She'd known that he’d eventually find her. She hoped it would take him another day or so, but that was one drawback to the small-town thing. It would've taken him a single stop at any of the major businesses, including the gas station, grocery store, and even Ellie's bar, to find out where she was. Especially if he told them he was her father.
An icy coldness slipped through her. “How did you find me?”
“The guy at the gas station on the corner. Asked if he knew where Rory was. Didn’t even need your last name. Pointed me in this direction.”
“Did you tell them who you are?”
Roger grinned. “Didn’t need to. Probably thought I was some bigwig in town to donate to your fancy Christmas party.” He ran a hand down the front of his shirt.
Rory took in his appearance. Roger did look different than usual. She was used to her dad wearing jeans and t-shirts and ball caps. He usually sported a medium length beard and often went months without a haircut. Now he was dressed in a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and was clean-shaven with short hair.
She'd seen him when he got out of his truck earlier, but she hadn't taken in the details with her brain screaming, oh my God, what's he doing here?
“What are you up to?”
“Nice to see you too.”
“You know I don't think it's nice to see you. You only show up when you want something. What is it this time?”
“I have a new job. Starts in a couple weeks.”
Rory's eyebrows rose. “New job? Where?”
Roger had been an over-the-road trucker as long as she'd known him. It had worked out well with his preferred lifestyle of meeting and sleeping with multiple women in several different towns, as well as pulling off cons in places no one knew him, and where he could avoid returning.
“One of the casinos in New Orleans.”
Oh, the idea of Roger working in a casino was a terrible one. Kind of like him getting cozy with a family that owned a big jewelry store. But honestly, Rory didn't care. That was the casino’s problem. If they weren't vetting their employees any better than that, it wasn't her job to fill them in.
“And what does that have to do with me?”
“The guy who's getting me the job wants me to pay him back before I start.”
“A guy at one of the casinos is getting you a job but you owe him money?”
“We met across the Blackjack table.”
“He was the dealer and you were the loser so he figured you were an easy mark?”
“He was the dealer and I was the guy he was helping win.”
“So that was the con. Using a guy on the inside and splitting the win. That’s almost too simple for you, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes the beauty is in the simplicity.” Roger grinned proudly.
Rory just rolled her eyes. She didn't want to know anything more. She learned a long time ago, from her mother, ways to avoid becoming a potential accomplice.
“So he's bringing you in as a dealer now?”
“Yep. But I have to pay him the three grand back first.”
Rory closed her eyes and groaned. “You got into debt to him before you even started the job?”
“Yeah, but that's small potatoes compared to what I’ll be making.”
“So just tell him you’ll pay him back after this job starts.”
“That's not how it works. This is a good faith thing. He needs to know that I'm good for it upfront.”
“But you’re not.”
“But I am. Because I have you.”
Rory sighed. She already knew more than she wanted to. She crossed her arms. “Sorry. I don’t have three thousand dollars.”
“You sure about that, baby girl?”
“Oh, very sure. I mean, three thousand dollars would've been a little hard for me to come up with anyway, but since you haven't been around, let me fill you in. I have a life now. A real life. I own a business and I've invested in that business. That means doing things the way normal grown-ups do, by taking out a bank loan and slowly paying it back month by month. Not a loan shark, not a buddy who got out of prison two weeks ago, not some dude I met on a barstool last weekend. I'm doing this the legit way. So no, I don't have money just laying around in my bank account waiting for you to waltz into town and need a favor.”
“So sell something.”
She gaped at him. She didn’t know why. She should have expected something like that. “No. Actually, hell no. First of all, I need everything that I have. Second of all, all my stuff is mine. Get your own stuff to sell off.”
Roger’s eyes glinted at that and Rory had the very familiar and very unwelcome feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“Well, that's an interesting suggestion.” He held up a box. It was about the size of a box of cookies or crackers.
Rory frowned as she looked at it. She had no idea what she was looking at. “What's that?”
“You don't even know what you have,” he said with a chuckle. It was definitely more of a statement that question. “You telling me I could have just walked off with the stuff and you wouldn't have even noticed?”
“What are you talking about, Roger?” She hadn’t called him dad since the day she found out that he'd been cheating on her mother and faking the whole happy-family-home-and-hearth thing with her for sixteen years. She actually preferred not calling him anything at all, but once in a while it was unavoidable.
“You have fifty of these in that little storage space. The good-looking guy, not the one you were kissing, but the other one, brought these up earlier.”
So these were some of the toys that Beau had brought for the gift donation. She didn't know what exactly this all meant. But if Roger knew anything about any of this it could only be trouble for her.
“So what?”
“These are new edition game controllers from a company called Fluke Inc. They’re a very elite gaming company out of Chicago.”
Actually, Rory knew about Fluke Inc. It was indeed a gaming company and happened to be owned by friends of Paige’s, but it was now based out of Appleby, Iowa. Which was where Drew was from too. It was very likely that Drew knew the Fluke guys, actually, now that she thought about it.
She narrowed her eyes, not wanting to give Roger any information he could use as ammunition, and kept her arms crossed. “And?”
“These aren’t due to be released until the spring,” Roger said. “That makes them not only the most coveted toy of next year, but incredibly valuable right now. These fifty had to have been specially manufactured early. You can’t get these anywhere. You can't order them. You can't even reserve them for purchase later yet. So the fact that you have fifty of them sitting right here in this little town means something. Somebody has an in and made a huge donation.”
The little hairs on the back of her neck were standing up and she wanted to rush at Roger. The urge to slap him, claw his face, and scream at him was nearly overpowering. This man had been messing with her in her life for years. He'd ruined everything that was important to her from her childhood. All the memories of a happy, stable family. All of the I-love-you-baby-girls. All of the I-miss-you postcards he’d sent. He’d devastated her mother, who still wasn't over him. And since then, he’d kept Rory’s life from being peaceful because he would pop in unexpectedly and stir things up and make her crazy. She felt like she’d been constantly looking over her shoulder and hiding a huge part of her life from friends. She’d never talked about her father to anyone.