When she returned to the kitchen, Leona was loading the dishwasher. “Colin O’Reilly is perfection.”
Devon shook her head. “We’d better look somewhere else, maybe the Actors’ Guild. I don’t think Colin will go for the idea.”
“Don’t be silly.” Leona wiped her hands on a dish towel and studied her with twinkling eyes. “I saw the way he looked at you. He’ll agree, all right.”
Devon remembered Colin’s sullen demeanor. “Are you sure we were watching the same man? He looked disgusted to me.”
“Trust me, cupcake.” Leona linked her arm through Devon’s and led her toward the family room. “I know what I saw. Now I need the rest of the story.”
“The rest?”
Leona pointed to Amanda. “How did you come by this little angel?”
“You’re not going to believe it. You’d better sit down.”
TWO HOURS LATER, Devon walked Leona to her rental car and gave her directions to her hotel on the beach. Had it been only this morning that her life had been so calm, uncluttered and uncomplicated?
Inside, she secured the locks and turned out the downstairs lights. Afraid she’d awaken the sleeping child if she lifted her out of the carrier, or worse, drop her on the stairs, she grabbed the carrier and toted it upstairs to her bedroom.
The crib with fresh linens stood in the corner, but Devon gauged the distance between it and her own bed with trepidation. What if Amanda cried in the night, and she didn’t hear her? She gazed down at the child, lying still—too still.
She eased the carrier onto her bed and searched through her dresser drawer, scattering its contents in her haste to locate a small mirror. When she held the glass to the baby’s face, breath fogged the glass, and she sagged with relief.
She stripped off her clothes, tugged on an oversize T-shirt, placed the carrier on the pillow beside her and lay down, holding her breath for fear she wouldn’t hear Amanda’s cries.
Exhaustion finally conquered anxiety, and she dropped off to sleep.
ERNIE POTTS STOLE into the shadows of the back porch, extracted the pick from his pocket and slipped it into the lock. A dog in the adjoining yard barked, and he froze. When no lights came on next door, he continued, teasing the lock until it clicked open.
He turned the knob and held his breath. If the house had an alarm system, he’d have to beat a fast retreat. The only thing worse than a blaring alarm would be a face-to-face confrontation with the man who’d helped the movers unload. Ernie was a big man, but that guy had been a helluva lot bigger. He stepped across the threshold and waited. Nothing happened. No alarm, no muscle man to block his way.
Moonlight streaming through the window over the sink lighted his route to the stove. He switched on the large front burner, extracted a saucepan from a nearby cabinet, then placed it on the element. From his jacket pocket, he pulled out a plastic bag and dumped its contents into the pot. He withdrew his cigarette lighter, held its flame to an oiled rag and dropped it into the pot. He waited for a few minutes until the contents caught fire, then scurried out the door.
As he crossed the backyard and headed for his car, parked on the next block, the beep of a smoke alarm blared in the old Victorian house.
Chapter Four
Every baby needs a secure and familiar environment in which to learn and grow.
Amanda Donovan, Bringing Up Baby
Mike O’Reilly was the last patient on Dr. Pete Packard’s evening rounds. The doctor removed his stethoscope from his ears and fixed him with a puzzled stare. “We’ve been friends for a long time—”
“Thirty-five years,” Mike said with a nod, “since before Colin was born.”
“So I’m going to give it to you straight.” He lowered his rotund frame to the bedside chair. “There’s not a damn thing wrong with you. You’re as healthy as a horse.”
Mike’s blue eyes twinkled. “I know.”
“You know? You’ve let me run every test in the book on you, and you know you’re healthy? Maybe I missed the most important test of all—a psychiatric exam.”
Mike pulled himself into a sitting position and plumped the pillows behind him. “There’s nothing wrong with my mind, except that I’m worried about Colin. “I’ll need your help, Pete.”
“Colin’s not ill, is he?”
Mike tapped the blue hospital gown over his chest. “He’s sick at heart.”
