He’d take off, as soon as he was certain they were protected. From the look she’d just given him, nothing would please her more.
HEATHER CURLED IN an armchair, sipped a cup of lemon tea and tried to decide what to do next.
The crime scene unit, Officer Parker and Detective Cramer had left a few minutes ago, after hours of brushing for prints, vacuuming for fibers and asking endless questions. Chip was napping in his bedroom, the one area of the house either ignored or overlooked by the intruder.
Her survey of the living room revealed desk drawers overturned on the floor and bookcases stripped, the volumes scattered with covers spread like the wings of wounded birds. In her bedroom, especially the corner she used as her office, the disorder was worse. Every folder had been yanked from her file cabinet and emptied into a pile on the floor, clothes had been tossed from the bureau and her closet cleared.
Had the intruder known her hatred of clutter and scattered her belongings for spite, or had he been searching for something? Her mind spun like tires in sand, and answers eluded her. Like Chip’s kidnapping, the break-in made no sense.
Just thinking of the mess made her itch to put her house back in order, but she didn’t want to awaken Chip, or Dylan, who had sprawled on her sofa during the last of Parker’s questions and fallen asleep. The crime scene unit had worked quietly around him.
Conscience pricked her. Because of her, Dylan had gone without rest for the last twenty-four hours. Letting him catch a few winks so he wouldn’t doze at the wheel on his way home was the least she could do.
She bit back a sarcastic chuckle. Who was she kidding? Knowing his presence was only temporary, she cherished every moment she could have him near her. Soon he would walk out her door, creating a hole in her heart as massive as before.
With a tormented sigh, she set aside her cup and saucer. Whoever had said “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” must have been a masochist. She felt like her home looked, turned upside down and inside out. Maybe once she cleaned up the mess around her, her heart would right itself, too.
Another glance at Dylan shattered that hope.
Inflicting herself with the sweet agony of cataloging his features while he slept, she etched details in her mind to remember once he was gone. Thick chestnut hair cut short to departmental standards; a high forehead above dark, expressive eyebrows; long, thick lashes most women would envy; a well-shaped nose, unbroken despite his love of wild and rugged pickup games of basketball on his driveway; lips that had driven her wild…
Sometime later she awoke with a start to find Dylan watching her from across the room.
“What time is it?” She blushed, remembering her thoughts before falling asleep.
“Almost noon.”
She started to rise. “I’d better check on Chip—”
“I just did. The little guy’s sound asleep. Yesterday must have worn him out.”
Thrusting away the unsettling memory of Dylan with Chip in his arms, she stood, took her cup and saucer, and headed for the kitchen. “This place is a wreck. I’d better get busy.”
Dylan shoved to his feet. “I’ll help.”
She felt torn, hoping he’d stay and wanting the pain of his leaving behind her. “You don’t have to—”
“I told Officer Parker I’d repair your back door.” He followed her down the hall and stopped at the closet where she kept her tool kit. “Do you have any scraps of lumber?”
“There’s plywood in the garage,” she said, glad of the tranquillity in her voice. “If you’re going to fix the door, the least I can do is make you lunch.”
“Tuna sandwiches? Yours were always the best—”
As if embarrassed, he cut his words short, reached into the closet and yanked out the toolbox.
“If I can find the tuna.” She forced a smile. “The pantry was ransacked, too.”
For a few seconds they had fallen back into the easy pattern of their former relationship, and that brief revival made the ache of her loss all the more severe.
For the next hour, she shelved canned goods and restored pots and pans to their cupboards. She remembered how Dylan had always teased about the meticulous arrangement of her shelves and cabinets, unlike his own where he could rarely find what he needed without first organizing a search party.
With the outward appearance of domestic harmony, she puttered in the kitchen, while Dylan measured then cut a rectangle of plywood to fit the window the intruder had broken to unlock the door.
She was mixing ingredients for tuna salad when she felt the heat of Dylan’s gaze on her neck and turned to find him staring at her.
He blinked, almost as if awakening from sleep. “The wood’s ready, but I won’t fasten it to the door until after Chip’s awake.”
Realizing she’d been holding her breath at the sight of him, standing in her kitchen as if he belonged there, she inhaled. “It’s time he wakes up. I don’t want his regular sleep schedule disrupted.”
She hurried up the hall to Chip’s room, aware of Dylan’s gaze following her. Standing in bed and clutching the railing, Chip grinned when she entered the room.
“Out, Mommy. Want out now.”
A surge of love, so strong she almost gasped, swept over her. She had already lost Dylan. If she had lost her son…
She gathered Chip in her arms, lifted him from the bed and nuzzled the soft skin of his neck. “I love you, my big boy.”
“Wuv you, Mommy.” He planted a wet kiss on her cheek. “Go see Dyl?”
Her heart wrenched at the sound of Dylan’s name on her son’s lips. Loving and losing Dylan had inflicted her own private agony. She didn’t want Chip to love and lose him, too. At the risk of appearing ungrateful, she’d ask Dylan to leave, right after lunch.
She carried Chip into the now empty kitchen, settled him in his high chair and gave him two small trucks to play with while she finished making sandwiches.
