Almost Home Part 16

"I don't know. She never said. I never asked. But the last thing I want is for Jackson to open that old wound."

"That's why you came to the restaurant tonight," Katherine said, remembering the earlier byplay between the two men. "He forced your hand."

"Yes, but I also came to warn you."

"At the risk of him telling the Stantons about your theft?"

"Well, I don't know if it would matter anymore. It was a long time ago."

"Of course it would matter. It was a risk you took for me. You saved me, Zach."

Zach stared at her for a long minute. "I couldn't let him play you for a sucker, too."

She shivered at the intensity in his voice, the look in his eyes. "One might think you actually care what happens to me."

"I know you're desperate to find your father. Desperation makes for an easy mark."

"Are you sure that it's a lie?" She hated to ask, but she had to ask.

"Do I have DNA proof that he couldn't be your father? No. But he's unwilling to take a blood test, which is a sure sign he's hiding something. It's also my understanding that he had a vasectomy shortly after my birth."

"Really?" She felt a huge weight slip off her shoulders.

"He told me so once, something along the lines of 'I'm going to make sure I don't have any more brats like you.'"

"I wish we could be sure."

Zach thought for a minute. "My father has a woman friend in Louisville, Veronica Lacey. She's known him forever, slept with him on and off for probably thirty years. She's been his confidante in the past. Maybe she could verify the vasectomy. I have to go to Louisville tomorrow anyway," Zach said. "We sent Rogue down there today and I want to check on him. I can stop in at Veronica's before I come back."

"Can I go with you?"

"It would be better if you didn't."

"I have a stake in this, too, remember?"

"All right, but I'm leaving at four-thirty."

Her jaw dropped. "In the morning?"

"I want to catch the morning workout at six." He smiled at her look of discomfort. "Too early for a city girl?"

She rose to the challenge in his eyes. "Not at all."

He nodded, sliding out of the booth. "I'll take you back to the hotel now. I want you to lock your door and don't open it, no matter who comes knocking."

She got to her feet. "I'll be fine."

"I hope those won't be your famous last words."

Chapter 10.

Four-thirty in the morning was too d.a.m.n early for anyone to be up, Katherine decided grumpily as she drew her heavy red sweater around her shoulders. It was still dark outside, the air cold and crisp, the streetlights casting menacing shadows on the empty sidewalks.

She was thankful she'd dressed for comfort in heavy blue jeans and tennis shoes along with a pink long-sleeve T-shirt under her red sweater. She'd pulled her hair into a no-nonsense ponytail and only glossed her lips with a bright pink lipstick. It wasn't her most glamorous outfit, but she was more intent on fitting in than looking beautiful. Besides that, she simply couldn't be bothered getting up a second earlier to fix her face. She yawned again as Zach's truck pulled up in front of the hotel.

Zach kept the motor running as she walked down to the truck and got in. "Mornin'," he sang out with the most cheerful smile she'd ever seen on his face. Wearing his trademark black jeans and a burgundy and gold jacket, he looked far too happy for this hour of the morning.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" he said. "I love this time right before dawn when the sun is creeping up over the horizon."

She looked at him through narrowed, irritated eyes. You've got to be kidding. I don't see any sun."

"Uh-oh, I'm sensing that you're not a morning person."

"Why would you say that?"

Zach pointed to a thermos on the seat next to him. "I brought hot coffee guaranteed to give you a jump start."

She reached for the thermos as if it were a lifesaver and poured some coffee into a mug. As she lifted it to her lips, she saw the picture on the side of a cartoon figure sitting behind a desk stacked with papers and the words, "Are we having fun yet?"

"No," she said.

"Huh?" he asked, as he drove down the highway.

She held up the cup for him to see. "I'm not having fun yet."

"Take a few more sips," he encouraged.

"I don't suppose you have a nice fluffy omelette and some hash browns stashed away somewhere."

"Cereal bars in the glove compartment," he said. "Will that help?"

"Barely, but I'll take it."

After drinking half a cup of coffee and downing a rather grainy, far-too-healthy cereal bar, Katherine felt marginally better.

Zach turned on the radio, and she settled back in her seat, content to listen to the early morning news. It seemed odd to hear reports from around the country. In Paradise, she felt isolated and somewhat protected. Now, back on the highway, she began to feel the way she'd felt on her drive into town, edgy and unsure of herself. She just hoped their trip to Louisville would put an end to Jackson Tyler's insinuations about her parenthood.

"Did my father bother you last night?" Zach asked, as if he had read her mind.

