Once a Cop

by Lisa Childs

  He shook his head in stunned disbelief. “You’re really old enough to have a nine-year-old?”

  She nodded, but didn’t share her age with him. She couldn’t have been much older when she’d had Kayla than Lorielle had been when Holly was born. Had Roberta brought her child into the world all alone, the way his sister had? Kayla had said she didn’t have a dad. Had the little girl’s father ever been in the picture?

  Holden glanced around the small apartment, which had the same high ceilings, ornate trim and gleaming hardwood floors as the house, just a few blocks west, that he had inherited from his grandfather. Robbie’s unit was small, its kitchen tucked into what had probably once been a closet. The place was only big enough for the two of them.

  “I met Kayla at the back-to-school open house,” he said. “She’s a very sweet girl.”

  “Holly is, too.”

  Despite everything his niece had been through. Guilt weighed on him over the past and the present. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “Where is Holly?”

  He wanted to thank Roberta for saving his neck earlier in the week, but he didn’t want Holly to hear about the danger in which he’d put himself. He knew he should have thanked Roberta the other night, after the CPA class, but she’d taken him aback with her refusal to visit the shelter.

  “The girls are in Kayla’s room,” she informed him. “I wanted to talk to you alone first.”

  His pulse leapt, then steadied, and he reminded himself that she didn’t appear to like him much.

  She gestured toward the coffeepot on the short kitchen counter. “Would you like some?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Was there a problem last night?” Holly had had nightmares, frequently, until about a year ago. Maybe sleeping in a strange place had brought all that insecurity back for her.

  “No, Holly was fine. The girls had fun,” she said with a smile, “and so did I.” But then she added, “It was something she said this morning that concerns me. She thinks you forget about her.”

  He winced. “I didn’t forget about her. I just got held up.”

  “Like you did the other night?”

  Heat rushed to his face as he remembered how easily she’d caught him off guard. After all the years he’d spent dealing with surly and sometimes dangerous teenagers, he should have developed quicker reflexes. “No, I almost got arrested the other night.”

  “I wouldn’t have booked you,” she said.

  He blew out an exaggerated breath of relief. “That’s good.”

  “You had nothing in your possession that I could have used as evidence.”

  He assured her, “The last thing you would ever find on me is drugs.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “since you’re Holly’s sole guardian.”

  “So you know I have custody of her?” What else had his niece told her?

  She nodded. “Kayla said that Holly’s mother died a few years ago. She was your sister?”

  Even now, nearly three years later, his heart still contracted with pain over the senseless death of his beautiful younger half sister. “Yes.”

  “So you’re raising Holly alone?” she asked. “Your parents aren’t involved? Or Holly’s father?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, Officer Meyers. I could ask some of my own,” he warned her, suspecting she wouldn’t appreciate his prying into her life any more than he appreciated her doing the same to him. “What about Kayla’s father? She says she doesn’t have one. What happened to him?”

  “We’re not talking about Kayla,” she said. “We’re talking about Holly and your habit of forgetting about her. Do you have any idea how that must make her feel?”

  “You’ve only spent a few hours, awake, with Holly. You don’t know how she feels.” Holden hoped he did; he hoped his niece told him the truth when she assured him that she understood about the shelter taking so much of his time. Was she old enough to understand that he was doing it for her, to honor her mother’s memory?

  “Do you know how she feels?” Robbie asked, as if she’d read his thoughts—and known his worry. “Young girls are sensitive. You need to be more careful with her feelings.”

  “And why do you think you’re qualified to give me parenting advice?” he wondered aloud. “You’re the one who missed your daughter’s back-to-school open house.”

  Color rushed to her face, painting her pale skin bright pink. “I had to work.”

  “Since you’re the one putting your job ahead of your daughter, I think you’re the one who needs to be reminded of her responsibilities.”

  “H-how dare you,” she sputtered, her eyes hard with anger.

  “The same way you dare, Roberta.”

  “ARE THEY STILL arguing?” Kayla asked Holly, who had her ear pressed to the crack of the bedroom door. Because Kayla’s room was small and filled with her canopy bed and a mirrored dresser her mother had stenciled with flowers, she stood only a few steps away from the door herself. She heard only a rumble of voices from the living room, though.

  Her friend turned back and sighed. “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?” Kayla asked, nerves fluttering in her stomach as she thought of the plan she and Holly had formed last night after the other two girls had fallen asleep.

  Holly’s green eyes sparkled. “It’s perfect.”

  “It would be perfect,” Kayla cautioned, “if they go for it.” If they go for each other.

  “Uncle Holden is single. Well, there’s this lady he sometimes goes out with, but I don’t think they really like each other. What about your mom?”

  “She doesn’t ever date,” Kayla admitted reluctantly. Was it her fault her mom never went out? Because if she wasn’t working, she wanted to be with Kayla?

  “So they’re both single,” Holly said as if that was all that mattered.

  But Kayla was nine. And sometimes she listened to Aunt JoJo’s radio show when she was supposed to be sleeping, so she knew better. She knew relationships were complicated, that it took more than two single people to make a couple. “It doesn’t look—well, sound—like they like each other,” she pointed out.

