by Dana Corbit
He didn’t even understand why his search for her had quickly become frenzied. Yet he’d sensed something was wrong the moment he’d dropped by the Frasers’ during Pilar’s regular lunch hour and had not found her there.
After he’d spoken with Kelly Young at the adoption agency and had learned that Pilar had taken a few days vacation, he’d worried that Pilar’s secrets had come to haunt her. When he’d tracked her to the Richmond hospital, he couldn’t drive fast enough.
He hadn’t even stopped to consider whether he was the person she needed to come to her aid. She needed someone, and that was enough for him.
The voices grew louder as he neared the surgery center waiting room. Pilar, crouched in a wheelchair, and a nurse in blue scrubs came into view. What had happened to her? Was she okay? The impulse to race into the room and to demand answers was so strong that he had to brace his hands on the door frame to prevent it. From the doorway, he could see her, but she couldn’t see him.
The nurse crouched next to Pilar’s wheelchair and gestured widely with her hands. “Now Miss Estes, I thought you understood that you cannot go home alone. You cannot be released until your ride arrives.”
Pilar sat in the chair wringing her hands. With her hair pulled back like that, he could see how pale she looked. She pressed her fingertips against her forehead as if she was in pain. “I’m perfectly capable—”
“I’m sure you are, but you understand, it’s hospital policy. Now please tell me whom I can call to come for you. There has to be someone.”
“That’s just it. There’s…”
Though she let her words trail off, he couldn’t help wondering if she’d almost said “no one.” That was unacceptable. His sister had once had no one. He could never willingly allow another woman to be so alone.
Without taking time to think, Zach pushed through the door and approached the two women.
“Pilar, can you ever forgive me? I meant to get here earlier, but I got caught up in an important investigation, and I lost track of time.”
Her eyes widened. He doubted he needed to mention that she’d been the focus of the investigation.
“Oh.” The nurse looked back and forth between Pilar and Zach. “You didn’t mention that your ride was late.”
“No, I didn’t.” Pilar opened her mouth to say more, but when she glanced at Zach, he shook his head. Finally, she clicked her jaw shut.
“Well, we can release you now.”
A few minutes and a few signed papers later, Zach pulled his car to the drop-off area. The nurse crouched in front of the chair and released the footrests as he came around the car.
“Can you walk?” Somehow he managed not to sweep her into his arms and handle the situation before she had the chance to answer.
“I think so. They wouldn’t let me try inside.” She glanced back at the nurse who’d moved behind the chair.
“I know. Hospital policy.”
At least Pilar had kept her sense of humor during what must have been a difficult day. He might have thought she was okay if not for the hitch in her breath when he helped her into the car. After he’d closed the door and had come around to the driver’s side, she still sat with her eyes pinched closed and her hand pressed over her belly.
What is wrong? So many questions bombarded his mind, and she wasn’t offering any answers. Gall bladder surgery? The C word? No, he refused to believe it was cancer. When other, more personal, suspicions filtered in, he pushed them aside, as well. He wasn’t here to judge her. He didn’t need to know. She needed a friend, and it appeared he was all she had.
“Thanks for coming.” Her voice cracked with emotion that had nothing to do with his chauffeur service.
“Glad to help.” He put the car in Drive and crept out of the parking lot, moving slowly over the speed bumps. “Did they give you anything for the pain?”
She nodded but stared out the window.
“Seems to be working.”
The side of her mouth lifted, though her chuckle sounded more like a grunt. Again, she clutched her midsection.
“Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay. The new dose hasn’t taken effect yet.”
New dose? Zach was more sorry he hadn’t started looking for Pilar earlier in the day because she’d obviously been in Recovery long enough to have a second dose. But he’d had no believable excuse for his presence in her office first thing that morning, so there was no way he could have known.
If only she’d called him earlier to ask for a ride. That idea was ridiculous, though. She never would have asked him. Until the last week she’d barely known him, and since then she’d only rested like a pinned monarch butterfly under his magnifying glass of suspicion. Why would she have asked anything of him?
The idea struck him then that though she had plenty of good friends and a supportive family, she hadn’t asked any of them to go to the hospital, either. What had she been so afraid of?
For most of the short drive from Richmond to Chestnut Grove, they drove in a silence so loud that Zach had to put on the radio to drown it out. Okay, he’d found her. Now what was he supposed to do? She was in no shape for him to interrogate her again, and yet that was exactly what he was tempted to do. None of the questions he wanted to ask had to do with his investigation though.
They had just turned onto Main Street when Pilar spoke again. “How did you find me?”
“Process of elimination.”
Out of his peripheral vision, he caught sight of her smiling. The medication must have begun to take effect.
“Did you start at the morgues and work backward?”
“Something like that,” he said, though the muscles in his stomach refused to unclench. She’d meant it as a joke to lighten the heavy mood, but it was so not funny. It had been bad enough finding her at the hospital.
“Why were you looking for me in the first place?”
She’d turned her head to watch him, and he felt unsteady under her gaze.
