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“All it will take to do what? Damn it, Daniel, talk to me!”
He studied her face for a long moment, then absolutely floored her by chuckling. What on earth was there to laugh about?
“You've changed. You were so sweet-natured and easy to please. The perfect daughter, straight-A student, never caused any trouble, never said a cross word to anyone—except maybe your older brother and sister.”
He remembered all that about her? She had been exactly the way he described her, back when he knew her. It was only within the past three or four years that she had become aware of how tired she was of pleasing everyone but herself. Of living a sheltered, uneventful, unadventurous life that had become increasingly stifling and boring.
She had wished for excitement. She should have remembered that old adage about being careful what one wished for.
“You still haven't answered my questions,” she prodded gruffly.
Another brief hesitation and then he said, “I can't tell you much. Only that you've stumbled into a very complicated situation—as I assume you've figured out for yourself.”
“Go on.”
“Judson Drake thinks I have a wealthy wife back in Texas. He invited me to bring her along on this trip, but I had a convenient excuse to explain her absence. When you showed up at the farm, asking for me by name when no one should have known I was there—and asking with a very obvious Texas twang, by the way—Bernard put two and two together. I admit he isn't the sharpest thorn on the rosebush, but even he can handle that level of mathematics.”
“So why didn't you tell him that I'm not your wife? As clever as you are,” she said, adding an extra helping of sarcasm to her “Texas twang,” “you should have been able to come up with some sort of explanation for my arrival. Say, oh, the truth, for example.”
“Wouldn't have worked. My background, according to what Drake has been told, is one of upper-middleclass comfort. Private schools, public college, fortuitous marriage to a woman with money. Nowhere in that story is a mention of foster care. The truth about how I know you could have blown everything.”
“So the wife is as fictional as your upper-middle-class background?”
His face expressionless again, he nodded.
“Why have you told them these things?”
“I can't go into that right now.”
“You expect me to simply accept what you've told me and go along with this charade for the next two or three days?”
“I wish I could say you have the option of saying no. Unfortunately you don't. These are dangerous people, Brittany—”
“B.J.”
“Sorry. B.J. These men will not accept a change in my s
tory now. One hint that I've tried to deceive them, and you and I will both quietly disappear. That's how they operate.”
“Then why are you here?”
He took a sip of his soda before saying, “There's a great deal of money involved for anyone who is clever enough to get a piece of it.”
“Money?” She stared at him with narrowed eyes. “You're doing this for money?”
He shrugged and drained the remainder of his soda.
B.J. set her water aside. She simply didn't know whether she could believe a word he said.
She had thought he might try to tell her he was an undercover operative for some branch of law enforcement. Would that have been any easier for her to believe? And if so, would it have been because she wanted to think Daniel was on the right side of the law?
“So what you're telling me,” she said slowly, “is that you're running some sort of scam on some very dangerous men. And I'm stuck helping you pull it off because I accidentally arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“That pretty well sums it up.”
“If I refuse, I might just 'quietly disappear.' And if I agree, I could end up making some big mistake, and then we'll still end up dead.”
“You won't make a mistake. All you have to do is remember a few details I'll tell you before we go out again.”
