Lawman's Redemption (11 page)

“Of course it's not my fault! I was a
baby!
What could I have done to deserve that?”

“You didn't deserve it,” Hallie murmured. But Brady didn't deserve the blame, either. How could he have known all those years ago that, after making such a point of convincing him he
wasn't
her daughter's father, Sandra was going to raise the child to believe he was?

“They did what
they
wanted, and to hell with me. They didn't give a damn about me then, and they still don't. And I don't give a damn about them!”

Hallie sighed. She couldn't exactly argue the sentiments with Les, since she had no idea whether they were true. If they were discussing a normal family, she wouldn't hesitate to reassure the child that her parents loved her. But Sandra was far from a normal mother, and Brady wasn't at all convinced he was even a father.

So instead of addressing the sentiment, she focused on the way it had been presented. Leaning back in the rocker, she shook her head and made a tsk-ing sound. “We've got to do something about your language. I'd hate to wash your mouth out with soap every time you swear, but if that's what it takes…”

Les stared at her a moment, unbalanced by the shift in the conversation, then with belligerence that was mostly feigned—or so Hallie thought—she asked, “You and what army?”

“Oh, child, don't tempt me. Ask my sisters—I give only one warning, and then I act. And you got your warning the first time we met.” She watched Les work to maintain her scowl. “Let
me guess. You started swearing when you realized how much your mother disliked it. And you dyed your hair and got pierced and tattooed because you knew she would hate it. And you started going by Les because you knew she would hate that, too.” Putting on a bad accent, she said, “Vell, Miss Marshall, I think ve can safely say you have issues vith your mother.”

“Everyone who knows Sandra has issues with her.”

“But everyone isn't her daughter, whom she's supposed to love and treasure and protect with her life,” Hallie said gently.

Les stretched out on the swing and tilted her head up to study the ceiling. Hallie watched her and thought about how wonderful a cool ocean breeze would feel. When Neely had shared her honeymoon plans with her sisters, Hallie had thought they were perfect. She was a firm believer that there was no problem a bikini, a handsome man and a tropical beach couldn't make better. Too bad she, Brady and Les were stuck in landlocked Oklahoma.

After a time Les announced, “I won't answer to Alessandra. That's what
she
calls me.”

The ache in Hallie's stomach eased a bit. “There are plenty of nicknames for it. How about Ally?”

“Great. Then we'd be Hallie and Ally.”

They were only going to be a part of each other's lives for another week or two, so that wasn't a concern, but Hallie didn't point that out. “Okay. There's Andie. Or Sandy. Alessandra is the Italian variation of Alexandra, so you could be Alex, Alexa, Lexy or Zandra.”

“Sandy's too close to Sandra, Andie's petite, Zandra is exotic and I'm not.” Then her expression softened, and her manner became hesitant. “I-I kinda like Lexy. A Lexy could be five-ten and skinny and flat-chested.”

“Do you want to think about it, or ask your father's opinion?”

“What do
you
think?”

“I like it. Do you think you could get used to it?”

She blushed. “I, uh…only started going by Les this summer. It won't be a problem.”

After another short silence, Hallie asked, “You want to go inside where it's about thirty degrees cooler?”

“Can't take the heat…or having a hot flash? You know, at your age…”

“At my age?” Hallie gave her a mock outraged look. “I'm going to give you a five-second head start, and then I'm gonna chase you down and tickle you until you cry uncle.”

Les—nope, she was Lexy now—looked at her a moment, then without warning, jumped to her feet and dashed inside the house. Hallie was only three seconds behind her. Okay, so she cheated. She was more than twice the kid's age. She needed whatever advantage she could get.

They were on opposite sides of the dining table when the doorbell rang. Lexy grinned. “If you go answer the door, I'm outta here.”

Hallie grinned, too. “That's okay. I know where you live. Sometime in the middle of a dark scary night, if something comes scratching at your bedroom window, wailing and moaning—”

“I'll tell Brady, and he'll arrest you—if he doesn't shoot you first.”

The doorbell sounded again. Hallie glanced that way, and through the frosted glass, she could see the outline of a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a cowboy hat. “That's Brady now. Come on. Reintroduce yourself to him.” She extended one arm and wiggled her fingers. “Come on. All threats are off for the moment. No tickling.”

Lexy hesitated, suspicion in her eyes, then came around the table. Hallie slid her arm around the girl's shoulders and walked into the living room and halfway to the door with her before she disregarded her own assurance and started tickling her.

