Читать книгу Maggie's Guardian - Anna Adams - Страница 8

AFTER SHE KICKED THE DOOR shut behind her, Tessa dropped the shopping bag at her feet and shrugged out of her coat. As she laid Maggie on a wide ottoman, the baby woke, scrunching her small face in displeasure.

Breathing in the scent of baby and snow, Tessa tugged the pink knit mittens off Maggie’s tiny clenched fists and then unzipped her snowsuit. At once, Maggie gripped Tessa’s index finger and clung unquestioningly.

Tessa’s heart raced with panic, her gut reaction to such humbling trust from David’s daughter. Sure she’d carried a sleeping infant from a foster home in the middle of the night, but she hadn’t quite realized she was starting a lifetime of caring for Maggie. In the year since she’d left Noah, Tessa had built herself a safe, solitary existence, a life raft she’d ridden out of the wreck of her marriage. David’s baby girl threatened her security.

She closed her eyes, tensing with shame. She’d been reluctant before, in the early months of her pregnancy with Keely. She’d always meant to have children, but she’d wanted them according to her time frame—when she was ready to be the best mother who ever undertook childrearing. She’d planned a perfect life for her family, a mom and dad wildly in love, a doting home, good schools, and at least one parent available to provide unfettered devotion.

She’d spent so many days alone while her own father had built his reputation as a plastic surgeon and her mother, the ultimate Junior Leaguer, had paved his social path and waited for Tessa to grow up and become interesting.

But she hadn’t grown interesting. She hadn’t even grown out of being too short and too round to make a less-than-embarrassing Junior Leaguer in training. And she hadn’t mastered the fine arts of womanhood her mother modeled so flawlessly—studied helplessness, perfect decorum in the face of disaster and the all-important ability to set a perfect table with an ideal dinner for an impromptu party of six or more.

Her father, who could fix anyone, and her mother, who’d never needed to be fixed, still didn’t understand that their absences and their disappointment had taught her to make sure it would be a glacial day in hell before she’d parent by their examples.

She’d intended to build her career first. She wanted no success as an attorney at anyone else’s expense, but eventually, she’d planned to have time to work from home, or to take a break from her career, to make sure her children knew how dearly she and Noah had wanted them.

Pregnancy had smashed her plan, and her early reluctance now seemed like a red flag she’d waved at fate. Quickly abandoning her idiotic ideas about time frames hadn’t saved her daughter. She hadn’t even managed to save Keely with love deeper than she could bear to remember.

She squeezed Maggie’s hand. This baby needed love, too, and Tessa had learned not to taunt fate. What if curses were real, not the product of her grief?

She gazed into Maggie’s tear-damped blue eyes, smiling through a tremble that hurt her mouth. She lifted the baby in her soft terry sleeper. Need sliced through her. She shifted Maggie to her shoulder so she could hide her face as she gritted her teeth. Her arms ached for Keely’s warmth.

She breathed deeply. In…out…in…out. Maggie needed her now.

When the baby shifted, ramming her fist into her mouth, Tessa recognized the gesture with a start. Despite trying with all the willpower she possessed to forget the past few years, she remembered how to care for a baby.

“Are you hungry?” Thank God, she’d stopped for bottles and formula and baby food.

But as she reached for the shopping bag, something moved outside, breaking the line of porch light that spilled across her pine floor. She straightened, staring through the small panes of the bay windows.

Nothing else moved.

Then she remembered she was holding a baby whose father had been viciously killed. What if someone had acted on a grudge against David? Tessa shot to the wall beside the door, slamming her hand over the switch to turn off the living-room lamps. Easing Maggie onto her other shoulder, she leaned across the door and yanked the cord that dropped blinds over the nearest section of the bay window.

Footsteps crunched the snow on her porch. Tessa gasped, and Maggie started to whimper. Smoothing her hand over the baby’s head, Tessa forced her breathing into a regular pattern.

Good guardians tried not to terrify children in their care. She’d given Weldon her honest best guess about what had happened to David. Nothing else made sense.

All the same, unexpected company scared her tonight.

