Impact (Suncoast Society #32)(50)

“I’ll take her,” Leigh said. “You keep watching.”

About ten minutes later, the cop pulled out and Loren headed upstairs. Tilly was waiting for her in the reception area when she walked in, a pleased smile on her face.

“What the hell, Lor?”

Loren grinned. “I remembered you telling me about an annoying guy. When we pulled in, I spotted a guy standing there, like he was waiting, and I’d already turned on my phone’s camera. His mistake was thinking he could say something like, ‘I’m going to make you pay for that, bitch,’ and assuming he wasn’t being filmed. Oh, and I had a baby carrier in my hands when he said it.”

“Holy shit. He really said that?”

“Yep. And from the angle I filmed him, it looks like he stepped into the door deliberately when I opened it. The cop arrested him for trespassing and attempted battery and child endangerment.”

“Child endangerment?”

“I had a baby right there.” She smiled. “Good thing you guys already had the trespass warrant out for him. That helped.”

“Unless Martians land in the middle of the Hollywood Bowl or something by dinnertime, I’m officially declaring this the weirdest day of my freaking life. Not even in a good way.”

“I’ve got to e-mail the footage to the cop,” she said. “Let me get my laptop set up.”

“I’ll call Clark,” Leigh said from the doorway. She had Katie in her arms. “And Lucas.”

“Now that was fun,” Loren said. “Why didn’t you tell me this would be so much fun? I haven’t had that much fun in a while.”

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means, Lor,” Tilly said.

“Maybe we should just take a vacation week,” Leigh suggested. “I’m not even kidding. All we need now is a damn earthquake to make this day perfect.”





Chapter Seventeen


Cris fought the really tempting urge to belt back a shot of something strong enough to burn a hole in his intestinal tract before starting the search for his family. The easiest way was to look up the property tax records.

Sure enough, both his mother, and his aunt and uncle, still resided at the same addresses.

When he searched his parents’ old phone number online, it came back with his mother’s address.

Okay, then.

Landry had offered to be the bearer of bad tidings, but Cris declined the offer. And he absolutely did not want to tell his mother the news before he told his aunt and uncle. He knew she would call them immediately and tell them, and he wanted to do it himself, in person.

He owed Sofia that much. If he wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror about this matter, he needed to break the news himself.

Landry went in to work to deal with everything there. Cris had just pulled onto the freeway when Tilly called him. He hit the hands-free button to answer it.

“Hello, Redbird. Are you at work?”

“Um, yeah. Heh, funny thing happened.”

Cris did his best not to scream swear words when he listened to the story. Tilly might not understand he wasn’t swearing at her or even at Loren, but at the situation.

What a bad f*cking day to pile shit on top of shit.

“Okay. Call Lan and tell him what happened. Are you guys all right?”

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Tilly said. “But I think there’s now a bull’s-eye in the middle of my forehead.”

“Probably. Maybe you should take the baby and go to Florida. Today.”

“I can’t. She has a doctor’s appointment on Thursday.”

“Cancel it and get one in Florida with Leigh’s pediatrician there.”

“No. I’m not running. I’m too damn worn out to run. And I’m too far behind now with work.”

That makes two of us.

But he didn’t say that. “Can you work from home today?”

“I’m not going back home. I’m already here. We’ve got meetings this afternoon.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you.” He reined in his frustration. “I’m sorry. I’ll call you and check on you when I finish this.”

“Okay,” she softly said. “I’m sorry.”

She sounded hurt, which seared his soul. Tilly never sounded hurt. When one of them got snippy with her, which was rare, she got snarky right back.

“No, sweetheart, don’t be sorry. You were right, you needed to call me. I…I just can’t fix this for you, and I’m sorry for that.”

“Do you think this will have any impact when we move to adopt her?”

“No, baby. It’s just a jerk from the paparazzi doing what they do. It means nothing. So Loren took him out with a car door, huh?”

“Oh, my god. It was incredible. Looked totally accidental, too.”

He chuckled. “I want to see that footage when I get home. Let me get off here. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He ended the call and tried to yank his mind back on the task at hand. If he found no one home when he got there, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. He could leave them a note to call him, but who knew if they’d ever do that?

Nearly an hour later, he made a familiar turn into their neighborhood. While the houses still mostly looked well-kept, there were a few more bars on some of the houses’ windows, and taller, fuller trees than he remembered.