A Little Texas

But what would she do? There was no way the salon could generate extra income in the coming months. It was post-Christmas and debt squashed unnecessary services for regular customers. Many spas had closed their doors and many friends had gone from esthetician to cocktail waitress in the past few months.

The bartender finally moseyed toward her. He eyed her a moment before asking, “You want another?”

Kate waved her hand over the empty tumbler. “No thanks. If I have any more, I might go home with Pushy over there.”

“In that case, I’d like to buy her another drink,” the bed-rumpled hunk deadpanned.

Kate laughed. What else could she do? Her life was falling apart and someone wanted to pick her up. Just not in the way she needed.

She turned to the guy. He stared back, amusement in his brown eyes. She almost rethought her position on taking him up on his not stated, but obviously intended offer. “Listen, you don’t want to deal with me tonight. It’s been a hell of a day, and I just lost eight hundred dollars at the blackjack table. Unless you’ve got ten thousand dollars in your pocket, there isn’t much else I want out of those pants.”

The bartender laughed. “She’s got you there, partner.”

The hunk joined in on the laughter. “Not only sexy, but a smart-ass mouth. Damn, if I don’t want to take you home right now.”

“How much are you worth?” Kate asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Not nearly enough.” He slid his own empty glass toward the bartender. “But I figure I can at least afford to buy you another drink.”

Kate smiled. “Well, I’m gonna pass. It’s almost midnight and that’s when my car turns into a pumpkin.”

She rummaged through her bag, found her matching Prada wallet, flipped it open and tossed her credit card onto the counter. As she snapped her wallet closed a small, yellowed piece of paper caught her eye. She’d carried it with her for years and years.

She pulled it from the pocket in which it had been nestled. Written in her grandmother’s shaky handwriting before she’d died was a name. It hadn’t mattered that Kate already knew the truth about him. That nearly everybody in her hometown had known the truth about the man. Her grandmother insisted on putting it in writing. Like that mattered. Justus Mitchell.

The name of her biological father.

The man who refused to claim her.

The man she hated.

She fingered the timeworn edges of the paper. Justus Mitchell had once been the richest man in East Texas. His lands had stretched as far as the eye could see and his oil money went as deep as the earth that sheltered the precious commodity. The man was rich, powerful and politically connected. In his heyday, he’d owned everyone from cocktail waitresses to governors. He still held influence, or had the last time she’d checked. But even the powerful were vulnerable to hidden truths. Look what illegitimate children and mistresses had done to politicians.

Kate had morals. She had character. But she wasn’t beyond blackmail in order to save her salon. And a low-down snake like Justus had mounds of money sitting in the bank.

So…if she needed money, he might as well provide what he’d refused to give her so many years ago. Child support.

He owed her. She’d feel no guilt because Justus wasn’t a victim.

And neither was she.

CHAPTER TWO

RICK MENDEZ SWALLOWED the words he wanted to say as he watched Justus Mitchell roll his way. He shouldn’t be here. There was no need. Rick could handle the center without the old man’s meddling.

Rick watched as Justus navigated the maze of the recreation room. The sloped shoulders, withered legs and blue-veined hands betrayed the power of the man halting his wheelchair before a table set with dominoes. He could no longer walk, but he still commanded any room he entered.

“So how are things progressing, Enrique?”

Rick set the bill for the sprinkler system on the Ping-Pong table and moved toward the older man. Only Justus called him Enrique. “No problems yet.”

“You know, I’ve launched many ventures over the years, but none of them have been as important as this one. This one is for Ryan.” His chin jutted forward emphatically, as if Rick could forget how intricately involved Justus’s son had been in the initial idea of Phoenix, the Hispanic gang rehabilitation center. Ryan had given it the name, believing that, like Rick, others could rise from the ashes and become new again.

Rick looked at the old white man staring at him with violet-blue eyes. They were Ryan’s eyes…yet different. At that moment, Rick missed Ryan as keenly as he ever had.

“I haven’t forgotten, but I’m not doing this because of Ryan. This center isn’t a memorial. It’s vital. And working with gang members isn’t going to be easy. Theirs is a different world.” Rick unconsciously rubbed a hand across the tattoos on his chest before catching himself. “There will be resistance in the gang community, resistance that might not be pleasant.”

“We can deal with thugs. You of all people should know that.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. Justus shifted his gaze away, a small measure of retreat. Old Man Mitchell knew better than to remind him of who he’d been. “You’ll have to trust me. I can do this.”

“I want to be involved.”

Rick tamped down his anger. “You are involved.”

Justus snorted. “I’m only the bank.”

“Si,” he said, just to remind Justus of how different they still were. “That has been your role since the beginning, and it is a most worthy role. You can’t relate to the men who will come here. I can. I know the path they’ve walked. I know the pain and regret.”

Justus didn’t flinch. “I know regret, too.”

Rick nodded. “I know, but that doesn’t change the fact that the men who come here will have almost nothing in common with you. Other than wanting to shake free from the life they now lead.”

“Fine. I didn’t come here to oversee you.”

Rick felt a moment’s relief, then a prickling arose on his neck. Justus wanted something.

“I have a request. It’s quite, ahem, delicate.”

Rick crossed his arms. He didn’t need this now. Justus had employed Rick when he’d first come to live at Cottonwood and since then he’d done many things for the man before him. Nothing illegal, but some of those tasks made him feel uncomfortable in his skin. Of course that had been before Ryan died. Before Justus’s stroke. Before he had changed. Before Rick had tired of being Justus Mitchell’s lackey. Yet, Rick owed Justus more than he liked to admit.

And he owed the man’s late son.

If it hadn’t been for Ryan, Rick would not be the man he was today. Ryan’s death had bound him to the Mitchells with invisible ties that would never be severed.

“What?”

Justus’s eyes closed for a moment, before opening and piercing him with their intensity. “I have a daughter.”

“You have a daughter?”

“Si,” he said to be annoying. Satisfaction flashed across his face before he continued, “No one knows about her. Well, rather, they don’t talk about her.”

“Why?”

The old man rolled a bit closer, banging into the foos-ball table and causing the little soccer men to spin. The low pendant light cast a gray pall on his pasty skin. “Her mother was a waitress over in Oak Stand. I’d been with her five or six times, but there could have been others. She didn’t seem the choosy type. The child could have been mine, or not. I never bothered to find out.”

“Then why worry about her now?” Rick eased himself onto the corner of the new pool table. The green felt was stiff beneath his fingers—very different from the one at the deli in the barrio where he’d won money off leathery broken men. He’d been a ten-year-old hustler with the instincts of a shark.