Beauty in Hiding

by Robin Patchen

Chapter Seventeen

  Jack settled on the sofa in Red’s house and exhaled a long breath.

  Vanessa had called him when she couldn’t get in touch with Harper. He’d left the work he was doing at one of the cabins he managed and rushed into town. He’d thought to stop at McNeal’s to tell Harper what was going on, but he figured he’d better check on Red first.

  Once he had Red in his pickup, there was no leaving him alone. The old man beside him bore no resemblance to the Red that Jack had come to know. He was angry, aggressive, and irrational. This was the man who’d caused that gash on Harper’s temple almost a week earlier. It took all of Jack’s focus to keep him from diving out of the pickup and hurting himself.

  Jack had considered taking Red home with him, but Red had never been to his house, and Jack hoped maybe the familiarity of his own living room might help calm him down. So he’d used his spare key, let himself into Red and Harper’s house, and then cajoled the angry old man up the ramp and into his chair.

  Red had complained and yelled and fought him every step.

  It wasn’t until Jack turned on the TV and found a soap opera that Red settled down. Jack made him a sandwich, encouraged him to eat it, and managed to get him to drink half a glass of Gatorade. He had no idea if food or hydration would help, but they couldn’t hurt.

  Jack was way out of his league here.

  He’d planned to call the restaurant and ask for Harper as soon as he had a free moment. But by the time he got Red calmed down enough to do so, he was so angry, he couldn’t think straight. Why hadn’t she answered Vanessa’s calls? Did she really intend to leave her grandfather for others to care for? She hadn’t seemed that type of woman, but after Thursday… Well, clearly he had no idea what type of woman she was.

  Rude, no doubt about that. Secretive. And, if Thursday night’s conversation could be believed, estranged from her family. A family that could have helped her with Red. Seemed to Jack that if she really cared about the old man, she’d mend whatever fences she’d torn down with them.

  After Red had finished the sandwich, he’d focused on the TV. Now, he was snoring softly, his head lolling to the side.

  Finally, he heard a car in the driveway. A moment later, Harper burst through the front door. She looked at the old man and grabbed the door jamb. “Thank God.”

  Jack’s anger slipped a few notches. With a nod toward the kitchen, he whispered, “Come on.”

  She collapsed on a chair and dropped her head into her hands. “I’m so sorry. My phone… I don’t know what happened.”

  Tears dripped between her fingers and landed on her lap.

  He’d seen her phone. It looked like a cheapie one might buy in a convenience store. No wonder it didn’t work. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “You need to replace that phone.”

  She reached for a napkin, wiped her eyes, took a deep breath. “As soon as I get my first paycheck.” More tears dripped, and she wiped them away, focusing on her lap. “Why didn’t Vanessa call me at McNeal’s?”

  He’d wondered the same thing. “Maybe because she knows it’s your first week there. Maybe she didn’t want to jeopardize your job. And she figures we’re friends.”

  Her gaze snapped up and met his. She swallowed, blinked away fresh tears. “I’m sorry I was so rude last week. I just… My family is a hard topic.”

  “I gathered.”

  She straightened her shoulders, took another deep breath, seemed to be steeling herself. “What happened with Gramps?”

  “According to Steve, he was fine. And then he wasn’t. I figure it was sort of like what happened the other night. Except nobody there knew how to handle it.”

  “Sometimes I can’t handle it, either. You saw him last week.”

  “Do you think it’s Alzheimer’s?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just been in the last month or so that he’s gotten aggressive.” She paused, took a breath. “To be honest, he’s actually better than he was a few weeks back. His memory was failing a little, yes, but for a while, he was angry and confused much more than he has been here.” She turned toward the doorway and her sleeping grandfather.

  Jack surveyed the kitchen, the dingy house he’d rented them. He weighed his next words carefully, figured he was about to get thrown out again. But it had to be said. “Wouldn’t he do better in his own home?”

  She deflated like a balloon with a fast leak. “You don’t understand.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  She pressed her hands together, stared at the cabinets.

  He lowered his voice, tried to sound gentle. “If you took him home to your family, would they take care of him?”

  She didn’t answer, but fresh tears dripped down her cheeks.

  “You don’t think your father, Red’s own son, would help you?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “So you said.”

  She stood, opened the fridge, pulled out a package of American cheese. Well, those nasty individually-wrapped orange squares people tried to pass off as cheese. She unwrapped it, nibbled the edge like a frightened mouse.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  She shook her head, focused on the floor.

  He edged by her, opened the fridge again, and pulled out the pan of lasagna. Only one serving remained. “How about I warm this up for you?”

  “I can feed myself.”

  He just lifted his eyebrows and waited.

  She took the pan from him, cut the small portion in half, and put it on a plate. “You want some?”

  “There’s barely enough for one.”

  She glanced at the portion she’d dished herself. “I won’t eat more than that.”

  He’d had a sandwich with Red, but the lasagna looked good. When he said nothing else, she took the rest, put it on a second plate.

  While the food heated in the microwave, she washed the empty pan and set it on the table. Then she got them both glasses.

  “Water for me,” he said.

  She filled two glasses and grabbed their meals.

