damn tired of covering for them.”
As if on cue, the bell above the door jangled. A trio of burly truck drivers came in, closely followed by the pair of giggling blond twins who worked the graveyard shift.
“Finally,” Nina said. She took the dustpan out of Annie’s hands, gave her a quick once-over and pointed toward the far booth. “Go. Sit. We need to talk.”
“But—”
“I’ll be right there.” Not waiting to hear any further protest, she marched away, dumped the broken dishware into the trash and went to have a little talk with their blond co-workers.
She joined Annie a few minutes later. “Honest to God, those two make Jenny’s gerbil look like an intellectual.” Jenny was the second of Nina’s three children; she had one from each of her marriages. “Here.” She handed Annie a steaming cup of coffee, set her own on the table and slid onto the seat. “You look like you could use it.”
“Thanks.” Annie dredged up a tired smile. “Does that mean I look as bad as I feel?”
“Ha. You couldn’t look really bad if you worked at it. But you’ve jumped like a scalded cat every time anyone’s so much as hiccuped tonight. It doesn’t take one of those brain surgeons to figure out something’s wrong.”
“Oh.”
Nina grimaced at the carefully neutral answer, twisted sideways and stretched out her legs on the seat with a sigh of pleasure. “So. Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or am I going to have to pry it out of you?”
Annie rolled the cup between her hands and considered her answer.
When she’d left Denver three years ago and started driving north, she’d been numb, so overcome by the events of the preceding months she hadn’t been able to think past escaping the city where her entire world had collapsed. During the previous year she’d graduated from an exclusive Boston college, returned to Colorado after a fourteen-year exile and been swept off her feet by the man of her dreams. She’d gone from being her wealthy father’s golden princess, to Gavin’s prized possession, to being a twenty-three-year-old orphaned ex-debutante with five thousand dollars to her name, no marketable skills, a husband who didn’t want her and a baby on the way.
In the back of her mind she’d had a vague plan of starting over somewhere like Montana or Idaho. Instead the muffler had fallen off her car after a mere forty-three miles, stranding her in Mountainveiw, and she’d simply been too overcome to move on.
Yet she hadn’t given up entirely. The child stirring inside had refused to let her. For the first time ever, somebody had been depending on her. Annie had been determined not to let that small, precious somebody down.
Somehow she’d found the energy and strength to rent her little house, to husband her limited financial resources through the remainder of her pregnancy, to make it alone through the long, scary hours of childbirth. Three months later she’d found her way to the Palomino, determined to do whatever she had to, to support her new little family.
Beyond the bare particulars, she hadn’t talked about her past to anyone. At first because it was too painful. And then because she’d put it behind her.
Or so she’d thought.
She looked over at Nina’s expectant gaze and realized she was finally going to have to say…something. She sighed, trying to decide where to start. “I ran into Gavin in the grocery store last week,” she said finally.
“Gavin?” Nina’s blank look spoke volumes.
“My husband. Sam’s father.”
“You mean, you really are…married?”
It was Annie’s turn to look startled. “For heaven’s sake, Nina.” She glanced from her friend to the heavy gold and silver wedding band on her own hand, and back again. “Yes. What did you think? That I’d made it up?”
“Well…yeah. What was I supposed to think? You’ve been alone ever since you first walked in here desperate for a job, when Sam was just a little tadpole. You never join any of the discussions me and the other girls have about sex. I just figured some guy had given you a real bad time. That because of Sam, it was easier to say you were married than talk about it.”
Bemused, Annie shook her head. “Is that why you think I’ve turned down every offer for a date since I’ve worked here?”
“Well, sure. That and the fact that you look and sound like one of those high-class types they use in ads to sell mink coats and pearls. You’re light-years above the yahoos we get in here, and we both know it.”
Annie winced, but recognized that now was not the time to dwell on what it was about her that prompted people to see the surface, rather than the person underneath. “Be that as it may, I am married. And Gavin is very, very real.”
“So where’s he been? Is he military or CIA or something?”
“No.”
“Alien abduction, then?”
Annie took a deep breath. “He’s been in prison.”
Nina nodded. “That was gonna be my next guess.” Her eyes narrowed. “So what’d he do? He didn’t beat on you, did he?”
Annie shook her head, shocked at the very idea. “No. Gavin would never do that.”
“So what are we talking here? Too many traffic tickets? Mass murder? What?”
Annie sighed. “The charge was accomplice to criminal fraud.”
“Huh. And what does that mean in real-people English?”
“It means he worked for my father, who owned a company that specialized in building big commercial structures—high-rises, shopping malls, that sort of thing. Gavin started as a carpenter, but eventually became one of KinnairdCo’s most valuable foremen. Until three and a half years ago, when a Pueblo high-rise under construction collapsed. A worker was badly injured. It turned out—” she stared into her coffee “—it turned out the company was in financial trouble. And that my father had tried to economize by substituting substandard steel and other low-grade materials for what was specified in the bid, even though he knew it could compromise the structure. Charges were brought, but before anything could be proved, he had a heart attack.”
“And?”
Annie pushed her coffee mug aside and looked up. “And by then, Gavin and I had been married for three months, and Daddy had made him a partner in the business. So he—” she exhaled tiredly “—became the one held accountable.”
Nina stared. “But…but that’s not fair! How could he be blamed if he didn’t know?”
“He knew,” Annie said quietly. “He wasn’t part of it, but at some point he found out and chose to say nothing, and that was enough to make him legally responsible as far as the Pueblo County D.A. was concerned. He came after Gavin with everything he had. On advice of counsel, Gavin pleaded ‘no contest’ in return for a reduced sentence. Not,” she added tiredly, “that he ever discussed it with me. Verbal communication was not our strong suit.”
Nina
