Читать книгу Maggie's Guardian - Anna Adams - Страница 9

HOURS LATER, Tessa lay staring into the darkness. A bony limb scraped at her ice-etched window. Wind seemed to lift the eaves with each sudden gust. The house settled, making familiar snaps and clicks. The only thing she couldn’t hear was the sound of Maggie breathing.

And at last, she couldn’t stand not knowing. She turned on the lamp and knelt beside the baby in her makeshift bed. On her side, with one small hand across her face, Maggie looked ridiculously older than she was. Her terry sleeper lifted and sank with lovely regularity over her chest.

Tessa eased a relieved sigh between her lips. She slid to the floor and cushioned her own elbow beneath her head.

Before long, she began to shiver. The pine floor transferred the cold, despite being insulated by another layer of house downstairs. She crawled back and yanked down a pillow and her own comforter. Then she burrowed into a warm nest beside Maggie on the floor.

Tomorrow night, maybe she’d be able to sleep in her bed. If she found a crib and pulled it near enough.

She closed her eyes. Maggie’s rhythmic breaths became her own. She felt each in-and-out exchange of oxygen that fed Maggie’s blood and hers. Until finally, by some miracle, she stopped thinking at all and fell asleep.

NOAH OPENED ONE EYE to the morning sun. The anvil player in his head had slowed the tempo enough to make life bearable. He turned over, but the familiar scent of the sheets beneath his face startled him. He lifted his head.

Until this second, he hadn’t noticed his own sheets no longer smelled like this, fresh and something floral that made him remember lying with Tessa. He pressed his face into the bed and breathed in.

In the scented darkness, he could almost pretend the past eighteen months hadn’t happened. Any second now he’d hear his baby cooing the odd, off-key songs that had tugged at his heart as Tessa sang back to her.

Punching a hole in his fantasy, a sharp screech erupted from the next room. Noah pulled a pillow over his head, but it couldn’t muffle Tessa’s confused response.

He’d never known her to face the morning with pure joy. Maybe if he’d had twenty years with her, he would have gotten sick of her bad humor in the a.m. He’d only lived with her five years, just long enough to find her morning temper endearing. She’d hidden it from their baby, and even now, she spoke lovingly to Maggie.

He shoved the pillow away. Tessa had less reason than ever to welcome a new day. Memories of finding David’s body would probably hit her harder this morning.

She’d never seen such violence. Tessa’s family tended to be detached. She’d grown up on her own for the most part, in a nice safe, upper-middle-class environment. But her parents had protected her from anything resembling David’s death.

A sudden spurt of anger surprised Noah, twisting out of the depths of his apathy. Loss of life pissed him off, but David’s death mattered even more. After his and Tessa’s divorce, he’d backed away from his friendship with David in case the other man felt he had to choose between them.

Since then, they’d shared exactly two beers on two separate occasions when David had come to Boston for business. They’d never talked about Tessa, and they’d never discussed David’s personal life. Noah figured David had chosen which friend he wanted to keep.

But he’d be damned if he’d let anyone get away with killing David Howard, and he’d be damned again if he’d let anyone think Tessa could hurt their friend.

He got out of bed, and a whole anvil chorus tuned up for a more complex piece. Pressing his fists to his temples, he staggered to the chair where he’d left his clothes.

He dressed and then opened the door just in time to stumble into Tessa, carrying small brown-haired Maggie. His ex-wife’s glance flickered over him. Despite the percussion in his head and his need to maintain a professional distance, interest rode his nerve endings along the path Tessa’s gaze had taken.

He stepped back into his borrowed room, realizing a retreat probably exposed his response to her innocent gaze. Fortunately, she had her eye on Maggie.

“I forgot how often they want to be fed.” She broke off, looking stricken.

He knew. She didn’t want to forget their baby, even the small, everyday functions of caring for her. He lifted his hand to comfort her, but second thoughts held him back.

He’d come to make sure no one charged her with murder, not to resurrect a relationship they’d failed at. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat and tried to sound like the kind of man she’d once needed him to be. “It’s all right to talk about our daughter. Maybe we’d both be happier now if we’d talked about her.”

