Garrett said some profanity under his breath. Nicky had often cursed Patrick for what he’d done, but if he hadn’t, she might not have Kaylee today.
“Kaylee doesn’t know any of this by the way,” Nicky went on. “I’ll tell her eventually, of course, when she gets a little older.”
Nicky wasn’t certain when that would be, but the therapist she’d visited about it had said that Nicky would know when the time was right.
“I’ve saved some photos of Shanda and Patrick so I can show them to her,” Nicky went on. “It’s all official, by the way. Shanda put my name on the birth certificate as Kaylee’s mother, but I wanted to legally adopt her. Shanda agreed, eventually.”
“After another payoff?”
Nicky made a sound of agreement. “At the time, I just wanted her out of our lives and thought it was money well spent. In hindsight, I wish I’d had her prosecuted. It probably would have saved her life because two days after I gave her the money, she died of a drug overdose.”
He groaned softly, shook his head. “How does Doris fit into all of this?”
“Doris didn’t even know her daughter had had a baby until she showed up for the funeral, but when she heard about Kaylee, she pieced things together. Heck, it’s possible that Shanda even mentioned Patrick to her. Either way, Doris knew.”
“And she wanted her,” Garrett finished for her.
“She did.” Nicky had to pause. “Doris felt as if she’d failed with Shanda and she wanted a second chance at motherhood. I didn’t want to give her a chance to screw up another child’s life.”
Nicky tried to tamp down the memories. Both those from her childhood and the ones that Shanda had bought into her life. “Shanda’s father was an alcoholic. He beat her. He berated her. Remind you of anyone?” She didn’t wait for Garrett to answer. “And Doris let that happen just as my mother did.”
A muscle flickered in Garrett’s jaw. “Please tell me Shanda’s shit head father isn’t in the picture.”
“He’s not. He died the year before Kaylee was born.” That was something at least. But in some ways, he’d be easier to fight. “Shanda’s father had a police record. Doris doesn’t. There’s nothing on paper for me to convince a judge that she would be a bad grandmother. But I don’t believe she wants to be only a grandmother. I believe Doris wants to be Kaylee’s mother.”
“So do I,” Garrett said without hesitation.
Nicky lifted her head, looked at him. “Did she say or do something?” She got to her feet when the panic started to roll through her. “She’s not coming after Kaylee, is she?”
He stood, too, met her gaze. “I heard you mention the restraining order to Clay.” He held up his hands in defense. “I wasn’t actually eavesdropping, but I was standing outside the door at the police station when you told him.”
Of course. Garrett and Belle had been there because of Candy’s accusations. She hated that he’d overheard it, mainly because he’d gotten no explanation to go along with it. Unless he’d heard everything she’d said to Clay, but Nicky doubted it.
“There’s a problem,” Nicky went on. “And it’s the reason I didn’t tell you all of this right from the start. Doris is claiming that I allowed Shanda to use my insurance card, that I willingly gave it to her. If I had done that, I could be arrested since it’s illegal. But I swear I had no idea Shanda even existed before Kaylee was born. I certainly didn’t let her use my insurance. I’m not rich, but I had plenty enough money to have paid for her medical expenses without resorting to breaking the law.”
He stayed quiet a moment, obviously processing all of that. “I believe you, but since both Patrick and Shanda are dead, they can’t tell Doris the truth.”
“She doesn’t want the truth. She wants her granddaughter.”
And she wanted her enough to keep sending those stupid flowers and texts.
“Doris sends me those yellow roses because they were Shanda’s favorite,” Nicky continued. “Apparently, Shanda even had a rose tattoo. Doris would probably say she sends them as a way of keeping her daughter alive.”
Garrett nodded. “She mentioned that. Along with saying she didn’t want you to forget.”
A burst of air left her mouth. It wasn’t from humor though. “As if I could. And I don’t want to forget her. Shanda was a young and troubled woman. Barely twenty-one. And she was Patrick’s client. He was trying to get her out of some drug charges when they met.”
“Drugs?” Garrett repeated. And he didn’t have to say anything else for her to know what he was asking.
“Yes, she used them when she was pregnant with Kaylee. That’s probably why she has some delays, but the delays aren’t permanent. She’s catching up.”
“Thanks to you,” he said.
Nicky didn’t want any thanks. She loved her daughter more than life itself, and it was a privilege to do whatever it took to help her. If she ever had a biological child of her own, she’d never love that child or anyone else more than Kaylee.
“If Doris ever did pursue guardianship,” Nicky added a moment later, “she’d have to fight me in court for that because as I said, Patrick and I did legally adopt Kaylee before he passed away. The only thing that’s holding Doris back from a lawsuit is money. She’s not broke, but she doesn’t have the cash for something like this.”
Nicky could have sworn that the air changed in the room. Something had certainly changed.
“Shit.” Garrett squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. “Nicky, I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head. There were some bad ideas going through her mind, and she hoped Garrett hadn’t done what she thought he had.
“Please tell me you didn’t pay her off.” Nicky’s voice barely had any sound. That’s because her breath was stalled in her lungs.