With shrieks of laughter echoing around them, Lexy collapsed on the couch and Hallie got her best tickling in, until the girl gave in. “Okay, okay,” she said, her voice unsteady. “You win. It couldn't have been a hot flash 'cause you're way too young for that, and I swear, I won't ever suggest you might be old again.”

Hallie sat back on the coffee table. “Like I believe that.”

“This from the woman who gave me a five-second head start that only lasted, like, one second? Who said all threats were off, then carried 'em out anyway?”

Brady cleared his throat, drawing both their gazes to the door, where he leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb and watched.

“Come in,” Hallie said, skimming her hand over her hair to make sure her braid was still intact. “We were just having a discussion of things a child should never say to a woman who's fast on her feet and more devious than said child.”

“Some discussion. I've broken up quieter domestic disputes.”

Hallie shifted her dry gaze from him to Lexy. “Oh, look. The grumpy undersheriff has a sense of humor.” Rising from the coffee table, she gave the girl a hand up, then pulled her across the room to him. “Go ahead.”

Ducking her head, the girl shuffled her feet, then muttered, “You do it.”

“Okay.” She slid her arm around the kid's thin shoulders.

“Being that it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind, as well as anything else under her control, this young woman has decided to change the name to which she'll answer. Alessandra is verboten, and Les is to be forgotten. From this day forward, she shall be known as Lexy—and if you forget, you'll have to deal with me.

“And dealing with me,” she finished with a wink for Lexy and a slow, lazy grin for Brady, “can be hazardous to your health. Can't it, O ticklish one?”

A
fter his shower Saturday morning, Brady dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, then took his breakfast to the front porch to enjoy the only relatively cool moments of the day. This was his weekend off, though with Reese gone, he would be on call for anything his boss would normally handle. Usually on his Saturday off, he cleaned house, caught up on the laundry, bought groceries and did anything else that needed doing. Today, with Les—Lexy to consider, he didn't know what was on the agenda.

When he'd gone to pick her up yesterday and heard the hysterical laughter inside the house, he'd been surprised. He hadn't known she was capable of laughing like a kid. She was always so wary and on her guard around him. But there she'd been, on her back on the sofa, wiggling and giggling breathlessly, as if she did it all the time.

Hallie hadn't looked the least bit embarrassed when he'd made his presence known—a fact he liked a lot. Les—Lexy hadn't looked embarrassed, either, but wary, distrustful—a fact which he regretted a lot.

Hallie had turned down his usual dinner invitation, so it had been just him and the kid for the entire evening. They'd ex
changed maybe twenty words, then wound up watching TV until he'd finally gone to bed. Not a great evening for either of them.

He didn't hear the door open behind him, but the screen door creaked, alerting him to Les's—damn it, he would get this right—to Lexy's presence.

She still wore her boxers and T-shirt, and made her way gingerly across the porch to sit at the opposite end of the step from him. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rested her chin on her knees and stared out at the street.

“I didn't mean to wake you,” he said after a while.

“You didn't. I usually get up early.”

“You want some cereal?”

She shook her head. “Can we do something today?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know.”

“I'm on call, so I have to stay close to home.”

“Then never mind.”

“That just means I need to stay in the county where I can respond to any calls. Do you have any idea what you want to do?”

“Is there a pool around here?”

“No, but there's a lake.”

“We could go swimming.”

“I don't swim, but I can take you. We can take a picnic.”

“How can you not know how to swim? You had your own pool growing up.”

Her innocent words cranked his nerves so tight he felt sick with it. “Let's just say I don't have a natural affinity for the water.”

She fell silent again for a while before asking, “Could I hang a poster on the wall in my room?”

“Sure. There are some thumbtacks in the junk drawer in the kitchen.”

After a solemn nod, she apparently found the chipped polish on her fingernails of great interest. She peeled and picked at it until she couldn't do any more damage before swiveling her head around to look him in the eye. “Is it true what Sandra said about your parents?”

The sick feeling came back, only about ten times as strong. and made his hands tremble so much that he had to set his cereal bowl down to stop the spoon from clattering against the dish. “What did she say?”

“That they— That you—” Her gaze flickered tellingly, then her cheeks turned pink and she shrugged and jumped to her feet.

“Never mind. Forget I asked. I'm gonna take a shower and get dressed.”

