Robin in the Hood (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 1) (30 page)

My dad leaned back on his flamingo-shaped chaise lounge on the grass at Turtle Shores and licked his fingers from Lorraine’s fried chicken like the happiest guy on earth. When we’d brought him home all bandaged up from the hospital, Lorraine had cooked enough food for an army—including her amazing sweet potato pie. But this time, Creek didn’t have to steal sacks of flour or bags of sweet potatoes. We’d humbly paid for them at a local farmer’s market with cash.

And subtracted that amount from the four million dollars in the Swiss bank account that had been secretly registered in my name.

My
r
e
a
l
name—Rubina de Bargona.

I was rich again.

Or I guess I should say, I’d been rich all along.

Only now, it scared the hell out of me.

Because during my journey through total brokedom to the trailer park, I’d actually found more love in my life than I’d ever known. Now I had people who genuinely cared about me and who didn’t bolt the minute their paychecks dried up. I didn’t want to jinx that—I wanted love to stay.

I thought about what my mother had said in my vision:
C
a
n
o
u
r
l
o
v
e
t
r
i
u
m
p
h
?

Well, the only person I knew for certain who might have a clue about my future was Granny Tinker.

She sat on a chipped white rocker next to my dad with one of her old quilts stretched out on the grass. On it was a faded lawn chair that held her crystal ball, sparkling in the afternoon sun. She’d told me the outdoors was good for the crystal, “Lets in fresh air and cleans them vibes.”

I had my doubts.

It was hard to imagine the vibes getting any purer with Bixby and the TNT Twins exploding things all over the place. Just beyond the compound, I heard another boom! and saw a purplish plume rise in air. The three of them did awkward cartwheels and jumped up and down in victory. The smoke and gases they’d released made me cough.

“JUSTIN! JASPER!” Brandi swung open her trailer door and marched with her yellow platform sneakers onto the grass, waving her fist. “Cut that out! You’re making too much racket for Dooley to finish his homework.” She had on a blonde Afro wig today with a colorful striped jumpsuit that made her look like a soul superstar. On anyone else, the outfit would have been ridiculous, but for those of us who knew Brandi, it brought nothing but joy. Her crazy get-ups were a sign that she’d gotten her mojo back, and she was determined now to beat cancer.

The doctors had said her prognosis was good, provided she kept up her treatments.

And Granny promised me it wasn’t her “time”. She’d been seeing bluebirds land on Brandi’s trailer all week. Omens, she insisted, hinting at a happy future. “Besides,” Granny had said, “Dooley needs Brandi—we all do—and we ain’t about to surrender our earth angel to the hereafter without a fight.”

Granny pitched back and forth on her rocker and watched Brandi return to her trailer. Her mouth broadened into a smile, allowing the sunlight to glint off her gold front tooth.

“Reckon everything’s back to the way it’s supposed to be,” she remarked, glancing at me. “But yer worried about true love, ain’t ya?”

Goose bumps prickled my skin. I folded my arms to distract myself, but Granny caught the uncertain look in my eye.

“Then what you doin’ here, darlin’?” she prodded. “Git on out to the lake.”

“What? Why?”

“’Cause that’s where yer gonna find Creek.” She leaned back on her rocker and laughed. “He’s workin’ on yer answer right now.”

“My ans—”

I paused before making a fool of myself. Of course Granny knew I was worried about love—she always picked up on my emotions. And what had been eating at me for the past two weeks was that Creek had only ever said he loved me when I was poor. While my dad was in the hospital and Brandi was getting her chemo treatments, we’d barely had a chance to say two words to each other. Now that the dust had settled, Creek had disappeared for days, not even showing up for Lorraine’s fried chicken. Did he think I’d become just another rich bitch, like that awful chick whose name he’d scratched off his arm? Could he find it in his heart to love a loaded Robin—a.k.a. Rubina—with a hoity-toity last name like de Bargona?

Nervous, I shot a glance at Granny’s crystal ball. Oddly enough, it began to mist over with a purplish smoke. Then I thought I saw an image of Creek. He was sitting by the lake, and he appeared to be arranging something on the sand.

