A woman in a heavy coat stood on the porch, an equally bundled child in her arms.
“Hey, Desiree,” Travis said. “Good to see you.”
“I really appreciate this.”
“No problem at all.”
As Desiree stepped inside her hood fell back to reveal a mass of long, brown curly hair, falling loose around her stunning face and accenting her light-brown complexion. Something about the shape of her deep brown eyes struck Tatiana as familiar, but she didn’t think they’d met before.
“Hey, little man.” Travis stepped closer and brushed his fingertips over the boy’s beanie.
The child’s hazel eyes stared out at them both before he buried his face against the woman’s coat.
“Someone’s being shy tonight,” he said.
“You remember Travis, don’t you, Danny?”
But even as Desiree reassured the child, twin lines of worry appeared between her delicate brows. She shifted the boy’s weight on her hip, the diaper bag slipping off her opposite shoulder and catching on her elbow.
Clearly, the woman wasn’t an on-duty police officer, but who was she, and what was she to Travis? For that matter, what was his relationship to the child? Was Tatiana’s baby the only one Travis had fathered? Danny didn’t seem to know him too well, but that didn’t mean the boy couldn’t be his.
After Travis relieved her of the items she carried, Desiree pulled off Danny’s hat and unzipped his coat.
“You know, I wouldn’t have asked if, well, I wasn’t—”
“Desperate?” he finished for Desiree. “Don’t worry. My feelings won’t be hurt if I wasn’t the first person you called. Or the second or...”
He paused, as if waiting for her to fill in the blank.
“The sixth,” Desiree admitted.
“Ouch.”
“But I also didn’t expect you to say yes. The others told me not to bother asking you. Usually, you wouldn’t even be home at this time of night.”
As the two of them spoke, Tatiana couldn’t help watching the boy, with his crop of messy brown hair. Would her own child have a lot of hair at birth? Would he or she be shy like Danny or outgoing?
Desiree glanced at Tatiana, who leaned against the wall, as if only then noticing she was there.
“You didn’t tell me I was interrupting something.”
“You’re not,” he said.
Tatiana gestured toward Desiree. “You haven’t told me what’s going on here, either.”
Travis gestured toward his guest. “I’d like you to meet Desiree Colton and her son, Danny. He’s a big boy. Twenty months.”
“Sister or cousin?” Tatiana asked, her cheeks heating. Had she really been jealous of one of his relatives? They weren’t in a relationship, anyway. She had no claim over him at all.
“Cousin,” Desiree said.
No wonder she’d looked familiar. “Troy’s sister?”
“You know my little brother? I take no responsibility for any boneheaded thing he said.”
Tatiana turned back to Travis. She should have known better. What had she told him about her dad? Was there anything that he could relay to the police to help them find him?
“Does she work at the police department, too?”
Desiree answered for herself. “Just part-time, so I can be home with this little guy. I’m a sketch artist.”
Tatiana pinned Travis with her stare. “It wasn’t enough that you let those two guys ambush me at work today. Now you’re distracting me with delicious food so you can have another law enforcement agent show up to do a sketch of my dad? They have his mug shot on file.”
Desiree stared wide-eyed at her. Her son’s bottom lip trembled.
“No.” Travis shook his head several times. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“What is she talking about?” his cousin wanted to know.
“Desiree, this is Tatiana Davison, my co-CEO at Colton Plastics. And current houseguest.”
“Davison? Houseguest?” She spoke both words as though they were equally shocking. “Maybe I should just call the station and say I can’t come in, after all.”
“Now why would you do that?” Travis held out his arms to Danny, but the boy only stared at his hands without moving. “He’ll be fine with me. With both of us.”
“You didn’t tell me someone else would be here when I called,” Desiree insisted.
“Don’t worry. He’ll be safe. We won’t let anything happen to him again.”
Again? Tatiana was trying to make sense of his words when he finally turned back to her.
“Desiree was called in last-minute to the department for a case. She phoned while you were napping. She was looking for an emergency sitter for Danny. I volunteered us.”
“Oh.” Tatiana couldn’t decide which surprised her more—that a single man with no children had volunteered to provide childcare for his cousin or that he’d intended to do it with her. Was this a statement about his future role as a father or the way they’d co-parent their own baby?
To keep from asking those questions in front of his cousin, Tatiana spoke to Desiree instead. “I’m sorry for overreacting to your showing up here. It’s been a really long day.”
“That’s okay. I’ve had a few of those myself,” Desiree said.
Tatiana cleared her throat. “Did Travis say that something happened to Danny?”
His cousin nodded. “In January, he was abducted.”
Tatiana gasped. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. He was recovered quickly, with no injuries, but I’ve never been so scared in my life. So, you’ll understand if I’m just not comfortable—”
“I totally get it. I would be so nervous to even leave if it were,” she paused to clear her throat, “my son.”
She couldn’t imagine the fear and agony she would have experienced if someone had taken her child. Though she hadn’t even met her baby yet, the thought of a loss like that nearly dragged her to her knees.
