First Star I See Tonight (Chicago Stars #8) - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,8
give up without the fight of her life.
By the time she fell asleep, she’d made up her mind. She was going to stick with barmy Esmerelda Crocker and hope for the best.
The next morning, she showered, slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, and ran her fingers through her wet hair—no need for a wig. After she’d grabbed her coffee and a slice of three-day-old pizza, she set out.
The second-story condo she couldn’t afford to keep much longer was part of a five-unit brownstone in the city’s Andersonville neighborhood and boasted its own private parking space. As she slung her bag into her car along with her travel mug and the cold pizza slice, she wondered whether she’d be in jail by the end of the day. It was a risk she had to take.
Graham occupied the top two floors of a converted, four-story former seminary on a tree-lined street in Lakeview. Lakeview wasn’t Chicago’s most expensive neighborhood, but it was one of its best with great shops, trendy restaurants, a stretch of shoreline, and Wrigley Field. She wedged her Sonata into a semi-parking spot across from a postage-stamp park and took a few bites of the pizza and a swig of coffee. Her days of treating herself to a morning Starbucks were gone.
She tugged on a blade of her real hair—short, choppy, the same chestnut brown Duke said her mother’s had been, before she’d been murdered in a sidewalk robbery. Piper was four at the time and barely remembered her, but the effect of her mother’s violent death had set the course of Piper’s upbringing.
Duke had raised Piper to be tough. He’d enrolled her in one self-defense class after another, along with teaching her every trick he’d picked up over the years. He’d taught her to be strong, and even when she was very young, he’d freeze her out if she cried. He’d rewarded her toughness by teaching her to shoot and taking her to ball games, by letting her go with him on trips to the corner bar and laughing when she cussed. But no tears. No whining. And no visits to play at a friend’s house until he’d run a background check.
That was the bewildering, contradictory part of her upbringing. At the same time he demanded strength from her, he was also maddeningly overprotective—a constant source of conflict between them as she’d grown older and he’d planted himself firmly between her and her ambitions. He’d raised her to be as tough as he was and then tried to wrap her in cotton.
She wadded up the rest of her pizza and shoved it in the overstuffed litterbag hanging from her dashboard. She’d begged Duke to let her join him, but he’d refused.
“This business is too dirty for a woman. I didn’t spend a fortune on your education to see you staked out in a car photographing some asshole cheating on his wife.”
Her throat tightened. She missed him. The disturbing combination of his harshness and his overprotection had caused years of raging arguments between them and left her feeling as if she was never quite enough. Still, she’d never doubted his love, and she kept expecting to hear his voice on the phone warning her not to be walking around the goddam city at night or getting into a goddam cab without making sure the driver had a legitimate license.
You drove me crazy, Dad. But I loved you.
She forced a sip of coffee down her tight throat and tried to concentrate on transferring the last of yesterday’s handwritten notes to her laptop instead of thinking about her money-grubbing stepmother, who was now enjoying a town house in Bonita Springs bought with Piper’s money. An hour went by. She wanted more coffee, but that would mean pulling out the Tinkle Belle.
Just as she’d begun to wonder if Graham would appear, his one-hundred-grand metallic-blue Tesla emerged from the alley that backed up to the building’s garages. But instead of pulling into the street, he stopped. The sunlight reflecting off his windshield kept her from seeing much, but she’d parked in plain sight, and he had to have spotted her.
The moment of decision. Would he call the police or not?
She made herself put the window down and give him a cheery wave, along with a thumbs-up, that she hoped signified Esmerelda was loony, but not dangerous, and that he should ignore her and go about his business.
He still didn’t pull out, and she couldn’t tell if he was on his cell. If she