happy.
Quite suddenly she had a headache. Her stomach felt queasy, too, and she began to regret the soup.
I don’t know if I can keep doing this.
But she’d continue to feel as if she was being torn in two as long as she and Nolan were together.
She saw her mother’s face. Heard her say, You’re the one person in the world I’ve always been able to depend on.
And then Nolan, implacable, asking, Where in Oklahoma?
Allie had to close her eyes against the pain that stabbed her temple.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SO NOW HE knew where she’d gone to high school, Nolan thought on the drive home. Assuming she’d told the truth. He’d seen the alarm in her eyes when he pressed for specifics. Would he find there even was a town of Fairfield near Tulsa? And, goddamn it, what was he going to do if there wasn’t?
Or, for that matter, if there was. Fly there next weekend and show her picture around town? From what she’d said, she had moved away over ten years ago, and she might not have lived there that long. She kept repeating that her family had moved a lot.
He wondered if there was a way he could track Allie’s brother. Wright was a common enough last name, but hadn’t Allie mentioned that the guy was still in the Tulsa area? If so, that would be a place to start.
Nolan made himself go back to work when he got home, but brooded all afternoon. He had to lay off when it was time to pick Sean up after basketball practice. Seeing him walking out of the gym with a cluster of other boys, laughing and talking, stopping once to half wrestle with one of them, that was a bright spot in Nolan’s day. Sean had started getting phone calls at home over the past week or two. And he was talking about teammates in the casual way that suggested they were becoming friends.
“Eric says he skis, but Coach doesn’t like it ’cause he’s sure he’ll break a leg and be out midseason. But, man, I’d really like to learn. He says I could ride up with his family...” Or, “Aidan’s got a twin sister. Did I tell you that? He’s kind of doofus looking, but she’s sort of hot. I mean, you know.” His hands shaped a pair of stupendous breasts. “He said she wanted to know who I was.”
Today, he hopped in the truck, fastened the seat belt and planted his feet on the dashboard. “So, I made this awesome pass to Jared and then went for the key. He totally faked out Dylan, spun like he was going to shoot and then zapped the ball to me. I laid it up so sweet.” He pumped his fist. “After practice Coach said he thinks we’re going to have a fabulous season.”
Nolan grinned at him. “That’s great. All that time you’ve been putting in on the hoop at home is paying off, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “I’m going to kick Allie’s butt the next time we play, too.”
“She was pretty amazing for someone who probably hadn’t shot a basket in years.”
Sean grunted his agreement. “It’s like...her body is totally centered. You know? There’s the way she moves, and she has this sense of where she is in relation to everything else. I bet she could have done something like gymnastics.”
“I’ve had the same thought. She did say she took dance lessons when she was a kid.”
Sean started grumbling about a paper he had due, and Nolan was just as glad not to talk about Allie anymore. He was too troubled by his thoughts. He knew she was lying to him, damn it! He only wished he could tell which things that came out of her mouth were lies, and which were truth.
That evening after dinner he went online and verified that, indeed, Tulsa had a suburb named Fairfield. And she was right, there were a lot of other towns named Fairfield around the country, starting with one in California.
So now what? he asked himself. Call the high school and ask for verification that Allie Wright had indeed attended? What excuse could he give? Did schools give out that kind of information?
He frowned. Why wouldn’t they?
Try.
Come morning, he stood there with the phone in his hand, and conducted a serious argument with himself. How would he feel, if he found out Allie was doing a background check on him because she doubted what he’d told her about himself? Trust was part