by Debbie Burke
While he buttoned a starched pearl-gray shirt and tucked it into dark gray suit pants, his expression grew increasingly impenetrable, as if each layer of clothing added to the invisible armor forming around him. Once he’d tied the Windsor knot in his burgundy silk tie and shrugged wide shoulders into the suitcoat, he looked totally blank. Despite his outer control, she knew fury boiled inside him.
She slid her hands down his lapels and smoothed his dark curls. “You look good enough to argue a case before the Supreme Court.”
His only answer was a too-brief kiss before he turned on his heel toward the garage. She followed him up the stairs where he got into his Mercedes and backed out into the driveway. As he drove away, heading for his office and the showdown with Steve Zepruder, Tawny prayed his anger didn’t get the best of him.
With a sigh, she went inside and bundled Arielle and Judah off to school with their bodyguards. Then she made eggs and English muffins, hoping Mimi might eat.
When she approached the girl’s bedroom door, she heard the thud-thud-thud of feet pounding the treadmill and wondered if Mimi had been running all night. She was as driven as her dad.
Tawny tapped on the door. “Want some breakfast?”
“It’s open,” came the muffled reply.
Tawny entered.
Mimi hit the stop button on the treadmill and stepped down.
The room’s sterile neatness again gave Tawny a chill. Either Mimi had already made the bed or had never slept in it.
She accepted the plate. “I hate runny eggs. You cook them hard enough.”
Tawny smiled. “Glad you like them.”
Mimi perched on the edge of the mattress. Her eyes flicked to the cell lying beside her, as if expecting a text. “Did you already eat?”
Tawny nodded. “With Arielle and Judah before they left for school.”
“Is Dad gone?”
“Went to the office.” To throw his thieving partner out the window. “Kemp Withers died this morning.”
Mimi’s lip twitched. “That’s sad. He was more like a grandfather to me than my real one.” She nibbled on the muffin. “Jews have to be buried within twenty-four hours. Mom will so want to throw the funeral bash here.”
“That’s a lot to pull together, especially without Consuelo’s help.” A sudden recollection made Tawny jerk to attention. In all the chaos, she’d forgotten to tell Tillman that Fausto’s brakes had been tampered with.
Mimi looked up from her food. “What is it?”
“I need to tell your dad something.” Tawny didn’t want to interrupt the showdown between partners by phoning. Instead she tapped a quick text, asking him to call when he could.
Mimi finished eating and rose from the bed. “I want to ride my horse.” She brushed past Tawny and headed to the kitchen.
Tawny followed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea with the kidnappers still on the loose.”
Mimi set her dish in the sink. “They aren’t going to come back with all the cops and guards swarming around here.” Her pout sent the silent message—you can’t tell me what to do.
Tawny’s phone rang. Tillman. To Mimi, she said, “Excuse me, this is business.”
Mimi tossed her hair. Her expression read: Do you think I’m stupid?
“I’m going to change into riding clothes.” She stalked away, disappearing downstairs toward her bedroom.
Tawny went to the library and closed the door before answering.
“What is it?” Tillman asked.
“Florentino told me the brake lines on Fausto’s truck appeared to have been cut. That may be what caused his accident.”
A short silence. “Probably the kidnappers. Wanted to make sure Consuelo and Fausto weren’t around so you’d be alone in the house with the kids.”
“Sorry I forgot to tell you earlier. Things got crazy.”
“I’ll get hold of Florentino and call Detective Bettencourt. Anything else?”
Tawny sighed. “Mimi wants to ride her horse. Doesn’t sound like a good idea with the kidnappers maybe around. But she’s not going to listen to me.”
Tillman snorted. “She’s not going to listen to me either. I’ll have Florentino tail her.”
“OK.” Tawny hesitated, afraid to ask about the showdown. “Did you see Steve?”
“Not yet. The little prick hasn’t come into the office or called. Esther has no idea where he is.”
Tawny didn’t know whether to feel relief or more worry.
“Is Mimi talking to you?” Tillman asked.
“A little.”
“That’s a helluva lot more than she’s done with anyone else. You’re the most likely one to get her to open up.” He disconnected.
