Читать книгу: «A Hasty Wedding», страница 2

Two

B lake climbed in his ranch vehicle, a brand-new silver-gray Nissan Pathfinder that had been donated to the ranch recently by Springer Petroleum. A surprising donation, authorized by Todd Lamb, who had replaced David Corbett as vice president of Springer after Corbett had been arrested for poisoning the water.

A premature arrest as it turned out, to the surprise of no one who knew Corbett. Blake, whose skills at judging people had been honed to razor fineness because of a childhood that required a number of interesting survival skills, including the ability to read people quickly and accurately, had suspected they had the wrong man.

But he had been wrong many times, too, most notably when Joe Colton had come to his rescue, after a judge had decided that was one motorcycle too many that Blake had helped himself to. An angry young teen at the time, Blake had nearly been bitter enough to not listen to the voice deep within him that had told him, loud and clear, this man you can trust.

Joe just had never given up on him. Ever.

Since then, Blake had learned to listen a little better to that voice that whispered within him. It helped, especially, in dealing with these kids. Kids who had learned to lie and cheat and steal when most kids were learning their alphabet. Blake could tell in a glance if a child was lying—and why. There were so many motivations, and few of them had anything to do with the kid being bad. Self-preservation and fear were the two that usually headed the list.

He could also tell if it was a tortured, unexpressed sadness that had motivated an act of vandalism, or a need for attention, or just plain old garden-variety belligerence.

So, when he’d first heard David Corbett had been arrested, he’d told his pal Rafe James his thoughts on the subject. Short and sweet. No way it was Corbett.

Rafe came from the mean streets, too. He read people as well as Blake did, maybe better. The happy ending to David’s tragic false accusation was that Rafe was a changed man—the quintessential lone wolf’s heart had been warmed by David’s fiery daughter, Libby.

The thing that struck Blake as odd about Todd Lamb having Springer donate the vehicle to the ranch was that it was the type of thing David Corbett might have instigated, but not Todd. David, on the few social occasions when they had met, had always impressed Blake as being open, generous, authentically kind. It had been such a relief when David’s name had been cleared and he’d been let out of jail. Always a man determined to find reason in all the events of his life, David said the whole incident had propelled him toward doing what he really wanted to do with his life. He’d retired. Still, if the culprit was not David it did mean that a very dangerous individual, one capable of harming children, one who had tossed the dice with human lives, was still on the loose out there.

Todd Lamb, on the other hand, whom Blake had also met at the odd ranch fund-raiser or at Colton social functions, seemed to be cold, ruthless and ambitious. Not the kind of man who would give away a vehicle without a string attached.

The vehicle had come with the official explanation that Springer knew what an incredible inconvenience the residents and staff had been put to because of the ranch being evacuated. The official letter said that though they claimed no responsibility even though the chemical found in the water, DMBE, was used by them, as a responsible corporate citizen they hoped to be of assistance by offering extra and reliable transportation while kids were still being ferried around the countryside as a result of the contaminated water.

Blake’s first conclusion had been that Holly must have gone to Todd, her father, and asked him to help out. She’d had to put a lot of miles on the old ranch vehicle, a minivan that had probably been the prototype for minivans, but when he’d asked her, Holly had looked as surprised as he by her father’s generosity.

It seemed incongruous that she could have sprung from the same tree as Todd Lamb. Though Blake detected a slight physical resemblance between the father and daughter, that seemed to be where all similarity ended. Holly had qualities of warmth and gentleness and integrity that shone right through those convent-approved suits she wore.

In just eight months, Blake was amazed how absolutely indispensable she had become to him. How her presence had changed the whole office.

Her predecessor, Mrs. Bartholomew, had been a battleship in pink polyester. Efficient, yes. Pleasant, no. The kids had been terrified of her. She called it respect. He might have been a little terrified of her himself, though he’d done his best never to let it show—another trick of an old street fighter.

Certainly the whole ranch staff seemed to have sighed a big sigh of relief when she had announced her retirement.

And then Holly had come. His office was in a lovely old white clapboard ranch house that had been converted. He had a simple apartment upstairs, which the downstairs served as office space for the Hopechest Ranch.

Holly had loved the house on sight.

“Oh,” she’d said dreamily, of the outer office, “this used to be the front parlor of this house.”

He’d seen a certain gleam in her eye when she investigated the old river rock fireplace that seemed so out of place among filing cabinets and her desk, and the government office reject chairs lined up against the walls for kids who were in the office having paperwork done or were waiting to see him.