“Hi, Dyl!” Chip shouted with a happy laugh when Dylan, carrying the rectangle of plywood, entered the kitchen.
“Hello, fella.”
Heather turned away, unable to bear Dylan’s bright smile when he greeted her son.
“Lunch is almost ready,” she said over her shoulder.
“This won’t take a minute,” Dylan said, “but you’d better plug your ears.”
Using her battery-operated drill, he threaded screws through the plywood into the door frame. He finished just as she placed sandwiches and glasses of iced tea on the table.
After washing his hands at the sink, he sat at the table with the same easy manner she remembered from the night they’d met, a time that seemed hundreds of years ago.
“That plywood,” he said, “will hold temporarily, but if you plan to keep a window in that door, you should buy a Medico dead bolt that opens only with a key.”
“The security people can handle that when they install the new system.” Her reply carried more sharpness than she’d intended, but his presence had her so muddled she couldn’t think straight.
She stirred Chip’s lunch of SpaghettiOs she’d heated in the microwave and fed him a spoonful. Dylan bit into his sandwich with obvious relish, but the turmoil in her mind and stomach ruined her appetite.
“Have you figured out if anything’s missing?” he asked between bites.
She shook her head. “I don’t keep money in the house, and I don’t have any jewelry or collectibles.”
A deep furrow formed in Dylan’s tanned forehead. “Neither the TV nor VCR was taken. Did you have a computer?”
“I was saving for one. Guess I’ll get a security system instead.”
“Was the bathroom trashed?”
“That and Chip’s room were the only places untouched. Maybe you frightened him away before he had time.”
“If he’d been looking for drugs, he’d have gone to the bathroom medicine cabinet first,” Dylan said.
“You think the intruder wasn’t the kidnapper?”
“The break-in could have been coincidence. No car in the drive, no one at home. No alarm system and easy access. Maybe the opportunity was too much for the average burglar to resist.”
“But why break in and not take anything?” she asked.
“Like you said, maybe we scared him off before he could grab the stuff he wanted.”
Dylan’s attitude, too casual and offhand, roused her suspicions. “You don’t really believe that.”
He shrugged and avoided her eyes. “If it was the kidnapper, once he realized you and Chip weren’t here, why did he toss the place?”
“Maybe he was searching for the ransom money. Thank God Detective Sergeant Bullock offered to lock it in the station safe until we can return it to the bank and the credit union.”
“Most folks would assume that much money would either be held by the police or returned to the bank.”
“But it’s possible he was looking for the ransom?” she insisted.
“Anything is possible.” His intense expression added a multitude of meanings to his words.
Desire blindsided her with a fierceness that snatched her breath away, and she hid her reaction by feeding Chip another bite.
“Maybe,” she suggested, when she could breathe again, “the kidnapper came looking for us or the money. When he didn’t find what he wanted, he tore up the house as revenge.”
“This mess is the result of a hasty and frantic search, not anger. Aside from breaking the window, he did no damage.”
That disquieting thought remained with her while she finished feeding Chip and Dylan polished off another sandwich. If the kidnapper had been the same man who’d broken into her house, what had he been looking for? And why?
Money seemed the obvious answer, and, as she cleared the dishes and washed tomato sauce from Chip’s face, she took comfort from her conclusion. Now that the kidnapper knew she didn’t have the ransom money, he would leave them alone.
Out of lifelong habit, she made a mental list. First, she had to ask Dylan to leave while she still had the courage. Next, she would call the security company to schedule an installation. Then she’d tackle the chore of putting her house back together. She placed the last plate in the dishwasher and turned to wipe the table.
Dylan and Chip were gone.
Choking with panic, she rushed up the hall. In the living room, Dylan had placed Chip in his playpen and was collecting books off the floor.
At her sudden entry, Dylan lifted his head and grinned. “I know you have a system for shelving these. Dewey decimal or Library of Congress?”
“Nothing so elaborate.” She sank into a chair and berated herself for fearing he had taken her son away. If she didn’t calm down, she’d be seeing bogeymen under the bed next. “I separate fiction and nonfiction, arrange the fiction alphabetically by author, group the nonfiction by subject…”
She forced herself to her feet and tried to take the books from his hands. “No need for you to stay. I can do this.”
His fingers brushed hers, infusing her with a tingling warmth that shot straight to her abdomen. His grip on the books tightened. “You have plenty to do. I’ll shelve the books and watch Chip while you straighten your bedroom.”
She broke the delicious contact by jerking her hands away and clasping them behind her back. Her mind churned, searching for a tactful way to make him leave. Her nerves and emotions were tattered. If he hung around much longer, she’d blurt out something she’d regret or, even worse, plunge into his arms and make a total idiot of herself.
The only way she’d get rid of him was to ask him, straight out, to go. “You have to work tonight, so you’d better leave. Please—”
“I’m staying,” he said with unyielding stubbornness, “until Officer Parker says they’ve caught the driver of the Mercedes.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but words failed her.
“So I might as well help,” he added, with an infuriating grin.
Cursing herself for a coward, she chose flight over fight. She whirled around and scurried to her bedroom. If she couldn’t make him go, avoiding him was the next best thing.