“His divorce?”
“He’s lost his center, his focus in life. Oh, I don’t blame Felicia. She was too young when they married, didn’t know what she wanted. Unfortunately, when she figured out what was important to her, it didn’t include Colin or the family he longs for.”
Pete leaned back and tapped his lips with his forefinger. “I’m just an old general practitioner, so you’ll have to explain how your playing invalid is going to make Colin happy. On the contrary, you’re probably worrying him to death.”
Mike rubbed his hands together and grinned. “It’s the best plan—and the most fun—I’ve had since before Katie died.”
Pete leaned toward the bed for Mike’s explanation.
A half hour later, he walked toward the door. “If the Board of Medical Ethics finds out I have any part in this, they’ll have my license.”
“Like I said,” Mike insisted, “my plan isn’t harming anyone, and it could make several people happy, including me.”
“I hope you’re right. Colin’s not going to like his dad scaring him half to death—or meddling in his love life.”
“You just keep your end of the bargain and leave Colin to me.” Mike reached for the television remote control. “And, Pete…”
“Yes?”
“Thanks. It may not be what you had in mind, but you’ve done my heart a world of good.”
“You’re a sentimental old coot.” Pete rammed his stethoscope into the pocket of his white coat and left the room.
COLIN STOPPED at the nurses’ station of the cardiac wing. “I know it’s past visiting hours, but may I see Mike O’Reilly?”
The gray-haired nurse, who looked as if her feet hurt, flipped open a chart. “Are you his son?”
He nodded.
“Dr. Packard’s left instructions that you can see your father anytime.”
Fear for his father gripped him with a vengeance. “How is he?”
“He’s resting as comfortably as can be expected,” she said with a professional smile.
Unconvinced, he strode down the tiled hallway to his father’s room. The old man lay propped against his pillows with his eyes shut. Colin reached across him for the remote and turned off the television.
His father opened his eyes. “I thought I heard your voice down the hall.”
“How are you, Dad?” His stomach twisted with pain. His father had always been a vibrant, active man. Now, for the first time, lying so quiet and still in the hospital bed, he seemed old.
He struggled to sit upright, and Colin placed an arm around his shoulders to help him up. He lay still for a moment, as if the effort had worn him out.
“I’m fine,” he said in a weak voice that Colin had to lean forward to hear.
“And what did Dr. Pete have to say?”
His father flipped his hand back and forth in a soso gesture. “He says as long as I get plenty of bed rest and don’t get too excited, I should be okay.”
Colin’s heart sank. Bed rest was like a death sentence to a man as energetic as his dad had always been.
“Let’s not talk about me,” his father said in a stronger voice. “Tell me how you like working for Devon Clarke.”
Colin gave a half snort, half laugh. “The woman is crazy and the house is a zoo.”
“Not anything you can’t handle?” Some of the old sparkle returned to his father’s eyes.
“The construction work?” Colin shook his head, exorcising intriguing thoughts of Devon Clarke in his arms. “But don’t you think we should let someone else take over the job so I can look after you?”
�
��No!” The old man lay back, closed his eyes and clutched his chest.
Colin bent over him with alarm. “Dad, are you okay? Should I call the nurse?”
Mike grabbed the front of Colin’s shirt, pulled him close and spoke in a strangled whisper. “That girl is like one of my own daughters. Don’t abandon her now when she needs you.”
“She doesn’t need me. Any carpenter can finish what you started,” Colin protested, but he couldn’t erase from his mind the picture of Devon’s red-gold curls bowed over Baby Amanda’s blond ones. Or the flash of her hazel eyes and the delicate curve of her cheeks. She had the courage to face new situations without falling apart and, in fact, thought faster on her feet than any man he knew. The woman had embedded herself in his consciousness and wouldn’t let go. The less he saw of her, the better.
His father winced and clutched his chest again. “She’s all alone in the world and needs looking after. Promise me.”
