by Irene Brand
“I’ve been over the full list of foster parents. There’s no one.”
“I know of someone.”
“Are you listening to me? No one is available.”
She wanted to reach through the telephone wire and shake her boss, who had become uncharacteristically dense in the past few hours. “If you have some other name, I need it now because the nurse is bringing the baby’s release papers.”
Clara cleared her throat. “I was talking about you.”
Some Christmas Eve this had been, Brock thought as he trudged through the sheriff’s department and dumped his notebook on his desk at dinnertime. If he weren’t so cross-eyed exhausted from pulling an extra shift, he might have looked over his shoulder to see if the notebook had toppled his desk’s mountain of chaos. But at this moment, he could only look straight ahead…to coffee.
The day had suffered from a lousy start, and it had gone downhill from there. Even the morning headline had read “What Child Is This?” as some clever headline writers had played on the words from the old Christmas carol.
If the weekly Destiny Post, best known for its no-longer-news content, had scored the scoop, then even the three or so people in town who missed last night’s comedy of crèches and didn’t have a direct link in the gossip chain knew about the abandoned baby. They also knew about his failure to apprehend the suspect. And it was only a matter of time until the Indianapolis networks descended on Destiny like ants on an uncovered brownie to report the cheesy Christmas story. No doubt they’d write a sidebar article on police incompetence over the response.
For the hundredth time today he wished the crime hadn’t occurred in a public venue. But wishing did no more to change the facts than it did to make his cup of coffee taste less like tar smelled. He took a swig of the brew anyway and grabbed the stack of pink messages off his desk. He riffled through them, hoping at least one would provide the lead he hadn’t found all day.
Contacting hospitals and shelters all the way from Greenfield to Kokomo hadn’t produced a single, solid clue. But he was far too stubborn to let the case grow cold. Someone had to have seen the mother after the show, and he was determined to find that someone, even if he had to interrupt every Christmas celebration in town.
When he was on the next to last message, he shot a glance at the sheriff’s dispatcher, Jane Richards, in her windowed office.
“How’s it going, Chandler?” she asked, but turned back to her computer without even waiting for his answer.
“Dandy,” he said anyway.
His co-worker appeared annoyed at having to work while everyone else spent time with family, attending Christmas Eve services or roasting chestnuts, if people outside storybooks really did that. Too bad for her she had a family to go home to. On nights like this one, when law-enforcement officers worked double shifts while the rest of the world celebrated, it paid to be alone in the world. Just the way he wanted to be.
So why did a picture of that know-it-all caseworker appear in his thoughts like a neon sign blinking on and off with the word liar? And why had his apartment, perfectly sized for a bachelor who didn’t put much stock in furniture or electronics or clothes or anything that took up space, seemed so tiny this morning? And empty?
The holidays were probably getting to him. No wonder suicide rates increased between Christmas and New Year’s. Newspaper articles and commercials featuring Norman Rockwell holiday images were designed to make people like him wonder if they were missing something.
Did Allison Hensley ever worry she was missing anything? She was single and lived alone; he’d checked out that information himself earlier in the day. And she’d made a point of calling David Wright a friend; whether for his benefit, Brock wasn’t sure.
Maybe she’d just been searching for something to say to cover up her discomfiture over the outfit she’d been wearing. He couldn’t understand why the sweats had made her so uncomfortable. She’d looked fine. More than fine—even with her hair all messy like that. All soft and feminine and relaxed enough for a night of videos and popcorn. At least until he’d mentioned her costume.
Still, she wasn’t the only one who’d been feeling discomfort in that hospital hallway. Otherwise, why would he have said some idiotic thing about not recognizing her? As if he wouldn’t have known those intense, long-lashed hazel eyes, even if she were dressed in a pillowed pumpkin costume and had painted her face orange.
That reality bothered him far more than facing the sassy social worker at the hospital. Since when did he go around noticing women’s eyes, even if this particular pair seemed to change at will between green and golden brown? And since when did he suffer from such a chemistry shock upon simply shaking a woman’s hand? Well, no matter when it had started, it needed to stop right now. Unless those eyes—or hands—happened to belong to a particular deserting mother, and if he did touch her hands, it would only be to snap on her cuffs.
Joy. How ironic that someone had given that nickname to the baby. Joy was likely the one emotion this child would never experience.
Shaking off the strange musings that he could attribute only to a lack of sleep, he lowered his gaze to the last two messages in his hand. The one on top was a tip regarding his most crucial local case prior to this one—a rash of power tools burglaries. As that case would just have to wait, he flipped past it to the last message.
His breath caught as he looked down at the same name he’d been trying all day to forget. Allison Hensley. His palms started sweating before he’d even read what she had to say. Her message was as surprising as the fact that she’d called at all. She’d be providing temporary foster care for the infant? At her own home?
Brock didn’t have to ask himself where he was going as he gathered up his notebook and his jacket. And he refused to ask himself why. He didn’t even have to look up her address again, since he’d already done that and had passed by her small ranch home three times since then, always on his way to somewhere else. And always wondering if she had more interesting plans than his for Christmas Eve.