He watched her cross to the door in two strides, then forced himself to speak. “It's okay, Les-xy. It's just that…I-I'd rather not talk about some things. They're…hard.”

She gazed at him a long time, looking about thirty-four instead of fourteen, then nodded. “I know. I'm gonna get dressed.”

After she disappeared inside, he leaned back against the post that helped support the roof and sipped his coffee. A fourteen-year-old girl shouldn't be capable of that old, weary look, and she shouldn't have a clue that it hurt to give voice to some things in life. Damn Sandra and her selfishness…and damn him. He shouldn't have let her run him off so easily. He should have stuck around and demanded proof, one way or the other, of Lexy's paternity. He should have made life impossible for Sandra until she settled the issue to his satisfaction, to the court's and to Lexy's.

But if the proof had pointed to another father, he still would have left Texas, and most likely she still would have had no parent but Sandra. The damage still would have been done.

When he finished his coffee, he went inside and filled the sink with soapy water, put the dishes in, then gazed out the window. Across the pasture was a stand of trees, most of them blackjacks not good for much besides dozing down and, in this case, hiding the Tucker place from neighbors' prying eyes. He wondered what Hallie was doing, if she was an early riser, too, or if she preferred to laze around. He wondered if he sneaked out of the house after Lexy had gone to sleep some night and tapped on her bedroom window, if she would let him spend just a few hours in her bed.

Backing off from the thought, he washed the dishes, then
started a load of laundry, vacuumed and swept. By the time he finished, Lexy had finally come out of the bathroom and shut herself in her room. After about thirty minutes in there, she emerged. He glanced up from polishing the coffee table, then did a double take.

Her hair was still purple, but there were no spikes this morning. Instead, it curled all over her head, giving the appearance of being only about half as long as he'd thought. Her makeup had been toned down, and the outfit she wore was as close to normal as he'd seen so far—denim shorts, a tank top and sandals. Yes, the shorts were short and rode well below her waist, and the tank top was tight, didn't quite reach her waist, either, and lime-green, but they were a vast improvement over her usual style.

“Do you happen to have any shirts that actually fit, or should I add that to the shopping list?”

“Hey, Hallie wears her T-shirts tight, too, but I haven't heard you complaining about hers.”

True, and she wouldn't. He hadn't yet seen Hallie in anything he didn't like…though he liked her best in nothing at all. Laughter and a smile—they flattered her most. “You haven't heard me complaining about yours, either. I just asked a question.”

She rolled her eyes, returned to the bedroom, then came back a moment later with a white shirt. She put it on, tied the tails just below her waist, then rolled the sleeves to her elbows. “Better?”

“Yes.”

“Parents are such prudes.” She dropped down on the couch and turned on the TV, then immediately muted the sound. “Can Hallie go with us today?”

“If you want. Have you decided where you want to go?”

“I saw a sign in town the other day that said they were having something downtown with music and food and stuff. You know, like, some sort of street festival.”

“The Sidewalk Sale.” He'd forgotten about it, mostly because he'd had more important things on his mind this past week. It was Buffalo Plains's annual the-end-of-summer-is-near celebration and back-to-school sale. The first year he'd lived
there, he'd walked down the street from end to end one time and felt so out of place among all the families and friends. He'd never been back, except for the one time he'd gotten called in to help Reese break up a fight in the closing hours. “Why don't you call Hallie and see if she wants to go? If she does, we can pick her up on our way.”

“Okay.”

Hallie was home, and after a few minutes of Lexy's wheedling, she agreed to join them. Lexy grabbed her backpack, then Brady locked up and followed her to his sheriff's department SUV. Leaving the front seat for Hallie, she climbed in the back seat, settled in, then announced, “Now this is more what I'm used to.”

He looked at her over his shoulder, and she looked back, as innocent as a pierced, tattooed rebel child could appear. “Jeez, just kidding.”

He figured he could trust her on that. Most likely an arrest would have been a quick ticket to the boarding school of Sandra's choice, and who could blame her? No one wanted a juvenile delinquent on their hands.

It took about two minutes to drive to Hallie's house—minutes that seemed endless. He was in damn sorry shape when the prospect of spending a miserably hot day outside in the sun with half the county around sounded like a great idea just because a certain woman was going to be there, too. That fact sent up warning flags all over the place, but it didn't stop his muscles from tightening when she came out of her house, and it didn't stop the need from taking hold in his gut or the hot, achy feeling from growing.

