“What room are you in?” Knox asked. I realized we were already back at the motel.
“Why?” I asked with suspicion.
He exhaled slowly as if I were on his last nerve. “So I can drop you at your door.”
Oh. “Nine.”
“You leave your door open?” he asked a second later, his mouth tight.
“Yeah. That’s the way it’s done on Long Island,” I deadpanned. “It’s how we show our neighbors we trust them.”
He gave me another one of those long, frowny looks.
“No. Of course I didn’t leave it open. I closed and locked it.”
He pointed toward number nine.
My door was ajar.
“Oh.”
He put the truck in park where it sat in the middle of the lot with more force than necessary. “Stay here.”
I blinked as he climbed out and stalked toward my room.
My weary eyes were drawn to the view of those worn jeans clinging to a spectacular butt as he stalked toward my door. Hypnotized for a few of his long strides, it took me a hot minute to remember exactly what I’d left in that room and how very much I didn’t want Knox, of all people, to see it.
“Wait!” I jumped out of the truck and ran after him, but he didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down.
I turned on the speed in a last-ditch effort and jumped in front of him. He walked right into the hand I held up.
“Get your ass out of my way, Naomi,” he ordered.
When I didn’t comply, he brought a hand to my stomach and walked me backward until I was standing in front of Room 8.
I didn’t know what it said about me that I really liked his hand there.
“You don’t have to go in there,” I insisted. “I’m sure it’s just housekeeping.”
“This place look like it has housekeeping?”
He had a point. The motel looked like it should give out tetanus shots instead of mini bottles of shampoo.
“Stay,” he said again, then stalked back to my open door.
“Shit,” I whispered when he shoved it open. I lasted all of two seconds before following him inside.
The room had been unappealing, to say the least, when I’d checked in less than an hour ago.
The orange and brown wallpaper was peeling in long strips. The carpet was a dark green that felt like it was made out of the scrubby side of a dish sponge. The bathroom fixtures were Pepto Bismol pink, and the shower was missing several tiles.
But it was the only option within twenty miles, and I’d figured I could rough it for a night or two. Besides, I’d thought at the time, how bad could it be?
Apparently pretty freaking bad. Between the time I’d checked in, stowed my suitcase, plugged in my laptop, and left to meet Tina, someone had broken in and ransacked the room.
My suitcase was upended on the floor, some of its contents strewn all over the carpet.
The dresser drawers were pulled out, closet doors left open.
My laptop was missing. So was the zippered pouch of cash I’d hidden in my suitcase.
“Sucker” was scrawled across the bathroom vanity mirror in my favorite lipstick. Ironically, the thing I didn’t want my grumpy Viking to see, the thing that was worth more than whatever else had been stolen, was still there in a crumpled heap in the corner.
Worst of all, the perpetrator was sitting on the bed, dirty sneakers tangled in a clump of sheets. She was watching a natural disaster movie. I wasn’t good at guessing ages, but I put her solidly in the Child/Pre-Teen category.
The girl’s blue eyes flitted away from the screen to land on him before returning to the TV. “Hey, Knox.”
It was a small town. Of course the town grump and the child felon knew each other.
“Okay, look,” I said, side-stepping Knox to stand in front of the thing in the corner that I really didn’t want to explain. “I don’t know if child labor laws are different in Virginia. But I asked for an extra pillow, not to be robbed by a pint-sized criminal.”
The girl spared me a glance.
“Where’s your mom?” Knox asked, ignoring me.
Another shrug. “Gone,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”
“That’d be your Aunt Naomi.”
She didn’t look impressed. I, on the other hand, probably looked like I’d just been shot out of a cannon toward a brick wall.
“Aunt?” I repeated, shaking my head in hopes that it would fix my hearing. Another wilted flower petal fell out of what was left of my updo and flitted to the floor.
“Thought you were dead,” the girl said, studying me with vague interest.
“Nice hair.”
“Aunt?” I said again.
Knox turned to me. “Waylay is Tina’s kid,” Knox explained slowly.
“Tina?” I parroted on a croak.
“Looks like your sister helped herself to your stuff,” he observed.
“Said most of it was shit,” the girl said.
I blinked rapidly. Not only had my sister stolen my car, she’d also broken into my hotel room, ransacked it, and left behind the niece I didn’t know existed.
“She okay?” Waylay asked, not taking her eyes off the tornado that returned to the screen.
“She” was probably me. And I was most definitely not okay.
I grabbed a pillow off the bed. “Will you two please excuse me?” I squeaked.
Without waiting for an answer, I hauled ass out the door into the hot Virginia sunshine. Birds were chirping. Two motorcycles drove by, their engines a deafening roar. Across the street, an older couple climbed out of a pickup truck and headed into the diner for breakfast.
How could things have the audacity to look so normal when my entire life had just imploded?
I held the pillow to my face and let loose the scream that had been building.
