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“For me?” Lily cried, clearly amazed. It was obvious that she felt the cake was her big prize. Anything else was above and beyond all expectation. “What is it?”
Miranda reached into the oversize purse she’d left on the floor and pulled out the gift she had wrapped for Lily early this morning, before she’d left for the hospital.
Handing it over, she said, “Why don’t you open it and see?”
Lily held the gift as if she couldn’t decide whether to unwrap it or just gaze at it adoringly for a while. Her curiosity finally won out and she started peeling away the wrapping paper.
The moment she’d done so, her mouth dropped open. “You got me a puppy!” she cried.
“Well,” Miranda amended, “I can’t get you a real puppy because the shelter won’t allow it, so for now, I want you to have this stuffed one. But someday, when you’re in a home again, I’ll come and bring you a real one,” she promised.
Heaven knew she had access to enough homeless dogs at the animal shelter to pick just the right one for the little girl.
Lily threw her arms around her a third time and hugged her as hard as she could. “I wish you were my mom,” she said breathlessly.
Touched though she was, Miranda knew she couldn’t have the girl feeling like that. “Don’t say that, honey. Your real mom’s out there and she’s probably trying to get back here to you right now.”
But Lily shook her head. “I still wish you were my mom,” she insisted, burying her face against Miranda as she clutched the stuffed dog. “Thank you for my cake and my candles and my puppy. Thank you for everything,” she cried.
Miranda hugged the little girl, moved almost to tears and wishing there was something she could do for her beyond giving her a gift and a cake.
And then it came to her. She knew what she had to do.
She needed to track down the police officer on the motorcycle. Not to bring to the hospital with her—that would come later—but to help her find out what had happened to Lily’s mother. The man had resources at his disposal that she certainly didn’t have.
All she needed to do, once she located him, Miranda thought, was to appeal to his sense of justice or humanity, or whatever it took to get him to agree to look for Lily’s mother.
Smiling, she hugged Lily a little harder.
Chapter Three (#uda029983-d22c-565e-86fb-751b9ed4baff)
Because she didn’t want to risk possibly getting the motorcycle officer in any sort of trouble by going to the precinct and asking about him, Miranda spent the rest of that evening and part of the night reviewing her viable options.
By the next morning, Miranda decided that her best course of action was to literally track down the officer. That meant driving by the overpass where he’d been yesterday. She could only hope that he’d be there, waiting to ticket someone going over the speed limit.
But when she swung by the area that afternoon, after her shift was over, the police officer wasn’t there.
Disappointed, Miranda had to concede that not finding him there stood to reason. If an officer frequented the same spot day after day, word would quickly spread and drivers would either avoid the area altogether or at the very least be extra cautious about observing the speed limit.
Still, as she drove slowly by the overpass, Miranda wondered how far away the police officer could be. Unless he had been relocated, there must be a certain radius he had to adhere to, so as not to cross into another cop’s territory, right?
Giving herself a fifteen-minute time limit to find him, Miranda drove up one street and down another. She knew she was attempting to second-guess a man she knew absolutely nothing about, but at the moment she couldn’t think of an alternative.
Fifteen minutes later Miranda sighed. The time was up and she still hadn’t found the officer. She didn’t want to be too late getting to the women’s shelter. She knew that Lily’s mother still hadn’t shown up—she’d called Amelia to check—and the little girl would be devastated if she didn’t come to see her as she’d promised.
She had to go, Miranda thought. Maybe she’d come across the traffic cop tomorrow.
Slowing down, Miranda did a three-point turn in order to head toward the street that would ultimately take her to the shelter.
As she approached the red light at an intersection, a fleeting glint from the left caught her attention. The setting sun was reflecting off some sort of metal.
Miranda turned her head in that direction, and found the sun was hitting the handlebars of a motorcycle.
A police motorcycle.
His motorcycle.
Although the officer was wearing a helmet, and virtually all police motorcycles in Bedford looked alike, something told her that this particular officer was the one who had pulled her over yesterday. Pulled her over and didn’t give her a ticket. Miranda could feel it in her gut.
