Born to Be Wild (24 page)

Moving slowly, she put down the receiver, slid her legs over the side of the mattress, and sat up. She was in her skimpy thong and bra and nothing more, and for the life of her she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten into bed. As for how she’d gotten home from Tattoo Annie’s Saloon, well, that was a complete mystery, too.

Putting a hand on the bedpost, she steadied herself as she stood. The room spun around her. The inside of her mouth felt like cotton. And her mother’s nonsense swam through her mind.

Max was not a thief. Max’s friends weren’t criminals. She’d never believe that ever in a million years. As for Max being out for her money, she didn’t believe that, either.

Losing her heart to him was another matter completely. He was good and kind and he hung out in biker bars with all the wrong kind of people. He was honest and loyal, but that didn’t matter to her friends and family. If something went wrong, they’d look at someone like Max first.

He’d never be accepted in her world and, God, did she really want to go back to his, considering the way she felt right now?

Somehow she trudged toward the bathroom, stripped out of her underwear, and stared at herself in the mirror. Dark shadow and heavy mascara had smeared under her eyes. Her goopy hair shot out at various angles from her head. She didn’t know the woman staring back at her. That Lauren Remington was a complete stranger, a woman who had tried to be something she wasn’t, just to please a man. That thought annoyed her more than her mother’s words, more than getting drunk, more than anything.

She put her hands to her face and started to cry. For once in her life, she wanted to be loved for who she was. She didn’t want to change to get a man or to keep a man.

She heard Charles’s knock at her door. “Just a moment,” she called out to him, her words pounding against her head. Grabbing a brush, she tried to put her hair in some kind of order, splashed cold water on her face, and took her robe from the back of the door.

What she saw in the full-length mirror stunned her. She moved closer, turned her backside toward the door, and stared at some kind of fish tattooed on her cheek. Oh, dear, it wasn’t a fish. It was a merman, with bulging pecs and biceps, shoulder-length black hair, and hoops in his ears.

What had she done? she asked herself, as tears flowed again from her eyes. More importantly, what was she going to do now?

oOo

Max wound his way through the tight confines of J. C. Penney’s lingerie department, wishing there were some way he could hide from prying eyes. What people thought of him rarely mattered, but he’d never gone shopping for bras before, and doing it with an eleven-year-old girl made the task a thousand times more uncomfortable.

For both of them.

How could Jamie have gone from flat as a pancake one day to needing a training bra the next? Why couldn’t she be happy with the perfectly acceptable plain white cotton stretchy things the clerk kept suggesting she try?

“They’re ugly, Max!” she said a little too loudly.

“You’re not going to be wearing them out in public,” he stated as low as he possibly could, while still trying to get his point across.

Jamie had her fists planted firmly on her nonexistent hips. “I have to change clothes in PE and all the girls will look at me.”

“And I’m sure they’re all wearing training bras, too.”

“Nikki Constantine’s mother took her to Victoria’s Secret to buy her first bra and it pushes her up to make her look bigger.”

“Well I’m not Nikki Constantine’s mother, I’m your father.”

“You are not!”

“Well, I will be real soon, but that’s neither here
nor there. I don’t want you to look bigger. Not now, not ever!”

Big tears welled up in Jamie’s eyes and poured down her cheeks.

“Christ!”

The saleslady gasped, and Max came close to throwing his arms up in the air in frustration. Instead, he looked at the training bra the woman held in her hands and said, “We’ll take a dozen of those.”

“You really don’t need that many, sir.”

“Then give me however many you think we’ll need so we can get out of here.”

“Perhaps you’d like to come back when you’re in a better frame of mind.”

His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “There’s nothing wrong with my frame of mind, I just don’t like shopping for bras!”

“Ryan thought you should take me to Victoria’s Secret,” Jamie blubbered. “He said they had women’s bras there, and you’d probably like them better.”

He didn’t even like women at the moment, one in particular, the one who’d disappeared from Palm Beach without a goodbye,
an I-hate-you, or a drop-dead.

Damn her!

He’d called again and again to talk to Lauren the day after the Tattoo Annie’s fiasco, and Charles continually told him she was unavailable. She was hung over, they both knew that, and Max figured she was asleep the first couple of times he’d called. But Miss Palm Beach couldn’t possibly have slept for
twenty-four hours. She must have gotten his messages—but she hadn’t bothered to call, she’d just up and run away.

Damn her!

He plunked down cash for the bras, grabbed the bag that Jamie refused to hold, latched on to his little girl’s hand, and marched out of J. C. Penney’s thinking that Jamie was growing up far too fast, thinking, too, that he’d made a big mistake losing his heart to Lauren Remington. She was a scheming, conniving, spoiled brat, who had a knack for chewing men up and spitting them out. He’d known that days ago, and he’d walked right into her trap.

But damn if he didn’t still want her!

W
ednesday morning came with its usual fanfare. Jamie refused to go to school because she’d been teased unmercifully about her new bras on Monday and Tuesday. Ryan hadn’t done his history homework the night before and refused to go because he was certain his teacher would give him an F.

“You knew a week ago that that assignment was due today,” Max grumbled, while hacking up a bunch of carrots to go in Jamie’s and Ryan’s lunches.

