“Hey,” Cord objected, a little miffed. “I ‘understand people’ just fine.”
Tina glanced toward the door. “Do you? Including teenage girls?”
“Come on, Tina. Nobody understands teenage girls.”
She smiled. “I do,” she said. “I raised three of them.” She cocked a thumb in the direction Carly had gone. “That child is lost and so hungry for a place to belong it makes me want to cry just looking at her.”
“Maybe she is,” Cord allowed. “And maybe she’s a first-class grifter.” Despite his increasing confidence that the girl was telling the truth, or at least a substantial part of it, he wasn’t entirely willing to let that remaining doubt go. He wasn’t sure why. Out of self-defense? Not wanting to risk being hoodwinked or taken advantage of? If he bought her story too readily and then found out he’d been had, he wouldn’t just feel like a fool, he’d be wounded, and deeply.
Tina rapped lightly on his chest with one fisted hand. “She’s no such thing, Cord Hollister. I have no idea why Carly’s here, but I can guarantee it isn’t part of some devious plan to fleece anybody.”
“If I were you, I’d reserve judgment on that score. She turned up out of nowhere, and she’s got one hell of a story, as little of it as she’s been willing to tell.”
“Well,” Tina said, on her way out, purse in hand, “you’re not me. And furthermore, you’re too suspicious for your own good. You automatically mistrust anybody you haven’t known your whole life.”
Cord could have argued that he trusted plenty of people—he dealt with strangers all the time in his line of work—but he didn’t have the energy. All he could muster was, “You, on the other hand, would trust the Devil himself if he played on your sympathies.”
Tina merely shook her head.
A moment later, she was out the door. Seconds after that, he heard her car start up.
Cord crossed to the sink and watched her headlights slice through the drizzle as she drove away.
He sighed.
Maybe Tina was right, and he was too suspicious. But he prided himself on a sense of reality and the smarts to see through scammers.
Still, he knew one thing about Carly—she had to be Reba’s daughter, with that hair and those eyes. But in spite of the likelihood that one of them was her dad, it was still possible that Reba had hooked up with someone else (or several someones) after she’d left town...
Better to keep his guard up until he knew what was what.
A simple DNA test would tell the tale. Provided the kid could be persuaded to take one.
Come to think of it, Eli and J.P. might balk at the suggestion, too. They might not be all that eager to find out they were somebody’s dear old dad—or that they weren’t. And maybe that was the real point. In any case, he knew he was willing to do it, and eventually they all needed to. But that was tomorrow’s worry.
As if on cue, his phone rang. He pulled it from his shirt pocket, squinted at the screen and saw J.P.’s mug grinning back at him.
Cord almost let the call go to voice mail, but in the end, he couldn’t. This was his friend and J.P. might need help of some kind; independent as he was, J.P. still had the occasional bad night, when the flashbacks kicked in and he was back in Afghanistan, or he just plain panicked for no apparent reason. But fortunately that was rare these days.
PTSD was tricky, though. And it had a way of sneaking up on J.P. out of nowhere.
So Cord took the call.
“What?” he barked, because that was always his response when J.P. phoned him; any hint of concern or, God forbid, sympathy would sting the man to the quick.
Cord collapsed into his chair and reached for his coffee, which had gone cold.
“You know what,” J.P. replied, sounding peevish. “Is the girl there?”
Relieved, Cord released the sigh he’d been holding back. “No,” he answered, rising and crossing to the sink to empty his coffee mug. “She went home with Tina, as planned. They just left.”
J.P. hesitated, then asked, “So, do you believe the kid?”
“I believe she’s Reba’s daughter—you can’t fake that kind of resemblance—but beyond that, I’m not sure.” Self-defense tactic kicking in again...
“If she’s not telling the truth, she’s a damn good liar.”
“It’s not as if they’re uncommon. I’ve known plenty of them, and so have you. Reba, for instance.”
A brief silence fell.