For the next hour, she soothed her jangled nerves by returning the scattered clothes to her closet and gained calm by neatly folding and methodically arranging her belongings in her bureau. If she couldn’t organize the chaos of her emotions, at least she could wreak neatness on her bedroom.
The resulting tidiness brought no solace. Every time her pulse and breathing slowed, the sound of Dylan’s low, rumbling voice and Chip’s responding giggle blasted her peacefulness to smithereens.
Once she had returned her clothes to their accustomed place, still avoiding Dylan, she attacked her file folders and desk. She had almost finished reconstructing the contents of the top right drawer when a glaring absence struck her.
She sprinted through the hall to the living room, now straightened with books neatly arranged. Dylan sat in the birch rocker, reading The Velveteen Rabbit to Chip in his lap. Dylan glanced up when she paused in the doorway. Before he aligned his features into a neutral expression, she glimpsed a ghost of the tenderness with which he used to regard her. That fleeting view, a shadow of the passion they had once shared, almost made her forget what she’d come to tell him.
“I’ve discovered what’s missing,” she announced.
“What?” Dylan stood and placed the boy in his play pen.
“My address book.”
“Oh.”
His simple response told her nothing, but his clouded expression, like a storm gathering on the horizon, sent a shiver down her spine.
“Why would he take my address book?”
“Who knows?” Dylan’s offhand answer suggested that he did.
“What use is my address book to anyone?”
“No use at all—” His inflection hung in midair, indicating something left unsaid.
She pushed her fingers through her hair with impatience, strode toward him and lifted her face toward his. “I’m a big girl now, Dylan Wade. In fact, I’ve been taking care of myself, and Chip, for a long time. I can handle unpleasantness. What I can’t handle is being left in the dark. Why would someone want my address book?”
Dylan sighed, and his breath, scented with chocolate chip cookies from lunch, fanned her cheek. Unidentifiable emotions flitted across his face and deepened the brown in his eyes.
She retreated to remove herself from his tantalizing proximity. “Well?”
“You weren’t home last night.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
A grimness settled on his features. “Since you weren’t home, and then your address book was stolen, it’s obvious someone wants to find out where you are.”
The room seemed to tilt, and she staggered backward until her legs hit a chair. She slumped into it as if her bones had liquefied, and her worst fears surged back to life.
“The kidnapper,” Dylan said, “whoever he is, isn’t finished with you yet.”
Chapter Five
Dylan swore under his breath. He should have made a fast break back to Dolphin Bay as soon as he awoke from his catnap. How could he leave now, knowing someone might be systematically searching for Heather and her child?
Instinct, the same inexplicable certainty that had goaded him to follow Heather home this morning, and logic convinced him of the danger inherent in the missing address book. The creep who broke in definitely hadn’t fancied a mailing list for party invitations.
“We can’t be sure the intruder was the kidnapper,” Heather argued.
He opened his mouth to contradict her, noted the anxiety more prevalent than golden flecks in her eyes and tempered his response. “A burglar seldom drives a late-model Mercedes.”
“He could have stolen it,” she persisted, as if trying to convince herself.
“Stole a car, then didn’t take anything from your house but an address book? You have to face facts,” he urged gently. “He’s looking for you. If he’d
heard you unlocking the front door…”
Blood drained from her face, and she glanced toward Chip, playing contentedly with a push toy in his playpen. The sight of her son seemed to give her strength. She straightened in her chair, gripped the arms, squared her shoulders and raised her chin. At her show of courage, another of the reasons he had loved her, a strong sense of loss filled him.
“But he didn’t hear me, and if he’s searching for me somewhere else, that gives me time to have a security system installed.” The soft lines of her face hardened as she added, “And to buy a gun for protection.”
“You hate guns,” he reminded her.
Her chin ratcheted up a notch. “A necessary evil for defending my child.”
“What if Chip gets hold of it?”
“I’ll buy one of those trigger-lock thingamajigs,” she said with characteristic stubbornness, “and keep the gun out of his reach.”
“You don’t know the first thing about using a gun.”
He recalled the times he’d volunteered to take her to the shooting range to train her in gun use and safety. Like many people unfamiliar with weapons, she had recoiled from the idea with wariness and distaste. Arming herself now was the worst thing she could do. A gun in her uninitiated hands, especially if she was spooked, could prove more harmful to her or Chip than any assailant.
He started to tell her so, but the ornery glint in her eye convinced him arguing was futile. She was a mother, protecting her child, and if necessary, she’d tromp barefoot over broken glass and burst through walls of fire to keep Chip safe.
He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from trying to shake some sense into her. “This whole discussion is premature. I’ll call Detective Sergeant Bullock. The forensics reports from last night might give us a lead on this guy’s identity. If we can nail him, your problem’s solved.”
“Maybe the St. Pete police have picked him up by now,” she suggested, but didn’t sound hopeful.
Dylan suspected Officer Parker would have notified him if they’d collared the Mercedes’ driver. Of one fact Dylan was certain. He wasn’t leaving Heather and Chip alone in this house. He’d drag them back to the safety of Dolphin Bay if he had to kidnap them himself.
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