"Yeah, but things went downhill last night. Her family found out I wasn't Matt. The whole thing was s.h.i.+tty."

"Brennan. Dude. Seriously? You barely know the guy. Do you really think it's going to help?"

"I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I'm sure I should do it. Her dad and I got along well. I'm hoping he'll hear me out."

"Okay, well, if it makes you feel better, go for it, superman. I need you to hurry your a.s.s up and get here though. This actually pertains to your current project, so I'm hoping that you'll make it a priority."

"Charley is not a project," I corrected. "As a matter of fact, she's my date for this weekend." I was bragging.

"That's nice," my brother said, dismissively. "I'm just telling you this is about her so if you could hurry your a.s.s over here I'd appreciate it. I think I'm starting to act like you, and it's not my style, but I think you'll appreciate this information."

He was right. That had gotten my attention.

"What does this have to do with--"

He cut me off, "If I wanted to tell you over the phone, I would have done that already, douche. Just get over here." Before I could respond, he'd already hung up.

He wasn't mad, that was just how Adam operated. Everyone was a douche, or a d.i.c.k, or a jacka.s.s. They were, strangely, his terms of endearment.

I pushed a little harder on the truck's accelerator as I drove toward the hotel.

When I arrived, I went straight to the front desk, hoping I could charm my way into finding out what room the Vaughan's were staying in. As I worked out, I didn't have to. Charley's sister Codey was walking toward the elevators, arms full of pastries and coffees. I hustled over to her, hoping this would be my way in.

"HeyCodey. Let me help you with that," I said, taking the tray of coffees from her before she had a chance to protest. She just stared at me.

"What on earth are you doing here?" she said with a slight drawl. It wasn't anywhere near as thick as her mothers, but slightly more than Charley's..

"I'm here to talk to your dad," I told her. "Is he still here?" She just laughed at me as I stepped onto the elevator with her "If you're looking to get anything done, you're looking in the wrong place. I would have thought even just a week around our family would have shown you that." Her face was a darker, more bitter looking version of Charley's face. The eyes weren't the same though. Codey's were still brown, but more like mud and less like chocolate. They didn't have the same light as Charley's did. I wondered if it was because she was so angry all the time.

"He's not here," she said, cutting into my thoughts. The doors opened and she reached out for the coffee tray.

"Do you know--"

"The coffee shop down the street," she cut me off. "The one with the giant mug on the door."

"Thanks," I said as the doors closed on me. Quickly, I pushed the OPEN b.u.t.ton. The doors parted, revealing Codey's unamused face.

"Your sister loves you," I told her. "She understands why you two are angry with her, she just doesn't know how to fix it."

Codey looked at me blank faced.

"I just thought you'd like to know that," I told her as the elevator doors closed.

The elevator quickly brought me back down to the lobby, and I quickly headed out toward the coffee shop Codey had been talking about. Sure enough, Charley's dad was sitting in a chair right by the window. I walked in, and sat next to him before he had a chance to speak.

"Mr. Vaughan, I need to talk to you," I began.

"Son, let's not--" he started, but I cut him off.

"No, I just need to explain something to you. I just need a minute of your time, and then you can be on your way, and I'll leave you alone."

He just looked at me, so I took that as my cue to go ahead.

"Charley made a mistake by lying to you, but she didn't come up with it, it was Sara and I. We were just trying to help her."

"I know what Charley was trying to do," he said quietly. "Rebecca has made up her mind, though."

'With all due respect, sir," I shot back, "this isn't about Rebecca. It's about you and your daughters. Not just Charley, but Codey and Casey, too. They need you."

He gave a sarcastic laugh, "Those girls," he said sadly. "They don't even like me anymore. And Charley's proved they don't need me for much of anything anymore."

"That's just it," I corrected him, "they DO need you. They all do. They don't just need you to stand up for them, they need you to stand up for yourself."

He started to speak, but I cut him off.

"Look, I know I am absolutely one hundred percent out of line here, Mr. Vaughan. And, I apologize for that, but I just couldn't let you leave without telling you this. Your wife has already lost your daughters. From what I can tell, even the two that still live with you have one foot out the door already. This bakery thing, it seems like a small thing to you, but to Charley, it's everything. I've only known her a couple of weeks and I already know that. I think you know, too, how important this is to her. I hope that she'll do it without the money and without the recipes, but I do think that she needs your support. Just a call, or a letter or something is all I'm saying. Just let her know that you're on her side, even if you can't give her the tangible things-she just needs to know her dad is on her side."

