Susan Mallery - The Sassy One

He would send her away, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Sam didn’t sleep. He spent the hours until midnight pacing downstairs, then around one in the morning he started walking the grounds. By the time the sun came up, he was exhausted, sore, and not completely convinced he’d handled the situation with Francesca as well as he could have.

She’d lied. He was still having trouble reconciling what she’d done with the woman he’d grown to love. If she had been anyone else, he would have dismissed her from his life and never thought of her again. That’s what he’d done with Tanya, with the other women he’d met. Even with his mother, after she’d died. He turned his back on bitter memories and had vowed never to make that mistake again.

Until now he’d succeeded. He’d kept his relationships superficial. No one had gotten under his skin, no one had mattered, and no one had betrayed him.

He’d wanted more of the same with Francesca, but that hadn’t happened. Kelly had shown up, throwing his life the kind of curve designed to show the measure of his character. He figured he’d succeeded as much as he’d failed with her. And any part of his success was due to Francesca.

Damn her hide, but she’d made him look at things he hadn’t wanted to see. He and Kelly might have a long way to go before they had something close to a normal father-daughter relationship, but if not for Francesca, they would still be spending all their time screaming at each other.

Francesca had taught him to listen, to be calm, to look at Kelly’s side of things. Francesca had given him hope that he could learn how to be a good father. She’d made him believe in himself, in her, in them.

He’d fallen in love with her. Only to find out she was just like all the rest of them.

But he couldn’t get his mind around that last thing. That she was like Tanya. Because Tanya had never cared about anyone but herself. And his mother had only been interested in manipulating those around her, using whatever means she could to manage the outcome. He’d known women who were in it for the money, the house, the family business, or the name. So what was Francesca in it for? A baby?

He shook his head. No. He would bet his soul that she hadn’t gotten pregnant on purpose. They’d used protection and it had failed. So he wasn’t angry because of the baby, but because-

He stopped in the middle of the garden, cold, damp with dew, and barely able to see straight. The first fingers of pink light had barely crept over the house. They were going to have a baby.

He’d heard the words when she’d said them, but he hadn’t internalized them. Not until that second. A baby. An infant.

His brain filled with pictures of diapers and blankets, of rocking chairs and car seats. Of a baby smile, a toddler, of a first step, a first word. All the things he’d missed with Kelly. No, not missed. All the things that had been stolen from him.

He clenched his hands into fists and raised his face to the sky. If there was one woman in the world he would have been willing to have a child with, Francesca was the one. He loved her. Had loved her. And she’d betrayed him.

Why had she kept it a secret? Five weeks. Not a couple of days or even one week. Five. She’d made love with him, knowing she carried his child. She’d laughed with him, smiled at him, held him close, all the while living a lie.

How could he reconcile what he wanted with what he knew?

There weren’t any answers. At least not here in the garden. Tired beyond words, he headed for the house and walked into the kitchen. Maybe a couple hours of sleep would make things more clear. Maybe he would wake up and find out this was all just a bad dream and that it was still okay to trust and give his heart.

Didn’t anybody on the planet carry cash anymore? Kelly wondered angrily as she tried yet another key in the door of Security International. The third one worked, the lock giving way with a loud click.

It was nearly six-thirty on Friday morning. She figured she had a couple of hours before office staff started showing up, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Not when there was so much on the line.

Sam had been up all night. She knew because she kept checking his room. Finally, just after dawn, she’d heard him go into his room. He’d been snoring when she left fifteen minutes later.

She really hated that she’d had to come to the office first, but when she’d gone through his wallet around midnight, she’d found all of twenty dollars. Not nearly enough to allow her to run away and not ever be found. Which meant she needed more cash, and she knew only one place to get it.

After carefully closing and locking the front door behind her, she made her way to Sam’s office. There she went through the key ritual again until she found the one that unlocked his desk. She pulled out the key that would open the cabinet holding the petty cash box and crept down the hall.

She didn’t want to steal. Not really. But what choice did she have? It wasn’t like she had her own credit card anymore. And not having a credit card had meant having to look up the bus routes and then take the right one to get her to the office. She’d lost a lot of time. But she had a plan. Once she had the money, she would take a bus to San Francisco. She figured a bus was really safe because Sam would assume she was taking a plane. While he was busy checking first-class reservations, she would disappear into the city.

She walked into the storeroom and opened the cabinet. She was in the process of counting out the bills when a hand dropped onto her shoulder. She screamed and the money went flying. When she turned, she found her great-grandfather standing right behind her.

“You’re up early,” he said.

She opened her mouth, closed it, then burst into tears.

Sam woke at eight-thirty. A shower and two cups of coffee later he still felt like roadkill. By nine-fifteen he decided he’d better check on Kelly. She’d been hurting last night, and he felt badly for not talking to her at the time. Francesca’s announcement had thrown him.

As he climbed the stairs, he wondered how he was going to tell Kelly about the baby. Maybe he should wait on that until he knew what was going to happen. They could discuss it-

She was gone.

Sam stood inside her room and stared at the neatly made bed. There weren’t that many things missing, but he knew in his gut that she’d left. Run away.

Panic didn’t begin to describe what he was feeling. His daughter, he thought frantically. Where would she go?

Just in case his gut was wrong, he carefully searched the house, then checked his wallet. His credit cards were all there, but the last of his cash was missing.

He grabbed the phone on his nightstand and punched in Francesca’s number. A thick, tear-filled voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Is she with you?”

Francesca cleared her throat. “What? Sam?”

“Is Kelly with you?”

“No. Of course not. What happened?”

“She’s missing. She ran away. I was up all night, so it must have been sometime this morning.”

“No. Oh, Sam, she can’t be out on her own. What are you going to do?”

“Find her.”

“Do you want me to help?”

Frustration, fear, and the need to get moving steeled his resolve. “I don’t want anything from you,” he said before hanging up.

“You’re all fired,” Sam announced at noon the following day. “Every single one of you is fired. We’re the most successful security company on the West Coast, and you’re telling me we can’t find one twelve-year-old girl?”

The portion of his security staff in town gathered in the main conference room. Sam paced in front of the dry erase boards. Gabriel sat in a chair by the door.