“Hi,” she greeted when she climbed into the truck, then settled her camera bag on her lap. “Hey, Lexy, I didn't know your hair was curly. It's so
cute.
”

In the rearview mirror, Brady watched Lexy comb her fingers through her hair, a frown on her face. “Sandra hates it. She says it lacks class. She says
she
would shave her head and be bald before she'd ever have curly hair.”

How did you tell a teenage girl that her mother was full of crap and not to listen to anything she said? Brady wondered
with a scowl. Before he found an answer, though, Hallie responded.

“Oh, she's probably just jealous. You're young and pretty, and you take attention away from her, and women like her don't like that.”

“I bet no one takes attention away from you,” Lexy said.

Hallie's laughter was light and easy. “Oh, sweetie, I've been invisible at every party I've gone to or given for four years. It's not easy when the guest lists include Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron and Lilah Grant.”

“Lilah Grant looks like the queen of the planet Silicone,” Lexy said, her voice heavy with disdain.

“Bless you, child,” Hallie replied. “Can I adopt you?”

“I wish,” Lexy murmured softly.

Though cars lined every street for blocks around the downtown area, Brady had no problem finding a convenient space—his reserved space behind the courthouse. It was one of the few perks of working for the county.

They cut through the courthouse, where he made a quick visit to the sheriff's department to let the dispatcher know he was in town, then stopped on the steps out front to survey the goings-on. All the merchants had tables on the sidewalks in front of their stores, there was an art show on the courthouse lawn, crafts booths were set up in the street and food vendors were located about every fifty feet, and of course, there were people everywhere. In the intersection in front of the bank, a bandstand had been erected, and a kiddie beauty pageant was taking place there now. Later in the day there would be other pageants, as well as live music.

“This is almost as good as the state fair,” Hallie said with a beaming smile. “Remember when you were a kid, eating cotton candy and caramel apples and riding the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-a-Whirl?”

Brady shook his head.

“Your parents never took you to the fair?”

The muscle in his jaw twitched. “No.”

Hallie was scandalized. Her mother had loved going to the fair even more than the kids had, if that was possible. They'd
gotten there when the gates opened on the first Saturday morning and stayed until the gates closed again, and they'd sampled everything from food to crafts to livestock shows to rides. It had been a blast. “Sheesh, that's un-American. It's unnatural.”

The corners of his mouth quirked into a thin smile, though that was a generous description. Grimace might be more accurate. “Unnatural. That's my parents,” he said in a low rumble before deliberately, transparently, directing the conversation elsewhere. “Lexy, what do you want to do first?”

“Find the funnel cakes. I'm hungry.” She set off, and Hallie and Brady followed her into the crowds.

“You're doing better with her,” Hallie said.

“She's doing better, thanks to you.”

“I haven't done anything special. I just like her.”

“I imagine for her, that's pretty special. Her mother, you may have noticed, isn't particularly interested in her.”

She smiled at a familiar face, then pulled her camera bag around in front so she could unzip it and remove one of the two cameras inside. When she rezipped it, Brady extended his hand and she passed the bag to him. “I've been wondering about that. How did you happen to marry a woman as utterly self-centered, vain and mercenary as Sandra appears to be?”

He was silent so long that she was about to write the question off when he shrugged. “She knew what she wanted and I was the way to get it. I was…alone. I made it easy for her.”

Alone,
she knew from her own experiences, often translated to
lonely.
Sandra had been poor, according to Lexy, and she'd wanted money, so she'd set her sights on the lonely rich kid, who'd probably had a miserable relationship with his parents, considering that even now, he couldn't seem to bear any conversation about them without overwhelming tension.

“How old were you?”

“Eighteen.”

That muscle in his jaw was twitching again, so she decided to lighten the conversation. “Oh, you must have been easy pick-ins,” she teased. “An eighteen-year-old boy with raging hormones, a beautiful and willing girl…. You didn't stand a chance, did you?”

“I was an idiot and a fool.”

“Honey, that's part of being an eighteen-year-old boy. Haven't you learned that yet?”

They joined Lexy at the funnel-cake stand, where Brady paid for the fried batter cake laden with powdered sugar and calories. They walked and ate, window-shopped, traded hellos with people Hallie had met and some she hadn't, and she snapped off a roll of photographs. They stood in the shade and watched part of the talent show, ate fried alligator and sno-cones and talked about things of no consequence.

Hallie couldn't imagine a better way to spend a hot August Saturday.