Читать книгу Look-Alike Lawman - Glynna Kaye - Страница 13

Chapter Three

“Hurry up, Cory.” Elise glanced back at her lagging son as she walked briskly to their vehicle in the dimly lit grocery-store parking lot. Purse secured. Keys in hand. Her gaze alert to their surroundings.

Normally she shopped for groceries on Saturday morning, especially in the fall and winter as days grew shorter and didn’t allow much time for after-work errands. Thank goodness for daylight savings time, but it would expire in another month. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten until this evening that she’d promised to make a red velvet cake for their youth pastor’s birthday potluck after church tomorrow. She couldn’t find a single drop of red food coloring in the kitchen cabinets.

“Mom?” Cory crawled into his seat and she locked the doors. Started the car.

“What?”

“When’s Officer Wallace coming to the school again?”

As the overhead interior light faded, she looked into her son’s hopeful eyes. He’d talked nonstop about Officer Wallace for the past twenty-four hours. How cool his badge was. How he’d brought him the ball glove. How he knew Daddy was a hero and said it was an honor to meet his son.

She offered a sympathetic smile. “Career day is once a year. It’s doubtful he’ll be back anytime soon.”

The glow in his eyes faded momentarily, then brightened. “Maybe he’ll come to visit anyway, to say hi to the kids.”

She didn’t want Cory to get his hopes up. The likelihood of Officer Wallace’s return was slim. Yes, he’d made a memorable impression on them both, but it didn’t take long for reality to set in. For her guard to go up. It was best for all concerned that Officer Wallace keep his distance. Unless she called the number on his business card, she suspected he would.

But she wouldn’t call him. Not even for Cory. Especially not for Cory. Another cop in his life was too risky.

She smiled again at her son as she put the vehicle in gear and backed it out of the parking place. “He has an important job, sweetheart, so it’s doubtful he could stop by even if he’d like to.”

“I wish he would.”

Heading into the darkened street, anxious to get home, she almost caught her own wishes echoing her son’s.

But that was stupid.

And she wasn’t a stupid woman.

* * *

Gazing down at the comatose Belle Colby, hooked up to medical paraphernalia of every imaginable kind, Grayson harbored the same frustration as his siblings at not being able to get desperately needed answers to their questions.

Although his siblings had picked up rumors from a former neighbor of the then still-intact family, what was the real reason Belle and his dad split? Why had they separated Maddie and him from their twin counterparts? The boys had been two, the girls not much beyond six months. Why had his father led him to believe Sharla Wallace was his birth mom?

Grayson gripped the black, leather-bound Bible in his hands. Did Belle know who’d sent these Bibles to him, his twin brother and two sisters? He and Maddie had received them in June, after their dad headed out on his six-month medical mission and not long before Grayson went undercover. No postmark. No return address. Later, Violet had found one on the seat of her car after church and Jack’s had turned up on the hearth of the home he was renovating.

They all held the same handwritten, anonymous note, the words of which were burned into his memory.

I am sorry for what I did to you and your family. I hope you and your siblings, especially your twin, can forgive me as I ask the Lord to forgive me.

When he and Maddie each received a Bible and identical note, they’d initially been puzzled. Then they’d laughed them off, thinking someone had them confused with somebody else. At that point they hadn’t any idea they each had a twin. But someone had known—and for some reason felt guilty about it.

Who? And why?

Gray shook his head as he continued to watch the quiet rise and fall of Belle’s breathing. Would she ever be able to answer their questions?

The most pressing question of all, however, was where was his dad? No one thought much about it when he didn’t return calls while on a mission trip. He wasn’t big on checking in and worked in remote areas with limited phone reception. Then in August it was discovered he’d left his cell phone at one of his stops in Blackstone, Texas. Probably got hundreds of miles down the road before he realized it, intending to swing back and get it later. Not too much concern at that time.

But in September when Grayson returned from his assignment, the family enlisted him to find their dad so they could get answers to their family mystery. Not long into his search he’d learned that his father appeared unwell at one location. Jack had followed up, going down to search the migrant camp where he’d last been spotted. He’d come up empty-handed except to confirm that when last seen, their father appeared feverish, coughing and maybe not quite lucid at times. Now they were greatly concerned and Gray’s own investigation had escalated.