“You do what makes you most comfortable,” Tatiana told her. “But I am happy to help Travis with Danny if you decide you can leave him.”
Desiree nodded but stood staring at her feet.
Travis stepped forward. “Remember, Tatiana isn’t accused of any crime. And we can’t help who our fathers are.”
His rough attempt at humor must have helped her escape from her dark thoughts as she glanced up and chuckled. “You’ve got that right. Why do you think I’m a single mother by choice?”
“So?” Travis pressed. “Do you feel comfortable enough to leave him? Remember, the whole family will descend on me like a wildfire if I so much as tear his fingernail.”
“That’s true.” Finally, Desiree nodded. “Danny, you get to play here for a while.”
Tatiana approached slowly then, the child regarding her with caution. When she was close to them, Danny reached out and came willingly into her arms. She wasn’t prepared for the warmth that spread inside of her. Perhaps it was the hormones from the pregnancy or simply the anticipation of holding her own child that autumn, but the sensation was startling and new.
As Travis closed the door, after receiving Desiree’s promise that she wouldn’t report at the station that Tatiana was staying with him, he turned back to her. They exchanged a look as tender as the range of emotions filling her.
“Guess, for tonight at least, we’re in this together.”
Didn’t he see that because of the existence of their own baby, his words spanned beyond a single evening? They were connected now, whether they liked it or not. She wouldn’t read more into their relationship than was there though. She’d made that mistake with him once before.
But that didn’t contain her curiosity. She wasn’t sure what to make of many things about him today, from his protectiveness of her and amazing cooking to
his kindness involving Desiree’s child. Tatiana was certain of one thing though: she really liked this softer side of Travis Colton.
CHAPTER 6
An hour later, Travis sank with a sigh back into the cushion of the sectional next to Danny, who sat with his legs spread wide as only toddlers could do comfortably. A pile of solid-wood blocks buried his tiny legs. Every minute or so, the child would try to toss a block over the back of the sofa, or, worse, into Travis’s lap, narrowly missing parts that were important to him.
“Guess the blocks weren’t a great idea,” he said, as he tweaked the little boy on the nose. He hadn’t thought the whole babysitting plan through, either, but it hadn’t turned out too badly with Tatiana there. How was he supposed to use this time with his cousin’s son to show off his childcare knowledge when he had almost zero of it? Was this supposed to convince Tatiana that he would be a good father to their unborn child?
His lack of experience with kids was just one of the reasons Desiree had been nervous about leaving Danny with them. Who could blame her for being cautious after her son had been kidnapped? If he’d informed her that Len Davison’s daughter was staying with him, cousins or not, Desiree would have turned him down flat. That was why he hadn’t mentioned it.
“Probably not the O’s cereal, either,” she said, as she pulled her head away from the cushion.
Tatiana pointed to his end of the sectional. “You’ll be finding those little treats in your sofa for weeks.”
“Now you tell me.”
“I tried. You weren’t listening.”
She pulled the blanket she’d tucked around her lap higher so that it covered part of her blouse. Though she’d napped earlier, she still looked as though she could have fallen asleep right there, even with the boy’s constant chatter.
“More,” Danny announced as he slid down and smeared his grimy hands over the coffee table.
Travis reached for the damp paper towel and tried to wipe the toddler’s hands again, but it quickly transformed into a chase game with a trail of giggles in its wake. Yeah, he could get used to this, he thought with a grin. Well, if he could learn to put up with a little more dirt. And if he could do better job with those little tab things on diapers than he had that night.
“I think you’ve had enough, buddy,” Travis told Danny, still laughing.
“Want more.” The toddler’s bottom lip quivered.
Travis froze. He didn’t know a lot about kids, but he recognized that waterworks were coming.
“Help,” he said out the side of his mouth.
Tatiana grinned. “CP co-CEO brought down by an opponent less than three feet tall.”
She climbed down on the rug centered beneath the coffee table and tucked her knees under her skirt, her pink-painted toes peeking out on one side.
“Want to build a house, Danny?” Already, she was gathering some cylindrical and triangular-shaped blocks off the floor and piling them on the table.
“House?” Danny called out.
Cereal forgotten, the toddler grabbed blocks from the floor and dumped them on the tabletop.
“Thank you, sir,” she told him, not batting an eye over the noise or the mess.
Tatiana collected more from the floor and set them side by side for a base. The next layer she rested lengthwise to construct a perimeter, and then she stood a few more on their ends. The boy squeezed in front of her and knocked the whole structure off the table. She just laughed. Caring for Danny was easy for her. Effortless. Would it ever be that way for him, even with their own child? Would he be able to let go and really enjoy being a parent? Would he love his child for the person he was instead of trying to make him or her into someone else?
“Hey, are we building houses or crashing them?” Tatiana asked, and then caught the boy around the waist and tickled his belly. More giggles erupted.
