by JoAnn Ross
The school picture that Will had shown him the day before had indicated how much she took after him, but in person the resemblance seemed less marked. Her expression tightened when she noticed him looking at her and she shifted in her chair, crossing her arms.
Classic defensiveness.
“I guess I don’t need to ask if you and Sara kept in touch after you two graduated from Bendlemaier.” Logan turned his attention back to Annie. He was perfectly aware of Riley’s increased defensiveness when he mentioned the school. Another thing that Will had clued him into.
He and Noelle wanted to send their daughter to the exclusive boarding school. But it was apparent that Riley liked the idea even less than Annie once had.
Annie’s smile looked forced. “I, um, I didn’t graduate from Bendlemaier. But we kept in touch when she went off to college. We’d talked often enough about wanting our own shop, and when the opportunity arose, we went for it.”
For some reason, Logan had assumed Annie had been in college with Sara. Showed how much he knew about his sister. He wondered if Sara had changed as much as Annie. Even though it hadn’t been in his plans—which were to do what needed doing and get out of there as quickly as possible—he had more than a fleeting desire to see his kid sister.
He’d talked to her a few times in the past ten years on the phone, but he hadn’t seen her in person in longer than that. He still remembered her expression the last time they’d seen each other. Confused. Hurt. It had felt like his skin was being peeled away to know he’d never come back to Turnabout to be any sort of brother that mattered. Instead, he called when the need to do so grew too great and sent her money to salve his conscience. After enough years, he could almost convince himself his system worked.
But he wasn’t there to deal with his family issues. So he studied Annie for a moment. He’d fully expected to see her, since Will had told him that his daughter was staying with her, but he hadn’t expected any of the feelings that had hit him when he did. “Your hair used to be longer, didn’t it?” He knew good and well how long it had been. Thick and shining, its wild white-blond curls had reached down to the small of her back. All those years ago, she’d used that mane like a weapon against any male in her vicinity.
“Yes.” She poked her fork into her water glass, spearing the lemon, which she squeezed back into the water. Her cheeks looked vaguely red. “You look pretty much the same to me.” She glanced at Riley, making him wonder what she was thinking. “A little older, but aren’t we all?”
“All this reminiscing makes me want to gag.”
“Then face the other way before you do, Riley, so you don’t ruin our lunches,” Logan suggested mildly.
She glared at him. It made him want to smile. She was very much like her aunt had once been. Full of attitude. The style of clothing had changed some in the past decade and a half, but she wore hers just as tightly and flauntingly as Annie had ever done.
He watched Annie’s down-turned head for a moment. There was nothing flaunting about Annie’s appearance, now. She had on a sleeveless khaki jumper that nearly reached her ankles over a short-sleeved white T-shirt. The dress was shapeless and the neckline of the shirt didn’t even reveal the base of her slender throat.
She wore a plain watch with a thin black band on her left wrist and no other visible jewelry. Gone were the jangling metal bracelets, the chains around her neck, the multiple sets of dangling earrings. Her brown lashes looked soft and naked and if she wore a hint of makeup, she’d done it too subtly for him to tell. When she’d been seventeen she’d seemed to pile on the stuff with a trowel.
“Geez. Take a picture, why don’t you?” Riley rolled her eyes and shook her head at him, her disgust obvious.
Annie looked up, her gaze flicking from her niece to Logan’s face. Then her cheeks flushed again. She moistened her lips and seemed about to say something, but the waitress returned, arms laden with their orders, leaving Logan to wonder what had caused that flush—if it had to do with the past.
She’d never seemed the blushing type before.
The last time he’d seen her had been at her parents’ palatial Seattle home, where he, along with the rest of the wedding party, had spent the night following Will’s wedding. He’d been pretty damned angry with her.
But even angrier with himself. Her youth could explain her actions. He’d had no such excuse.
“Pass the ketchup, please.”
He handed Riley the bottle, vaguely surprised by her politeness. But then again, attitude or not, she was Will and Noelle’s daughter. He watched her dump it over her French fries. “Like to have one French fry with your ketchup?”
She made a face then nodded. He took the bottle when she was finished, doing the same thing with his own plate. “Me, too.”
It earned him a studiously bored look.
Annie had ordered a salad. She stabbed her fork into it, moving lettuce and chunky vegetables from side to side, but not seeming to eat any of it.
“So, what did happen when you left Bendlemaier?”
She didn’t look up from her salad. “Not a lot.”
“How come you don’t still live on Turnabout, if you came from here?” Riley dredged a fry back and forth through her pool of ketchup.
“I had a job that took me elsewhere.” It was true enough, though hardly the entire truth. He had the sense that Riley had only posed the question to keep him from asking more questions of his own to her aunt. It struck him as oddly protective.
“What kinda job?”
“Riley, it’s none of our business.”
He shook his head at Annie’s protest. “I became a spy.”
“Yeah, right.” Riley rolled her eyes and scooped up her dripping French fry, licking her fingers afterward.
