Brad remained beside her, silent and patient, letting her search for her father. Never pulling her aside to make her stop. Never once suggesting the whole thing was futile. Never once calling her out for wasting his time.
Sophie entered the sports-betting area and watched a gentleman at the cashier station. He was too tall to be her father and his hair too gray, but still, she waited until she could see more than the man’s profile. The gentleman finally turned, counting a large stack of bills in his hands. The stranger had too much money to be her father. Sophie skipped her gaze over the multiple high-def TVs lining one wall. Basketballs dropped through hoops, cars squealed around tracks, horses lunged from the starting gates, pucks cracked against the boards and defeat cracked through Sophie. “He isn’t here, is he?”
“No,” Brad said, close enough to touch.
The single word dropped like a steel door slamming in her face. The certainty in his voice set her off. Sophie rounded on Brad. “You’re a private investigator. Can’t you investigate?”
He pushed away from the pillar he’d been leaning against and stilled, everything in him quiet, even his wide eyes, no unnecessary blinks to disrupt his stillness. The only active part of him was the gaze that searched her face. “Do you want me to investigate your father, Sophie?”
His voice was low, but jolted through her.
“No. Yes. Maybe.” Sophie threw up her hands. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
She wanted something not to be complicated. For once. She wanted something to be easy. What did it even matter what she wanted?
He stepped forward and reached for her.
Sophie spun toward the lobby sign, away from him and the emotions he tangled up inside her. There was nothing simple or straightforward about her feelings for Brad. But this wasn’t the time or place to dig into those truths now. She waited until he fell in step beside her and said, “I know I don’t want to stay in Reno another minute.”
“It’s after midnight,” he said. “We can get a room and leave early in the morning.”
“I need to go home.” Now. She needed to polish the furniture to sell. Maybe she could use the proceeds to extend her loan or for first month’s rent at a new location. A shiver expanded from her core and extended over her whole body as if she’d collapsed inside a twenty-foot snowbank.
She had to find a new home for her and Ella. She had to find homes for all of her fosters. She couldn’t rely on the gala for the adoptions. That left her only a week. Seven days until the event and ten days until the balloon payment was due.
Sophie slowed as if that snow weighed her down with each step. But her mind, frantic and overloaded, scratched out a massive to-do list. Sophie struggled to move, although she knew that avalanche was about to suffocate her if she didn’t keep going. If she didn’t keep believing.
Her father might return with her money. But could she sit around and plan her future and Ella’s on that possibility? She tripped and stumbled. Nothing except her foolishness blocked her path.
Brad’s arm circled her waist. Sophie sagged into him, but kept her shoulders stiff and her head held high. She wasn’t falling apart. Not in the warm comfort of Brad’s embrace. Not now. Not ever.
He stopped and pulled her fully against him. She dropped her forehead against his chest, but kept her arms at her sides. He wouldn’t break her. She wouldn’t break. She squeezed her eyes closed, willing the tears to stop. There wasn’t time for crying.
Her tears dampened Brad’s shirt. Sophie curled her fingers into her palms, digging her nails into her skin. Brad’s arms tightened around her. Sophie held herself together.
Then his hand smoothed up her back and his lips dropped onto her head. His kiss poured through her. His silent acceptance rocked her and his tender strength undid her.
Sophie wrapped her arms around him and clutched at his jacket. “I’m not crying over my father.”
He rested his chin on her head and rubbed her back.
“I stopped crying over him when I was ten,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “I’d have to be a fool to let him hurt me again.”
His hands continued to loosen all the tension from her muscles. His embrace continued to comfort all those lonely places inside her.
“I’m not a fool.” At least, she wasn’t supposed to be a fool. Her grandmother had raised her better than that. She lifted her head and swiped her palms over her wet cheeks. “Besides, my dad might be on his way back to San Francisco with my money.”
Brad’s eyebrows lifted into his hairline and his mouth opened, but only silence escaped.
Sophie closed her eyes. “I said might. It’s not like I really believe it.”
But heaven help her, how she wanted to. How she wanted to believe her father would keep this promise that would change her and Ella’s lives. Her father had to come through, so that Sophie knew risking her heart wouldn’t always mean pain.
Her grandmother had failed after all. Sophie was a fool.
Only a fool believed in derelict fathers.
Only a fool strove to change her roots.
Only a fool lost her heart to Brad.
Sophie opened her eyes to find him watching her. Weariness darkened the skin under his eyes and his gaze had dimmed. She’d made him drive through a snowstorm on a wild-goose chase. He had to be tired from the journey and from her. “I never thanked you for driving me up here. I owe you.”
He rubbed his thumb across her cheek, removing the last of her tears. “I like seats behind first base or the home team dugout, hiking in the foothills and a double with extra cheese from Roadside Burgers.”
A laugh gurgled through her tears. “That’s all back in the city.”
“Should we get going?”
She searched his face. That he was willing to drive home after their useless trip without complaint made her heart tumble over itself. “In the morning.”
