Lucky Shot

by B. J Daniels

He shot Kat a grin as if to say, “See, all women find me irresistible.”

  Kat groaned and disappeared behind her menu.

  The waitress returned, sopped up the spilled coffee and apologized profusely.

  “It’s all right,” Kat assured her. “It could have happened to anyone.”

  Max shot her another grin before picking up his menu.

  Kat waited for the young woman to finish filling their coffee cups as Max continued to peruse his menu.

  “We’ll both have bacon and eggs, hash browns and a side of pancakes,” Max said.

  “No,” she said and tried to stop the waitress, but Max shooed the girl off with a wink. Kat had been planning to have nothing but coffee and toast like she usually did to also make this breakfast as short as possible. “I don’t eat pancakes, let alone bacon or hash browns or egg yolks for that matter.”

  Max lifted an eyebrow.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I hadn’t taken you for one of those.”

  “One of those?” she repeated, feeling her blood begin to heat.

  “Why do you deny yourself one of the pleasures of life?”

  “Bacon?”

  “Eating.” He leaned on his elbows on the table to study her. “What other pleasures do you deny yourself?”

  “I really don’t have t—”

  As she started to rise, he reached over and put a hand on her arm. “Sorry, didn’t know you were that sensitive about life’s...pleasures.”

  She shot him a daggered look. “Just tell me what I’m doing here.”

  “I hate doing business on an empty stomach.”

  “Start talking or I’m walking.”

  He nodded and leaned back, suddenly all business. It startled her for a moment at how quickly he could turn off the charming but inept, arrogant cowboy reporter, and become serious and seemingly competent. It made her wonder who the real Max Malone was.

  “How much do you know about your mother’s past before she married your father?” he asked.

  Kat shrugged, a little embarrassed to admit even to herself that she knew little. Her father had never talked about their mother. Even as a child, when she’d asked about her mother, he’d been vague. It wasn’t until her mother returned that she understood why. For years, her father had believed that Sarah had committed suicide. He would have seen that as the ultimate betrayal—as well as his own failure. Add to that his broken heart...

  Once Angelina had come into the picture, all evidence of their mother had disappeared, and her mother was never mentioned again. That was, until she’d shown up all these years later, alive but with no memory of the past.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you know,” Kat suggested.

  He gave her a look that said he saw right through her veiled attempt to hide what she didn’t know, but he didn’t seem concerned about it. “Your mother had what appeared to be a privileged childhood,” he began as if reciting from notes. “Two loving parents, a nice house in a nice neighborhood, friends and picture-perfect high school years. So I ask you, why are there no photographs from college? Your mother has been all over the news. By now friends would have come forward with candid shots, which would have been worth a nice chunk of change.”

  “Maybe her friends aren’t as mercenary as you.”

  “It’s just a fact of life. If not for the money, then for fifteen minutes of fame. It looks to me like your mother just dropped off the radar in college after being so popular and so involved in high school. It doesn’t add up.”

  “So what?” Kat said, frowning. “I know she graduated.”

  “According to her transcripts.”

  She stared at him. “What are you saying?”

  The waitress reappeared with their food. Max dug in as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe he hadn’t. There hadn’t been many vehicles on Main this morning because of the hour. She assumed that the old pickup parked down the street from the gallery with the California plates must have been his.

  “I can’t find anyone who knew her,” he said between bites. “Not a professor who remembers her, a roommate, anyone.”

  “It was a large university, and she probably could afford not to have a roommate,” Kat said.

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Add to that the fact that she wasn’t a member of any organizations, sororities or even campus clubs, or involved in any campus-sponsored extracurricular activities.”

  Absentmindedly Kat picked up a strip of bacon and took a bite. It had been so long since she’d had meat—let alone bacon—that she was shocked at how good it tasted. She quickly put it down.

  “That isn’t that unusual,” she said wiping her hands on her napkin. “I wasn’t interested in any of that either and at a large campus...” She watched him slather butter on his pancakes and then drown them in syrup, recalling the taste for the first time in what seemed like forever.

  He was right. She hadn’t quit eating things that she loved for health reasons. She knew exactly when she’d begun denying herself any pleasures and shuddered inside at the memory.

  “So you really don’t have any proof,” she said. “You’re just fishing.”

  * * *

  MAX DIDN’T LET her words affect his appetite or his confidence in what he had to tell her—or her desire to hear it.

  Looking up, he jabbed his fork into the air as he ticked off what he’d discovered about the early Sarah Johnson pre-Hamilton.

  “Think about it. Your mother was pretty and popular in high school. There were tons of photos of her in all kinds of organizations, at dances, with her girlfriends in the yearbooks. She was a cheerleader and in every kind of after-school activity there was.” He noticed that she was buttering her pancakes. Not missing a beat, he slid the syrup over to her. “Then she goes off to college and...nothing.”