The burden of a frantic father’s hope weighed heavily on Tawny.
Yet somewhere during the past few days she’d spent with his children, her feelings had shifted. No longer did they represent a responsibility she reluctantly bore for Tillman’s sake. By saving their lives, they had become hers. Not by blood and bone but by choice, her choice.
They’d needed a mother to protect them and now she was theirs forever.
She was washing breakfast dishes when Mimi came into the kitchen, dressed in jeans and boots, her expression still blank. “I guess you can ride with me if you want.”
Her words surprised Tawny. “I’d like that.” Then she remembered the Appaloosa’s blindness. “Is it safe? Arielle said Sweetie can’t see.”
Mimi lifted a slim shoulder. “She’ll follow Moldy just fine.” She shot a challenge at Tawny. “Unless you’re scared.”
“If you say it’s all right, I trust you.”
The girl’s dark eyes flickered slightly.
Tawny added, “Fausto said the horses like apples. I bought a bag for them the other day. They’re in the fridge.”
Mimi was as unreadable as her dad was in the courtroom. Yet Tawny thought she caught something in her expression that otherwise seemed flat and lifeless. The girl opened the refrigerator and grabbed the apples.
“I’ll go change into boots,” Tawny said and headed to Tillman’s suite.
****
In the driveway, Mimi warmed up the engine in her red Toyota truck, which was surprisingly shiny despite spring mud. Tawny wondered who kept it clean and polished for her, maybe Florentino. She climbed in and they took off.
As the front gate rolled open, a reporter and a TV cam operator approached the truck, hungry for updates on the attempted kidnapping. A security guard blocked them, allowing Mimi to gun the engine and shoot onto the street.
At the intersection with Highway 3, Tawny caught sight of Florentino in his old Dodge pickup, waiting. He waved at her, then fell in behind, trailing them to the dirt cutoff road to the stables. They bumped along the gravel track to the corral.
Both horses clopped to the fence at the approach of the trucks. Mimi hopped out and climbed up a rung. Tawny followed with two apples.
The girl leaned over to nuzzle the gray horse’s face. “Did you miss me?” she cooed, the first obvious emotion—besides annoyance—that she’d displayed.
Tawny offered an apple to the blind Appy. The horse gently took it from her hand. The gray moved closer to Tawny and lifted his head, asking for his own treat. As both chomped contentedly, a tiny smile curled Mimi’s lips.
She climbed over the fence, limber and agile as a spider monkey, and not a lot larger. Beside the gray horse, she looked no bigger around than one of its legs. Without hesitation, she grabbed a handful of mane and led him inside the barn, completely in control. Sweetie followed them. Within moments, Mimi had both horses saddled and ready to go.
She handed Sweetie’s reins to Tawny. “You know to mount on the left side, don’t you?”
Tawny nodded, stuck her boot in the stirrup, and grasped the saddle horn. Pulling herself up used different muscles than she was used to. She struggled as Sweetie danced away, unsure of this stranger trying to climb aboard.
Mimi watched from atop the gray unti
l Tawny had settled herself in the saddle. They crossed the corral to the pasture. Without dismounting, Mimi flipped the gate latch and swung it aside. Tawny followed, feeling uncertain because the horse she rode couldn’t see. But Sweetie moved through the narrow opening without scraping her legs.
Tawny had only ridden a few times, mostly broken-down nags from tourist concessions. After several minutes, Sweetie’s gentle, rolling gait lulled her into an easygoing rhythm.
Mimi led them through open fields until they reached a dirt road parallel to the distant highway. Florentino followed behind in his truck. Except for the low grumble of his engine, the only sounds were the chirping of crickets and the beating of bird wings flushed from hiding places in the grass.
Once on the road, Sweetie walked beside Moldy, evidently feeling safe on the level terrain.
“If I didn’t know Sweetie was blind,” Tawny said, “I wouldn’t guess it from the way she moves. I thought she’d be jerky and skittish.”
Mimi glanced over, hands easy on the reins, her slender form melded to her horse as if they were one being. “She trusts Moldy and she knows this road.”