Now he knew for certain that she did, but they weren’t the kind he’d imagined with a bit of jealousy he had no right to feel.
Despite the misgivings forming a jumble of knots in his gut, Brock hurried past the dispatcher and out into the early-evening darkness. During the three-minute ETA to her house, he would have to come up with some plausible excuse for being there. But he didn’t care. None of his valid reasons for staying away from her seemed to matter right now, even if he couldn’t explain his attraction for the woman who dressed like Mary. He could tell himself he was only checking up on the abandoned infant, but truth be told, he was far more curious about the baby’s temporary caregiver.
“What are you doing here?” Allison asked as she pulled the front door open, her expression a blend of shock and confusion. Her gaze followed his tan sheriff’s department uniform from boots to service belt and weapon to hat.
She stood in the parquet entry, her damp hair hanging loose to her shoulders, bare toes peeking out from the flared bottoms of her jeans. Like the night before, she looked fresh-faced without makeup, and she appeared nervous again, this time pushing her hair behind her ears.
“I just came to—”
But from inside the white-painted house, an infant shrieked.
Allison grimaced. “I’ve got to get her.” Already, she backed away from the door. “Come inside. I’ll be right back.” She turned and rushed down the hall.
All the calm he’d manufactured during the short drive in his sheriff’s cruiser disappeared as he stepped inside. He shoved his hands in his pockets as much to wipe off his sweaty palms as to quit fidgeting. So much for the tough sheriff’s deputy.
Inside, the house didn’t seem to match the woman he’d met. It didn’t have the same vibrancy so apparent in her smile or the intensity that flowed from her pores. Brock took in the floral wallpaper and the antique furniture, crowded with bric-a-brac. Even on the Christmas tree in the corner, ornate glass
ornaments were crammed on branches next to paper-and-glue angels and loads of tinsel.
When Allison didn’t return for several minutes, he ambled over to a claw-footed curio cabinet, staring at the figurines stuffed inside.
“Those were my mother’s. This was her house.”
Brock startled at her words and turned to see Allison standing behind him, a sniffling baby resting against her shoulder. “Oh. They’re nice.”
She chuckled and started swaying to some tune that perhaps only she and the baby could hear. Though the infant had been in her care less than twenty-four hours, Allison moved with a practiced rhythm. Her face glowed.
“Not exactly my taste, but she loved them,” she said, still talking about the figurines he’d already forgotten in favor of a much more interesting figure, this one dressed in faded jeans and a soft-looking red sweater.
Allison lowered her gaze to a bell collection on one of the dark wood end tables and smiled. “Mom and I never agreed on decorating, but since she died a year ago, I haven’t had the heart to change anything.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he said.
Instantly, Allison’s gaze cleared, and she turned back to him. “I must have forgotten. Lack of sleep will do that to you. Did you say why you’re here?”
“Rough night?” As soon as he said the words, Brock regretted them. He had no business asking her questions about how she’d spent last night or any other. Especially with the kind of innuendo that she couldn’t have missed.
A pleasant flush crept across her cheeks, but she didn’t call him on it. “Our Joy has her nights and days mixed up. So we watched a lot of infomercials together last night. And in the morning.”
As she spoke, Allison switched the wiggly infant to a reclining position, and immediately the child started rooting against her chest, so she lifted her back to her shoulder. “She’s hungry.”
“I can see that.” Again, the words escaped before he could stop them. He’d seen that, all right. Now he could only watch her blush again. He had no business replaying the scene and wondering what it would be like to touch Allison himself. He had to either get control of his hormones or leave right away for both of their sakes. He chose control.
“I’m off-duty. I just stopped by to check on Joy.” Funny how much more believable that statement had sounded when he’d practiced it in the car. And even more surprising, he’d called Baby Doe by that nickname that suddenly seemed appropriate for a child receiving Allison’s care. If only every child were so privileged.
Allison stifled a yawn and nodded, as if she accepted his flimsy excuse for being there. “Well, I need to warm a bottle for her, and she’s wet so—”
“Here, let me help.” He stepped forward and lifted Joy, a new and disturbing experience. She was so tiny, squirming and pushing her head back as he rested her against his shoulder. He lifted his finger to the child’s tiny hand, and her fingers curled around it as if she, too, realized they were connected in their losses.
As natural as anything he’d ever done, he brushed his lips across the baby’s forehead. She smelled so much like Allison’s light, floral perfume that he wondered what it would be like to kiss the woman herself.
When he looked up, Allison was staring at him, her expression so strange that he worried she’d read his inappropriate thoughts. But she turned away, leaving him oddly disappointed. “The stuff’s in the diaper bag. Could you change her?”
“Sure.” He was anything but, though he’d shoot his foot with his own sidearm before he admitted it. How hard could changing a diaper—only a wet one, thankfully—be? He crouched by the diaper bag and pulled out one of those changing pads he’d seen parents use and spread it on the floor before resting the baby on it.
As if she knew what awaited her, Joy started fussing. But he couldn’t let that distract him as he studied how the diaper went on before he released the tabs that secured it. He was prepared to master this task—and impress Allison—if it killed him.