Over Maggie’s head, Tessa’s green eyes lit with—reproach? Anger? He couldn’t tell which.

“I feel guilty when I think of being happy, and you can’t even say her name.”

Obviously she still blamed him. He took a stern grip on his temper when he really wanted to hurt Tessa back. Maybe he’d chosen a touchy word, but something was sure as hell wrong with both of them after eighteen months of grieving. How was he supposed to say their child’s name when thinking of her tore him apart? If he said her name out loud, that morning would unfold all over again.

And now, since Tessa seemed to be saying his pain wasn’t as bad as hers, he eyed her, unable to put the truth in words.

“What?” She stepped up, small and furious, spoiling for a fight.

Being angry got them nowhere. He concentrated on his own failure. She’d suffered, and he’d let her. He hadn’t meant to, but he hadn’t known how to bridge the gulf between them. “It’s too late to say this, but I wish I’d been a better husband to you.”

All emotion drained from her face, and she walked away. “It is too late to talk about our marriage.” The baby’s head bobbed over her shoulder as they reached the stairs. Even Maggie seemed to accuse him.

He stared at Tessa’s hair sprouting from an untidy ponytail, at the wrinkles in the short, tight T-shirt that hugged curves he’d loved and she’d loathed. The left leg of her sweats climbed halfway up her calf, and she should have looked a mess.

With her stiff neck and her disinterest, she just looked as if she didn’t want him here.

“I have to drive back to Boston and pick up some clothes. I came without packing.” His only thought had been to straighten Weldon out about Tessa. He forced himself to march down the gallery behind her. He matched her indifference. “First I’ll check around here, see what I can get out of Weldon. Maybe one of the traffic cops noticed someone hanging around David’s house. Will you need help with the arrangements?” For David’s funeral. He didn’t have to specify. Tessa would know what he meant, and she was the only one left to set it up. David’s parents had passed away years ago.

Still, she didn’t look back. “I’ll take care of everything. He wanted a memorial service.”

At the bottom of the stairs, he caught up, taking her elbow to make sure he had her attention. “While I’m gone, I want you to be careful, Tessa.”

She shrugged lightly to release herself. “I won’t take chances.”

She was thinking of David’s daughter, not of her own safety. “I’m not just talking about the baby. You might be in danger, too.”

“I get it.” She made an obvious effort to keep her tone civil. “I won’t go out after dark, and I’ll set the alarm. The second I see anything suspicious, I’ll dial 911.”

“Keep your cell phone in your purse or your pocket, wherever you can get to it in a hurry. We should ask Weldon for protection until we’re sure whether David interrupted a robbery.”

The baby muttered, a slight edge to her voice that even Noah already recognized.

Tessa turned toward the kitchen. “I don’t want the police tossing my house.”

He almost laughed. “The police search. Criminals toss.” He followed them, and when Tessa turned, he nodded at the baby before he went on. “Remember you have her before you turn down protection.”

Again she relented. “If I had to let them in because of Maggie, I would, but couldn’t Weldon leave someone outside?”

Truth was, neither he nor Tessa had charmed Weldon so far. “We’ll be lucky if I can browbeat him into having someone drive by.”

“Which does us no good unless the cop and the bad guy happen to show up at the same time. Let’s drop it.” As the hungry little girl arched her back and mouthed a furious complaint, Tessa soothed her with the same sounds that had calmed their own baby.

She took a bottle from the fridge while Noah watched and marveled. Every step she took was sure.

“Joanna’s parents are coming over.” Tessa put the bottle in the microwave and set the timer. “They’re staying here, so if you need to take care of business in Boston…”

“How far away are they?”

“Only about forty-five minutes, but they want to see Maggie, and she needs all the love she can get. I don’t mind if they stay.”

“I’m glad someone will be here with you.” He’d remind Weldon that no matter how annoying he found Tessa, she remained his best witness. That should insure some extra police interest, and three adults ought to be able to work dead bolts and the telephone.

As for him, he needed clean clothes, and Baxton would force him to fill out paperwork for a leave of absence. They needed to talk about a case the two of them had been working in their free time, an abusive husband who seemed to be on the verge of hurting his wife and children.

