by Dana Corbit
Kelly made a sound of acknowledgment in her throat but didn’t comment further. The absence of a birth father was as common an occurrence in the adoption-agency business as the lack of complete information.
Ross’s hands tightened on the folder. If he couldn’t solve the problems for the agency his wife loved, then he’d at least hoped to help her reunite some of the adoptive children with their birth parents. Even in that plan, he was failing Kelly.
Shuffling the papers again, he smacked the file closed, but when he did, something fell to the ground. It wasn’t much, just a tiny slip of yellowing paper, about the size of a sticky note.
Ross automatically reached down to grab it and stuff it back in the file, but the two words stopped him with his hand still held high: “See Donovan.”
He cleared his throat, his pulse pounding. “Honey, ever see this?”
“What is it?” she asked, but her eyes widened and she reached into the box between them.
It was all Ross could do not to shove his pregnant wife out of the way and start riffling in the box himself, but somehow he managed to wait until she was finished. Her frown didn’t leave any doubt that she hadn’t found the file, but her expression lifted again, and she tilted her head to the side.
“You don’t think—”
“No,” he blurted. He didn’t need her to finish to know how crazy the idea sounded. It was too easy. He’d been a P.I. long enough to know it was never that easy.
But what if it is? an unwelcome voice inside him suggested. Maybe just this once, a case could be as simple as someone forgetting to remove a note from a file that the owner never intended anyone to find.
Ross glanced across the room, his gaze landing on two more boxes of files next to the breakfast bar. Kelly had been bringing them home frequently, cross-checking files from the office with the duplicates found inside the wall at the Harcourt mansion.
“You don’t happen to have any more Ds, do you?”
“I think so,” she said, already trying to push herself off the couch.
“Here, let me get it.”
He couldn’t get to the box fast enough. It was the thrill of the chase, and he knew it well. He flipped through the files, his hands landing on one that said “Donovan.” He carried it back to the couch, so they could look at it together.
“It might not even be the same Donovan,” he said to keep his own hopes from getting too high.
As he opened the file, his gaze, well trained from looking at so many documents, went right to the date of birth.
“It’s a match.”
That they’d both said it at the same time made them laugh, but they stopped just as quickly. Okay, they had a match. Now what?
Ross flipped through the file, reading about George and Edie Donovan and the newborn infant they adopted and named Alex. This version listed the birth mother as Mary Something-or-other, but it was probably the bogus one.
He handed the file to Kelly, already planning his steps. First, he would do an Internet search for the Donovans’ son, and then he would start eliminating from that pool those who couldn’t be this particular guy. Part of him hated to mess up another person’s well-ordered life, but the man deserved the chance to know the truth.
For a long time, Kelly didn’t look up from the file. She simply stared at it as if willing it to complete the puzzle. She leaned her head to one shoulder and to the other as if considering, and finally she turned back to him.
“Isn’t Eli Cavanaugh’s friend, the fireman who moved from Richmond, named Alex Donovan?”
“Hey, Donovan, get out here and shoot some hoops with us,” Trent Gillman called from the court adjacent to the parking lot as Alex climbed out of his SUV.
“Give me a few.” Alex shut the door and started toward the station. Basketball was one of the ways the men and women at the station killed a few hours on slow days or burned off steam after busier or more stressful ones. Today had certainly been one of the more stressful variety.
“Make it quick. We need somebody to kill in three-on-three.” To make his point, Trent drove by Cory Long for a perfect layup and then lifted his arms in a Rocky-style victory dance.
“You mean you need me to let you win?”
When a ball came sailing toward him, Alex ducked inside the gray brick structure through the side door.
He traded his khaki pants and polo shirt for a hooded sweatshirt and loose-fitting warm-ups and jogged back outside to join the game. Already, several firefighters, including Fire Chief Nevins, were taking shots.
“Think fast.”
Alex shot his hands up to his face in time to catch the ball aimed at his head. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem,” Trent said.
On the court, Alex executed a perfect chest shot. “You see boys, nothin’ but net.” Going in for the rebound, he balanced the ball on his right hand, setting up for a shot with his left.
“How was your afternoon with the preacher’s daughter?” Trent asked just as Alex took the shot.
No net this time, the ball bounced off the backboard with a thud and then dropped into the grass. Alex turned back to him, drawing his eyebrows together. “What are you talking about? I don’t know any preacher’s daughter. I was just at a conference with Chelsea’s teacher.”
“You mean Miss Fraser? Miss Dinah Fraser?”
“Daughter of Reverend John Fraser,” Bill Nevins filled in the blank when Alex turned his perplexed expression on him.
Fraser, of course. He’d met Reverend Fraser of Chestnut Grove Community Church, a few times during last year’s Community holiday toy drive.
It was strange, though, that when he’d asked Dinah about her common surname, she hadn’t even mentioned her well-known father. She’d said only that there were a lot of Frasers around. What was that all about? It had been difficult enough for him to picture someone like Dinah as an elementary teacher, but a preacher’s daughter? That just didn’t seem possible.
“Puts a whole new spin on the lovely Miss Fraser, doesn’t it?” Trent said.