His heart heavy, he sat down in a molded plastic chair next to the bed, placing the mystery Bible on his knee. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he’d had no doubt that Belle was his mother. All the kids including him looked like her. None of them resembled their father. Although he hadn’t yet looked into her eyes, he’d seen almost three decades’ worth of photographs of her when he’d first come to the home of his long-lost siblings.

For the thousandth time in the past four weeks, he willed himself to remember something—anything—of his first two years with his birth mom. But not even a shadow of her remained.

Incredibly, the woman he and Maddie adored and had grown up believing was their mother wasn’t their birth mother, although she was their little brother, Carter’s, mom. The whole thing seemed like a dream—or a nightmare. He still hadn’t grasped that Violet and Jack had lived separate lives, raised by this woman whose life he and Maddie should have shared as well.

He reached for his mother’s warm but seemingly lifeless hand. Ran his thumb over the back of it. Said a silent prayer, then spoke aloud. “It’s me, Grayson. Jack’s brother. Your son.”

Did that sound weird or what?

She didn’t stir.

“I, uh, understand you never wanted Jack and Violet to pursue finding their father.” He cleared his throat. “But we need to track Dad down. Let him know what’s going on here. I know he’s okay. He’s gotten caught up in his work like he often does. He’s a doctor now. A good one. Did you know that? A missionary doctor much of the time.”

He shook his head, wondering about the wisdom of pouring all this out to the woman in the bed. Could she even hear him? Understand any of it?

“I’m a police officer in Fort Worth. That’s why the others are counting on me to find him. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want us to do. We don’t mean for it to upset you.”

He gently squeezed her motionless hand. “But don’t you worry. Things will turn out fine. All of us kids are grateful we’ve found each other. Maddie’s even moved from Fort Worth and will be marrying your ranch foreman, Ty. Doesn’t that beat all?”

He paused to catch his breath, not used to rambling on in a soliloquy. “Violet and Jack are both engaged to fine folks, too. Keira’s a vet, which will come in handy at the ranch, and Landon’s an old friend of mine. So lots of weddings in the works, and we need you there to help out.”

Silence permeated the room, except for the wall clock ticking away the seconds as he breathed in the antiseptic scents clinging to the Spartan space.

“Nothing in the plans like that for me.” He chuckled, but memory flashed unbidden to the captivating Elise Lopez. Why couldn’t he get her out of his head? “So don’t go getting your hopes up. I think I’m destined to go it alone. You know, the dedicated lawman route.”

“Oh, yeah, the dedicated lawman,” a familiar female voice whispered from the doorway. His sister. The original one. Maddie. “Leaving scores of women pining in his wake.”

With a grin, he turned to look at her. Who’d have thought a polished, twenty-five-year-old former assistant at the glamorous Texas Today magazine would be standing here in Western-flavored garb, hair swept into a ponytail? She still had a stylish city flair, but what a difference a few months had made.

“Pining women, huh?” He stood, tucked the Bible under his slinged arm and quietly moved to join her in the hallway. “You know something I don’t know?”

“Hey, I have more than a few girlfriends at Texas Today who still talk about the time you escorted me to that company cookout. Believe me, they’d sell their BMWs for a chance to get their hands on you.”

“Would hate for them to make that kind of sacrifice for a sorry specimen like me.”

“Yeah, right.” Maddie grinned, then motioned to the doorway behind him. “So how’s...Belle today? Seems strange to call her Mom, doesn’t it?”

“Can’t do it myself.”

Maddie rested a hand on his arm and they moved a short distance down the hall, out of Belle’s earshot—if she could hear them at all.

“But she is our mother, Gray. You and Jack might have doubts about your male parentage, but you only have to take one look at her and know we’re hers.”

His spine stiffened. “I don’t have any doubts about my male parentage. I’m not buying into that Fort Worth woman’s tales. She sounds like a troublemaker to me. Dad’s my dad and that’s all there is to it.”

