Deirdre’s eyes were huge and hopeful when he pressed the button to disconnect.
“We need to call your lawyer,” he said, seeing no way to sugarcoat the information. “Law enforcement can’t peddle backward fast enough to get away from cases like this.”
Frannie came over and put an arm around Deirdre. “I can’t believe it. Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Ronan shook his head, frustration darkening his face and his mood. “Not without talking to a judge first.”
“Are you telling me she isn’t going to get them back until she goes to court?”
Deirdre made a sound that was half sob, half moan. “He can’t just take them, can he?”
“He already has.” Jack drummed his big fingers on the coffee table, his eyes following Ronan as he began to pace around the room. “We need to figure out how to get them back.”
Deirdre’s face crumpled, wrinkling like carelessly handled tissue paper. For the first time since the ordeal had begun, she began to weep openly. “I can’t—They’re going to be so—Tommy can’t sleep without his alligator.” She sobbed harder. “Gumsy keeps him from being afraid in the dark.”
Ronan tossed the phone to Jack and went to her. He took her in his arms and sat down on the sofa, rocking her soft body gently and wishing he had her ex-husband in front of him. “Who’s her lawyer?” he asked Frannie. “Can you call him?”
She nodded, and he saw that she was gulping, swallowing back her own fears. Quickly she flipped through the phone book and made the call. Ronan only half listened to her end of the conversation. He rubbed Deirdre’s back and let her tears soak his shirt, his heart aching for her. He hated feeling so helpless, and his mind raced as he considered and discarded possibilities... most of which would get him thrown in jail.
When Frannie ended the call, she came over and sat down beside them, her hand absently patting Deirdre’s knee. “He’s going to get something ready tonight,” she said. “First thing in the morning he’ll file it, and unless he’s taken them somewhere else, you’ll have them back again in a few days or weeks.”
“A few weeks.” It was a despairing whisper. Then Deirdre nodded, biting her bottom lip as she tried to compose herself. “Thank you,” she said to all of them.
The doorbell rang, and he remembered the cop who’d promised to stop by. As he rose, Jack opened the door and showed a woman in dark pants and a jacket into the room. “This is Detective Sims,” he said, introducing each of them.
Detective Sims was about his age, Ronan figured, stocky and athletic with no-nonsense brown hair cropped in a short bob.
Ronan offered his hand. “We spoke on the phone.”
The woman nodded, her attention turning to Deirdre. The detective’s eyes were soft with compassion as she walked over and sat down facing her. “So your ex took your kids, huh?” She shook her head. “We hear this all the time. Wish I could do more for you.”
Then she looked up at Ronan. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I have two kids of my own, and I know how I’d feel if this were happening to me.” She fished a piece of paper out of her pocket. “This is the number of an old buddy of mine, a former federal agent who retired a few years ago and still likes the occasional challenge. He specializes in finding children who aren’t really lost, if you catch my meaning.”
Ronan took the offered paper and scanned the information. “Does he have office hours or can we call him right now?”
“No office hours. That’s his home number.” She held up one finger when Ronan reached for the phone. “He doesn’t do this for peanuts. Depending on how long it takes to locate ‘em, and how difficult it is to get ’em away from the other parent, you might be looking at upwards of ten grand.”
“Ten thousand dollars?” Deirdre gasped, and the hope that had begun to glow in her eyes dimmed. “I can’t begin to afford that.”
Detective Sims rose. “It’s a hefty chunk of change, no question. But you have to understand—he has all kinds of expenses involved in an undercover job, which is essentially what this would be.” She took both of Deirdre’s hands in hers and squeezed before rising to her feet. “Good luck getting them back, however you decide to do it.”
After Jack closed the door behind the woman, Deirdre stood and started pacing the room. “I’ll have to sell the farm, I guess.” She was talking to herself. “I wonder if he’d be willing to let me pay him in installments?”
