Maggie's Guardian

TESSA HAD BARELY SUNG, cajoled and bribed Maggie to take a nap in her brand-new crib when the telephone rang. She grabbed the receiver and then buried it in her sweater, trying to keep the ringer from waking Maggie as she grabbed the baby monitor and bolted from her room.

Please let it be Weldon. She’d dialed his office after breakfast to ask if she could pick up some of Maggie’s belongings.

When he hadn’t returned her call by the time Maggie ate her second meal and began to scrub at her eyes with weariness, Tessa had gone out to buy a new crib. By some miracle she’d managed to set it up in her room while Maggie slept on a pile of quilts on the living-room floor.

At the bottom of the stairs, Tessa pulled the phone out of her sweater and whispered a hello, but instead of Weldon, her mother’s voice breathed her name.

“Are you all right? My neighbor just called to tell me about David. Why didn’t you call?”

“I’m fine, Mom.” How did the neighbor know the number of the bed-and-breakfast they were staying at in England? Amanda and Chad Lawlor, her parents, hadn’t left the number with her.

“Mrs. Hawkins said you found his body.”

“I’m fine,” she said again. Most of her conversations with her mother went this way. She tried to say whatever might be least likely to spawn a melodramatic reaction. Her mother drove forward.

“You have bad luck, Tessa. First you marry a guy who works with dead people. Now your best friend’s husband dies and you find him.”

Why argue that Noah tried to keep people alive, and David hadn’t gotten killed on purpose? Despite the fact the entire family had known David since he and Tessa were in kindergarten, her mom still couldn’t remember she’d met Joanna through David, not the other way around. Ladies didn’t have male best friends, unless they were hoping to date them.

“I blame it on Noah,” Amanda said.

“Mom, you like Noah, remember?”

“I’d like him better if he’d taken that lieutenant’s position. It was a much more respectable job, and I’ll bet you’d still be together if he’d stopped chasing unkempt, unfit criminals and devoted himself to you.”

“Mom, he’s here.” And who would be a kempt, fit criminal? “He came to help me because the police think I know something about David’s death.”

“What?” At her mother’s shocked bleat, Tessa scrambled to backtrack. A suspected murderess might find herself designated persona non grata in the Lawlor family.

“I don’t know anything, of course, but I was his partner, and because of Maggie, I’ll have indirect access to his assets.”

“Why ever would you not? You agreed to take care of little Megan. Why is Noah there again?”

“Maggie, Mom. David’s daughter is Maggie. And Noah came because he didn’t like the way the police treated me. I don’t want you calling here and saying something ugly to him.”

“As you said, I like the man. He’s gorgeous, after all. I just think he might have done better by you.”

“What happened between Noah and me, we did to each other.” Tessa changed the subject. “How’s Dad?”

“At a seminar at some hospital. That reminds me, dear, I have to get his tux cleaned. We have tickets for Madame Butterfly on Friday. Do you think this David thing will get you and Noah back together?”

“Mother, my friend was killed.”

“What happened anyway? Someone shot him? A robbery, honey?”

Her mother, a blasé citizen of Boston, obviously imagined a nice, clean death, a bullet that served its purpose with little or no trace. “No, Mom. He was stabbed.”

“Do you need us to come back to the States for the funeral?”

“No.” Noah was enough to face for now. “But thank you.”

“We want to be there for you.”

“Thanks, but too many people might confuse Maggie. Every time someone opens the door, she asks for David.”

“She’s another good reason for you and Noah to try again. You’re too fragile to take care of her by yourself.”

Fragile? She was anything but. “Thanks for the advice.”

“Call me after the funeral. Your father will want to know you’re fine, too.”

“All right, Mom.”

“I love you.”

“Me, too, you.”

She clicked the phone’s off button and dropped her arm. As she turned, Noah seemed to rise out of the floor. She hadn’t heard him come in, but he crossed the room in three steps.

“Was that Weldon?”

“My mom.”

“Oh. Amanda.” He lifted one shoulder, and for a moment they read each other’s thoughts. He turned away.

“She means well.” She’d always tried to pretend her family was “normal.”

“You know exactly what she means. You know who they are, Tessa, and what they are. Why do you waste time protecting them?”

