A Baby For Lord Roderick

Before Allie could answer he turned and left the room, but her radiant look had been replaced by one of suspicious dismay. He knew he’d come across as arrogant and had undoubtedly overstepped his bounds…especially considering he had no rights whatsoever in the matter. In fact, he knew his whole manner from the moment they’d arrived with the baby had been abrupt and rude. He supposed his painful concern for the baby’s welfare was the reason he’d behaved so badly, and he shouldn’t have taken it out on Allie Lockwood.

But, he admitted, there was another reason he’d reacted to the doctor the way he had. The thing was, Allie Lockwood seemed to be finding it just as impossible as he was to be emotionally objective about this baby. She was so proprietary. Too proprietary. Did she want the baby, too?

Liam set his jaw. Too bad if she did. Besides, what was stopping her and her Sheriff boyfriend from making babies of their own? They had to be an “item.” What other explanation was there for Sheriff Renshaw’s familiarity with Allie’s house?

DOUG HAD NEVER SEEN such a bloody mess in his life. It was all he could do to keep his dinner down. Sure, Annabella wasn’t known for its violent crime and he’d only been on hand for a couple of domestic disturbances that involved shootings, but not even Homer Bledsoe’s gushing neck wound had prepared Doug for the women’s bathroom at Johnsons’ Gas ’n Go.

Whoever had given birth to that baby had lost a lot of blood doing it. Which made him wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to check the hospital at Kamas for recent admissions. He’d better check the morgue, too.

“I smell like hell.” Lamont Johnson, the county’s one and only full-time Crime Scene Technician, was standing in the Dumpster in waist-high garbage. “Kelly’s not going to let me in the house tonight.”

“Why should tonight be any different, Lamont?” Doug stripped off the latex gloves he’d been wearing and carefully put them in a plastic bag, tied it off and stuffed it back inside the pouch on his belt.

Lamont snorted. “You’re one to talk. Allie’s still lockin’ you out, I hear.”

“You shouldn’t listen to gossip. Besides, my situation with Allie is different. We’re not married anymore.”

“Just wished you were, eh?” Lamont straightened up, pressing his knuckles into the small of his back. “I’m done here. There’s more than enough evidence in the blood samples I collected to match DNA to a likely suspect.”

Doug grabbed the tight muscles at the back of his neck and grimaced up at the dark sky. It had finally stopped raining, but the clouds still blocked any hint of stars and moon.

“There’s the rub. We haven’t got any suspects. And besides the blood, all we’ve got is that ratty old quilt.”

Lamont struggled out of the Dumpster. “Think Captain Hightower will send you some help?” he asked on a grunt as his feet hit the asphalt.

“Maybe if I ask for it. But I’m not going to ask. This is my town and I know it better than any of those jokers Hightower might send me from the main office. I know the people and I know how to talk…and not talk…to them. I’ll have better luck with this investigation if I do it on my own and in my own way. Besides, if news of this got beyond Annabella that that royal pretty boy, McAllister, found the baby, the national media might grab hold of it and the town could be overrun with paparazzi. It’s best if we try to keep this local, and Hightower agrees.”

Lamont nodded and hiked up his drooping pants. “Well, that makes sense. But you’re taking on a lot, Doug. If you don’t have a clue who the perpetrator is, you’re goin’ to be doing a helluva lot of overtime.”

Doug shook his head and gave a ragged sigh. “Lamont, when I think about how hard Allie and I tried to have a baby, then someone just throws one away like that…The whole damned thing just makes me want to puke.”

Lamont snapped off his gloves and gave Doug a keen look. “I guess you really want to solve this case?”

Doug nodded grimly. “Yeah, Lamont, I guess I sure as hell do.”

Chapter Three

Allie made a crib for the baby out of a Xerox box that her copy paper had come in and put it beside her bed on a wide-bottom chair. As she’d brushed her teeth and washed her face in the bathroom just two feet away, she’d hurried out at the slightest movement or sound the baby made, staring down at him with anxious concern.

As soon as she’d convinced herself that he was just fine, her worried scrutiny changed to a transfixed sort of awe and wonderment. She’d stand there, staring, for minutes at a time, toothpaste dripping off her chin, soap burning her eyes because she’d run out of the bathroom mid-rinse. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. He was so small, so precious, so beautiful. And he’d practically been dropped in her lap by a good fairy.