No way would he even speculate he was Joe Earl’s offspring—a guy that on the best of days you wouldn’t brag about being related to. He didn’t care that his siblings had talked to a neighbor where their parents originally lived in Fort Worth. Patty Earl, the deceased Joe Earl’s wife, seemed to know all about them. Even claimed her man had gotten a sixteen-year-old Belle pregnant with twin boys twenty-eight years ago. She said Belle had tricked Brian into marrying her, claiming they were his and all but implying that’s why Belle and Brian divorced shortly after the birth of a second set of twins.

He wasn’t buying it. Brian Wallace was his father. Period. He believed that. He had to believe it. It’s all he had to hang on to now. The one thing that kept the fragile balance of his world upright in the midst of the onslaught of family revelations.

His brother wasn’t quite as sure. He’d never had a father in his life. Didn’t understand why his abandoned him. It probably made more sense that if Brian Wallace wasn’t his biological father, that could account for his being willing to walk away from him, to let part of the family go.

Maddie’s brow crinkled. “So you don’t think—?”

“No.”

She studied him with concern and he realized his expression was likely as fierce as his thoughts.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Gray.”

“You didn’t. I’ve got a lot on my mind after what we all talked about at breakfast.” His siblings’ hopes of finding their dad—who held the answers their mother was incapable of providing—focused more and more on him.

“His being out of touch isn’t unheard of.” Maddie accurately tracked his thoughts. “But why’d Dad have to do a disappearing act in the middle of this family mess? From what you and Jack found out, he may be terribly ill. We’ve got to find him. You know, before...”

His jaw tightened as her words drifted off, but he knew where she’d been headed. They needed to find him—alive and well.

“I’m doing my best.”

She lifted her chin as if challenging her fears and gave him a resolute smile. “Then he’s as good as found.”

He wished he could reassure his sister. Tell her there was nothing to worry about. But the situation wasn’t promising at this point. He’d like to think people didn’t disappear into thin air, but from his cop standpoint he knew it happened. He didn’t want his dad becoming one of those disheartening statistics.

Maddie gazed at him thoughtfully, her voice low. “Between the two of us, how are you feeling about the rest of this? The twin thing, I mean. Finding out that Mom isn’t our birth mom. I know you dragged your feet, found every excuse under the sun not to see...Belle. Or face your brother.”

He scoffed. “Excuses? That’s what you call my job and physical therapy? My trying to find Dad?”

“You could have found a way to get here sooner than last weekend and we both know it. But I didn’t push you because I remember how it felt the first time I encountered Violet.”

So he hadn’t concealed his mixed-up feelings about the situation as well as he thought he had. He’d essentially talked himself into thinking he could only adequately conduct an investigation into his father’s status from Fort Worth. That he didn’t need to beat a path to Grasslands the moment he’d heard from Maddie. Had he thought if he delayed coming out here it might all go away? That he’d wake up one morning and none of this would have happened? It would again be just him, Maddie and Carter. Their dad and the memories of their mother.

His sister squeezed his arm. “At breakfast this morning, you still seemed a little freaked out with Jack sitting across from you wearing your face.”

Gray scowled. “Wearing my face? Not hardly. I see a family resemblance, sure, like we’re brothers. Or cousins. But I don’t get everyone thinking we’re matching bookends.”

Maddie yelped a laugh as he’d hoped she would. Get her mind off the seriousness of their family situation.

“Look at you,” a gravelly male voice intruded. “Finally got yourself a haircut, did you, boy? About time.”

Puzzled, Gray turned toward a stout, forty-something man sauntering down the tiled floor toward them. Dressed in jeans and a tan uniform shirt, a Western felt hat in hand, a smile spread across the balding man’s face. He stopped beside Gray, giving him a thorough inspection.

“Have to admit you clean up good.” He chuckled, smacking the side of his leg with the hat. “But I never figured you to be one to let that fiancée of yours dress you up like a Ken doll.”

“Pardon?” Gray glanced at Maddie, whose eyes danced with mischief.

“George, this isn’t Jack Colby. This is his twin brother, Grayson Wallace. He’s visiting from Fort Worth.”