With that, I stood up, feeling like a total a.s.s, and knowing I had completely overstepped my bounds.

I raised my hands in a defensive gesture, and repeated, "Again, I know, this is not my place. I just know that if I were in your position, I'd want someone to tell me." He sat there just looking at me.

"Well, it wasn't what I was expecting, I'll give you that," he replied. "The girls don't understand, but I can't just override what Rebecca says. It's not that easy."

"I think they understand more than you think," I told him, "They know what she's like. It doesn't mean you can't fix your relations.h.i.+p with them." He was still looking up at me.

"Sit down, son," he said sternly. "I'm gonna go ahead and explain something to you."

I sat back down, waiting for him to elaborate.

"The reason I don't go against what Rebecca says is becausewell, I'm partly to blame for how she is." He looked at me like he was waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing, so he went on. "Early in our relations.h.i.+p, I did something that hurt her. She stayed with me anyway, but I don't know that she ever forgave me. She's been like this ever since then. It's not easy to fight against someone when you know that you've hurt 'em. But that woman has punished me every day for what I did." He looked down at his hands.

"Right now, my girls think I'm pathetic, but if they knew the truth, they would think much worse of me. It's just so much easier to not make ripples."

"All I can say, sir--"

"Please, call me Jackson. You were calling me Jackson before, and you still seem like a good young man. And if I'm gonna be sharing all my secrets with you, I see no reason why we can't still be on a first name basis." He paused and looked thoughtful. "Which brings me to the fact that I don't know your actual first name, do I?"

"It's Brennan." I told him. " Brennan O'Conner."

We sat there for close to an hour talking. I found out that he cheated on Rebecca during the first year of their marriage. She had stayed because she was pregnant with Charley by then. At first, it was hard for me to not see my own father in Jackson. As the conversation went on, though, I realized that he was different. He had made a mistake, but he had loved his wife and his girls so much that he had stuck around to suffer the consequences of that mistake, and he hadn't made it again.

I hadn't known if I could ever feel respect for someone who cheated on his wife, but Jackson Vaughan was a respectable man. His sacrifice was so much more than his girls realized. He wasn't just absorbing the brunt of his wife's personality out of guilt-he was also doing it to protect his girls, whether he realized it or not.

I eventually had to explain to him how Charley and I had really met, and ended up answering far too many questions relating to my "intentions" with his daughter. I was honest, but not too honest. Skirting around anything that made me sound like some sap in a romance novel.

Parts of the conversation felt like a therapy session. Having been a bartender for several years now, I was used to situations like that. That hadn't been the part to shock me or make me uncomfortable. That came later, when we were saying goodbye. We shook hands, and I told him for the fifth time that I would not tell Charley what we had talked about-or even that we had talked.

He kind of chuckled and said, "What's funny is that this isn't the talk I expected us to be having. I thought for sure you were coming to" he trailed off. "Ah, never mind."

"Coming to what?" I asked him.

He laughed again. "Coming to ask for my daughter's hand in marriage-for real this time." My face must have been some combination of shock and embarra.s.sment because he quickly added, "The two of you just seemed so comfortable together. You never would have known you only just met."

"You don't need to worry about that," I a.s.sured him. "We haven't even had a date yet," I told him.

He just smiled and said, "We'll see, son. We'll see."

CHAPTER 10 BRENNAN.

After leaving the coffee shop, I headed toward Adam's shop to see what his call had been about. When I pulled up to his shop, he was waiting outside, pacing up and down the sidewalk in front of the garage doors.

"What's up?" I asked him as I got out of my truck.

"What do you remember about the night that your friend Charley got hit?" He was still pacing. He always paced when he was anxious.

"Why? What's going on?" I asked him.

"Before I tell you," he said with exaggerated slowness, "I need to know what you remember."

"Fine," I said, leaning against my truck. "Not a lot, honestly. It happened really fast. I was locking up. I heard a nose, I think Charley screamed. When I turned around, she was on the ground."

"What about the car?" He prompted me.

I was starting to see why I was at his shop and not at our apartment. "I don't remember much," I told him. "It was dark."

"What was dark?" he asked, his voice full of anxiety. "The car or the night?"

"Dude, breathe!" I half yelled at him. "The car was dark, I couldn't see much else."

Adam refused to be calm. It was then that I knew he was onto something. "What do you know?" I asked him.

"I think you need to call whoever is in charge of the hit and run case," was all he said before turning to go inside the office of the shop. When he was inside he put a sign in the window that read, "Sorry, we're closed."

