Page 65 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
A girl who looks like she can’t be many years older than Betty comes to the gate and opens it. “What’s up, Artie?” she asks.
“Tell Aunt Leah I’ve got another stray lamb.” Then she says to me, “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up, fed, and tucked in.”
It turns out that Artie lives in the hostel, and that all the regular beds are full. So I get a pallet on her floor — an air mattress like you’d take to the beach, clean sheets and a blanket.
Ark and I have vending machine sandwiches, then settle down on her tiny living room floor.
I bury my face in Ark’s fur and cry some more. He washes my face for me, which probably wasn’t sanitary but was super comforting. I fall asleep, my head pillowed on his shaggy side.
29
RICHARD
All this timewe’d been worrying about my sister, she been holed up with Austin in his van. But now she’s booked, just ahead of me catching up with her.
That is so like her. I’d lost track of how many times I’d called girlfriends, gone to resorts, and looked up her credit card records to discover where she’d run to.
I’d thought we were past all that when she got her Master’s in fashion design and started her own boutique. Oh, sure, I’d had to bail her out a couple of times when she miscalculated her overhead. And she was always pestering me to send her dresses from all the places I went.
That had slowed down since I quit traveling around as much. Kandy and the vineyard has kept me too busy to indulge in the traveling business playboy lifestyle. Before you ask, no, I don’t miss it at all.
Then I’d gotten this crazy prenup contract from a guy I’d never heard of before. Lee’s business is incorporated, and she gets a salary from it and an allowance from the family business.
She’s not collected the allowance or the salary for nearly three months. She doesn’t answer her phone, she’s not been to her apartment.
Meanwhile, Jason fancy-pants is all over the news, advertising for his lost bride.
Lost cash cow, I’d say. That prenuptial agreement signs over control of Rylie’s business and a hefty chunk of her quarterly allowance. It also has some weird references to inheritance that make no sense at all.
I hadn’t liked the look of it, so I’ve not signed off on it. I’m not sure if Jason missed that I would have to vet any such move since I’m on the board of directors for her company, or if he thought he could pull a fast one on me. Or maybe he’s just that ignorant of business management.
I drive carefully down the freeway, trying to watch on both sides of the road until I nearly sideswipe a woman with a kid in her backseat. Then I focus on driving and listening to the police scanner and CB while Austin does the looking.
The CB radio crackles to life. “Breaker, breaker one-nine. This here’s the Rolling Junk Wagon. Anybody got your ears on?”
I pick up the handset. “This is Golden Limo. I got ears, Junk Wagon, come on?”
“Hey, Limo. Ain’t heard you in a while. Hear you been nesting.”
I can’t help but grin, even under the circumstances. I key the mike. “Yeah, I got a sweet deal. Pretty woman and a cute kid. How about you, JW? Over.”
“I got a landing pad, Limo. Say, I near crashed my career today. Woman laid her pedal bike down damn near under my rig. Over.”
A cold shiver ran down my spine. Rylie had been on a bicycle. And she never could ride worth a damn. “What did she look like? over.”
“Buzz cut, chunky. Had a big dog with her.”
I glance over at Austin, who has stopped looking out the window and is staring at the radio box.
“What did the dog look like?” I ask because a buzz cut doesn’t sound like my Rylie.
“Big mother…marked like a German shepherd, but long hair. He yanked her back, and I was able to miss her by inches. I called the police because I wasn’t where I could stop. When I turned back at the next off ramp, she wasn’t anywhere around.”
“That sounds like Ark,” Austin says. “And I buzzed her head a couple months ago after she tried to cut her own hair.”
“You buzzed my sister’s hair?” I snarl at Austin.
“Didn’t know she was your sister,” he shrugs. “Only name she gave me was Lee. She had no ID and was wearing this crazy get up that looked like a motion picture wedding gown. She tried to cut her own hair and did such a bad job of it, there wasn’t much else to do. That was after the pawn shop wouldn’t take her jewels.”
