Uncertain Past

by Roz Denny Fox

  Emmy slowed to turn into her driveway when it struck her that she had nothing in the house for breakfast. It was ten o’clock, so she doubted the town’s general store would be open. But she’d prefer driving somewhere tonight over having no coffee, juice or toast in the morning. Admittedly, she was not a morning person.

  She remembered passing a Winn-Dixie on her way into town. Stepping on the gas, Emmy drove on past her place, and also Riley’s. She couldn’t help noticing that his midnight-blue convertible wasn’t where he’d parked it earlier. It’s in his garage, said the voice of logic.

  Yeah, right. More like he had a hot date. Gwyn had described him as a stay-at-home father. But did Gwyn really know his habits?

  Emmy had no problem finding the store. The lot was surprisingly full, considering the lateness of the hour. Stifling a yawn, Emmy grabbed a cart and took stock of the various aisles. She didn’t intend to spend half the night tracking down a few items. As dairy products were on the far right, she elected to start there. Rounding the corner, she pushed her cart into someone else’s.

  “Sorry,” she gasped. A teasing quip about grocery shopping in her sleep died on Emmy’s lips as she glanced up and into Riley Gray’s dark eyes. She groped for something—anything—less inane to say. All she managed was a few unintelligible squeaks.

  “Emmy.” Inclining his head, Riley started to move around her.

  Still off guard, she shuttled in the same direction and their carts again collided. Now her heart got into the act. It beat like a marching band.

  Riley untangled his full cart from her nearly empty one, mumbling, “Two accidental meetings in one day could only happen in a town the size of Uncertain.” In a cool offhand voice, he added, “Alanna tells me we’re going to be neighbors. I should’ve known you’d go to Fran’s. Listen, my daughter gets her feelings hurt easily. So, do us both a favor and don’t encourage her visits. Now please excuse me, I have Mrs. Yates on overtime.”

  He whipped out of sight before Emmy corralled a sudden, wicked thought. Wicked because she pictured her and Riley making love on the floor between the dairy products and frozen foods. Heavenly days! Where did that come from? Quickly harnessing hormones that had run amuck, Emmy rushed after him, needing to make amends for her earlier rudeness at the bank. By the time she’d turned the unwieldy cart around, he was nowhere to be found. And she still owed him an apology.

  Or maybe now Riley owed her one. Don’t encourage Alanna, indeed. His daughter was lonely, for pity’s sake. Surely Riley didn’t think she’d be unkind to a kid.

  Somehow, Emmy had lost her zeal for shopping. She continued down aisles, though, until she had everything she’d come for. There was still no sign of Riley when she checked out, or when she loaded the sacks into her pickup.

  At home, his car again sat in the spot where he’d parked after work. Emmy thought about his work while she unloaded and stored her groceries. The way they had gotten off on the wrong foot today there was no way she’d ask him to represent her. She’d have to call Fielder in the morning and request additional time to hire counsel. Shoot, why not set her alarm and get up early and go tell Fielder to his face? Emmy didn’t want the sheriff getting any idea that she was trying to weasel out of his questions.

  In the morning, she followed through. But who did she meet walking out of the police offices as she headed in? Riley.

  “Not again,” she muttered under her breath. Lord, but a man had no right to look so good this early in the morning. Sun glinted off the black hair he wore so much shorter these days. The natural bronze of his skin contrasted perfectly with a pale yellow shirt. His three-piece suit could only be termed professional, yet dashing.

  Thunderstruck, Emmy stood like a ninny blocking his path.

  A lopsided smile flickered on Riley’s mouth. “Three people phoned this morning to see if I knew you were back in town. I didn’t tell any of them how hard it would be to miss you. Are you stalking me, Ms. Monday?”

  Folding her arms, Emmy measured his changed mood through half-closed eyes. “Are ladies in the habit of stalking you, Mr. Grrr-ay?” She’d nearly stumbled, almost calling him Gray Wolf.

  He clapped his right hand over his heart. “It’s a cross we celebrities have to bear.”

