Harlequin Superromance February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: His Forever GirlMoonlight in ParisWife by Design

by Liz Talley

  Looking around her as she half ran across the complex, she let Grant ramble, trying to think of anyplace Darin might have gone.

  “Is there anyone at the park?” It was still early enough in the afternoon that all of the kids would be at school.

  And the private day care had its own little fenced-in playground.

  “No. There was a woman here with two small children, but she said she hadn’t seen Darin. They left.”

  She could see him, standing there in his jeans and black Bishop Landscaping shirt, looking strong and virile and lost.

  “I’m here,” she said. Turning, he saw her, returned his phone to its holster as he approached and grabbed her hand as soon as he was close enough to touch her.

  “Thanks for coming.” The words were plebian compared to the panicked look in his eyes.

  “We’ll find him.” As soon as she’d taken Grant’s call, she’d sent the one resident in her waiting room, a well-check appointment, over to Lila. She’d need to have someone reschedule the rest of her afternoon.

  “It’s just not like him. Darin doesn’t ever leave familiar territory. He got lost once and wet himself. He’s never forgotten....”

  “Then he’s someplace familiar,” she said, hoping she was right. “We just have to figure out where that is.”

  He was still holding her hand, and she gave his fingers a squeeze. “Let’s go check my place. He seems to be thinking of that as home. Maybe something upset him or spooked him. He wouldn’t have been able to run to you or your truck since you weren’t here. I was in back-to-back appointments all morning. And Maddie’s out with her folks. She walked Kara back to day care after lunch and her folks were picking her up from there.”

  “Angelica already called Maddie and confirmed that she’s with her parents. She didn’t know where Darin was.”

  Another alarm went off. “Did she let Maddie know he was missing?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “She’ll be frantic if she knows. And her folks aren’t great about helping her through her panic. They tend to panic about her panic.”

  Which was one of the reasons why Maddie wasn’t living with them. Pulling her phone out of her pocket she called the slender blonde.

  “Maddie? This is Lynn.” Still holding Grant’s hand in hers, she hurried with him across the sidewalk that meandered through the grounds and across the grass toward her bungalow.

  “Hi, Lynn, I’m with my parents shopping right now.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m calling. I wanted to make sure you remembered that you wanted to get some more of that special soap you like.”

  Cherry-scented hand soap. Lynn had extra that she intended to give Maddie, but she’d needed a reason to call.

  “Yes, Lynn, I remembered. And I thought you were calling about Darin. I didn’t walk him to therapy today because I’m with my parents right now.”

  “Okay, sweetie. We just forgot to tell Angelica about your visit with your parents. You’re fine.”

  “I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  “You aren’t in trouble.” The woman was obviously not worried about Darin, either. Which meant that she hadn’t put Angelica’s phone call together with the idea that Darin might be missing.

  “Did Darin tell you if he had anything to do after therapy today?”

  “He was going to miss me. And help his brother, Grant, with yard work because he can do it all now because he can bend over and lift things.”

  Darin had been released for full activity a couple of weeks ago.

  “That’s right. Good. I thought maybe I’d see if he wants to make his spaghetti again for dinner on Friday night.”

  “Okay, Lynn, I like his spaghetti, and Kara does, too. I have to go now. I’m shopping. And please tell Darin I’m sorry I didn’t walk him to therapy. And...tell him I miss him, too,” she added in almost a whisper.

  “I will,” Lynn assured her.

  They’d reached her house.

  “I take it she doesn’t know where he is.”

  “She doesn’t know he’s missing.” Which wasn’t all that reassuring. As much as Grant and Maddie talked, if he’d intended to stray from his normal itinerary, surely he would have told her.

  And Maddie would have told Lynn. Or at least confessed that she knew something she couldn’t tell her.

  * * *

  DARIN WASN’T AT Lynn’s house. Or anywhere on the secure premises of The Lemonade Stand. All residents had been put on alert—a one-shot text to their cell phones covered most of them. A message over the speakers installed in all of the bungalows and at the main house covered the rest.

  The atmosphere at the complex wasn’t one of panic. Everyone at The Lemonade Stand was taking the situation seriously but no one was panicking. It was far more likely that Darin had just wandered off—and a grown man of his size, even mentally handicapped as he was, should be able to keep himself alive until he was found.

  Grant was panicked, though.

  “This just isn’t like him,” he said, running fingers through hair that was already standing on end. He felt like a fool.

  And a failure, too.

  There had to be something he could do.

  The police had been notified. And were on their way to The Lemonade Stand to take his statement.

  “He’s going to be fine, Grant,” Lynn said. “He’s been out and about enough lately to know to ask for help. Or maybe even recognize someplace close by. He rides on these roads with you every single day.”

  They were in Lila’s office waiting for the police.

  Lila was seeing to a resident in crisis. An abused, recovering drug user whose children were going to be removed from her care later that day. Just until she could get clean and find a way to care for them.

  As far as anyone could tell, Darin had only been missing about an hour and a half. No one had seen him.

