The Marriage Profile. Metsy Hingle

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СКАЧАТЬ since I’ve been back, I’ve been watching my pop die right before my eyes little by little. He needs a reason to go on living. That baby could be it.”

      “He has you,” Angela pointed out.

      “All I’ve ever been for him is a headache, someone he doesn’t understand. Hell, even I don’t understand me. But Haley…Haley was his favorite. If the rumors are true, if my sister didn’t die in that boating accident and that missing kid is hers, it would make all the difference in the world to Pop. He’d have a grandchild who needed him, a piece of my sister again. He’d have a reason to live again.”

      “Ricky, what you’re asking—”

      “Is a lot. I know that,” he said, and caught her hands in his. “But I’m desperate, Angela. I’m desperate.”

      The weight of Ricky’s plea enveloped her like a shroud, and Angela pulled her fingers free. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t make you any promises. I’ll tell you the same thing I told the FBI and the police chief—you shouldn’t pin your hopes on me. Justin Wainwright’s a good sheriff. He’ll have followed every possible lead to find that missing child. So will the Bureau. If they haven’t been able to find her by now, the chances are I won’t be able to find her, either.”

      “You’ll find her,” Ricky said with the utmost conviction.

      “Ricky, I’m not a miracle worker. I’m a profiler,” she protested.

      “We both know you’re more than a profiler. My mama said you had a special gift. Second sight, she called it. You can see things, sense things that other people can’t. Like that time when I was supposed to make that truck run to Mexico and you called me, insisted you had to see me that night. It’s because you knew what was going to happen, didn’t you? Somehow you knew about that crazy hitchhiker, that he was going to kill the person driving the truck that night. That’s why you made sure I canceled the trip. You did it to save me.”

      Angela remained silent as the memory of that day six years ago came back to her. She’d seen Ricky in the Mission Creek Café at lunchtime that day, and when he’d given her a hello hug, an image had flashed into her mind’s eye of a dark roadway, of the sign indicating the Mexican border thirty miles away, of the body of a dark-haired man lying beside a truck with a bullet in his temple. When Ricky had told her he was leaving that afternoon for Mexico, she’d panicked. She’d known at once that he was in danger. So she’d called him, made up an excuse that she needed to see him that night after she was off duty and begged him to cancel his trip. And he’d done as she’d asked. Regret washed over her anew as she realized she’d been so caught up in first saving Ricky and then later defending her meeting with Ricky to an angry Justin that she hadn’t thought to ask Ricky if he’d arranged for someone else to take his run. And because she hadn’t asked him, a man had died.

      “You used your gift, or whatever you want to call it to save my life that night. Now I’m asking you—begging you—to use your gift again. Only this time use it to save my father’s life by finding that baby.”

      Her gift, Ricky had called it. But for as long as she could remember, she’d considered her visions a curse, not a gift. “Marked by the devil” her father had claimed. And she’d believed him, believed she’d deserved to be isolated from her family, to grow up without the love and affection she’d craved. Even Justin, who had claimed to love her, had been uncomfortable when she’d tried to tell him, to explain to him about the visions. And because she’d loved him so desperately and feared losing him, she had gone along with him when he’d chalked up her uncanny knack for knowing things as female intuition. A cop’s instinct. A coincidence. Yet here was Ricky, a man with a questionable reputation and ties to the Texas mafia, a man with whom she’d shared nothing more than friendship, accepting without question that she could see things he didn’t. Know things others wouldn’t. Not only was he accepting it, but he was asking her to use her ability to help him. “I’ll try,” she finally told him. “That’s all I can promise.”

      “And that’s all I’m asking.” He pressed a brotherly kiss to her forehead, then suddenly tensed.

      “What’s wrong?” she asked.

      “I just caught sight of your ex heading this way. And judging by his expression, he’s not a happy cowboy.” He stepped back, eyed her closely. “Want me to head him off for you?”

      Despite the knot in her stomach, Angela shook her head. “I need to see him sooner or later. It might as well be now.” She paused, wet her lips. “Maybe it would be better if I spoke with him alone first. Would you mind?”

      “You sure you want to do that? The man looks mad as hell.”

      “I’m sure.”

      “All right. I wanted to have a chat with Sal, anyway, see if he knows what’s going on between Pop and Del Brio. But I’m going to keep my eye on you. And if Wainwright starts giving you a hard time, I’m coming back whether you want me to or not.”

      “Thanks,” Angela murmured.

      Ricky winked at her, then headed to the corner of the room where his father and his cronies were gathered. Bracing herself, Angela turned around and waited for Justin to make his way to her. When he got waylaid by the town’s mayor, she took advantage of the moment to study him. Despite the sedate business suit and neatly combed hair, there was still something untamed about Justin Wainwright, an energy and restlessness about him that made her think of gunslingers and lawmen of the Old West. And blast her foolish heart if just the sight of him didn’t make her pulse quicken now as it had all those years ago.

      As though sensing her scrutiny, Justin looked up, locked eyes with hers. Within moments, he was excusing himself from the mayor and heading toward her again. Angela’s heart pounded faster with each step he took. And as he drew nearer, she noted the changes in him—the new lines that creased the corners of his eyes, the hint of gray mixed in with the dark blond hair at his temples. She stared at his mouth, that incredible mouth that had always made her knees go weak when he smiled at her, that had made her skin burn when he’d kissed her, that had whispered promises of love and forever in her ears.

      “Hello, Angela,” he said, his voice deadly soft.

      “Hello, Jus—”

      “You want to tell me just what in the hell you’re doing here?”

      Two

      Angela sucked in a sharp breath, taken aback by the stinging remark. Determined not to be intimidated, she hiked up her chin. “It’s good to see you again,” she said, and extended her hand.

      For a second, something hot flashed in those green eyes before he looked down at her outstretched hand. But when he lifted his gaze to hers, those eyes were as cold as his voice as he said, “Too bad I can’t say the same.”

      Angela’s smile died, along with any hope that Justin would make this easy for either of them. She dropped her hand to her side. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I know we didn’t part as friends, but I had thought…” She swallowed, tried again. “I had thought that after all this time we could at least be civil with each other.”

      “Then you thought wrong.”

      “Apparently,” she conceded. “Still, I had hoped…”

      “What? That maybe I’d forgotten how you walked out СКАЧАТЬ