  “Celebrity? Have I missed something?”

  “The morning news?” He straightened his already straight tie and gave her a cocky grin.

  “All right. Stop with the guessing games, Riley. Why were you on the news?” Emmy knew he wasn’t putting her on. Men carrying cameras emerged from the side of the municipal building. Two or three of them packed equipment into the back of a van sporting the logo of a neighboring town’s TV station.

  “Does the name Porter Ashton ring a bell?”

  Emmy filtered everyone she knew from their past through her brain and came up blank. She shook her head slowly. The way her response deflated Riley, Emmy wished she had known the name.

  “Obviously you haven’t lived in Texas these last two years. Ashton has been running insurance scams in small towns from Brownsville to Uncertain. Up to now, he’s successfully covered his tracks. Logan Fielder first alerted me that Ashton was in town. According to the FBI, he always hired a local attorney to handle his affairs. The feds suspected he paid big under the table to make sure he looked clean. This time he picked the wrong man. Last week I turned his falsified tax records over to the feds. We nailed him on twenty-four counts of tax evasion, fraud and numerous other infractions.”

  “Congratulations.” Emmy felt deeply proud of Riley. More than she ought to feel considering the distance she’d been careful to put between them.

  “You say that like you mean it.” Riley sobered and ran an assessing gaze from her head to her toes. His dark eyes kindled with interest.

  “Why wouldn’t I mean it? You think I’m lying because I wasn’t familiar with Ashton’s name? Louisiana’s been my home for the last few years. Anyway, I’m not an avid news fan. It was purely accidental I happened to see the article on Fran. The paper was outdated, at that.”

  Riley shoved his hands in his pants pockets and rattled his keys. “Will you answer one question, Emmy?”

  Squinting up at him, she lifted a shoulder casually. “If I can.”

  “Why didn’t you come back sooner? Even if you weren’t in a position to leave wherever the state placed you, you might have written to let me know you were okay. You up and fly off one day, and you’re able to forget about me and everybody else you left behind?”

  “No! It wasn’t like that,” she blurted. “I tried to run away so many times. The first foster family drove me to and from school and locked me in my room at night. There were bars on the window, and they tore up the letters I tried to send. The second family used a belt to keep me in line. The third and fourth families had other devious ways of ensuring that I stayed put. By the time they moved me into the group home, I’d learned how to bury any mention of my previous life.” Silent tears slipped from her eyes and slid over her cheeks, but she didn’t make any move to wipe them away.

  Riley did it for her. He clasped her face gently between his hands and smoothed his thumbs across her cheeks. “Erase everything I said, Emmy. I should have known you weren’t the type to go quietly. Hell, I did know.” Dropping his head, he planted a kiss on her silvery bangs. Straightening, he met her shimmering eyes. “I’d like to start over. Do you think we can pretend you just blew into town and this is our first meeting?”

  Unable to speak, Emmy nodded. A lot churned through her mind. An apology for her first brush-off. Asking Riley if he’d sit in on Sheriff Fielder’s questioning her about Mom Fran. Hiring him to probe her background. All impossible favors to ask of someone merely extending the hand of friendship. What Emmy wanted from Riley was far more. She wanted his touch. His love. She wanted the years that had been stolen from them.

  “Good,�
�� he said, brushing her damp cheeks one last time before he took his hands away to check a flat gold watch hidden beneath the cuff of his yellow shirt. “I have an appointment in half an hour, so we can’t go for that belated cup of coffee just yet. This afternoon I have papers to file at the county seat. That means I’ll be late getting home.” Pausing, he pulled a slim day planner out of his inside pocket and flipped through a few pages. “Tomorrow,” he said brightly. “If you’re free at five, we could meet at Crazy Jake’s for a drink.”

  “Do you still play darts there?” she asked, regaining her equilibrium.

  “Not nearly as much as I used to. Don’t tell me you still play?” His eyes gleamed, the way a man’s eyes did on encountering a challenge.

  “Some,” Emmy admitted.