Thoughts flew through my brain like a turbo-charged spin cycle. Warner was right. People didn’t change. My sister was still a terrible human being, and I was still naïve enough to fall for her lies. My car was gone along with my purse and my laptop. Not to mention the money I’d brought for Tina. As of last night, I had no job. I wasn’t on my way to Paris, which had been the plan a mere twenty-four hours ago. My family and friends thought I’d lost my damn mind. My favorite lipstick had been ruined on a bathroom mirror.
And I had a niece whose entire childhood I’d missed out on.
I sucked in another breath and let out one final scream for good measure before lowering the pillow.
“Okay. You can figure this out. You can fix this.”
“About done with your pep talk?”
I whirled around and found Knox leaning against the door frame, tattooed arms crossed over his broad chest.
“Yep,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “How old is she?”
“Eleven.”
Nodding, I shoved the pillow at him and marched back into the room.
“So, Waylay,” I began.
There was a family resemblance in the upturned nose, the dimple in the chin. She had the same colt-like legs her mother and I had at that age.
“So, Aunt Naomi.”
“Did your mom say when she’d be back?”
“Nope.”
“Where do you and your mom live, honey?” I asked.
Maybe Tina was there now, going through her haul, figuring out what was worth keeping and what she wanted to ruin just for the fun of it.
“Over in Hillside Acres,” she answered, looking around me to get a better view of the tornado tossing up cows on the screen.
“Need a minute,” Knox announced and nodded toward the door.
I had all the damn time in the world apparently. All the time and not a single clue what to do. No next step. No to-do list quantifying and organizing my world into nice, neat line items. Just a crisis on top of a hot mess on top of a dumpster fire.
“Sure,” I said, sounding only mildly hysterical.
He waited until I passed him before stepping out after me. When I stopped, he kept walking toward the faded soda machine outside the front office.
“You seriously want me to buy you a soda right now?” I asked, flummoxed.
“No. I’m trying to get out of earshot of the kid who doesn’t realize she’s been abandoned,” he snapped.
I followed him. “Maybe Tina’s coming back,” I said.
He stopped and turned to face me. “Way says Tina didn’t tell her anything. Just that she had something to take care of and she’d be gone a long time.”
A long time? What the hell was a long time in Tina time? A weekend? A week? A month?
“Oh my God. My parents.” This was going to devastate them. As if what I’d done yesterday wasn’t upsetting enough. I’d managed to assure them last night on a highway in Pennsylvania that I was fine and definitely not going through some kind of mid-life crisis. And I’d made them promise not to change their plans for me. They’d left for their three-week Mediterranean cruise this morning. The first big, international vacation they’d ever taken together.
I didn’t want my problems or Tina’s disaster ruining it.
“What do you intend to do with that kid in there?” Knox nodded toward the open door.
“What do you mean?”
“Naomi, when the cops find out Tina’s gone and left Waylay behind, it’s straight into foster care.”
I shook my head. “I’m her closest living relative who isn’t a criminal. I’m responsible for her.” Just like all of Tina’s other messes until we’d turned eighteen.
He gave me a long, hard look. “Just like that?”
“She’s family.” Besides. It wasn’t like I had a whole lot going on at the moment. I was basically adrift. For the first time in my entire life, I didn’t have a plan.
And that scared the crap out of me.
“Family,” he snorted as if my reasoning wasn’t sound.
“Listen. Thank you, Knox, for all of the shouting and the rides and the
coffee. But as you can see, I’ve got a situation to handle. So it’s probably best for you to go on back to whatever cave you crawled out of this morning.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
We were back to glaring at each other, the silence charged. This time he broke first.
“Quit stallin’, Daisy. What are you gonna do?”
“Daisy?”
He reached up and plucked a flower petal out of my hair with two fingers.
I batted his hand away and took a step back so I could think. “Okay. First I need to…” Definitely not call my parents. And I didn’t really want to get the police involved—again—if I didn’t have to. What if Tina showed up in an hour? Maybe the first thing I needed to do was get more coffee.
“Call the damn cops and report the break-in and the child abandonment,”
Knox said.
“She’s my sister. Besides, what if she shows up in an hour?”
“She stole your car and abandoned her kid. That doesn’t earn a fucking pass.”
The tattooed, grouchy bear of a man was right. I really didn’t like that about him.
“Argh! Fine. Okay. Let me think. Can I borrow your phone?”
He stood there staring at me, unmoving.
“For Pete’s sake. I’m not going to steal it. I just need to make a quick call.”
On a long-suffering sigh, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
“Thank you,” I said pointedly, then stomped back into my motel room.
Waylay was still watching her movie, now with her hands stacked behind her head.
I dug through my suitcase to find a notebook and went back outside.
“You keep a notebook of phone numbers with you?”
Knox was peering over my shoulder.
I shushed him and dialed.
“The hell do you want?”
My sister’s voice always managed to make me cringe inwardly.
“An explanation for starters,” I snapped. “Where are you?”
“Where are you?” she mimicked me in a high-pitched Muppet voice that I’d always hated.
“Are you smoking in my car?”
“Looks like it’s my car now.”
“You know what? Forget the car. We have bigger things to discuss. You have a daughter! A daughter you abandoned in a motel room.”