Ryan dribbled his basketball, glaring at Max as if school and homework were no big deal. “I forgot.”

“You’ve got an assignment calendar on the wall
in your room. There’s one on the refrigerator and one in your notebook. ‘I forgot’ doesn’t cut it.”

Ryan dribbled the ball beneath his leg without missing a beat. “You don’t have to get all over my case just because you’re pissed—”

Max shot Ryan a look the kid knew full well meant,
Watch your language.

Ryan, as usual, rolled his eyes. “Okay, you don’t have to get all over my case just because you’re
ticked
off at that Lauren Remington woman.”

“I’m not ticked off.”

“Well, that’s what Bear told me.”

Max hacked the carrots one more time and took a deep breath as he threw the shreds into two plastic bags. Yeah, he had been mad. His exhaustion hadn’t helped. In the last couple of days he’d talked to the adoption lawyer, he’d gathered up old report cards to prove how much the kids had progressed since they’d come to live with him, he’d catered a car dealer’s luncheon and an engagement dinner.

Except for his insane foray to Tattoo Annie’s, he’d worked nonstop for days. He’d had trouble sleeping. Jamie refused to speak to him, Lauren still hadn’t called, which hurt his pride and, God forbid, his heart, and the investigator hadn’t phoned. He’d hired a chef to substitute for him at the engagement party last night because he hadn’t wanted to leave the house and possibly miss Harry’s call. But he’d gotten no word about his sister. Even the messages he’d left on Harry’s voice mail had gone unanswered.

It seemed the only one interested in talking to him these days was Ryan, and their conversation was going nowhere.

He shoved his hands through his hair. As tired as he was, as hurt and angry as he felt, he didn’t have to take his frustrations out on the kids.

He poured fresh-squeezed orange juice into a glass and shoved it across the counter to Ryan, who managed to gulp down half of it while dribbling the basketball.

“So,” Max said, leaning against one of the refrigerators, “what’s the
real
reason you didn’t get the assignment done?”

“I for—” Max’s eyes narrowed when Ryan started to once again feed him the lousy “I forgot” excuse. “Okay, I hate history, my teacher’s boring, and I’d rather play basketball.”

“Do you have a game plan?” Max asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What are you going to do? Drop out of school?”

Ryan finally put the ball on the counter and poured himself some more juice. “I’ve thought about it.”

“What’s that going to get you?”

Ryan shrugged. “Freedom to do what I want.”

“Freedom to live on the street when you’re older is more like it. Freedom to be poor, to work at some fast-food joint.” Max took a swallow of Ryan’s juice and poured some more, keeping his eyes trained on Ryan’s face. “You might be better off staying in school.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re good at basketball. Stick around school, get good grades, and you might get a scholarship. Who knows, you could end up good enough to play professional.”

Ryan laughed. “In my dreams.”

Max shoved sandwiches, carrots, and cookies into two brown paper bags. “I’ve seen dreams come true,” Max said, “but I’ve also seen people working darn hard to make that happen. There aren’t too many fairy godmothers waving magic wands around these days.”

Ryan picked up one of the banana pecan muffins Max had made that morning and took a bite out of the side, watching Max, apparently contemplating his words. Max merely leaned on the counter, watched and waited for Ryan’s response.

“It’s too late to do anything about the F on my history paper that’s due today,” Ryan said. “You got any suggestions?”

“See if you can work something out with the teacher,” Max told him.

“Maybe you could call him for me?”

Max shook his head. “You didn’t do the assignment. You have to take care of the problem.”

“What am I supposed to tell him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you could ask to do some extra homework.”

“I can’t do that! It’ll mess with my basketball time.”

“It’s up to you,” Max said, then turned his back on Ryan and went to the refrigerator for milk.

He supposed he should have chewed Ryan out
for not turning in the assignment. Maybe he should have taken away his basketball, grounded him for a few weeks, but it seemed some kind of positive reinforcement would work better. It wasn’t exactly the kind of tough love he’d heard people preach about, but it was the only kind of love he planned to give his kids.

The phone rang and he grabbed for it, hoping it was Lauren, hoping it was Harry. “Hello.”

“It’s Harry.” Relief flooded through him. So did disappointment that it wasn’t Miss Palm Beach. “Sorry I couldn’t get back to you last night.”

Max didn’t care about apologies, he just wanted to hear the news. “Did you find my sister?”

“I found a woman named Charlotte Wilde, just like I told you the other day. She’s the right age, dark hair, brown eyes.”

All too soon Harry was silent.

“What else did you find out?” Max asked, positive by now it wasn’t good.

“Not a thing. The woman she’s living with isn’t anxious to lose her and Charlotte doesn’t remember her past.”

Max hadn’t wanted to hear that. Maybe he’d gotten his hopes up too high that this Charlotte Wilde was his real sister, that she wasn’t as mentally challenged as he’d been led to believe, that she suddenly remembered she had a brother and was anxious to see him again.

“Do you think she’s the right one?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your gut instinct?” Max asked.

“I don’t form gut instincts,” Harry answered. “I go on fact, nothing more. If you want to be sure, you’ll have to come here yourself.”

Max let out a frustrated breath. He had to cater a birthday party tonight. He’d neglected Jamie and Ryan too much lately. The laundry was piling up.

He needed to call Lauren—again.