Allie frowned. No, she was definitely romanticizing that part. A very disturbed mother had abandoned her baby in a Dumpster and an arrogant aristocrat—not a good fairy—had brought him to Allie’s door and into her life.

As Allie climbed into bed, she thought about Liam McAllister and their rather contentious exchanges. Gradually she concluded that she’d been too hard on him. Overwhelmed by her own feelings for the baby and astonished by the rightness of his suddenly appearing in her life, she’d completely forgotten that Liam had good reasons for having some rather overwhelming feelings of his own.

He’d lost a child just a year ago. A baby boy, like the one he’d found. There was a sort of bittersweet irony in the fact that he’d saved this one, but hadn’t been able to save his own little boy. An irony that probably had not been lost on Liam. No wonder he had been watching and questioning and criticizing everything she’d done. She needed to give him some slack, be more understanding.

But what had he meant when he said he wanted to be involved in “any and all decisions made about the baby”? Since he’d saved the baby’s life, it probably was quite natural that he’d have some continued concern for the baby’s welfare, but she certainly didn’t want him becoming a nuisance. The baby was in good hands now. The right hands. Her hands. And that was exactly where he was going to stay.

There was no denying, though, that she owed Liam McAllister big-time. If it hadn’t been for him, the baby would have died in that Dumpster. Allie shivered at the thought and slipped out from under the covers to scoot the chair closer to her bed. If she sat upright with the pillows plumped up behind her, she could stare down at the baby without getting out of bed.

Allie banished all thoughts of Liam McAllister and smiled contentedly. She didn’t need baby dreams now. She had the real thing. In that moment she decided on following through with the impulse that had seized her the first moment she held him in her arms. She was going to adopt him.

LIAM STOOD on the redwood deck and enjoyed the sight of the sun filtering through the pine trees on the eastern border of Mary’s property, his hands curved around the warmth of the stoneware mug filled with hot coffee. Except for the brief foray into the kitchen to fetch his dose of morning caffeine, he’d been standing there since just before sunrise. Everything was fresh and bright after the storm, and today there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Despite his jet lag and the emotionally exhausting ordeal he’d been through, he’d only managed to sleep about three hours.

“Liam?”

Liam hadn’t heard the glass doors sliding open. He turned and saw his grandmother standing half in, half out. She was a petite woman and seemed tinier than ever in the oversize flannel robe she’d wrapped herself in. He recognized the red plaid robe as his grandfather’s. “Hi, Gran. Sleep well?”

“As well as any old lady sleeps. How about you? No, don’t tell me. I can see you didn’t sleep a bit.” She stood on the deck with him for a minute, looking out at the same vista he had been enjoying for the past couple of hours. The sun glinted off her silver hair and made it look like spun sugar.

Finally she took a deep breath of the crisp mountain air and said, “Come in and have some breakfast.”

Liam obeyed. He wasn’t hungry, but he had to keep his strength up. Besides, Mary got talkative over toast and tea and he had some questions.

As Liam crossed the large great room toward the adjoining kitchen, he remembered how his grandfather, the Earl of Chiltington, used to call this huge edifice “Mary’s little cabin in Utah.” True, it was made of logs, but it wasn’t little and it could hardly be described as a cabin. With four bedrooms, five bathrooms, a great room, a modern kitchen, a library and wraparound decks on three levels, it was more like a charmingly rustic mansion.

Mary had protested when her husband had the plans drawn up for building it. She’d only wanted to update the stone cottage her parents had retired to on the same site and left to her in their wills. She was an only child, therefore the only recipient of their small amount of worldly goods.

As usual, Liam’s grandfather had won the day. He said the property was big enough to build a new house on it and still keep the cottage as a sort of guest retreat. He needed more room if he was going to be spending a bit of every summer in Utah. Besides he just might bring a few jolly friends over with him from England from time to time, and the children and grandchildren must always have a place to stay.

The irony was that Mary had spent two weeks each summer in Utah every one of the twenty years after the “cabin” was completed, while her husband, who had promoted the grander design, had only managed to make the long trip over from England once. He’d stayed a week, then hurried home to his pub, his horses and his hounds. He didn’t mind leaving Mary behind, because he knew she would soon follow.

