“Now, Michelle, we’ve already discussed this....”
“We haven’t discussed anything!” she raged, red-faced and weeping. “My father has only been dead three weeks and you’ve already thrown away every single thing he had, even his clothes! You’ve talked about selling the house... I’m still in school—I won’t even have a place to live. And now this! You...you...mercenary gold digger!”
Roberta tried to smile at the shocked man. “I do apologize for my daughter....”
“I’m not her daughter! She married my father two years ago. She’s got a boyfriend. She was with him while my father was dying in the hospital!”
The man stared at Michelle for a long moment, turned to Roberta, snapped the check out of her hands and tore it into shreds.
“But...we had a deal,” Roberta stammered.
The man gave her a look that made her move back a step. “Madam, if you were kin to me, I would disown you,” he said harshly. “I have no wish to purchase a collection stolen from a child.”
“I’ll sue you!” Roberta raged.
“By all means. Attempt it.”
He turned to Michelle. “I am very sorry,” he said gently. “For your loss and for the situation in which you find yourself.” He turned to Roberta. “Good day.”
He walked out.
Roberta gave him just enough time to get to his car. Then she turned to Michelle and slapped her so hard that her teeth felt as if they’d come loose on that side of her face.
“You little brat!” she yelled. “He was going to give me five thousand dollars for that stamp collection! It took me weeks to find a buyer!”
Michelle just stared at her, cold pride crackling around her. She lifted her chin. “Go ahead. Hit me again. And see what happens.”
Roberta drew back her hand. She meant to do it. The child was a horror. She hated her! But she kept remembering the look that minister had given her. She put her hand down and grabbed her purse.
“I’m going to see Bert,” she said icily. “And you’ll get no lunch money from me from now on. You can mop floors for your food, for all I care!”
She stormed out the door, got into her car and roared away.
Michelle picked up the precious stamp collection and took it into her room. She had a hiding place that, hopefully, Roberta wouldn’t be able to find. There was a loose baseboard in her closet. She pulled it out, slid the stamp book inside and pushed it back into the wall.
She went to the mirror. Her face looked almost blistered where Roberta had hit her. She didn’t care. She had the stamp collection. It was a memento of happy times when she’d sat on her father’s lap and carefully tucked stamps into place while he taught her about them. If Roberta killed her, she wasn’t giving the stamps up.
But she was in a hard place, with no real way out. The months until graduation seemed like years. Roberta would make her life a living hell from now on because she’d opposed her. She was so tired of it. Tired of Roberta. Tired of Bert and his innuendoes. Tired of having to be a slave to her stepmother. It seemed so hopeless.
She thought of her father and started bawling. He was gone. He’d never come back. Roberta would torment her to death. There was nothing left.
She walked out the front door like a sleepwalker, out to the dirt road that lead past the house. And she sat down in the middle of it—heartbroken and dusty with tears running down her cheeks.
Michelle felt the vibration of the vehicle before she smelled the dust that came up around it. Her back was to the direction it was coming from. Desperation had blinded her to the hope of better days. She was sick of life. Sick of everything.
She put her hands on her knees, brought her elbows in, closed her eyes, and waited for the collision. It would probably hurt. Hopefully, it would be quick....
There was a squealing of tires and a metallic jerk. She didn’t feel the impact. Was she dead?
Long, muscular legs in faded blue denim came into view above big black hand-tooled leather boots.
“Would you care to explain what the hell you’re doing sitting in the middle of a road?” a deep, angry voice demanded.
She looked up into chilling liquid black eyes and grimaced. “Trying to get hit by a car?”
“I drive a truck,” he pointed out.
“Trying to get hit by a truck,” she amended in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Care to elaborate?”
She shrugged. “My stepmother will probably beat me when she gets back home because I ruined her sale.”
He frowned. “What sale?”
“My father died three weeks ago,” she said heavily. She figured he didn’t know, because she hadn’t seen any signs of life at the house down the road until she’d watched his truck go by just recently. “She had all his things taken to the landfill because I insisted on a real funeral, not a cremation, and now she’s trying to sell his stamp collection. It’s all I have left of him. I ruined the sale. The man left. She hit me....”
He turned his head. It was the first time he’d noticed the side of her face that looked almost blistered. His eyes narrowed. “Get in the truck.”
She stared at him. “I’m all dusty.”
“It’s a dusty truck. It won’t matter.”
She got to her feet. “Are you abducting me?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “Okay.” She glanced at him ruefully. “If you don’t mind, I’d really like to go to Mars. Since I’m being abducted, I mean.”
He managed a rough laugh.
She went around to the passenger side. He opened the door for her.
“You’re Mr. Brandon,” she said when he climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
“Yes.”
She drew in a breath. “I’m Michelle.”
“Michelle.” He chuckled. “There was a song with that name. My father loved it. One of the lines was ‘Michelle, ma belle.’” He glanced at her. “Do you speak French?”
“A little,” she said. “I have it second period. It means something like ‘my beauty.’” She laughed. “And that has nothing to do with me, I’m afraid. I’m just plain.”
He glanced at her with raised eyebrows. Was she serious? She was gorgeous. Young, and untried, but her creamy complexion was without a blemish. She was nicely shaped and her hair was a pale blond.