Cory, who hadn’t spoken up until then, snickered.
Alex wheeled on his coworkers. It didn’t matter that Trent had only voiced Alex’s thoughts. He didn’t feel like cutting his tactless friend a little slack the way he usually did. Today even the fact that he had a good heart might not keep Trent from landing on his backside.
“Have a death wish, Gillman?” Bill asked, before Alex had the chance. “Then I wouldn’t say another word about the lady.” He put enough emphasis on the last two words to show he meant business.
After a few strange glances among the other firefighters, the subject fell away, leaving only six guys and a round orange ball to fill the void. Alex jumped higher, dribbled faster and guarded more aggressively than he had in a long time. That Trent happened to get fouled a few extra times—in the pursuit of the game, of course—couldn’t be avoided.
Alex couldn’t explain his need to defend a woman he barely knew, but there it was. As much as he would like to believe he would rush to protect any woman’s honor, he wondered if he would be as forceful in every case.
When the game ended, all six men poured off the court, drenched and a little bruised. The chief looked more winded than most as he came up behind Alex and rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Some game, wasn’t it?” Alex said, resisting the urge to shake his boss’s hand off his shoulder. His arm was sore, and he was regretting his “enthusiasm” in the game.
Bill made an affirmative grunt and rubbed his elbow where he had battled tendonitis over the years. “There’s only one thing I can say, Donovan.”
“What’s that?”
“That must have been some conference with Miss Dinah Fraser.”
Chapter Three
D inah startled in her seat as the fire alarm squawked in deafening, repetitive bursts. As if the alarm signaled the beginning of chaos rather than an announcement for safety, a clamor broke out in the classroom around her.
&nb
sp; “Everyone, please be quiet,” she said in a loud stage whisper. “It’s probably only a fire drill.” At least she hoped it was, though she hadn’t received advance warning of a scheduled drill.
Dinah set aside the copy of The Secret Garden that she’d been reading to the class and grabbed her grade book. She would need that to check attendance once they reached their designated meeting place by the curb.
“Now let’s line up by the door. I want everyone to stay in line and be silent until we’re past the flagpole.”
At a lower level of chaos, her twenty-four students followed her down the corridor to the side entry. Just as she reached the flagpole, two fire engines and two smaller trucks that must have been for paramedics came roaring up the street toward the school, lights flashing and sirens blaring. When all four trucks stopped, two firefighters, dressed in full gear, including helmets, climbed down from one of the fire engines and entered the building through the front door.
Definitely not a drill. Dinah’s chest tightened, and as she glanced back to the children and then at the building behind them, she hoped her smile didn’t falter.
She switched from the front of the line to the rear so when they all turned an about-face, she could lead her students back into the classroom. It also put her between the children she adored and the building in the unlikely case this was a real fire.
All around them, other classes poured out of the building, some well controlled and others as chaotic as Dinah’s had been. Some classes had stopped to grab jackets, but most of the students were shivering and fidgeting to keep warm. High-pitched voices chatted about the supposed causes of a fire and the amount of time until recess.
Dinah scanned down the names in her grade book—from Austin Carlyle to Lily Polson to Kellan Stolz. As always she felt a twinge of nervousness until she’d made certain that all of her students stood with her on terra firma.
When her gaze fell to Chelsea White’s name, she looked back to the fire engines. Though all four trucks were still parked in front of the school, most of the firefighters remained inside them. Was Alex Donovan one of the men in the truck, or maybe one of those still in the building? Not that she really cared or anything. She was only curious, and he happened to be the only firefighter she knew in Chestnut Grove.
Still, her cheeks and neck warmed at the thought of him, an unfortunate reaction she’d experienced too frequently these last few days, even more problematic since she thought of him so often.
Dinah shrugged. No matter what she thought and even no matter that they’d made a connection of sorts in their first meeting, the handsome firefighter would probably lose interest the minute he discovered from which branch of the Fraser family tree she’d sprung.
The alarm stopped blaring as suddenly as it had started. Another false alarm. There had already been three since school started. Someone had probably pulled it again and was standing out here, just as cold and miserable as everyone else but now holding a secret, too.
For the next few minutes, they all stood shivering and waiting for the bell that would signal their permission to return to the building. Dinah was so focused on the school entrance as she waited for the firefighters to exit through it that she didn’t notice the other firefighter who approached from behind her and touched her sweater-clad arm.
“Hey there, Miss Fraser.”
She didn’t need to see his face to know who was there. His familiar voice felt like a warm caress sliding up her neck, and her arm tingled where he’d touched it. The sensation surprised her because she’d thought her skin was too numb to feel anything.
Still, when she turned to face him, she did her best to appear surprised. Already a large man, Alex appeared massive wearing bunker pants and a cumbersome tan jacket with reflective bands on its chest, bottom edge and sleeves. He must have left his helmet in the truck.
“Oh, Mr. Donovan, it’s good to see you again.” She cleared her throat. “I mean…well, the circumstances aren’t the best, but—”
“I know what you mean.”