Another boom startled me, and the picture was gone—

Granny let out a loud cackle.

“I keep tellin’ ya. Your
s
o
u
l
’
s
marked,” she said. “You couldn’t run from love if you wanted to, not with an expert tracker like Creek on yer trail. So I suggest you git on down to that water now. ’Cause everything you’ve ever wanted is waiting for you at Bender Lake.”

I stared at her, bewildered.

“Have a nice trip, sweetheart,” she said mysteriously.

I swear, it felt as though her words clung to my skin, yet echoed across the compound at the same time.

Shaking my head, I took a deep breath, feeling butterflies swell in my stomach as I began to walk across the meadow—towards whatever fate held for me—and maneuvered around the TNT Twin’s holes. Nearing the edge of the compound, I saw the spot where Tweedle had been launched into the air by a camouflaged trebuchet. Turned out he’d suffered a bad concussion and couldn’t remember his name, let alone anything that had happened that night. When the Colonel and Bixby caught up with him on the shores of Bender Lake, lost and dripping wet, they’d resisted the urge to tar and feather him and throw him back in. Instead, they’d called a cab to take him to the address listed on his driver’s license.

Which meant that Tweedle had probably returned to
m
y
old house.

And I bet he was living it up on the money he’d embezzled. But odds were that he couldn’t remember me or my dad—perhaps ever again.

Given my latest turn of fortune, I decided to call our Karma even. It was more than a fair trade to leave Tweedle and his kind far, far behind.

As I followed the overgrown dirt trail into the woods beyond the compound, I inhaled the sweet aroma of honeysuckle with just a hint of pine and damp wood that filled the air. Only a couple of months ago, I would have scoffed at such a scent because it hadn’t come from a designer label. But now the smell seemed fresh and earthy, complex, and it reminded me of Creek . . .

Creek, who’d single-handedly taught me how to value simple things.

And most of all, who’d showed me that true wealth was found in people’s hearts, not in their pocketbooks.

But did that mean he still loved me? Now that I’d become Miss Moneybags?

I pushed aside some raspberry canes and brush until I came to the clearing at Bender Lake.

There was Creek, sitting quietly on the sand beside a rowboat.

Just like I’d seen in Granny’s crystal ball.

In front of him was a pillar candle with two tarot cards on either side. And my mother’s ruby heart—

I gasped and patted my jeans pocket. Empty! I dashed over to him on the beach.

“You thief! What are you doing with my mom’s ruby?”

I tried to snatch it up, but Creek grabbed my arm so fast it made me wince. He pulled me down to the sand.

“She’s been telling us where she is, Robin. All along, in the box—it held the clues.”

His icy blue eyes met mine and gave me chills. I could see in their cool intensity that he was back to business again.

“When you first came to Turtle Shores, Granny pulled me aside one night and told me history repeats itself. Loves comes back around for those who are brave enough to grab it. But I didn’t know what she meant.”

Creek grasped the two cards on the sand and held them up to me. On their backs, surrounded by little white stars, was the word
V
e
n
e
z
i
a
. Then he set them down and pulled out a yellowed newspaper clipping from his jeans pocket and unfolded it, revealing my mother’s photo. Her astonishing beauty always made my breath catch. He underlined the words beneath the picture with his finger:
A
s
s
o
c
i
a
t
e
d
P
r
e
s
s
/
V
e
n
i
c
e
.

Creek handed me the ruby heart. It still felt warm from his hands.

“Do you want to find her?”

My eyes welled up.

Of course I did! I wanted to run up and hug her and hold her in my arms. And then tell her how much Daddy loved her—that he’d never forgotten her all these years.

And neither had I.

All my life, there’d always been a hole in my heart that nothing seemed to fill, no matter how much I went shopping. And the only time I even came close to feeling full inside was when I was with Creek, or when I shared a bear hug with my dad, or held this ruby in my hands.

Creek stared into my eyes.

“Robin, I want
a
l
l
of you.” He took my hands in his, our palms cupping the gem stone. “And that can’t happen till you patch those cracks in your heart. You’ve made a lot of inroads with your dad. But you need to find your mom. To be whole.”