“Remember that case I’ve been working on?” That was certainly part of it. Whatever else it was, he couldn’t explain it to himself, let alone her.
“Always working so hard.”
Or hardly working. He sensed that the afternoon’s mad search hadn’t put him any closer to answers in the child abandonment case. Professionally speaking, he’d wasted another day, allowing the infant’s mother to go even further into hiding. But since she’d just given him what amounted to a sturdy branch stretched over the river rapids of their conversation, he grasped it with gratitude. “That’s me, workaholic Detective Fletcher.”
“Do you need directions to my apartment?” But she shook her head, not waiting for his answer. “Oh. Right. The police report.”
They both fell back into their earlier silence, but the atmosphere felt less tense. Zach guessed it was from relief. Was she as relieved that he wasn’t asking about her condition as he was that she hadn’t demanded to know why he’d hunted her down?
After only a few minutes, they pulled to the curb in front of the Walnut Street town house that had been converted into apartments. Taking in the aged brick and tall windows with ornate moldings, Zach wondered how proud Pilar was of her east-of-Main address. He’d seen her parents’ modest but well-maintained home. This place, though, represented a step up for Miss Estes.
Were possessions and prestige important to her? He didn’t know. She didn’t drive a flashy car, and her clothes didn’t have any four-digit price tags hanging out. Beyond that, he wasn’t much of a judge. Pilar was the one who’d pointed out that though Gabriel was found with a cashmere blanket, he was wearing dime-store jammies. Okay, she knew about designer labels, but he still didn’t know if they mattered to her. Or what did.
Though he’d asked her dozens of questions in the last few days, it was surprising just how little he knew about her. And disconcerting to realize he wanted to know more. Drive away now, his survival instinct demanded, though it wasn’t feasible with her still in the car. B
ut he did need to step away. He was too close to this investigation for more reasons than before.
When he glanced back at Pilar, she was studying him and looking perplexed. Her expression softened to a smile. “You don’t know how hard this is for me to admit, but I don’t think I can get out of the car by myself.”
“Okay then, I won’t tell anybody.”
She looked so grateful that his heart squeezed. Did she hope he would keep her interesting vacation-day excursion to himself, as well? Whatever thoughts of fleeing he’d had before evaporated like the mist that had settled on his windshield.
He climbed out of the car and crossed to open her door. With a hand below her elbow, he helped her out of the car, but she staggered as soon as her feet touched the ground. Instinct took over, and before he realized what he was doing, Zach had lifted her into his arms. She was light and, at this moment, vulnerable.
His mind returned to the morning of Gabriel’s discovery, when he’d wrapped his jacket around her shoulders. She’d handed it back, he remembered, showing how little she appreciated coddling. This time, though, only a gasp escaped her lips.
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” she whispered.
“Where are your keys?”
“Purse.”
He looked down to see a small handbag dangling from her arm. At least he wasn’t going to have to crouch down and retrieve her purse from the car. He hated to think how much doing something like that would hurt her. Now if he could only get her inside her apartment without maiming her. He dug his hand into her purse and was amazed to come out with a set of four keys, one with black rubber edging to signal it went to an ignition. He strained to lift the key chain high enough for her to see.
“The gold one.”
He fumbled with the lock and flipped the key over before it connected. “Which apartment is yours?”
“Upstairs on the right.”
He grunted. “Upstairs. Of course.” The police officer in him was relieved she wasn’t one of those naive young women who risked living in a first-floor apartment.
“You don’t have to carry me.”
Turning the knob, he pushed the door open with his foot. “Is that so? You think you can walk?” Inside, he let the door fall closed behind them. A set of narrow mahogany stairs had him pausing at the landing.
She chuckled until her breath hitched again. “I could crawl maybe.”
“What kind of gentleman would I be if I made a lady crawl up the stairs?” Turning sideways, he began the long slow journey. His arms ached from their positioning. Clearly, he needed to get back into the gym.
“I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
“I’d know. You’d know.” And it was awfully important to him right now that Pilar see him as a gentleman, especially since he was holding her keys up again to ask which went to her apartment.
“Silver one.”
He looked. “There’s two of those.”
“Square top.”
This one went in easily, and he turned the knob and pushed it open. The place was tiny, dollhouselike, but it didn’t look like any apartment he’d ever seen. There were curtains instead of just blinds.
Not only were there a real sofa and side chair, but there were fancy color combinations of pillows arranged on them. The place had tables with a few doodads on them, and, even more unbelievably, framed prints on the wall. It didn’t take much, of course, to amaze a guy like him, who still had boxes in his apartment from two years before. As for wall decor, he hadn’t put up anything that didn’t attach with tape.
“A little overwhelming, isn’t it?”
Pilar was looking up at him when he finally looked down at her. “It’s nice. Now all you need is a big dog like Rudy, and you’d have it made.”
“It would be pretty tight quarters with a dog.”
“Yeah, that’s probably right.”
“I like your dog, though.”
“And he likes you.” Someone else did, too, but he didn’t mention that.
