but, yes, I suppose it’s one reason. I wouldn’t have expected you to pick up on that.”
“Because I’m just an insensitive jerk?”
“Some of the time,” she agreed bluntly.
Her gaze met his with that directness he sometimes found so disconcerting.
“Other times you can be...surprising,” she added.
“You said your past might be only one of the reasons my relationship with my daughter matters to you. What’s another?”
“Maybe I’m just a sucker for a happy ending.”
Slade had the feeling that it was a whole lot more complicated than that, more personal. He’d known from the beginning that she was attracted to him, but he’d figured his refusal to get involved had only turned him into a challenge. Now he wondered if he’d been wrong. Could she be developing real feelings for him? He hoped not. He could have told her he was a bad bet. Hell, she could surely see that for herself after all these months.
Finally, he dragged his gaze away from hers, tried to ignore the rock-hard arousal that long, lingering glance had stirred. If he’d been a different kind of man or she’d been a different kind of woman, maybe they could have done something about it. As it was, she was off-limits.
“We should probably be going,” he said, his voice gruffer than he intended. He busied himself with calling for the bill, carefully counting out the money, taking enough time to assure that his body settled down.
When he finally risked another look at Val, the color was still high in her cheeks, as if she were embarrassed at unwittingly revealing some innermost secret.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, her controlled facade slipping neatly back into place. She moved briskly from the restaurant, allowing him no more than a glimpse of that swaying walk of hers. Just outside the door, she halted abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” Slade asked.
Val glanced up and down the street. “I don’t see any sign of Annie. She promised to stay right out here and she’s gone.”
“She’s probably just popped into one of the stores,” Slade said, stepping out onto the sidewalk to see for himself. “Come on, let’s check Dolan’s. She seems to have developed a real fondness for the ice cream there. She’s probably trying to talk Sharon Lynn into giving her a cone right now.”
But Annie wasn’t at the drugstore soda fountain and Sharon Lynn said she hadn’t seen her.
“I had a bad feeling when she asked to go outside,” Val said. “She was upset. I should have stopped her.”
“What about me? I’m her father. I didn’t think she’d take off. Let’s take a minute and think about this. It’s a small town,” he said, as much to reassure himself as Val. “How far could she have gone? It’s been less than a half hour since she left the restaurant.”
He thought of the tale Harlan Adams had told him about Jenny. Surely he hadn’t shared the same story with Annie. If so, was she impetuous enough to have tried the same stunt herself?
“Is the car still where we parked it?” he asked, peering down the street.
“Well, of course,” Val said, without even looking. “She can’t drive, Slade.” She dangled the keys in front of him. “I have these.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. It was one less thing to worry about. He doubted Annie’s skills ran to hot-wiring a car, unless she’d been hanging out at his father’s garage. Still, he couldn’t prevent the gut-sick sense of dread that washed through him when he realized that Annie was definitely missing.
Even though he’d just let her off the hook—and rightly so—he still wanted to rail at Val for getting them into this fix in the first place. If they hadn’t been planning a party, if they hadn’t come into town, if, if, if...
Bottom line, though, he had to find his daughter, and when he did, he was going to tan her hide, no matter what the so-called experts had to say about spanking these days.
For the next twenty minutes, he and Val searched high and low, but there was no sign of Annie in any of the likely places.
“You don’t suppose she’s gone to the bus station?” he asked Val, not quite able to bring himself to believe that his daughter was upset enough to truly run away. Had she decided to go back to his parents in Wilder’s Glen? Could she possibly have enough money in her pocket for the ticket?
Val gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Stop it right this minute. That child adores you.