  Holly uttered a small sigh of frustration. “But they’d be perfect for each other.”

  Kayla smiled. “It would be perfect for us.”

  Holly smiled, too. “Yeah. Mrs. Crayden’s nice, but I’d like a real mom.” Her smile changed to a frown. “I barely remember mine anymore.”

  Kayla pulled her friend into a tight hug, her heart aching for the other girl’s loss. “I’m sorry.”

  A small hand patted her back as if Kayla needed comforting, too. “It’s okay. I have Uncle Holden. He’s really more than an uncle—he’s like my dad.”

  Kayla had to take her friend’s word for it. She had never known her father. Mom had explained that he’d been too young to be a dad, but Mom must have been young, too, when she’d become a mother. “I’d like a dad,” she admitted.

  “And I want a mom. But more than that, I want a sister,” Holly said, her arms tightening for a moment before she released Kayla. “You’re going to be my sister.”

  “How?”

  “When Uncle Holden marries your mom, he’ll adopt you and she’ll adopt me. And we’ll become sisters.”

  “But how will we get them to stop fighting?” Kayla asked, lowering her voice to a whisper as she pressed her ear to the crack of the door.

  No angry words drifted down the hall. In fact, she heard nothing now. Mom had to be really mad to quit talking completely. Kayla sympathized with Mr. Thomas because she hated getting the silent treatment.

  “We have to make sure they spend a lot of time together,” Holly said, nibbling at her lower lip as she plotted. “The more time they spend together, the more they’ll see how perfect they are for each other.”

  Holly didn’t know her mom like Kayla knew her mom. Mom always said that they didn’t need a man in their lives. It was going to take a lot more than time alone to get her to change her mind.

  ROBER
TA COVERED her face with her hands as her shoulders shook.

  “Are you crying?” Holden asked, his voice rough with unease.

  She slid her palms down her face and let the laughter sputter out. “No. I’m not crying.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d given in to tears.

  “Why are you laughing?” he asked, almost as horrified as if she had been sobbing.

  “Maybe lack of sleep has made me as silly as the girls,” she admitted. “But do you realize how ridiculous we sound? We’re fighting over who’s the worse parent…”

  “When we both live in glass houses,” Holden said with a sigh.

  “I’m sorry for lecturing you,” Robbie apologized. “I had no right. It’s none of my business.” But even though she’d just met Holly Thomas, she’d already fallen for her, and she felt protective of the motherless child.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that…about you putting your job first. I was way out of line.”

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” she agreed. But then she had to know. “Is that what you think? That I put my job before my daughter?”

  Holden shook his head, but before Robbie could breathe a sigh of relief, he said, “I don’t know…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know you, Roberta.” He stepped forward, standing so close that she backed against the kitchen counter. He stared into her eyes, his own eyes narrowing as he studied her. “Somehow I suspect very few people do.”

  She lifted her shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. “My life’s an open book. I have no secrets.” Joelly was the one with the secret life, not her.

  He lifted a brow. “No secrets?”

  She shook her head even as foreboding lifted the hair on her nape. She was going to regret that declaration, she just knew it.

  “Then tell me about Kayla’s father,” he challenged her.

  “Simple.” She shrugged again. “She doesn’t have one.”

  “The stork brought her?”

  She laughed again. “If only. Then I wouldn’t have had to endure twenty-three hours of labor.”

  He grimaced in apparent commiseration. “Twenty-three? My sister was in labor for sixteen, and I thought that was bad enough.”

  “You were with her?” Robbie had had no family at her side—only Joelly, who’d been as scared as she’d been.

  Holden must have caught the wistfulness in her voice because now he focused on her again, his gaze intense. “You were alone?”

  “I had a friend with me.”

  “Not your parents? But you must have been a teenager when you had Kayla.”

  She nodded. “Sixteen. My folks weren’t too happy when I turned up pregnant.” She glanced down the short hall to Kayla’s closed door. “While that’s no secret, this might not be the best time or place for this discussion.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed readily, as if he hadn’t really been interested, after all. “I should get Holly and go. You must be exhausted from the slumber party.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For letting me know I look like hell.” She no doubt had dark circles beneath her eyes. Self-consciously she touched the clip, from which most her hair had fallen.

  “You don’t,” he said. His deep voice dropped to a whisper as he added, “I don’t think you could.”

  Robbie nearly choked on the breath that backed up in her lungs and throat. Her pulse quickened, and her heart raced. It had to be from all the caffeine she’d chugged that morning, not from the appreciative gleam in his eyes. She licked her lips and managed to reply, “Thank you.”

  “I’m the one who should be thanking you,” he said.

  A giggle slipped out. And she never giggled. “For what? The lecture I gave you?”

  “For saving my life the other night.”

  She laughed again. “You’d probably have gotten hurt less if you’d taken your chances with the bullets.”

  She lifted her fingertips to his cheek. The scrape had scabbed over and the flesh beneath it was bruised, but the injury took nothing away from his devastating good looks. Her fingertips tingled from the contact with his skin. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

  “You were right. I had no business being there.” He leaned closer. “And I have no business doing this.”