Cecil McAllister, Lord Chiltington, was an English country gent through and through, and Utah just didn’t cut it for him. But he understood Mary’s love for the country of her birth and they parted amicably for those two weeks each summer, then came together again, ecstatic to see each other and full of family plans for the rest of the year.

As far as the rest of the McAllister clan, Liam was the only family member to spend time with Mary in Utah, and then only once, that first year.

Two years ago, Liam’s grandfather passed away, and last year and this year, too, Mary’s stay in Utah started in June and extended through the autumn months. She would return to England and her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in time for Christmas, but not before. Liam suspected that she was being drawn more and more to her roots and wondered if she’d finally end up spending most of each year in Utah.

Liam smelled bacon frying and saw Ribchester and Mrs. Preedy busy in the kitchen. They were elderly servants who had been in Gran’s employ since the 1950s. Gran was seventy-eight and Liam guessed Ribchester and Mrs. Preedy—who were married, but still went by their “professional” names—were in their midseventies, as well. Despite their protests, Mary worked about the house almost as much as they did, so they were more like companions. But Mary let them do the cooking because that had never been one of her talents.

“Over easy as usual, my lord?” Ribchester inquired, waving his spatula and looking odd in the tailored jacket he insisted on wearing with a green checked apron, appliquéd with a large moose head, over it.

“That would be perfect, Ribchester,” Liam answered. “But only one this morning, thank you.”

Ribchester acquiesced without comment, but he and Mrs. Preedy exchanged frowns. They’d fussed over him since he was a child and had never got over the habit. He supposed he should have ordered two eggs just to make them happy.

“Bea’s still asleep,” Mary said, as she eased down into a chair by the table. “I looked in on her before coming downstairs. She’s exhausted from the trip.”

“And everything else that happened last night.”

Mary shook her head and gratefully clasped the handle of the mug of tea Mrs. Preedy set in front of her. “Thank you, Mrs. Preedy.” After a sip, she continued, “I could hardly believe it when you told me. I’ve heard of people leaving unwanted babies in rubbish bins and loos and such, but I just never thought something like that could happen in Annabella. And that you, Liam, after all you’ve been through, would be the one to have to deal with something so horrible.”

“I’m glad it happened,” he said.

“Well, of course you are. I didn’t mean—”

He put his hand over hers. “I know what you meant.”

They were silent for a couple of minutes, sipping their coffee and tea, thinking. Then Mary said, “Bea’s so thin, Liam. Just since June I can see a difference. And it’s not just that she’s getting taller and stretching out.”

Liam nodded solemnly. “Yes, I know. I’m hoping this trip will help her.”

“So am I. And I’m hoping it will help you, too. You both needed to get away. Neither of you were bouncing back from Victoria’s death as you should. It’s been a year.”

“Is there a timetable, Gran?” Liam asked with a sigh.

She patted his knee. “No, I suppose everyone has their own timetable when it comes to grief. But when one is getting too thin for one’s own good…”

“She doesn’t talk about her mother anymore. She just…” He shrugged, lost for words.

“She’s internalizing it. Perhaps she needs to talk.”

“I took her to a therapist, but that didn’t seem to help. In fact I took her to two therapists.”

Mary pursed her lips. “I’m sure therapists do a great deal of good for many people. But in Bea’s case, I can’t help but think a good country doctor with practical knowledge and a friendly demeanor that encouraged confidences would probably be much better at drawing out the child.”

“Are you hinting that Bea ought to be seen by Annabella’s country doctor?”

Mary looked abashed, as if she’d said more than she meant to. “Well, I—”

“Which one? Allie or her grandfather?”

“Allie’s the doctor now, not Jacob,” Mary answered evasively.

“But I thought you didn’t know anything about her? How do you know she’d be someone Bea could open up to?”

Flustered, Mary gave a helpless little shrug. “I’ve heard she’s an excellent doctor. Fortunately I’ve never needed her services. You know I don’t mingle with the townspeople, so what I know is what I hear from Ribchester and Mrs. Preedy after trips to town. They gather a bit of gossip as they gather the groceries.”

