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“Want me to tell Lucy anything when she wakes up?” When he made no reply, she asked, “Will you be back to see her?”
Dylan thought it an odd question. For all she knew, he’d just been someone passing by at the right time, or the wrong time, depending on whose view you took. But, then, he amended, maybe Lucy had told her that they’d known each other once.
For the sake of brevity and to prevent any possibility of further discussion, he said, “Yeah, sure,” and quickly walked away.
Sheila spared herself a moment to watch him go, aware that she had just been brushed off. Instinct told her that there was a great deal more going on here than was evident at first.
Turning away, she smiled to herself. He’d be back. Whether he realized it or not, he’d be back. She was willing to lay odds on it.
Detective Dave Watley glanced up from the video camera he was adjusting. It was perched on a tripod, its powerful telephoto lens aimed at the entrance of the restaurant five stories below and across the street. “What the hell kept you?” he asked Dylan when his partner entered the apartment.
Pulling up a folding chair to the partially curtained window with one hand, Dylan placed the paper tray with its two cups of coffee on the unsteady card table. Besides a beaten-up sofa that had been abandoned by the last tenant who lived in the apartment, the card table and two chairs represented the only furniture in the studio apartment. Watley had brought the table. He needed someplace to put the puzzles he was so fond of working on.
“I was detained.” Dylan pried his own cup from the holder, leaving the one he’d picked up for Watley where it was.
Watley looked at him with good-natured disgust. “No kidding, Sherlock. I kind of figured that part out for myself. Detained how?”
As far as Watley knew, his rather closed-mouth partner had no personal life to speak of, no relatives he ever mentioned, and certainly no woman in his life. The man lived and breathed the job, which made him a good man to have watching your back, but not exactly the best to share a long stakeout with. And this one had all the signs of being a long one, even though it was just in its third day.
Because nothing else came to him and he knew that Watley wasn’t the kind to back off once he started asking, Dylan gave him an abbreviated version of what had happened. “A woman went into labor.”
Watley stopped fooling with the camera. “And you took her to the hospital?” he asked.
Dylan scanned the street below. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening at the Den of Thieves. This was the restaurant’s busiest hour, but there was no one entering or leaving who aroused his suspicions. So far, none of the usual players in what was reported to be a money-laundering scheme were evident.
“It was too late for that.” He took off the lid from his cup and dropped it on the table.
“So you did what?” Picking up the discarded lid, Watley dropped it into the empty box he’d converted into a wastebasket. “Helped her deliver?” he prompted.
“Yeah.”
With his wife a brief six weeks away from delivery, Watley was facing his first time up as a new father. Thoughts of the restaurant they were staking out were forgotten. “So, what did it feel like? Holding that newborn in your hands? You did hold it, right?”
“Yes, I held her.”
“Well, what was it like?”
“Messy.”
Usually a very easygoing man, Watley threw his hands up in exasperation. “Dammit, McMorrow, you’ve got a heart made out of stone, you know that? There you were, with the miracle of life happening right in front of you and you’re thinking of cleanup detail.”
“Somebody has to.” Dylan paused, taking a long sip of the coffee that was already getting cold. His thoughts kept returning to the event. He’d felt like a bystander and a participant all at the same time. “It was kind of strange,” he finally added.
Watley’s interest was instantly piqued. “Strange?”
“Like it wasn’t real.” Dylan looked at his partner. “Except that it was.”
“Right.” Watley slanted him a glance, then grinned. “That’s probably the most eloquent I remember ever hearing you get.”
Dylan didn’t feel like being eloquent. He didn’t feel like being anything but the cop he was being paid to be. It was too complicated any other way. Dylan nodded toward the building across the street. “Anything going on in there?”
Clearly bored, Watley shook his head. He took the lid off the puzzle he’d brought with relish. “Nothing more than usual. I’m beginning to think this is just a wild-goose chase. Haven’t seen any of the big boys go in or out yet. Maybe the tip was bogus. God only knows where that accountant disappeared to.” The operation had begun in earnest on the word of one Owen Michelson, the restaurant’s accountant. But neither he nor the information he’d promised had turned up at a rendezvous he’d arranged last week.
“Chambers said he thought he saw someone he recalled seeing on a poster going in this morning, but he’s not sure,” Watley remarked. Dumping out the puzzle’s pieces on the table, Watley smiled to himself. “I think it’s just wishful thinking on his part, but we sent a copy of the photo he took to the feds for positive ID.”
“And?”
Watley shook his head. “Nothing yet.”
