Whose Little Girl are You? by Bethany Campbell

Author:Bethany Campbell [Campbell, Bethany]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-42532-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

But the way he pronounced things, nobody else knew what it meant.”

She smiled again. “He was small for his age. Sometimes other kids picked on him because of his size and the way he talked.”

“So you defended him,” Turner said. It was a statement, as if he had no doubt.

She nodded. “Yes. But the older he got, the more he could charm his way out of trouble. He was always the charmer.”

But now, she thought, he’s in the kind of trouble that charm can’t help.

Turner raised a dark eyebrow. “And you were the scrapper?”

“Exactly.” She raised the glass and took a drink.

He watched her. “Patrick was your mother’s favorite?”

“Yes. But it didn’t matter. He was my favorite, too. Nona and I never really saw eye-to-eye—except about him.”

“You always call her Nona. Why?”

“After I got out of college, I lived with a man. She sort of disowned me for a while. It started then.”

“But you patched it up—more or less.”

“Less rather than more. I suppose I married him partly in some weird attempt to appease her. I shouldn’t have. He wasn’t—a very honest man. He lied. I hate that. I hate liars. Maybe that’s why I got so upset with Nona over this.”

Turner held his glass up to the light. “He lied about what sort of things?”

She shrugged. “Women. There were always other women. I couldn’t take it anymore. So I divorced him. That didn’t sit well with Nona, either.”

“How long have you been divorced?”

“A year,” she said. She was becoming uncomfortable; she had talked too much about herself. “What about you? Have you been married?”

He shook his head negatively. “No. Not even close.”

“Altar shy?” she asked.

“Terminally so,” he said.

Good, she thought. I like that in a man. It seemed the safest way to feel.

He studied her, frowning slightly. “Tell me. Why did you change your mind tonight?”

It was a question she’d hoped he wouldn’t ask. The truth was embarrassing, not flattering to either of them.

She looked away. “You probably don’t want to know.”

He put his fingertips under her chin, turned her face to his again. “Tell me.”

She sighed. “I told Nona that we’d arrived and that we were going to talk to the Walsh woman tomorrow.”

His touch lingered on her face, fingers and thumb framing her jaw. “And?” he said.

She made herself keep her eyes on his. “And she started asking questions about our sleeping arrangements. I had to tell her three times we had separate rooms. She thought we should be in separate buildings. She said it didn’t look right, us checking into the same place.”

The corners of his mouth twitched.

Her temper flared defensively. “It’s not funny,” she said. “Then she told me she hoped I had the decency not to ‘go fooling around in some motel’ with you. And after I hung up the phone, I realized she’d really made me angry. I mean I’m almost thirty-three years old, for God’s sake.”

“You went to bed with me because your mother told you not to,” he said, his expression unreadable.

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