The Father Factor

Those last four words seemed to make some kind of low-wattage lightbulb click on in the young man’s head. He stopped looking at his hand. “Uh, yeah, have a good—” He frowned. Hadn’t someone just said that? “…uh, Miss Ameri—Miss Duncan,” he finished vaguely.

On her way out of the drugstore with the tube of lip balm still in one hand and a leather briefcase in the other, Shallis sighed. At some point, surely, this kind of thing had to stop.

But not yet, apparently.

“Well, hey, it’s Hyattville’s very own home-grown princess!” said the man who’d just emerged from the real estate office she was passing.

“Good morning, Mr. Delahunty,” she answered, digging the appropriate smile out of her extensive repertoire the way she might have dug the right lipstick out of a crammed makeup case.

The law office of Abraham Starke beckoned to her, several doors down. It had slatted cedar blinds in the windows, a polished brass knocker and name plate on the door, and a facade of pretty, cream-painted nineteenth-century brick, trimmed in Wedgwood-blue.

If she had pocketed that extra forty-five dollars in the drugstore like a felon, and left the unfortunate youth to explain the discrepancy to his boss, she would have missed crossing paths with Mr. Delahunty. By the time he’d appeared, she would already have gained the comparative safety of a private appointment with a man who was old enough to be her grandfather and was surely therefore not about to be impressed—or reduced to a gibbering heap—by former beauty queens.

Should she conclude that sometimes crime did pay?

Mr. Delahunty was her father’s assistant manager at the Douglas County Bank, so she couldn’t be rude. In fact, if she was ever rude, to anyone, anywhere in town, at any time, day or night, the story would probably make the front page of Hyattville’s weekly newspaper.

“Hyattville’s Very Own Home-Grown Princess says, ‘Scram!’ to Local Puppy,” or something.

It got wearing, after a while. Made some of life’s curlier issues a little harder to resolve. Who she was and what was really going to make her happy, for example.

Mr. Delahunty was asking questions. How did she enjoy being back in town? Three months, wasn’t it? How did it compare to L.A.? Didn’t she ever hanker for the bright lights and the celebrity lifestyle she’d left behind?

She couldn’t possibly give him a truthful answer. Even if he had all day, she didn’t. Abraham Starke would be expecting her at any moment, and she had to be back in her office at the Grand Regency Hotel right after lunch, to deal with a To Do list six feet long.

“Hyattville is a great little town,” she told him. “I don’t have any regrets about leaving L.A.”

Which was true as far as it went, but it didn’t go anywhere near all the way.

“Well, you have a great day, and I’ll tell your dad I ran into you. You know, if that Miss America had only turned out to be a prison escapee, or something…”

“I know,” Shallis drawled, smiling. “How unfair can you get, huh? How dare the woman have led such a blameless life!”

“Smart, beautiful and funny, too.” Duke Delahunty said to the April sky. His expression began to resemble the expression of the drugstore counter clerk a few minutes ago.

“It was good to see you, Mr. Delahunty,” Shallis said quickly.

Then she smiled at him again because, like almost every other citizen of Hyattville, he was genuinely proud of her and genuinely sorry that she’d so narrowly missed winning the Miss America crown. It would be ungracious to get angry about the level of support she’d always had here, when the cleavage gazers were well in the minority.

But the pageant was more than five years ago.

She wondered if Hyattville would ever let her move on.

An old-fashioned brass bell tinkled when Shallis open the front door of Abraham Starke’s law office, and his middle-aged receptionist looked up from her computer screen.

“Oh, Miss Duncan!” She beamed. “I’ll let Mr. Starke know you’ve arrived. He’s waiting for you.”

Instinctively, Shallis looked at her watch.

“Oh, no, you’re not late,” the receptionist said, fast and breathless. “I’m sorry, I just meant he’s expecting you.”

She pushed her swivel chair back too fast, stood up and stumbled over one of its wheels. A sharp curse word escaped her lips, and she threw a panicky look back at Shallis, as if a one-time first runner-up in the Miss America pageant had the right of citizen’s arrest over any woman who swore in public.

What next? Would Abraham Starke have an attack of hospital-strength heartburn at the sight of her, or something?

He’d been the Duncan family’s lawyer since before Shallis was born. Surely he might be one person who wouldn’t think of her in a ball gown with a pageant princess’s tiara on her head, but would have memories of some less exalted outfit from her past. A diaper and a sunhat, for example. Or a Girl Scout uniform. She’d seriously prefer either of those.

The receptionist rapped at the door of his private office, opened it and poked her head inside. “Miss Duncan is here to see you, Mr. Starke.”

“Yes, please show her in,” said a voice that didn’t sound like it belonged to someone in his eighties.

Two seconds later, Shallis came face-to-face with the man who six years ago had gotten dangerously close to ruining not just her sister Linnie’s wedding day but Linnie and Ryan’s whole marriage.

Jared Starke.

Not Abraham.

Oh, yeah, this Mr. Starke would have memories from her past, all right.

Her whole body went hot, and then cold. Reaction rushed through her, changed direction, rushed back again. She felt as if she’d been ambushed by ancient feelings she hadn’t enjoyed at the time and liked even less now. Surely it all should have gone away, after so long?

She’d felt so fiercely protective of her sister since getting back to Hyattville three months ago, when she’d learned the full story behind the fact that Linnie and Ryan weren’t parents yet, after six years as man and wife. She didn’t want anything to come along that might impinge on Linnie’s happiness any further.

If Jared still had the power to do that…

He was probably the one person in the world who could have made Shallis nostalgic for the princess treatment she regularly received from everybody else in Hyattville—everybody except her dad. She couldn’t stand the princess treatment, but at least she knew how to handle it.

She’d never known how to handle Jared. At best—as on Linnie’s wedding day—she’d only pretended.

He was Abraham Starke’s grandson, and she’d had no idea that he was back in town, let alone that he’d apparently taken over his grandfather’s law firm. He was sinfully good looking, impossible to trust, and she didn’t like him one bit.

No, really.

She didn’t.

She wouldn’t betray Linnie like that, and she wouldn’t be such a fool. She’d developed some pretty powerful instincts toward self-protection in recent years.

“Shallis,” he said, standing at once, and fast, so that he was on his feet almost before she’d fully entered the room. The Southern courtesy bred into him since childhood hadn’t been abraded by Chicago’s brasher style.

The noon sunshine reflecting into the office through its east-facing window caught the natural blond highlights in his hair and made them stand out against the thicker and darker strands beneath. His tan was no doubt the artificial result of frequent sessions on a big city tanning bed but it suited him all the same, even around the outer corners of his eyes, where a couple of fine, tiny wrinkles had begun to form.

His dark tailored pants and plain white shirt covered a strong male body that seemed at ease in its own skin, full of latent power but with nothing left to prove. He must already have proved himself plenty of times, with plenty of women. The electric aura of sensual success hovered around him, yet he acted as if he had no idea it was there.

Yeah, right. Like I’m buying that! Shallis thought. A man like him would always know it was there.

He must be around thirty-three years old by now, or maybe just turned thirty-four, against her own age of going on twenty-eight. He’d been her sister’s first serious boyfriend, starting from when Linnie was in senior year of high school and Shallis herself had hit thirteen. Thirteen was an impressionable age, and Shallis had been…

Yup, impressed.