Dylan blew out a breath. “And the wheels of justice turn slowly.” He took another swig from his coffee before setting the cup down in disgust. It hardly met his criteria for coffee beyond being liquid. Restless, he ran his hand along the back of his neck and told himself to calm down. “Doesn’t matter, we’re not going anywhere.” Watley groaned his agreement.
Dylan wished he had a cigarette.
Dylan pulled up the hand brake on his beat-up sports car. He’d bought it with the first money he’d earned the day before he left home. It still ran well. A single turn of his key cut off the engine and the low murmur of music that had been playing on the radio.
He sat in the stilled vehicle, looking at the back entrance to Harris Memorial and wondering if he’d lost his mind.
Getting off work half an hour ago, he’d had every intention of picking up some takeout at the new Thai restaurant near the stakeout and heading straight back to the place where he slept and ate when he wasn’t on the job. It wasn’t really home, but it served in lieu of one. Dylan hadn’t thought of a place as being home since his mother had died.
But instead of doing that, somehow, he’d ended up here instead, with no takeout sitting on the seat beside him and no claim to sanity even remotely in the vicinity. The smart thing, he knew, was to send either Alexander or Hathaway here. They were the ones handling the case, not him.
He frowned, absently watching a couple rush through the electronic doors.
Lucy didn’t need to see him again, it’d only upset her. And he sure as hell didn’t need to see her again.
Dylan began to turn the key in the ignition, then stopped, silently cursing himself. He couldn’t do it. There was a sense of right and wrong instilled in him, the one thing his mother managed to accomplish with her rebellious son.
He dragged his hand through his hair. It was his mother’s fault that he was here.
And his father’s fault that he shouldn’t be.
C’mon, fish or cut bait, McMorrow.
Biting off another curse, Dylan got out of his car and slammed the door shut behind him. Might as well get this over with, he thought.
As he strode almost militantly toward the bank of elevators located in the rear of the building, the hospital’s small gift shop still managed to catch his eye. The little teddy bear with a jaunty pink bow over one ear in the center of the window display all but popped out at him. Stopping in midstride, he went in before he changed his mind.
The shop, with its cheerful clutter, was empty except for one other customer who was browsing on the opposite side.
“How much for the bear in the window?” Dylan asked.
His question, snapped out the way it was, startled the mature-looking, pink-smocked woman behind the counter. As she looked up, her features softened into a grandmotherly smile. “Twelve ninety-five.”
Dylan dug into his front pocket. The wad of bills that comprised change from the twenty he’d given the cashier at the coffee shop earlier tumbled out onto the counter. He isolated the proper amount.
“I’ll take it.”
“And anything for the mother?”
Head snapping up, he looked at the woman sharply. “What makes you think…?”
The beatific smile was understanding. “You have that harried, new-father look about you.”
The hell he did. The woman was probably just trying to push merchandise. Almost against his will, he saw the light blue negligee that hung just behind the woman on another display against the back wall. For a fleeting, insane moment, he was tempted. But then good sense returned.
“Just the bear.”
“Fine.” The woman accepted the money he handed her. “I’ll ring it up for you. Would you like it wrapped?”
“The baby’s only a few hours old, she wouldn’t be able to unwrap anything,” he answered stoically.
“Perhaps her mother—”
“No.”
The woman inclined her head good-naturedly. “Very well, sir.”
Three minutes later, Dylan was jabbing the up button at the elevator bank. When two elevators arrived at the same time, he chose the empty one, then pressed five. The steel doors closed, locking him in.
He had no idea what he’d say to Lucy.
Part of him hoped that she was asleep, that he could just place the teddy bear on some available surface in her room and retreat, saying he’d done his duty.
Getting off the elevator when it stopped on Lucy’s floor, he made his way to her room. He should let someone else explain the cold details to her, he thought. It’d been a mistake to think he could handle it better than Alexander or Hathaway. A mistake to think that he could handle seeing her again. He made a left at the nurse’s station. Coming back into her life, even for a few minutes, had been nothing short of disastrous.
That was why he’d left to begin with, to spare them both this kind of thing. No, he amended, grappling with an annoyance he couldn’t quite trace to its roots, it’d been to spare her, not himself.
Nothing was going to spare him.
Arriving at her room, he eased the door open and peered in. Just as he’d hoped, she was asleep. Very softly, he entered the room, then slowly closed the door behind him.
For a second, Dylan stood there, just looking at Lucy. At the woman he’d once, fleetingly, thought of as his salvation. But he’d only been deluding himself. She deserved better than the future he could give her.
