Unspoken Read Free Page B

okay!” She held both her palms outward, in his face, and stepped back. Bile roiled in her stomach. Beneath her skin, her muscles were quivering in rage. “Someone, and I don’t know who, sent me all this. I got it yesterday, and so I came back here to clear it up. Where’s my daughter, Dad?” she demanded through teeth that were clenched so hard her jaw ached. “What the hell did you do with her?”
    “Now, darlin’—”
    “Stop it! Right now! Don’t call me darlin’, or sweetie, or kiddo, or missy or any of those cute little names, okay? I’m all grown up now, in case you hadn’t noticed, and you can’t smooth-talk your way out of this, Judge. I’m not a little girl. I know better than to believe a word that passes through your lying lips, and I only came back here to find my child, Judge—my daughter.” She thumped her chest with her thumb.
    “Yours and who else’s?” he asked, his smile having disappeared and the old, hard edge she remembered coming back to his voice.
    “That—that doesn’t matter.”
    “Doesn’t it?” The Judge scattered the papers across the table and frowned, his eyes narrowing behind wire-rimmed reading glasses. “Odd, don’t you think? You get proof that you’ve got a kid during the same week that Ross McCallum is going to be released from prison.”
    “What?” Her knees nearly buckled. McCallum couldn’t be given his freedom. Not yet. Not ever. Fear congealed her blood. She was suddenly hot and cold all at once.
    “Oh, so you didn’t know?” The Judge settled back in his chair and played with the ivory handle of his cane. He looked up at her over the tops of his glasses. “Yep. Ross is gonna be a free man. Oh ... and Nevada Smith, he’s still around.”
    Her stupid heart skipped a beat, but she managed to keep her face bland, her expression cool. Nevada was out of her life. Had been for a long, long time. Nothing would change that Ever.
    “Yep,” the Judge went on, fingertips caressing the smooth knob, “inherited a rocky scrap of land that he’s tryin’ to ranch. No one knows how he’ll handle Ross’s freedom, but the word is that there is certainly gonna be hell to pay.” He bit his lower lip and scowled thoughtfully, as he’d often done while hearing long-winded summations when he was on the bench. “And now someone sends you bait—a little chum in the water to lure you back to a town you’ve sworn you’d never return to. Someone’s playin’ you for a fool, Shelby,” he said, slowly nodding his head, as if in agreement with himself, “and it ain’t me.”
    For once she believed him.
    She’d flown back here on a cloud of self-righteous nobility and determination to find her child. That hadn’t changed. But now she felt manipulated, and yes, as her father had said, played for a fool. Unwittingly, she’d stepped into a carefully laid trap set by an unknown individual with purposes of his own.
    Well, tough!
    Beneath the blouse that stuck to her skin, her shoulders squared.
    She’d find a way to get herself out of this damned snare. Come hell or high water, she’d leave Bad Luck, Texas, behind her once and for all.
    And this time, by God, she’d take her daughter with her.

Chapter Two
     
    “But you can’t leave. Niña , please, you just got here!” Lydia was nothing if not persistent. It was her one quality that hadn’t changed over the years. Oh, her hair may have grayed and a few pounds had thickened her waist and ankles, but she was just as determined as she had been for as long as Shelby could remember. “The Judge, he needs you,” she said, puffing to keep up with Shelby’s quick steps as she marched through the house to the front door.
    “He doesn’t need anyone.”
    “I thought you were here to visit.”
    “Nope. Business.” Shelby shook her head; she couldn’t stay here, not in this house, this huge tomb where her own mother had taken her life, where she’d grown up an only child with the stern Judge as her father,