Abby, Get Your Groom!

Clearly he had no idea how overwhelmed she was if he thought there was any way she could be good company right now. She declined the invitation with the polite excuse that she’d promised to eat with China tonight.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, then,” Dylan said without seeming to take any offense from the rejection.

They both stood and as he did, he picked up the key from the picnic table. “I think you should hang on to this.”

This time Abby took it from him, her fingers brushing his as she did and making her oddly aware of some kind of heat passing between them.

“Are you okay?” he asked then, as if he’d just noticed that she was a little dazed.

“I’m fine. There’s just been a lot that came at me all of a sudden...”

“Why don’t you at least let me drive you home.”

Abby took a deep breath of the evening air to clear her mind and shook her head. “I’m only a block away. The walk will do me good.”

“Are you sure?” he asked skeptically.

“I am,” she said, wondering if she should thank him or something.

But she didn’t feel altogether grateful for what she’d learned tonight, so instead she just said goodbye and headed back the way she’d come.

It was only as she walked home that she recalled feeling somehow strengthened by the thought of picking through her past with him by her side.

Why would that have happened? she asked herself when it struck her as weird all over again.

It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was fabulous looking—even though she suddenly found herself happy to think that she’d be seeing him again tomorrow night.

Maybe it was just because he was a big, strong guy who gave the impression that he could handle himself and anything thrown at him.

Except that whatever got thrown would be thrown at her...and so far, he’d been the one doing all the throwing.

But still, that must be it, she decided.

Because after all, what else could it be?

Certainly not that she was attracted to him.

They were worlds apart and she knew better than to try crossing over from her world to anyone else’s.

Chapter Three (#ulink_77ad53b3-cd5b-51d9-a30e-f2bda1414656)

“So... Dylan Camden didn’t come to tell you you’re the secret, illegitimate daughter of a high-society socialite.”

Like Abby, China fantasized a lot of scenarios for her friend that had extravagant happy endings.

It was early Saturday morning. After years of sharing an apartment to make ends meet when they’d aged out of foster care, Abby and China now had their own studio apartments across the hall from each other in a north Denver Victorian house that had been converted into an apartment building.

China had been on a date on Friday night and had come home too late for Abby to tell her about the meeting with Dylan. But the minute China woke up this morning she’d padded across the hall in her pajamas and bare feet to hear what Abby had learned.

Abby had told her the whole thing over coffee and cereal at her small pedestaled kitchen table.

“What do you think is in the lockbox?” China asked then. “A million dollars in gold coins? Another key and the number of a safety deposit box full of diamonds? A will that makes you—”

“Queen of a small country?” Abby finished with a laugh. “Somehow I don’t think being the abandoned daughter of someone who rich people used to strong-arm their employees leads to stuff like that.” And she didn’t want to entertain any more hopes for anything. Not after suffering the kind of crash she’d had last night when it finally sank in that the real story of her past was so much seedier than she’d ever imagined.

She turned her open laptop so China could see the screen. “I looked up old newspaper articles on Gus Glassman last night. Here’s his picture.”

“Oh, well, no wonder you’re gorgeous—you came from good genes,” China said the minute she saw the photograph. “But you didn’t get your dark eyes or dark curly hair from him—his eyes are lighter and the hair is straight and sandy brown. You have his nose and mouth, though. Anything about him look familiar?”

Abby shook her head. “Other than that little bit of resemblance, no. There were no flashes of looking up at him from my crib.”

“He has nice eyes. I wouldn’t be afraid to date him if I met him somewhere. He doesn’t look like someone who could kill someone else,” China said.

Abby knew her friend was searching for the positive side. But the facts didn’t seem to bear that out.

“The articles back up what Dylan told me,” she said. “Except that Dylan made it sound more like an accident and the articles don’t. Gus had threatened the supervisor before—often enough that the supervisor had gone to the police about him because he was worried about his safety.”

“If the cops didn’t do anything they must not have thought your father was too scary.”

“The police told the supervisor there was nothing they could do but file a report. But there was one article that said the police were on the side of the Camdens so they wouldn’t do anything because the Camdens were involved—like the police were in their pocket or something.”

“They are rich and powerful...” China said over her coffee cup.

“The supervisor’s factory was taking a vote that day about whether or not to unionize. If that factory had voted to do it, it seemed like the workers in the other factories would, too. Gus—”

“He’s your father, you know? You could call him that.”

“It just doesn’t seem like it,” Abby admitted. Despite all the years she’d thought about someone coming to claim her, now she wasn’t sure she wanted to claim him.

But she didn’t tell China that. When China was seven years old she’d found her mother dead from a drug overdose on the kitchen floor. With no idea who her father was and no other family, China had gone into the system. But she remembered her mother and the time they’d had together. She loved her mother in spite of the addiction that had killed her and put China in situations that China still had nightmares about. Through it all, China still claimed her.

Given that, it made Abby feel a little ashamed to admit that she wasn’t eager to do the same with Gus Glassman, that she didn’t feel much otherthan shame for what she’d come from.

Rather than calling him her father or Gus Glassman, she said, “He was at the factory to intimidate the supervisor so the vote wouldn’t be held. Employees testified that they were all afraid when they saw him. When he walked in, a lot of them decided not to vote at all. But the supervisor stood up to him and...” Abby shrugged. “They fought. The supervisor was killed. The newspaper articles also said that Gus had a police record stretching back to when he was a teenager. It was for minor things but still—”

“Okay, so he wasn’t a saint. But if he was a good dad to you for those two years, that’s something.”

Abby knew that was how her friend would look at it because that was how China viewed her own years with her mother, forgiving her mother everything because her mother had loved her. But China’s mother had done most of her harm to herself. She hadn’t killed someone else.

“At least I guess I can be glad that Mark isn’t around for this,” Abby said then.

“I’m glad he isn’t, too. He’d just make you feel worse about it!”

That was true enough.

“It’s kind of hard to feel good about it, though,” Abby confessed then. “Look farther down in the article—there’s a picture of the supervisor.”

China did.