Fear drew images of David, sprawled on his office floor. Trying not to sob, she turned toward the kitchen—and the closest phone. With Maggie here, she couldn’t take chances. She should have asked Weldon to send someone to watch the house until he caught the killer.

Tessa veered toward the keypad beside the kitchen door and tapped in the alarm code she barely remembered. She’d hardly ever used the thing. Nothing that had frightened her before went bump in the night.

Just then the doorbell chimed, and Maggie tugged her little fist out of her mouth. “Da?” she demanded. It had been her first word, and David had crowed proudly.

Tessa pressed a kiss to the baby’s silky hair. “I’m sorry. It’s not Daddy.” She stroked Maggie’s back as the little girl whispered another call for her father. Tessa pulled her even closer, trying to share her own body heat as comfort.

She reached for the wall phone and started to dial 911, but Maggie yanked the receiver from her hand. The baby’s playful grab gave her a moment to think. Was she overreacting?

The person on her porch might be another friend of David’s, coming to pay his respects, to check on Maggie. Why tell Weldon she had a prowler if she didn’t? He’d love an excuse to search her house.

She inched back along the living room wall to the door, angling her body to protect the baby. Supremely indifferent to Tessa’s little dance of fear, Maggie attacked her own fist with another hungry cry.

“Hold on a minute,” Tessa whispered. “I’ll feed you.” As soon as she made sure a maniacal killer hadn’t come to call. She parted two of the slats to peer through the ice-encrusted glass.

The stubbled chin at eye level triggered alarms all over her body.

Noah. She recognized the faint dimple beneath his bottom lip before she raised her gaze to his shadowed dark brown eyes. He tipped his head in an unspoken let me in, and Tessa sprang back. The blinds clattered into place, keeping time with her erratic heartbeat.

She went hot and then cold, and then warmed again with frustration.

“Open the door, Tessa. You need help.”

Her name sounded unfamiliar on the ragged edges of his raised voice. She should have called Larry Baxton one more time and begged him to burn her message.

She studied the living room’s shadows. She’d felt safe here because she didn’t have to avoid images of her broken family in these rooms. This house contained no memories of Noah or their own baby.

But now she had to think of Maggie. In a few hours, the baby had grown more important than Tessa’s worst fears. She had to learn to love Maggie and make new memories. And she couldn’t teach David’s little girl to be afraid of love or of facing a painful past.

Something heavy slammed into the door at her back. Noah’s fist, no doubt.

She must have lost her mind when she’d called him. She hadn’t been able to depend on him after Keely—after… He’d disappeared inside his job, finding more comfort with the murderers he was so good at catching than with her.

The door shuddered under his fist again. “Open up or I’ll shoot the damn lock.”

She didn’t like being pushed around. She bit her lip, curling her toes inside her shoes as she refused to walk away. Responsibility for Maggie pinioned her to the floor.

“Just let me in.” His strained patience was anything but familiar. They’d long since stopped trying to bear with each other. “Give me a chance to help you. And David’s baby.”

Tessa opened her mouth to answer. At the same time, Maggie sensed anger in the air. She teared up, puckering her lips.

Damn.

Tessa turned to a second keypad by the door. She didn’t want him in her house or anywhere near her life again, but Noah would help her keep Maggie safe. He’d turned away before, but he wouldn’t have driven all the way from Boston to turn his back on her now. She tapped out the code that disarmed the security system.

The moment she opened up, Noah pushed inside. She’d forgotten his scent. All male, it tugged at her, slipping between memories too intimate to face, too insistent to ignore. She hated the need that absorbed her in his drawn cheeks and the lines she’d never seen before, at the corners of his eyes. Emotion she couldn’t understand and certainly didn’t trust thinned his mouth.

“Tessa.” This time he whispered her name, as if their shared past drew his breath from depths she hadn’t known she’d reached inside him. His gaze washed her with the same insatiable need she felt. A yearning that had nothing to do with sex.

They were two people who’d lost everything that mattered most. Seeing him brought it all back. The joy as well as the pain. Joy scared her more. She didn’t want to remember that much happiness now that she’d lost it.

“I don’t want you here.” What she meant was she never wanted to need him again.