Soon she had a fire crackling away in that hearth every single day. The kids loved it, and the older ones lined up for the opportunity to chop and haul wood for her.

Then her desk had been pushed back into a corner, and the ugly metal frame green and orange vinyl chairs had disappeared. From somewhere she’d found an old blue sofa that she’d put a bright plaid throw over, and several wingback chairs which she had grouped around the fireplace.

An old trunk served as a coffee table, and it always had a heap of comic books, coloring books and crayons on it. She had hung lace valances on the tall old windows, and their wide casings held an assortment of plants that the children clamored to water.

A huge round fishbowl with four residents of various colors and fin shapes had a place on top of her filing cabinet. Standing on a chair to sprinkle feed for the fish seemed to be a special honor reserved for newcomers who arrived confused, frightened and tearstained.

Often the quiet murmur of voices drew him out of his office and he would find her, work stopped, having a quick snuggle on the couch with a needy child.

With something approaching reverence she took the artwork the children had made, and while they watched, she would pop it into a cheap frame and hang it on a bare spot on the wall. One whole wall, floor to ceiling, was nearly completely covered with these bright testaments to the resiliency of the human spirit.

The only pictures that had hung on the walls before were the worker’s compensation posters that Mrs. Bartholomew had put up religiously. As if she was in any danger of falling off a ladder, or being backed over by a truck. Pretty hard to miss something that big in that shade of pink. But if someone had hit her with a truck, he had the uncharitable thought it was the truck that would have needed repairing, not Mrs. B., as she had reluctantly permitted herself to be called.

“What are you going to do when you run out of walls?” he’d teased Holly one day.

“Run out of walls?” she’d said, astounded. “We have a whole ranch.”

Somehow having every wall on the whole ranch hung with the kids’ colorful drawings appealed to him very much.

“Where are you getting the frames from? You’re not buying them yourself, are you?”

She’d shrugged.

He’d quietly arranged for the downtown hardware store to donate a hundred frames. When that box arrived, she’d oohed and aahed like it was Christmas morning and he had given her diamonds.

The truth is he probably would have kept Holly even if not a lick of the office work got done. She attracted the kids, and she was good with them. She had, seemingly effortlessly, turned the dull space of her office into an area of good cheer and happiness, a place that it felt good to spend time in.

He even found himself wandering out there to get a handful of those little butterscotch candies she kept, and to sit on the couch in front of the fire and visit with whatever kid was on her sofa for the afternoon.

But, amazingly, she still got the office work done with incredible accuracy and efficiency. Her mind was exceedingly quick, not rigid and slow moving as her predecessor’s had been.

It was Holly who had first mentioned the water as a possible source when a terrifying number of kids had first started getting sick at Hopechest. And then everybody was sick. Her mind had sorted through information to the common denominator with breathtaking quickness. He credited her with the fact that the situation had never been allowed the opportunity to deteriorate into a terrible tragedy.

And though Holly Lamb was nothing to look at, she was a huge step up from Mrs. Bartholomew. She always looked presentable and professional and to Blake’s abject relief she had yet to wear pink. And every now and then he would notice her eyes behind those huge glasses, and try and figure out what color they were.

Some days he would be convinced they were blue. And the next day he would decide they were brown.

His office had changed in the most subtle and pleasant ways since her arrival, and he was already keeping his fingers crossed that she would never, ever quit.

Hard, though, to think of her as Todd Lamb’s daughter. He wondered what her mother was like.

And then he remembered the expression on Holly’s face when he had first come through the office door today.

It had troubled him then and it troubled him again now. When he had asked her what was wrong, she’d laughed it off and tried to turn it into a joke, but the expression on her face had been downright strange.

He shot a look at the boy sitting sullenly beside him in the passenger seat. He knew that look anywhere. Guilt. His instinct told him the boy could tell him all about that look on Holly’s face if he was approached in the right way.

“So,” Blake said, looking straight ahead at the road, “where are you coming from?” Out of the corner of his eye he caught the slight hunching of thin shoulders.

The boy hesitated, and then muttered the name of a juvenile detention facility.

“Oh, yeah,” Blake said. “I saw the inside of that one once or twice myself when I was your age.”

Startled surprise, quickly masked. “Sure.”

“No kidding.”

“What for?”

“I took motorcycles that didn’t belong to me.”

“Cool.”

