Читать книгу Colton 911: Baby's Bodyguard - Lisa Childs - Страница 13

Cries emanated from the house, drawing Forrest’s attention back to the one-story ranch structure and to her. A shadow passed behind the windows as if she was pacing in her kitchen. She had a baby.

Somebody had probably mentioned it to Forrest, but he didn’t remember. He’d been preoccupied with the hurricane damage and now with the murder investigation. He surveyed the crime scene. Techs worked on bagging those corroded coins or buttons he’d uncovered, while the coroner worked on removing the body from the hole. They knew what they were doing; they didn’t need his supervising their every move. In fact they’d probably resent it if he did.

So he headed back to the house. He raised his fist to the frame around the glass in the back door but hesitated before knocking. The cries were louder now, so he wasn’t at risk of waking the baby.

The little guy was already awake and squalling. Seeing through the glass that Rae had her hands full with the baby, Forrest reached instead for the knob, turned it and let himself back into the house.

She gasped at his bold intrusion, but then she didn’t seem to like anything he did. The invitation to dance had definitely been extended out of obligation or pity. Probably obligation...because she didn’t seem to like him enough to pity him.

She glared at him over the baby’s head. “Why did they have to come here with the sirens blaring?” she asked. “It doesn’t look like an emergency.”

“No,” he agreed. The body was far beyond help. Rae Lemmon looked as if she needed help, though, as she rocked the baby’s stiff little body in her arms.

Dark circles rimmed her brown eyes, but instead of detracting from her beauty, they highlighted it. She looked both vulnerable with her delicate features and sexy as hell with the old T-shirt molded to her generous curves.

“He had just finally gone to sleep,” she murmured with a little catch in her voice, “when the sirens woke him up.”

A pang of regret struck Forrest. The officers hadn’t needed to put on the sirens. It would have been better to draw less attention to the scene than more.

Fortunately no reporters had followed them. Forrest had never enjoyed dealing with the press. So he definitely should have advised the police not to use the sirens when he’d called in what he’d found. He opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could, chimes rang out.

Was that the sound of her doorbell?

Maybe a reporter had picked up on the call after all. He grimaced—just as Rae held out the baby toward him.

“That’s my phone,” she said, as she handed him the crying infant.

Because he had no experience with babies, he didn’t know how to hold him. But he reacted instinctively, closing his hands around the baby’s midsection. Was he supposed to cup his head or something? He moved one hand to the baby’s neck, and the little guy’s head swiveled toward him.

The face that had been scrunched up with cries froze with shock, and his dark eyes widened as he stared up at Forrest. Was he scared?

His crying stopped, though, so that was a good thing. Forrest could hear himself think again. He could also hear the soft murmur of Rae’s voice as she spoke to someone—maybe the baby’s father. She must have left the phone in another room, since in order to answer it she’d left him alone with her baby.

Forrest was as frozen with fear as the little guy was. What if he was holding him wrong? Or he dropped him?

Rae would hate him even more then.

And Forrest would hate himself. But the kid was light and easy to hold. Maybe he could do this. And if he figured it out, he would actually be able to hold Donovan and Bellamy’s baby once it came, and not harm his little niece and nephew.

He crooked his arm and eased the baby into that, so the kid could stare up at him more comfortably. And he kept staring like he had no idea what the hell Forrest was, let alone whom. Keeping his deep voice to a low rumble, he murmured, “I’m Detective Colton.”

Not that the baby could actually understand him. But he stared up at Forrest’s face as if he was listening.

Maybe Forrest reminded him of his father. Where was the guy? Forrest didn’t remember seeing anyone hanging around Rae at the wedding. But then, as one of the maids of honor, she’d been busy. Not too busy to ask him to dance, though.

But that must have been just part of her duty as a maid of honor—to look after the guests. Maybe that was why the baby’s father had made himself scarce. Or maybe he’d stayed home to watch the baby, since he probably would have been newly born at the time of the wedding.

She hadn’t looked like she’d recently given birth then, though—not with how well her navy blue maid of honor’s dress had fit her.

Forrest had so many questions about Rae Lemmon, so much curiosity. It was that curiosity that had drawn him to her house this morning and to the body in her backyard. That—more than anything—should have proved to him that she was going to be trouble.

He had to restrict his curiosity to professional only, since his broken engagement had convinced him that personal relationships were not for him. The only personal relationships he was going to allow himself was with his family.

Being around this little guy might help him prepare for the new baby so that he would be able to help Donovan and Bellamy when they needed it. So that he could be a good uncle to the little cowgirl or cowboy that the newlyweds would have.

