Showdown!. Laurie Paige
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Tink, he wanted to know more about this woman of unexpected depth and mystery.
Depth and mystery? He shook his head at his musings. Except for the scar, he really didn’t know a solid fact about her, other than what she said.
After they’d ordered, he inhaled deeply, then began his argument to persuade her to return home with him. “I think I told you my uncle Nick had a heart attack recently?”
“Yes. That’s why you’re looking for his daughter.”
“Right. I think you could be her.” He held up a hand to forestall denials. “You have the scar. Both your parents are dead. You were raised by someone claiming to be a relative. What if she wasn’t your aunt? What if you were taken from your mother’s side and sold on the baby black market?”
“That’s…that’s ridiculous.”
But she no longer sounded so certain, he noted. “So maybe something went wrong, and you didn’t end up at the place you were supposed to go. Maybe the kidnapper needed to lie low and deposited you with a relative or girlfriend for safekeeping, but never came back. Where were you born?”
“California,” she said, then glared at him for slipping the question in when she wasn’t expecting it.
“You’re sure of that?”
She lifted those fake eyelashes enough to stare at him in confusion. Her eyes were blue, light blue with silvery flecks. His heart upped its beat. Tink had had blue eyes.
“My aunt,” she began in a low voice, then paused. “My aunt had to get a birth certificate for me when I went to school. It was certified by a sworn statement from her. She said I was born at home, with a midwife, instead of a doctor. Apparently the birth wasn’t registered at the time.”
A shot of excitement zinged along Zack’s nerves. The lack of a usual birth certificate clenched the matter as far as he was concerned. “You have to come to the ranch and talk to Uncle Nick. I’ll pay you. Five hundred dollars, free and clear, for two weeks of your time. You’ll have room and board, of course.”
He couldn’t tell anything from her silence.
“Look, it may not come to anything, but if there’s a chance you’re Tink, we have to take it. Uncle Nick might not survive another heart attack. If you are his daughter, wouldn’t you want to know?”
The lush mouth trembled for just a second before she crimped her lips firmly against each other. “Yes,” she said in an almost inaudible voice. “I’d want to know.”
He considered his anemic savings. “Today’s August the sixth. I’ll give you a thousand if you’ll stay the rest of the month.”
“I don’t want your money,” she told him seriously. “Tink is your cousin’s name?”
“Theresa. She insisted on Tinker Bell, so we started calling her Tink for short. It stuck.”
“You remember her?”
“Sure. I was around eight when she disappeared.”
Honey nodded and bent her head to study the table as if she might actually be considering his proposition. Zack waited for her to think it through. While he had his own doubts about bringing a strange woman home, this was for Uncle Nick. He couldn’t ignore the opportunity fate had thrown his way.
He saw her chest rise and fall. Bleakness darkened her eyes, then she said softly, “All right. I’ll go with you. To Idaho, right?”
“Yes.” He hooked an arm over the back of the chair and sighed in relief, unaware of the tension until that moment. “It isn’t the end of the world,” he assured her when she looked so oddly woebegone, or was it worried? Curiosity got the best of him. “Why have you decided to go?”
“I hate working in the casino.”
The emotion underlying the statement spoke of truth. He wondered what he would have done if she’d refused. He could hardly kidnap her.
He smiled. He didn’t have to worry about the next step now that she’d agreed with his plan. “What kind of notice do you need to give the casino?”
“Thirty minutes,” she said with a cynicism touched with some other emotion he couldn’t name. “People come and go at the drop of a hat here.”
“Great. Can you be ready to leave at six in the morning?” At her startled glance, he said, “Okay, seven. Can you be ready by then? Where shall I pick you up?”
“I’ll meet you in the lobby here. At six.” She dropped her hands into her lap so the waitress could place her order on the table. “I’ll need the address and phone number of the ranch. So I can tell my aunt,” she added as if he’d questioned the need to know.
“No problem.” He gave her the information. Picking up his hamburger, he bit into it hungrily. Lady Luck had finally smiled on him.
If this woman really was his long-lost cousin, Uncle Nick would be in high alt, as the old man liked to say.
But what if she wasn’t? What if she was playing some game with them, hoping to cash in somehow? Huh, she’d refused the money he’d offered, so what could she want? And he’d been doing all the pursuing, so it was unlikely she’d planned it all. And let’s face it, con artists weren’t likely to target Idaho ranchers or deputy sheriffs!
He weighed the evidence. She had the scar, her parents were gone, her birth certificate was questionable, so there was the possibility that she was legitimate. For Uncle Nick’s sake, he had to take that chance.
At five-thirty on Sunday morning, Honey left all her worldly possessions, which were crammed into two suitcases and one duffel, behind the supervisor’s desk in the office that adjoined the employee lounge. No one was in at the moment, since it wasn’t time for a shift change.
She didn’t want any of her co-workers to spot her, dressed as she was in baggy pants, a tank top and a long-sleeved shirt, her hair hidden under a baseball cap with a skimpy dark-haired fake ponytail attached. She thought she looked enough like a boy to pass a casual glance, but she wasn’t sure about a direct perusal from those who knew her.
Keeping her head low, she left the lounge and hurried to the elevators. At Zack’s room, she slipped a note under the door.
It opened at once. “What is it?” he asked.
Startled, she could only stare up at him for a second, then she ducked her head. “I was told to deliver a message to this room, sir,” she said in a deeper tone than her normal one. She gestured toward the letter.
“Wait,” he ordered.
She froze in place.
He picked the letter up, tore open the envelope and read it, a suspicious frown on his face. Finished, he handed her two casino tokens worth a dollar each.
“No reply,” he said, and closed the door.
She let her breath out slowly, then returned to the elevator. After leaving her employee badge and a note telling her supervisor she had to leave town due to a family emergency, she carried her luggage to the service door.
Zack appeared right on time. “Where is she?” he asked.
“I’m to take you to her,” Honey told him. She pulled her baseball cap a little lower when he tilted his head and tried to study her face.
“Uh, this is her luggage,” she added.
He nodded, hoisted the duffel and left her to deal with the two bags. She followed at his heels, taking longer steps in an insouciant and masculine—she hoped—manner.
They stored the bags in the back of a black SUV. She climbed in the passenger side, fastened her seat belt and slipped on sunglasses. She noted the protective bullet-proof glass and chain-link-type divider between the front and back seats. For a second she wondered if he would order her into the rear of the vehicle,