Free Lancelot of the Pines (Louisiana Knights Book 1) by Jennifer Blake

it.”
    “He what?” He stared at her with a frown between his eyes.
    “He told me he filed a motion to fix it,” she repeated, then went on more slowly. “Because I was a minor when arrested and it had been over five years, so he said, the record could be wiped clean. It would be—I can’t think of the word.”
    “Expunged,” Lance supplied.
    “That’s it. Everything would be expunged. It would be as if it never happened.”
    “No legal action of that kind is in the file, probably because he told you wrong. The records can only be expunged five years after your release, not after the arrest. Everything is still there.”
    Everything is still there…
    She should have been shocked. Somehow, she couldn’t summon the energy. What she felt was sick depression. Bruce had either lied in hope of earning her gratitude or made a mistake and been too conceited to tell her. That made it one more in a long line of betrayals. Yet it was also a sign of the years of her life, years wasted on a man who promised the moon and handed her a rock.
    Or no, that wasn’t precisely true. Bruce had kept his most important promise, which was seeing to it Clare had excellent care and every possible comfort for as long as she lived. The trouble was, that hadn’t been long. No, not long at all.
    Mandy sat back in her seat, looking down at her nails that hadn’t seen a manicure in weeks. She picked at a hangnail. “If you know about my record already, what is it you want me to tell you?”
    “The vandalism charge, what was that about?”
    “Broken windows in a school, because a boy in the gang I ran with was expelled for no good reason. When we were caught, he told the judge I just was hanging with him and his friends, never picked up a rock. I got off with a reprimand.”
    Lance inclined his head. “And the more serious one, the shoplifting? What did you take, jewelry, electronics, fancy running shoes?”
    “A box of Twinkies,” she said with a sardonic smile as she named the small, individually wrapped cakes. “A red hoodie, bottle of cologne, couple of bags of corn chips.”
    “And that’s all?”
    “The manager at the discount store was hardnosed, especially after I bit him.”
    “You bit him.” Lance’s voice was grim.
    “He called it assault, and claimed I was lying when I told the cops he was trying to make me go down on him at the time.”
    “Were you?”
    She laughed in sharp derision. “They didn’t believe me, either. The guy was married with two kids and a dog, as if that made a difference.”
    “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.” His gaze rested an instant on her chest, but shifted away immediately.
    “But you wonder, don’t you?” she asked. “You’re just like the rest of them, ready to give a man with a job and family the benefit of the doubt over the word of a teenage girl dressed in thrift store leavings and with no known address.”
    “Your file doesn’t mention family.”
    “It wouldn’t.” She glanced away out the half glass in the door, though she couldn’t have said what lay outside.
    His face hardened and he folded his arms over his chest, an obvious sign he was going nowhere until he had answers. Mandy watched him out of the corners of her eyes until she could take the silence no longer.
    “The man who fathered me skipped out before I was born,” she said with a sigh. “If I had grandparents or aunts and uncles, I never knew them. My mom worked as a cocktail waitress whenever she could get a job, or hold one long enough to draw a paycheck. She was arrested in a drug bust when I was ten.”
    “Ten.”
    She shrugged. “Almost.”
    “Young,” he said. A frown came and went across his face. “I suppose you were sent to Family Services?”
    “Isn’t that in the record you’re so proud of finding?”
    “I haven’t read it all. Tell me.”
    “Fine, yeah. We were taken into custody, or whatever you call it, the same night. They told us—told me my mom was released after a