“They’re not your problem any longer.”

“Did you talk to your dad? Are they coming here?” He managed to make it sound like the last straw.

“They’re in England. He’s at a seminar.”

“Good. Their comfort is the last thing you need.” At her affronted glare, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “My mother always asks me if you’re ever going to speak to her again.”

She’d avoided Lucy Gabriel since the divorce. Not that she was mad at Lucy. She just hadn’t wanted to poach on Noah’s property. Lucy, whose independence was her greatest possession, next to her son, would be annoyed that Tessa could consider anyone property, but that happened during a divorce.

“She blames me,” Noah said. “She thinks I told you to stay away from her.”

Tessa planted the baby monitor on one hip and the phone on the other, forgetting she had them in her hands. “I never said so. I just didn’t want to come between you. She was your mother first.”

“But you still belong to her, too. She doesn’t like to lose anyone she loves.”

His unaccustomed frankness made her feel contrite. And that bugged her. “Why don’t you handle her? Tell her not to worry about me.”

“Handle my mom?” His eyes crinkled, making the irises seem darker than she remembered.

“I don’t know how to be friends with her now.” She wasn’t about to admit Lucy reminded her too much of Noah.

His gaze intensified. Palpable unease and one of Maggie’s breaths filled the silence. He tossed his coat at the couch. “Don’t tell me to ‘handle’ her. You care more for her than that.”

“I do.” Hot shame raced across her skin. “But she tries to talk about you. I know I hurt you both, but I had to go. I couldn’t stay in that house when we were both so alone.”

He spoke through tight lips. “Why did we have to be alone? We lived together.”

“We didn’t.” Her solitary grief swept her with familiar emptiness. “You wanted nothing from me, but I needed someone to make me want to live again.”

He tilted his head, eyeing her with an incredulous question. “How can I make you want to live?”

“I don’t know.” She cleared her throat. “And I don’t need that now, but I couldn’t get through to you. We left each other, and then I finally moved out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

“I told you over and over, but you refused to hear.”

He nodded suddenly, and the light picked out silver strands in his black hair. “I didn’t want you to go. I think—I thought—you should have given me another chance.”

As if she owed him? They looked back at the end of their marriage just the way they’d lived it—miles apart in perception.

She glanced toward her future, asleep behind her bedroom door. “Maggie’s the last chance I have in me. You and I stopped owing each other anything the day our divorce became final. I just have to do right by her now.” She twisted the kinks out of her shoulders. “About your mom, what do you say to her?”

“That you’ll call when you’re able to talk to her again.”

Which made it sound as if there was something wrong with her. She started to get mad again.

He saw. “Just call her.” His tone, almost defeated, reminded her he rarely recovered from a migraine in only twenty-four hours. “Mom keeps insisting she didn’t need to deal with a divorce.”

She’d spent a lot of time trying not to miss Lucy. Noah’s mom had made her believe in unconditional mother’s love. With bright copper hair, bloodred faux nails and a legion of suitors, Lucy had been the worst example Amanda could imagine for the daughter she’d considered a failure as a woman. Amanda had admired the quantity of Lucy’s suitors, but she’d lectured long and hard that a woman should more subtly display her attributes.

To Tessa, Lucy had always been…Lucy. What you saw was what you got. She’d only turned her back on her borrowed mother because she’d loved her so much. She’d sworn she wouldn’t come between Noah and his mom.

“I’ll call,” she said with dread. Lucy probably still considered the divorce a temporary measure because Noah had told her he didn’t want it. His signing the papers hadn’t convinced her he’d lied, and Lucy would never stop trying to piece her family back together.

“I don’t mean just for today. Call Mom because you’re a daughter to her, as much as I’m her son.”

Tessa walked around him. “Don’t take yourself too seriously in this ex-husband-to-the-rescue role. I need you because you understand the way Weldon thinks, but I’ve learned how to run my own life again.”

“Maybe I’m more worried about my mother than about you.” He said it so quickly she knew he meant it, that he hadn’t planned the one answer that would make her wonder if she’d made a mistake.

Surely he knew her well enough to see she still loved his mom. “I’ll call her,” she said again. Continuing toward the kitchen, she tried to step back onto last night’s impersonal footing. “Did you talk to Weldon? What are you doing back here anyway?”