His grimace acknowledged what she couldn’t say. With shaking hands, he dragged his hair away from his face. Black strands stuck to his scalp, and moisture clung in drops to his fingers. He shut the door and turned the dead bolt. “Who did this to David? Are you all right?” His eyes looked like holes in his face. “Is someone trying to hurt you?”

“I’m fine.” She wasn’t. She wanted to cry—for David, for Maggie, for herself, and maybe a little for this empty-eyed shadow of Noah.

Somehow she’d managed to forget the ghost who’d walked out long before she’d left him. She’d been angry with the Noah she’d loved, the husband with whom she’d planned at least one brother or sister for Keely and a future as long as forever.

Another reason to forget about counting on life being fair or normal. She’d better just tell Noah what had happened and hope he’d be able to help before he vanished again.

“David must have interrupted a burglary. Whoever—” She stopped. David’s death grew more real each time she had to talk about finding him. She wiped her mouth. She had to function for Maggie. “Whoever hurt David also tore the office apart.”

“You—” He sounded scared, except Noah didn’t get scared. “You found him?”

His question confused her. “Didn’t Weldon tell you? Why are you here?”

Noah shook his head, as if he realized he didn’t sound coherent. “Weldon told me, but I hate thinking of you seeing him like that.”

She backed up a little, distancing herself from his concern. If David was still alive, she’d be planning to tell him about this crazy conversation. David had been the one she could rely on. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out loud.

David would never come back again, and Noah hadn’t come to comfort her. Better count her blessings he was such a good cop. Closing her eyes on her tears, she turned away, but Noah caught the arm that wasn’t clutching Maggie.

“You’re not all right.”

She stared at his hand until he let her go. “I was better until I had to ask you for help.”

“I know you called back and changed your mind, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know.” One step brought Noah closer. “And I know why you don’t want me around. You don’t think about…her, until you see me.”

She resented him for never saying Keely’s name. “Do you forget her?”

Maggie cried out at Tessa’s hostility, but Noah didn’t have to answer. Grief hollowed his eyes and his gray face made him look like the walking dead.

Tessa scaled down her anger. She wasn’t being fair. “I shouldn’t have called you the first time.”

She shifted the baby against her breast, and Noah stared, mesmerized by Maggie. When he looked slowly back at Tessa, he staggered. At first, she thought he was upset, maybe even drunk, if the rumors she’d heard from their Boston friends were true. But he reached behind himself, grasping for anything solid.

“You’re sick.” He’d had so many migraines after Keely died Tessa had begged him to see a doctor. He hadn’t.

With a grimace, he ignored her. “How can you take on that child?”

He’d gone to the heart of her doubts. She wasn’t certain she’d make a good substitute parent for Maggie. “What choice do I have?”

“Are you being fair to her? You can’t just give her up if it doesn’t work out. You won’t.”

He shut his mouth in lines of pain. After Keely, they’d forgotten how to love each other, but he did still know her, and she knew him well enough to recognize his anguish.

He backed unsteadily into the wall, and she forgot to be wary of him.

“I’ll make it work, Noah. She needs me.” She slid her free arm around his waist. His muscles tensed against her, from her shoulder to her thigh.

Feel nothing, she warned herself. He’s temporary here.

“Migraine,” he muttered.

“I guessed. Come sit down.”

Noah shrugged off her helping hand. “Carry the baby. I’ll manage.”

Shadows intensified the paleness of his cheek where his beard grew more sparsely. Tessa swallowed, trying to wet her dry mouth. She’d forgotten that small patch of skin she’d kissed so many times she could feel its texture now against her lips.

“How did you get out of the police station without an attorney, Tessa?”

“I don’t need an attorney.”

“Weldon hinted you did, and you should pay attention when a cop talks like that.” He enunciated each word too carefully. “Don’t tell me you’re representing yourself.”

With sudden impatience, Maggie brought the fleshy part of Tessa’s thumb to her mouth. Sharp baby teeth grazed Tessa’s skin, making her draw a deep breath. Leaning down, she grabbed the shopping bag and then headed for the kitchen. “Let me feed her and I’ll drive you to a hotel, Noah. We can talk tomorrow.”

