Lancelot of the Pines (Louisiana Knights Book 1) (9 page)

“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.” His gaze rested an instant on her chest, but shifted away immediately.

“But you wonder, don’t you?” she asked. “You’re just like the rest of them, ready to give a man with a job and family the benefit of the doubt over the word of a teenage girl dressed in thrift store leavings and with no known address.”

“Your file doesn’t mention family.”

“It wouldn’t.” She glanced away out the half glass in the door, though she couldn’t have said what lay outside.

His face hardened and he folded his arms over his chest, an obvious sign he was going nowhere until he had answers. Mandy watched him out of the corners of her eyes until she could take the silence no longer.

“The man who fathered me skipped out before I was born,” she said with a sigh. “If I had grandparents or aunts and uncles, I never knew them. My mom worked as a cocktail waitress whenever she could get a job, or hold one long enough to draw a paycheck. She was arrested in a drug bust when I was ten.”

“Ten.”

She shrugged. “Almost.”

“Young,” he said. A frown came and went across his face. “I suppose you were sent to Family Services?”

“Isn’t that in the record you’re so proud of finding?”

“I haven’t read it all. Tell me.”

“Fine, yeah. We were taken into custody, or whatever you call it, the same night. They told us—told me my mom was released after a couple of days, but died of a drug overdose before she could arrange to have—have me brought back to the apartment.” She jerked a shoulder. “That might have been the way it happened or might not. Who knows?”

If he noticed her slip of the tongue, he gave no sign of it. “If that’s what they said happened to her, I expect it’s the truth.”

“Maybe. All I know is that I never saw her again.”

“You don’t have much respect for authority, do you?”

“I’ve not had much reason.” Her voice was stone cold, despite all she could do.

“Didn’t Family Services look after you, maybe put you with a foster family?”

They’d done that all right, but nobody had wanted Clare. Mandy went back to picking at her cuticle. “It didn’t work out.”

“You ran away,” he offered when she added nothing more to that bald fact.

“You could say that.”

“You ran away several times.”

“I had things to do.”

She’d kept trying to find Clare. Now and then a social worker would understand, but mostly they didn’t. They only shifted her to another family when the one before lost patience.

“The last time you skipped, you got caught up in a gang. You were what—fourteen or fifteen by then?”

He was relentless, but then Mandy expected nothing less from a cop. “Barely fourteen, but I looked older.”

“That young—and living on the streets. You’re lucky to be alive.”

She went back to picking at her cuticle. It had been the gang, more a group of misfits than delinquents into crime, that helped her to find Clare at last. Her sister had been placed in an institution where people didn’t seem to understand there was nothing wrong with her except she lived in her own make-believe world. Over the next few months, Mandy had managed to figure out a way to see her, to bring her a few things to make her smile. She’d been planning a way to get Clare out of that place when she was arrested.

“Oh, it was just a few months, and I wasn’t exactly homeless,” she said with a mock careless shrug. “There was a broken-down Plymouth in a woman’s storage shed where three or four of us crashed. Old Lady Dawson didn’t care. She fed us when she had something to spare.”

“Good hearted of her.”

“Not completely. The neighborhood wasn’t exactly safe and she couldn’t afford to move. We kept her from being mugged when she left her house.”

If he was surprised, he hid it well. “She fed you, but you still lifted a box of Twinkies and some chips.”

Twinkies and the rest had been Clare’s favorites. She’d liked the color red, too, and jackets with hoods because she could hide inside them. Not that Mandy thought the man across from her would care. “We were always hungry, though the old lady did her best. Granny Chauvin reminds me of her.”

“How’s that?”

“Always trying to make people feel better, even if it was only with food.”

He met her eyes for long moments, his own searching and slightly puzzled. He lowered his gaze to the floor then. Almost against his will, or so it seemed, he allowed it to shift from the wood pattern of the linoleum to her bare legs, and then up them to the length of thigh exposed where the hem of her T-shirt rode up.

She tugged on the shirt hem, tucking it under her, while hot discomfort crept over her.

Abruptly, he glanced away, unfolded his arms and sat up straighter. “I suppose that’s where you learned to sleep alone and with one eye open, in that abandoned Plymouth.”

“You could say that.” There’d also been a foster brother who had to be taught the meaning of a closed door at night, but that had been solved with a softball in a sock. No need to go into it now.

“At what point did Bruce Caret enter the picture?”

She looked at the floor. “He was a lawyer, as I’m sure you know. We met while he was representing another client after at the court hearing where I was arraigned. He took my case on pro bono.”

“Why was that?”

“He felt sorry for me. He liked to take on underdog cases now and then, when he thought he could win.”

“But he didn’t. Win, that is.”

“He said he could get probation for me, but it didn’t happen.”

“You were sentenced to five years instead.”

It was the first of many promises Bruce hadn’t kept. “He was sorry about that, I guess, because he came to see me at the correction center, brought me books and hand lotion and all the other little comforts families usually bring. He did arrange parole after four years. When I was released, he took me home with him.”

“So you married him.”

It wasn’t that simple, but she was pretty sure Lance wouldn’t understand. “A year or so later, yes. He was—was kind and acted as if he cared. I had nowhere else to go. One thing led to another.”

“I’ll bet it did.”

Her smile was crooked. “You try being barely eighteen years old and just out, no family or job prospects, and see what happens.”

He made no answer, but sat studying her with concentration in his eyes. It was as if he was willing her to say something more, something incriminating.

She refused. He was the one who wanted to talk about Bruce, not her.

“When did he put everything he owned in your name?”

“What?” He couldn’t have said what she thought, couldn’t have meant it if he’d said it.