  His lips touched hers, as tentatively and gently as she’d touched his cheek.

  “DON’T YOU THINK Miss Meyers is pretty?” Holly asked, kneeling on a stool pulled up to the kitchen counter. She’d propped her elbows on the dark granite surface and held her chin in her hands, staring up at him. Her interest in his response was far too intense for a casual question.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Holden lied blatantly, even though he could still taste Roberta on his lips. What the heck had he been thinking, kissing her with the kids just a closed door away? Thank God they hadn’t walked out and caught them. How would he have been able to explain what he didn’t understand himself?

  How could he be attracted to Roberta Meyers? Sure, she was beautiful, but she also had a job that put her life in danger. She’d actually laughed about getting shot at…

  “She’s really more than pretty,” Holly persisted. “More like beautiful. I wish I had black hair and blue eyes like she and Kayla have.”

  “You’re beautiful just the way you are,” he assured his niece, surprised that she’d already started worrying about her appearance. But then, she’d be a teenager before he knew it. Because he dealt with teens every day, he knew that Holly would need an adult female in her life in whom she felt close enough to confide. She needed a mom.

  “I asked you a question,” his niece persisted. “Do you think Miss Meyers is pretty?”

  A grin tugged at his lips. “I answered you.” Obviously he hadn’t given her the answer she’d wanted.

  “How could you not notice what she looks like?” Holly asked, her green eyes narrowed in suspicion; it reminded him of how Roberta Meyers looked at him. “You two talked for a long time.”

  But he hadn’t really found out anything about her except how sweet she tasted. He didn’t know why she, a single mother, would choose a career as risky as law enforcement. As he recalled the memorial wall in the lobby of the police department, he sliced through the bread on which he’d been attempting to spread peanut butter.

  “Here, let me do it,” Holly said, grabbing the knife from his hand. She was already so independent. But she needed people in her life on whom she could rely. Guilt gripped him. People who didn’t forget about her, not that he actually had. But she deserved more. She deserved the family her mother had wanted her to have.

  He had promised his sister on her deathbed that he would provide her daughter with a loving family and a stable home life—something Lorielle had always longed for. When their father had divorced her mother Holden had lost touch with his younger sibling for a long time. Eventually he had lost her completely. He had failed her.

  And if he even considered finding Holly a mother who risked her life every day at work, he would fail her again. No, he shouldn’t have kissed Roberta Meyers. For so many reasons…

  Chapter Four

  I do not put my job before my daughter. Even though he’d apologized for saying so, Robbie still reeled from Holden’s accusation. And from his kiss.

  He’d apologized for that, too, pulling away before she could reach for him. Not that she would have reached for him. She had not wanted that kiss.

  And she did not want to be here, where she would undoubtedly see him again—at the second session for the Citizens’ Police Academy. She wanted to be home, instead, with Kayla.

  Of course her daughter and probably the college student who babysat her would both be asleep by now. But sometimes Robbie just stood in the doorway to Kayla’s room and watched her sleep, wishing she could see the dreams passing through her daughter’s head and make them all come true.

  She glanced around the third-floor conference room where t
he class and the officer guides had just returned from a tour of the department. Fortunately she’d been late and so hadn’t had to play tour guide. She spotted Holden standing next to the man who ran an after-school community center for at-risk kids. As if he’d felt her watching him, he turned and met her gaze. But then he quickly looked away again, returning his attention to Rafe Sanchez.

  Did he regret that brief kiss as much as she did? Had it kept him awake the past few nights, too? She’d missed so much sleep that when they dimmed the lights to show traffic-stop videos, she nearly nodded off.

  Lieutenant Chad Michalski, the department’s emergency-vehicle-operation expert, introduced the traffic footage. He even showed a video of himself pulling over a student in the class. The blond saleswoman smiled as the other students and a couple of the officers teased her about trying to flirt her way out of the ticket the lieutenant had given her. Then he showed some more serious footage, of officers injured in the line of duty. Despite the dim light, Robbie could see that Holden was staring at her, instead of the projection screen. And she wondered about the look on his handsome face. Horror? Regret?

  When Lieutenant Michalski finished answering questions about the traffic videos, he called a break. Robbie needed some caffeine, but Holden was standing at the back of the conference room, near the coffee carafes. So she stayed where she was.

  “You going to take this?” Billy asked, drumming his fingers on the officers’ table to catch her attention.

  Startled, she glanced up at the sergeant. “What?”

  “Do you want to introduce the vice videos and then answer any questions about them?” Billy asked. “They’re coming up after the break.”

  “Uh,” she stammered, “I—I don’t know which videos you picked, so I don’t think I could.”

  Billy lifted his wrist and glanced at his watch. “I really gotta get back to work. I’m sure you can handle this, Rob. Just wing it.”

  “Everybody, take your seats,” Lieutenant Patrick O’Donnell commanded. “Now we’re going to check out some footage of vice arrests. Officer Roberta Meyers will answer any questions you may have about what you see.”