innocently. “Chuck?”
“The handyman you hired for the resort?” PJ’s brows rose to match Cara Jo’s.
“Oh, yeah, him.” Cara Jo’s cheeks reddened. She rested a hand on PJ’s arm. “When Hank told me he’d hired a handyman, I didn’t know it was Chuck at first. Hank’s my new boss. I didn’t have a say. He hired him and told me he’d be starting today. It wasn’t until we were on the way to Fort Stockton that Hank let me know who he really was. I swear.” She held up her hand, her expression too solemn to be a hoax. Cara Jo had never lied to PJ. Why would she start now?
“Why didn’t you warn me then?”
“I was trying to find the words, but for some reason, I never could come up with the right ones.” She shrugged. “Are you mad at me?”
PJ sighed. “No. I can’t stay mad at you.” She set the coffeepot on the burner. “Do you have any say in who works as the handyman?”
“Not yet. I just accepted the position of resort manager. I haven’t even had a chance to move my stuff into the office.”
PJ sighed. Chuck would be around for a while. “I guess we won’t be seeing much of you around the diner once you get oriented with your new duties.”
“My first responsibility is to the diner. It’s my baby. I won’t desert you and the staff here.” Cara Jo hugged PJ. “And you’ll always be my friend, so don’t think you’re getting out of this relationship without an argument from me.”
Her heart warming at Cara Jo’s display of affection, PJ reminded herself how lucky she was to have Cara Jo in her life. When her adoptive mother had died of a heart attack, PJ had felt more alone than she had since she’d come to Wild Oak Canyon. If not for Cara Jo giving her a job and arranging with the resort for a place to live, she and Charlie would have been destitute. Then out of the blue, the scholarship had landed in her lap and PJ felt she was finally on her way to a new and better life for her and her daughter.
The bell over the diner door jingled and PJ glanced up, her heart flipping over.
Chuck entered, his gaze crossing the room to clash with PJ’s. Hank Derringer entered behind Chuck and then smiled and nodded toward Cara Jo and PJ. The two settled in the farthest corner in a booth.
“Want me to get them?” Cara Jo asked.
“No. I can do this.” PJ stiffened her spine.
“Does Chuck know about Charlie?” Cara Jo whispered.
PJ nodded, gathering two menus and two coffee mugs, her hands shaking. “He found out last night after he chased the attacker out of my apartment.”
Cara Jo whistled softly. “Wow, what a way to learn you have a baby daughter.”
A stab of guilt twisted in PJ’s gut. “Yeah. But what’s done is done. I have to live with the choice I made.”
“Any chance you two will get back together?” Cara Jo asked.
Her chest tightening so much she could barely breathe, PJ shrugged. She was afraid if she spoke, her voice would crack along with her composure.
“I get it. It’s too soon to talk about it.” Cara Jo gave her a pat on the back. “Go on. You’re tough—you can handle this.”
PJ wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t plan on hiding every time she ran into Chuck. Wild Oak Canyon was too small to think she could avoid him forever.
* * *
“ANY OTHER PROBLEMS after last night’s initial incident?” Hank asked.
Chuck dragged his gaze away from PJ as she strode across the black and white linoleum tiles of the diner toward them. He had a hard time focusing on Hank with PJ nearby. “What? Oh, no. I checked her balcony door locks and each of the windows and then bedded down in the hallway to make sure no one bothered her again.”
Hank sighed. “I figured something might happen, but I wasn’t sure what or when.”
PJ stopped at their table and set the menus and the empty coffee mugs in front of them. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.” Hank frowned. “Are you all right, my dear?”
PJ smiled down at the older man. “I’m fine, thanks to Chuck. I understand you hired him as the handyman for the resort.”
“I did. Thought we could use someone with carpentry skills who could also work with the horses since Juan is no longer with us.”
She nodded curtly. “I’ll be right back with the coffee.”
As soon as PJ was out of earshot, Hank leaned closer. “I don’t want anyone to know I hired you to protect PJ. The less connection she has to me, the less chance of her being hurt.”
“What’s going on? All you told me was that I needed to provide protection to an employee of the resort. What made you think PJ needed protecting?”
“I got a call from an adoption agency in Flagstaff, Arizona. They noted that their computer system had been hacked, and PJ’s files had been the target.”
“And why would they call you?”
Hank glanced around the diner, his blue eyes darkening. “I knew PJ’s birth mother, Alana Rodriguez. She made sure that if anything happened to PJ’s adoptive mother, all correspondence or concerns should be directed to me.”
“Why you?”
“I helped her escape her abusive fiancé twenty-six years ago in Cozumel, Mexico. It was easy for her to fit into a new life in the United States. She spoke fluent English and had sandy-blond hair and green eyes just like PJ. I suspect her coloring was a throwback from her European Spanish heritage.”
Chuck’s eyes narrowed. “Something tells me there’s more to this story.”
Hank sighed. “I told her if she ever needed me for anything to let me know.” He stared across the table at Chuck. “When she disappeared, her fiancé had the Mexican police arrest me, claiming I’d murdered Alana.”
“What happened to her?”
“I arranged for her to get to the States, gave her a new identity and she disappeared. I didn’t see her again.”
“How did you get the Mexican government to drop the charges?”
“With no body and no evidence of foul play, they couldn’t keep me. Although I barely got out of Mexico.”
“So why is this all surfacing again?”
“Her fiancé, Emilio Montalvo,” Hank slid a blurry picture of a Hispanic man in front of Hank, “had connections deep in the Mexican Mafia. He swore when he found Alana, he’d make us both pay. I stayed away from her, sure that any contact with her would put her at risk of him finding her. I didn’t know she’d had a child and the child was PJ until last year.”
“How did you find out?”
Hank’s
