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“Look who’s talking,” he muttered.
But Riley was totally tuned in to Blue. “Or puking so you don’t get fat.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Blue wrinkled her small, sharp nose. “How does she know about that?”
“Puking’s real important to Aunt Gayle.”
“Gotcha.” Blue shot Dean a quick look. “So I’m guessing Aunt Gayle is pretty boring, too.”
“Totally. She always says ‘huggy huggy’ when she sees me and makes me kiss her, but it’s fake. She thinks I’m a fat weirdo, too.” Riley tugged on the hem of her T-shirt, trying to pull it over the little roll of flesh showing above the waistband of her cords.
“I feel sorry for people like that,” Blue said earnestly. “People who are always judging. My mother, who’s a very, very powerful woman, taught me that you can’t do extraordinary things in the world if you’re spending your time criticizing others because they don’t look or behave the way you think they should.”
“Is your mom…like…alive?”
“Yes. She’s in South America helping protect some girls from getting hurt.” Blue’s expression turned grim.
“That doesn’t sound boring,” Riley said.
“She’s a pretty great woman.”
A great woman, Dean thought, who’d abandoned her only kid to be raised by strangers. But at least Virginia Bailey hadn’t spent her nights getting high and fucking rock stars.
Blue rose and stepped around him to retrieve her cell from the table. “I need you to do something for me, Riley. I can see you don’t want to give Dean your phone number, and privacy’s okay up to a point. But you have to call Ava yourself and tell her you’re okay.” She held out her
phone.
Riley gazed at it but didn’t take it.
“Do it.” Blue might look like an escapee from the Magic Kingdom, but she could be a drill sergeant when she wanted, and Dean wasn’t surprised to see Riley take the phone and punch in a number.
Blue sat next to her. Several seconds ticked by. “Hi, Ava, it’s me. Riley. I’m okay. I’m with grown-ups, so you don’t have to worry about me. Say hi to Peter.” She disconnected and gave the phone back to Blue. Her eyes, bottomless pools of need, returned to Dean. “Would you…like to see my scrapbook?”
He did not want to hurt this fragile kid by raising false hopes. “Maybe later,” he said brusquely. “I’ve got some work to do.” He looked at Blue. “Give me a hug before I go, sweetheart.”
She got up, compliant for the first time since he’d met her. Riley’s appearance had put a crimp in his plan to deal with her lie about April, but only temporarily. He moved to the middle of the caravan so he didn’t bump his head. She wrapped her arms around his waist. He considered copping a feel, but she must have read his mind because she pinched him hard through his T-shirt. “Ouch.”
She smiled up at him as she pulled away. “Miss me, dreamboat.”
He glared at her, rubbed his side, and left the caravan.
As soon as he was out of sight, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the cell she’d transferred over to him. He flicked through the menus, redialed the last call, and got voice mail for a Chattanooga insurance company.
The kid was no dummy.
While he had Blue’s phone, he thumbed through the log until he found the date he wanted. He dialed up her voice mail and entered the password he’d watched her punch in a couple of days earlier. She hadn’t gotten around to clearing out her mailbox, and he listened to her mother’s message with interest.
Inside the caravan, Blue watched Riley slowly return the scrapbook to her backpack. “I didn’t know he was your boyfriend,” she said. “I thought you were like the cleaning lady or somebody.”
Blue sighed. Even at eleven, this child knew the Blue Baileys of the world weren’t in the same league with the Dean Robillards.
“He likes you a lot,” Riley said wistfully.
“He’s just bored.”
April poked her head in. “I have something I forgot at the cottage. Would the two of you like to come with me while I get it? It’s a nice walk.”
Blue still hadn’t made it to the shower, but keeping Riley away from Dean for a while seemed like a good idea, and she suspected that was April’s intention. Besides, she wanted to see this cottage. “Sure. We weirdos like new adventures.”