Blake decided to let that pass, and he knew better than to pry about what the kid had done. He could find out later if it interested him.

“When did you get out?”

“A couple of weeks ago. I tried to find my sister. I promised.”

“Yeah. She told us.”

“I was supposed to go to a foster home when I got out, but I’ll be sixteen in a few weeks, so I figured I’d take a miss.”

Under the nonchalant expression, Blake heard the question. Am I in trouble?

“I’ll find out for you,” he said, just as if the question had been asked out loud.

The boy gave him a surprised look.

“How come my secretary looked so strange when I walked in?” There. He’d given him something, now he wanted something back.

The boy took a sudden interest in his sneakers, then his fingernails, then the scenery outside the windows.

“I dunno.” His eyes were skittering around like crazy.

A lie. Blake gave him the look that said he knew it was a lie, and the boy tried to do a turtle and pull his head inside his own jacket.

A long silence ensued, which Blake did nothing to break.

“I was really mad. And scared. And tired. It was a dumb thing to do.” The voice was coming from somewhere inside the jean jacket.

“What was a dumb thing to do?”

“Pulling the blade on her.”

Blake, who prided himself on being unshockable, on keeping his cool in any circumstance, swerved the vehicle onto the shoulder and braked to a halt so fast that the boy’s head popped out of his jacket.

“You did what?” It registered, somewhere in him, that this was not him, the unflappable Blake Fallon. But the thought of someone scaring his sweet secretary filled him with a quiet and protective rage that did not bode well for the boy sitting next to him.

Tomas shrank back against the door. His hand moved stealthily for the handle. “Don’t hit me,” he whispered.

And Blake snapped back to reality. He took a deep breath and tried not to think of Holly on the end of a knife.

“I don’t hit kids,” he said quietly. “Nobody here hits kids.” Given the paleness of the boy’s face, he decided to skip the lecture on the possible consequences of pulling a knife on someone. If it had been his old secretary, that boy would be in cuffs already, on his way back to where he’d just come from.

But instead of that making him appreciate her more, Blake suddenly felt furious with Holly for putting him in this situation. He’d asked her what was going on, and she’d lied to him. Maybe, he admitted, he felt furious with her because for a moment pure emotion ruled him.

“I didn’t see a knife when I arrived at the office,” he said, putting the vehicle back in gear and pulling back onto the highway.

“She kicked it under the desk when you came in.”

Great. He felt his ire rising again. Not only had she lied to him, she’d deliberately misled him.

“Do you have any more weapons on you?”

“No.”

“Do I have to check?”

“No.”

He glanced at Tomas, and saw truth there. He arrived at Hacienda de Alegria, Joe and Meredith Colton’s lavish ranch, and shook his head. There were kids everywhere, spilling across the lawns and out of the big sprawling house that dominated the scene.

Meredith Colton, who really should have been enjoying her retirement, was running frantically with a homemade kite, kids on all sides of her, running and laughing, their faces lifted to the sun.

Joe had a little fat pony saddled and a small girl had a death grip on the saddle horn and a huge smile on her face as Joe led her around the yard. Another dozen or so kids were hopping along on either side of them, excited to have a turn.

Blake shook his head. He’d been worried about imposing on his foster parents when they had offered to take the kids from Hopechest. But when the logistics of keeping the ranch open by bringing in water and supplying bottled water for drinking had proved impossible, he had accepted their gracious offer.

He realized now he had never seen two people look less imposed upon. The pair of them looked like they were in all their glory.

“What is this place?” Tomas asked, his eyes wide, his nose pressed to the window.

“It’s a temporary home for the kids who were displaced from the ranch.”

“No kidding?” he breathed. “I kind of imagined heaven looking like this.”

“That’s kind of how I felt when I first saw it, too,” Blake confessed. Tomas was way ahead of where Blake had been, though, if he could admit something like that. Blake, at that age, would have considered such an admission soft.

A half hour later Tomas had been reunited with his sister, and Joe, with his knack for trusting those who had never been trusted, had put Tomas in charge of pony rides.

“What’s his story?” Joe asked quietly, as he and Blake sat on comfortable cushions on the bent willow chairs in the deep shade of the porch.

“I don’t know yet,” Blake said, taking a sip of his iced tea. Just the way he liked it. Tea and lemon, no sugar. Trust Meredith to be watching the sugar intake of all these kids. “I just found out from him he pulled a knife on my secretary.”

“Really?” Joe said mildly. “Surprised he has any teeth left.”