“Are you doing okay out there?” she called from the kitchen just as he had the wet diaper open.
“Sure we are—” he paused as he stared down at Joy’s sore-looking backside “—except, is her bottom supposed to be this red?”
As if he’d just pointed out that the child was missing a limb, Allison rushed back into the living room carrying the bottle. She appeared as uncertain as he did as she studied the problem. “I think it’s diaper rash.” She set the bottle aside and started digging through the diaper bag. “I thought I saw a tube of cream in here.”
“Yeah, I saw one, too.” He reached over to dig with her, stilling his hand as it brushed hers. Their gazes caught and held in what felt like a timeless pause before she pulled her hand from the bag and looked away.
“It has to be in there somewhere,” Brock said to cover the awkwardness. He grabbed the bag and dumped it on the floor, with everything, even the plastic-covered cardboard piece that stabilized the bag’s bottom, falling out.
And he saw it.
Taped to the bottom of the cardboard piece was a white index card and the clue he should have found earlier. Written in block letters, the message was brief.
Sweetheart,
Remember that I love you.
Your Mother
His thoughts whirled and escaped to that forbidden place in his past. His fingers tingled with the memory of long wavy hair that a boy could touch. He fisted his hands to exorcise it. “Yeah, she loved her, all right. Enough to desert her.”
Brock whispered the words, but he knew Allison had heard it because she glared at him as she dug in the bag’s zippered pocket and produced the missing tube of cream. She elbowed him out of the way, applied a thin layer of the sticky white ointment and diapered the baby.
“This child’s mother left her where she was certain to be found.” She snapped the sleeper back into place. “She’d cared for her well. Even the doctor said so. And she wanted her child to know she was loved. Who are you to judge her? How can you possibly know her heart?”
“Oh, I know, all right, how easy it is for women like her to walk away. To cut those apron strings with a machete and never look back.”
Allison jerked with shock the way he’d expected her to, but she said nothing as she washed and dried her hands at the sink. Then she turned back to him, leaning against the living room doorway. “Brock, are we talking about Joy’s mother…or yours?”
Chapter Four
Brock’s stark expression as he looked up from the note answered more succinctly than any words he could have spoken. But he put on a mask of disinterest in the same way he probably donned his brown uniform and assumed the air of authority that went with it. Allison didn’t buy his act this time.
Those broad shoulders that had filled out his leather jacket the night before and earlier had straightened the seams in his uniform shirt now curled forward. As if one opponent in his life could still best him.
Avoiding the temptation to study him further, Allison reached for the bottle and offered it to Joy, who drank greedily. She smiled at the hearty appetite of a child blissfully unaware of the drastic turn her life had taken. That she’d become a statistic.
When Allison glanced up again, she caught Brock studying them. Her pulse fluttered even though she reasoned that he was only looking at her because she nestled a critical part of his investigation. The victim.
“The only mother we need to worry about right now is hers.” He poked a finger through the air toward Joy.
Allison flinched and was glad the baby was so preoccupied with her dinner and the bright color of her caregiver’s sweater that she hadn’t startled at Brock’s sudden movement. At least he hadn’t bothered to deny her guess about his own deserting mom because she wouldn’t have believed him if he had. His anger was too palpable for him not to have scars of his own.
As he wasn’t sharing any details and didn’t appear likely to anytime soon, she switched tacks. “Are you going to have the note dusted for fingerprints?”
He shrugged. “I could, but I doubt it will produce any leads. The only way her prints would be in the NCIC—the National Crime Institute Computer—would be if she’d been booked for a crime.”
“But you doubt that’s the case, right?”
“She’s probably not in there.” Brock raised an eyebrow at her as if expecting her to gloat.
She only nodded. Why it was so critical that he not believe Joy’s mother to be a criminal—at least prior to this—she wasn’t sure. It could have been that she wanted affirmation of her willingness to give the mother the benefit of a doubt, but she wondered if she just wanted some proof that Brock Chandler wasn’t entirely jaded. His belief in humanity was tarnished at best.
For a few seconds, she focused on Joy alone, who was nodding off after having inhaled half of her eight-ounce bottle. She sensed the deputy’s gaze, warm upon them, and allowed herself a few minutes to enjoy the fantasy that she’d caught such a handsome man’s attention.
His nearness was disconcerting, but she couldn’t escape it because his presence filled the room. She wanted to believe it was the uniform, the badge, the gun at his hip that took up so much space, though she guessed it was much more likely the man himself.
If only she could have stayed as she was—secretly tickled by his attention—instead of becoming self-conscious. Had he noticed how large her thighs appeared in those jeans or how her long sweater masked a pesky ten pounds she never could seem to lose?
“Here, let me feed her.” He took a step closer and stretched out his arms.
“Wait, I need to burp her first.”
She glanced down at the child relying so completely on her. It surprised her to realize she didn’t want to share Joy at all, even after the exhausting day she’d had. That was crazy. She had no business becoming attached, not when keeping a professional distance was essential to case management. They’d never been just cases to her, though. They were children. This particular child had come into her house, slept in her spare room in a portable crib and climbed into her heart.