Ronan picked up the phone and began to dial the number on the paper. He already knew what he was going to do. He’d deal with the consequences later. “Don’t worry about the money.” He silenced her with a look when she began to protest. Then a man’s voice answered on the other end of the line, and he began to negotiate.
Deirdre was still in shock. It was 3:30 in the wee hours of the morning, and she sat alone in Frannie’s kitchen nursing a cup of coffee. Frannie and Jack had finally gone to bed at her insistence, after midnight came and went. Today was Monday, and they both would be working.
Edwin Briggs, the man Ronan had hired, was already out working on finding Lee and Tommy, and Ronan had gone with him. Briggs had instructed her to wait by the phone in case Nelson called. And if he did, Briggs had done something to ensure that they would be able to trace the call. She knew it had to be illegal, not to mention that he probably had had to bribe an employee of the telephone company...and she didn’t care one little bit, if it helped find her sons.
The man Ronan had hired. All three of them—she, Frannie and Jack—had gaped when Ronan had calmly promised the man on the phone a five-thousand-dollar retainer fee. That night.
He’d been out the door with his keys in his hand before she’d even realized the phone conversation had ended. “Where are you going?” she’d said.
“To get the money.” Ronan didn’t even slow down.
“But the automatic tellers won’t let you withdraw anywhere near that much,” Jack had said.
“I know.” They’d all followed Ronan to the door and as he climbed into his truck he’d said, “I have it at home. I’ll be back. If Briggs gets here ahead of me, tell him everything you can.”
But Ronan had made it back just as Mr. Briggs arrived. Briggs was a tall, muscled man with dark hair that shone with silver highlights. He was calm and quiet, and he’d gotten her to tell him all kinds of things she knew about Nelson’s habits and hang-outs, things she hadn’t even realized she remembered.
“I’m starting now,” he informed her. “The warmer the trail, the faster we find ’em.”
“There’s more than one of you?” Ronan questioned.
Briggs nodded. “I have a few other people working for me as needed. I don’t know yet whether or not I’ll need to call any of them in.”
She’d started to mention money then, but Ronan had cut her off. “Money’s no object. Just tell me how much more you need, and you’ll have it as soon as the banks open in the morning. The only important thing is that we get the boys back.”
That “we” had lightened her spirits for an instant, but the weight of worry replaced it again within seconds. And then there was the little detail of Ronan’s money. Bewilderment and confusion were a whirling lump of questions in her mind.
Money was no object. He’d had five thousand dollars just gathering dust in his apartment in her stable. He would get more from the bank in the morning.
Maybe he was simply frugal, saving everything he could. He lived alone, after all. She’d have to pay him back, of course—
The phone rang. She knocked over her coffee cup, thankfully almost empty, and frantically threw napkins on the puddle as she pushed the button to turn the telephone on with trembling fingers. “Hello?”
“We have them.” Ronan’s voice was filled with jubilation.
“Where are you? Are they all right? How long will it take—”
Ronan laughed. “Whoa, woman. I’m on Briggs’s car phone, and we’re going over a mountain, so I’d better keep it brief before we lose the connection. Th
e boys are fine. Right now they’re asleep in the back seat. Your ex doesn’t even know they’re gone yet—we took them from a back bedroom of his hunting cabin while he was sleeping in the next room. I’ll tell you everything else when we get back.” His voice deepened. “Give yourself a kiss for me, and I’ll replace it personally in a few hours.”
She could picture the warm glint in his tiger eyes as he spoke, the humorous expression he wore that masked the serious intent in his voice. A warmth shot through her, as tender and sweet as it was arousing. “I love you, Ronan.”
There was total silence from the other end of the receiver. She could have bitten off her tongue. The words had been a reckless impulse, out before she consciously thought about them. And they would change everything. Miserably she waited, aware that he hadn’t responded in any way.
“Deirdre?” His voice sounded strangely unsure. “We have to talk when I get home. I’ll see you soon, baby.”
She was crying as she hung up, and she wasn’t sure if it was happiness that her sons were coming home to her, or fear that she’d just ruined everything with those three stupid little words.