“I did,” he said, reaching for her. But Nicky stepped back. “I gave her fifty thousand. I told her to leave town and never come back.”
“Oh, God,” Nicky said and she repeated it several times because she didn’t know what else to say. “She’ll be back. She always comes back.”
The words from Doris’s text came back to her.
I’ll be in touch soon.
With Garrett’s money, the woman certainly would be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NICKY HURRIED OUT of the room, running again, and Garrett didn’t stop her. That was because he didn’t know what to say to her. He was still trying to wrap his head around what he’d done.
And what he’d done was screw up big-time.
Of course, he hadn’t known that was what he was doing when he forked over the money to Doris. He’d thought he was ridding Nicky and Kaylee of a problem. One in the guise of a money-grubbing granny.
Even though he didn’t know Doris, he had smelled trouble all over her, and apparently his nose had been right. But now that she had cash, she would go after Kaylee. Maybe not because she even wanted to raise her but simply because she didn’t want Nicky to have her.
Garrett hadn’t missed the venom in Doris’s voice and eyes. Venom all aimed at Nicky. Probably because Nicky was the only one alive that Doris could blame for her daughter’s death. He cursed Doris.
He cursed Shanda, as well, for using drugs while she was pregnant.
“Oh, dear,” he heard his mother say.
Crap. He didn’t want to deal with her or anyone else right now. But there she was. Already making her way into the library.
“I came in here to ask if you’d catch the crab, clean up the horse poop and talk to Lady,” his mother continued, “but I can see I caught you at a bad time.”
The biggest understatement in the history of understatements.
Despite his mother’s having recognized his bad mood, she didn’t leave. Did nothing to improve it, either. “The crab has started charging at anyo
ne who goes into the kitchen, and I need to get more snickerdoodles from the counter. It just gets madder when you throw things at it to get it to move.”
Garrett groaned, buried his face in his hands. “Mom—”
“And as for the poop, well, Jake left his horse beneath the porch awning, and it pooped,” she continued as if he hadn’t even spoken. “Then, there’s Lady. She’s trying to get into the mayor’s pants.”
Garrett seriously doubted the mayor minded that since he was divorced and not seeing anyone, but even if he minded, it wasn’t Garrett’s problem.
“Of course, you know about Nicky,” his mother tossed out there.
That got him to lower his hands. “What about her?”
“Well, she was crying, and she told Gina to stay with Kaylee and the sitter, in case some woman shows up. I really hope we don’t have any more surprise guests because we’ve had enough of that malarkey.”
Yeah, they had. “I need to check on Nicky,” he said, heading for the door.
“She’s not here. After she told Gina to watch Kaylee, she left. She said she was going to find some woman named Doris.”
Hell’s Texas Bells.
“The trail is blocked, and there’s a bad storm raging,” Garrett grumbled. “There’s no way she could have left.”
“Not by car, but she took Jake’s horse. That’s when she noticed the poop. Anyway, she said she was going to ride the horse to the ranch and get a vehicle there.”
Garrett fished his keys from his pocket. He only hoped he’d parked far enough away from the mud that he could still get out of there. If not, he’d have to walk through the pasture. At night. In a storm. No, nothing stupid about that, but he had to find Nicky and try to make things right.
Somehow.
He stopped again when something else occurred to him. “How does Nicky even know where to find Doris?” Garrett asked his mother, not expecting her to have a clue.
But she did.
“Nicky called her on the way out the door, and she’s meeting the woman in town.”
* * *
NICKY WAS SOAKED by the time she rode Jake’s mare to the ranch. Soaked and pissed off. She’d known it could come to this, but she hadn’t thought it would play out with Doris actually having the money to go after Kaylee.
Her conversation with Doris had been short and not friendly. “I want to see you now,” Nicky had demanded.
“Good, I want to see you, too. I’m at the lawyer’s office on Main Street in town. He stayed open late just for me.” That was it, all that Doris had said, before she’d ended the call.
Nicky didn’t know the lawyer, Seth Rodriguez, since he’d only been in Wrangler’s Creek a couple of months. That meant he didn’t have any ties to the Grangers and might be hungry for business. Since she now had cash, Doris could have easily enticed him to stay late and take her case.
She took the horse to the barn, thankful that a hand was still there to tend to the mare, and despite the hand’s offer to get her a towel, Nicky declined and had instead asked to use a vehicle. Any vehicle. The hand had given her the keys to a spare truck they used to haul hay.
She got started on the drive to town, but the weather didn’t cooperate. The rain came down even harder, and despite the windshield wipers going at full speed, it was still hard to see. She forced herself to drive slowly even though she didn’t want to lose another minute before confronting the woman.
But what was she going to say to her?
It’d been nearly thirty minutes since she’d called Doris, and that was enough time for the lawyer to have started the initial paperwork for Doris’s custody suit. The woman would almost certainly accuse Nicky of abetting her husband to commit insurance fraud. And that meant Nicky would need her own lawyer not just to defend herself but to make sure Doris never got her hands on Kaylee.