I shuddered. Was I that obvious? Or had Creek become as psychic as Granny? A tear trickled down my cheek, and I dropped my gaze to the ruby in our hands. It sparkled like a crimson fire in the sunlight.

“I took back the money,” Creek confessed, rubbing his hands over mine. “I used the passcode from your account to withdraw two hundred thousand dollars, and I put it in a sack and left it in the Cinci Federal vault. So it looked like it had been . . . misplaced.” He paused. “Let’s just say I gave the security guard a little incentive to do things my way—and to keep quiet.”

He gave me that sinister, dagger half-smile that I absolutely loved.

“That’s why I split for a while. I wanted us to be free and clear, like you said. But I’ll never touch your money again.”

“
O
u
r
money,” I countered. “Without you, I never would’ve found my dad’s box—”

Creek shook his head. “We’re partners of the heart, Robin. That’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

Creek gazed at the candle on the sand. He was silent for a moment.

“It means I love you. And I want us to have a future that can’t be killed by dollar signs.”

A lightning bolt shook me inside so hard I wondered if I appeared incandescent. He does still love me! But I couldn’t escape the fact that there was a giant wall of cash between us now.

“I love you too, Creek. You gave me a whole world—and a family—that doesn’t change with every shift of the stock market. So how do we keep this money from being a curse?” I asked, gazing down at the ruby. “The kind that destroyed my parents?”

“It didn’t destroy them—that’s the key,” Creek replied. “They loved each other all along, we know that now. They were just too afraid to admit it. But I’m
n
o
t
,
Robin.”

Creek leaned in to kiss me. An intense kiss of promise, scented by the sunshine on the sand, the rich honeysuckle, the clear water of Bender Lake, and a whole life together that felt eternal in that very moment.

But when his lips gently slid from mine, he reached into his pocket for a knife and clicked it so that the blade flashed in the sunlight.

“Write it,” Creek said.

“What?”

“You know.”

He rolled up his t-shirt sleeve on the same arm as the snake tattoo that held nothing over his bicep. His skin stared back at me like a blank page.

Creek handed me the knife.

“You gotta be kidding!” I protested. “You want me to carve my name in your arm?”

“No, I want you to hold this feather first.”

He handed me the small feather.

“Ask for our love to last forever. Then let it go and hold this knife over the candle. Start cutting.”

I shook my head, floored—

“Robin, if you don’t do this,” Creek gently grasped my cheeks, “then you’ll never know if I love you, or if I was just after your money. That will eat you alive, trust me. So I want you to dig this blade in as hard and deep as you can.”

My fingers began to tremble.

“Okay, hold up your feather and release it.”

Closing my eyes, I said a quick blessing for our love. To who, I wasn’t quite sure—I just imagined my mother and father together again, full of love, and everyone at Turtle Shores smiling at us like saints. Then I tossed the feather into a breeze and opened my eyes, watching it swirl over Bender Lake.

Swallowing hard, I raised the knife and poised it over Creek’s bicep. I couldn’t believe I was about to even consider something like this.

And God almighty, which name should I carve? Robin or Rubina?

Creek grabbed a stick from the sand and shoved it between his teeth.

“Partners,” he nodded before shutting his eyes tight. “With a big ol’ heart around it.”

I laughed for a second, certain he was joking.

But he wasn’t.

He sat very still with his eyes closed, waiting.

When I thought about it, I realized that was the one name that would never change, regardless of which birth certificate or social security card had been faked, or whose last name I took next—McArthur, McCracken, or de Bargona.

Summoning all my courage, I gritted my teeth and ran the knife through the candle flame, flipping it over several times, then sank it into his arm.

The blade was so sharp it sliced through his flesh like butter.

Creek winced, but made no sound.

Hyperventilating, my hand shook as I carved a big cursive P and an A, watching his blood trickle down his forearm and drop to stain the sand. I could hear his breathing halt as I removed the knife and sunk it in again, moving on to a flowing R and T. If this scar was going to last forever, then I decided I wanted it to be beautiful. After fashioning the rest of the letters, I held up the knife and dug it in one last time to swoop a giant heart around the entire word.