However, that old saw about murderers showing up at their victims’ funerals was sometimes true, and Noah intended to get back to Prodigal in time to attend David’s service.

Tessa took baby cereal and a small jar of fruit from a shopping bag on the counter.

“Do you have everything you need for her?” He should offer to hold the baby, but he couldn’t move the impulse from his mind to his mouth. He didn’t want to hold her, to risk being reminded of the child who’d been, along with her mother, his greatest joy.

“I don’t have anything,” Tessa said, unaware of his cowardice. “Do you think Weldon will let me go to David’s house to get her clothes and her crib?”

A crib? He hadn’t even thought about one. “Where did she sleep last night?”

“In a drawer.” The last word came out around the baby’s fingers as Maggie tried to plunge her hand into Tessa’s mouth. Laughing, Tessa ducked out of the grinning little girl’s reach. Their smiles made the floor drop from beneath Noah’s feet.

He grabbed the table’s edge, wanting, needing, craving one more impossible second with their baby. One morning spent just this way, preparing her breakfast, enjoying the destruction she’d wreaked in their kitchen with her curiosity.

“How’s your head, Noah?” Tessa planted the baby-food jar between her arm and her body and twisted off its lid. “You don’t look as if you’ve recovered yet.”

“I’m fine.” Dizzy with unexpected sorrow, he looked anywhere except at her and pretended his most vital interest was the growth of beard on his chin. “Do you mind if I take a shower before I visit Weldon?”

She stared at him over the baby’s head as if she heard something in his voice. She might not want to care for him anymore, but concern cut a frown across her forehead. He had to be more careful. He faced her until she turned back to her task.

“The guest bath is next door to your room.” She spooned some of the fruit into a bowl. “Toward the stairs. You can take a disposable razor from the cabinet beneath my sink.”

Right. He was dying to rummage through her personal belongings. Annoyed daily at the sight of his own bare bathroom counter, the last thing he wanted to see was the face cream and toothpaste and perfume he still expected to shift out of his way.

“Why don’t you take out a razor after you finish with her and leave it by the guest bathroom door?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” His pathetic need to maintain their separate lives made her laugh. “Just get a razor. Everything else you’ll need is either in the bathroom or in the linen closet. That’s the door between our rooms on the gallery.”

Her apathy taunted him. His life should have grown easier after she’d left. He no longer owed her the emotional outlay loving required. Facing the back of her head, knowing she considered him a failure at emotional outlay, he wanted badly to prove he could still make her feel anything at all.

But what if he couldn’t? He’d learned enough about his weakness from Tessa. Why risk any more self-knowledge?

He pushed away from the table and exited the kitchen, slowing only as he all but burst through her bedroom door. The clutter pushed him back a step.

Her room was a muddle of her clothes, Maggie’s makeshift bed and stacks of books. To hell with perfume. He swallowed a groan as the books took him back eighteen months in less than a second. He knew Tessa’s stacking method as well as she did. Just looking at the piles, he knew to the book which ones she’d already read.

A bone-deep ache drove him into the small bathroom where Tessa’s sweet, sexy scent pervaded everything, the curtains, the shower, the cabinet whose door he yanked open.

Sweat poured off his face as he fished out a razor and then dug a bar of soap from a cellophaned pack of six. Why the hell did a woman on her own buy soap by the six-pack?

He straightened, meaning to grab what he needed and beat it. Instead, he stopped to inventory the rest of Tessa’s things. Nothing that belonged to a man. He wasn’t terribly surprised, except at the relief that flooded him.

This was ridiculous. She’d left him. He hadn’t asked her to go. He wasn’t the kind of needy jerk capable of mooning around Tessa’s room.

He slammed the cabinet door, pretty sure he’d lost his mind. Fortunately, the past eighteen months had taught him he didn’t need certified mental health to catch a killer.

TESSA HAD BARELY SUNG, cajoled and bribed Maggie to take a nap in her brand-new crib when the telephone rang. She grabbed the receiver and then buried it in her sweater, trying to keep the ringer from waking Maggie as she grabbed the baby monitor and bolted from her room.

Please let it be Weldon. She’d dialed his office after breakfast to ask if she could pick up some of Maggie’s belongings.