“Got shit to do. Can’t have a kid holding me back for the next while. Got something big in the works. Why ya think I named her Waylay? Figured she could hang out with her Aunt Goody Two-Shoes till I get back.”
I was so mad I could only sputter.
Knox snatched the phone from my ear. “You listen and you listen good, Tina. You’ve got exactly thirty minutes to get back here, or I’m callin’ the damn cops.”
I watched as his face got harder, his jaw tighter, showing off little hollows under his cheekbones. His eyes went so cold I shivered.
“As always, you’re a real fuckin’ idiot,” he said. “Just remember, next time you get picked up by the cops, you’ll have warrants. That means your stupid ass will be sittin’ behind bars, and I don’t see anyone rushin’ to bail you out.”
He paused for a moment and then said, “Yeah. Fuck you too.”
He swore again and lowered his phone.
“How exactly do you and my sister know each other?” I wondered out loud.
“Tina’s been a pain in everyone’s ass since she blew into town a year ago.
Always lookin’ for an easy buck. Tried a couple of slip and fall schemes on some of the local businesses, including your pal Justice. Every time she gets a little money in her pocket, she’s rip-roarin’ drunk and wreaking havoc all over town. Petty shit. Vandalism.”
Yeah, that sounded like my sister.
“What did she say?” I asked, not really wanting the answer.
“Said she doesn’t give a shit if we call the cops. She’s not comin’ back.”
“Did she say that?” I’d always wanted kids. But not like this. Not jumping in one step shy of puberty when the formative years were already gone.
“Said she’d be back when she felt like it,” he said, thumbing through his phone.
Some things never changed. My sister had always made her own rules.
As an infant, she’d slept all day and stayed up all night. As a toddler, she was
kicked out of three daycares for biting. And once we hit school age, well, it was a whole new ballgame of rebellion.
“What are you doing?” I asked Knox as he brought the phone back up to his ear.
“Last thing I want to,” he drawled.
“Buying tickets to the ballet?” I hypothesized.
He didn’t answer, just strode into the parking lot with rigid shoulders. I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, but there were a lot of fuck you s and kiss my ass es.
I added “phone etiquette” to the growing list of things Knox Morgan was bad at.
He returned looking even angrier. Ignoring me, he produced a wallet and fished out a few bills, then fed them into the soda machine.
“What do you want?” he muttered.
“Uh. Water, please.”
He punched the buttons harder than I thought necessary. And a bottle of water and two Yellow Lightnings fell out onto the ground.
“Here.” He shoved the water at me and headed back to the room.
“Uh. Thanks?” I called after him.
I debated for about thirty seconds whether or not I should just start walking until I found a new reality that was less terrible. But it was just a mental exercise. There was no way I could walk away. I had a new responsibility. And with that responsibility would come some sense of purpose. Probably.
I returned to my room and found Knox examining the lock on the door.
“No finesse,” he complained.
“Told her she should’ve picked it,” Waylay said, cracking open her soda.
“It’s barely eight in the morning, and you gave her a soda,” I hissed at Knox as I resumed my sentry stance in front of the mound in the corner.
He looked at me, then beyond me. Nervously I spread my arms and tried to block his view.
“That some kind of tablecloth?” he asked, peering past me.
“Wedding dress,” Waylay announced. “Mom said it was ugly as hell.”
“Yeah, well, Tina wouldn’t know good taste if it hit her over the head with a Birkin bag,” I said, feeling defensive.
“Does that dress mean I have an uncle out there somewhere?” she asked, nodding at the pile of lace and underskirt that had once made me feel like a
fairy princess but now only made me feel like a fool.
“No,” I said firmly.
Knox’s eyebrows raised fractionally. “You just decided to take a wedding dress on a road trip?”
“I really don’t see how this is any of your business,” I told him.
“Hair’s done up like she was going someplace fancy,” Waylay mused, eyeing me.
“Sure looks that way, Way,” Knox agreed, crossing his arms over his chest and looking amused.
I did not like the two of them ganging up against me.
“Let’s worry less about my hair and a dress than what we’re going to do next,” I suggested. “Waylay, did your mom say anything about where she was going?”
The girl’s eyes zeroed back on the screen. Her slim shoulders shrugged.
“Dunno. Just said I was your problem now.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Thankfully I didn’t have to answer because a brisk knock had all three of us looking at the open door.
The man standing in it made me suck in a little breath. Knockemout sure grew them hot. He was dressed in a spotless dark blue uniform with a very shiny badge. There was a nice layer of stubble accentuating a strong jaw. His shoulders and chest were broad, hips and waist tapered. His hair was close to blond. There was something familiar about his eyes.
“Knox,” he said.
“Nash.” His tone was as cold as his eyes.
“Hey, Way,” the newcomer said.
Waylay gave the man a head nod. “Chief.”
His eyes came to me.
“You called the police?” I squeaked at Knox. My sister was a terrible person, and I was definitely going to let her know that. But calling the police felt so final.