She switched on the kitchen light, but Noah, who’d driven at least four hours in excruciating pain, gazed at her through slitted eyes, trying to filter out the brightness. “What hotel?”

Maggie’s protest at the lack of anything filling in Tessa’s hand left little time to argue. “You can’t stay here.”

“Why? We don’t love each other anymore. I can’t hurt you.”

“You know why.” She wasn’t about to admit how long she’d worked at sleeping in a house where she couldn’t even hope he’d be coming home. “We got divorced. We didn’t part on good terms. I called you because with David…gone…I didn’t know who else to turn to.” She pushed the shopping bag onto the kitchen counter.

“I’m sorry about David.”

“Me, too.” She couldn’t keep moisture from gathering at the corners of her eyes, but she used her forearm to wipe it away. Better get Noah out of here before the shock of David’s death finally wore off.

She kept remembering how painful “never” was when you realized you wouldn’t see someone you loved again. Saying goodbye to David would feel something like letting Keely go. She couldn’t do that with Noah watching her.

He’d been unable to share her pain for the daughter they’d both loved deeply. She wouldn’t expose herself to his reserve again.

Fortunately, he had his own concerns, and he seemed oblivious to hers. “You don’t seem to understand how angry someone must have been to stab David like that,” he said. “It could have been a client. It could have been a friend. It had to be someone who knew him.” Noah’s investigative instincts were so strong he’d trained half the detectives on Boston’s homicide force. “I don’t care how you and I split up, I’m not leaving you alone tonight when someone killed David in your office this morning.”

“What use would you be?” She softened her voice. She wasn’t out to get him, just to remind him he wasn’t at top strength. But she was used to helping him when he had a migraine. Keeping a tight grip on the baby, she eased Noah toward a chair. “You can barely stand up straight.”

“I could throw you my gun.”

His wry tone threw her off balance. Maggie began emitting an “aiyiyi” sound that apparently meant she was ravenous. Tessa peered from the baby to the man. Maybe now wasn’t the time to prove she didn’t need him. She just might.

“For tonight,” she said. “Until we’re sure no one has a grudge against David that includes Maggie.”

Unexpected wistfulness colored his exhausted gaze. “She is kind of cute.”

“You could have met her at the christening.”

“No.” In response to the invitation David and Joanna had sent him, he’d simply scrawled “I hope you understand” on the RSVP card. “I couldn’t,” he said now.

Tessa wanted to think badly of his weakness, but she remembered how she’d sweated outside the church, furiously trying to force herself through those doors. Only her friendship for David and her growing concern for Joanna, whose second addiction had begun to show itself, had pulled her inside.

The last of Maggie’s temper went up in a shrill cry that whitened Noah’s already pale skin. Tessa reached into the bag and pulled out a baby monitor. Noah stared at it, and she stared at him.

They’d left Keely’s monitor on that last night, but it hadn’t helped. If she had to strap this one to her hip and turn up the sound until she heard ice forming on the windowpanes, this baby would survive.

“I’ll wait in there,” Noah said, and departed the field for the safer confines of the living room.

Tessa nodded, taking out the formula mix to refresh herself on the recipe. Maggie drank most of a bottle before her eyes drifted shut, but Tessa waited to make sure she was sound asleep. She backed through the kitchen door, clutching the baby and the monitor.

She tried not to wonder where Noah would turn up. Had he scouted out a bedroom? Hardly seemed likely.

She had to cross the living room to reach the stairs. Noah sat hunched forward on the sofa, resting his head between splayed fingers.

“Did you take anything?” she asked in a low tone.

He looked up. “The medication knocks me out. I was waiting for you to finish in there.”

“We don’t have to talk tonight.”

“You found a murder victim today, and Weldon wants me to believe he suspects you. Think of Maggie if you can’t see you’re in trouble.”

“I’m not afraid. I didn’t hurt David.”

“You’d better be afraid. You know how many people have been ruined because the police falsely suspected them, and you know someone hated David enough to kill him. Put the baby to bed and come back down here.”