“Cord, she’s seventeen. Do the math.”
“She says she’s seventeen. She could be older than she claims—or younger—and that would make all the difference.” Cord closed his eyes for a moment, recalling his earlier and growing certainty about her. He braced himself. “Don’t forget Reba lied about her age. And she put one over on all of us. Who’s to say there wasn’t another fool involved, somebody we don’t know about.”
“But the girl says she has a birth certificate and that she’s willing to show it to Eli. He should be able to find out if it’s real or a fraud. And if it’s real, that’ll answer the question about her age.”
“True.”
“Also,” J.P. went on, “I don’t think there was anybody else. Not then, anyhow.”
“Don’t be a sucker,” Cord said, but without rancor. “Reba had the chutzpah to juggle the three of us—and we were best friends—for the better part of a summer. One more idiot wouldn’t have thrown her at all.”
Another silence, longer than the last.
J.P. broke it. With a verbal sledgehammer.
“How many times did you sleep with Reba?” he asked.
It was a question they’d never asked each other, which wasn’t surprising, considering that they’d rarely talked about Reba after that one Christmas at Bailey’s. And it was a damn personal question, to boot.
“Once,” Cord heard himself say.
He carried his mug to the coffee maker, decided against another shot of caffeine and retraced his steps, putting the cup in the sink.
“Yeah,” J.P. murmured reflectively. “Me, too.”
“What about Eli?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I think it might be a different story with him. You remember how they were all over each other, he and Reba, at that party.”
“So, if the kid’s on the level, Eli’s the most likely candidate.”
“Or not,” J.P. said, and the quick way he responded lent the words a defensive note. “They were necking, after all, when we saw them, not having sex. She and I did our share of necking, and I reckon you could say the same.”
Yet again, Cord asked himself what the hell Reba had been trying to pull that summer. Yes, she’d been wild, unpredictable and often reckless, but she’d never struck him as cruel.
He shook his head. What did he know?
He’d fallen for Reba—excusable, since he’d been a dumb-ass kid amped up on testosterone at the time—but then he’d proceeded to date all the wrong women he could find, all through college. In fact, he’d actually married one of them, Jenna Clifton, despite dozens of red flags. He’d met her at a college reunion the same year his grandmother died.
Just as his dad, Bill and Mimi’s only son, had gone ahead and married a young woman he barely knew.
Toby Hollister had met his future wife, Julie Welch, in an LA club one hot August night, while he was stationed in San Diego. Within a month, Julie was pregnant, so they’d eloped to Las Vegas, tied the knot and proceeded to live unhappily ever after.
Not that Toby lived that long.
He’d been killed in a freak accident on base, when Julie was six months along.
“Yo, Hollister,” J.P. interjected crisply. “You still with me?”
“Yeah,” Cord said wearily. “I’m with you.”
“I’m worried about you, old buddy. Lately, you’ve been downright drifty. And that isn’
t like you.”
“I think a lot,” Cord answered, mildly annoyed. “You ought to try it sometime. Thinking, I mean.”
J.P. laughed. “Not just drifty, but prickly, too.”
“Asshole,” Cord muttered.
“I rest my case.”
“Did you call about Carly, or did you just feel like pissing off one more person before you turned in for the night?”
“Carly? That’s her name?” J.P.’s tone was almost wistful.
“According to her, yes. Short for Charlotte. Keep in mind, she was calling herself ‘Zelda’ a few hours ago.” He figured he understood why she’d done that—her own form of self-defense.
“What is it with you?” J.P. snapped. So much for wistful. “She’s a kid, and five will get you ten, she’s in some kind of trouble. Why not give her the benefit of the doubt?”
“I’m doing that,” Cord replied reasonably. “She’s here on my ranch, isn’t she?” He paused. “Or you want the kid at your place, J.P.? Come and get her.”
“Whoa. Dial back on the attitude a little, will you? This is me, your old pal J.P. McCall. And I’m on your side.”