The man drew back, squinting to give Gray a more thorough scrutiny—from the collar of his navy knit polo shirt, past neatly pressed gray trousers and down to the tips of polished leather shoes.

“I’ll be swallowed by a horned toad. Shoulda known Jack wouldn’t let a pretty little lady pry those Tony Lamas offa his feet.” Shaking his head with a lopsided smile, he thrust out a hand to grasp Grayson’s. “Good to meet you, son. Heard about the goings-on at the Colby Ranch. Two sets of twins who didn’t know the others were alive. Don’t that beat all.”

“Mighty wild,” Gray acknowledged, amazed at how well-informed a small-town grapevine could be. Must be a piece of cake being a lawman around here. No need for undercover assignments—you camped out at the local diner and kept your ears open.

“Gray,” Maddie chimed in as she looked from one man to the other, “this is George Cole, our sheriff. George, Grayson’s a police officer in Fort Worth. He’s building a respectable reputation for himself back there and his superiors have their eye on him for a move up in the ranks.”

He never should have confided in her. Put like that, it sounded like bragging, even if he wasn’t the one doing it.

“You don’t say.” George squinted again, as if sizing up Gray anew. “Don’t suppose, then, that you’ll be movin’ out this way with the rest of your kin like your sister here did?”

“No plans to, sir.”

“Think about it, young’un. Serious like. Opportunity is knockin’ at your door. We’ve got ourselves a deputy retiring come the end of the year. Lookin’ for a replacement.”

Grayson managed not to laugh. What did they do all day in this sleepy Texas Mayberry? Play checkers and arrest people for overdue library fines? No, he couldn’t see himself as a Barney Fife to this guy’s Andy Taylor.

“Thank you kindly, but home’s Fort Worth.”

George chortled as he turned his hat in his hands. “Don’t let the laid-back trappings of our little cow-town community scare you off, boy. If you’ve a mind to join the family hereabouts, we’d fit you right in. Could get that city-slicker veneer washed offa you before you can say ‘Alamo.’ What do you think, Maddie?”

She turned appraising eyes on her older brother. “I’d love for Gray to move out here. He’d look mighty handsome in boots and a Stetson.”

“See, son? Family ties trump city life and a hotshot career any day.”

“It’s tempting, but I have commitments elsewhere.”

George squinted and gave him a knowing nod. “Shoulda figured as much. Strapping young man like you must have a special lady.”

Gray’s memory flashed to Elise Lopez and at once Maddie slipped to his side and hooked her arm through his, her eyes narrowing.

“A special lady, is it, big bro?” Her tone echoed with mock accusation. “I think we need to have ourselves a private chat.”

“Sorry for blowing the whistle on you and running, son.” The sheriff’s eyes twinkled as he set his hat on his shiny pate and turned away. “But I have to make my rounds. Stopped in to check on my granny. She broke her leg chasing a calf out of the kitchen yesterday.”

Calf? Or had the man said cat? Baffled, Gray fixed his gaze on the lawman striding away, but he sensed Maddie’s eyes boring into him.

“So, Gray, let’s hear it. All of it.”

He turned to her. “All of what?”

“About that special lady.”

He adjusted the sling and secured the Bible under his arm. He didn’t want to explain Elise Lopez. What could he say? That she was one of the most intriguing women he’d met in a good long while—and she wouldn’t give him the time of day? “Sorry to disappoint you, Mad, but there’s been no lady in my life since Jenna showed me the door. The commitment I was referring to is my career.”

“When George made that little lady assumption, you got one of those deer-in-the-headlights looks in your eyes. The kind you had as a kid when you were hiding something and Dad called your bluff.”

“Contrary to your belief, the world has more than its fair share of women who aren’t keen on getting involved with a cop.”

“Jenna didn’t have the sense of a goose.”

Or maybe she was one wise woman?

Regardless, he suspected Elise Lopez had plenty of common sense on her side—and she clearly wanted nothing to do with him. Despite the fact that for some inexplicable reason he’d left his business card with her, he wasn’t accustomed to pursuing women who didn’t show obvious interest.

Maybe it was his pride, but he didn’t intend to start now.