“What about you?” Forrest asked the baby. “Are you going to be a cowboy? You want to learn to ride?”

Despite having no experience with kids, he realized this one was too young to answer any of his questions, but the baby seemed fascinated by his voice. Those already wide brown eyes widened even more. With those enormous eyes, delicate features and brown hair, the baby looked so much like his beautiful mother.

A little bubble floated out of the baby’s lips as he gurgled. And Forrest tensed with concern. Was something wrong?

And where had the baby’s mother gone?

Forrest had felt more comfortable finding that mummified body in her backyard than he did standing in her kitchen, holding her child. That body was beyond saving; the only thing he needed to do for her was find her killer.

But the baby...

He could screw up. He could cause him harm, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

* * *

Why had the crying stopped?

What had Forrest Colton done to her baby?

Rae peered through her open bedroom door at the man standing in her kitchen. He’d moved Connor to the crook of his muscular arm, and her child lay there, staring up in adulation at the man holding him.

Connor hadn’t looked at her that way in a while—with fascination. Frustration, instead, scrunched up his little face when he stared up at her. He’d been so fussy lately.

For her.

But not for Forrest Colton.

What the hell had the man done to him?

“Rae? Are you there? Are you okay?”

It wasn’t his deep voice rumbling in her ear as she pressed the cell phone into the crook of her shoulder and tried to dress while peering through the crack of her door. “Yes, Kenneth, I’m fine,” she assured her caller, who was one of the lawyers at the firm where she worked as a paralegal.

“Do you need me to come out there?”

“No,” she automatically replied. She’d been saying that to him a lot since she’d been hired at the firm—no to an offer of coffee or dinner. Not that he was harassing her. He’d made it clear that he was happily married and that his offers were only intended to make her feel welcome at the firm.

“I just wanted to be available in case any legal issues arise out of this search of your property,” he explained. “You’re one of the family here at Lukas, Jolley and Fitzsimmons.” He was more family than she was because he was related by marriage. His father-in-law was Fitzsimmons.

“I’m actually going to leave soon.” Even though this was her home, she didn’t want to stay here while Forrest Colton was on her property. “I’ll drop off Connor at day care and come into the office.”

Kenneth blew out a ragged breath of relief. “That’ll be good for you to get out of there.”

He’d called because he’d heard on his police scanner that the coroner and a crime-scene unit had been dispatched to her address. He used the scanner to drum up business for the firm—chasing ambulances.

“Yes,” she agreed. It would be good for her to get away from Forrest Colton. And to get him away from her child. “I’ll see you soon,” she said as she clicked off her cell phone.

While juggling the phone, she’d managed to replace her nightgown with a long summer dress. She’d even managed to rub some concealer over her dark circles and cover it up with a dusting of powder. A swipe of mascara across her lashes finished her makeup routine.

She stepped out of the bedroom and rushed into the kitchen. Forrest looked up from her son and focused on her face.

Did he notice the makeup? Did he think she’d put it on for him?

The heat of embarrassment rushed up now, probably flushing her face under that thin dusting of powder. “I had to take that call,” she told him.

“Was it your husband?” he asked.

A chortle slipped through her lips at the thought of her being married. “Not mine,” she said.

“Somebody else’s?” he asked.

She grimaced. “Don’t make it sound like that. He’s one of my colleagues. He heard the call and was concerned.”

Forrest’s brow furrowed. “How did he hear it?”

She shrugged. It wasn’t illegal to own a police scanner, but since starting law school, she’d already grown tired of the ambulance-chaser comments.

“What about you?” he asked. “Did you hear anything last night?”

“I already told you I hadn’t,” she reminded him. Then she pointed toward the baby, who’d actually fallen asleep now in Forrest’s arms. “He’s the only one who’s been making any noise around here at night.”

The detective looked down at the baby again, and his lips curved into a smile, which was quite a turnaround from the grimace of horror that had crossed his face when she had first handed him her son. “What’s his name?” he asked.

“Connor.”

He glanced up at her as if waiting for more.

So she added, “Lemmon.”

“You’re not married?” he asked.

“I thought I already established that,” she said. When she’d asked him to dance at that wedding.

She was old-fashioned enough that she wouldn’t have asked a single guy to dance if she was married. But apparently she wasn’t as old-fashioned as he was.

“You know you don’t have to be married to have a baby,” she said.

“The father didn’t want to marry you?”

Both outraged and offended, she gasped. Forrest Colton wasn’t just old-fashioned; he was a jerk. “The father doesn’t even know me.”