The late-afternoon sun illuminated the room, bathing everything it touched in shades of gold and whispering along her face and arms. The way his hand once had. She looked like the princess in that story his mother had told him years ago, when he’d been young and the world still held promise. The one where the princess slept in the glass casket, waiting to be woken up by her true love’s first kiss.
It wouldn’t be him she’d be waiting for, he thought.
As quietly as possible, he tiptoed over to the bed and placed the teddy bear on the table that was pushed over just to the side. Because he was in a hurry, his hand wasn’t quite steady. As he took a step back, the bear toppled silently from the table, falling to the floor.
It figured. Dylan bent down quickly to retrieve it before Lucy woke up.
“Why don’t you just hand it to me?”
Her voice, soft, filled with the last remnants of sleep, surrounded him. Their eyes met as he rose again. Unaccountably, he felt like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” With a hand digging into the mattress on either side of her, Lucy pushed herself further up on the bed. “Just resting. The nurse just took Elena back.”
“Elena?” His own voice sounded hopelessly dumb to his ear.
He looked edgy, she thought, like he didn’t want to be here. Nothing had changed. “The baby.”
“Elena.” Dylan repeated the name slowly. Elaine had been his mother’s name. He thought it an odd coincidence. “Nice name.”
“I always thought so.” She struggled to get past the awkward feeling. And the anger that was cutting off her words, her train of thought. She hadn’t thought seeing him again would hurt so much. “It seems to suit her.”
Dylan lifted a shoulder, letting it drop carelessly. He wouldn’t know about that. Babies all tended to look alike to him, except that this one had a mop of dark hair.
Realizing he was still holding the teddy bear, he felt like a stuttering fool. He thrust it toward her, wanting to be out of here. “Well, I just came by to give you this for the baby—for Elena.”
She took it from him, surprised that he could pick out something so sweet. But then, maybe it wasn’t such a surprise. There had been sweet moments with him. Moments that had been left unguarded when he… She banked down the memory, the feelings. Reliving them would only stir things up more and she had spent all these months clearing them out of her life. “That’s very nice of you.”
“Yeah, well…” He began to edge out of the room.
“You didn’t wait.” Her eyes held his. “You promised you would.”
Feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, he looked away. “I was late for work.”
Lucy nodded. There would always be excuses between them. Excuses and lies. But now there would always be something more.
Setting the teddy bear aside on the table, she took a deep breath and pressed the button on the railing that raised her up into a sitting position. “Could you help me up, please?”
He stopped his retreat and looked at her in surprise. She was trying to get out of bed. What was wrong with her? “Look, I can get the nurse if you—”
Because she continued moving to the edge of the bed in small increments, he pushed the table out of the way and moved beside her, placing his hand to her back to keep her steady.
Only the fact that there was pain shooting through other parts of her kept Lucy from reacting to the feel of his hand along her back. “Sheila said I was supposed get out of bed later today and walk down the hall at least once.”
He stared at her. “But you just gave birth. Well, not ‘just,’ but—” He was stumbling over his own tongue and it annoyed the hell out of him. “Isn’t that a little barbaric?”
The journey to the edge of the bed, to where her legs were dangling over the side, seemed almost endless, but she finally made it, feeling a little triumphant at the accomplishment.
“They say it helps you heal faster.”
She looked at him and tried not to let the fact that his face was just inches away from hers affect her. Instead, she concentrated on the coldness she’d seen in his eyes the day he’d broken it off between them. Broken it off just when she’d thought they were building something lasting.
“Besides,” she continued, “there’s not going to be anyone to help once I get home, I need to get stronger.” Her best friend had offered, but there was the store they co-owned to see to. That would keep Alma more than busy.
Seeing she was determined, Dylan offered her his arm. Some things, he thought, didn’t change. Too bad Ritchie had never had her stubborn streak and stuck it out with something he’d begun. “You’ve always been the strongest person I knew.”
She began to smile at the comment. Her smile tightened as her feet finally reached the floor and she tried to stand. Pain ricocheted through her.
He saw her wincing and stopped immediately. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”
She clenched her teeth together. “Yes, it is. Just let me hold on to your arm.” Biting her lower lip, she straightened and finally gained her feet.
It was then that he noticed. “You’re barefoot. Wait a second.” As gently as he could, Dylan eased her back onto the bed, then bent down to look under the bed. Except for a couple of wads of what looked like elastic-trimmed light blue tissue paper, there was nothing there. “Where’re your slippers?”