Chagrined, though he’d be damned if he’d let on, Cord took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, exhaled slowly.
Before he could pick up the conversational ball, J.P. went on again. “Look,” he said, “I know you’ve got trust issues, but right now, you need to let all of that go. We have to get a handle on this situation, Cord.”
“‘Trust issues’?” Cord bit out. What did that mean and what did it have to do with anything?
J.P. sighed expressively. “That’s what I said,” he replied. “Your ex betrayed you. So did Reba, even though that was years ago. Plus, the kid—Carly—mentioned being in foster care. I’m guessing that brought up some stuff you don’t want to deal with. And believe me, I know all about bad memories.”
“Okay,” Cord managed, still furious and well aware that his mood was irrational. “Can we move past that, please, and discuss the problem at hand?”
The problem.
He didn’t have a lot of memories of those early years, but recalled being referred to as “the problem” by a foster parent or two before Bill and Mimi found him and brought him home. Now here he was, sticking the same label on Carly.
“Let me rephrase that,” he added, before J.P. could start up with the amateur psychological analysis again. “We ought to be talking about the girl.”
“Right,” J.P. said. “Carly. Reba’s daughter and, most likely, yours, Eli’s or mine. What are we going to do, Cord?”
Cord rubbed the stubble on his jaw. He’d shaved that morning. Maybe he ought to give up and just let his beard grow in.
“We can settle the matter easily enough, it seems to me,” he said calmly. “All we need to do is have our DNA tested, see if one of us is a match.”
J.P.’s response was slow in coming. “I’m not sure I want to know yet, one way or the other,” he finally confessed. “Eventually, but I don’t feel ready...”
“Maybe none of us is ready, with the possible exception of Carly herself,” Cord answered, feeling hollowed out and more than a little bit lonesome. Considering what all had happened in one day, that wasn’t surprising. And he knew J.P. had to feel much the same...
He’d thought he’d be happily married by now, with a passel of kids, but things hadn’t turned out that way and, deep down, he was disappointed.
He was thirty-five years old, and what did he have to show for it, besides his work? One short, tempestuous marriage to Ms. Wrong, a mistake from “I do” right on through to the final showdown, when his bride backed a rented truck up to the front door and had her three brothers load up most of the furniture, the still-unused wedding china and silver, the whole shooting match. She’d stripped the walls of the expensive art they’d chosen together, helped herself to half the pots and pans, even taken the aspirin from the medicine cabinet.
She’d tried to make off with his dog, for God’s sake! Out of spite, no doubt, since Jenna didn’t much care for animals—or maybe she’d planned on holding poor Clyde for ransom.
Turned out she didn’t much care for ranch life in general.
Or him.
And there went his mind, wandering again. Maybe J.P. was right, and he ought to find himself a shrink, have his head examined.
Nope, not gonna happen.
“You off in the hinterlands again, buddy?” J.P. prompted.
“I’m here,” Cord insisted. For now.
“What if Carly won’t agree to a DNA test?”
“That would be a little suspicious,” Cord replied carefully, remembering J.P.’s observations earlier.
Hell, maybe he did have trust issues.
If so, he was entitled to them. He’d been screwed over often enough, hadn’t he?
Fortunately, or maybe out of simple mercy, J.P. let his comment pass without remarking on it.
“Eli ought to be in on this conversation,” he said.
“Yeah,” Cord agreed.
“How about getting together for breakfast tomorrow, at Brynne’s? The three of us. We can hammer out a plan.”
“Can’t,” Cord said in all honesty. “I have to work.”
Until Tina had reminded him an hour ago, the obligation had slipped his mind completely. A new client, Ms. S. Fletcher, was due to arrive by 6 a.m. at the latest, and the way his luck had been running, she’d actually show up.
