Page 48 of Bad Mother

Mirabelle returned to her chair and raised her glass. “To my girl, who is good and decent clear down to her bones, who does the right thing no matter the cost.”

“Hear, hear,” Gavin said softly, meeting Sienna’s eyes, watching as happy color rose in her cheeks.

“And if I may add,” Argus broke in before they could take a sip, “to fate bringing you back to us.”

Gavin could definitely drink to that.

“Before you get going, can I show you something?” Gavin asked.

Sienna looked at him sideways. They’d finished dinner and enjoyed dessert on the patio as Sienna told Mirabelle and Argus more about her life, Gavin soaking it in as well. Sienna had hugged them both goodbye, promising to call Mirabelle. It’d made Gavin happy to see the two women reunited. “I don’t know. It depends what it is,” she answered.

“Trust me.”

“It’s already dark.”

“That won’t matter.”

She shot him a glance, but he could see in her eyes that he had her halfway convinced. “I really should get home and—”

“I won’t keep you long. It’s close by. I think you’ll like what I have to show you. And taking your mind off the case for a little while isn’t a bad thing, right?”

Sienna sighed. “Okay, fine. But no more than an hour.”

Gavin grinned and led her to his car, parked in Mirabelle’s driveway, and opened the passenger door for her so she could slide inside. She was wearing a simple navy dress, belted loosely at the waist, and as she lifted her legs to place her feet on the floor of his car, her dress lifted, giving him a shot of the curve of her smooth thigh. The desire to reach down and run his hand along that thigh was so strong he had to grit his teeth as he shut the door and rounded the car.

“When you say close by—”

“Five miles, maybe less,” he said. God, she smelled good, her scent even more detectable in the small, enclosed space. She was wearing perfume, something she hadn’t worn when they were young—something she wouldn’t have been able to afford then—but beneath that, he smelledher, and it was a jolt straight between his legs. He swore he could still remember how she tasted.

“Okay,” she said, putting her seat belt on as the car purred to life. “Nice ride.”

“Thanks.” He was proud that he’d kept the sudden surge of desire out of his voice, and as he brought his seat belt around his body, he took the opportunity to adjust himself.

She was quiet for a minute as he turned the corner off the street where Mirabelle lived. “Did you ever offer to teach Mirabelle how to drive?” she asked, her thoughts obviously moving from his car to what Mirabelle had said earlier about preferring to take the bus.

“Many times,” he said, shrugging. “She’s stubborn about it. But I can’t force her if she doesn’t want to.” He paused for a moment, looking over his shoulder as they merged onto the highway. “I sometimes wonder if it has to do with my father.”

“How so?”

“I wonder if he eroded her confidence. She doesn’t talk about him a lot, just that he wasn’t a great guy.”

“Yes,” Sienna said distractedly, obviously recalling something. “She told me the same thing.”

He glanced at her. He wasn’t surprised. Mirabelle had always considered Sienna a daughter. Whatever she’d told Gavin, she’d likely told Sienna. He’d stopped asking his mother about his father when he was about twelve, as she’d always get this intensely pained expression on her face and disappear into her room for hours afterward.

Gavin got the impression that not only wasn’t he a “great guy” but he’d been physically abusive. And so he could only be grateful that she’d taken him and left. They’d moved around a bit when he was a kid. They’d lived in Las Vegas for a couple of years, a town he barely remembered because he’d been so young, and then Atlantic City for a shorter time. Then they’d moved to Reno, where she’d found the job with Argus. It hadn’t been long before she’d taken little Sienna Walker under her wing, the seven-year-old girl who lived three trailers over... the one who’d first been his best friend and later his first love.

Maybe Mirabelle had simply been trying to find the place that felt the most like home with the few material possessions or prospects she’d had at the time, or maybe she’d moved them around for a few years because she didn’t want to be tracked down. But if it was the latter, apparently the man she’d been evading hadn’t been too serious about doing any tracking, because Gavin was a man close to thirty now, and he hadn’t ever seen hide nor hair of him.

Nor did he want to. If Mirabelle said he was a less-than-stellar person, he knew it was true.

The radio played quietly, and though Gavin’s mind had drifted for a few minutes, the mood was comfortable. The quiet easy. Beside him, Sienna looked like she was enjoying the chance to lay her head back and rest, the landscape gliding by along with the blur of headlights.

He exited the highway and made a couple more turns before finally pulling off the road and stopping in front of a guard shack, where he inserted the pass he’d bought a few days before when he’d looked up this place. The gate lifted, and Gavin continued on, then stopped in a small parking lot and shut off the lights.

They both stepped from the car, Sienna standing at the door for a moment as she stared out over the water and then pulled in a breath, looking at him over the roof of the car. He smiled.

She shut the door and then walked forward, across the small paved area surrounded by trees and grass. Tall, muted streetlights dotted the parking lot, casting a soft glow over the pond beyond, the swan clearly visible as he glided across the water.

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