Free When Wishes Collide by Barbara Freethy Page B

name?"
    "Carly."
    "What did she look like?"
    "Dark hair, brown eyes, I think, long, long legs, the kind that could wrap –"
    "Yeah, I get the picture," Wyatt said grimly. "When did you last see her?"
    "A couple of weeks ago."
    "Did they leave anything behind?"
    "Housekeeping takes whatever is left."
    "If they come back, call me," Wyatt said, handing him his card.
    "I don't want any trouble."
    "Then don't forget to call me, or you'll have all kinds of trouble," he warned.
    Wyatt's ruthless tone made the clerk back up a step. "Got it."
    "Good." Wyatt strode briskly out of the lobby.
    Adrianna followed, happy to be back in the sunshine. She hadn't imagined that helping Wyatt would take her back to places that reminded her of her own past.
    Wyatt walked down the path in front of the motel and around the corner where two machines offering ice and drinks were located. The motel was shaped like a U with the parking lot in the middle. There were three cars in the lot and an old man sitting in a folding chair in front of his room. When he saw them staring, he got up and went inside, as if he was afraid they were going to ask him questions.
    "I feel like knocking on some doors," Wyatt said.
    "I doubt many will answer," she said. "But you can try."
    He shot her a quick look. "I've got nothing to lose."
    She shrugged. "It's your call."
    As she'd predicted, only one person answered his knock, an older, confused woman who seemed to think they were going to give her a ride to the drug store. It took a lot of explanation to convince her otherwise. In the end, she finally just went back inside.
    "Okay, now you can say, I told you so ," Wyatt said as they circled back to the front of the building.
    "Can I say I'm impressed instead?"
    "Impressed by my failure?"
    "No, by your determination. You're relentless."
    "The stakes are high," he said.
    She nodded. "Did one of the women the clerk described sound like your ex-wife?"
    "The long legs could have been hers, but who knows?"
    "What did Jennifer do? Did she have a job?"
    "At one time, she wanted to design clothes. But after we married, she got pregnant, and that seemed to be the end of that. One time, when we were arguing, she told me that I'd stopped her from having her dreams, because I'd wanted a kid."
    "So she didn't want to get pregnant?"
    "Oh, she wanted a baby. That was part of the fairytale, until she actually had a baby and realized the fairytale literally stunk. She used to say she didn't have time to work because she was taking care of a baby, but her parents got her a nanny, and she spent more time having lunch with her friends than pushing a stroller to the park." He let out a sigh. "This was a waste of time."
    "It was a good place to check. It's more than likely that the kids are staying in a place like this and that it's close to Vincenzo's. Maybe they'll come back here."
    "I hate to say I hope so, because this place is a dump."
    "Yeah, it is," she said. "But for a lot of people it's home."
    His gaze met hers and he gave her a questioning look.
    "I used to live in a place called the Oceanview Lodge," she said, answering his unspoken question. "It didn't have a view of the ocean. Our room overlooked the dumpsters behind the strip clubs. The clerk was just like the guy inside. He didn't care who was staying there as long as they paid cash, and I doubted if he could have described anyone who came through the door. He made a point of not looking. I was actually happy about that at the time. It was the ones that looked at me that made me nervous."
    "What a shitty life you had," he said, shaking his head. "I don't understand why someone wasn't looking out for you."
    She was taken aback by his passion, by the anger in his eyes. "My mom was sick."
    "What about the rest of your family? Someone should have tracked your father down. And weren't there any grandparents, any aunts, any cousins?"
    "They did look for my father, but I didn't have any information for them to go on. He wasn't listed