When the light turned green, instead of driving straight ahead, she deliberately eased her car to the left, into the next lane. Far enough to allow her to make a left-hand turn.
As she did so, she rolled down her window and honked her horn twice. Getting the officer’s attention, she waved her hand at the man, indicating that she wanted him to make a U-turn and follow her. She then mentally crossed her fingers that she hadn’t accidentally made a mistake, and that this was the same officer she’d interacted with yesterday.
* * *
Always alert when he was on the job, Colin tensed when he heard the driver honking. Seeing an arm come out of the driver’s window, waving to get his attention, he bit off a curse. Was the woman taunting him? Or did she actually want to get a ticket?
And then, as he looked closer, he realized that it was the same car he’d pulled over yesterday. The one driven by that petite blonde with the really deep blue eyes.
The one who had that birthday cake on the passenger seat.
What was she doing here? Was she deliberately trying to press her luck? Because if she was, she was in for a surprise.
Her luck had just run out, he thought.
Biting off a few choice words under his breath, Colin made a U-turn and took off after her.
Less than thirty seconds later, he realized that she wasn’t going anywhere. The woman with the soulful doe eyes had pulled over to the curb.
Something was definitely off, Colin thought as he brought his motorcycle to a halt behind her vehicle.
Training from his days on the force in Los Angeles had Colin approaching the car with caution. Every police officer knew that the first thirty seconds after a vehicle was pulled over were the most dangerous ones. If something bad was going to happen, it usually took place within that space of time.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the pulled-over driver was harmless. It was that one other time that turned out to be fatal.
Although he had volunteered for this detail, choosing to patrol the city streets on a motorcycle over riding around in a squad car with a partner, he was not unaware of the risk that came with the job. A risk that always had his adrenaline flowing and his breath backing up in his lungs for that short time that it took for him to dismount and approach the offending driver’s vehicle.
If he had a partner, there would be someone close by who had his back. However, Owens, his last partner, had been killed on the job, and although Colin never said anything to anyone about it, that had weighed really heavily on him, and still did. After that tragic incident, he operated alone. Patrolling alone meant he had to watch out only for himself. He liked it that way.
The second he peered into the passenger window and saw the driver, he knew that he was facing another kind of danger entirely.
No one was going to die today, but it was still a risk.
Miranda rolled down the passenger window and leaned toward him. “Hi. I wasn’t speeding this time,” she said, greeting him with a cheerful smile and a chipper demeanor he found almost annoyingly suspicious.
He scowled at her. “No, you were just executing a very strange turn.”
“I had to,” Miranda explained. “If I went straight and turned at the next light, by the time I came back, I was afraid that you’d be gone.”
Only if I’d been lucky, Colin thought.
Just what was this woman’s game? “And that would have been a problem because...?”
She never missed a beat. “Because I had to talk to you.”
The idea of just turning away and getting back on his motorcycle was exceedingly tempting, but for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on, Colin decided to hear this overly upbeat woman out.
“You are persistent, aren’t you?” he retorted.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Miranda did her best to try to get the officer to lighten up a little and smile.
His stoic expression never changed. “It is from where I’m standing.” He’d glimpsed her driver’s license yesterday and tried to recall the name he’d seen on it. Maybe if he made this personal, he’d succeed in scaring her off. “What do you want, Miriam?”
“Miranda,” she corrected, still sounding annoyingly cheerful. “That’s okay, a lot of people get my name wrong at first. It takes getting used to.”
“I have no intention of getting used to it,” he informed her. Or you.
As far as he was concerned, the woman was really pushing her luck.
“Look, I let you off with a warning yesterday,” he reminded her. “Would you like me to rescind that warning and give you a ticket?”
Colin was fairly confident that the threat of a ticket would be enough to make her back off.
“No. That was very nice of you yesterday. That’s the reason I came looking for you today.”
She wasn’t making any sense. And then he remembered what she’d said yesterday about asking him to pay a visit to some ward at the hospital.
That’s what this was about, he decided. Something about sick children. Well, he was not about to get roped into anything. Who knew what this woman’s ultimate game really was?