She was a fool, but not stupid. The snow had increased and her weather app showed it wasn’t letting up soon. Who knew what the road conditions were now. She wouldn’t be able to sleep with all of her racing thoughts. But Brad could.
Twenty minutes later, Sophie slipped her nightshirt over her head, tucked her toothbrush inside her bag and flipped off the bathroom light. Brad stretched out on top of the comforter, still in his clothes, pillows jammed behind his head, the TV remote aimed at the flat screen. Only king rooms had remained when they’d returned to the concierge desk.
Sophie hadn’t hesitated and accepted the room key. She wanted to be close to Brad. For one night. It could be the only one they ever shared and, besides, she wasn’t ready to rely on her own arms to hold her.
She crawled under the covers and scooted closer to Brad. He lifted his arm and invited her to curl up beside him. Her head rested on his chest, his arm curved around her back. The feather comforter divided them, but she was next to Brad. It was more than she’d dared to wish for. More than she’d dared to want.
He clicked through the TV channels and stopped on a show with a couple buying their own private island and squeezed her. “You could sail away with me to any island we wanted.”
“I have too many responsibilities in the city. I can’t just leave like you.” Sophie yawned, long and deep. “I don’t have your freedom.”
She rubbed her cheek against his chest, let out another yawn and fell asleep dreaming about sailing away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BRAD LOCKED HIS truck and crossed toward the dock. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, but failed to remove the chill from the air. He rubbed his hands together. He hadn’t been warm since Saturday morning when he’d woken with Sophie in his arms.
It’d been four days since the call had come on their drive home from Reno, telling him that his boat was ready when he was. A gulf had opened between him and
Sophie inside his truck as if she had been gathering herself together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and putting everything back in the box. Everything besides him.
He wasn’t part of her life. She wasn’t part of his. And he’d been insane to even suggest she join him. Maybe that’s why he’d offered. To prove to them both that it could never work. That they were on two different paths and those paths weren’t meant to converge. Not now. Not ever. So he could tell himself he’d at least tried. With a halfhearted offer. An offer he’d known she couldn’t and wouldn’t ever accept. He shoved on his sunglasses to block out the sun and his own foolishness.
Brad stopped at boat slip 118 and stared at the cursive writing on the vessel’s stern. The Freedom Seeker was waiting. The updated master stateroom with the redesigned head and down-filled duvet-covered king bed, the stainless-steel appliances in the open-concept kitchen that flowed into a media room with an L-shaped leather couch and fifty-inch flat-screen TV, and computerized cockpit with leather captain chairs beckoned him aboard. Beckoned him to unpack his clothes and fill the cedar-lined drawers. Beckoned him to stock the refrigerator and light the grill on the sundeck. Beckoned him to pull into the bay and ultimately seek his freedom.
Yet he remained on the dock, arms crossed over his chest, boots planted as if he’d suddenly lost his sea legs. As if he’d never gain his sea legs.
A low whistle drifted by before Drew’s deep voice called out to him. “Freedom awaits. Can’t think of a better way to leave town.”
Brad couldn’t, either. Everything he’d envisioned at the start of the restoration floated before him, from the special-order hand railings to the teak stairs to the custom swim platform. It was all aboard, ready to welcome him.
Except he hadn’t envisioned everything. He hadn’t envisioned a certain honey blonde or her adorable curly-haired sidekick. “Why are you here?”
Drew slapped a folder against Brad’s arms still crossed over his chest. “Called in a few favors. If it’s information you don’t already have, then you’re going to owe me.”
Brad had promised several favors the last few days himself. Favors he’d need to deliver on before he set sail or his word would mean nothing when he returned. Now he might owe his brother’s contacts or Drew’s reputation would suffer and he wouldn’t be the cause of that.
A boat motored out into the bay. The dock swayed from the wake, the motion rocking up through Brad’s legs. He questioned if it was all worth it. His heart strapped on a life jacket and shouted a definitive yes. But he’d never listened to his heart before. Why was he now? “Thanks. Let me know what I can do for your contacts and I’ll see that it gets done.”
“From your cockpit or sundeck?” Drew asked.
“I haven’t left yet.” Brad flipped through a timeline and several photos of Teddy Gordon—George Callahan’s business associate and Sophie’s unwanted customer.
“About that,” Drew said. “When do we crack the champagne against the bow and bid you bon voyage?”
“Soon.”
“Soon as in this week or soon as in within the next month?” Drew nudged him in the side with his elbow.
Brad turned away from his boat and his brother and strode down the dock toward the parking lot.
Drew caught up and matched Brad’s quick pace. “So I’m guessing not this week.”
“I’ve got to finish up a few things first.”
“Things like Sophie Callahan?”
Brad stopped and faced his brother. “Sophie isn’t a thing. She’s...” He stopped himself before he said everything. And there was nothing finished about them. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m getting at your single-minded, absurd resolve to sail away on that boat. Alone.” Drew pointed toward the Freedom Seeker. His voice dropped, becoming serious and stern. “To leave behind your family. Your business. And possibly the only woman you’ve ever really loved.”
