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He reached past her for the door. Which was locked. The baby’s crying was affecting him so badly, he considered a well-placed kick to the old wood, but contained himself.
“No,” she said, firmly, her suspicion leaping back in her eyes. “I’m leaving. It’s all right. Really. I’m tired. I drove too long. I must have the wrong address.”
She went to move by him and then stopped, the porch opening onto the stairs too small for her to squeeze by without touching him. It was when he saw the delicate blush rising in her cheeks that he remembered he was in a state of undress.
“Wait right here,” he said sternly, using his no-nonsense cop voice, a man to be taken seriously, even in his underwear. Boxers, thank God. The plaid kind that could be mistaken for a pair of gym shorts in a thick fog. Maybe.
She was scared still, it was written all over her face.
Scared that if he was not a pervert that had been hiding in the bushes, she had accidentally knocked on the door of Miracle Harbor’s only axe-murderer.
“I’m a cop,” he said reluctantly, “Retired.” He knew she’d see it. The stance, the look in his eyes, the cut of his hair.
Her eyes wide on his face, she nodded, then as soon as he stepped back, she flew by him, and scurried down the walk. He let her go, listening to the snap of the locks on her car doors when she was safely inside it.
Then he listened to the unhealthy grind as she turned the ignition.
Not his problem, he thought, at all. Thank God.
He went back down the sidewalk, and in his back door. He ordered himself up the steps and into bed. He made it up the steps, but his mind, never disciplined at this time of night, listened for the sound of the car pulling away. Nothing.
He opened his window, took a look out, and heard again the grind of the starter.
“Hell,” he said, and picked up a pair of jeans off the end of his bed. “Double hell.”
Despite a shin that should have told him otherwise, the woman had a vulnerable quality in her eyes. He wanted to leave her to her fate, and couldn’t. She wasn’t dressed warmly enough to be sitting out there in a freezing car, and the child probably wasn’t either.
Minutes later, snapping up his jeans, he turned on the porch light and flung open the front door.
She could come in if she wanted to.
But she didn’t.
Stubborn. That was written all over her face. Beautiful, yes, but stubborn, too. He snuck a glance out the door.
The wind lifted the fog enough for him to see her. She had her forehead resting against the steering wheel. She was probably crying. But she wasn’t going to ask for his help. Not him. The pervert.
Sighing, he pulled a jacket over his naked chest. He’d taken an oath, years ago, to protect and serve. And retired or not, that oath was as much a part of his makeup as anything else. It ran through his blood, and he found himself almost relieved at the discovery that his personal tragedy had not stolen that part of his nature from him.
He was not capable of leaving her out there in the cold.
She didn’t see him coming, and started when he tapped on her window. There, he’d managed to scare her again, which should warn him to give up any notion of a new career in the damsel-in-distress department.
She opened her window a crack. “Yes?”
“Do you want me to call somebody for you? Have you got road service?” Old habits died hard. Her license plates said Illinois. There was a parking sticker on her windshield for a lot in Chicago. He’d been right when he guessed this woman was a long way from home.
“I’ll be fine,” she said proudly. “In Chicago this is picnic weather.”
“Yeah,” he said. She was shivering. “I can see that. Is that baby as cold as you are?”
She gave the child a distressed look, and turned back to him. “Are you really a police officer?”
“I was, yes.”
“Have you got a badge?”
“Not anymore.”
“Why aren’t you a policeman anymore?”
His aggravation grew. It occurred to him it was the most he’d felt of anything for a long, long time. He actually felt alive. Aggravated, but alive.
“Lady,” he said, “are you going to make me beg you to come in?”
She seemed to mull that over, then with a resigned sigh, she undid the lock and reached for the baby. She followed him up the walk.
He held open the door for them. The baby was nestled into her mother’s chest now, sucking her thumb. When she glanced at him, she scrunched up her face again, and opened her mouth so wide he could see her tonsils.
The baby was wearing a knitted sweater with a little pink hood and pom-poms.
A memory niggled, so strong, so hard, he nearly shut the door.
Their baby was going to be a girl. The amniocentesis
had told them that. Stacey had begun to buy pink things. Little dresses. Booties.
“Are you all right?” the woman asked him.
No. He wasn’t. Two years, and he still wasn’t. He had accepted it now. That he was never going to be all right. That time would not heal it.
But he lied to her. “Sure. Fine. Come in.”
She stepped hesitantly over the threshold. The baby craned her neck and looked around.
“I’m Abby Blakely,” she said, and freeing a hand, extended it. She was small, but in the full light, she looked older than she had outside. Mid to late twenties. Not the teenager the Cubs cap had suggested. Her figure was delectable—slender, but soft in all the right places.
He took her hand, noting for a hand so small, it was very strong. “Shane McCall.”
“And you really were a policeman?”
