Heather pushed to her feet. She had changed her chambray dress for white shorts and a green, scoopneck shirt before lunch. She wiped her palms along the fabric on her thighs, as if to hide their trembling. Her display of courage had been an act. She was obviously as concerned over their safety as he was.
“I’ll start making calls to home security companies,” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on Chip while I contact Bullock on my cell phone.”
Watching her leave the room, he identified another fact of which he was certain. He wouldn’t let her walk out of his life again until she explained why she’d left him the first time.
WHEN HEATHER RETURNED to the living room a short while later, Chip was asleep in his playpen and Dylan was pacing the Oriental rug in front of the sofa.
“Is something wrong?” she asked quietly, not wanting to awaken Chip.
Dylan scowled. “Not a thing, if you like dead ends.”
Dead end.
The perfect description for her relationship with the handsome, irresistible and infuriating man who lit up her life like fireworks in the night sky. Two years ago, she’d hit one dead end when she cut off all contact with him. Yesterday, life had dragged her down an unexpected road and reunited them again. Now another dead end loomed at the end of this route as well.
“So you’re leaving now,” she said flatly, steeling herself for the desolation to come.
His scowl deepened. “Who said anything about leaving? I was talking about the investigation.”
Heat seared her cheeks, and she bent over the playpen and brushed Chip’s hair from his forehead so Dylan couldn’t see her blush. He must never guess how much she wanted him to stay.
“Bullock gave me the forensic reports over the phone,” he said.
Her composure recaptured, she stood and faced him. “What did they find?”
“Nothing, nada and zip, in that order.”
“I thought criminals always left something at the scene of a crime, even if only a strand of hair.”
His sharp laugh echoed in the room. “He left hair, all right. Several strands were caught on a nail in the packing house. All dark black, all from the same nylon wig.”
Heather sank into a chair. “No fingerprints?”
“None. And none on the ransom note, either. He must have worn gloves.” He ceased pacing and settled into the chair across from her.
Weariness mixed with frustration in his expression, and she longed to go to him and brush the hair from his forehead as she had Chip’s. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap to avoid temptation. “Didn’t you tell me they found empty cartridge cases?”
He leaned against the back of the chair and nodded. “The only thing that tells us is that he fired a nine-millimeter automatic. Once we find the gun, we can check barrel markings to prove it was the same one fired at you, but we’re unlikely to uncover the weapon since we have no idea who we’re looking for.”
Unexpressed anger appeared to boil inside him like a simmering volcano, and not for the first time she wondered how much of his irritation was caused by her sudden reappearance in his life. “Maybe the police will find his car and pick him up.”
He shook his head. “I spoke to Officer Parker. They’ve stopped every white Mercedes on the city streets. Every driver was an elderly retiree with an ironclad alibi for this morning.”
Disappointment laced with fear seeped through her. “So he got away.”
“This time. He could be anywhere in the state by now.”
The menace in his voice made her shudder. “You don’t think he’ll come back? That he’ll try to break in and take Chip again?”
He shrugged. “Returning this morning after last night’s fiasco proves he’s determined. A rational person might not persist, knowing the police are looking for him. But, since you can’t think of a logical reason why someone wants to harm you or Chip, we can’t assume he’s rational.”
“We’re being stalked by a lunatic?”
His face reflected his reluctance to answer. “It’s possible.”
Conflicting emotions ripped her apart. She wanted Dylan gone. His presence taunted and tormented her with all she’d lost. And she wanted Chip safe. As long as Dylan remained in the house, the kidnapper, possibly a crazy man, had little chance of harming her son. But the longer Dylan stayed, the greater the potential for disaster of another kind.
Her head ached from internal wrangling. She latched onto the plan she’d devised a few minutes ago in the kitchen. “I scheduled installation of a security system.”
“Good,” Dylan said with overt relief. “When?”
“I checked with five different companies. Day after tomorrow was the soonest I could get.”
He frowned. “You can’t stay here until then. It isn’t safe.”
“I’ll call Carol. You remember, she’s in the history department at my school. She’ll take us in until the system’s ready.”
His scowl darkened. “Is she listed in your address book?”
Her heart plummeted. Dylan and danger had muddled her mind. “Yes, she’s in there.”
“Am I listed in your address book?” he asked, his voice heavy with bitterness.
With flaming cheeks, she shook her head. She’d expunged him from every aspect of her life with the ruthlessness of desperation, a desire to avoid more pain. From the hurt and anger mirrored in his eyes, she realized he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about his absence from her address book. As unbearable as his reaction was, she welcomed it, knowing she’d successfully steered him from the truth.
“If my name and address aren’t there,” he said, “the kidnapper won’t look for you at my house. You and Chip are coming home with me.”
DYLAN SWORE SILENTLY as Heather’s blunt “No!” reverberated through the room. If he had harbored any doubts about her animosity toward him, the strength of her rejection sent them flying. She must despise him big-time to risk her own safety and her son’s, rather than remain in his presence.