He had agitated his father, exactly what Dr. Pete had warned against. “Sure, Dad, don’t worry. I promise.”
The old man raised his hand from his chest and patted Colin’s cheek. “You’re a good boy, son. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Dad.” He had planned to tell him about the baby and Devon’s offer for the television interview, but the old man had experienced enough excitement for one night. Colin sat quietly beside the bed until his father drifted off to sleep.
WHEN HE PULLED OUT of the hospital parking lot, his promise to his dad echoed in his mind. Because it meant so much to the old man, he’d agreed, against his better instincts, to continue working for Devon Clarke. He chuckled at his father’s notion that she needed looking after. With her enterprising and manipulating mind, she’d do just fine on her own. He was the one who’d need to be cautious, or she’d soon have him sucked into her money-making schemes.
Instead of turning left toward his dad’s house, he took a right and headed back to Devon’s. As little as he relished the responsibility of watching out for her, a promise was a promise, and he wondered how the novice mother was faring with Amanda. She was in for one rough ride.
He turned down Devon’s street and had almost reached her house when he spotted clouds of thick black smoke billowing out of the downstairs windows of the old Victorian.
He gunned the pickup truck the last hundred feet to the front of the house, braked against the curb and raced to the front door.
“Devon, wake up!” He pounded on the locked door and listened for sounds of life, but the only noise inside the house was the incessant beep of a smoke alarm.
He shrugged off his shirt, wrapped it around his arm and drew back, prepared to break the beveled glass of the door to gain entry.
“We’re up here.” Devon’s voice floated down to him.
He bounded off the porch and glanced up, straining to see through the smoke-shrouded darkness. An acrid stench filled his nostrils and seared his lungs, and he coughed, gasping for air. Above him, the faint glow of a streetlight illuminated Devon, crouched on the porch roof outside her open bedroom window with Amanda’s carrier crushed against her chest.
Fear for Devon and the child threatened to paralyze him. Between the dry tinder of the frame structure and dozens of cans of flammable paint stacked inside, the whole house could explode any second, tumbling them into an inferno below.
“Wait right there!” He hurtled down the walk toward his truck, ignoring the agony in his chest as he sucked in the smoke-laden air.
“We haven’t much choice,” Devon called after him with a nervous hiccup in her voice.
He dragged the expandable ladder from the truck bed, hefted it on his shoulder and raced back up the lawn toward the porch. Sirens sounded in the distance, increasing in volume as the fire trucks approached, but they were too far away to save Devon and Amanda if the porch caught fire.
He threw the ladder on the ground, extended it to its full length, then secured the catches before raising it to the eaves along the porch and clambering up. Devon’s wide eyes glittered darkly in her pale face when he met her face-to-face at the roof’s edge.
“Here—” she thrust the carrier toward him “—take the baby.”
“I’ll be back for you.” Tucking the carrier under one arm, he began the precarious one-handed descent.
“I can take care of myself,” she insisted, and swung a leg onto the ladder.
The flash of a firm, round buttock beneath the hem of her shirt almost caused him to lose his grip on the rung, and he averted his eyes toward the ground. Amanda cooed and chuckled in his arm as if the entire episode was some kind of lark, planned solely for her amusement.
A tanker and hook-and-ladder truck roared to a stop against the curb, and fire fighters began laying hose to the corner hydrant. An official approached just as Devon stepped off the ladder to the safety of the front lawn.
“Anyone else inside?” he asked.
Devon shook her head. “Thanks to Colin here.”
The fire chief acknowledged Colin with a nod and returned his attention to Devon. “Any idea how or where the fire started?”
“I was asleep upstairs when the smoke alarm went off.” She reached into the carryall slung over her shoulder and extracted her portable phone. “The halls were filled with smoke, so I grabbed the baby and the phone, crawled onto the porch roof and called 911.”
Colin experienced a stab of sympathy for her when he saw tears flooding her eyes as she observed the clouds of foul smoke seeping out around the doorjambs and window casements.