He gasped now.

And she laughed at the shock on his face.

Her son tensed briefly in Forrest’s arm, but he moved him in a rocking motion, and Connor settled back to sleep. How could the man soothe her son while he riled her up? She’d never met anyone who’d infuriated her as much as Forrest Colton did.

“I chose to have my son on my own,” she informed him. “I used a sperm donor.” And before he could jump to another unflattering assumption about her, she added, “From a sperm bank.”

“Oh,” he murmured.

Not everyone understood or appreciated what she’d done. But she didn’t care. She loved Connor so much—even when he kept her awake. She moved closer to Forrest and brushed a fingertip along Connor’s cheek. He was so perfect.

“You chose to be a single parent,” he murmured.

And she couldn’t tell if he approved or disapproved. But she didn’t give a damn what he thought anyway.

“He’s the only male I need or want in my life,” she informed Forrest, just like she’d told her friends a week ago. She didn’t want anyone to answer to, anyone to disappoint or abandon her.

“That’s too bad,” he said.

And she gasped with surprise yet again. Was he...interested in her after all? She glanced from Connor’s face to his, which was flushed now.

“I meant...because it would be safer for you and Connor if you weren’t out here alone,” he said quickly, as if he was worried she’d misunderstood him.

She sighed. “You sound like Bellamy and Maggie,” she admitted.

“They’re concerned about you, too?”

She nodded. And that had been before Forrest’s discovery in her backyard. She couldn’t imagine how much they would worry now. She was surprised that he was concerned, though.

Why?

He barely knew her. And if he was interested in her, he wouldn’t act like such a jerk. Maybe it was just the lawman in him that had him worried about her safety.

“Your friends are wise to worry about you being out here all by yourself,” he said.

“They’re my friends, so they should know better than anyone else does that I can take care of myself and my son without the help or protection of any man,” she informed him.

“I’m not saying you need a man,” Forrest told her. “I’m saying that you need someone, though. You’re training to be a lawyer, not a police officer.”

She tensed. “You really believe I’m in danger?”

He shrugged, which jostled the sleeping baby into opening one eye and peering up at the man holding him.

If she was in danger, Connor would be, as well. So she had to ask, “What do you think?”

“I think there’s a killer in Whisperwood,” he said. “So nobody’s safe.”

She reached for her son, taking him from the detective’s arm. When her fingers brushed across his muscular forearm, a tingling sensation rose from her fingertips to her heart, jolting her.

And Connor.

He awoke with a cry of protest. Apparently he’d preferred Forrest Colton holding him over his mother holding him. But then he had to be frustrated with her; she hadn’t managed to comfort him last night, hadn’t managed to make him feel better, like her mother had always made her feel better.

Even when Mama had been so very sick, she’d offered solace to Rae, had held her and soothed all of her fears. She missed her mom every day. And she needed her now more than she ever had.

Because Rae was scared...and not just of the killer on the loose. She was scared that she may have taken on more than she could handle alone.

* * *

She was alone.

He had watched the house all day, had watched the police collect their evidence, had watched Rae Lemmon leave and then return later, after the police had already gone for the day. So she was the only one near the house now.

She and her baby.

He waited outside, watching the house until all of the lights flickered off inside, leaving it dark. Then he moved away from the tree against which he’d been leaning, and he headed toward the house.

Beside the sidewalk leading up to the porch, a big iron pot overflowed with red geraniums that matched the flowers overflowing the window boxes of the little white ranch house. He bent over, tipped the pot and fumbled beneath it.

Then a grin curved his lips, and his fingers closed around a key and tugged it free from beneath the pot. A magnet glued to the key had kept it stuck to the bottom. With the key in hand, he climbed the short steps up to the porch. As he moved across it to the front door, boards creaked beneath his weight. He unlocked the door, and it creaked as he opened it.

He tensed, waiting for lights to flash on inside, but everything remained dark and quiet.

The house was small, just two bedrooms off the living room, with a bathroom in between them. The door to the first bedroom was mostly closed, so he walked past it and the bathroom to the second bedroom. Moonlight streaming through the window reflected off the glow-in-the-dark stars painted on the ceiling. That light shone down on the face of the baby sleeping in the crib.

He crossed the room to the crib and stared down at the sleeping child. Something twisted in his chest, and he sucked in a breath.

He hated to do this.

But he had no choice.

Not anymore.

His hand shaking, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket and popped out the blade. Then he leaned over the railing of the crib, with the knife in his hand extended toward the sleeping child...