The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy Read online

  And found herself waiting in another large room after she had received her personal property, which consisted of a belt, a Cartier watch, an emerald ring, and a half-empty purse, in which, fortunately, there had been a lone credit card in the side pocket. The very helpful deputies also gave her a paper with the location of her car and pointed to the window where she would pay her fine along with everyone else in Houston.

  Robin made the mistake of asking the clerk when she could pay, which earned her a reprimand to be seated while the clerk and her friend chatted away as if they had nothing else to do. Dejected, exhausted, and feeling terribly low, Robin sat, wondering if it were possible to get a bazooka in here to break up their little coffee klatch. Her head ached, her back ached, even her butt ached from sitting for so many hours on rock-hard benches like the one on which she was sitting now. She felt grimy, her mouth tasted rank, and her stomach was in knots. All she wanted to do was go home and burrow under the covers of her bed for the next five months.

  She waited.

  Until someone sat hard next to her, jostling her almost off the bench, that she realized she must have been drifting on the edge of sleep. With a jump, Robin blinked, looked to her left. A man with impossibly broad shoulders had fallen onto the bench next to her. He was wearing a weathered leather jacket and faded jeans, had a crop of thick dark brown hair, and when he turned to look at Robin, he smiled and said with a wink, “Hey.”

  “Get real,” she muttered, and scooched over.

  “Oh come on, it can’t be that bad,” he remarked, as if they were sitting in a park somewhere.

  “What would you know?”

  “Okay, so I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you. Truce?”

  She really was not in the mood to make friends just now. With her hand, she gestured for him to move. “Just . . . please go away.”

  “Believe me, lady, I’d love to oblige you,” he said, his voice less friendly, “but in case you haven’t noticed, it’s pretty crowded in here.”

  “You can find another seat.”

  “Maybe you’d like to find another seat. I’ve been waiting two hours.”

  Only two hours? How did he get out so fast? That infuriated Robin—she had to wait all night, and this dude was out in two hours? “I was here first,” she pointed out.

  “Ah,” he said, nodding. “Clearly, I misunderstood.” But instead of moving, he just settled in.

  Robin glared at him. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “Like I said, the room is full, so unless you can produce a deed or something that proves you own this bench, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Great,” Robin snapped, and abruptly stood up.

  “Nice talking to you, Miss Congeniality,” he said as she started to push her way down the row.

  Three or four seats down, she glared at two Hispanic men who, after exchanging a wary glance with one another, moved to make a seat for her.

  She squished in between them like a sardine, then glanced down the row just as the jailbird got up and sauntered off. Bastard! But Lord . . . what a saunter that bastard had! Even in her dejected, repulsed, and generally miserable state, Robin could not help noticing how fine he was in his ancient denim jeans and briefly wondered what he might have done to land himself in hell.

  He suddenly turned and caught her staring at his backside and flashed her a lopsided, knew-it smile. Robin frowned deeply, turned her attention forward, and did not look again. Except once. Maybe twice. By the time they finally called her name, she had definitely lost sight of him and was in such a hurry to get out of that stinking hellhole that she almost collided with him when she turned from the window, clutching her freedom on a receipt marked PAID.

  “Oh man. Well, hello again, Sunshine,” he drawled.

  “Jesus!” she exclaimed, holding the hand with the receipt over her flailing heart as she glared up at him. “Can’t you take a hint?”

  “Hey, Queenie, I’m just waiting in line like everyone else.”

  “Uh-huh, right,” Robin responded irritably and wondered for a split second why men thought women were so ignorant of their motives.

  The man all but choked. He stared down at her, his copper-brown eyes wide with surprise. And then he laughed. Laughed. Laughed so roundly, as if that was so hilariously preposterous, that several heads turned in their direction. But he didn’t seem to care—he leaned forward, bent his head until his mouth was just an inch or two from her cheek, and said, “Sunshine, you’re cute” —he paused, lingered there for a tiny moment, his breath warm on her face, so close that she could smell his cheap (but not altogether unpleasant) cologne— “but no way are you that cute. And you’re mean.” He straightened up and calmly stepped around her to the payment window.