I pulled out my wallet and retrieved the card that the officer had given me the night of Charley's accident. When I dialed his number from my phone, my hands were shaking with anxiety, and I knew exactly how Adam had felt a minute ago. We got the guy.

About half an hour later, the officer-officer Vasquez, and a detective-detective Schmidt, were standing in Adam's shop, examining the car, and listening to him explain why he thought this could be the car. It was during his explanation that I realized part of why he was so nervous.

"I destroyed some of the evidence! I had no idea, man. You've gotta believe me!" He went over to a bucket full of dirty rags and grabbed a couple out. "I saved the what I could, and I stopped working on it as soon as I realized what was up." He held the rags up to the detective's face.

Detective Schmidt looked like he was trying to hold back a laugh. "Do you watch CSI?" he asked Adam "Miami and New York," I chimed in. He gave a slight laugh.

"You're not going to be in any trouble, kid," Detective Schmidt said. "You did the right thing. Now, tell us what happened."

"This guy brings the car in a couple of days before Christmas. Says it got dinged up at the mall, and the person didn't leave a note. He was real tool about it, and gave me a whole line about how he needed it fixed right awayblah blah blah. So, I tell the guy, with the holidays, its gonna take a while, and I put him off for a while 'cause he was such a tool."

He looked around for a response to this, and when no one gave one, he went on. "Anyway, I don't start working on the b.u.mper until today. I thought maybe I could just pop the dent out. When I was wiping at the paint to see if the scuffs would come out, I noticed the rag had that reddish brown stuff on itI thought it might be dried blood. That's when I made the connection between the girl-I mean, my brother's fiance, and the car."

He shot me a look that said, "oops," but the detective didn't seem to notice Adam's misstep.

The detective sighed. "I appreciate your enthusiasm," he said. "But, that blood could easily be from an animal."

"Fair enough," Adam said. "But, this guy doesn't seem like the outdoor type." He walked over to the car and knelt down, "And," he added. "This looks like hair, and not like fur. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I just thought it was worth the call."

Just then, my phone rang. I looked at the screen to see that it was Sara. She didn't usually call for no reason, so I stepped away from Adam and the cops to answer.

"Hey, Sara," I said into the receiver.

"Hey, Matt!" she said in her cheery tone. She was even more perky since Charley had been released from the hospital. "Okay," she continued before I could reply to her greeting, "So, Charley called me and told me that you guys had a date coming up, and I thought maybe you could use some tips from her best friend," she shot out rapidly.

"Um, Sara--" I began.

"I know, I know," she said quickly, "You two get along really fine and all that. I'm just talking about little tips, you know? Like, little things that will make that extra special difference. You're a good guy, I know that. But someone's gotta tell you what her favorite flowers are, and what kind of candy she likes, and what her favorite color is so that you can--" this time I cut her off.

"No, Sara, I appreciate that. It's just that right now isn't a good time"

"It's Daisies," she said, apparently not hearing me. "She loves daisies. And if you can find yellow Gerber daisies then that's perfect! She just loves those"

"Sara," I tried again "I know it will be hard to find daisies this time of year, but if you hit the florist on Taft-you know the one, by the Colorado Rd. intersection-they usually have a good selection," I didn't think she was breathing, but finally she paused to inhale, "I'm telling you, that little touch will really set the date off on a great foot!"

"Sara!!" I tried, a little louder this time.

"Mmmhmm?" she asked innocently, sounding like I hadn't just been trying to interject for the past two minutes.

"I'm here at my brother, Adam's shop right now. It's not for sure, but he thinks he may have the car here-the one that hit Charley."

She was silent for a good minute. It had to be a record for her.

"Where's his shop?" she asked, all of previous peppiness gone from her tone.

"It's on College," I told her. "Over behind the Mario's Pizza." She took another breath.

"I'm just down the street," she said quickly. "I'm on my way. I'll be there in like, two minutes. One if I catch this light." With that, she hung up.

Just like she'd said, it was only a couple of minutes before I saw her black Honda pull up behind my truck. She jumped out to greet me.

"Where is it? And who does it belong to?" She was already flushed.

"We don't know yet, Adam was explaining everything when I walked out to grab your call."

"I can't wait to get a name," she said with a look of violent intent on her face. "I'll kill the sonofab.i.t.c.h!" she went charging into the garage. I had to rush to catch her because her charge caught me off guard. I grabbed her by the arm.