  They ate with only the sound of the soap opera in the other room and their forks against the dishes for noise.

  When he finished, he stood with his empty plate. “You about to kick me out again?”

  “I didn’t kick you out. I just…”

  When she didn’t finish, he turned to the sink to rinse the empty dish.

  “Just leave it.”

  “And go,” he added, figuring that’s what she wanted.

  She gestured toward the other chair. “Unless you need to go. You probably have work to do or something. I’m sure we messed up your day.”

  He sat. “I’m good.”

  Her plate was still half-full when she pushed it away. “I don’t have a relationship with my parents. I want to. Maybe someday I’ll have the nerve to go home, but not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  It was like trying to question a hostile witness. He’d have made a terrible lawyer. “Why don’t you have a relationship with them?”

  “They were good parents. Raised me with love. Taught me right from wrong. I chose wrong.”

  Vague, but getting somewhere. “How so?”

  She sipped her water, set it down. Folded her hands. They were trembling. “After I graduated from high school, I took off. Decided I wanted to be an actress.”

  “They didn’t like that idea?”

  “They were very supportive. I got a job in Hollywood as a barista, auditioned for every role I could. At one of them, I met this guy. He offered me a job dancing in a show in Vegas. It wasn’t Hollywood, but it was a paying job. I was thrilled.”

  Her wry smile told him the thrill had worn off quickly.

  “The job was fine. The guy and I started dating. And then we had a falling out.” The way her lip ticked up at the corner, a look of pure disgust, made him wonder. “He kicked me out of his apartment, and I got fired from the job.”

  “Becaus
e you dumped him?” A rush of anger had the words out before he could stop them.

  “Apparently, sleeping with him was one of my job requirements. I hadn’t realized…”

  The lasagna turned in his stomach. “I’m sorry.”

  “I should have gone home. But I’d made this big deal about how I was going to make it in show business, not just to my family but to everyone. To old friends who’d gone off to college and gotten real jobs. I was embarrassed.” She sipped her water. “I knew people. I had work experience. I thought I could get another job.”

  Her gaze darted around the room as if collecting words, trying to put them together. “But that guy, the one from before… He’d introduced me to drugs.” She swallowed. “I had a hard time… I thought if I could just make enough money, then it would all be okay. I just had to work. I was sure I’d figure everything out.”

  More tears. The woman leaked more than bad plumbing. And everything in him wanted to fix it for her. Because beyond the beauty, beyond the walls she’d put up, lay a woman he was drawn to. A woman he wanted to know. A woman in pain.

  She wiped her eyes. “I got a job dancing again.”

  Why didn’t that sound like good news?

  She raised her hand, made air quotes. “Dancing.”

  It took him a second. Then he realized what she meant.

  “It wasn’t a… Vegas is…” She swallowed. “I always wore something. It was barely anything, but—”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Okay.”

  She was quiet a moment while he tried very hard not to picture what she’d described. Tried very hard to push away the anger, the disgust. Not at her, but at every person who’d seen her, every person who’d taken advantage of her desperation.

  Finally, she continued. “You start doing that for a living, and the last thing you want is to have a better grip on reality. I used more drugs, drank more, partied more. Anything to forget.”

  He couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to.

  “I met a guy. He was… I didn’t realize how much he was like the first guy. I mean, not in all the ways you can see. The first guy was rich, this one was poor. The first guy was classy and sophisticated, this one was down to earth and funny. But they were alike in the ways that mattered. I chose not to see it, because I so desperately needed somebody to… to love me, I guess.”

  He kept his mouth shut. On his lap, his hands were clenched so tightly they hurt.

  “Money was always an issue,” she said. “I made it, he spent it. Then…” Her gaze started darting again. Here, there. Anywhere but at him. “He got arrested. Sent to prison.”

  He hadn’t expected that. “What did you do?”

  There was a long pause. “This and that. And then I ended up with Gramps.”

  This and that. What did that mean? Not that it was any of his business. She hadn’t had to tell him all of that. She hadn’t had to tell him any of it. So why had she? And why had she stopped?

  And what did this and that mean?

  “You still haven’t gone home?”

  “How can I, after…?”

  He thought of his own parents. The love they’d always shown him. He knew all parents weren’t like his, though. “Are you afraid they’ll reject you?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  He unclenched his fists and rested his hand on hers. Tried to ignore the electricity that zinged through him. “No. I wouldn’t.”

  She met his gaze, blinked, looked down.

  “What if they didn’t reject you, Harper?” At the sound of her name, she met his eyes. “What if they greeted you with open arms? What if they hugged you and held you and told you how much they loved you?”

  More tears. “What if they didn’t?”

  “What would you have lost?”

  When she didn’t answer, he pulled his hand back. At least now he understood the haunted look in her eyes, the reason she chose to be alone rather than with family.

  But there were those bruises. And there was Red.

  “Did your grandfather have a falling out with them, too?”