“Look, I already told you,” he retorted. “I’m not the type to come see kids in a hospital. I don’t like hospitals.”
Rather than look disappointed as he’d expected her to, the woman nodded. “A lot of people don’t,” she agreed.
Okay, she was obviously stalking him, and this was over. “Well then, have a nice day,” Colin told her curtly, and then turned to walk back to his motorcycle.
“I’m not here about the hospital,” Miranda called after him. “Although I’d like to revisit that subject at a later time.”
Colin stopped walking. The woman had to be one of the pushiest people he’d ever encountered, not to mention she had a hell of a lot of nerve.
Against his better judgment, he found himself turning around again to face her. “And just what are you ‘here’ about?” he asked.
There was absolutely nothing friendly in his voice that invited her to talk. But she did anyway.
“That little girl I told you about?” Miranda began, feeling as if she was picking her way through a minefield that could blow up on her at any moment. “The one with your aunt’s name,” she reminded him, hoping that would get the officer to listen, and buy her a little more time.
“Lily,” he repeated, all but growling the name. “What about her?” he asked grudgingly.
He wasn’t a curious man by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something about this overly eager woman that had him wondering just where she was taking this.
“Lily’s mother is missing,” she told him, never taking her eyes off his face.
Rather than show some sort of reaction to what she’d just said, his expression never changed. He looked, Miranda thought, as if she’d just given him a bland weather report.
She began to wonder what had damaged the man to this extent.
“So go to the precinct and report it,” Colin told her. “That’s the standard procedure.”
“The director at the shelter already did that,” Miranda answered.
“All right, then it’s taken care of.” What more did she expect him to do? Colin wondered irritably as he began to walk away again.
“No, it isn’t,” Miranda insisted, stepping out of her car and moving quickly between him and his motorcycle. “The officer who took down the information said that maybe Lily’s mother took off. He said a lot of women in her situation feel overwhelmed and just leave. He said that maybe she’d come to her senses in a few days and return for her daughter.”
“Okay, you have your answer,” Colin said, moving around this human roadblock.
Again Miranda shifted quickly so he couldn’t get to his motorcycle. She ignored the dark look he gave her. She wasn’t about to give up. This was important. Lily was depending on her to do everything she could to find her mother.
“But what if she doesn’t?” Miranda asked. “What if she didn’t take off? What if something’s happened to Lily’s mother and that’s why she never came back to the shelter?”
He felt as if this doe-eyed blonde was boxing him in. “That’s life,” he said, exasperated.
“There’s a little eight-year-old girl at the shelter waiting for her mommy to come back,” Miranda told him with feeling. “I can’t just tell her ‘that’s life.’”
Taking hold of Miranda’s shoulders, he moved her firmly out of his way and finally reached his motorcycle. “Tell her whatever you like.”
Miranda raised her voice so that he could hear her above the sound of the cars going by. “I’d like to tell her that this nice police officer is trying to find her mommy.”
Colin turned sharply on his heel and glared at this woman who refused to take a hint. “Look, lady—”
“Miranda,” she prompted.
“Miranda,” Colin echoed between gritted teeth. “You are a royal pain, you know that?”
Miranda had always tried to glean something positive out of every situation, no matter how bleak it might appear. “Does that mean you’ll look for her?” she asked hopefully.
Colin blew out an angry breath. “That means you’re a royal pain,” he repeated.
With nothing to lose, Miranda climbed out on a limb. “Please? I can give you a description of Lily’s mother.” And then she thought of something even better. “And if you come with me, I can get you a picture of her that’ll be useful.”
He had a feeling that this woman wasn’t going to give up unless he agreed to help her. Although it irritated him beyond description, there was a very small part of him that had to admit he admired her tenacity.
Still, he gave getting her to back off one more try. “What will be useful is if you get out of my way and let me do my job.”
Miranda didn’t budge. “Isn’t part of your job finding people who have gone missing?”
“She’s not missing if she left of her own accord and just decided to keep on going,” he told the blonde, enunciating every word.
“But we don’t know that she decided to keep on going. She did leave the shelter to go look for work,” Miranda told him.