He placed a consoling arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. “Let’s get out of the way so the fire fighters can do their job.”
With the baby under his other arm, he led Devon across the lawn to his truck, opened the door and boosted her inside. She appeared small and fragile sitting alone on the wide seat, shivering and trying to catch her breath. Despite the heat, she seemed chilled to the bone.
He handed her the baby, then retrieved the shirt he’d flung onto the lawn in his rush for the ladder. When he tucked the garment around her slender shoulders, tenderness toward her overwhelmed him. She’d remained calm and cool in a crisis, thinking clearly and reacting quickly to save herself and the child. And now, in spite of the fact her home was about to go up in flames, she hadn’t succumbed to hysteria. Not like Felicia. His former wife had wept buckets over a hangnail.
As if to contradict his thoughts, Devon jumped from the truck, thrust the baby into his arms and sprinted up the walk toward the front door.
“Wait,” he yelled, making Amanda howl in protest. He lowered the carrier to the curb, raced after Devon and caught her as she vaulted up the porch steps. “Are you crazy?” He dragged her down the walk, dodging hoses and equipment. “You never go back into a burning building.”
“Let me go.” She twisted in his arms, struggling for release. “I have to—”
He grabbed her shoulders and swiveled her to face him. “What’s so damned important you’d risk your life for it? If you’re insured, everything can be replaced.”
“Not Gramma Donovan’s journals.” She kicked him in the shin.
Startled by the unexpected attack, he loosened his grip. She raced toward the steps, but a fire fighter blocked her way. “You can’t go in there, ma’am.”
“I have to!”
She tried to circumvent the forceful fireman, who seized her firmly by the elbow and led her back to Colin. “You could help us out by keeping your wife out of the way.”
“She’s not-”
“I’m not—”
They both spoke at once, but the fireman returned to his duties, ignoring their outbursts.
Colin scowled at her. “That was the dumbest stunt I’ve ever witnessed. Doesn’t your life mean more to you than some stupid newspaper column?”
Fury etched her face, and she shivered in helpless frustration, her fists clenched at her side. She opened her mouth as if to reply, but an angry shriek from Amanda interrupted her.
The baby’s tiny face contorted with rage, and her cries pierced the air above the rumble of the fire engines. With a chagrined look, Devon knelt before the child, unfastened her restraints and gathered her awkwardly in her arms. Looking dazed and lost and lovely, she sank to the curb, cradling the screaming baby against her chest.
His conscience attacked him when he remembered his promise to his father, and he dropped to the pavement beside her and took Amanda from her arms. As if sensing his need for quiet, the baby ceased her cries, snuggled into the hollow of his throat and, easing her fist into her mouth, began to suck contentedly.
“I’m sorry—” he began.
“No, you were right.” She tilted her face toward him. Disordered curls framed her face, delicate pink tinged her cheeks, and her eyes were swirls of gold and green. Soot smudged the tip of her upturned nose. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
His anger transformed into a deep molten heat of longing, and every protective urge he’d ever known coalesced into a desire to shield her from all harm. He shifted the baby to his other arm and drew Devon’s trembling body against him. “You thought straight when it mattered. Both of you are safe, thanks to your quick response.”
The warmth of her seared through his jeans, Amanda’s body weighed comfortably against his bare chest, and he reveled in the closeness, the rightness of woman and child in his arms. A brusque voice broke his reverie.
“You the owners?” The fire chief stood before them with a blackened object in his hands.
“I am.” Devon stood and tugged her shirt over her thighs. Her calm dignity generated a reluctant approval from Colin.
“The fire’s out,” the chief said, “and except for the cabinets above the stove, there’s only smoke damage.”
“The stove?” she said. “Was there some kind of electrical short?”
He shook his head. “A burner was left on high and this pot caught fire. Some kind of rubbery substance in it created all the smoke. What the hell were you cooking, lady? Snow tires?”
Bringing Up Baby Page 5