She smiled, grateful he’d saved her from whatever inane thing she would have said if she’d had time to come up with one. “Sorry about the false alarm.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“We’ve had a few lately.”
His nod and his frown combined. “It’s unfortunate and not just because it’s illegal to trigger a false alarm. If you have a lot of false alarms, people begin to not take them seriously.”
It was Dinah’s turn to frown. She’d worried about that exact thing. “You don’t mean…”
He shook his head as he must have picked up on her meaning. “No, the fire department responds every time as though it’s a real emergency. Even to those locations where there’s a bad track record.”
Dinah grimaced. Her school certainly had one of those.
But instead of criticizing as he had every right to, Alex waved away the situation as water under the bridge.
“What can you do?” he said with a sigh as he scanned the rows of students. “Since I was here anyway, I thought I would come over and say hello to my best girl.”
Dinah swallowed hard, and her neck tingled before she had the chance to really process what he’d said. Best girl? Did guys in the New Millennium still use an old term like that? Maybe they did when they were referring to a child who looked up to them with adoration in her huge, light brown eyes.
Chelsea was doing just that when Dinah caught the tiny blonde’s approach in her side vision. The child’s cap of straight, chin-length hair blew every which way, and her long-sleeved T-shirt probably wasn’t keeping her warm, but Chelsea still grinned like a child on Christmas morning as she stared at her hero.
Best girl. Of course. It humiliated Dinah to admit that, just for a second, she’d wished Alex had been talking about her. Who could blame the little girl for some hero adoration over Alex when Dinah had a mild case of that herself, and she was nowhere near a child.
“Hi, Uncle Alex,” Chelsea said almost shyly as she stepped closer to him.
“Get over here, you goofy kid.” Alex bent at the waist and held his hands wide.
That wouldn’t have been Dinah’s choice for what to say to a child, but the petite nine-year-old grinned and ran into his arms. So much for what she knew.
“Did you come here to put out the fire?” Chelsea asked him when she pulled back.
“There’s no fire. It’s a false alarm.”
“Oh.” The child stared back at the building and nodded as if just realizing that it wouldn’t be burning to the ground today.
“But you should always react to an alarm as if there could be a real fire,” he reminded her.
“Okay.”
Dinah couldn’t help but smile at that. Alex was so worried about being an inadequate guardian, and already Chelsea accepted his direction without question. Sometimes she would have given anything to have that kind of authority in the classroom.
“What are you smiling about?”
Alex lifted an eyebrow when Dinah turned after hearing his question. His bare hands must have been cold because he stuffed them in the pockets of his jacket.
When he might have looked away, he continued to watch her. His intelligent eyes seemed to see right through her, to recognize the loneliness in her that she’d always tried to hide. She wasn’t used to feeling this exposed, and yet for the life of her, she couldn’t look away.
If not for the bell that rang, signaling the all clear and making her leap back at least four inches, she might have gone right on staring back at him. Alex seemed to look away reluctantly, as well.
As if they both remembered where they were at the same time, Alex and Dinah glanced down at Chelsea. The two of them hadn’t been the only ones staring the last few minutes, and the child’s knowing smile hinted at just what she’d seen. Chelsea looked back and forth between them, her smile widening. If Alex really had been able to look into Dinah’s eyes and sense her thoughts, maybe Chelsea shared that family trait.
Dinah cleared her throat and turned to the rest of the class. “Okay, everyone. It’s time to go back inside. Please keep quiet and stay in line until we reach the classroom.”
“Well, I’d better get back to the truck. See you tonight, kiddo.” Alex gave Chelsea one last hug.
“Good seeing you, Mr. Donovan.”
Dinah started forward, putting on an air of nonchalance that she hoped Alex would buy. She couldn’t remember ever being around a man who put her nerve endings on alert the way he did. Her palms were so damp that she would be embarrassed if one of her students took her hand on the way inside the building. Despite her best resistance, she glanced over her shoulder at Alex, hoping he wouldn’t catch her.
He did, and he smiled and waved. “Goodbye, Miss Fraser. Tell Reverend Fraser I said hello.”
Dinah swallowed. If he knew about her family, why had he pretended not to the other day? But she had no time to process the information, not when she had twenty-four students behind her, who all needed to return to their classroom. Their chatter followed her inside the building and down the hall, but she didn’t take time to correct them.
She had a job to do, had a class full of third-graders relying on her to restore order and to make them feel safe at school, and she wouldn’t let anything, even her own hormones, get in the way of her doing it.
Soon, she’d taken her place behind her desk, and the students were back at their own grouped desks working on the illustrations for their personal narratives as they had been before the alarm. Dinah had just opened her copy of The Secret Garden again, when Chelsea raised her hand. Dinah would have been annoyed with the interruption, but at least the child was participating in class again.
“Yes, Chelsea? Do you need help with something?”
Chelsea nodded, as if she had a serious matter to discuss. Dinah straightened in her chair. She wasn’t sure what she would say if Chelsea said she was worried her father would die in the war or that her mother might not survive her cancer treatment. Should she encourage her to talk, even if it wasn’t the most appropriate time? Dinah braced her hands on the edge of her desk and waited.