Suddenly she brightened. “Is this your roundabout way of asking me if I know anything about Allie Lockwood’s personal life?”

“I’m not asking you about Allie Lockwood at all, Gran, and you know it,” Liam said gently. “When you talked of a country doctor, you were thinking of Allie’s grandfather, Jacob Lockwood, weren’t you?”

Looking startled, like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Mary set her mug down on the table with a thump. The tea spilled over the brim and onto the pine tabletop. She mopped up the tea with a green checked napkin, her eyes fixed to her task. “Perhaps I was,” she finally admitted.

“Tell me about him, Gran.”

“Well, he’s a good doctor, too, although he is retired, you know.”

“At the present, I’m not interested in his abilities as a doctor.”

She finally braved a look at him. “Then what are you interested in, Liam?”

“I know there was something between you and him, bits of which I’ve heard a little of over the years, but now I want to know the whole story from start to finish.”

“It’s really ancient history.”

“It’s why you don’t go into town, isn’t it? And why no one visits you when you stay here? That doesn’t sound like ancient history to me.”

Liam had had all night to think about Allie Lockwood, the baby, and his grandmother’s history with Allie’s grandfather. He wasn’t sure why he’d never been curious enough about it to inquire before, but he supposed he had been so involved with his own life, and Mary had been so happy with his grandfather, he hadn’t felt the need. Now he wanted every bit of information available about that family and how it was connected to his, no matter how trivial the connection might turn out to be.

Mary sighed and tapped her fingers gently against the side of her cup. “It’s a very simple and short story, Liam. I was raised in Annabella, as you know. My father was the pharmacist at Woolworths and Mother stayed at home…as most women did then. Jacob Lockwood teased and tortured me all through grammar school, but when we both turned thirteen, things changed.”

A shy smile curved his grandmother’s mouth, making her seem suddenly so much younger. “He was my sweetheart all through high school. We were going to move to Salt Lake City, so Jacob could go to the University of Utah, where he had a scholarship. He’d take premed, then go on to medical school. But first we’d get married.”

“Then the war came and changed all that,” Liam said.

Mary nodded sadly. “Yes. I wanted to marry him before he joined up, but he refused. He didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Times were so uncertain.”

She seemed to get lost in thought for a minute, then continued. “Jacob was in the Navy and stationed in the South Pacific. I got frustrated waiting for him, waiting for his letters. Sometimes months would go by. I wanted to do something, not just sit about the house waiting and wondering.” She smiled ruefully. “We were a patriotic bunch back then, Liam.”

“It’s a good thing you were,” Liam replied quietly.

“I became a WAC and trained as a nurse. I was immediately sent over to England. I met your grandfather in the hospital in Dover. He’d had a head injury and didn’t even know who he was. I fell in love with him, Liam. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know who he was, or anything about him, but I knew we were meant to be together. I know that sounds sickly sweet, but it’s true.”

Liam had no trouble believing her. He’d felt the same way about Victoria. “Go on.”

“We were married by the chaplain at the base. I hadn’t heard from Jacob for over a year. I wanted to tell him about Cecil before the wedding, but I had no address. I wasn’t even sure he was still alive. Two months after our wedding, Cecil’s father found him. I was nearly bowled over when I heard Cecil was going to be an earl someday and owned country estates in Cumbria! I thought he was just some bloke from London.”

“Not with that high-brow accent of his, Gran,” Liam teased her.

“Well, I didn’t know about accents then, Liam. It took a few months, but your grandfather gradually regained his memory.

“I was afraid he’d regret marrying me, when he could have had just about any girl in England, but he didn’t. His parents—your great-grandparents—were a little floored at first, but they learned to accept me, too. I’ve been very happy with your grandfather, Liam. But my heart ached for Jacob….”

“What happened to Jacob?”

“He was injured in the war, too. Sent home in ’44 with injuries to his back and both legs. For awhile no one thought he would walk again. I hear he still limps.”

“And when he found out about you and Grandfather?”