  “Maybe college was harder for her, and she had to study more,” Kat said and took a bite of her pancake. She closed her eyes for a moment, her face a picture of euphoria. He tried to concentrate on her words, telling himself she was beginning to question her mother’s past, as well.

  But at the back of his mind, he kept asking himself why Kat Hamilton had given up the food she loved. What else had she given up, he wondered as he considered her apparel.

  “A person as outgoing as your mother was in high school is the kind to pledge a sorority, to get involved in the school paper or university politics, have her photo all over that campus.” He shook his head. “Who changes just like that?” He snapped his fingers. “Something happened.”

  He stabbed his fork into his pancakes. Like Kat Hamilton, he thought. He’d met women on diets. Others who wanted to eat more healthfully. But Kat was different. She seemed to be in a battle with food. Or was it with herself? Why was that?

  “Something happened that changed your mother’s life, changed her.” He’d bet his lucky boots on that.

  Kat sat back, as if trying to distance herself from what he was saying. “Like what?”

  He chewed for a moment. “That’s what I don’t know and I’m trying to find out.”

  “I think you’re making too much out of this.”

  He considered her for a moment. “And I think you’re just as curious as I am. Too bad we can’t ask her.”

  “Oh, I see what you’re up to. You want me to ask my mother what she was doing in college besides studying?”

  He leaned his elbows on the table as he bent toward her. “Why not? Supposedly those were years she should be able to remember, right?”

  Kat shook her head, and he saw that he’d made her angry again. “You think she’s lying about not remembering the past twenty-two years?”

  He shrugged and took another bite of his pancakes. “What do you think?”

  “I think breakfast is over.”
She started to rise, but he caught her hand with his free one.

  “I’m being honest with you. How about being honest with me?”

  “I didn’t take your camera and laptop,” she said, pulling loose of his touch.

  “I believe you. Who did you tell about the photo after I showed it to you, though?”

  Kat’s gray eyes widened for an instant. She slowly sat back down. “I’m not sure I even believe you lost anything.”

  He put down his fork and pushed his plate away before wiping his mouth with his napkin. “Yes, you are, and I think you know who was behind stealing them and the photos.” His gaze captured hers. “So who did you call?” To his surprise, he saw the answer in her expression. “You called your mother.”

  “You can’t think that my mother...”

  “Would she call your father? Or would she call Russell Murdock?”

  “This is ridiculous,” Kat snapped. “You can’t think that my father or Russell—”

  “No,” he said, frowning down at his nearly empty plate. “Unless...” He looked up at her. “What if her phone or wherever she is staying is bugged?”

  She gave him an angry look. “You’re just saying all this to scare me. Why would anyone bug the cabin where my mother’s staying?”

  “Seriously? The first wife of the possible future president. Even if she wasn’t missing the past twenty-two years, there’s a story there. The other reporters are chasing the love triangle, but I think the real story started back in college.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  KAT COULDN’T HELP but stare at him. He’d tricked her into coming to breakfast with this crazy story about her mother’s college years and now he was trying to make her think that her mother’s cabin was bugged by...by people who would hire some woman to steal the photos he’d taken.

  It was just crazy enough to have a ring of truth to it, she thought, then quickly pushed the idea away.

  Max picked up his coffee cup, took a sip and put it back down as if lost in thought. “If that SUV that almost ran us down wasn’t an accident...”

  “Do you really think I am that gullible that I’m buying any of this?” Kat demanded, trying to keep her voice down. She worried enough about her mother without having some...some reporter try to fill her head with complete nonsense. “You dig into other people’s life for dirt, and if you can’t find it, you make it up out of thin air? I can’t believe you do this for a living, because I can see that you clearly enjoy it.”

  He didn’t even look offended. She suspected he’d heard it all before. “People fascinate me. I try to figure them out, learn their deep, dark secrets, reveal the real person behind the mask.” Max shrugged. “Like you.” He cocked his head as he surveyed her openly. “I bet you have a few secrets of your own.”

  She held up her hand. “Don’t start. What you see is what you get.”

  He laughed. “Really?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I just don’t believe you. Everyone has something to hide. You’re no different.”

  She got to her feet. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “Maybe.” He was still studying her, still grinning.

  “Obviously my mother went to that college and graduated—”

  “Records can be doctored.”

  “Then she came out here to work in Yellowstone Park.”

  “But she never did work in the park.”

  “That’s because my father swept her off her feet and—”

  “She never even applied for work in the park. Instead, she was hanging around a corral, no doubt aware your father would be delivering horses that day.”

  Kat stared at him. “Is there no end to your devious theories? You have no way of knowing if that is true or not.”

  “But you have to admit, it is all very...suspicious.”

  She shook her head. There was no dissuading him. “Well, if you don’t have more to do than this, I do.” She reached for her purse, figuring he really was going to let her buy breakfast.

  He rose slowly to his feet. The man annoyed her on so many levels. Like the way he dressed, as if he really didn’t give a damn that people thought he was homeless. Like the slow, laid-back way he moved. Like the way his blue eyes pierced through the wall she’d built around herself.