“After hearing how she broke Judah’s leg, I was a little nervous.”
Mimi tossed her hair. “She didn’t break his leg. He was acting like an idiot. It was his own fault, not the horse’s.” She leaned back in the saddle. “If somebody tied a blindfold around your eyes then kicked you to run and you didn’t know what was ahead, you’d be jumpy, too.”
“I understand that now.” Tawny hesitated, wondering if she should say more. “Thanks for inviting me. This is really nice, peaceful.”
“Yeah, a lot different from competition riding. There, the pressure is intense.”
“I saw your trophies. Are you still competing?”
Mimi didn’t answer for a long moment. “I’ll probably have to quit soon.”
“Oh?” Tawny couldn’t appear to pry.
“I’m tired of it anyway. When you’re already the best, what’s the point?”
That sounded like Tillman, arrogant, yet speaking the truth.
The girl shot a look at Tawny. “I’m a stuck-up, entitled, little bitch who thinks she’s better than anyone else.”
Tawny struggled to keep her expression neutral. “I don’t think that.”
“Well, you should. I am. Like my mom. Too pretty, too smart, too demanding. Everybody better duck when she wants something and can’t get it.”
Tawny studied the girl who had come so close to dying. “Mimi, what do you want that you can’t get?”
Her head whipped away, dark hair swirling. A shudder shook her thin shoulders. Even the horse jerked around to peer at her. She kicked his sides and he leapt into an instant gallop. They tore down the road, flashing hooves churning up dirt.
Sweetie jittered under Tawny and turned in a circle, head tossing. Tawny held the reins firm, pulling back so the blind animal wouldn’t follow, and patted her flank. “Whoa, easy now.” The horse quieted as she watched the billowing dust cloud in the girl’s wake. “Well, that sure hit Mimi’s hot button, didn’t it?”
Florentino’s truck approached. He leaned out the driver’s window, brows quizzical. “What should we do, señora?”
By now, Mimi and her horse were nearly a quarter mile farther up the road, still galloping, enveloped in powdery dust. “Just keep her in sight.”
He scanned the open pasture. “I watch. No one gets close without I see them first.”
“Gracías.” Tawny tapped her heels. Sweetie resumed her rolling walk then eased into a trot.
A half-mile ahead, a solitary cottonwood rose in the middle of a hay field. Part of the tree was dead from an old lightning strike, its jagged white trunk thrusting forty feet into the sky like a gnarled bare arm. Lower branches still had leaves and the gray horse stood in their shade.
Tawny urged Sweetie into a canter. As they drew closer, Tawny spotted Mimi, sitting in the crotch of the tree, swinging her legs. She didn’t make eye contact.
At the outer edge of the shade, Tawny halted the horse and swung down to the ground. Her hips felt stiff. While she stretched muscles not used to squeezing a horse, Sweetie clopped to stand beside Moldy, both grazing lazily.
Mimi’s legs swung back and forth as relentless as a metronome.
Tawny moved to the base of the tree trunk and slid to the ground. She hoped the girl would hear the message: I’m here but not pushing.
She waited for Mimi to say: Get lost. Leave me alone. After a few silent moments, she figured if the girl was going to rebuff her, she’d have already done it. Maybe there was a chance she’d finally open up in the peaceful surroundings, soothed by the rustling cottonwood leaves and the mournful cooing of doves.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Mimi’s legs slowed their mechanical swing. She crossed her ankles and said, “I’m pregnant.”
Not unexpected. Stay quiet, be patient.
“I was probably the last virgin in my whole high school. Did it once.” Her voice rose. “Once! And I’m knocked up.”
“Tough break.”
“The thing is, it was like a romance novel. Perfect. What I’d dreamed about.”
Tawny glanced up at Mimi.
The girl’s face remained impassive, beautiful but blank. “Mom was at some university event. Dad was gone, probably in Kalispell with you. It was Valentine’s Day. I mean, how corny can you get?” Her tone tried to sound worldly and cynical, like Tillman, but dark eyes shone with a young girl’s dream. “It was two days before my sixteenth birthday. He invited me out to dinner at TEN because he knows I love that place. He was drinking. A lot. I ordered iced tea then switched glasses so the waiter couldn’t tell I was drinking Scotch with him.”
