He looks back at the shelf. “I thought having money was the most important thing in life. Money got me video games, popularity, friends… girls. But as I got older, my home life started to crumble, and I realized that there was a huge difference between the kind of rich that my father was and the kind of rich that, uh… that your father was.” He glances at me. “Your dad had an appreciation and humility—for life, for money, for people—that my father never had. And when I was young I was just like my father. Selfish. Ungrateful… So yeah.” He looks back at the shelf and resumes his search. “I was a spoiled brat and your dad knew it.”
I watch him for a moment, wondering what he meant by his home life starting to crumble. I know about his mom running off with the reverend, Brad Keeton, and how his dad started drinking after that, but the way he said as I got older makes me think there’s something more to the story.
I muse, “Sounds like you deserved a lesson in appreciation.”
He tosses me a crooked smile. “I may have been a spoiled brat but that’s still no excuse for a grown man to steal a kid’s baseball cards. And frankly, I think Turner’s lesson on gratitude would have been better spent on you.”
I blanch. “Excuse me?” His insult stings, but the casual tone with which he said it hurts more. “I’m not spoiled. I—I’m the opposite of spoiled.”
“Sure you are.” He moves from the cabinet to the entertainment center, dragging me along as he looks inside, under, and behind every nook and cranny. “Didn’t your father set up a trust fund for you?”
“What? No.” I blink. “No. Why would you think that?”
He lifts a shoulder. “That’s what I heard.”
I scowl. “From who?”
“It’s a small town. From everyone.”
“Well I don’t know what people told you, but I do not have, nor have I ever had, a trust fund. That’s ridiculous.”
He eyes me skeptically before moving to the sofa. “Maybe I’m wrong then.”
Everywhere he goes, I have to go but all I want to do is storm off. Damn these handcuffs!
“Yes. You are wrong. You know nothing about me,” I say as he crouches down to look under the couch. “And I seriously doubt my father hid your baseball cards under the couch.” I look down at him with an exasperated breath.
He frowns at the nothingness beneath the sofa. “Where would he have put them?”
I pinch my lips together. “He probably has a secret vault where he stashes all the toys he takes from little kids and the candy he steals from babies.”
“Laugh all you want,” he says, “but if he stole something from you when you were thirteen, you’d be just as mad as me—” He sits up and his words catch in his throat when he comes face-to-face with my skirt.
With him still crouched on the floor, and me standing beside him, my bare lower thighs are right at his eye level. An exhale leaves his mouth and his hot breath grazes the inside of my legs, floating up my skirt and between the bare skin of my thighs. I suddenly forget about his insult and my anger as my head clouds with desire.
He looks up at me from under those long dark eyelashes of his and my entire body flushes. My throat goes dry. My nipples harden. I want to swallow but my brain doesn’t seem to be working as I stare down at his large pupils boring into me.
He rocks back on his heels and my leashed wrist swings back with his, our arms moving in sync. I watch his Adam’s apple bob with a thick swallow as his eyelids grow heavy and his gaze returns to my legs. I grasp for something to do or say, anything to distract me from the fact that there is a hot beautiful mouth breathing against my thighs. And not just any mouth. Daren’s mouth.
I’ve got nothing.
Nothing but white-hot arousal and naughty, naughty thoughts.
Jolting me out of my stupor, Daren clears his throat and leans away. I’m finally able to swallow as I watch him slowly stand, and time crawls along in the silence.
He swallows as well. “Will you please just help me find my baseball cards?”
Baseball cards… baseball cards… Oh, right. That’s what we were talking about.
“Why don’t we just forget about your search and go to the train station and get the money instead?” I suggest, my voice somewhat raspy. “Then you can buy all the baseball cards in the world.”
He stands and brushes off his hands. “No way. Those cards aren’t replaceable. They… they’re important to me. Please?” His eyes turn pleading. “Will you please help me look?”
I don’t know why he’s so obsessed with something he’s managed to live without for ten years, but I don’t have the heart to continue arguing with him. And honestly, if he keeps pouting with those puppy dog eyes of his there’s no telling what I’ll do to please him.
“Fine,” I say, totally caving.
God. What is it with this guy?
“Awesome.” He smiles. “The baseball cards are in a green box about this big”—he holds his hands out in a shape of a square—“with a red ribbon around the lid.”
I nod and we begin our search. Though it’s not a very efficient search, since we’re, you know, in handcuffs and can’t split up to cover more ground. And our movements are awkward as hell as we move from room to room, each of us trying to go in different directions. We’re not smooth at all, especially once we reach the kitchen.
As we walk past the cabinets, the handcuffs snag on a drawer and cause Daren to lose his balance. He knocks into me, I knock into the table, the table knocks into the wall, and then a picture falls off the wall as I topple toward the floor. Daren quickly grabs my waist and pulls me upright but the framed photo crashes to the tile and shards of glass skid everywhere.
Not. Smooth. At all.
“Wow,” I say slowly. “That was like something out of a cartoon.” I jingle our handcuffs. “We’re not very coordinated with these things, are we?”
“Not in the slightest,” he says with a quiet chuckle. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I realize he’s still holding me and the tips of his fingers suddenly feel hot on my hips.
I casually slip out of his grasp and try not to make eye contact with him. Instead I look at the kitchen floor. Shattered glass splinters out from the busted picture frame, leaving a photograph bent and buried beneath the rubble. I carefully retrieve the fallen picture from the glass.
It’s a photo of me with my parents at one of our family picnics. My mom is dressed in all white with an orange scarf in her hair and pink lipstick, and I’m in a polka-dot dress with a pair of Mary Janes, holding up a white rose.
White roses were a common item my dad would ask us to find on our mother-daughter scavenger hunts because they grow wild all over Copper Springs. Mom would always pick them so I wouldn’t prick my finger on the thorns. Then we’d bring them back to my dad and he would cut off every thorn before handing them back to me to keep. I inwardly smile. I loved those scavenger hunts. They always started the same way: with the first clue written on a small piece of paper tucked into an envelope, just like the ones in the blue suitcase…
My heart skips a beat.
No. No way.
My father wouldn’t stage a scavenger hunt to collect the inheritance money… would he?
No. That would be preposterous.
Shaking my head with a sigh of relief, I gaze down at the photograph and run a finger over my parents’ happy faces. I’ve seen this picture a thousand times, but now that the happy people in the photograph are gone, it means so much more to me. I glance at the wall where a square of paint, slightly darker than the rest of the wall, shows where the frame used to be. I’m surprised my dad kept this picture hanging up all these years.
When my mom left, she broke my dad’s heart. He was careful never to bad-mouth her when I’d come stay with him during the summer, but I wasn’t blind. I could see the hurt on his face whenever he’d mention her.
My mom was no angel. She was smart and friendly, but she was terribly selfish. She said my dad was too good for her and that’s why she left him. That he treated her like a queen and it put too much pressure on her. While that was probably all true, I think the real reason my mom left is because she didn’t want to be tied down to a nice guy in a small town. She wanted drama in a big city.
She got it.
“Polka dots,” Daren says, leaning over my shoulder as he looks at the picture. “Nice.”