  On top of that, she noticed that she’d eaten most of the breakfast he’d ordered her.

  “If I’m wrong, then help me prove it,” he challenged as he shifted that blue-eyed gaze to her. “Your father would have your mother’s things—you know, the usual stuff we hang on to in safety deposit boxes—diplomas, photos, transcripts of grades from college, anything to convince me your mother really did attend that university. Maybe you’ve even seen some of these things.”

  She hadn’t and she was pretty sure he was counting on that. He’d established doubt in her mind, and now he was daring her to prove him wrong.

  “I see what you’re doing,” she said.

  He gave her that innocent boyish look of his, another thing about him she didn’t like. “If I’m wrong, I won’t bother you again.”

  “Fine.” A part of her couldn’t wait to prove him wrong. “Where can I find you?”

  “I’m staying in the back of my pickup outside the ranch gate.”

  “Of course you are. How glamorous.”

  “I’m pretty low maintenance when I’m working.”

  Was he implying she wasn’t? She took a breath and didn’t take the bait. While she was at the house proving him wrong, she would take the opportunity to do a little digging into Max Malone’s life as well and see how he liked it.

  She pulled out her debit card.

  “Breakfast is on me,” he said, sounding almost amused as he picked up the bill from the table.

  “How gallant.”

  “I’m glad to see that you enjoyed your meal,” he said, a grin in his voice.

  She refused to look at him as she put her card away. “I just want to see your face when I prove you wrong.”

  * * *

  MAX FOUND HIMSELF whistling as he walked to his pickup. He’d enjoyed breakfast. He’d enjoyed Kat Hamilton. She was talented, quick-witted and smart. Hopefully, she would also be useful.

  He had thought it odd when he couldn’t find out anything about Sarah Johnson Hamilton’s college years, other than her transcript. But after talking to Kat, he was more convinced than ever that he was onto something. Had she seen anything that proved Kat had even gone to college, she would have said something.

  He’d seen from her expression that she didn’t know any more about her mother’s time at college than he did. Maybe Kat would produce more documents from those days, but Max seriously doubted it.

  Sarah had been a straight A student in high school, even though she’d been involved in every activity known to man. Her college transcript, on the other hand, was filled with Bs and Cs.

  On the surface, that hadn’t seemed that strange. College was often harder. Also, as he recalled, it was a time to spread your wings and have some fun. So the grades hadn’t triggered any red flags. If he was right, though, and her records had been manipulated, then whoever did it wouldn’t have given her all As. Straight A students attracted attention. Professors would have remembered that Sarah.

  He shook his head. Maybe he really was looking for a story where there wasn’t one. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d let his imagination loose only to come back to earth with a thud, disappointing himself. But if a man didn’t dream...

  As he reached his pickup, he saw that someone had stuck a small piece of paper under the windshield wiper. He slowed and looked around. The paper was ragged on the edges, as if quickly torn from a larger sheet. He didn’t see anyone watching him, but he had the distinct feeling eyes were on him.

 
Carefully, he pulled the note out, trying not to touch more than the edge in case he had need to check it for fingerprints at sometime in the future. It was a cautious behavior that was familiar to him. His favorite stories were those involving people who didn’t want their secrets revealed. Because of that, he’d had his share of threats—not to mention the times things had turned violent. He was often thankful for the years he’d spent in martial arts training.

  The piece of paper was folded in half. Opening it, he saw the apparently hurriedly scrawled words: Back off or you will lose more than your photos.

  Max smiled, opened his pickup and carefully put the note into the glove box. Apparently, he was making someone nervous. That was always a good sign. It was time to dig deeper into the years Sarah Johnson had spent at college back East, because he was onto something. Too bad he didn’t know what. Yet.

  * * *

  KAT TOLD HERSELF that she’d never met a more irritating man. She returned to the studio feeling as if she’d just been in a three-ring boxing bout—or just had angry sex.

  Where had that thought come from?

  She shook her head as she tried to get her head back into her work. But she couldn’t wait to prove Max Malone wrong. Smiling, she thought of the look on his face when she shot down his theory. Not that he would stop stalking her mother, she thought, her smile fading. But Sarah could take care of herself.

  Another thought from out of nowhere.

  She had no basis for it. She didn’t know her mother. Worse, she hadn’t made an effort to get to know the stranger who’d returned.

  But Buckmaster certainly saw his first wife as weak, broken, vulnerable. Kat could tell it drove him crazy that he couldn’t take care of her and have her totally dependent on him. She could imagine how Angelina hated that he was now supporting both of them.

  But Kat sensed that her mother was stronger than her father thought.

  She shivered as she remembered the things that Max had said. Did her mother have something to hide—other than the twenty-two missing years?

  Realizing she wasn’t going to be able to get anything done until she proved Max Malone wrong, she left the gallery and drove to the ranch.