Alistair (Golden Streak Series) by Kathi S. Barton

Jed prepare a
bowl for it. “I’ll just set this aside while we deal with the rest of these
cookies.”
    There was a great deal more batter left,
and as Jed scooped up the dough and dropped it on the sheet, Ally started to
pace. Sandra watched her son. She knew that he loved the girl, it was written
all over his face, but he also was afraid for her. Bronwyn started speaking as
Ally pulled some other ingredients from the cabinets.
    “I wasn’t really sure what I was looking
for, but I do know that your ex wasn’t in his mind. So I dug a little deeper. I
suppose that your ex could have sent him, but a female talked to him and told
him where you were. She said that you’d either be in that particular shop or
you’d be in the food court. Either way, he was excited to be getting to do this
for her.”
    “I guess we should be lucky that he
found me in the shop. There had to be considerably less people there.” Ally was
putting together something else in another large bowl while Jed finished the
cookies off. It looked like ten or so dozen of them lay on several cooling
racks on the counter.
    Ryland got up to get more glasses as Bronwyn
filled the plate again. If Ally kept this baking thing up she’d have enough
food for the entire family to take home. She got up to find some old tins she
knew that Alistair kept for her. She was just filling them with cookies when
Ryland spoke.
    “Do you know of any females that might
want you dead? Or maybe someone that your ex might know that would help him? A
friend or lover?” Ally shook her head as she poured sugar into the bowl.
    “No. He didn’t have a many friends. People
he worked with didn’t care much for him, and I lost all of mine just after we
were married. He had…I wasn’t allowed to go out with them anymore without him,
too.” She looked up, pausing in the middle of mixing together the dry
ingredients that Sandra just figured out was going to be pie crust. “Do you
think it could have been his mom? I mean, she’s as mean as a…she and I never
seemed to get along, and the one time I went to her after I’d been returned
home to see if she’d help me, she….”
    Sandra felt the tension surrounding the
girl and then noticed that even Jed took a step back. Alistair cleared his
throat twice before he spoke, and even then his voice was hoarse and deep.
    “What did she do?” Ally put the bowl
into the countertop and reached for the glass of ice water that Jed handed her.
“Ally, what did she do to you that made you not go back to her for help again?”
    “She…she hit me. Not with her fists like
Lance did but with the mug she’d had in her hand. She told me that I should be
more grateful that she’d not come after me, because I wouldn’t just need a long
sleeved shirt to hide what her son had done. She’d…she said that she’d kill me
if I ever tried to put her son into a position again where he had to explain
what had happened to me. I knew then that I had to get away.” She gently mixed
the iced water with the dry things, making the dough soft and flaky. “She then
told her son that I’d insulted him, and he said he’d take care of me when he
got home. I ended up in the hospital then and got out with the help of a nice
judge.”
    “The one that had helped you with your
divorce as well, correct?” Sandra looked at Keith when he spoke. “I helped find
out all I could about you when you first got here. That was part of what I
found. I’m sorry.”
    Sandra waited for a reaction from the
girl. Fireworks, anger, something, but all she did was shrug. There was
something so…laid back about her that made Sandra think that once she was able
to let it go, she’d be hell on wheels.
    The bread was punched down twice before
the conversation was completed. And a loaf of it eaten as a snack when it came
out of the oven while Jed cleaned up the kitchen. Most of the talk centered on
family and antics of her son’s childhood, but Sandra watched Alistair and