  Lila’s landline rang, and Grant tensed as Lynn picked up immediately.

  He could hear a male voice, but couldn’t make out a single word.

  She looked at him and shook her head. Then said, “You’re sure?” Her tone was biting.

  He heard the male voice again. The frown encompassing Lynn’s entire expression eased as she gave him a quick smile and a shake of her head. Her lips mouthed the words Not Darin.

  “Uh-huh.”

  More male voice. More “Uh-huh.”

  She was looking at him. His tension eased a bit, but not enough.

  “Okay, thank you.”

  She hung up, a frown marring her brow.

  “What?”

  “Nothing to do with Darin,” she said. Then she picked up the phone again and dialed.

  “Lila?”

  She was on the phone, but staring at him intently, and Grant read that she was going to let him be privy to classified information without actually telling him what was going on.

  “I just had a call from the police. No, nothing to do with Darin Bishop— We’re still waiting for an officer to come take our statement on him. Another officer, one on regular patrol, noticed someone hanging around the area. Apparently he’s been watching him for a couple of days, but the guy didn’t do anything particularly suspicious. He went for a burger across the street. Sat on a bench...”

  Grant didn’t need to hear the guy sat on a bench. What in the hell was going on?

  And where was his brother?

  “But today he seemed to be eyeing the door to the public day care a little too closely. Not enough to arrest him, but the officer has been making extra rounds to keep an eye on him. He saw the guy go into our boutique. And then later he was hanging around our public entrance. The officer approached him for loitering and told him he’d have to move along, and the guy got belligerent so he arrested him.
”

  Grant was watching her, on alert. He’d stayed away from the residents as he’d promised, but he’d learned some things during his weeks at The Lemonade Stand. These woman...they were fragile. They had men in their lives who’d hurt them. Men who, by and large, seemed to think women were property—their property....

  “Turns out it was Dan Cleveland, Maria’s husband,” Lynn was telling Lila on the phone.

  Maria Cleveland. Grant knew that Maria was the woman who had moved in next door to Lynn. One of their first late-night conversations had been about Maria, though he hadn’t known her name then. Lynn had texted Grant at two in the morning after spending the evening in the emergency room with Maria. And had been called out another time to tend to her because she’d ripped out her stiches trying to hail a cab to get to her kids.

  “I don’t know, I called you first,” Lynn was saying into the phone, apparently in response to something Lila had asked.

  “Okay.”

  Lynn hung up. “Lila’s sending someone over to make certain Maria’s in the group counseling session she was scheduled to attend this afternoon.”

  “He was really going to try to get to her if he could.”

  “Of course. This is no drama mart we run here, Grant. Do you know how many women die every day in the United States from spousal abuse?”

  He did know. She knew he knew. She was the one who’d told him.

  “It’s a good thing the police in this town are so observant.”

  “The city allots monies for extra patrols around our block. All of the officers on this beat know what to watch for.”

  “Then surely they’d have noticed if a confused-looking man was wandering around out there.”

  She came around the desk. Took his hand again. “We’ll find him, Grant.”

  She didn’t look him straight in the eye when she said it. But he was glad she’d cared enough to say the words anyway.

  * * *

  THE POLICE CAME. Took Grant’s statement. They talked to Angelica and Carmelita, too. And many of the residents who were gathered together in a recreation hall in the main building.

  Maria Cleveland was absent. She was in a private counseling session with Sara, being encouraged to press charges against her husband for spousal abuse so the police could keep him locked up and away from her.

  A few of the residents had seen Darin that morning. None of them remembered anything different about him. Or knew anything about where he could be.

  But in the past ten days, he’d been seen all around the grounds helping Grant with the landscaping. He could mow now. And trim. And had been doing a lot of both. The ladies were used to having him around. They might not have noticed anything amiss.

  Darin had been gone two hours, and Lynn could tell that Grant was starting to let his panic get the better of him. She was surprised he’d remained calm as long as he had. For seventeen years his life had revolved around Darin.

  “It’s almost time to go get Kara,” she said. “Let’s pick her up early and take another walk around the grounds.”

  Maybe her precocious offspring would distract Grant a little bit. Either way, Lynn was going to collect her. There’d been too much danger that day. Lynn needed Kara close.

  She took his hand as they walked through subdued hallways toward the private day care where Kara had been taking dance class that afternoon. “Did we look in here?” Grant asked, stopping by a janitor door. “Maybe he got locked in someplace by accident....” He didn’t let go of her hand.

  With her free hand, Lynn pulled open the door. There wasn’t room in the supply closet for a man of Darin’s size to stand, let alone hide.

  Security had already checked the landscaping garage. And they’d been back a second time.

  “I don’t understand this,” Grant said. “If Darin wasn’t missing, I’d be thrilled to hear that he’d actually gone someplace on his own. He clings to the familiar. Always.”

  “Other than that one time he wet himself, he’s never just wandered off but found his way back?”