As if realizing the rudeness of her abrupt response, she flushed and avoided his gaze. “I mean, staying with you wouldn’t be wise, since you’re working night shift and—”
“I’m taking some overdue vacation, starting today,” he said. “I cleared it with the chief when I called Detective Sergeant Bullock.”
He had accumulated too many vacation days, he thought grimly. Since Heather had shut him out of her life, he had avoided time off. Leisure gave him unlimited opportunity to contemplate what he’d lost and why she’d left. He had postponed vacations and volunteered for extra duty and holidays, hoping activity would drive away his loneliness, ease his heartache and quench his anger.
But keeping busy hadn’t worked, although the passage of time had dulled the gut-ripping sharpness of his bitterness and grief, until her appearance yesterday honed his emotions back to their original keen edge.
“Chip and I will check into a hotel.” The certainty in her voice told him she’d worked everything out. Even if it wasn’t written down, she’d probably compiled a list of all the details in her head. “The Bay-front Hilton has excellent security—”
The telephone rang in the kitchen. With the relieved expression of a reprieved prisoner, she dashed out of the room.
He sucked in air in hopes of loosening the tension her rejection had knotted in his muscles. She didn’t want him around her or her son. He should feel grateful that her suggestion of staying at the Hilton let him off the hook, but all he felt was frustrated. He would follow her to the hotel, make certain she checked in, speak to the chief of security and head for home. Right after she’d disclosed why she walked out two years ago.
The sound of her raised voice in the kitchen cut through his planning. “Don’t threaten me. We’ve been through all this before—”
He eased down the hall and leaned against the frame of the kitchen door. Heather, her cheeks flushed, the fingers of her left hand thrust through her hair, listened to the person on the
other end of the line. Her eyes sparked green fire, and her soft mouth settled into a hard, grim line.
“So get a lawyer,” she snapped into the receiver, “and we’ll settle this in court.”
His imagination stirred. Still stinging from her rebuff, he wondered if she had lied about the death of Chip’s father. The little he’d heard of her side of the telephone conversation sounded like a custody battle.
She tapped her foot impatiently against the tile floor and wrapped the phone cord around her hand as if wishing she could strangle someone with it. “There’s no point rehashing this, John. Have your lawyer contact me.”
With a grimace of disgust, she slammed down the receiver, then sank into a chair at the table and cradled her head in her hands.
“I don’t need this,” she said with a groan. “Not today.”
“Who’s John?” he asked.
Her head snapped up with a jerk. “I thought you were in the other room.”
“Who’s John?” he repeated in a voice raw with hurt and anger.
Slouching in her chair, she met his gaze. “My next-door neighbor.”
His convoluted thinking zoomed into overdrive. Was John next door Chip’s father? And if so, why hadn’t she admitted it?
Why should she tell you? an inner voice taunted. You’re nothing to her.
“You’re fighting with John over Chip.” He failed to filter the bitterness from his voice.
“What?”
She was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. Jealousy, thick and cloying, threatened to choke him. This should have been their home, his and Heather’s, and Chip should have been their son, not the child of a neighbor.
With superhuman effort, he reined in his disappointment and anger. “Sorry, it’s none of my business.”
Comprehension kindled in her eyes, and her expression softened. She giggled.
Spurred by her laughter, his outrage threatened to return. He hung on to his self-control, refusing to give her the satisfaction of thinking he cared.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, with a calm he didn’t feel.
“You think I want to take John to court over Chip?”
He nodded.
“But why…?” Her amusement vanished. Her posture stiffened, and her green eyes turned almost black. “You think John is Chip’s father?”
“He’s as good a guess as any. You never told me the man’s name.”
She clasped her hands tightly on the table, and dismay etched her face. “John is seventy-five years old.”
Dylan forced his anger-tight shoulders to shrug. “So?”
“And Velma, his wife, never lets him out of her sight.”
At her answers, he resisted the urge to squirm. His temper had landed him in a can of worms. “Why is he taking you to court?”
“John has an obsessive fear of hurricanes.”
He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Being around her was driving him crazy, because nothing she said made sense. “You lost me.”
She pushed to her feet and pointed out the window over the sink. “Look there, just inside my fence.”
He narrowed his eyes. All he could detect on her side of the backyard was well-mowed grass and an ancient live oak, surrounded by azaleas. “I give up. What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“The tree,” she said, as if it explained everything.
He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from tearing at his hair. This conversation resurrected memories of another of her traits he had almost forgotten. Making her listener draw his own conclusions might be a great teaching strategy with her history students, but her sparse explanations had often tested his patience.
Like now.
She expelled a deep breath, as if disappointed he hadn’t figured out the answer on his own. “John is afraid my oak tree will topple onto his house if we have a hurricane. He wants me to cut it down, but I won’t. That magnificent old oak is one of the reasons I bought this house.”
He nodded, thankful he wasn’t the blushing type. He had jumped to wild conclusions that had been way out of bounds. Then the ramifications of her words struck him. “How long has this argument been going on?”
