Baby, It's You by Jane Graves Page A

distressed. A tear coursed down her cheek, and she swept it away with the back of her hand.
    “Don’t cry,” Marc said. “That asshole’s not worth it.”
    “It’s not Greg,” Kari said, sniffing. “It’s Jill. I thought we were friends.”
    “Friends don’t betray you like that.”
    “I know. I just thought she would understand.”
    “Why did you get engaged to that guy in the first place?”
    She shrugged weakly. “Everybody thought it was such a good idea. Particularly my father. Greg works at his company, and my father thinks he’s wonderful. Mostly because they’re just alike.”
    “He seems hell-bent on marrying you, but he doesn’t seem to give a damn about how you feel about it.”
    Kari was silent.
    “I’m just stabbing in the dark here, but does your father happen to have money?”
    She paused. “Yeah.”
    “A lot of it?”
    “More than you can possibly imagine.”
    Marc was beginning to get the picture here, and it wasn’t pretty. The asshole wanted to marry her for her money. Maybe he even saw himself at the helm of the old man’s company someday, so he gave her a ring and conned her into an engagement. Her father seemed to think it was an excellent match, so the pressure was coming from two sides. And her friend Jill wasn’t a friend at all if she thought marrying that guy was a good idea. It appeared everybody in Kari’s life pushed her around like a chess piece, right up to the day the pawn finally revolted.
    “Thank you for sticking up for me,” Kari said. “That was nice.”
    “It wasn’t nice. Nice had nothing to do with it. It was just a logical reaction to bad behavior. You have to call a halt to that kind of crap the instant it begins, or you’ll have more trouble than you know what to do with.”
    “Okay, then,” she said. “How about if I thank you for being logical?”
    Marc didn’t know what to say to that. He only knew it was time for Kari to do whatever she had to do to get out of Rainbow Valley and on the road back to Houston. Surely she had other friends who could help her. She could return to her old life minus a certain asshole, and Marc would finally be free of the drama he hadn’t asked for in the first place.
    “Rick called me this morning,” he said. “He said he pulled your car out of the ditch, but that you hadn’t come by yet. I thought you were going over there first thing.”
    “I was,” Kari said. “But I slept late. And then when I came down here…” Her voice faded away.
    “Look, I just came to tell you that you need to go see Rick. I asked him to haul your car in, so he needs to be paid for his time.”
    “Yes,” she said on a sigh. “I know.”
    “Just so you know, he thinks the car is a total loss.”
    “ What? ”
    “He said the frame is bent, which means it would cost more to fix the car than it’s worth.”
    “Oh, no.” Kari sat down, her body going limp, then dropped her head to her hands. The rag mop scurried in a circle on the sofa, then jumped down to sniff a potted plant.
    “Your insurance should reimburse you for the current value of the car,” Marc said. “Just call your insurance company, and it’ll all be taken care of.”
    “I can’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I don’t own the car. Not exactly.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Kari sighed. “It’s in my father’s name.”
    Marc was confused. “Why?”
    “Because he gave it to me as a gift a few years ago.”
    “And he never put it in your name?”
    “That’s right.”
    “So call your father and get him to talk to the insurance company. One way or another, you’ll get a check.”
    Kari looked away. “I’m afraid there’s a teensy little problem with that.”
    Marc felt a glimmer of apprehension. The last time he heard the word problem , he got stuck unbuttoning a wedding dress. Unfortunately, she was looking up at him with those amazing green eyes, so he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What problem?”
    And then she told him,