Still carrying her, he crossed to an open doorway. A bed, dresser and still more fluffy pillows were inside.
Zach swallowed hard. What was he supposed to do now? “Uh, where do you want to land?”
She followed his gaze to her bedroom and chewed her lip. “The couch is fine.”
Relief flooded through him. “Yes, the couch.”
He carried her to the sofa and bent to lower her. As he lay her head back, he reached behind her and tossed several pillows to the floor to make more room for her.
Once she was resting against a deep green pillow made out of what looked like corduroy material, she let her head loll to the side. For several seconds, she studied the pillows on the floor as if colors and textures were overstimulating her.
“I guess I overdid it with the pillows. I just like to decorate, mixing colors and textures.”
“You’re a really good decorator.”
“Not really, but thanks for saying so.”
Not that he would recognize a really bad one if said decorator wallpapered him to the wall. If he kept on like this, he probably would be telling her she was talented and incredible in the next breath.
At least she wasn’t looking at him as if he were some alien invader. She wasn’t paying attention to anything, as her eyes first fluttered a few times and then closed.
She needed the rest after whatever trauma she’d faced that day. He hadn’t asked her about it, and she hadn’t volunteered anything, but he could see that she’d been affected by whatever it was.
Zach reached over the back of the couch and pulled a rainbow-colored afghan over her. Though she didn’t even startle in her sleep, he couldn’t help but continue watching her.
If she’d seemed vulnerable before, when he’d first seen her arguing her case with the nurse, then it was nothing compared to seeing her now in sleep. Her skin appeared so smooth that he stuffed his hand in his pocket to keep from brushing her cheek to test the theory.
With her face so relaxed, she appeared innocent, trusting. What was it about Pilar that made him wish he was a different man, the type who could trust people the way she did? If he could pinpoint it, then maybe he could set it aside and get back to his policy of helping people without getting too invested. She tempted him to chuck that policy, and he just couldn’t allow that.
But he couldn’t leave her here like that, either. Beyond her likely needing help to face whatever had sent her to the hospital, she didn’t have anyone there to give her a decent meal. The least he could do was provide that.
Backing slowly away from her so as not to wake her, he retreated to the safety of her galley kitchen. Rummaging through her cabinets, he found a can of chicken soup and a saucepan. While the soup was warming on the stove, he located crackers in a different cabinet and a jar of applesauce in the refrigerator.
As he arranged the things he found on a tray from under the sink, he scanned the cut-glass canisters and fancy towels strategically arranged in the small space. She’d managed to make even this place, no bigger than a small walk-in closet, inviting. Instead of temporary lodging, she made the place seem like a real home.
He hated to think how long it had been since he’d felt at home anywhere. But he shook away the notion. He’d thought he’d given up wasting energy on things that couldn’t be changed a long time ago.
Hoisting the tray, he crossed the ten steps that landed him back in the living area.
Pilar faced him, having hoisted herself in an almost seated position. Her ponytail was mussed from her nap. Curiosity etched her features.
“Oh, I thought I was going to have to wake you up to feed you.”
“You’re not going to feed me, are you? If you do, I might die from humiliation.”
He shook his head. “I meant when I gave you your food.”
“Thanks for clearing that up.”
“Here.” Zach set the tray on the coffee table and shifted another pillow behind her back so she could sit up higher.
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“Comfortable?”
When she nodded, he laid the tray across her lap.
“Thanks for making me dinner.” She bowed her head for a few seconds and then lifted a spoonful of soup to her lips. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Aren’t you hungry?”
Zach shrugged as he lowered into the side chair. He had no idea what he was, except for out of his element.
This was a virtual no-man’s-land in his world of walls, and he didn’t know what to do without the safety of his concrete barriers.
She was studying him again. He could feel her gaze on him even before he looked up to confirm it.
“Tell me, something, Zach.” She paused a few seconds before continuing. “Why are you still here?”
Chapter Eight
Pilar stared back at the man looking at her as if she’d just pulled a gun on him or something. Though she was as curious as ever, she wished she hadn’t demanded answers.
Now he was probably going to leave her here alone, and that was the last thing she wanted.
In her best dreams, she’d pictured Zach at her apartment a time or two, but she’d always imagined him picking her up for a date or maybe sharing a dinner that she’d cooked. This was not at all what she’d had in mind, and yet it was nice, too.
If she hadn’t already recognized Zach Fletcher’s many good qualities before, she would have seen him in a new light today. A compassionate, caring light. Zach had always seemed to keep a polite distance, but he’d been different all afternoon.
Whether he planned on it or not, they’d crossed the line between acquaintance and friendship the moment he’d let her into his car. If not then, surely it had been when he’d hauled her into his arms and carried her up the stairs. She wondered if he felt as unsettled about the change as she did. Somehow she doubted it. Her feelings where he was concerned were confusing enough without him being so nice to her.
Zach playing nursemaid threatened to make her wish for all kinds of things that she had no business thinking about with anybody, at least not right now. But that didn’t stop her from wanting him to stay, and from regretting that she’d given him any reason to leave.