“I don’t hit kids.”

“Well, none of them ever pulled a knife on Holly before. Meredith and I are very taken with that girl.”

Holly was making several trips a week between Hacienda de Alegria and the Hopechest Ranch with paperwork. But Blake suspected many of her trips were just because she missed the kids so much.

He did, too.

He noticed a twinkle in Joe Colton’s eye that seemed to encourage a confession that Blake, too, was quite taken with his new secretary.

Blake had a desperate need to deny it. “I would have been ticked if it happened to anybody, and not enough to be smashing heads, either.”

“Well, maybe you wouldn’t have been that ticked if it had happened to Mrs. Bartholomew,” Joe guessed.

Blake had to chuckle. “Okay, maybe not her. Joe, I don’t have any kind of interest in Holly Lamb, aside from the fact she’s the most wonderful secretary I’ve ever had.”

Joe looked skeptical.

“For God’s sake, it would be totally unprofessional.”

“I don’t recall saying a word about your relationship with Holly, professional or otherwise. But let an old man share some wisdom with you.”

“Do you have to?”

“Yes. She’s the kind of girl men pass up. She doesn’t catch the eye, like a piece of tinfoil in the gutter. She’s more like gold. Gold doesn’t shine much when you first find it. You have to look hard for it.”

“I’m not involved with my secretary. And I don’t plan to be. Joe, I have an example to set. My behavior has to be exemplary in every way.”

“Who are you trying to convince you’re perfect—the rest of the world or yourself? You’ve got to quit lining up those paper clips in neat rows and live a little.”

An annoying statement, uncomfortably close to the one Rory had made recently. Something insulting about him polishing his stapler.

Of course, Rory was all buoyance and light and unpolished staplers now that Cupid’s arrow had found him.

Joe could still make Blake feel like an awkward kid, still ask all the right questions.

He also knew precisely when to drop something.

“Look, Meredith and I have set our party for a week from Saturday. We think its about time to have some fun.”

Blake looked at the three-ring circus happening around him and wondered glumly how much more fun it could get.

“This whole thing has been terrible on the morale of the whole town. We’re going to have a good old-fashioned barn dance. Get people laughing again, give these kids a chance to see there are wholesome ways to have fun. Can I count on you to come?”

“Oh, yeah, like you need me to have fun.” Blake had an independent nature that did not lend itself well to social functions, which he detested. His job required him to attend some, but he rarely attended any voluntarily.

“I don’t need you, but I sure like it when you’re around, Blake. You know Meredith and I consider you as much our son as Rand and Drake. Meredith wants you to come, too. Plus, of course, it would be setting a good example to your staff, showing them it’s time for a change in mood, time to move forward.”

“I’d feel better about doing that when whoever is behind the contamination of the water system is found.”

“Maybe he’ll never be found,” Joe said. “It’s important to move forward now, past the fear and tensions of the last couple of months. You can poison kids like these without ever touching their water.”

“He’ll be found,” Blake said. “I won’t rest until he’s found. Sinclair from the FBI, and Rafe feel the same way.”

Joe nodded. “Well, since we’ve got the three of you on it, the rest of us might as well start relaxing, hmm?”

Blake grinned. “Okay, I get your point.”

“Good. Are you going to come?”

“Okay. I’ll come,” he agreed reluctantly.

“Feel free to bring somebody with you.”

Blake squinted at Joe suspiciously, but there was not a flicker in the older man’s face to suggest he thought that someone should be Holly Lamb. As if.

“Can Tomas stay here for a day or two? Until I find out where he’s supposed to be, and if he needs to go back?”

“Oh, sure,” Joe said easily as if one more kid was a joy.

That was what Blake had felt here, for the very first time in his life. That his presence in this universe was a joy to someone, instead of a burden.

“Well, don’t forget he pulled the knife.”

“Blake, look at him. He hasn’t let go of his little sister’s hand since he arrived. He’s been helping snotty-nosed kids on and off that pony for the better part of half an hour. I like the cut of his jib.”

“Well, you always see it first, Joe.”

“Don’t I?” Joe said happily. “Go home and make sure that secretary of yours is okay. Though she looks to me like the kind of girl who would know just how to handle a scrawny, scared kid with a knife.”

Blake thought of coming into the office, Tomas weeping against Holly’s slender shoulder, and he sighed heavily.

“I suppose you like the cut of her jib, too.”

“You said it first, not me.”