Moment Of Truth. Maggie Price
eased out a breath. Ten years ago she’d been eighteen, broken-hearted and pregnant, and would have given anything to have him near. Anything to have just known where he was.
And what would she have done if she had known? she asked caustically. Gone after him and begged him to want her? Begged him to love her the way she did him? Begged him to want and love the child she was carrying?
Hart had walked out on her. All her going after him would have done was enhance the despair and mortification she had felt when she realized his claiming to want and love her was a lie.
She shoved at a wisp of hair the breeze batted against her cheek. Ten years ago she had made a vow not to let her unborn child down. To give her the best life possible. To protect her.
Joan had no idea what kind of man Hart O’Brien had become. She could not second-guess what he might do if he discovered Helena was his daughter. Ignore his child? Befriend her? Walk away as easily as he had done ten years ago, leaving Helena with a shattered heart?
No, Joan thought as the need to protect welled inside her. Hart O’Brien had made his bed a long time ago. He had stepped on her own heart, but he wasn’t getting a shot at Helena’s.
For the first time Joan gave thanks for her parents’ unending need to maintain appearances. That need had motivated them to send her to stay with her aunt in Dallas when they found out she was pregnant. When she brought Helena home to Mission Creek, Joan had learned her parents had told everybody she’d had a whirlwind romance with a Dallas attorney who had died weeks after they’d eloped. Everyone in Mission Creek had accepted the story. Joan had done nothing to change that. Why should she? Why not protect her child from the stigma of being illegitimate?
Everyone believed Helena’s father had died before she was born. There was no reason Hart shouldn’t believe that, too.
No reason to tell him Helena was his.
Chapter 3
Hart said goodbye to Yance Ingram outside the bomb crime scene, then rode an elevator, complete with a small, tinkling chandelier, to the third floor. There he unlocked the door to the executive suite Bonnie Brannigan had reserved for him. The sumptuous rooms were full of mahogany furnishings, Oriental rugs and silk drapes the color of burnt sugar. The suite sported two televisions, a stereo system and a full bar setup.
For Hart the opulent surroundings represented the height of irony. His previous living quarters in Mission Creek had been a cramped, going-to-rust trailer, which he and his mother shared on the outskirts of town. Then Vonda O’Brien had been a truck-stop waitress, existing in a hazy world of bourbon and country music. For years she had blocked Hart’s efforts to get her off the bottle, claiming she was happy the way things were. Content to drift from town to town just as she’d done years before when she’d been a vocalist for a country-western band. Growing up, Hart hadn’t had a choice but to accept his mother’s itinerant lifestyle.
Things had changed the day their car broke down in Mission Creek.
Tired of being on the move, sick of having nothing, he told Vonda they were settling down, and began a campaign of bullying her to go into rehab. He’d hired on at the Lone Star, determined to have some sort of normal life.
The day he first laid eyes on Joan Cooper dashing across a tennis court, he had forced himself to ignore the lust that punched through him. Forced himself to dismiss her sassy smile and the way she tossed back her dark hair. Told himself that a rich-girl, poor-boy romance had disaster written all over it. He had managed to keep most of his thoughts and his hands off Joan until that night she came to him. The curves that had driven him nuts for months had been covered only by skimpy shorts and a white halter top. Mad with desire, he had taken what she offered. And fallen in love in the process. He’d been fool enough to think that somehow, some way, he could keep her in his life.
Hours later he and Vonda had fled Mission Creek. If Zane Cooper’s phony accusation that Hart had stolen money had been the man’s sole threat, Hart would have dug in and defended himself. But Cooper had an ace in the hole—a hot check Vonda had written and a buddy on the sheriff’s department willing to haul her in. With his mother in trouble, Hart had to get her away from there. Later, after he got Vonda settled near her stepbrother in Chicago and attending AA meetings, he had tried to contact Joan. That’s when he found out she’d gotten married.
“Christ,” Hart muttered. Even after so long he felt a remnant of the anger and hurt pride that had burned away the last of his innocence. Knowing those events still had the power to reach out and grab him by the throat had his temper rumbling all over again. He had spent ten years making something of himself. He didn’t need reminders of a past that was best forgotten.
And he had to figure that was how Joan felt, too. After all, she’d heard her father’s claim that the man she’d given herself to was a no-good thief. The shame she’d probably felt back then would have been enough for one lifetime.
Shame, Hart thought, his eyes narrowing. Could he have been wrong about her reaction to him this afternoon? Was what he’d read as panic actually been shame? His cop’s instincts, honed over time, had always proved infallible. Still, emotion usually didn’t taint those instincts.
Biting back frustration, he unpacked, then stowed his field evidence kit in a walk-in closet the same size as the sparkling-tiled bathroom that boasted a round sunken tub. That done, he returned to his rental car and drove though the clear moonlit night to the address Spence Harrison had given him.
Ten minutes later Hart pulled up to the curb in front of a Victorian house with a wraparound porch.
“Nice digs,” he said as Spence headed into the kitchen for beer. Hart made himself comfortable on the leather couch that faced a dark fireplace with a burnished wood mantel and marble edging. On each side of the couch sat a matching leather wing chair. A thick-legged coffee table piled with neat stacks of file folders sat in front of the couch. The warmly lit room’s overall impression was of old polished oak and leather, a place of comfort to settle in and relax.
“Glad you like the place,” Spence commented when he strode back into view. Holding two long-necked beer bottles between the fingers of one hand, he loosened the knot on his crimson tie with the other. “The woman who owns this house is a widow. When I heard she wanted to rent out the entire top floor, I grabbed it.”
“Smart move,” Hart said, accepting the bottle Spence handed him.
“It’s a plus that this place is only a couple of blocks from the courthouse.” Spence set his bottle on the coffee table, stripped off his navy suit coat and draped it over the far arm of the sofa. Out of the corner of his eye, Hart caught a glint of reflected light. He noted the small gold pin in the shape of a lion affixed to the coat’s lapel. Yance Ingram had worn an identical pin.
“Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the Lone Star when you got in,” Spence said.
“No problem.” While Spence settled into a chair, Hart sipped his beer, letting the ice-cold brew slide down his throat. “You said you had some sort of dinner event tonight.”
“At which I gave a speech. The minute I wound things up my pager went off. I had to stop by my office on the way here to take care of a problem with a search warrant one of my assistants authorized. I got here five minutes before you drove up.”
“That kind of schedule doesn’t make for much of a social life.”
“What the hell is a social life?”
Hart chuckled. “Good question. I wouldn’t know one if it jumped up and bit me on the butt.”
Spence took a draw on his beer. “Hard to believe it’s been ten years since we slaved as groundskeepers at the Lone Star.”
“Yeah.” Spence Harrison hadn’t changed much over those years, Hart decided. His friend still had the lean, powerful build that complemented his six-foot frame. He wore his thick brown hair in the same style, although now it was cropped close on the sides. It was his eyes that seemed different.