“I wanted to check in before I left town.” He followed her lead. “Weldon has nothing on you. He just doesn’t have any other suspects. I talked to the patrol officers who work David’s neighborhood.” He paused as she took out bottles and the formula mix. “What are you doing?”

“Making formula for later. She’ll be hungry again any second. How much longer do you suppose she’ll drink this stuff?” She made a mental note to schedule an appointment with Maggie’s pediatrician.

“I don’t know. Can I help?”

She nearly slammed the formula onto the counter. A cozy suggestion, but unthinkable. “No, thanks.” She tried to sound as if his help didn’t matter in the least. “What did the patrolmen say?”

“No one’s been hanging around David’s house, or here, either.”

“Good.” She hadn’t wanted to believe she and Maggie might be in trouble.

“Weldon wants you to search your office records again to make sure nothing’s missing.”

“I’ll have to ask Emily, our receptionist, to help.” She glanced at him. Bracing his hands on one of her kitchen chairs, he looked big and completely at home. As soon as they switched to business, he shucked off the discomfort that felt like her second skin. “Emily does a lot of the filing.”

“I’d like to talk to her, too. She might know more about David’s office than you.”

He was right. “Does Weldon want to see me again?”

“He didn’t say so, but he knows I’m on your side, and I’m afraid I all but called him a small-town idiot.”

“That should help.” He didn’t answer and the silence stretched. She began to spoon formula into tonight’s bottles. “Noah?”

“Yeah?”

His voice warned her he was coming around the table to look her in the eye. “Why are you so sure I’m innocent?” Following his earlier approach, she asked it quickly. A healthy divorced woman didn’t care what her ex-husband thought of her.

“Are you kidding? I know you.”

“Not now. You knew me before.” As in before she’d lost him and Keely.

“Nothing we’ve been through turns a loving woman into a murderer.”

She nearly dropped the bottle again. If he thought her loving, why had he said no to the divorce but then signed the papers?

“Why are you helping me?” She turned to watch his expression as he answered her.

He looked away. “I let you down. And maybe I should have been able to save our daughter.”

Terrifying compassion swayed her toward him. “Don’t say that.”

“You don’t believe it’s true?”

“Not at all.” She couldn’t force her voice above a whisper. She’d felt the same guilt all this time.

“Then why did you leave?”

“Because you didn’t love me anymore, and I had to learn not to love you.” She brushed away her tears. “Why are you helping me now?”

“Because I owe you.”

Rage flashed up and down her nerve endings. He owed her? She set Maggie’s bottle on the counter and reached for him. He lifted one thick eyebrow, and his shoulder flexed beneath her palm. He felt real and warm and alive, and she wanted to shake him.

“You feel sorry for me, because you couldn’t love me after Keely—after she—” She couldn’t say it. Eighteen months later, and she still found it hard to say the words.

“I have to make up for the way I let you down so I can get on with my life.” His raspy tone, the warmth of his breath on her face, reminded her she’d been his wife. She’d been much closer to him than this.

“So if you help me now, you’ll make up for everything that happened before? I’m your penance?”

“If I’m doing what you need, why do you care about my motives? You only called me out of habit.”

“I hope you’re right.” She struck back, unable to stop herself. “I don’t want to need you again.”

He tilted his head away, as if her anger ricocheted off his face. She hadn’t known she could still hurt him. She hadn’t realized how badly she still wanted to make him pay because she’d hated living without him and Keely.

Most of all, most painful of all, she didn’t want to be a debt he owed.

The doorbell rang, and she spun away from Noah, accidentally elbowing the bottle off the counter. Powdered formula sprayed her floor, and she strode through it.

She pressed her hands to her chest, trying to slow her pounding heart. Behind her, sounds from the kitchen told her Noah was cleaning up. If she were as self-sufficient as she’d tried to be, she would have thrown him out of her house. He didn’t belong here.

The bell rang again, and Tessa hurried to open the door. A tall woman, who seemed much older than when Tessa had last seen her, spilled over the threshold.

“Where’s Maggie?” she demanded.

On her heels, her husband carried a single large suitcase. He hadn’t changed as much as his wife. Tessa hadn’t seen them since they’d last driven down to visit David and the baby.

