style="font-size:15px;"> That brought the old mouth down into a nice, tight scowl.
He jumped each time the restroom door opened. Three women gave him the eye, one looked as though she was willing to give him far more than that. Galen finally emerged, slightly less green but still frighteningly pale, hugging her carry-on to her stomach like a drowning woman a log. He thought she might have run a comb through her hair, splashed water on her face, if the damp tendrils hugging her temples and clumped eyelashes were any indication. Those incredible turquoise eyes met his; a flush swept up from underneath the baggy, high-necked sweater—black, severe, a startling contrast with her fair skin, the dark red hair.
“Thank you,” she whispered, a smile flickering over almost colorless lips.
“Rough flight?”
Her gaze darted to his, vulnerable and embarrassed. A breath-stealing urge to put his arm around her swamped him again; he handily fought it back.
She nodded, shifting from foot to foot. Even without makeup, her complexion was flawless, the skin as clear and fine as a teenager’s. Only the hairline creases bookending her mouth hinted that she was older. And yes, Cora, there were freckles. Just a few, nicely arranged.
“We hit—” she swallowed “—turbulence over the lake.” Another smile played peekaboo with her lips. Nice mouth, even if a bit on the anemic side. Geez…how long had it been since he’d noticed a woman’s mouth? Hell, since he’d noticed a woman’s anything? Or, in this case, everything.
At first glance you’d say, okay, sure, she’s pretty—definitely pretty—but in an ordinary way for all that, y’know? Just…average. Average height, average weight, averagely clothed in sweater and jeans. Very average hair, except for the color. Straight, parted in the middle, clipped back. Strictly utilitarian, right? On second glance, however, you’d say, “Hmm.”
On second glance, you’d notice the delicacy of her bone structure, the way one tawny eyebrow sat slightly higher than the other, that the loose sweater, the no-frills jeans, really didn’t hide what he suspected was a spectacular figure as much as she probably thought it did. That her ears were absolutely perfect. If red rimmed.
She held out her hand for the carrier. Short nails. No polish. No rings. “Here, I’ll take that back—”
“No, it’s okay, I’ve got it.” He lifted it up, peeked inside for the first time. Managed not to wince. Huge, batlike ears, buggy eyes, hairy—the thing looked like a Furby. Before they perfected the prototype.
“She was my grandmother’s,” Galen said on a sigh, as if that explained it. Which, in a weird sort of way, it did. “Now she’s mine, I guess.”
Del lowered the carrier. “Lucky you.”
That got a tiny smile. And another blush. “Well. Talk about your inauspicious beginnings,” she said, traces of blue-collar Pittsburghese tingeing her speech patterns. She jerked her head back toward the restroom door, cleared her throat. “So. You know I’m Galen. And you are?”
Del snapped to, now tried to take her bag as well. Wariness flared in her eyes as she inched away, choking it more closely to her. He swallowed a grin. The dog, he immediately surmised, he could have. Whatever was in that bag, though, she’d fight to the death for. “Del Farentino. I’m the contractor doing some work on Cora’s new house.”
“Oh. The one that’s costing her way too much money?” She flushed even brighter. “Th-the house, I mean. Not the contractor…”
“I think she’d probably agree with you on both counts,” Del said with a grin, wondering what it was about this woman that was making him feel…good. Like something remotely human, even. “Well, we might as well get a move on.” Del started down the concourse, assuming Galen would follow.
She didn’t. Del turned around, got bumped from behind by a foreign tourist. He frowned at the not unwarranted suspicion in Galen’s eyes. “What?”
“Why couldn’t Cora pick me up?”
Del took a step back to her, resisting the urge to glance at his watch. “Well, the story is, she went to do some shopping, her car skidded off the road, messing up the muffler or something, so she couldn’t pick you up. And I was the only person to answer the phone. Can we go—?”
She stayed put, squinting at him with an expression caught neatly between guarded and nervous. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
Ah, hell.
“Oh, I’m telling the truth, honey, trust me. It’s whether Cora’s telling the truth we have to consider.” He gave her the reassuring smile he’d given Mrs. Standish earlier. She didn’t smile back. Del took a step closer. The dog yipped. Del’s hand streaked through his hair as minutes ticked by like race cars. “You afraid to get in the truck with me, what?”
“Uh, yeah.” Caution stiffened her features, shadowed her eyes. But not, he thought, from experience as much as…lack of it. That’s what it was, he realized. She was like a child on the first day of school, excited and fearful all at once. She shifted the bag, which was clearly heavy. “Kinda got that drummed into me by the time I was three. It stuck.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand—he hoped his daughter would grow up to be half this streetsmart, which he doubted, which he decided he did not need to think about just now—but he still had a lot of work to do and it was Thanksgiving week and he had to pick Wendy up from the sitter’s at four and, frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. Hadn’t he just explained who he was? Did she really think he made all that up, somehow? Still, he plastered on another smile. “Honey, I just got you to the john before you threw up all over the terminal floor. You can trust me to get you to Cora’s with both your reputation and body parts intact, okay? I mean, come on, already—do I look like someone you should be afraid of?”
She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, color pinking her cheeks. Shook her head. But that was it.
Del huffed out a sigh. “Okay, here’s the deal. Trust me, and I’ll get you to Spruce Lake in just under an hour, no hassles, and for free. Otherwise, take your chances with a taxi. And remember. It’s two days before Thanksgiving. And the weather sucks.”
He pivoted on his heel, started to walk away, figuring if this tactic worked at least fifty percent of the time with a four-year-old, he might have a shot of it working with a grown woman.
Five seconds later, he turned back, undecided whether to throttle or comfort the basket case in front of him. Then he lifted both hands, the carrier dangling like a suspended Ferris wheel basket. “For crying out loud, I know who you are, I know who Cora is, I didn’t run off with your dog when I had the chance—” he jerked the carrier to prove his point, which he noticed did provoke a small, startled reaction on her part, not to mention the dog’s “—so why are you so afraid of me?”
“It’s not that…”
He sighed. Mightily. But he walked back, dumped the carrier and her coat, then fished his wallet from the vest’s inside pocket. As what seemed like the entire population of the Great Lakes region milled around them, he flipped it open to his driver’s license, which happened to sit opposite a picture of his daughter. “Okay, here. I don’t know what this will prove, but what the hell.”
She never even noticed the license, he could tell. She tucked a stray