When he reminded her Maggie was her priority, she had no choice. She had to give in.

She carried the baby up the stairs at the far end of the room and turned onto the gallery that led to the three bedrooms. She managed not to look down at Noah as she took Maggie into hers.

Mentally preparing herself to make their talk quick, she recounted each second of her morning. Noah had despaired more than once about witnesses who’d kept “inconsequential” case-breaking information to themselves.

She glanced at Maggie, who suckled in her sleep. “We’ll find the guy who did this to your daddy. I won’t let you forget him and your mom. I promise you.” Her voice broke under the strain of holding on to her grief, but she kept her mind on getting Maggie to bed and seeing Noah once more tonight.

She searched her room for a safe bed for a nine-month-old. The armchair wouldn’t do, and neither would her bed. She wasn’t used to sleeping with a baby, and she didn’t want to risk rolling over on Maggie. Maybe a dresser drawer?

Tessa positioned pillows on the bed and eased the baby into the center. Then she opened her dresser’s bottom drawer and emptied it. She fished a quilt out of her closet and lined the drawer before adding a blanket. Then she checked Maggie’s blessedly dry diaper.

The baby whimpered when Tessa laid her in her makeshift bed, but after one strong stretch, Maggie burrowed into the little nest.

She might manage to crawl over the side, but she’d only slither onto the floor. Just in case, Tessa surrounded the drawer with a comforter from the hall linen closet and then set up the monitor by the baby’s head. Tomorrow she’d find a crib, but for tonight, Maggie would be safe.

Tessa took a scarf from another drawer and settled it over the lamp shade to dim the light. Cupping the monitor’s receiver in her hand, she tiptoed from the room. She paused to pull the door, but when she leaned over the gallery rail, Noah seemed to have fallen asleep.

With one arm angled over his eyes, his other hand flattened on his belly and one knee bent so his foot rested on the floor, he looked peaceful.

Sleep was the only sure cure for his migraine. Why wake him when they couldn’t solve anything tonight? She reached for her door again, but stopped, swearing under her breath as she stole another look at him. He might get cold if he slept there till morning.

She snatched another comforter and a pillow from the linen closet and negotiated the quiet stair treads. She set the pillow and the monitor on the floor beside her former husband and then made herself spread the comforter over his long body.

He shifted one lean leg, and the past exploded in her head like Fourth of July fireworks. Noah’s legs, naked and strong, wrapped around hers, his back curved protectively as he covered her.

Tessa bit her lip, trying not to whimper the way Maggie had. She’d better forget those days. And the nights. The lovely, loving nights. They were all over. Lost. Unshared grief had destroyed her marriage.

“I’m not asleep.”

She jumped back, tripping over the coffee table, but Noah caught her hands.

“Don’t break your neck. Sit down beside me.”

He still looked pale enough to pass out at any moment. Those treacherous memories tempted her to curl her body into his and pull his head onto her shoulder, but she perched on the opposite arm of the sofa. He didn’t suggest she come back.

“Tell me what you saw.” He pushed the comforter off. “From the moment you stepped inside your office.”

Horrible images flooded back. She tried to distance herself. She’d had enough practice, getting through the days after Keely’s death. “The main door was locked. I had to open it with my keys. I didn’t notice anything at first. I worked for half an hour in my own office.” She shuddered. If only she’d gone to David’s office. Had he still been alive? “Whoever—the killer must have already gone. I left my door open and anyone who tried to leave would have had to walk past.”

“You have a receptionist?”

“She comes at nine o’clock, but I got there around eight because I had to finish some research for a meeting today.” She’d never called to cancel that appointment.

“You changed your routine so you could go in early. That’s why Weldon thinks you arranged to meet David. He thinks you might have killed him and then pretended to find him.”

She began to breathe fast. She hadn’t taken Weldon seriously.

“Are you all right?” Noah leaned forward and cupped her nape. While she stared at him, startled that he’d touch her, he made her bend down. “Put your head between your knees before you faint.”

She put her head down because goose bumps radiated from the place where he’d pressed his fingers against her skin. “You think Weldon really suspects me?”

