“You come to San Antonio with me and help me get Amber out of this mess, and I’ll pay off Donetto for you.”
“I want that in writing.”
Harper rolled his eyes at the phone. “No, you don’t.”
“Uh…yeah, I think I do.”
“Trust me, you don’t. Donetto’s a criminal, you moron. Do you really want your name associated with his in writing?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You don’t think. That’s always been your problem, Buchanan. Now do we have a deal or not?”
* * *
Killed? Her mother had obviously gone crazy. That nice man she’d met at Harper’s wouldn’t kill anyone.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I’m serious. I tried to find him after you were born. When I finally got hold of him, some woman told me he wanted nothing to do with me or my bastard baby, that a baby didn’t fit into his plans, and if I tried to contact him again he’d have us both killed.”
Amber’s skin crawled with invisible insects. Surely her mother was mistaken. Thunder Morgan? The man with her eyes? The man Harper knew and respected? The man she shared dinner with, who’d called her pretty lady?
Couldn’t be.
“Did you try again?”
“Hell no! I couldn’t put us in danger. Though there’ve been plenty of times since then that I’ve thought I’d be better off dead.”
For an instant Amber’s heart softened toward her mother. Then she remembered how the woman had kicked her out when she was barely sixteen. Thank God for Laura.
“I know you don’t believe this, Amber, but I honestly did the best I could.”
Amber’s jaw dropped. “Seriously, Mama? You expect me to buy that?”
“I don’t expect anything.” Karen sniffed. “You were better off without me, and we both know it. I did you a favor by making you leave.”
Amber let out a huff. “Please. Don’t say that again. You may not have been the best mother in town, but I was sheltered and fed, never physically abused. Lots of kids have it worse. You were just tired of the responsibility.”
“I won’t deny I was tired. Seems there hasn’t been a day in my life that I haven’t been exhausted. But trust me, you were better off. I wasn’t lying about selling you to the white slavers.”
“You’re making that up.”
Karen sniffed again. “Get me a tissue, will you?”
Amber grabbed a box from the counter and slid it in from of Karen.
“I swear I’m not making it up,” Karen continued. “I had offers, and I knew what those folks were capable of. I had to get you out of my house. Out of danger.”
Amber shook her head. “You’re paranoid.”
Clearly her mother needed some medical help. She wasn’t functioning with a full deck. Had she ever? She was making things up. When she was younger, Amber had suspected Karen might be a little off her rocker, but she’d always had too much else on her mind in those days—like making sure they were both clean and fed. Looking back, her mother had sometimes suffered paranoid delusions. The thing about Thunder Morgan killing them both was probably no different.
It all made sense now. Her mother was not only an alcoholic. She was mentally ill. Amber hadn’t understood before because she’d been too young.
In a way, she’d failed Karen.
No sense going there. She’d only been a kid. She hadn’t failed Karen. And there hadn’t been anyone else in their lives who could have failed her. They’d been alone.