Private Lives. Karen Young

don’t know what he thinks.” Austin sounded like a surly teen.

      “Maybe there’s some substance to those allegations Gina and Elizabeth Walker were making? Maybe your old man has picked up something from the office grapevine? Or maybe he has a more reliable source.”

      “Meaning what?” Austin’s face was turned away, closed.

      “Meaning he’s family, Austin. Your family. Families have secrets.”

      “He doesn’t know my secrets,” Austin said sourly, his gaze on the lunch hour traffic. “There’s nothing for him to know. Gina’s lying. Liz is lying.”

      “Everybody’s lying,” Ryan said evenly. “But not you.”

      Austin turned and looked him squarely in the eye then. “No, not me.”

      After a moment, Ryan began to walk again. “Then if you stick with that attitude on the stand this afternoon, you’ll be in good shape, depending on what you really want. If it’s to avoid writing a big check, maybe. Gina claims she doesn’t want much. But if it’s custody of your little girl, that’s more iffy.”

      “You worry too much,” Austin said, his good humor restored by the prospect that he might not have to part with real money.

      “Yeah, well, that’s my job,” Ryan said. Approaching his car, he opened the door and tossed his briefcase inside. What was really sticking in his craw was the custody issue. When it came to the little girl, Ryan had a bad feeling about handing her over to Austin. He’d felt these vague negative stirrings before in other cases…and it was always when he’d gone to the wire for a client who, when it was all over, turned out to be a liar.

      Pity that little girl.

      “Jesse, we’re home!” Gina tossed her purse on a chair, kicked off her shoes. “God, I feel like an ex-con getting out of prison. How do you stand being cooped up all day in front of that monitor, Liz? I’d go crazy. Louie! Jesse!” She pulled the comb from her hair and freed her thick, dark mane. Balancing on one leg, she reached for one of the staid, black pumps borrowed from Elizabeth for the hearing and took it off. She glanced into the den while massaging her cramped toes. “Where are they?”

      Elizabeth tucked her purse into a drawer. “I’ll check my office.” Jesse had quickly learned to play simple computer games and she sometimes broke the rule not to open the machine when Elizabeth wasn’t there to supervise. “Not in here,” she told Gina. “They’re probably outside.”

      “Probably.” Gina headed across the den to the patio doors. “If Louie would let her, Jesse would spend the whole day outside. She’s such a tomboy.” Gina sighed, savoring the cool wood floor on her bare feet. “My feet feel as if they’re out of prison, too,” she muttered, opening the French doors to a burst of enthusiastic barking in the area beyond the patio. “Louie! Jesse! Where are you?”

      “Over here.” Louie’s voice came from the gazebo. He began to rise from an old-fashioned glider. There was no sign of Jesse. “How’d it go?”

      “We’ll know tomorrow,” Elizabeth said. “The judge will give us his decision then.”

      “Oh, shoot, I’ll ruin these panty hose if I go out there.” Stepping back, Gina lifted the hem of her skirt—also borrowed from Elizabeth—and wiggled out of the panty hose. Then, sighing with relief, she stepped barefoot onto the flagstone surface. “Where’s my honey?” she called, raising her voice in the singsong way that Jesse loved.

      Jesse squealed, emerging from a pile of raked leaves that hadn’t been there when they’d left this morning. “Here I am, Mommy!” Laughing, she ran flat-out for her mother, arms open wide. The golden retriever raced by her side. Both outdistanced a tow-headed boy, who was just a fraction of an inch taller than Jesse. Gina laughed as thirty-five pounds of small female energy crashed into her legs and two short arms closed tight around her thighs. The dog leaped around them, grinning and barking ecstatically.

      “Missed me, didn’t you, punkin?” Gina framed Jesse’s small face between her hands and gave her a kiss on the nose.

      “You were gone a long time, Mommy.”

      “It sure seemed like it to me, too, baby.” Gina plucked a few dead leaves from her daughter’s tangled mop. “But I came home as soon as I could. Hi, Cody,” she said to the little boy, who smiled shyly while hanging on to the dog’s collar.

      “Was she a good girl, Louie?”

      The aging man was dusting leaves and debris from his pants. “She’s always a good girl,” Louie Christian said, giving Jesse a wink.

      “What is it with that wink?” Gina asked, pretending to frown.

      “Don’t go in Papa Louie’s kitchen, Mommy,” Jesse warned. Beside her, Cody buried his face in the dog’s ruff.

      “Why, what would I find in Papa Louie’s kitchen?” Gina asked.

      “They wanted to make play dough,” Louie explained. “From scratch.”

      “No, from flour and salt, Papa Louie,” Jesse said.

      Louie gave Gina another wink. “My mistake.”

      Gina’s hands went to her hips. “So you said absolutely not because a kitchen is no place for two five-year-olds, except for eating. And besides, fooling around with flour and salt and who-knows-what-all to make play dough is a project to be supervised by moms. That is what you said, isn’t it, Louie?”

      Louie scratched his bearded cheek. “Well…”

      Jesse was jumping up and down and Cody was grinning. “He let us do it because we knew how, Mommy! We learned at school, didn’t we, Cody?”

      “Uh-huh.” Blond head bobbing.

      “I’m afraid I didn’t realize exactly what was required to make play dough,” Louie said apologetically. “And then there seemed to be flour everywhere and Archie was going to track it back into the den, so I turned my back for a moment to put her outside, then Cody said he knew how much water it took, but apparently he overestimated a bit and then—” He was shaking his head. “Actually, it was the mixer that did most of the damage, I’m afraid.”

      Gina reached up and flicked something white and sticky from Louie’s beard.

      “Oops.” Jesse covered her mouth and her smile. “I thought we cleaned you all up, Papa Louie.”

      “But did you clean up Papa Louie’s kitchen, young lady?” she asked sternly.

      “Papa Louie said we’d better go outside while the gittin’ was good,” Jesse said. “So we did.”

      “It was too overwhelming for them to clean up,” Louie said, looking pained. “And I couldn’t leave them outside without supervision. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

      “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want that.” Gina rolled her eyes. “Look, Louie, you’re going to have to be more forceful with them, Jesse especially. She can talk the tail off a tiger if you let her. Now, next time—”

      “Next time I won’t let them in the kitchen,” Louie said, looking relieved to get only a lecture.

      “No, next time you won’t let them talk you into beginning a project that even an experienced childcare worker would hesitate over.” After a moment, she gave a resigned sigh. “Okay, the damage is done, but we have to go over to Papa Louie’s house now and clean up.” She took Jesse’s hand and motioned for Cody to follow. When Louie made to join them, she shook her head. “Uh-uh, Louie. They did the mess, they’ll clean it up. You go back to the glider and let Elizabeth tell you about the hearing.”

      “Good idea.” Elizabeth, smiling faintly over the situation, nudged Louie toward the gazebo.

      “Is it good news?” Louie asked, not ready to sit.

      “Tell