The panic continued to build, and she realized part of the reason she couldn’t see so well was because she was crying. She wouldn’t lose her daughter. She just couldn’t.
By the time she made it to Main Street, Nicky knew she had to rein in her emotions, especially the tears. They wouldn’t help, and in fact could hurt. She didn’t want Doris’s lawyer to think she was on the verge of losing it. Even though it felt as if she was.
She tried not to blame Garrett for this. Because he hadn’t known what Doris would do with the money. He’d no doubt believed he was fixing things, and after Nicky had calmed down some, she might be able to thank him. But not now.
Nicky pulled to a stop in front of the lawyer’s office, and her stomach dropped a little when she didn’t see any lights on. She hurried out of the truck, tested the doorknob.
Locked.
And there was a closed sign in the window.
She knocked, waited. No answer. So she knocked again. It wasn’t a large office, just a reception area with two other rooms behind that. The doors to both of those rooms were open, and there didn’t appear to be anyone in them. No way could Doris and the lawyer have finished up so quickly. So where the heck was she?
Since there wasn’t any kind of awning over the lawyer’s office, Nicky got back in Jake’s truck to call Doris. No answer. It went straight to voice mail. She tried the number for the lawyer that was on the sign outside the office, but just like the call to Doris, he didn’t answer.
What was going on?
It was too much to hope that Doris had been lying about seeing a lawyer. But maybe Seth had turned her down and sent her on her way. If so, Nicky had no idea where she would go. Judging from what Patrick had told her, Doris moved around a lot, and Nicky didn’t even know where she was living these days.
Doris could be anywhere.
That didn’t settle her stomach or calm the panic. In fact, it made it worse. Nicky had geared herself up for a fight. A verbal one anyway. And now she might have to wait days or longer to find out Doris’s plan. It was possible the woman was on her way to San Antonio PD to try to convince the cops there to arrest Nicky.
She sent off a text to Gina to remind her to keep watch in case Doris showed up there. At least if she did, she wouldn’t be able to get through on the trail, and by now Gina had almost certainly alerted everyone in the house to be on the lookout for the woman. Of course, Doris wouldn’t need to resort to such measures as an attempted kidnapping because she might have the law on her side. Nicky doubted the courts would give the woman custody, but Doris might end up with visitation rights. Or even more. Split custody since Nicky had no biological connection to her little girl.
The tears came again. So did the anger. No matter what it took, Nicky would fight this.
She started the drive back to Z.T.’s and tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong. But it was too late. She was already thinking of them, but instead of it leaving her feeling defeated, Nicky tried to steel herself up. It was working.
Until she saw her old house.
Even though it was just a gray blob in the curtain of rain, she could still see it well enough for the flashbacks to come. She cursed, started to speed up so she wouldn’t have to look at it for long. But something inside her snapped. Not like a dry twig, either. But the kind of snapping a person did when they were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore.
She turned into the driveway so fast that she nearly went into a skid, and then Nicky hit the brakes. In that short period of time, her anger had grown by leaps and bounds. She felt like a pressure cooker ready to blow. That was probably why she didn’t have any trouble marching right up the porch steps.
Nicky didn’t even pause at the door. She threw it open, ready to scream. And she did that all right.
When a mouse scurried across her shoe.
She screamed like a little girl, in fact, and ran to the other side of the room.
At least she was fully insid
e now, and she might not have been able to do that so easily if it hadn’t been for the mouse. Thankfully, it stayed put and didn’t come toward her, but she kept her attention on it just in case.
The place was dark and wet. Literally. The ceiling was dripping, and the water had puddled on the floor in spots. Even over the sound of the rain on the old roof, she still heard the crunching sound and looked down. Thanks to a flash of lightning, she saw the clump of dead bugs.
Nicky’s courage dipped a little, dipped even more when she realized some of the bugs in the pile were still alive. Some squashed ones were beneath her feet, too. That didn’t discourage her, though, from what she had to do.
“Screw you, assholes!” she shouted just as Cassie had told her to do. Of course, Cassie had meant for this to help her deal with her childhood. Still, Nicky included Doris in that message.
She yelled it again, adding the part about the demons, including all the profanity that Cassie had told her to use. In fact, Nicky repeated it, and she just kept shouting it, her voice echoing through the empty house.
Even the bugs and the mouse ran for cover. The mouse darted into a hole in the wall near the fireplace. Bugs scurried. Heck, it felt as if the walls themselves were rattling.
And Nicky kept on yelling.
* * *
THE FIRST THING Garrett heard when he stopped his truck was Nicky screaming. He hurried out, running toward the house, only to realize she was actually cursing.
“Screw you in the demon ass!”
He’d never heard her use that kind of language, and he assumed the worst. That she was in a shouting match with Doris, and judging from the rage in Nicky’s voice, it was about to get really ugly.
“Nicky?” he called out to her, and he scrambled across the wet porch and into the house. He really wanted to settle some things right here, right now. But there was no Doris.
Just Nicky.
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