Anything for Her(63)

“I’m dragging,” she said, smiling weakly. “Somehow, every time I get together with the two of you I end up going home with new muscle groups aching. I think I’d better take off, too.”

Sean smirked. “You can have a rematch.”

“Darn right I’m going to have a rematch.” She managed an evil grin. “You’re not bad...for a kid.”

Their byplay got her safely in the car. When Nolan braced a hand on the open door and asked in a low voice if she had time for him tomorrow, all she could do was nod. “Of course I do. You cooked tonight. I’ll make lunch.”

He circled the door, bent down and kissed her lightly. “Tomorrow,” he murmured while nuzzling her ear.

Panic beat hard at her while she drove away.

* * *

NOLAN SHOVED HIS hands in his jeans pockets and watched the taillights of Allie’s car flare as she braked at the end of the driveway before turning out onto the road. Something had been really off tonight. She’d been quieter than usual. He’d had to scrape food off both her dinner plate and her dessert plate. In fact, unless he was imagining things, she was losing weight. She’d gotten so slight, he imagined her floating away like a puff of dandelion.

He frowned. She wasn’t that bad off, or she wouldn’t have been able to play a rousing three games of horse with Sean. But his instinct told him something was eating at her.

“That was weird,” Sean said.

Nolan started. He hadn’t realized Sean still stood there in the pool of porch light. “What’s weird?” he asked, turning.

“What her mother said.” His foster son was still staring into the dark where Allie’s car had disappeared. “You know. About Montana.”

Nolan’s attention snapped into focus. “Why is that weird?”

Sean finally looked at him. “Well, because Allie said they lived in Oklahoma before they came here. She said that’s where she went to high school before Lynnwood.”

What the hell? “They moved a lot. You’re sure she said she was in high school there?”

“Positive.” Sean sounded indignant. “I said wasn’t it dusty, and she laughed at me and said there were cities like anywhere else, that it wasn’t like Oklahoma! I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she told me about the musical. I looked it up online. They did it in Seattle at the Fifth Avenue Theatre not that long ago.”

“Yeah, I remember the reviews.” Nolan shook his head in disbelief. “Why the hell...?”

“I don’t know.” The teenager was quiet for a moment. “She wouldn’t lie to me, would she?”

“I can’t imagine why she would.” But somebody was lying, that was for damned sure. And if he had to guess... Allie had been tense from the moment her mother got there. Her smiles looked forced.

But why, why would she lie about something like that? Why prop it up with the talk about the musical? Why tell Sean at all where she’d gone to high school?

He felt sick and tried to tell himself there was an explanation. His gut told him she wasn’t going to want to offer one, though, and that if she did, it would probably be a lie, too. Anyone else that evasive about their background, he’d think they were hiding something ugly. A crime.

God. He felt as if he’d taken a blow to his chest. What if she and her mother had had to move suddenly Allie’s senior year of high school not because of the parents’ divorce, but because Allie desperately needed a fresh start? What if the father had cut her off for a good reason?

What, Nolan asked himself, if I’ve had it ass backward all along?

Could his luck possibly be so bad, he’d fallen in love with a woman as deceptive as his own mother?





CHAPTER ELEVEN



NOLAN CALLED NOT long after Allie had gotten up in the morning and apologized because he had to cancel on her today. He had an emergency rush on a job, he told her; he’d be holding up the contractor until he produced the countertops.

Allie didn’t have any reason to doubt that he was telling her the truth, but he sounded more reserved than usual. Maybe somebody was with him, she tried to convince herself, but didn’t believe it. Could Mom have said things while they were alone together that contradicted what she had told him?

She hadn’t slept well last night. She grimaced at the thought. Okay, she had hardly slept at all last night. How could she go on like this?