Noah didn’t speak, so she looked up as he considered his answer. He’d become a cop because he’d seen his father die making an almost routine traffic stop. His intuition had been born that day, and Tessa trusted it.

“I don’t know.” Weariness strained his tone, and he looked more haggard by the second. “He even mentioned Joanna’s accident. He said she was using drugs because of you.”

“What?” Her promises to David meant more than her own reputation. She’d vowed she wouldn’t let anyone else find out about Joanna. “Weldon got his training at the movies. Joanna had an accident.”

“Weldon thinks you wanted David for yourself.”

She sprang to her feet, flustered. No matter where they stood now, she didn’t want Noah thinking there’d been something between her and David. It was hard enough to live with the fact Joanna had thought so. “He was my friend.”

Noah drew his mouth into a brief, tense line. “I have to ask you—as much as I don’t want to—did your feelings for David change after you left me and Joanna died?”

The man had to be blind. She hadn’t left him until he’d made sure they were living separate lives in the same house. And David had welcomed her here. They’d always been close, but their losses had created a shorthand that had strengthened their friendship until Joanna became ill. “We were friends, the same as always.”

She couldn’t explain the truth about Joanna without betraying David. She looked down at her hands. A tear splashed just above her thumb, horrifying her. The last thing she needed was to cry in front of Noah.

She tried to clear her throat. “If anything, we weren’t as close after Joanna died. David was distracted with Maggie.” And they’d both felt guilty that their innocent friendship might have hurt Joanna.

“Weldon said you’d argued.”

“Who told him that?” She couldn’t explain to Noah. He’d want to get all the way to the bottom, and she couldn’t tell him the truth about Joanna. “I thought David was preoccupied, raising Maggie alone.”

“But now?”

“Now? Nothing,” she said. “He was preoccupied with Maggie. We had a couple of troublesome clients, one who sort of harassed me.”

“What?” Noah was instantly razor sharp.

“David and I handled it.” She felt and sounded defensive, but she couldn’t help it.

“The guy what—called you?”

She nodded. “Last time was about two weeks ago.”

“Did he ever come here? To your house?”

She blinked in surprise. It was odd to hear him talk about her house. Once, she’d assumed she’d always share a home with him. “Once or twice. I never encouraged him.”

“You should have told me about him the second I arrived. Did you tell Weldon?”

His brusque question sealed their new, impersonal relationship. In Noah’s eyes, she’d become a witness.

“I only told him what I saw this morning.” Her quavering voice gave her grief away, but again Noah didn’t notice.

“Someone wanted David to suffer. The rage that kind of murder takes—who knows if it’s dissipated? When you found him you must have been—”

“I was terrified,” she admitted.

“This guy you’re talking about—do you think he’d be capable of stabbing David?”

“I don’t know.” She truly didn’t. “He also thought David and I were more than friends.” She denied it again with a shake of her head. “Eric gives me the creeps, but I can’t imagine anyone doing what I saw.”

“Eric?” He reached inside his pocket for a notepad, but Tessa held out her hand, mindful of his pain.

“Don’t. I’ll write it down for you in the morning.”

He nodded a terse thanks. “Your other clients—the ones who were unhappy—did you solve their problems?”

“Yes, or we’re in the process. Hugh Carlson was rebuilding his factory after a fire, and we argued with him about following code. We’re also defending a lobsterman’s daughter against a breach of promise by her former fiancé.” She thought about his assumption that the killer’s rage might spill over to someone else in their office or onto David’s child. “Do you really think someone might try to hurt Maggie?”

“Or you.” He rubbed his temples. “When I thought about it, I was almost glad Weldon wanted to keep you. I stopped at the station.”

“I walked out,” she said. “I haven’t done a lot of criminal law, but I knew he couldn’t keep me.” She lowered her head again. “Wouldn’t I know if someone were that angry with me?”

“Did David?”

“He never said anything.” Because of the distance that had crept between them? “I keep thinking he’ll call, that I’m baby-sitting for him tonight.”

Noah dropped his police persona. “You baby-sat?”

“Occasionally. More over the past few months. As I saw less of David, I saw more of Maggie.” She shook her head. “You’ve got me suspicious of every conversation we had.”