“Okay, I’m a consultant,” he said dryly. The lie had always been more palatable for people than the truth—even if he’d dared to share the truth with anybody who mattered. Even his associates had a hard time stomaching it. There were a lot of agents who worked for Coleman Black, the head of Hollins-Winword, in many capacities. But there was need for only one clean-up man.
“Consultant for what? Who?”
“Did you pick up that questioning technique from your dad? I always figured if he hadn’t wanted to be a lawyer, he’d have made a good cop.”
The teen wasn’t fooled. “That’s not an answer.”
“What happened with your law degree?” Annie finally spoke.
“I stuck it in a closet where it’s gathered a lot of dust.” He smiled grimly. He did practice law. Just in a manner most people didn’t want to be aware of. He’d felt that way himself many times. Until recently, though, he’d always been able to shake it, and get on with the job at hand.
A young woman with a white towel wrapped around her hips stopped by their table. “Anything else I can bring you?”
Logan shook his head. Riley sat back, her arms crossed. She’d eaten her ketchup-drenched fries and half her hamburger. Annie—who hadn’t eaten even half of the salad, smiled up at the waitress. “I think we’re fine, Janie. Thanks.”
The waitress moved away. She hadn’t been the one to serve them their meal.
“Who’s the girl?” he asked, watching after her. “She looks familiar.”
Annie followed his gaze toward the departing waitress. “Janie Vega. She helps Maisy out when things are busy. She’s actually a stained-glass artist, though. Has her own studio on the island.”
“Vega?”
Annie nodded. “I suppose you knew Sam Vega? She’s his younger sister.”
“I went to school with Sam.” Janie had been a baby back then.
“He’s sheriff now.”
Logan shook his head, truly surprised at that. “When we were young, Sam wanted off the island worse than I did.”
Annie toyed with her water glass. “When Sara said she hardly ever heard from you she wasn’t joking. Otherwise you’d have known he was the sheriff.”
Riley huffed again. “This is too old for words. I’m outta here.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll go back to your house or something.”
Logan watched Annie’s face. A dozen expressions seemed to cross it. Everything from alarm to reluctance to resignation. She passed her keys to her niece. “You can watch the shop until I get there.”
Riley slowly took the keys. “You trust me?”
“You’re not planning to go anywhere else, are you?”
Anywhere else like running away again, Logan interpreted.
“No.” She turned on her heel and strode out of the dining area. Logan watched her go, calculating how likely it would be for her to get off the island if she’d been set on doing so. He’d already talked to Diego Montoya who—as he’d suspected—still ran the only ferry on the island, only to learn the old man was already on the watch for Riley Hess. If the girl were to try to leave, she wouldn’t be able to do so on Diego’s boat. And fortunately for Logan’s current purposes, the other residents of the island seemed to have held to the strange tradition of not owning any kind of watercraft more sophisticated than a dinghy. Only a fool would attempt the crossing in that small a craft.
When Riley was gone, Logan looked back to find Annie watching him. She set down her fork and pushed aside the salad with an air of finality. Her expression was unreadable. “Riley was right. Will did send you. I wasn’t aware that you two were even in touch anymore.”
“I was in Olympia and happened to look him up. He told me Riley had run away.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Happened? Quite a coincidence. And how perfectly convenient that your consulting job allows you to head off to little-known islands whenever it suits you.”
“I’m between assignments right now.” It wasn’t often he found himself feeling defensive, and he’d be damned if he knew why he did now. His answer was true enough, though. Except he didn’t know how he could stomach another assignment after the last FUBAR. He’d told Cole that he’d needed a break, which was how Logan came to be helping out on what should have been a straightforward runaway case. Except that Will hadn’t been the one to ask him to help out. It had been Cole. Turns out his boss and Will had some dealings with each other. Dealings he hadn’t known about until now.
Despite that, however, Logan didn’t necessarily trust his boss to leave Logan to his task if his particular talents suddenly became necessary again. Cole’s priorities were simple. Hollins-Winword—and all that it stood for, all that it protected—came first.
Annie’s lips were pressed together. “Your job—whatever it is—doesn’t really matter, anyway. Will should have come after Riley himself.”
Logan didn’t necessarily disagree. Another argument he’d had with Cole and Will. “Your brother didn’t want Riley doing something even more drastic.”
“She threatened to run again if he came after her.”
“I heard.”
“But she needs to go home.”
The fine line of her jaw looked tight. In fact, everything about Annie looked tight. Uptight. It wasn’t a demeanor he’d have expected her to wear. “Is she causing you difficulties?”
“No. No, of course she isn’t.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but didn’t.
“Has she told you why she left home?”
“Riley doesn’t confide in me.”
He frowned. “Come on, Annie. Riley didn’t just run away and disappear. Fortunately. She came to you.”
Annie shook her head. She fiddled with her fork and spoon, neatly aligning them. “She’s just curious about her black-sheep aunt who is odd enough to live on a small island.”
Black sheep? She currently looked more like Bo-Peep to him. “Will and Noelle want to send Riley to Bendlemaier.”
“It’s a fine school.”