When he hadn’t returned her call by the time Maggie ate her second meal and began to scrub at her eyes with weariness, Tessa had gone out to buy a new crib. By some miracle she’d managed to set it up in her room while Maggie slept on a pile of quilts on the living-room floor.

At the bottom of the stairs, Tessa pulled the phone out of her sweater and whispered a hello, but instead of Weldon, her mother’s voice breathed her name.

“Are you all right? My neighbor just called to tell me about David. Why didn’t you call?”

“I’m fine, Mom.” How did the neighbor know the number of the bed-and-breakfast they were staying at in England? Amanda and Chad Lawlor, her parents, hadn’t left the number with her.

“Mrs. Hawkins said you found his body.”

“I’m fine,” she said again. Most of her conversations with her mother went this way. She tried to say whatever might be least likely to spawn a melodramatic reaction. Her mother drove forward.

“You have bad luck, Tessa. First you marry a guy who works with dead people. Now your best friend’s husband dies and you find him.”

Why argue that Noah tried to keep people alive, and David hadn’t gotten killed on purpose? Despite the fact the entire family had known David since he and Tessa were in kindergarten, her mom still couldn’t remember she’d met Joanna through David, not the other way around. Ladies didn’t have male best friends, unless they were hoping to date them.

“I blame it on Noah,” Amanda said.

“Mom, you like Noah, remember?”

“I’d like him better if he’d taken that lieutenant’s position. It was a much more respectable job, and I’ll bet you’d still be together if he’d stopped chasing unkempt, unfit criminals and devoted himself to you.”

“Mom, he’s here.” And who would be a kempt, fit criminal? “He came to help me because the police think I know something about David’s death.”

“What?” At her mother’s shocked bleat, Tessa scrambled to backtrack. A suspected murderess might find herself designated persona non grata in the Lawlor family.

“I don’t know anything, of course, but I was his partner, and because of Maggie, I’ll have indirect access to his assets.”

“Why ever would you not? You agreed to take care of little Megan. Why is Noah there again?”

“Maggie, Mom. David’s daughter is Maggie. And Noah came because he didn’t like the way the police treated me. I don’t want you calling here and saying something ugly to him.”

“As you said, I like the man. He’s gorgeous, after all. I just think he might have done better by you.”

“What happened between Noah and me, we did to each other.” Tessa changed the subject. “How’s Dad?”

“At a seminar at some hospital. That reminds me, dear, I have to get his tux cleaned. We have tickets for Madame Butterfly on Friday. Do you think this David thing will get you and Noah back together?”

“Mother, my friend was killed.”

“What happened anyway? Someone shot him? A robbery, honey?”

Her mother, a blasé citizen of Boston, obviously imagined a nice, clean death, a bullet that served its purpose with little or no trace. “No, Mom. He was stabbed.”

“Do you need us to come back to the States for the funeral?”

“No.” Noah was enough to face for now. “But thank you.”

“We want to be there for you.”

“Thanks, but too many people might confuse Maggie. Every time someone opens the door, she asks for David.”

“She’s another good reason for you and Noah to try again. You’re too fragile to take care of her by yourself.”

Fragile? She was anything but. “Thanks for the advice.”

“Call me after the funeral. Your father will want to know you’re fine, too.”

“All right, Mom.”

“I love you.”

“Me, too, you.”

She clicked the phone’s off button and dropped her arm. As she turned, Noah seemed to rise out of the floor. She hadn’t heard him come in, but he crossed the room in three steps.

“Was that Weldon?”

“My mom.”

“Oh. Amanda.” He lifted one shoulder, and for a moment they read each other’s thoughts. He turned away.

“She means well.” She’d always tried to pretend her family was “normal.”

“You know exactly what she means. You know who they are, Tessa, and what they are. Why do you waste time protecting them?”

“They’re not your problem any longer.”

“Did you talk to your dad? Are they coming here?” He managed to make it sound like the last straw.

“They’re in England. He’s at a seminar.”

“Good. Their comfort is the last thing you need.” At her affronted glare, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “My mother always asks me if you’re ever going to speak to her again.”