“All his assets; the house and other investment properties, cars, boat, bank accounts—everything was signed over to you. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

She could only shake her head. “He never mentioned it. It must be a tax dodge of some kind. He hated paying taxes.”

“He never gave you documents to sign.”

Her heart gave a small leap in her chest. “Insurance papers, or so he said, though he gave me no chance to read them, seemed to think I wouldn’t understand the fine print. He was older, and wanted to be sure I was taken care of if anything happened to him. Oh, and then there were the papers for the car he bought for me.”

“A car.”

“Yes, but he took the keys after—that is, about a year ago.”

“Why was that?”

“I guess he was afraid I might drive off and leave him.”

He took a moment to digest that, too. “This would be the same car you wrecked after being abducted at the shopping mall?”

Hot color rose in her face. “It wasn’t as if I had a choice! Or should have to feel bad about using my own car, for that matter. It was just—when Bruce didn’t come home that evening, I saw an opportunity to get out of the house for a while.”

“You went shopping.”

“It was something to do besides drive around. I didn’t realize—I thought he would be back later in the night.”

“I see.”

In those few seconds, he lowered his eyes to her hem that had ridden up again. A muscle tightened in his jaw before he looked away. She grabbed for the stretchy fabric to halt its progress. Grasping for a change of subject as well, she said, “I hope Granny Chauvin got her car back okay that we borrowed. I’d hate if anything happened to it.”

“It was returned safe and sound. Trey saw to it.”

“No nicks or scrapes. No bullet holes.”

A grim smile touched his mouth, though it was hard to tell if it was from amazement that she would care what happened to Granny Chauvin’s property or because she’d noticed where he was looking. For a split second, it crossed her mind to let the hem go and find out what he’d do if he saw she was naked under Trey’s old shirt.

The chance never came. It was taken away by the hum of a vehicle. It grew louder, riding hard, the sound rising and falling as it bounced over the rough track. It was headed straight toward their sanctuary among the trees.

Lance saw Mandy’s eyes widen and the sudden clench of her hand into a fist. He could relieve her fear with a few words, but he hesitated.

Anger simmered inside him at the way he was taken in by her. He’d been convinced she was a useless society type, so accustomed to money she’d do anything to keep it rolling in. To discover she had lived on the streets and had a criminal record before marrying Bruce Caret put a whole different slant on the case. It was possible the man’s disappearance was deliberate, a con game of some type. She might well be part of it.

He didn’t want to believe it. She was so young, for one thing, still in her early twenties according to her records. She was secretive and withdrawn, yes, but who wouldn’t be, given her circumstances? She also seemed guileless, hunted, in need of rescue.

He was a sucker for the walking wounded. He was also a pushover for females who could look dewy fresh and outrageously gorgeous with no makeup, finger-combed hair, and wearing only an extra-long T-shirt.

The sight of her teeny-weeny peach-colored bikini hanging over the bathroom shower rod, dripping into its pan beneath, had hit him like a ton of bricks. Imagination was the greatest aphrodisiac, so they said, and his had been working overtime for the past few minutes. He could barely think, knowing she was sitting there in front of him, answering his questions, while naked under that old T-shirt.

His predicament was made worse by what took place the night before, when he’d stood holding her with every luscious curve and hollow under her shirt pressed to him. It was all he could do not to wrap his arms around her, fill his hands with warm, trembling female, and maybe carry her back to the musty mattress in that haunted bedroom.

He didn’t know which annoyed him most, that she’d fooled him up to this point, or that he was beyond hot for her, so hot he could barely control it.

“Trey,” he said in abrupt explanation as he surged to his feet. “It’s Trey.”

“You mean—”

“I recognize the sound of his bike.”

“I thought no one knew where we were going.”

He gave a negative shake of his head. “My guess is he’s checking out a hunch.”

The way she wilted and closed her eyes as tension left her made him feel like a creep for even thinking of letting her stew. He didn’t stay to wallow in it, but let himself out of the RV before he did something really stupid, like tell her he was sorry.

Trey piloted his monster Harley through the trees, riding as if it was a part of him, before coming to a halt a few feet from where Lance stood. Swinging off, he set the kickstand and then sauntered toward him.

“What’s up, bro?” he asked with a grin. “Getting along okay with the dangerous babe?”

Lance was in no mood for jokes. “We’re fine. You sure you weren’t followed?”

“If I ever had a tail, I lost it, guaranteed. Nobody keeps up with me unless I let them.”

“So what brings you out here?”

“Not the sight of your sour mug,” his cousin said, setting his hands on his hips. “Zeni sent me.”

“Zeni?” What the coffee shop manager had to do with anything was more than he could see.

“Seems she’s worried about your lady friend’s wardrobe, or lack thereof. She went shopping for a few things.” Turning back to his bike, Trey dragged a couple of plastic shopping bags printed with a discount store’s logo from his saddle bags and tossed them toward Lance.

There was more in them than clothes; he could feel it. He’d have to go through the stuff, make sure there was nothing lethal in it. “Nice of Zeni to think of her.”

“She’s a good kid, in spite of her take-no-prisoners attitude.”

“Kid?”

“Her job application said twenty-one, but I doubt it. I make her close to ten years younger than I am.”

Trey had bothered to do the math? Interesting. Not that he intended to call him on it. Or to think too much about the fact that Mandy was quite a bit younger than his thirty years.

“So she just guessed you’d have an idea where to bring this stuff?”

“Smart of her, wasn’t it? But then she’s a bright girl.”

“So it seems. Tell her thanks, okay?”

Lance turned away as he spoke, in part to hide his disbelief that Trey might have a thing going for the employee who was always on his case, but also to head back inside before Mandy decided to come out and see what was going on. He didn’t much care for the idea of Trey seeing how she looked wearing nothing except his old T-shirt.