“Harringtons don’t do love.” Brad slapped the folder against his leg.
Drew scratched the back of his neck and studied Brad, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish. The same expression Drew had when they’d been kids and Brad had suggested they jump from the roof like stuntmen, or light firecrackers in the garbage can. Only Brad could make his brother more bewildered than a hung jury on a defenseless trial. “Of course we do love. Everything Mom has ever done has come from her love for her family.”
Brad’s tight grip pinched the folder. “Let me revise that. The Harringtons don’t do love well.” His family distorted love, twisted it inside out and manipulated those they loved for their own selfish gain. Sophie deserved better than that.
“You haven’t ever loved someone. How do you know if you’re not good at it or not?” Drew tipped his head and put both hands on his waist. “Wait, this isn’t about the Bureau and Marlene, is it?”
Brad had sworn to personally protect his witness, but had in the end deferred to his superiors’ order to let the US Marshals do their job.
Brad looked away, walking toward the parking lot again. He’d confided in his brother when he’d resigned from the Bureau. The only outsider who knew the full details of that fatal error. “That’s in the past.”
“But not dealt with.” Drew paced him.
Mandated therapy sessions had forced Brad to deal with that part of his past. However, there was still the present, and that he’d not dealt with. His disloyalty to Evie when he’d ruined her husband, ensured Richard’s electoral defeat in favor of his mother’s success. He’d even held Evie’s hand at her husband’s funeral three weeks later. And then he’d failed to protect Evie from the likes of George Callahan. All the while he loved Evelyn Davenport as if she were his family. “When did you become a psychologist?”
“When did you let fear convince you to run away?” his brother countered.
“I’m tired of the manipulation,” Brad said. “When I sail away, then my life will be on my terms.”
“You can have a life on your terms here.”
If he had a life on his terms here he wouldn’t still be lying to Sophie. It sounded nice, but it was impossible. “It doesn’t matter. When Sophie finds out the truth, she’ll bolt just like Marlene.”
“If Marlene had really trusted you, she wouldn’t have run away that night. She would have believed in the future you’d promised. You have to trust in Sophie’s love for you.”
Evie trusted him and look where that’d gotten her. But Sophie wouldn’t trust him when she discovered he’d been lying to her from the start. And Brad wasn’t certain he could ever trust anyone with his heart. “I need to find Teddy Gordon and then meet Lydia at the office at five to see what else she’s found.”
“Then this concludes our therapy session.” Drew gave a quick nod. “I’ll forward my bill to your office. When would you like to schedule the next one? I tend to book up fast.”
Brad laughed. Once again thankful for Drew’s natural ability to diffuse situations. “Is never available?”
“That’s a low blow for how insightful I was.” Drew clutched his stomach as if Brad had punched him. “I even impressed myself.”
Brad stopped beside his truck. “It’s not that difficult. How about we discuss your tendency to place work above social interaction? Or your tendency to forget your girlfriend’s birthday or date night because you slept at the office for the third night in a row? Or your unwillingness to eat in public while preparing for a trial?”
Drew backed away, his arms spread wide. “I’m an open book and today wasn’t about me.”
“Scared to open the door and see your skeletons?” Brad taunted.
“I adopted Felix and Milo.” Drew opened his car door and smiled over the hood. “I’ve dressed my skeletons and invited them outside to play.”
“We’ll chat when you finally meet the woman that makes you hea
r your heart.” Brad knocked his fist on the truck’s roof.
“Is that what Sophie’s done to you?”
Not that he’d ever admit it. And not that it mattered once she learned the truth. He shook his head, the movement small and tight and fast. “Not yet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SOPHIE WALKED THE length of the ballroom and checked on the items in the silent auction, manned by Erin and her sorority sisters. She’d created a text message tree for everyone to communicate. Thumbs-up images popped on her phone screen from the check-in desk and the two public-relations majors emceeing the runway show for dogs that would begin in less than fifteen minutes.
All of the college kids had asked to return next year to work the event. Not wanting to disappoint them with the news that this would be the first and last Paws and Bark Bash, Sophie had smiled and agreed.
Evie, Olivia and Ruthie volunteered to handle the staging area where the dogs relaxed until their turn on the runway. She’d gotten a dozen requests from guests asking about how to put their dogs on the runway next year. One guest even inquired about the price to walk the runway. Sophie cursed herself for missing the potential revenue. Her foster families prepped their charges for the runway and hopefully adoptions.
Troy and his partner manned the kitty kennels and were helping people complete the adoption paperwork. She’d only brought in the four kitten litters and photos of her older cats. But the boys had a tablet with guests interested in several other cats and animals. Sophie prayed those guests would still be interested tomorrow when she called them personally.
Ruthie’s fiancé, Matt, circulated the room with Brad and Drew beside him. Mayor Harrington was doing the same on the other side, with Mr. Harrington holding her hand.
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