The Daddy Secret

“Pretty good, I guess.”

Before Alice could respond, her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her purse and checked the lighted display. “Uh-oh. This is a dear friend whose husband is having some serious health issues. I need to speak to her, Doctor. Would you mind if I left Lucas with you and talked to her in private?”

“No, go ahead.”

As Alice stepped through the door that led to the waiting room, Lucas sidled up to Rick. “Where do you keep Buddy?”

“He’s in the back, near where I live. Come on. I’ll show you.” Rick took Lucas out the door that led to the yard enclosed by a chain-link fence.

As they made their way to the gate, Rick said, “I used to let Buddy have the run of the yard, but he kept jumping over the fence.”

“He must be a supergood jumper,” Lucas said.

“Yes, he is. So I had to lock him in one of the dog runs now, which he doesn’t like, but I can’t trust him to play in the yard without supervision.”

Buddy barked when he spotted them, then wiggled his rump and wagged his tail like crazy. The boy and dog sure seemed to have hit it off. But then, that’s the way it was with kids and pets.

But kids and adults?

That wasn’t always the case.

Maybe it was best that Rick wasn’t the boy’s father. How the hell would he ever relate to him? He hadn’t had any kind of role model growing up. Of course, even if the boy was his—and Mallory certainly had implied that he wasn’t—Rick didn’t have to become any kind of SuperDad. Maybe he could just be a friend or a mentor, like Detective Hank Lazaro had been to him.

If Hank hadn’t come along when he had and seen something worthwhile in Rick, something that was salvageable and worth tapping into, no telling where Rick would have ended up.

In jail or dead, he supposed.

Either way, that didn’t mean Rick wasn’t curious about the man who’d replaced him in Mallory’s life.

He’d save his big questions for her, but it wouldn’t hurt to quiz Lucas a bit—just a few random things that wouldn’t seem unusual for a neighbor to ask.

“Hey, Lucas,” he said. “I have a question for you. Yesterday, when we were talking in front of Mrs. Reilly’s house, you mentioned that your dad wouldn’t let you have a dog when you lived in the city.”

“Yeah, we had a big brick house but no yard. Now we have a little house and a big yard.”

They downsized, huh? “What does your dad do for a living?”

“He was a teacher, but he died when I was seven.”

Oops. Rick hadn’t seen that coming. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, me, too. People said it was a blessing when he died, since he was so sick. But I don’t know about that. I mean, why’d he have to get cancer in the first place?”

Rick, who had never been much of a churchgoer except for a couple of times with Mallory when he’d been stuck on her as a teenager, didn’t have an answer. And he knew enough not to try and blow heavenly smoke.

No answer had to be better than a wrong one, right?

“I know he’s in Heaven now,” Lucas added. “And that he has a brand-new body, with hair again and everything. So that’s good. But I still wish he was here with me. Know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do.”

Rick didn’t especially like the idea that Mallory had met another man that she’d fallen in love with, a guy she’d decided would make a much better husband and father than Rick would have made. But apparently the guy had been good to Lucas, so Rick was grateful for that.

And he was truly sorry the kid had had to lose his father, especially since the boy had obviously cared deeply for him.

As Rick opened the latch on the gate, Buddy let out a howl. The minute he was out of the dog run, he rushed out to greet Lucas as though the two were long lost friends.

“You missed me,” Lucas said, ruffling the fur on Buddy’s neck. “Didn’t you, boy.”

Buddy gave him a wet, sloppy lick.

As Rick watched the two wrestle and play on the grass, it was hard to guess who was happier—the kid or the dog.

“So, tell me something,” Rick said. “What was your dad like?”

“He was just a regular guy, but really nice. Know what I mean?” When Rick nodded, Lucas continued. “He worked at my school and would have been my fourth-grade teacher this year, but he died. So then I had to have Mrs. Callaway instead. And she’s cranky and yells all the time.”

“I guess it’s lucky that you moved to Brighton Valley then. I hear the teachers are much better here.” Rick, of course, had heard no such thing, but he wanted to say something to make the kid feel better, although he’d never been very good at stuff like that.

“Dr. Martinez?” Kara called from the doorway to the clinic. “Fred Ames is here with Nugget.”

“I’ll be right there.” Rick strode over to where Buddy was playing with Lucas and grabbed the dog’s collar. “I’m afraid I need to go back to work now, so we’ll have to put Buddy back into his pen.”

“Aw, man. That’s too bad. Poor Buddy. I’d hate to live in a cage like that.”

So would Rick. In fact, the idea of spending his life in confinement made him think about his uncle, who’d ended up in prison after the last time his drunken rage had turned violent. The neighbors had called the cops, and his aunt had spent a week in the hospital. The state had stepped in, finally, sending Rick and Joey, his younger brother, into foster care.

The whole thing had been pretty embarrassing, since it had been in the local newspaper. Rick had often thought that Mallory’s conservative grandfather, a minister, had decided Rick wasn’t good enough for Mallory because they figured he would grow up to be like the other men in his family.

To be honest, that was one of the reasons Rick hadn’t wanted to settle down, get married and have kids. He’d worried about it a bit, too. Hell, even Joey had run away and cut all ties to everyone who bore a drop of Martinez blood, including Rick.

A couple of years ago, Rick had hired a P.I. and tried to find his kid brother, but it was as if Joey hadn’t wanted to be found. He’d pretty much vanished.

Unless, of course, he was dead.

Rick raked a hand through his hair. At times like this, when the memories haunted him, he wondered if he’d really turned his life around or not. Maybe on the outside he had. But on the inside, he feared that he was still the same troubled little boy who’d been knocked around by his old man and called a loser more times than he could count, abandoned by his parents, left to the care of an alcoholic uncle and finally turned over to the state foster system until his eighteenth birthday.

After putting Buddy back in the dog run and locking the gate, Rick and Lucas headed back to the clinic, while Buddy complained with howls and barks.

“I feel bad for him,” Lucas said.

So did Rick, which was why he took Buddy for a run each evening and why he let him sleep in the house at night.

Buddy was a free spirit, a lot like Rick. He wasn’t cut out to live in a kennel or crate. But if he didn’t get his frisky behavior in check, he wouldn’t be cut out to be a family pet, either.

Maybe that’s why Rick had taken such a liking to the stray, why he’d felt inclined to keep him until he could find a suitable home for him.

Because in some ways, Rick and Buddy were alike. Loners who shouldn’t tempt fate.