“And?”
“Mia is the last one—the only one I’d missed. She lives with my father. And while I resent the old man bitterly, I thought they had a peaceful relationship if she chose him over the stability of a foster home. I figured he must have mellowed with age and his illness since the hospital forced him to get sober,” Clay explained. “But if she’s still reaching out to a victims’ support group, maybe life in the Yancy household sucks as much as ever. I’ll make sure she knows that there are good homes in the foster system that will give her more stability.”
There was a cold finality to the words.
“You’d send her back into foster care?” She couldn’t believe the boy she once knew could have grown so heartless. “What about you? You could take her in. You would be a good role model?—”
“Me?” He sounded shocked she would consider it. He shook his head. “I’ve made enough of a mess of my own relationships. I wouldn’t be any help to a girl her age.”
“You’ve dealt with so many of the same things and gone on to be a successful adult.”
“Because I broke away from my messed-up family.” The jut of his chin told her how much he would stake on that belief. “I wouldn’t be doing Mia any favors to invite her back into the screwed-up legacy that is her genetic birthright. Better for her to find a good foster home like I did, with people who are committed to understanding at-risk teens.”
“She had very different experiences in the foster system than you. It’s hard for her to trust anyone.” Gabriella understood that much about the people who called her hotline or emailed her privately looking for help. Victims of stalking and bullying were less inclined to trust.
And although Mia wasn’t currently being bullied, that was the situation in her first foster home when her foster mother’s teenage son had tried to coerce her into sex in exchange for extra privileges in the house.
Of course, Gabriella couldn’t share any of that with Clay. It was information protected by the privacy policies of her support group. And although the policies were more flexible where the underage participants were concerned, Mia had shared the information with her caseworker. And for her part, Gabriella would do what she could to protect Mia’s privacy for as long as she could.
“That, I understand. But I will explain to her how getting out from under the dark cloud of the Yancy influence helped me.” His dark eyes glittered with determination, his square jaw set. “She’ll be far better off in the system with experts watching out for her.”
Standing, Gabriella realized their conversation had come to a definite stalemate. She’d worked through enough of her past tonight without taking on Mia’s future, too. Shewould save that for another day, when she had time to think over her best course of action.
Besides, she wanted to talk to Mia and make sure she was okay.
“It seems we did a good job of surprising each other tonight.” She slid off his jacket and laid it gently over the wooden railing for him, the scent of the leather—of him—lingering along with the warmth. “You had no idea I was baring my soul to you online ten years ago. And I had no idea you were the kind of man to return a teenage sibling to the foster system.”
She walked away without waiting for a response. She heard him call out to her, but she was too tired and upset to continue a heated discussion tonight. Not with the trial starting tomorrow.
Besides, if Clayton Travers wasn’t concerned about Mia going back into state custody after Pete’s death, that was his business. But for her part, she planned to call the girl and see if she could help.
Gabriella understood all too well what it was like to have the people you counted on abandon you.
Chapter Five
Mia Benson crossedher fingers against the worn leather bench seat of Davis Reed’s vintage Ford pickup truck as he slowed down on a gravel back road and pulled off to one side of a hayfield on the way home from their first date.
Davis—not Dave, as he made clear to everyone—was a band geek. A tall, skinny drummer who wore a plumed hat at halftime during the football games at Crestwood High where they both went to school. Surely a band geek with enough guts to strap on that loopy hat every week was not stopping at an obvious hook-up spot to do anything more than…kiss?
She’d had a decent time on this first date so far. She wasn’t falling for Davis Reed or anything.Obviously. But she also hadn’t spent the last three hours plotting how to get away from him, which had happened enough times in her dating career that most girls would have just given it up as an exercise in futility. But what else was there to do in a small town on a Sunday night? Sit at home and watch her dying father’s jaundiced skin turn a deeper shade of yellow?
Mia was grateful to the old guy for bailing her out of the foster system and everything, but she wasn’t his caregiver. Eww. Bad enough she had to think about what would happen to her once Pete Yancy croaked. But she would not complicate her messed-up life even more by getting too attached to the father who hadn’t wanted her for the first thirteen years of her life.
“Not much of a view, is it?” She hid her crossed fingers under a filched makeup bag of her mother’s that Mia had used for a purse ever since leaving the Drunken House of Horrors that was her mother’s outwardly nice life in the Nashville suburbs.
She’d take the jaundiced, clueless dad—who at least pretended to care—over the cold and unfeeling mother who didn’t want to hear that her last boyfriend had cornered Mia in the laundry room demanding things that weren’t fatherly in the least.
“I like the view just fine.” Davis turned toward her with a shy half smile as he switched off the ignition and killed the headlights.
His attempt at flirting, she guessed. And since he didn’t seem to be undressing her with his eyes, she let the comment slide. If he was warming up for a kiss—that was fine. She could deal.
Anything more than that and Davis Reed was going to find out what she was made of.
“Seriously.” She debated unfastening her seat belt. Better mobility if she needed to ward him off. But the act of unfastening anything around a teenage boy was like a flashing neon sign screaming “come and get it.”
“My dad’s night nurse leaves at eleven. I need to get home.”
Davis wore khakis and a white button-down. Preppyleather boat shoes. With his dark blond crew cut and freckles, he had a friendly face. He got good grades, too. All of which had played into her decision to go out with him tonight to escape the new machines installed at her father’s bedside last week. Machines that buzzed and beeped in a way that seemed to count down the remaining seconds of a life she needed to last for at least another nineteen months.