  “Then it’ll really be like old times.” Riley rubbed his hands together as he backed toward the street where he’d parked his car.

  “Sure, like old times,” she agreed. “Except I’ve grown up, Riley. Tomorrow you won’t get away with buying me a cola.”

  His smile widened into a feral grin. As he vaulted over the door into the front seat of the convertible, Emmy thought he might have said, “Hey, kid, I’ve missed you.” With the roar of the car’s powerful engine, she wasn’t sure.

  Watching him drive off, she felt a soul-deep yearning. Yet she wasn’t altogether sure that agreeing to meet him in a dimly lit bar was the smart thing to do. Riley hadn’t given any reasons for not playing darts as much as he used to. But she knew why. He had obligations. He was a family man. No amount of wishing would recapture the years they’d lost. And Emmy seriously doubted he put as much store in their upcoming meeting as she did. If he had, he would’ve called it a date.

  It wasn’t a date. The sooner she stopped thinking about it as one, the better off she’d be. Drawing in a ragged sigh, Emmy trudged inside to see Logan Fielder.

  Fielder wasn’t happy. He wasn’t particularly nice. He did, however, grudgingly agree to give her an extra week to seek counsel. Darn, Emmy had hoped he’d say she didn’t need a lawyer. Technically, she didn’t. She couldn’t shed any light on her foster mom’s disappearance or her subsequent murder. Emmy shivered as she stepped out into the fresh air, but she was determined that no one in this backwater town was going to walk on her or bully her.

  Furthermore, someone around here knew who she was, and by God, nothing would deter her from finding the truth.

  Chapter Four

  Following his last meeting with Emmy, Riley expected to be too involved in work to think about her or their proposed date. He had back-to-back appointments with longtime clients. Nice guys who insisted they couldn’t possibly owe the government more than they’d already shelled out quarterly for taxes. It wasn’t that Riley didn’t like talking tax strategy, but it did get boring to cover the same ground with the same folks year after year. Some never seemed to get the concept of taking steps to shelter money before, not after, the fact—when it was too late.

  It wasn’t until the last rancher left that Riley realized he’d doodled Emmy’s name around the edges of five pages of tax notes. The woman scrambled his brains as surely as he did Alanna’s breakfast eggs. She always had. His high-school teachers had taken him aside to discuss the sketches on his homework—his clever attempts to entwine Emmy’s name with his. Then, as today, he’d been mortified when faced with the facts. Although it troubled him more now. Not only did he no longer have the excuse of being a teenager, but it shook him to discover that lust could hang around so long.

  And in his misspent youth, he had lusted after Emmy Monday, although he’d never acted on those feelings. Maybe that was the problem, he mused as he wandered from his office into the conference room to refill his coffee cup. On his return, he tucked the damning evidence in his middle desk drawer, then sharpened a new set of pencils in preparation for his final meeting with the FBI.

  The doodles continued to plague his thoughts. One of his college roommates, who was prone to pontificating, had once told him that guys forgot their high-school conquests but they never forgot the girl who got away.

  Emmy didn’t exactly fit that description. Riley had never really looked at her as a possible conquest. He hadn’t pursued her. Because of her age he’d gone to great lengths to maintain a hands-off policy.

  “Hmm.” Tilting back his chair, Riley laced his fingers over his stomach and smiled at the memory of how dismally he’d failed on that score. On her thirteenth birthday he’d broken his code of ethics and kissed her. And brother, did she kiss him back. He should have felt guiltier that she was such a quick study. But there’d been no shred of remorse in spite of his knowing that Jed or Will would’ve ripped him apart if they’d found out.

  From the moment their lips touched, Emmy’s heart, soul and body had been his for the taking. The power in that knowledge allowed Riley to draw a line he never crossed thereafter. His respect for her—rather than any threat of being beaten to a pulp by his best friends—set the boundaries.

  His intercom buzzed. Riley jerked forward in his chair. Damn!