She’d avoided Lucy Gabriel since the divorce. Not that she was mad at Lucy. She just hadn’t wanted to poach on Noah’s property. Lucy, whose independence was her greatest possession, next to her son, would be annoyed that Tessa could consider anyone property, but that happened during a divorce.

“She blames me,” Noah said. “She thinks I told you to stay away from her.”

Tessa planted the baby monitor on one hip and the phone on the other, forgetting she had them in her hands. “I never said so. I just didn’t want to come between you. She was your mother first.”

“But you still belong to her, too. She doesn’t like to lose anyone she loves.”

His unaccustomed frankness made her feel contrite. And that bugged her. “Why don’t you handle her? Tell her not to worry about me.”

“Handle my mom?” His eyes crinkled, making the irises seem darker than she remembered.

“I don’t know how to be friends with her now.” She wasn’t about to admit Lucy reminded her too much of Noah.

His gaze intensified. Palpable unease and one of Maggie’s breaths filled the silence. He tossed his coat at the couch. “Don’t tell me to ‘handle’ her. You care more for her than that.”

“I do.” Hot shame raced across her skin. “But she tries to talk about you. I know I hurt you both, but I had to go. I couldn’t stay in that house when we were both so alone.”

He spoke through tight lips. “Why did we have to be alone? We lived together.”

“We didn’t.” Her solitary grief swept her with familiar emptiness. “You wanted nothing from me, but I needed someone to make me want to live again.”

He tilted his head, eyeing her with an incredulous question. “How can I make you want to live?”

“I don’t know.” She cleared her throat. “And I don’t need that now, but I couldn’t get through to you. We left each other, and then I finally moved out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

“I told you over and over, but you refused to hear.”

He nodded suddenly, and the light picked out silver strands in his black hair. “I didn’t want you to go. I think—I thought—you should have given me another chance.”

As if she owed him? They looked back at the end of their marriage just the way they’d lived it—miles apart in perception.

She glanced toward her future, asleep behind her bedroom door. “Maggie’s the last chance I have in me. You and I stopped owing each other anything the day our divorce became final. I just have to do right by her now.” She twisted the kinks out of her shoulders. “About your mom, what do you say to her?”

“That you’ll call when you’re able to talk to her again.”

Which made it sound as if there was something wrong with her. She started to get mad again.

He saw. “Just call her.” His tone, almost defeated, reminded her he rarely recovered from a migraine in only twenty-four hours. “Mom keeps insisting she didn’t need to deal with a divorce.”

She’d spent a lot of time trying not to miss Lucy. Noah’s mom had made her believe in unconditional mother’s love. With bright copper hair, bloodred faux nails and a legion of suitors, Lucy had been the worst example Amanda could imagine for the daughter she’d considered a failure as a woman. Amanda had admired the quantity of Lucy’s suitors, but she’d lectured long and hard that a woman should more subtly display her attributes.

To Tessa, Lucy had always been…Lucy. What you saw was what you got. She’d only turned her back on her borrowed mother because she’d loved her so much. She’d sworn she wouldn’t come between Noah and his mom.

“I’ll call,” she said with dread. Lucy probably still considered the divorce a temporary measure because Noah had told her he didn’t want it. His signing the papers hadn’t convinced her he’d lied, and Lucy would never stop trying to piece her family back together.

“I don’t mean just for today. Call Mom because you’re a daughter to her, as much as I’m her son.”

Tessa walked around him. “Don’t take yourself too seriously in this ex-husband-to-the-rescue role. I need you because you understand the way Weldon thinks, but I’ve learned how to run my own life again.”

“Maybe I’m more worried about my mother than about you.” He said it so quickly she knew he meant it, that he hadn’t planned the one answer that would make her wonder if she’d made a mistake.

Surely he knew her well enough to see she still loved his mom. “I’ll call her,” she said again. Continuing toward the kitchen, she tried to step back onto last night’s impersonal footing. “Did you talk to Weldon? What are you doing back here anyway?”

“I wanted to check in before I left town.” He followed her lead. “Weldon has nothing on you. He just doesn’t have any other suspects. I talked to the patrol officers who work David’s neighborhood.” He paused as she took out bottles and the formula mix. “What are you doing?”

