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He didn’t understand. Regardless of how hard she tried, no one ever loved her enough to keep her around. No one ever—
She sucked in her breath. The town limit sign flashed by. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue. As she blew her nose, she took a hard look inside herself and saw a woman who was letting fear dictate the course of her life.
She eased back on the accelerator. She couldn’t leave town like this. Dean wasn’t a fool. He didn’t give his heart away to anyone. Was she really too damaged to recognize love, or was she simply being a realist?
She looked down the road for a place to turn around, but before she could find one, she heard the siren.
An hour later, she gazed across the gray steel desk at the chief of police, Byron Wesley. “I didn’t steal her diamond necklace,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Nita planted it in my purse.”
The chief looked over her head to the television, which was tuned to Meet the Press. “Now why would she do that?”
“To keep me in Garrison. I told you.” She slapped her fist on the desk. “I want a lawyer.”
The chief pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “Hal Cates plays golf on Sunday morning, but you can leave a message.”
“Hal Cates is Nita’s lawyer.”
“He’s the only one in town.”
Which meant Blue would have to call April.
But April didn’t answer her phone, and Blue didn’t have Jack’s number. Nita was the one who’d had her arrested, and she was hardly likely to bail her out. That left Dean.
“Lock me up,” she said to the deputy. “I need to think.”
“Are you going to get Blue today?” Jack asked Monday afternoon, the day after Blue’s arrest, as he and Dean stood on side-by-side ladders giving the barn a fresh coat of white paint.
Dean wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Nope.”
April gazed up at him from the ground, where she was painting window trim. The red bandanna she’d twisted around her hair was already speckled with white. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I’m sure. And I don’t want to talk about it.” He wasn’t sure at all. He only knew that Blue wasn’t tough enough to stay in the game. If Nita hadn’t stopped her, she would have been halfway across the country by now. When Dean got up this morning, he’d decided he could either get drunk and stay that way, or slap paint on this damned barn until he was too tired to feel the pain.
“I miss her,” Jack said.
Dean annihilated a cobweb with his paint rag. Despite everything he’d told her, she’d walked away from him.
Riley piped up from the ground below. “I don’t think Blue and Dean are the only ones who had a fight. I think you and April did, too, Dad.”
Jack kept his eyes on the area he was painting. “April and I didn’t fight.”
“I think you fought,” Riley said. “You hardly talked to each other all yesterday, and nobody’s dancing.”
“We’re painting,” April said. “You can’t dance all the time.”
Riley cut to the chase. “I think you two should get married.”
“Riley!” April, who never let anything embarrass her, turned red. Jack was harder to read.
Riley persisted. “If you got married, Dean wouldn’t be a…You know.” She whispered, “A bastard.”
“Your father’s the bastard,” April snapped. “Not Dean.”
“That isn’t very nice.” Riley picked up Puffy.
“April’s mad at me,” Jack said, dipping his roller in the pan attached to his ladder. “Even though all I did was tell her I think we should start dating.”
Dean forced himself to put his own misery aside. He looked down at Riley. “Beat it.”
