Hometown Detective. Jennifer Morey

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СКАЧАТЬ successful entrepreneur who’d made a cushy life for herself.

      “What happened?” he indulged her by asking. He also wanted to know.

      “We became wards of the state. No one wanted to adopt two children, so we were split up. I didn’t know where Kaelyn was taken.” She made her shot and sank another solid and faced him, holding her cue stick upright. “When I was twelve, my adoptive father lost his job. A year went by and he still hadn’t found anything. My adoptive mother didn’t make enough to support us all and things went downhill from there.”

      That explanation he hadn’t expected. While she had struck him as one of those fortunate types who did with ease anything they set their mind to do, she hadn’t had an easy start.

      He waited for her to shoot again.

      “I went hungry a lot and wore the same clothes to school. By the time I was seventeen, our house had been foreclosed and we were living in a trailer. That’s all my adoptive mother could afford.” She bent with her stick and aimed. “The day my adoptive father forgot to pick me up after a school event and a strange man tried to get me to get into his car as I walked home was the day I decided I’d had enough. I ran away. I lived with my best friend’s older sister until I graduated from high school. My adoptive parents didn’t even report me missing.”

      She hit the ball hard and it crashed into the hole. “Now you know the background of me and my twin sister, how we got separated anyway.” She sank all the solids except the eight ball. Roman had all of his striped balls still on the table.

      Calling the corner hole, she shot the eight ball there. Then, smiling slightly, she held her cue stick upright. “What about you? Everybody has a story. What’s yours? Do you have any tragedies haunting you?”

      His childhood had been heaven compared to hers. Heaven compared to most he met. He supposed he should be happy she didn’t use her past to segue into her sister’s case.

      “The only tragedies I’ve experienced are the ones victims tell from their graves.” He inserted more coins. “I’ll break this time.”

      He racked the balls. As he leaned over and broke, he wondered how Kendra had gone from a runaway to a shop owner. She looked young for her age. Late twenties instead of forty-one, just a couple years younger than him.

      He sank two solids. Grinning at her, he moved to his next shot.

      She smiled back. “You haven’t told me about your childhood.”

      “Nothing to tell.” He made his next shot and sank another ball. “I was an only child of an apothecary and a crime novelist. I grew up in a fantasy world.”

      “Crime novelist.” She tapped her forefinger on her lower lip. “William Cooper... The William Cooper? The Australian?”

      “You’ve heard of him?” His father was a popular novelist but not the Stephen King variety.

      “Who hasn’t heard of him? Wow. You’re the son of a celebrity. And Australian. You have a very subtle accent.”

      “I was basically raised in the States.”

      “You do have a Rick Grimes kind of look to you,” she said.

      Great. She thought he looked like the star of The Walking Dead. “My dad’s not really a celebrity.” He made his next shot and missed. “That was your fault.”

      She laughed lightly. “And your mother is a what? What’s an apothecary?”

      “She bought an old pharmacy and turned it into an apothecary museum. She studied chemistry in college and developed an odd fascination with herbal medicine.”

      “That’s not so odd. What’s odd is they have a son who became a crime detective.” A band had begun to play and she started tapping her foot to the beat.

      “That’s odd?”

      “Well...maybe not since your dad is a crime novelist. But your profession isn’t as...fascinating as theirs.”

      “Are you always this blunt?” He didn’t dislike that about her.

      “Best way to be. I wish everyone treated me the same.” Still holding her stick upright, her enchanted expression smoothed and her foot stopped tapping as though something came to her. “Wait a minute. I know that museum. It’s here in Chesterville.” She sucked in a breath. “Are you from here?”

      She caught him. They now had a connection. She lived in his hometown. “It’s your turn.”

      “You are?”

      “Are you going to rob me of my chance to beat you?”

      Laughing, she went to make her move, missing the striped ball. “How is it that you’re from here and assigned to my sister’s case?”

      “There is no case yet. My boss made me come. He did that on purpose.”

      “So you could see your family? How sweet. A lot of bosses aren’t like that.”

      “I didn’t want to go see them.” This might venture into the Too Personal zone. When he’d lured her out tonight, he had done it with the intention of sharing a night with her before he went back to work in Wyoming or wherever the need took him. He hadn’t anticipated getting to know her and she him.

      “What? Why not?”

      He leaned over the table, aiming his stick.

      “You do have a tragic story to tell.”

      “No, I don’t. I just didn’t feel like seeing them now, that’s all.” He hit a ball and it plunked into a hole.

      “They’re your family. Don’t they know you’re here?”

      Standing up, he turned and stepped toward her, stopping close. “I came here to see you.” He moved around her to make his next shot, sinking another ball.

      “Is it because they’re so much larger than you?”

      “No. I love my parents and they love me. I had a painfully normal childhood.” He dropped another ball.

      “What is that?” she asked as though she didn’t know.

      “Normal. Bedtime stories.” He’d had lots of those. “Be home by ten. Eat your vegetables. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. Don’t do drugs. You can do anything you put your mind to do. Love you and hugs.”

      “What’s so painful about that?”

      She didn’t get it and he wasn’t going to explain. His childhood had been painful because it had been so idyllic. But idyllic hadn’t prepared him for the world. All the encouragement to do what his heart told him hadn’t opened his mind and soul to awareness of what his heart told him. His heart hadn’t told him anything. He’d gone to school to become a crime detective because he’d always been fascinated with his father, his imagination, his success. He’d never achieve that kind of success. He had to be satisfied with what he had.

      He СКАЧАТЬ