“Since summer before last, when that Class Three hurricane missed us by only seventy-five miles.”
He remembered the storm. It had crossed the coast north of Dolphin Bay the month after Heather left him. He’d worked three straight days and nights of emergency duty, hoping all the while, in a perverse sort of way, that the storm would strike, blowing the rest of his world to kingdom come, finishing off what little remained after Heather’s treachery. Mother Nature hadn’t cooperated, forcing him to learn to live with his pain.
“What does John look like?” he demanded.
“I told you,” she said with a hint of anger, “he’s not Chip’s father.”
“Forget that,” he snapped. “Just tell me how John would look in a black wig and beard.”
“You don’t think…?” Her face turned pale. “John is about the same size and build as the kidnapper.”
“Did you give his name to Officer Parker?”
She shook her head. “John’s harmless, except for his paranoia about that tree.”
Back at the station, he had a stack of wanted photos six inches thick of men who had seemed harmless, shy and retiring loners until the day they snapped and committed horrible crimes. “The police should question John, just in case.”
“I can’t sic the police on my neighbor,” she said hotly, “just because he hates my tree. We’d never be able to co-exist peacefully again.”
“And if he’s the man who tried to kill you and your son?”
Her hesitation was so slight, he almost didn’t see it. “He drives a blue Cavalier, not a Mercedes,” she said, as if that settled the matter.
“He could have borrowed or rented a car.”
She glared at him, strode past him toward the hall, then turned in the doorway. “I’m going to pack. No need for you to stay. Chip and I can find the hotel without help.”
Heather Taylor was, without doubt, the most stubborn woman he’d ever met. After trying to reason with her, his head ached as if he’d banged it on a wall. “I’m staying with you until you’re safely checked in. Then I’ll get out of your life again.”
“Fine,” she said flatly. “Suit yourself.”
A few seconds later, her bedroom door clicked, closing him out as effectively as she had two years before.
Dragged down by fatigue, he returned to the living room and sagged into a chair to wait. Chip snoozed in his playpen, his features, so like his mother’s but with a decidedly masculine stamp, peaceful in sleep. The boy triggered a thousand questions, but none Dylan could answer.
His gaze swept the familiar room, and happy memories filled him with fresh pain. When Heather came out of her bedroom, he’d demand answers. He wouldn’t leave until she—
His attention fell on the eight-by-ten portrait of Chip on the mantel, the sturdy toddler laughing beneath a Christmas tree six months ago. The contradiction that had niggled in the back of his mind when he first saw the photo now slammed him in the heart with the force of a speeding bus.
When he could breathe again, he leaped to his feet, jerked the picture off the mantel and stomped down the hall toward Heather’s bedroom with fire in his eyes.
Chapter Six
Heather’s bedroom door crashed against the wall.
Certain the kidnapper had returned, she flinched and cried out. At the sight of Dylan on the threshold, molten fury in his eyes and Chip’s picture clutched in his hand, she almost wished she was confronting her son’s abductor instead.
“How old did you say Chip is?” The tightness in his jaw made his words almost unintelligible.
“A year old, this month,” she lied, and edged toward the window, away from his rage.
“Try again.” His lips twisted in a snarl. “My sister Megan’s boy is six months old. Big for his age, his doctor
says, and Lyle isn’t half the size of Chip in this photo. So I’m asking you once more. How old is he?”
He spoke in a low, fierce tone, but his words bludgeoned her as if he’d shouted. The urge to flee goaded her, but he blocked her only exit.
“How old?” He ground out the words between gritted teeth.
If she could have run, she would have, but escape was impossible. She had no choice but to answer. “Almost eighteen months.”
He staggered as if she had struck him. “Eighteen months. Conceived three months before you dumped me? That explains your leaving.”
You have it all wrong, she wanted to shout, but clamped her jaw against the words lodged in her throat. Better his misunderstanding than guessing the truth.
“Who was he?” Dylan’s eyes blazed.
She struggled to remember the name she’d given Detective Sergeant Bullock, but her mind went blank.
“I have a right to know at least that much.” He sounded more sad than angry now, and the rigor gripping his body had eased.
She blinked back tears. Her heart was breaking, clouding her mind with pain. She grappled wildly for a name, any name. Her glance fell on her four-poster bed.
“Ethan, Ethan Allen—bee.”
Suspicion flared in his eyes, and she groaned inwardly. Why had she picked such a ridiculous name?
“And this Ethan Allen—bee,” he said with sarcastic emphasis, “how did you meet him?”
Her thoughts tangled. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Her heart thrashed against her chest wall as if struggling to escape. She longed for unconsciousness to rescue her, but her traitorous mind refused to shut down.
Dylan advanced, and she pressed backward until her thighs struck the windowsill.
His anger turned quiet and more terrifying. “There was no Ethan Allenbee, was there?”
She shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Who are you protecting?”
“No one,” she lied. “His father is dead. What difference does his name make to you?”
First-Class Father Page 7