“That was a cool trick.”
“What do you mean?” She started putting the blocks back on the table, with Danny knocking off each one as she did it. “Are you talking about distraction? That’s an essential babysitting skill.”
“You must have babysat a lot.”
“Just a few times for neighbors. But, if I were to guess, I’d say this is the first time you’ve ever watched anyone’s kids.”
“Guilty.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Was it so obvious?”
“There were a few hints. Like when you offered Danny some water. In a glass.”
“Good save, finding that sippy cup in his bag.” He frowned, imagining the disaster that could have been.
“The O’s, too. I was surprised you let him eat or drink anything in here.” She waved her arm to indicate the great room.
“I’ll admit, it was tough, but in the end, it’s just a house.”
She gave him an odd look. “I was so glad that Desiree decided she could trust us with Danny. I’m not sure I would have been brave enough if the roles were reversed.”
Having heard his name, the toddler looked up from his demolition project, but the attraction of crashing blocks drew him back to it again.
“It was an awful time for our whole family,” Travis admitted.
“I didn’t remember the names of the people involved, but I had read about the abduction when I was here for my interview.”
They exchanged a look as they did every time either of them mentioned her earlier visit. Then she brushed her finger over Danny’s cheek, causing the child to squirm.
“I’m so glad everything turned out okay. Desiree must have been so worried. Didn’t the kidnapper turn out to be a grandma or someone, desperate to get police to look at her relative’s murder case again?”
“You have a good memory. It was a grandmother. Hannah McPherson was trying to help her granddaughter, Everleigh Emerson, who was accused of murdering her estranged husband. She was later exonerated, though.”
“You mentioned that case before. Do you know these people personally?”
“I do now. Everleigh’s my future sister-in-law. Engaged to my brother Clarke, the private investigator. He started out protecting her from her husband’s real murderer, and then, well...” He let his words fall away and then grinned.
“He was really attentive to his assignment.”
She tilted her head to the side in that endearing way he remembered from that night he was supposed to forget.
“Exactly,” he managed. “It was when Clarke and the GGPD started looking closer at Everleigh’s case that they started seeing inconsistencies in some of Randall Bowe’s other cases.”
“Guess we know how that turned out.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“I’m glad it worked out well for your brother and his fiancée.”
“That’s kind of you. I know it wasn’t great for your dad.”
The sadness filling her eyes squeezed something inside him that he couldn’t quite define. Did she feel alone like he did? At least she had an excuse. She was an only child who’d lost her mother, and her father must have become a stranger to her. How could his situation even compare to that when he was surrounded by more Coltons than should ever live in one city?
Tatiana lowered her gaze and started building again. With a squeal, Danny scrambled over once more to begin his demolition work. Travis couldn’t resist getting in on the action, sliding to the floor on the opposite side of the table and starting his own construction project. Delighted with that idea, the toddler moved between them to destroy both castles by turns.
“You’re going to be a great mom.” Travis licked his lips, surprised by his own words. But he wouldn’t take them back, either. He could easily picture her with their child nestled at her breast.
She lifted a brow when she looked back at him. “How do you know that? Just because I can distract a busy almost-two-year-old?”
“You’re a natural with him.”
“You’re the one who claimed to be a confirmed bachelor and just happened to have a whole set of blocks around the house for a kid to play with.”
“They weren’t so bad after all?” He waited for her headshake before he continued. “I only kept a few things when Mom insisted that my brothers, sister and I go through our stuff and clear it out of her house. I didn’t need any Little League trophies, but I wanted the blocks.”
He considered for a few seconds whether to admit more and then did it anyway. “I have the metal and the plastic brick building sets, too, but I thought the pieces might be too small for the little dude here.”
“Good thinking about the choking hazards. Your cousin will never leave him with anyone again if he ends up at the ER tonight.”
“She’s definitely had more than her share of parental scares.”
Tatiana pointed to the blocks that Travis had started lining up in a train track of sorts, which the boy was busy scattering with his foot. “Didn’t your siblings want any of that stuff?”
“I told you I had nothing in common with them. While they were playing cops and robbers, I was off in the corner building a skyscraper or an amusement park.”
“It’s no wonder that you ended up founding and building Colton Plastics. It was in you from the beginning.” Travis swallowed and kept working on his failing train track. He couldn’t risk looking at her. Was it because of her own engineering background that she just seemed to get him?
“My focus at Colton Plastics has always been on building a solid company, more than a specific product. Plastic businesses design and manufacture parts to meet other companies’ needs, like car interiors and exterior cases for printers, and I wanted CP to stand for quality in that arena.” He stopped as Danny dismantled the last piece of his railroad and shook his head, grinning at the mess.
“My business degree made me the right person to build CP, but it never would have worked without the engineering expertise that Constantine Niarchos provided.” He gestured to her destroyed block building on the table and smiled. “Now you’ll fulfill that critical role with a more appropriate title as co-CEO.”
Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021 Page 30
