it and her soda on the bar. She hoisted herself onto the bar stool and waved a cookie. “Ashton and his mom just moved here from some fancy park in Dallas. His dad lives there with his new, very hot girlfriend.”
“Highland Park?”
Kenzie nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Highland Park is a ritzy, old-money neighborhood, not a park.” Vince grinned. “But what does his absentee dad and very hot girlfriend have to do with why you got in a fight over the kid?”
She took a drink and her blue eyes lit with mischief. “I couldn’t just stand by and let Billy pick on him. Then I’d have been no better than Bully Baer.”
Although Vince was proud she was willing and able to stand up for herself, and evidently others as well, he wasn’t sure that noble motive was entirely the root of this incident. “You used this new kid as an excuse to punch Billy Baer.”
Kenzie washed her cookie down with strawberry soda. “Stupid bullies tick me off.”
“Agreed. But next time you might give the new kid a chance to fight his own battle, or Billy and his gang of misfits will peg him for a sissy and continue to make his life miserable.” Vince tossed his empty can in the recycling bin and grabbed the pickup’s keys off the counter. “I’ve got to run over and check on the crew working on the Andersons’ dock before they skip out early and we miss our deliverable. Want to go with?”
“Come on, Boo.” She sealed the package of cookies, jammed her pink ball cap with the ridiculous logo Pink Is The New Black on her head backward and picked up the soda. “We need to stop for dog food.”
“Woof,” Boo chimed in, trotting out the door behind her.
Out of dog food already?
AFTER CHECKING ON the progress of the Andersons’ dock, Vince pulled into the crowded Wal-Mart parking lot. He loaded a fifty-pound bag of dog food, two boxes of breakfast cereal and other odds and ends into the cart and headed across the store for new socks for Kenzie. Where they disappeared to once inside the dryer was a mystery, but he’d never done a load of laundry and had the socks come out even. There had to be a huge cosmic black hole somewhere full of all sizes and colors of mismatched socks.
Of course, they didn’t make it past the video-gaming department without her spotting a game she couldn’t live without. “Dad, they have Wii NASCAR. Can we get it?”
“Forty bucks? You got that much saved from your allowance?” He flipped the game over and checked the rating.
“I have eighteen. Come on. You’ll play it as much as me, you know you will. If we get it, you can deduct the other two dollars for my half from my allowance this week.”
Her keen rationalization always suckered him into helping fund her plans. He tossed the game in the cart. “Fine, but don’t try to hit me up for the full ten dollars when you only get eight Friday.”
“Thanks, Dad.” She gave him a hug and headed toward the girls’ department. “I’m going to wipe you off the track when we get home.”
“In your dreams.” He should count himself lucky that she had only asked for one game this trip. “No games until all your homework is done. And you get me called up in front of Principal Montgomery one more time and the Wii goes in the closet until school’s out. It’s been years, but I distinctly remember graduating sixth grade. I’ve got no desire to go back.”
“It’s okay, you’re cool. You still like to play games. And you slowing down in your old age is what gives me the edge so I can win.”
Picking through the bins, she selected a plastic bag of assorted socks plus a new purple-striped sleep shirt and Vince herded her in the general direction of the checkout. His day had started at 5:00 a.m., and he still had to get home, unload the groceries, throw something together for dinner, make sure Kenzie did her homework and took her bath, and only then could he get time to work up the bid for the two docks on Lake Travis. He grinned. And now there was NASCAR to work into the schedule.
“Ashton! Hey!” Kenzie called out, making a ninety-degree turn into the boys’ department.
“Hey.” The kid Kenzie had defended at school today stood in the boys’ jeans section grinning at her. His mom didn’t look nearly as pleased.
“Can you make Mom understand that these faded jeans are way cooler than those dark-blue ones?” he asked.
Kenzie held the offensive jeans in front of her. “Geesh, these things are so stiff they can stand up even when you aren’t wearing them.”
Vince ventured a grin at the mom. She looked even more uptight here than she had at school. Chocolate-brown eyes and lashes, complexion like melted vanilla ice cream. He’d seen some bow-shaped mouths, but hers was classic. A pair of designer sunglasses perched on top of her dark curls. If he tugged one of those soft little ringlets, it’d probably spring right back into place.
She offered a half grin and took the jeans out of Kenzie’s hand. “These are nice. Tailored.”
“And Bully Baer will call me a nerd,” Ashton said.
“It’s not my fault if Billy Baer has no taste,” Ashton’s mother defended in a gravelly, Demi-Moorish voice. “I won’t have you going to school in sloppy, faded clothes.”
Vince leaned on his cart, staying out of the fight as he followed the woman’s quick perusal of his daughter’s faded jeans and pink ball cap. She dismissed Kenzie’s casual style, picked through a rack of three-button golf shirts and selected a banana-yellow-and-white-striped number.
This boy was going to get the crap beat out of him tomorrow.
With a mutinous scowl, Ashton slunk into the dressing room, the jeans and golf shirt grasped in a tight fist.
Undeterred by the mom’s ruling, Kenzie plowed through a shelf of faded jeans as if she could override her if she found just the right pair.
“Vince?” Hanna’s sultry pronunciation of his name sounded sexy as hell. She stared at him as if she’d rather be anywhere else than standing in the boys’ department at Wal-Mart. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve actually been introduced.”
“Pardon my manners.” He grinned and extended his right hand, hoping to at least get along, seeing as how their kids seemed to have hit it off. “Keegan. Vince Keegan. Nice to meet you.”
“Hanna Rosser.” There was a definite wariness as she brushed his hand with those long, delicate fingers.
He gave her right hand a gentle squeeze, avoiding the huge emerald solitaire. “Kenzie tells me you and Ashton just moved to town.”
“Last week. And it’s back to town. I grew up here.”
She didn’t sound too happy about that. “Right. And you and your mom are opening a bookstore in the old souvenir shop just off 281.”
“How come I’m not surprised you know that?” She pulled her hand away, then adjusted the shoulder strap on her neat little purse. Judging from those woven Cs on the fabric, he’d take bets it wasn’t the fifty-dollar-knockoff variety. Her left hand was bare, with a conspicuous pale circle around