“She’s asleep.” Tessa closed the door and turned to her guests. Her heart danced a vicious tango as Noah joined them from the kitchen.

“You remember my husband—” She passed her hand across her mouth and then tried again. “My ex-husband, I mean.”

CHAPTER FOUR

ELEANOR AND JOE LINGERED in the doorway, both staring over Tessa’s shoulder at Noah as if he shouldn’t be there. The older woman’s animosity startled Tessa, but then her mouth trembled, deepening the lines in her shocked face. Tessa felt for her. She’d been through too much, starting with Joanna’s accident.

“Mr. and Mrs. Worth.” Noah came so close his body heat surrounded Tessa. “Good to see you again.” He curved his hands around her waist and eased her aside to make room for the other couple. “Come in, out of the cold.”

Tessa glared over her shoulder, annoyed that Noah had touched her possessively to mark himself as the host in her home.

Eleanor managed a tight smile. “We didn’t expect to see you, Mr. Gabriel.” Faint welcome warmed her voice. “I mean, Detective Gabriel—I’m sorry—I just don’t know how to treat policemen since my daughter’s death last year. After Chief Weldon took office here, he came out to our house. He tried to make us believe she was under the influence of drugs that night she died.”

Tessa started. Did the Worths know? David had told her about Joanna’s depression soon after Maggie’s birth, when he’d begun to back away from their friendship. She’d only discovered Joanna’s drug use when she’d caught David flushing his wife’s stash after the accident. He’d sworn Tessa to secrecy, to protect his family. He would never have told Eleanor.

Noah took the older woman’s hand, unexpected compassion in his gaze. Surprised again, Tessa watched him comfort Joanna’s mother.

“Police are naturally suspicious. You have to make allowances,” he said. “I’m sorry about David. He was a good friend to my—to Tessa. She counted on him.”

Tessa felt her eyes widen. An expert at reading character, he’d failed at tending frayed relationships. Had he changed or was he merely offering the Worths appropriate responses?

She rubbed her temples, trying to avoid old resentments before they bubbled to the surface. After Keely’s death, Noah had maintained his phenomenal success rate at work. Murder had claimed the largest share of his attention, as if he couldn’t be both a good cop and a good family man. He’d steered clear of the pain and regret that had swallowed her as their marriage withered, but his empathy for Eleanor now obviously touched the older woman.

Tears welled in her eyes, and pink color stained her thin face. “We’ll miss David,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know what Maggie will think, after her mother and now this.”

With heartbreaking tenderness, Joe Worth stroked his wife’s back. “We’ll make sure Maggie remembers her mother and father, and she’ll still have us and Tessa.”

Noah looked suddenly uncomfortable. Tessa knew what he was thinking. He was only a temporary part of the picture.

“Noah’s on his way back to Boston.” She’d grabbed for her hard-fought sense of detachment. Easier to do with Noah out of the way.

He obliged by moving toward the door, and Eleanor and Joe sank against the wall to give him room. But Joe grabbed his sleeve.

“You’re satisfied the police here can handle the case?”

Noah opened his mouth, but he waited too long to be convincing. “Chief Weldon and his men are qualified.”

His bland tone reminded Tessa of what he’d called the first rule. The initial twenty-four hours after a homicide were key. Almost thirty had passed.

As if his uncertainty went over her head, Eleanor changed the subject. “When do you think Maggie will wake up? I won’t feel the world is a safe place again until I can hold her in my arms.”

Tessa stiffened. Surely David deserved a moment’s remembrance. But Eleanor had lost two members of her family. Naturally she needed to see Maggie. “She just went down for her nap—”

“I’m not leaving for good.” Noah interrupted, making them all look at him.

He pinned Tessa, his gaze dark and intense. “I’ll pick up my stuff at home and talk to Baxton about a leave of absence. Maybe you should give me a key so you don’t have to wait up for me tonight.”

Hand over a key to her home? “I’ll wait up.” Pigs would fly before she’d invite him to come and go at will.

Clenching his jaw, he flicked a quick look at the Worths and then grabbed his jacket off the sofa. His broad shoulders stretched the leather as he wrapped himself in control. Skimming her face with a glance that came nowhere near her eyes, he held out his hand to Joe Worth.