“Who was that?” Jack came into the kitchen, blinking blearily. He carried Brooks, who looked wide-awake and ready for some fun, in one arm and he took a moment to lay the baby down in a bassinet in the corner.
“That was Ronan. He found them!” Suddenly she realized what she was saying, and she launched herself at him with a whoop of joy. Jack caught her in midair, hugging her in a ferocious embrace as she pounded his back ecstatically. “They’re safe! He found them,” she repeated.
“Thank God.” Jack’s voice came from somewhere above her head and she thought it sounded a little shaky. “Thank God.”
“What’s going on in here?” Frannie stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. “First I hear a wild war whoop, then I find my husband flirting. As usual.” She shook her head fondly, then clasped her hands as if she were praying. “Does this means we have something to celebrate?”
“He found them!” Deirdre charged at her, dragging her into the circle, practically dancing with joy as she clutched Frannie’s neck in a stranglehold.
Frannie’s eyes filled with tears. “Way to go, Ronan,” she said softly. “Now I can cry.”
Three hours later the sky had grown light and Monday was waking up, when Briggs’s dark blue Suburban glided smoothly into the Ferrises’ driveway. Ronan emerged as she came tearing out the front door. He opened the back door of the truck and leaned in, and when he straightened up she saw Lee blinking sleepily in his arms.
As he handed her son to her, their eyes met. And in the instant before he turned away and reached for Tommy, she realized that his gaze was filled with something strong and warm, something that she dared to hope was love.
They drove home with her sons between them.
“Where did Daddy go?” Lee asked. “He said we were staying with him now.”
“An’ I don’ want to,” declared Tommy, his lower lip quivering. “He said I’m too big to s‘eep wif Gumsy, an’ I’m not.”
Gumsy...the thought of the big alligator had shattered her earlier. Fury almost choked her now, but she shooed it away, reaching for a calm voice and manner. The last thing the boys needed was to have her flip out. “Daddy’s still at the cabin,” she said, referring to Nelson’s old fishing cabin along the Potomac, where she learned he’d taken them...the cabin she’d forgotten he even owned until Mr. Briggs had jogged her memory. “It was time for you to come home.”
She put her arm around Tommy, sitting closest to her, and hugged him tightly. “You can sleep with Gumsy as long as you want to. He’s waiting for you on your bed right now.” She lowered her voice. “He told me to tell you to hurry home.”
Tommy giggled. But Lee wasn’t so easily sidetracked. She could almost see the gears turning in that agile little mind which, at five, comprehended the events of the night a bit more accurately than Tommy’s did. “I told Daddy he wasn’t supposed to take us away overnight, but he said you told him it was okay. You didn’t, did you, Mom?”
“No,” she said. “Your daddy must have misunderstood me.”
“I don’t ever want to go away with Daddy again,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “He yelled at me when I told him you were going to be mad if he didn’t bring us back.”
She clenched her teeth together so hard they hurt and counted to ten. “You don’t have to do anything with Daddy that you don’t want to do, honey,” she said.
“Daddy saw Ronan. He said you were going to give us to him since you had Ronan. He said Ronan doesn’t like us.” Lee shook his head. “An’ when I said Ronan liked us, he said, ‘Shut up!’”
Both boys’ eyes were big and round. Shut up, was the worst swear word they knew; one of her rules prohibited the use of the word in her household.
“Daddy was a bad boy,” Tommy chirped.
You’d better believe it, she thought. Mulling over Lee’s other statements, she worried at the best way to handle the issue of Ronan with her sons. She didn’t want them to feel left out or fear that they were being supplanted in her affections, fears that Nelson clearly had tried to encourage.
Then Lee turned to the man driving silently toward her home. “I knew you liked us.” He leaned his head against Ronan’s side and sighed. “You came and got us.”
A muscle worked in Ronan’s jaw, and he held Lee close to him for a moment with his free arm. “You got that right, buddy,” he said in a husky tone. “I like you.”