“By the time Jacob heard about it, the townspeople had decided that I’d dumped Jacob—a war hero with a Purple Heart—to marry a rich English lord. My parents said he took it hard, drank like a fish for awhile, but he was always a stubborn one. He swore off liquor, then worked hard till he could walk again, then he went on to medical school and came back to Annabella to be the best GP they’d had in these parts…or so I’ve been told. He married Allie’s grandmother, Althea Rutherford, and they had one child, a boy they named James. James married another Annabella ‘belle’ named Lisa, and they had four children. Two boys and two girls. I think you played with the boys that summer you briefly visited, Liam….”

“Oh?”

“Yes, but the boys moved away, as did their parents, but Allie and Kayla, the two sisters, still live in Annabella.”

“Is this Dr. Lockwood still alive and living in Annabella?”

“Oh yes. He’s retired, as I told you, but he didn’t move away. I don’t expect Jacob would ever leave Annabella.”

“How about his wife?”

“Althea died several years ago.”

“Ah, so he’s a widower.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed. “So?”

“You’ve come here every year for twenty years, but you never go to town. You just go through it when you’re coming from, or going to, the airport. You send Ribchester and Mrs. Preedy to do the shopping. It might have been an easy thing to manage when you used to come for only two weeks at a time, but now that Grandfather’s gone and you spend months here, I imagine it’s pretty difficult to keep away from the only bit of civilization there is around here. What keeps you away, Gran? And why doesn’t anyone come to see you? Surely the townspeople don’t still hold a grudge?”

“I don’t know whether they do or not,” Mary replied with an unconvincing show of unconcern. “They probably don’t. I’m sure they’ve had better things to do over the past half-century than harbor resentment against me.” She paused, then added wistfully, “Even for Jacob’s sake…”

Presently she said, in a firmer tone, “Besides, the town has grown and changed. There’s still people I know, but their grandchildren probably haven’t even heard of Mary Hayes McAllister.”

Remembering Sheriff Doug Renshaw’s reaction from the day before, Liam wasn’t so sure that was true. If Doug had heard of him, he’d heard of his grandmother, too.

“So the bottom line here, Gran, is that you’re not that worried about facing the townspeople. It’s Dr. Lockwood you’re worried about running into in the produce department of the grocery store. Right?”

Mary nodded grudgingly. “I admit it, Liam. It’s Jacob I’m avoiding. I don’t know why, but I still can’t face him.”

“People don’t plan on falling out of love with someone and in love with someone else,” Liam reasoned. “It just happens. You weren’t married to him. He wouldn’t hold a grudge against you after all these years if he’s the great guy you say he is…or was.”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t know, Liam. I just don’t know.”

Liam was then served his breakfast and he noticed that Mrs. Preedy had made up for the lack of two eggs by supplying him with twice as much bacon and several slices of fried tomato. Liam preferred a bowl of oatmeal or fruit for breakfast, but Mrs. Preedy still believed in a hearty English breakfast and he didn’t mind indulging on those rare mornings he spent with his grandmother. He smiled up at Mrs. Preedy, who was still hovering anxiously, and gamely picked up his fork.

“You really should be asking about Allie Lockwood, you know,” Mary presently informed him. “I hear she’s a looker.”

Sure, Allie Lockwood was a “looker,” Liam had to admit that, now that he actually thought about it. Last night he’d been too shocked and busy to think about it, but he had somehow managed to notice that she appeared to be very curvy under that shapeless flannel shirt she was wearing, and had lips like Catherine Zeta-Jones…that slight, natural upturn at the corners of her mouth even when she wasn’t smiling. Kissable lips.

Fortunately Sheriff Renshaw had dibs on those kissable lips, and they were, therefore, off-limits. Not that Liam had given the idea of kissing them a second thought.

“Ribchester and Mrs. Preedy aren’t keeping you up on the latest, Gran,” Liam informed her. This announcement, of course, caught the couple’s attention and they turned and listened from their posts in the kitchen. “Sheriff Renshaw knows his way around that little house of hers like the back of his hand. They obviously have something going.”

Ribchester’s chest swelled and he smirked with the superior delight of someone who knows something someone else doesn’t.

“I beg to differ, my lord,” he said, striving to keep a humble tone. “Sheriff Renshaw knows his way around Dr. Lockwood’s house because they had something going.”

“They were married,” Mrs. Preedy finished with a decided nod, “but got divorced nearly a year ago.”