“Nice to see you after so long. Mrs. Worth, again, my condolences.”

Joe shook Noah’s hand, nodding while his wife mumbled thanks. They wore the stunned smiles of the living who’ve lost a loved one. Noah opened the door, but Tessa caught it to ease it shut so they wouldn’t wake Maggie.

“Wait.” Noah grabbed the heavy door again, his greater strength shoving the cold wood against her palm. “I know you can’t get into your office to access the files, but I want you to write down everything you remember about any client who’s complained at any time in the past year.”

“I can’t, Noah. I’m their attorney.”

“Don’t start that. I’m not official, and we’ll find a way to protect privilege if we have to, but I have to know what went wrong here. I’m especially interested in the guy who wanted you to be his own private attorney.”

“I’ll just bet you are.” The words slipped out, echoing the last contentious days of their marriage.

Noah curved his mouth and the seductive fullness of his lower lip rattled her even more than his pleasure in provoking her. He spun on his heel and sauntered down the steps, in charge again, damn him. She hadn’t learned his kind of control, and she was still mad as hell at him.

She watched him walk away until she realized divorcing him hadn’t cured her addiction to the loose, sexy swing of his stride. Without another thought she slammed the door. And then cursed herself, waiting for Maggie’s shrill cry.

Which came right on schedule.

“Let me get her,” Joe said.

Tessa wavered, already used to having sole responsibility for the baby. But she had to assure Joe and Eleanor they were still important to Maggie. She might be afraid of loving enough to get hurt again, but she’d make herself trust a little for Maggie’s sake.

“She’s in my room.” She pointed up at the gallery. “That door. I’ll get a bottle in case she’s hungry.”

“I’ll come with you, Joe.” Eleanor followed her husband to the stairs. “But, Tessa?”

With her hand on the kitchen door, she looked back.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to go to a hotel?” Eleanor asked.

“You’re welcome here.” Maggie knew them, loved them and needed them. “Noah’s already taken the room closest to mine. You can have the one nearest the stairs, but I’ve been using it for storage. I’ll clear it out for you later.”

As simple as that, she began to transform her haven for one into a family dwelling. Her safe days of owing nothing to anyone were over, but she’d held Maggie without screaming in agony because she couldn’t hold Keely. Maybe she was turning a corner. Maybe she’d learn to treasure her memories instead of avoiding them.

Some of her memories anyway. The ones that featured Noah still spelled danger. He might be the one man who could find the real killer quickly, but afterward, he’d retire to his self-sufficient life. A hint of unease snaked down her spine, making her shiver.

She didn’t want to need Noah again.

“BAXTON, I HAVE TO TAKE the time.” Noah shifted in the cracked leather chair across from his angry commander. The other man glared at him from beneath bushy brows that looked more gray than Noah remembered. When had Baxton started to look his age?

More to the point, when was the last time he’d noticed anything except his own work? For eighteen months he’d made himself numb while he’d functioned on the job. He used that same detachment to focus now.

“You know Tessa’s innocent. I can’t let those village clowns nail her for something she’d never do.”

“You’re divorced. You haven’t forgotten that in some drunken stupor?”

Noah passed on responding to Baxton’s sneer. Taking a punch at his superior could end this negotiation badly, and if his boss had really thought he was coming to work drunk, he’d have been off the job months ago. “I haven’t forgotten the divorce.” He never forgot, but maybe if he did something right for Tessa, he’d learn to let her go.

“How well do you know her after all this time? When did you last see her?”

Noah wasn’t about to admit he’d sat pathetically outside her parents’ house on Thanksgiving, knowing the hour she’d walk up their steps to the door.

“We haven’t seen each other since she left me—until last night.”

Baxton rocked slowly back and forth in his chair as a clock ticked behind him. “How much time off do you want?”

“I’m not sure.”

The commander seemed to think it over, as if he had a choice.

Noah reared out of his chair. “Look, Baxton, I’m not asking—I’m going to Maine to help my ex-wife. Fire me if you have to.”

“Damn you, man, you know I can’t fire you. I’d be explaining until my successor was planning his retirement party. Go, but you’d better make this fast. Let’s go over your caseload.”

“We’d better start with Della Eddings.”