  She blinked. Twice. “Uh. He hasn’t had a relationship with them in a long time.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged and carried her plate to the trash, where she dumped what she hadn’t eaten. “I don’t know the story. Don’t ask him about it, though. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  Amazing how fast the woman could shift from truth to lies. After all she’d told him, what in the world could she be hiding?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Derrick stepped out of the shower in his Las Vegas hotel room Tuesday morning and dripped on the fancy tile while he dried off. This had been an utterly useless trip. He’d been so sure he’d be able to locate Harper. Where else would she go except back to the crappy life she’d left?

  All day Friday and then all weekend, he’d looked for her. But nobody at the nursing home where she’d been working had seen her since she’d moved away. He’d even offered money for information on her whereabouts. Zip, zero, nada.

  Derrick had visited her old apartment building and canvassed the residents, but they all claimed not to remember her. Those people were probably lucky to remember their names half the time. Bunch of bums. Even those fools at the grocery store where Harper had worked for chump change had come up with squat. Trying to grease their palms had gotten him nothing.

  Unfortunately, it was Vegas, and without Harper to distract him, the poker tables had beckoned.

  When he’d first met Harper, he’d believed she would be his angel. Once he’d turned his focus to her, his desire to gamble had waned. It had gone from a pounding need to a dull ache easily ignored. But when she’d blown him off over the summer because Gramps was sick, that ache had grown, and, with nothing else to do, he’d gone to Atlantic City.

  The money he’d lost—her fault. All her fault.

  And he was back here in Vegas because of her. He’d lost more money because of her.

  So now he was tapped out, and not just financially. He’d been winning all night. At one point, he’d had thousands of dollars’ worth of chips stacked in front of him. He’d been so sure this would be the moment of his big score. The solution to all his problems. But by the time the sun rose over the distant mountains, he’d lost every penny.

  Derrick scoffed at his reflection in the foggy mirror. His angel. Right. Thanks to Harper, he was pretty sure he’d soon get a visit from the angel of death.

  Why couldn’t she have just been on his side?

  Didn’t she understand what he’d done for her? Rescuing her from the low-class life she’d lived here, when she’d had to work two jobs just to get by. Derrick had given her a place to live and a job—a job nobody else would hire an ex-con to do. He’d showered her with gifts, given her everything she needed. He’d loved her.

  And she’d betrayed him.

  He dressed in a fresh suit and tie and checked his image in the mirror, smiling at his reflection despite the fury filling his gut. He still looked like the kind of guy you could trust with your money. And people could trust him. At least he’d kept that part of his life unsullied.

  He slipped on his glasses, packed his small roller bag, and headed for the elevator.

  He’d never be back. Never. Not to Las Vegas, not to Atlantic City, not to any of the other casinos that had popped up all over the country like zits on a teenager. After last night, he was done with gambling forever.

  He meant it this time.

  Thank God he’d put most of the cash he’d gotten from Tank into his savings account, an account not accessible by ATM and not attached to his checking account. No matter how much he’d wanted to dig into it the night before, he hadn’t been able to. So he’d only lost the money he’d had on him.

  Only. Like a thousand dollars was chump change.

  Except it was, compared to what he owed. And now he had less cash to use for finding Harper and Gramp
s.

  As he pushed the button to summon the elevator, he cursed the cards that had turned against him, his own stupidity, and Harper.

  Someone approached from behind.

  A man stood to his right, another behind him. Too close. He turned to nod, felt his automatic smile freeze.

  He didn’t recognize them, but he didn’t need to. Their sneers told Derrick all he needed to know. He faced them head-on. The shorter one snatched Derrick’s suitcase. The one shaped like Rambo gripped Derrick’s arm as if he were in the mood for juice and Derrick was the orange.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Rambo said.

  Fighting would only get him hurt. Yelling for help would probably get him knocked out cold. He walked with the men to the room next door to the one he’d occupied. How long had they been watching?

  They knocked, and a man on the inside opened the door.

  This one, Derrick recognized. Quentin Gray. Medium height, medium build, medium red hair, medium brown eyes. Freckles all over his face. Didn’t look a day over twenty-five, but Derrick guessed he was at least in his thirties. He passed himself off as a tech millionaire, and maybe he was. He’d developed some obscure program for some obscure industry. But that program didn’t account for the bulk of his income. That came from other, more lucrative, sources.

  One of which was the reason Derrick was face-to-face with him now.

  The goons pushed Derrick into the room and followed. The door closed with a thud.

  Quentin crossed to a small desk and sat in the chair behind it. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  Derrick shrugged off Rambo and forced himself not to rub his aching arm. He straightened his suit coat, pushed up his glasses, and stepped closer to Quentin, mostly to distance himself from the guys behind him. “I didn’t know you were in Las Vegas.”

  “When I heard you were in town, I thought I’d fly in, say hello.”

  Derrick was smart enough not to ask how he’d heard. “I’m trying to get your money.”

  Quentin took his phone, pressed the screen, then lifted it so Derrick could see the image there.

  Photos of him at the poker table the night before. The first photo showed a stack of chips in front of him. He wore a stupid smile. Quentin swiped so Derrick could look at the next photo. Fewer chips, smaller smile. Then he saw the next, and the next, until finally, no chips remained in front of him. Derrick stared at the image of his own face, the shock he saw there, as if any idiot couldn’t have seen that coming. As if the same thing hadn’t happened every single time.