"No."

"Mm-mm."

"That doesn't sound good." She sent him a quick glance, but his hard profile was unreadable.

"It's a little too easy," Zach said. "He's up to something."

"Maybe he decided to back off."

"We'll see." Zach leaned over and turned up the radio as the local news broadcast its daily pre-Derby Countdown update.

The announcer said, "One of the most renowned trainers in the world, David Montgomery, announced today that he has scratched Camelot's Court from the Derby due to a lingering virus that set in after he showed in the Arkansas Derby. And now on to other news..."

Zach switched off the radio.

"Is that good or bad news?" Katherine asked.

"Doesn't matter. Camelot's Court didn't have a chance."

"Is it hard to get into the Derby? They only take so many horses, right?"

"The horse has to have earned a certain amount of prize money in the past year and have some key wins in stake races."

"And Rogue has done well?"

"Very well," he said, flashing her a proud smile. "He's won three tough stakes races and placed or showed in five others. So far, he's won more than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. "No kidding? I had no idea."

"Horse racing is big business."

"What do you get if you win the Derby?"

"The purse is a million dollars."

"Wow! No wonder you want it so bad."

"It's not for the money," he said quietly. "I just want to win the race."

And she believed him, because if Zach had ever been motivated by money, he wouldn't have walked away from his father's moneymaking schemes. He wouldn't have sunk every dime into a horse that might win or come in last. No, Zach wanted the win for personal reasons. He wanted to prove he could win without cheating. He wanted to prove he wasn't his father. She just hoped his horse could run like the wind. Or Zach would be running for the rest of his life.

As they neared Louisville, she sat up straighter in her seat. When she'd flown into the city the week before, she hadn't seen much more than the airport and the roads leading out of town.

Zach smiled at her excitement. "Missing the big city?"

"No. But I didn't see much of Louisville on my way in."

"It's a nice city. It's got pretty much everything, the Ohio River, the BatMuseum, home of the famous Louisville Slugger-"

"The what?"

"It's a baseball bat, Kat."

"Oh."

"I guess you know as much about baseball as you know about horses," he teased.

"Well, I do know a lot about mutual funds and stock splits and foreign investments."

He raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like fun. What do you do when you're not worshiping the almighty dollar?"

"I plant flowers."

"In your stepfather's acre of incredible gardens?"

"No. I have a garden on the roof of my condo building."

"A condo? You live in a condo?" he asked in disbelief.

"It's a very nice condo. It has two bedrooms."

"But you don't have any land, any yard?"

"What is this-twenty questions?" she asked defensively. She adjusted her seat belt, feeling constricted by the belt, by Zach's att.i.tude, by her own wish that she hadn't settled for a condo when she'd really wanted a little cottage with a garden and a porch swing. "A condo is practical," she continued. "It's close to my work. It's efficient and low maintenance, and perfect for my needs." It was also sterile and lonely and impersonal, but she wasn't about to share that with Zach.

She wasn't going to tell him that the tar-and-gravel roof got hotter than h.e.l.l in the summer and her flowers could barely survive the southern California heat, because then he'd only ask her why she was living in a place where her flowers couldn't thrive, where she couldn't thrive. And she didn't have an answer. At least not one she wanted to say out loud, because that would mean admitting that she'd been following someone else's game plan for far too long.

"Fine, whatever makes you happy," he said.

"Well, I am happy there, very happy."

"Great."

"It is great." She dared him to say anything more, but Zach changed lanes and seemed to be more interested in the scenery than in her.

After a few minutes of unsettled silence, Katherine pulled out her notebook and flipped to an empty page.

Zach cast her a quick glance. "What are we listing this morning?"

"I just wanted to review what we want to accomplish today so we won't forget to ask something important."

"We only have one question. Did my father get a vasectomy?"

"And what year did it take place?" she added, checking off one of the questions she'd come up with the night before. "Plus we should ask where it was done, if this woman knows, in case we need to check records. And we might even ask if she knows where your father spent most of 1972 or at least the month when I might have been conceived. Then we should-"

"Kat?"

"What?" she asked, looking up from her list.

"Flexibility can give you an advantage." He sent her a small, intimate smile that made her toes curl inside her tennis shoes and made her heart flutter restlessly against her chest. Focusing on her lists, on her priorities, had kept her from focusing on him, but now she'd gone and done the unthinkable, made eye contact. And what eye contact. She had to force herself to breathe.

"Besides, I'm not very good at following directions," Zach said.