Logan watched her for a long moment. “You hated it there.”
“The academic program is—”
“You called it a prison.”
“—unparalleled. Riley is very—”
“You did everything you could to get out of there.”
“—bright. She’ll excel there.”
“Obviously you succeeded in getting out, since you’ve admitted you didn’t graduate from Bendlemaier.” He recognized her face. But the resemblance to the Annie of old was nil. “That’s probably what your parents said when they sent you there. That you’d excel.”
She stiffened. “You never did think much of me, Logan. But are you really comparing me to George and Lucia Hess?”
Impatience rolled through him. He leaned toward her across the small round table. “What the hell’s happened to you, Annie?”
“I grew up,” she said evenly. “What happened to you? You’re the one who pretty much disappeared after Will and Noelle’s wedding.”
If she knew, she’d keep him miles away from Riley. “This isn’t about me.”
“Nor is it about me. This is about Riley and the fact that you’re here to take her home because her father, my brother, couldn’t be bothered to come after her himself.”
“You know his reasons. He and Noelle are being cautious, given what Riley has threatened.”
“Do you really think that Riley doesn’t want her parents’ attention despite what she says to the contrary?” She sat back, seeming to realize that her voice had risen. “Okay, so fine. You’re doing your old friend a favor by retrieving his daughter. Actually, I’m surprised Will waited even a day to retrieve her, considering the unhealthy influence I’m bound to have on her.”
Her tone was even. Neither defensive nor sarcastic, but factual. She could have been reciting geographic statistics from an encyclopedia for all the emotion she showed.
It bugged the hell out of him.
Years ago, there had probably been a portrait of Annie in the dictionary beside the word precocious, but she hadn’t been a danger to anyone other than herself. “How long has it been since you’ve seen Will in person?” All Will had said during that very brief meeting they’d had—the only time they’d seen each other in more than fifteen years, in fact—was that Annie occasionally visited for Christmas, flying in and out just as quickly.
She lifted her shoulder. “Why does it matter?”
Because Logan already suspected that Will knew this Annie about as well as Logan did. Before he could get into that, however, he noticed someone entering the dining area.
He stiffened. Dammit.
“Maisy told me you were here,” Hugo Drake said, stopping beside their table. “I had to see it with my own eyes, though. I guess they must be building igloos in hell ’bout now since you were pretty clear that particular place had to freeze over before you’d ever step foot on the island again.”
He looked up at his father, a man he’d loathed for so many years he could barely remember feeling anything else for him. Hugo Drake was still a robust man, though the years had left their mark in the white hair, the fading eyes. But the old man still had an unlit cigar sticking out of the pocket on his shirt.
Annie had risen and was dropping bills on the table.
“Where are you going?” He ignored his father.
“Back to the shop.”
Her gaze darted between him and Hugo. He wondered what she was thinking. And he wondered why it mattered. He didn’t care who knew about his feelings where his father was concerned. The guy had made his mother’s life a misery. She’d downed a bottle of pills rather than stay married to him. Rather than hang around to finish raising her son and daughter.
Logan hadn’t hated living on Turnabout so much as he’d hated being Dr. Hugo Drake’s son.
He doubted all that many things had changed in the twenty years since he’d been to Turnabout, and he knew that particular thing had changed least of all.
He stood, picked up Annie’s money and handed it back to her. Right or wrong, he paid his own way in life. “I’ll see you later at the shop.”
Her lips parted softly. But he’d already put enough cash on the table to pay the check and was walking away.
He was on Turnabout for one specific reason. Because his boss had ordered it. And that reason didn’t include playing the prodigal son to the man he held responsible for his mother’s death.
Chapter 3
Logan wasn’t at the shop when Annie got there. Which surprised her and relieved her—and disappointed her—though she hardly wanted to dwell on that point. Given what little she knew about him now, and what she remembered of the man she’d once briefly known, she figured he wouldn’t stay away for long. He’d come to the island for a purpose. She couldn’t see him not fulfilling it.
Since they wanted the same thing—Riley to return home—she decided to blame any disappointment over his absence on that aspect.
Riley, though, was in the shop, sitting on top of the counter by the register, blowing pink bubbles in her chewing gum and watching her boots as she swung her feet in small circles.
“Has anyone come into the shop?” Annie put her wallet back in the cupboard.
“Nope.”
“Any phone calls?”
“Nope.”
“Any gorillas prancing down the street wearing pink tutus?”
Riley looked up, her latest bubble deflating around her small mouth. She plucked the sticky stuff from her lips and popped the wad of gum back in her mouth. “Yup.”
Annie smiled faintly. She tugged at her ear, rubbed her hands down her arms. “Riley—”
“Huh-uh.” Her niece hopped off the counter. “I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m not going back.”
“I wasn’t—okay, I was.” She studied the girl. “I haven’t pressed you about anything since you arrived, Riley.” She hadn’t known what to do. Had been nearly paralyzed from taking any actions—sensible or otherwise. But Logan’s arrival had spurred something. “Maybe if you’d just give Bendlemaier a chance, you’d—”