  The fibbies were here to put a cap on the Ashton case and he’d spent the last half hour daydreaming. Over a woman. He’d promised himself after the bad match he’d made with Lani that he’d never again allow a female to be the center of his attention. Well, other than Alanna. Considering the history he had with Emmy Monday, it was a good thing she’d suggested they engage in something competitive on their first date.

  Meeting, he corrected, scowling as he flipped the intercom. “I’m ready for the agents, Marge. Show them into the conference room. I’ll get the coffee. You can lock up and go to lunch. We’ll close out the case and probably grab a bite afterward.”

  The intercom crackled as Riley waited for signs of agreement from the competent legal assistant he’d inherited from the former owner of his practice—a man now happily retired on a gulf coast beach.

  “The agents aren’t here. I just fielded an odd call. A woman, I can’t place the voice, called to inquire about your hourly rates.”

  Riley laughed. “It’s odd because she asked in advance about rates instead of throwing a fit after receiving our bill? Or odd because there’s actually someone in town you haven’t met? I know, she’s an alien. Her spacecraft accidentally landed on Caddo Lake. The water’s so low she’s mired in lily pads. Taxes are due on Plutarium and she wants me to file an extension for her.”

  “Stop, Riley. You are so bad.” His assistant tried hard to remain serious. “Didn’t your professors tell you comedy and finance don’t mix?”

  “All the time. I’ve had numerous lectures on the subject. Okay, no more joking.”

  “Good. This caller evaded every one of my standard questions. But I haven’t been in this business thirty years for nothing.” Marge sounded smug. “After my bully tactics, she admitted to having two matters that may require legal services. One investigative. One criminal.”

  Riley had no idea why Emmy immediately came to mind. Except that Marge did know everyone. But she wouldn’t know Emmy’s voice. “Criminal, you said? You explained I don’t handle criminal cases unless they involve tax evasion?”

  “I did. I think the news went in one ear and out the other. Without missing a beat, she asked if you’d ever done genealogical research, and what it cost.”

  His stomach plunged. Riley released the intercom button. It had to be Emmy. Was she being furtive because he’d try to talk her out of digging in her past? Leaping from his chair, he went to further question Marge face to face. “Did the caller leave a number where she can be reached?”

  “No. Get this—I didn’t give her a lick of information, yet she thanked me sweetly for all my help, and then hung up.”

  “You’ve fielded hundreds of queries. Why did this one stand out?”

  “At first I thought she might be a reporter after inside information on the Ashton
case. But she sounded too sincere. Gosh, Riley, I can’t explain any better.”

  He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. If Emmy needed help in a criminal matter . . . Hell, it’d have to be connected to Fran Granger’s murder. “You referred her to the law registry?”

  “She never let me get that far. You saw Logan earlier. Has he turned up any new evidence in the Granger murder?”

  That was where he’d bumped into Emmy. Outside the municipal building. Surely Logan wasn’t questioning her. She’d been only thirteen when Fran disappeared. She couldn’t know a thing.

  “Riley?”

  “Frannie Granger’s foster daughter is back in town. She was a kid at the time the ME dated that murder. I doubt Emmy’s under suspicion or Logan would’ve dropped a hint. He knows I was close to all three of Frannie’s foster kids. Since I’m not one of his favorite people, if he had something—anything—on Emmy Monday, he’d have been sure to rub my nose in it.”

  “Okay. Another possibility is Tessa Lang. I’m not sure I’d recognize her voice. And yesterday, when I had my hair done, Jessie Bond told everyone in the shop the archaeologist is getting on Logan’s nerves. Could he be hassling her over permits or something?”

  “Word is, it’s the other way around. Tessa is badgering Logan to let her reopen the site. Unless she’s hatched a plot to do in our illustrious lawman, I see no reason she’d need legal advice regarding a criminal matter.”

  Marge snickered. “Ms. Lang might have to stand in line to get to Logan. He’s making an ass of himself over this case. It’s his last big hurrah, you know, before he hangs up his spurs. Or should I say his star? Uh-oh—” she lowered her voice to a whisper “—your men in black are here. And I don’t mean the undertakers.”