Peg Sutherland - All-American Baby

“Yet,” Maddie added.

Ida stood beside the third chair at their table. “What happened?”

“Tood Grunkemeier. You know Tood?”

Ida’s breathing grew shallow. “What’s wrong with Tood?”

“Massive heart attack. He’s lucky to be alive.”

Leon shook his head. “He might not make it till morning. Seems sadder, somehow, him not having anybody.”

Maddie rubbed her eyes, a weary gesture. “When we were hooking him up to the heart monitor, he said, ‘Don’t bother. Ain’t nobody going to care one way or another.”’

“That really choked me up,” Leon said.

Ida felt her own heartbeat going haywire on her. She clutched the back of the little white metal chair. The room seemed to swim around her. Tood Grunkemeier, not expected to live.

“Ida, you okay?”

She tried to reply, but the words of reassurance wouldn’t come. Maddie reached for her and guided her into the seat.

“Sorry if we gave you a start.”

Ida nodded, realizing there were tears in her eyes. Tood Grunkemeier lay in a hospital a few miles away, his sad old heart giving out. Thinking nobody cared. What if he died without ever knowing the secret she’d kept all these years?

It was almost more than she could bear.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHERE ARE WE going to sleep?”

Ash hadn’t been thinking of sleeping. He’d been thinking of putting as much distance as possible between him and anyone who might have it in mind to harm Melina. He also had no cash to pay for sleeping anywhere and his credit cards would create a trail leading straight to him—and Melina.

“In the car,” he replied.

“This car?”

“What’s wrong with this car?”

“I get the back seat,” she said.

Figures. “I could look for a van.”

“Something in red, maybe? Brown isn’t my color.”

“Of course not. I wasn’t thinking.”

Now he was. Now he could see the impish quality he’d been drawn to three months earlier for what it really was. She was spoiled, that was all.

“Aren’t you getting sleepy?”

“It’s not even midnight.”

“That’s right. You’re a night owl.”

A spark touched off in him. She’d been a morning person. She’d laughingly suggested they compromise and spend the entire day in bed, getting up from ten at night until ten in the morning to accommodate them both. They’d spent the day in bed, all right, but they hadn’t slept.

“Are we going to get different clothes? Something to sleep in? Something for tomorrow?”

“Of course,” he said.

“When?”

How could a grown woman sound so guileless and so eager? She was good, no question of that. A shame she was so rich; she could be quite a success on stage.

“Soon,” he said brusquely.

But the truth was, he didn’t know where or when or how. He didn’t know what to do with her or who to trust. Worst of all, he was damned if he even knew why any of it mattered. This was her problem, not his.

They passed through a little town that promised to be the last one for quite a few miles. Ash slowed down, studying carefully the narrow, quiet streets, the tidy. little houses with their spring gardens that seemed to speak of trust and safety.

“Are we shopping for a new car again?” she whispered.

He wished she wouldn’t whisper. It stirred him in spite of himself. It reminded him of other whispers, other sighs, other nights alone with her in the dark.

When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Are you casing the joint?”

He was getting grumpier by the minute and he knew it. Her lack of concern for the gravity of their situation wasn’t helping. “You watch too much television.”

“I know.” She sounded pleased with herself.

He was looking for something with legroom, as well as something old enough that it could easily be hot-wired. He found a comfortable-looking van parked in the dark corner of a lot surrounding a stucco condominium. He left the brown sedan in its place and took some satisfaction in knowing that the knitting would be returned to its owner very soon. Ash didn’t like stealing cars; the last one he’d stolen was when he was fifteen, and his father had grounded him for six months. Cars were a necessity and stealing them was for emergency situations only. Bram Thorndyke had been clear on the matter of stolen cars.

Diamonds and rubies, however, were sheer extravagance and therefore fair game.

On the way out of town, Ash spotted a little boutique. He parked in a narrow alley behind the row of pastel-colored shops, hemmed in by a brick wall at the edge of a municipal golf course. “Wait here.”

She was already getting out of the van. “I’m not letting you pick out my clothes.”

He pinned her between the open door and the van.

“Yes, you are.”

She stared at him with those dark eyes and he knew he’d be undone if he didn’t back off. He could almost feel her breath, sweet with chocolate milk shake but no longer cool. Warm. Hot, even. He grew warm himself in the chill northern California night air.

“What if it doesn’t fit?”

“It will fit.”

And that mouth. Soft. Full. Wide. Trouble any way you looked at it.

“What if I hate it?”

“You’ll get over it.”

She looked ready to pout. He supposed that worked a lot when a person was rich and spoiled. “I want to go with you. I’ve never been on a break-and-enter before.”

“And you aren’t coming now.”

“I can help.”

She was wheedling. He was dismayed to find he was susceptible to it. He had to toughen up. “You’ll be in the way. I know what I’m doing. You don’t. It’s too dangerous.”

“Are you a professional criminal?”

“In the car, princess.”

She studied him carefully, but he remained unyielding. She finally relented and backed into the car. As he walked toward the dark back entrance of the shop, she hissed out the window, “Size six. Jeans. I want blue jeans. Boot cut. And sunglasses. Ash, do you hear me?”

He turned and glared at her. “I hear you. Barney Fife hears you. Every neighbor for miles around hears you. Could you please pretend you have some common sense? Just for the next twenty minutes.”

She raised the window and turned away from him, nose in the air. She had the perfect nose for it, too. Narrow, straight, very aristocratic. Along with a very stubborn chin.

Accessing the shop was easy. He did harder jobs every day. But he didn’t like doing it. He wasn’t accustomed to stealing from people who probably couldn’t afford it. He told himself the shop had insurance and the insurance company could certainly afford it. But he also saw the three snapshots taped to the side of the cash register—an attractively plump middle-aged woman and two younger women just past their teens who had to be her daughters. This was who he was robbing, for the sake of a spoiled heiress.

He didn’t like himself.

He loaded two shopping bags. One for him, with a limited selection of unremarkable khakis and polo shirts. Then he started on a second shopping bag. He got jeans, size six. Underwear, cotton and serviceable, size selected by memory. Unwelcome, distracting memory. He selected a very ugly T-shirt with gold sequins in the design of a cat, a flouncy nightshirt in pink and yellow, a floppy-brimmed straw hat and a pair of gaudy sunglasses.

To heck with her if she didn’t like his choices.

He made it out of the shop and back to the red van—its selection had been based purely on availability and had nothing to do with Melina’s color preferences—without incident. Melina took the bags and began rummaging through them as he stuck conscientiously to the speed limit all the way out of the sleeping, unsuspecting town.

“If you’re not a professional, you certainly have an interesting hobby,” Melina said, pulling clothing out of a bag.