  Okay. Well. She was now officially in hell. Some . . . jail guy . . . had just dissed her, and it was so unbearably humiliating that Robin beat a hasty retreat out the double glass doors, into the lobby of the processing center, clutching her purse and her receipts like a mad escapee, frantically searching the milling crowd for her grandparents.

  Fortunately, her mother’s parents were easy to spot. There was her grandfather, who had the distinct misfortune to have been named Elmer, and the even greater misfortune, in his declining years, of actually resembling Elmer. He was round and squat with hugely enormous feet typically encased in white Easy Spirits, which heralded his arrival a good city block before him. And in fact, it was Mr. Fudd’s shoes Robin saw in the lobby before she saw him.

  Her grandmother, Lil, was the physical opposite of Elmer. She was tall and reed thin, and wore big pink-rimmed octagonal glasses that covered her cheeks and eyebrows and made her eyes look like big blue stop signs. She also wore Easy Spirits. The taupe ones.

  Grandma spotted Robin and came hurrying like a squirrel across the lobby, darting in and around people in her haste to get to her granddaughter. “Robbie!” she exclaimed, and grabbed her in a bear hold, nearly squeezing the breath from her. “Oh my God, sweet pea! What has happened!”

  “Robbie-girl, you all right?” Grandpa asked, rescuing her from Grandma’s grip.

  “I’m fine,” Robin insisted. “It’s really so stupid. I’ll tell you all about it in the car, but please, let’s just get out of here,” she urged, ushering them in the direction of the door.

  Grandpa had scored a prime parking spot into which he had maneuvered his Ford Excursion, an SUV the size of a small condo. Robin gratefully crawled into the cavernous backseat.

  “Buckle in, hon. Now, are we going to hear what you did?” Grandma insisted, fastening her seat belt.

  Best to get it over. “I got stopped for speeding—”

  “Speeding! Where?” Grandpa insisted.

  “On six-ten—”

  “Well now, six-ten, that’s just a death trap.”

  “—And I guess I sort of mouthed off a little. I mean, I wasn’t doing any faster than anyone else, and I told the cop so.”

  “That’s my girl!” Grandpa said proudly as he coasted out of the parking lot.

  “So he asked me for my license and registration, but the thing is, I had left them on my desk at work—by the way, Grandpa, I need to go by my office and get my wallet, okay? Anyway, I didn’t have my license or registration, and suddenly I’m a criminal! So the cop told me to step out of the car, and . . . well, I just thought . . . I just thought that he was overreacting and I shouldn’t have to step out of the car.”

  “Well, he should have taken your word for it!” Grandma said with an indignant nod of her head. “Surely when you told him your name he ran some sort of check or whatever they do in their cars to make sure you weren’t lying!”

  Robin squirmed.

  Grandma swiveled sharply to look at her. “Well?” demanded Grandma. “Didn’t he?”

  Robin sighed, leaned her head against a headrest covered with a pink baby T-shirt. “I was really tired and really cranky, and I didn’t exactly tell him who I was. I just sort of thought it wasn’t his bu
siness. So he arrested me.”

  Grandpa gave a shout of laughter, but Grandma threw a hand over her mouth and stared at Robin in horror for a moment. “Can they do that?”

  “Apparently,” she answered dryly. “He arrested me for failure to identify myself, driving without a license, and driving without insurance.

  “Oh my goodness, what does this mean?” Grandma asked.

  Robin grimaced at her grandmother’s look of shock, and turned away, to the window, where cars were swerving from behind Grandpa and whizzing past as he pushed the SUV up to sixty. “It means they slapped me with a Class C misdemeanor, took seven hundred fifty dollars for their trouble, and told me to go home.”

  “Did you see any murderers in there?” Grandpa asked.

  “Elmer! This is no joking matter!”

  “I didn’t think that was joking!”

  “Grandpa, don’t forget to go by my office, okay?”

  Grandpa acknowledged her request by putting his blinker on a good two or three miles before their exit.

