse was to argue the point with her, but he decided against it. Instead, he gestured toward the nearest couple. “That’s Easy and Shay Rafferty. She owns the Heartbreak Café. He used to be a champion roper until an accident shattered his hip and cost him three fingers. Now he raises and trains horses. Next to them are Guthrie and Olivia Harris. They’ve got twin daughters and just had a son last spring, and now Olivia’s pregnant again.”
“And they couldn’t be happier,” Hallie murmured.
He didn’t ask how she knew. It was so apparent on their faces that even a blind man couldn’t miss it. “The blonde over there is Callie Sellers, the nurse-midwife who delivers all the babies around here. And the redhead with the body—” which couldn’t be seen for all the men around her “—is Isabella. She came to visit Callie in May and hasn’t gone home yet.” Isabella was pretty, voluptuous, sexy and played at being nothing more than that, but Brady had spent enough years running away to recognize the signs in someone else.
“And who’s that gorgeous charmer with the blond hair?” Hallie’s sly look made it apparent the question was payback for the comment about Isabella’s body.
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