“Making formula for later. She’ll be hungry again any second. How much longer do you suppose she’ll drink this stuff?” She made a mental note to schedule an appointment with Maggie’s pediatrician.

“I don’t know. Can I help?”

She nearly slammed the formula onto the counter. A cozy suggestion, but unthinkable. “No, thanks.” She tried to sound as if his help didn’t matter in the least. “What did the patrolmen say?”

“No one’s been hanging around David’s house, or here, either.”

“Good.” She hadn’t wanted to believe she and Maggie might be in trouble.

“Weldon wants you to search your office records again to make sure nothing’s missing.”

“I’ll have to ask Emily, our receptionist, to help.” She glanced at him. Bracing his hands on one of her kitchen chairs, he looked big and completely at home. As soon as they switched to business, he shucked off the discomfort that felt like her second skin. “Emily does a lot of the filing.”

“I’d like to talk to her, too. She might know more about David’s office than you.”

He was right. “Does Weldon want to see me again?”

“He didn’t say so, but he knows I’m on your side, and I’m afraid I all but called him a small-town idiot.”

“That should help.” He didn’t answer and the silence stretched. She began to spoon formula into tonight’s bottles. “Noah?”

“Yeah?”

His voice warned her he was coming around the table to look her in the eye. “Why are you so sure I’m innocent?” Following his earlier approach, she asked it quickly. A healthy divorced woman didn’t care what her ex-husband thought of her.

“Are you kidding? I know you.”

“Not now. You knew me before.” As in before she’d lost him and Keely.

“Nothing we’ve been through turns a loving woman into a murderer.”

She nearly dropped the bottle again. If he thought her loving, why had he said no to the divorce but then signed the papers?

“Why are you helping me?” She turned to watch his expression as he answered her.

He looked away. “I let you down. And maybe I should have been able to save our daughter.”

Terrifying compassion swayed her toward him. “Don’t say that.”

“You don’t believe it’s true?”

“Not at all.” She couldn’t force her voice above a whisper. She’d felt the same guilt all this time.

“Then why did you leave?”

“Because you didn’t love me anymore, and I had to learn not to love you.” She brushed away her tears. “Why are you helping me now?”

“Because I owe you.”

Rage flashed up and down her nerve endings. He owed her? She set Maggie’s bottle on the counter and reached for him. He lifted one thick eyebrow, and his shoulder flexed beneath her palm. He felt real and warm and alive, and she wanted to shake him.

“You feel sorry for me, because you couldn’t love me after Keely—after she—” She couldn’t say it. Eighteen months later, and she still found it hard to say the words.

“I have to make up for the way I let you down so I can get on with my life.” His raspy tone, the warmth of his breath on her face, reminded her she’d been his wife. She’d been much closer to him than this.

“So if you help me now, you’ll make up for everything that happened before? I’m your penance?”

“If I’m doing what you need, why do you care about my motives? You only called me out of habit.”

“I hope you’re right.” She struck back, unable to stop herself. “I don’t want to need you again.”

He tilted his head away, as if her anger ricocheted off his face. She hadn’t known she could still hurt him. She hadn’t realized how badly she still wanted to make him pay because she’d hated living without him and Keely.

Most of all, most painful of all, she didn’t want to be a debt he owed.

The doorbell rang, and she spun away from Noah, accidentally elbowing the bottle off the counter. Powdered formula sprayed her floor, and she strode through it.

She pressed her hands to her chest, trying to slow her pounding heart. Behind her, sounds from the kitchen told her Noah was cleaning up. If she were as self-sufficient as she’d tried to be, she would have thrown him out of her house. He didn’t belong here.

The bell rang again, and Tessa hurried to open the door. A tall woman, who seemed much older than when Tessa had last seen her, spilled over the threshold.

“Where’s Maggie?” she demanded.

On her heels, her husband carried a single large suitcase. He hadn’t changed as much as his wife. Tessa hadn’t seen them since they’d last driven down to visit David and the baby.

“She’s asleep.” Tessa closed the door and turned to her guests. Her heart danced a vicious tango as Noah joined them from the kitchen.

“You remember my husband—” She passed her hand across her mouth and then tried again. “My ex-husband, I mean.”