  “Well, you can’t work today,” Grandma said in a huff. “You don’t want everyone knowing why you were late—Aaron wouldn’t like that at all.”

  Honestly, Robin didn’t know anymore. Maybe Dad would think she deserved to be publicly humiliated. “I just need to get my things and a couple of files, that’s all. Maybe Grandpa can go in for me,” Robin said absently.

  “I just can’t believe you have been arrested,” Grandma said and shook her head again.

  Too exhausted to think, Robin stared out the window, felt her eyelids growing heavy. The next thing she heard was Grandpa, saying, “Uh-oh. Looks like a fire.”

  Robin opened her eyes and glanced out the front windshield. As her mind began to grasp that they were on the street of her office, she suddenly grabbed the back of Grandpa’s seat. “Oh my God!” she cried. It couldn’t be. Couldn’t be! Robin quickly counted the floors of her office building and felt her heart sink to her toes. Oh yes, it could be, and it was. The LTI offices were on fire. Her office was on fire.

  In front of her, Grandpa shook his head. “Some fool probably left a cigarette burning or a computer on or something like that,” he opined, disgusted.

  Left something on . . . the suggestion was suddenly clawing at Robin’s throat, choking her. The coffeepot.

  She had left the coffeepot on.

  Chapter Five

  Grandma found Lucy in the growing crowd on the street and ascertained that everyone was accounted for and all right, and further, that the fire was contained to the LTI offices. Relieved that at least she hadn’t killed anyone, Robin begged Grandpa to take her home before anyone started nosing around.

  Exactly how her world had suddenly disintegrated into so many little pieces was so far beyond her ability to comprehend that by the time Grandpa eased into the circular drive in front of her house, she was seriously contemplating a trip to the roof of some downtown building and a swan dive off the side. Her father, her job, her arrest, her office— God, she was living in a soap opera! She would not be surprised if Maury Povich leapt out from behind the bushes to inform her she was pregnant with her lover’s cousin’s nephew.

  As it was, she practically had to arm wrestle Grandma to keep her from coming in.

  “You need to call your mom and let her know you’re all right,” Grandma said. “We’ll come in with you—”

  “I’ll call, I promise!” Robin said, and dove out the door, slammed it shut and popped in front of Grandma’s window before anyone could take one Easy-Spirited step toward her house. “Right now, I just want to take a bath and crawl into bed and sleep until the next century. Okay?”

  Grandma sighed with exasperation; Grandpa waved. “Okey-dokey!” he said cheerfully. “We’ll check on you later.”

  “Thanks,” Robin murmured and stepped away from the tank as Grandpa checked his side-view mirror before carefully nudging into gear. He turned his attention to navigating the rather wide drive as Grandma hung out the window. “Take an aspirin!” she shouted. “It will help you—”

  Who knows what else she might have said—Grandpa suddenly swerved, knocking Grandma back inside the tank.

  When Robin was sure they were gone, she headed for the back of the house. Her car was still impounded (another helpful clerk had informed her that for a mere $150, she could get her car on Monday), and she had no keys. But at one point, she’d had the presence of mind to hide a key for an event such as this. Only she’d figured such an event would involve fabulous shoes, a man, and a smashing good evening. Now all she had to do was remember under which brick she had hid the damn thing.

  As she was attempting to dislodge a brick, she heard a motorcycle roar into her drive and looked up.

  Her heart climbed right into her throat; she was momentarily paralyzed by her astonishment. But once she got over her distraction of the thick, dark brown hair he revealed as he removed his do-rag, and the tight fit of his jeans, and the vague feeling that she knew him, she suddenly gave a small shriek of surprised indignation that this . . . this sexual pervert predator had followed her all the way from the jail to her house!

  The man stuffed his do-rag into his back pocket, reached into a leather saddlebag, and turned his head. His eyes locked with hers— “Oh Gawwwd,” he groaned heavenward.

  It was the degenerate jailbird all right, and if this just wasn’t the topping on her cake, Robin didn’t know what was. “Un-be-leeev-able!”