“Why do you find that so hard to believe?”
“It’s not the policeman part I find hard to believe. It’s the retired part.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t look very old.”
The mirror played that trick on him, too. He looked in it and saw a man who looked so much younger than he felt.
“Thirty,” he said.
“Surely you’re a little too young to be retired, Mr. McCall?”
“Shane. Uh. Well. Semi, I guess. I’m a consultant on police training, now. Look, do you want to come in and sit down?”
Her eyes found his ring finger, and he saw her register the band of soft, solid gold that winked there. “Are we going to wake your wife?”
“No. I’m a widower.”
“I’m sorry.” After a moment, “You seem young for that, too.”
“Tell God.” He heard the bitter note in his voice, and would have done anything to erase it. “Look, are you coming in or not?”
She hesitated, looked like she was going to cry again, wiped at her face with her sleeve. “I don’t know what I want to do. I’m so tired.” She brightened. “I know, I’ll call one of my sisters.”
He liked the way she said sister, somehow putting so much love into the word that he knew her sister wouldn’t mind her calling at this time of the night. But why hadn’t she thought of that before?
She thrust the baby at him and bent to undo her shoes. It seemed to him he’d been in a better position when she didn’t trust him. He wasn’t good with babies.
He held the chubby body awkwardly, at arm’s length. “Uh, just leave your shoes on.”
“On these floors. Are you crazy?”
He looked at the floors, not sure he’d ever noticed them before. Wood. In need of something. Tender loving care.
The baby was regarding him with a suspicious scowl. Like mother, like daughter. “Me, Belle,” she finally announced warily.
“Great. Hi.” He still held her out, way far away from him.
She wiggled and he could feel the lively energy, the strength in her.
Abby straightened, and he went to hand the baby back. “Could you just hold her for a minute? Just until I use the phone?”
It would seem churlish to refuse. “The phone’s through here,” he said, leading the way, past the closed door that went into the empty main floor suite, and down the hall to the kitchen. The baby waggled away on the end of his held-out-straight-in-front-of-him arms.
“She won’t bite you.”
“Oh.” He made no move to change his position. Belle wiggled uncomfortably.
“Does she smell?” Abby asked.
“Belle no smell,” the baby yelled indignantly.
“Uh,” he managed to unbend his arms a little, draw the baby into him. Sniffed. She did smell. Of heaven. Something closed around his heart, a fist of pain.
And whatever emotion it was, it telegraphed itself straight to the baby, because she stared at him round-eyed, then touched his cheek with soft fingers, took the collar of his jacket in a surprisingly strong grip, and pulled herself into him.
“That’s otay,” she told him, nestling her blond curls under his chin and her cheek against his collarbone, and beginning to slurp untidily on her thumb. Drool fell down the vee of the jacket he hadn’t taken off for fear of reoffending Ms. Blakely’s sensibilities with the view of his naked chest.
“The phone’s right there.”
His intruder gave his kitchen, which was as Spartan as his bedroom, a cursory glance, went to the phone and picked it up. He could hear her calling information. How come she didn’t have her sisters’ phone numbers?
When she hung up she looked discouraged again.
“They’re not here yet. My sisters.”
“Here yet?”
“We’re all moving here. It’s a long story.” She looked exhausted and broken.
“All? Like how many dozen are you talking?”
She laughed a little. “Just three. I’m one of triplets.”
Three of her. That was kind of a scary thought for a reason he didn’t want to contemplate. The baby was sleeping against his chest, snoring gently. He registered the warmth of her tiny body, the light shining in her curls, and braced himself, waiting for some new and unspeakable pain to hit him.
“I’ll call a road service for you,” he said, tight control in his voice, “But I wouldn’t count on anything happening right away. This isn’t Chicago.”
She looked at him, startled.
“License plates,” he said. “Parking sticker on the left-hand side of your windshield.”
“You really are a cop.”
“Not now,” he corrected her.
Still leaving him with the baby she began to fish through a bag nearly as big as she was. She came out finally, triumphant, with a piece of wrinkled paper.
She handed it to him.
He awkwardly shifted “Me-Belle” to the crook of his arm and took the piece of paper. He stared at it. Blinked rapidly. Looked again. His own address was written there in a firm, feminine hand.
“There’s some mistake,” he finally said.
“Why?”
“This house is number twenty-two, Harbor Way.”
She looked deflated. “I must have written it down wrong.”
“You must have.”
She slumped down on a chair, took off her ball cap, ran a hand through her straight hair. It was sticking up in the cutest way. “Now what? I have to go. Obviously.”
That was obvious all right. Her hair was tangled and damp, and her face was pale with weariness. And still, all he could think, was that she was damnably sexy. She was wearing jeans that were way too big for her, accentuating the fact she was as slender as a young willow. She couldn’t stay here. Obviously.