“Could he have been afraid something was going to happen? Maybe he wanted you to be comfortable with the baby, and today was what he expected.”

“He would have told me that, Noah.”

“I’m wondering why he didn’t.” He glanced up at her room. “You seem comfortable with her.”

She’d felt way out of her depth. “She was David’s daughter before now. I could like her, but I didn’t have to give her much of myself. You know?”

“More than anyone.” His gentle tone offered the kind of comfort she’d once needed, but then he detached his feelings and became a suspicious cop again. “Where are Joanna’s parents?”

“I haven’t heard from them yet, but Weldon called them.” She glanced toward the phone. “They might have tried to reach me.” Taking a deep breath, she plunged on. “I wonder if they’re going to change their minds about leaving Maggie with me.”

“Why did they agree in the first place?”

“They’re both in their late sixties. I’m young enough to be a mother figure to Maggie, and that was what David and Joanna wanted for her. We drew up the papers just after Maggie was born, and Joanna asked them to sign a consent, but I don’t know how I’d fare in court.”

“They’re probably concerned if they’ve heard David was murdered at the office.”

Her breath caught, but she made herself think of good times with David—when they’d dangled off her roof, cleaning the gutters, the way he’d hounded her about not using the alarm system. He’d been her best friend. “Maybe I should call the Worths.”

“Yeah. David wasn’t so much killed as slaughtered.” At his blunt statement, she pulled back from him, and he grimaced. “They’ve lost him, too, Tessa.”

“You’re right. I didn’t think of that.” She stood, already looking away. “I’ll call from my bathroom. I can take the phone in there without waking the baby, and I know you need to sleep. Can I get you some water?”

“I’ll get it.” He rose, too, apparently as anxious to have her out of his way as she was to leave him on his own.

“I have a guest room upstairs.”

“I’ll take a look at it later.”

At his rueful tone, she picked up the monitor and left him. This was the way they should be together. Except for those first few moments, when they’d absorbed each other like two lost souls who’d wandered in from a desert, they’d treated each other as acquaintances.

She put their first reaction down to unfinished business, but she was happier being Noah’s acquaintance. He’d guide her through any pitfalls the Prodigal Police Department could throw in her path. He’d keep her from making a mistake that would hold their attention on her.

Upstairs Tessa carried the phone into the bathroom and eased the door shut. She called Information for Eleanor and Joe Worth’s phone number. Eleanor answered on the first ring.

“I’m so glad you called,” she said as soon as Tessa greeted her. “Where’s Maggie? That idiot police chief said he’d had Child Services pick her up from day care, but they wouldn’t tell us—”

“I have her.” Tessa waited for Eleanor’s reaction.

“Thank God.” Her gratitude sounded heartfelt. “Why don’t you bring her to us? She needs familiar faces around her, and we’d love to have you both.”

“Thank you,” Tessa said, a touch uneasy. Maggie knew her face. “But I have to arrange for the funeral and take care of the office.” And Weldon might not let her travel forty-five minutes beyond his jurisdiction until after he had cleared her.

“Oh.” Eleanor’s voice faltered into silence.

Her disappointment pricked Tessa’s conscience. “You could come here.” The second she offered she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Now was not the time to confuse Maggie about who would be taking care of her. Eleanor and Joe might not be able to keep themselves from interfering if they had any second thoughts about the guardianship.

“We should come. Maggie’s too young to go to her father’s funeral. We’ll look after her.”

Eleanor’s excitement felt inappropriate at a time when Tessa couldn’t get David’s broken body out of her head, but the other woman and her husband were all the family Maggie had left. Tessa didn’t want to alienate them. Maggie would need her grandparents, and naturally, they wanted to see her.

A squeak in the floor made her glance toward her bedroom door. Noah must have decided to use her extra room.

Used to old habits, she stood, on the verge of asking what he thought about having the Worths stay, but she came to her senses.

“Let me tell you how to get here from David’s house. It’s on your way.” Again she held back sorrow to take care of business.

“We have a few things to do first, but we’ll drive over late tomorrow morning.”