  “Looks like we find ourselves nose to nose again, Sunshine,” he said as Robin found the lose brick and yanked it clean of its slot, then grabbed the key. “You remember me, right? The guy you harassed this morning?”

  “Ha!” she shouted, clutching the key. “You were harassing me!”

  “Funny, I remember that you were the one who copped a negative attitude.”

  “Look, I don’t know what ridiculous, drug-induced little world you are living in, but I am not interested.” She fumbled with the key and the lock while the degenerate opened a saddlebag and rummaged inside. “Let me spell it out for you,” she continued. “Ain’t gonna happen! So get on your dirtbike and run along before I call the cops!”

  His face clouded; he frowned at her like she was the one doing the annoying here. “That is not a dirtbike. You know what?” he demanded as Robin managed to unlock the door, push it open, jump through, and pivot to block his entrance. “You are so full of yourself it’s a wonder you don’t pop! Trust me, I don’t like this anymore than you do—”

  “Don’t like—you have nerve! You are following me!”

  “Following? Oh Jesus—” he moaned, rolled his eyes, and started walking toward her. “You are delusional! Believe me, darlin’, you are the very last person I would follow!”

  Robin was about to respond with equal vigor, but the sack of Krispy Kremes under his arm momentarily distracted her. Krispy Kremes? She blinked, disbelieving. So he thought he’d just casually follow her to her house and do whatever perverts did? With doughnuts? “What the hell? So you, the pervert, were in jail for God knows what, and you saw me there, and you decided to follow me—”

  “Have you escaped from your nurse?”

  “Me? You’re the jailbird—”

  “If there is a jailbird here, it would be you—”

  “I was there by mistake! Are you trying to deny that you were not just in a room with every other lowlife in Houston being released from county jail?” she demanded, infuriated.

  “Well now, you might be a lowlife, but not everyone in that room was a criminal. I was there to bail out a friend who happened to have had a little too much to drink last night. His name is Zaney—perhaps you met him during your stay in cell block C?”

  Robin opened her mouth, then closed it, confused by the sack of doughnuts. “Wait a minute. Then what . . .” Something suddenly clicked, and Robin felt her self-assurance begin to crumble like sand. “Oh no,” she murmured to herself.

  “You really need to get over yourself, you know that?
” he added.

  “Oh my God—oh my God! You can’t be!”

  “Believe me, I wish I weren’t. Look, I gotta get to work. Know what work is, or do you spend most of your time in the pokey?” he grumbled as he pushed past her, into the house.

  The tears started to build behind Robin’s eyes as she gaped at Jacob Manning’s back, the man she had hired to renovate her house.

  The amount of time Jake Manning spent renovating the houses of strangers exposed him to some of the more colorful characters Houston had to offer, but at that moment, he had to believe Robin Lear had cornered the market on lunatics. How a woman could take an accidental jostling and accelerate that all the way up to pervert was beyond him. And to discover that she was the barracuda who had hired him to practically take down her house and put it up again was just not what he needed to hear right at the moment. The day had started badly enough what with having to bail Zaney out of jail. Now this. Jesus H. Christ.

  “What are the odds?” the barracuda blurted behind him. “I can’t believe this!”

  Well, believe it, baby, Jake thought as he walked in and slapped the doughnuts down on the dining room table. He damn sure didn’t like it any more than she did. He grabbed his tool belt, was putting it on as he turned and brushed past her again on his way to the kitchen.

  “This is just too much,” she continued, following him into the kitchen. “I am being punished for something.” She stalked to a cabinet, yanked it open, and studied the insides for a moment. “Well, whatever. I can’t deal with this right now. You can’t work here today.”

  “Whoa ,wait—are you talking to me?” he asked, incredulous.

  She turned abruptly to look at him. “You’re going to have to go.”

  “Ooh no.” She might be a lunatic, but she’d signed a damn contract. “No way,” he said, shaking his head. “You were the one who insisted on a start date of this week. I juggled three jobs to accommodate you, and I’m already behind. I can’t afford to lose a whole day.”

  “But I need to sleep.”