  “Not once. In seventeen years, not once.”

  They’d reached the day care. Grant squeezed her hand and let it go, standing off to the side as she opened the door and stepped into the small foyer.

  “You can come in,” she told him, holding open the door.

  Leaving him in the front entryway, she went through another door, down a small hallway and peeked into the dance class, praying that it was ending. Kara wouldn’t be happy about being pulled out early.

  The class was still underway.

  But she couldn’t see Kara at first. So she moved over to get a different view from the big window into the room. And still, even when she peered in the mirror straight ahead of her to get a view of the back of the room, she couldn’t find Kara.

  With all that had been going on that day, Lynn’s nerves were frayed. She was staff. A nurse. She could interrupt any function on campus. So she did. Pulling open the door, she stepped inside, an apology to the teacher on her lips as she sought her toddler out from the other seven or eight kids, male and female, absently registering that they’d brought kids over from the public day care to take part in the class.

  But not really caring at the moment.

  “Where’s Kara?” she blurted out over the children’s music blaring from a boom box on the floor by the instructor.

  “Kara?” The twentysomething woman asked. She’d been abused by her mother’s boyfriend, if Lynn remembered correctly. Sexually. Thankfully there’d been no internal damage.

  “My daughter. She was signed up to take this class.”

  “I thought she was with Maddie,” the girl said. “I saw her in the hallway...walking behind Maddie. They told me Maddie has jurisdiction over her and I thought she’d decided not to put Kara in class....”

  The girl was babbling. Seemingly unaware of the other kids in her care—most of whom were standing there staring, as if someone was getting in trouble and they didn’t want it to be them.

  “Maddie isn’t here this afternoon,” Lynn bit out. Everyone knew, everyone, that where the kids were concerned, no one assumed anything. “She’d have had to sign her out and clear it with you face-to-face if Kara wasn’t going to be in class. She knows the rules.”

  And clearly this young woman didn’t.

  Lynn would have to deal with that later. Right now, she had to find Kara.

  Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she tore out of the room—and straight into Grant Bishop’s arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WHEN LYNN’S BODY slammed into his, Grant knew, instantly, that something was terribly wrong.

  She turned before he could pull her fully into his arms, and righted herself. She was on her phone before she said a word to him.

  “Lila, I need a lockdown. Immediately. Kara’s missing.”

  She hung up and called the police. A tense fifteen minutes later, a couple of detectives met them in Lila’s office.

  They wanted pictures. Descriptions of clothing and shoes and distinguishing marks. While the female officer was on the phone, checking for any reports of unattended children in the area, the male officer, Detective Smith, talked to Lynn.

  She answered his questions as stoically as she had earlier when the police had requested the same information for Darin.

  “There has to be some connection here,” Grant said as he paced the office. He needed everyone on the same page. “Kara and Darin know each other. They eat dinner together regularly. Darin thinks he wants to marry Kara’s caregiver—who happens to be away from the complex at the moment. They have to be together.”

  Lynn stared at him openmouthed. “You think Darin and Maddie have Kara?”

  “I think that Darin wouldn’t set foot in your home that first time he was
there—because he won’t go anyplace he hasn’t been before unless I take him—but the minute he saw Maddie there, he went in.”

  He could see the confirmation of his memory in Lynn’s gaze.

  “He would never wander off on his own. But for Maddie...”

  “You think her parents are in on it?” Lynn asked.

  “Where is this Maddie person?” Detective Smith asked.

  “With her parents,” Lynn told him. “Shopping.”

  She pulled out her phone. Dialed.

  “I’ll take that,” Smith said, reaching for the phone. Lynn elbowed his hand away.

  “Maddie’s...special. She’ll clam up if you...”

  Grant understood. Smith was male. Maddie was scared to death of men.

  Except Darin.

  “Maddie.” Lynn turned her back to speak on the phone as the door opened and more officers entered the room along with Lila and some of the security personnel from The Lemonade Stand.

  “We’re on lockdown,” Lila told Detective Smith, after asking who was in charge. “All staff and residents have been ordered to check their offices and bungalows and report to the rec hall stat.”

  “We’ll want to speak with each one of them,” Smith said. “No one is to enter or leave this campus until we release them.”

  “I understand, Detective. Thank you for your prompt response.”

  Grant would have added his thanks if anyone had noticed him standing there.

  One thing was clear: once a child was involved, the search and rescue policies escalated.

  He nodded to himself, quietly going out of his mind. Would his brother really stoop to kidnapping to be with Maddie? Would Maddie put Kara at risk that way?

  He just didn’t think so. Couldn’t find a way to make the pieces fit. Darin and Maddie both knew right from wrong. They might not realize how much of a panic they would create if Kara went missing, but they’d still know that it was wrong to take her in the first place.

  The female detective called Kara’s father. The police had insisted on making that call so that they could get a true read on him. The conversation was short. From the tone Grant heard coming from the other end of the line, Brandon was shocked and distraught. Not the sound of a guilty man.