Anything for Her(91)

“Did he run credit checks? Search for drivers’ licenses? Property records?”

Nolan frowned. “I don’t know. Drivers’ licenses, maybe. Apparently your background story then had your family moving to Oklahoma from Michigan. The P.I. did try to find some evidence you’d actually lived there. He came up empty.”

“Oh, dear God.” She turned her back on him.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. “But knowing I did is good news in a way, isn’t it? It means you and your mother don’t have to worry.”

“I can’t believe you did this.” She sounded so shell-shocked, he began to get really afraid.

“What can I do to make you forgive me?”

She swung around and met his gaze, hers flat and chilling. “I don’t know if I can. Or if I want to. Even if Mom and I don’t have to move, I can’t trust you, Nolan. I thought...I thought you’d never do anything...” Her voice broke. “I have to go home.”

“Wait. Please.” Goddamn it, he’d never begged for anything in his life.

“Do you have the name of the P.I. so I can pass it on?”

He told her the name. “Allie, there’s no reason your mother should have to move.”

“That man is an outsider. He knows too much. If the marshal has to ask him questions, that’ll make him curious, won’t it? What if he betrays us?”

“No. Damn it, Allie! He doesn’t know your original names. He wouldn’t know who to contact, and that’s assuming he’s the creep you’re implying he is.”

“I told Mom I could trust you.” Her stunned gaze raked him.

“You can.” Nolan took a step toward her and grabbed her hands. “I swear. I love you, Allie. I’ll do anything.”

“Sure you will. You proved that, didn’t you?”

Bone-deep scared, he dropped her hands. “I would never hurt you on purpose. I was trying to answer my own questions. That’s all.”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” She swung away and started for the door.

“Allie.” He had this terrible fear that if she left now, he’d never see her again. “Even if your mother gets relocated for some reason, you don’t have to go. I need you to stay.” He barely hesitated. “To marry me.”

She only shook her head and hurried out. Nolan caught the door and watched her dash through the rain, get in her car, start it and drive away without once turning her head toward him.

For the second time in his life, the bottom had dropped out of his world. This time, he’d done the damage himself, and he had no idea how he could atone.

* * *

TELLING HER MOTHER was one of the worst things Allie had ever had to do. She didn’t know if Mom made it better or worse by accepting the news with surprising calm. She didn’t once say, I told you so. Or, This is why I didn’t trust your judgment.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry” was what she did say, very softly. She put her arms around Allie and held her for a long time.

Allie couldn’t make herself relax into the embrace. She didn’t cry. She simply stood there, waiting until she judged an adequate length of time had passed before she gently separated herself. “You’ll pass this on?”

“Of course I will. It does sound as if he stirred up a hornet’s nest, though, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe not. It might all have been the P.I.”

Her mother looked at her with pity. “The problem is, now there’s someone who can link Judy and Laura Nelson with Cheryl and Allie Wright in Washington State.”

“Nolan may not have said anything about Cheryl and Allie Wright.” She felt the tiniest twinge of hope. “I told you. He’d already discovered that I was Laura Nelson. He asked the investigator to try to find out about the Nelsons. Mostly he wanted to know why you and I took off and felt we had to change our names.”

“Then why was he trying to discover where we’d lived before Fairfield?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe he was only being thorough.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. The fact is, a man in West Fork, Washington, hired a P.I. to investigate the Nelsons in Oklahoma. Someone looking for us would come straight to West Fork, wouldn’t they?”

Yes, Allie supposed if anyone in the Moretti family had ever traced the Marrs as far as Oklahoma and was still looking for them, that’s exactly what they’d do. They would be very curious indeed why a stonemason in Washington State wanted questions answered about the Nelsons.