It was unlike him not to thoroughly vet applicants for his program, since it was rigorous and as apt to break prospective horse whisperers as make them, but he’d been rushed at the time, dealing with another commitment, so he’d merely skimmed the details. Then he’d banked the hefty deposit, which included room and board in the guest suite, and emailed the woman a set of dates and a few release forms, which she’d promptly returned.
She was from Seattle, this Ms. Fletcher, and while he had nothing against the place, it was big, and these days that bothered him. He wasn’t interested in big-city life and hadn’t been for years. Besides, he was in no mood to teach some lame-ass city slicker the basics of salvaging a damaged horse, particularly the kind of equine misfits and delinquents and no-hopers he took on. Or to teach people to train and work with therapy horses, since there was more and more interest in that, and some of his horses—despite or more likely because of their abusive backgrounds—were good contenders for that kind of life.
Damned if his brain hadn’t gone off on another tangent, he thought, landing back in the here and now with a jolt. The mind trip must have taken no more than a second or two, though, because J.P. didn’t miss a beat.
“Work?” he challenged. “Really? Cord, this is important.”
“I know that, J.P., but so is my work.” Cord was proud of his restraint. If he’d been a lesser man, he might have pointed out that, unlike J.P., who had parlayed a government settlement into a fortune by trading stocks, he had to earn a living.
“See you tomorrow night?” J.P. asked. “You, me and Eli at your place for dinner.”
He couldn’t resist. “Assuming Eli can take the time off,” Cord pointed out. “Some of us have jobs, you know.”
“Eat your heart out,” J.P. shot back. “And besides, what you do isn’t a job. It’s a calling—and you’d do it even without the fat fees your clients pay you to work your magic.”
Cord didn’t take the bait—which sounded more like a compliment. He was too tired to wrangle with J.P., who’d been known to argue one side of a question, then turn right around and argue its opposite just as convincingly.
“Tomorrow night,” Cord capitulated. “Bring food.”
J.P. didn’t answer, didn’t bother with a goodbye. He just ended the call.
CHAPTER FOUR
CORD TOOK THE dogs outside to lift a hind leg one more time.
When
Bandit and Smoky were back inside, settled on their beds by the stove, he made his way to the large master bedroom, remodeled at Jenna’s insistence; she’d dug in her stiletto heels right away and said she wasn’t about to settle for a bunch of old folks’ furniture or those musty curtains in her bedroom. Or that positively dreadful wallpaper.
A besotted bridegroom at the time, Cord had hired the appropriate contractors and given her free rein.
That was bad idea number two. Nobody’s fault but his own, since he’d agreed to it. Bad idea number one: marrying her in the first place.
Thanks to Jenna, and his own wimpy agreement to changes he’d never wanted, the once-homey space was barely recognizable as the room his grandparents had slept in for nearly sixty years. Gone were the heirloom quilts and the samplers Mimi had embroidered, along with the matched pair of rocking chairs as well as the potbellied stove that had kept them toasty warm on cold Montana nights.
Now everything in the bedroom was high-tech, from the lighting to the gas fireplace, velvet-soft carpeting and designer drapes. When it came to decorating—not to mention spending money, his money—Jenna had been in a league all her own.
Not content with the spacious accommodations at the end of the hall, she’d had a wall knocked out and turned Mimi’s beloved sewing nook into a bathroom suited to a movie star. She’d had that formerly humble chamber fitted with a massive marble bathtub, his and her johns, and a counter almost as long as the bar at Sully’s, with a backlit mirror running the length of it. The sinks were marble, like the tub and the floor, and sported gleaming copper fixtures, the gracefully arched faucets perfectly positioned to smack a man hard on the forehead every time he bent to splash water on his face or spit while brushing his teeth.
Even now, with Jenna long gone, living in Brooklyn and remarried to a rich lawyer almost twice her age, Cord felt like a squatter in both rooms, as if he were bunking down in somebody’s palace on the sly, or had sneaked into some obscenely expensive hotel without paying. A part of him expected to be found out and sent packing at any moment.
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