She leaned her head against the back of the seat, suddenly feeling every minute of the hours of missed sleep dragging at her. How could Nelson have done something so potentially damaging to these two precious babies? They were his sons, not something he owned.
And that pretty much said it all, she thought. To Nelson they were property. To her, and to Ronan, they were gifts, to be loved and cherished. When she realized what had just run through her head, she glanced over at the object of her thoughts. Ronan was just pulling into the lane that led to her house, and his attention was on the oncoming traffic. She drank in the straight slope of his nose, the strong jaw covered now with more than his usual day’s growth of beard stubble, the high forehead and the single lock of chestnut hair that had fallen over his forehead. Love welled within her, so fierce and deep that she had to take a deep breath to contain herself.
There will be time for us later, she promised herself. Time to share the words, the heart filled with emotions, the act of love that sex had become when she was lying beneath him reveling in her ability to pleasure him as he did her.
After lunch the boys began to drop into a noticeably lower gear, and she made them lie down. “You don’t have to sleep,” she assured Lee, “just rest on your bed. I know you’re too big to take naps anymore.”
When she checked on him five minutes later, he was sound asleep, sprawled over the side of the bed with his head hanging down in a terribly uncomfortable looking position. Tommy, across the hall, was curled into a snug ball, as usual, with Gumsy beneath him as a sort of toothy futon.
Smiling to herself, she made her way downstairs with a basket of laundry on her hip. Work awaited, but if she didn’t do some laundry soon, the three of them would be reduced to sorting through piles for the cleanest dirty clothes to wear.
As she sprayed grubby little T-shirts with stain remover before tossing them into the washing machine, she saw Ronan come out of the stable and get into his truck. He was so predictable. Every day, about one o’clock, he went to the post office and did his other chores.
She smiled to herself as she picked up the little bag of chocolate chip cookies she’d made that morning. Perfect timing. As his truck cleared the crest of the hill and disappeared down the lane on the other side, she walked across to the stable, gravel crunching under her feet before giving way to lush green grass again.
It was dim in the stable, with none of the windows open, and she paused to let her eyes adjust to the light. Cros
sing to the stairs, she heard a telephone ringing and she paused. If it was hers, it might wake the boys. But suddenly the ringing stopped and a machine clicked on, and she realized it was much closer than she’d thought. Ronan must have the ringer at its lowest setting.
Ronan’s clear, male voice invited the caller to leave a message after the beep, and a moment later she heard someone begin to speak. It occurred to her that it was rude to eavesdrop, even if it was just a machine, and she began to climb the stairs, intent on leaving the cookies and getting back to her work.
“Hey, Ronan! Good news! Pick up the phone.” The caller didn’t identify himself. “Dammit, Ronan, I know you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, hell, it’s my lousy agent again.’ But I have to talk to you! I’m sorry if you’re in the middle of a critical scene, but this is big!”
A pause, as the man waited for Ronan to pick up. She froze, halfway up the steps, unable to pinpoint the sudden dread that immobilized her. The moment lasted forever as she balanced on a knife edge, unable to name the fear but knowing that something was about to change in her life if she didn’t get away from that impatient voice...but she couldn’t move.
Then the choice was taken from her.
“All right, you win. Just listen. And if you’re really not home, call me back pronto! We just got an offer from—are you sitting down?—StarVision Pictures. They want to make a movie version of Among the Cold at Heart! The original offer is for five, but given the box office appeal your name will give it, I think we should negotiate for more.... Call me as soon as you get in, and we’ll talk about the particulars. Ciao, you gold mine, you.”
The machine clicked off as the caller hung up at the other end, but the words were still echoing in her ears. StarVision Pictures... movie version... gold mine....
She couldn’t get her lungs to work, couldn’t get enough air and she sat down heavily on the step. Among the Cold at Heart had been a bestselling novel last year. She read all the books that made the New York Times list, and that book had been a particular favorite. She’d read several earlier works by the author, R. J. Sullivan, Ronan. Her Ronan Sullivan.
Dedicated to Deirdre Page 11