Yeah, like that underage stunt had never been pulled before, Tawny thought.
“After dinner, we were both pretty smashed so I said let’s go sober up in the suite.”
“The suite?”
“The one Dad keeps at the Northern. He gave me a key card to it in case I ever got too drunk to drive.”
No doubt the same room Tawny and Tillman had stayed in. She felt squeamish at the thought of Mimi surrendering her virginity on the same bed.
“We got into the mini bar there, drank more scotch. There was a full moon streaming in the window. He turned on music and we were slow-dancing to this old song from when he was in school, ‘Angel Eyes.’ Then, well, you know…”
Tawny remembered the seduction song from the late Eighties and did quick math in her head. That tagged the man as probably in his forties. Crap.
For the first time, Mimi faced Tawny. Anguish filled the depths of her haunted eyes. “I’ve loved him since I was six years old. At last, things were the way they were supposed to be. We were together…finally.”
In love with a man since she was six? That ruled out a current teacher.
“Afterward, he fell asleep.”
More likely passed out, Tawny thought.
“I lay there beside him, the moon shining through the window on us, and, for the first time in my whole life, I felt really happy.”
Tawny remembered Consuelo’s description of Mimi, crying as a little girl. Depression had dogged her short life, except for a few magic moments of false joy. Tawny waited for her to go on, knowing she would soon hear the replay of a young heart breaking.
“A couple of hours later, he woke up, staggered into the bathroom, and threw up. That was the ugliest sound I’d ever heard. Then he came back to the bed, crying, sobbing, telling me it was all a horrible mistake, he should never have done it, he was so ashamed, and it would never have happened except he was so drunk.” The catch in her voice made her trip over the words.
“He said he could go to prison because I was under the age of consent. Like two lousy days made a difference. I told him it was a stupid legal distinction that didn’t matter because we loved each other.”
Mimi folded forward, torso pressed to thighs. Silent tears splashed on the dirt.
Tawny started to rise, intending to offer a hug, but stopped when Mimi spoke again.
Her voice quivered. “He said I looked just like my mother had at that age. He was so in love with her and, when he saw me looking exactly like she did back then, he just had to recapture that memory of their first time together.”
Tawny froze, sickness rising in her throat.
Steve Zepruder. Tillman’s dishonest partner. Rochelle’s lover.
That miserable snake.
The smiling, handsome predator with a dimple and a silky, radio announcer voice had charmed the vulnerable, depressed girl.
Tawny imagined Tillman’s terrifying wrath when he learned about this.
But he would also instantly jump on what Mimi called a stupid legal distinction. Tillman would guarantee Steve was prosecuted for the statutory rape of his daughter, lose his license to practice law, and possibly go to prison.
Steve had to be frantic to keep the secret.
The girl straightened and her legs swung again, harder and faster. “Thing is, he wasn’t even with me. He was fucking my mother when they were back in high school. Over and over, he kept saying it was a mistake. How could he call it a mistake? I loved him. He said he loved me too, but not that way. Like I was his daughter.”
Tawny fought down disgust. She pulled her knees to her chest, holding tight to still the tremors in her hands. Don’t let her see your reaction.
“You’ll probably think I’m evil for saying this but…” Mimi looked at Tawny through her dark lashes, as if their fragile shield could fend off disapproval. “I used to wish my parents would die so Steve could become guardian to us kids. Then we’d be together.”
Tawny’s fingernails dug through her jeans into her shins. “That’s not so strange. When my dad was drinking, sometimes I hoped he’d crash his truck and die.” Only he’d killed her mother instead. Then she sighed, remembering Emma. “And my daughter sure wished me dead when she was a teenager.”
Mimi slipped off the branch to stand near where Tawny sat against the tree trunk. “Really? How could she hate you? You’re so understanding. Not like mine.”
Tawny lifted one shoulder. “It’s just part of changing from child to adult, separating yourself from your parents.”
