She had the same effect on the people she rubbed elbows with on a daily basis.
Rick had once ventured that Miss Joan had heard more confessions than all the priests within a fifty-mile radius put together.
The older woman lit up when she saw Rick walk through the door, a fond smile growing fonder when she saw that he was not alone.
“Whatcha got there, Sheriff Santiago,” she teased, coming around the counter to come closer to him. “A new deputy?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Rick answered. He carefully placed the infant seat on top of the counter, making sure that the baby was secure and that the seat didn’t wobble.
No longer being lulled by the soothing constant motion of Rick walking, the baby began to fuss and complain again.
Having come over on the other side of the counter, Miss Joan peered into the infant seat. She studied the infant for a moment, then raised her eyes to Rick’s.
“Looks like the little guy who was in here yesterday,” she told him.
“Do you remember what the people with him looked like?” Rick realized that the question had come out a bit testily. He was quick to apologize. “Sorry.” He kept one hand on the infant seat; the other he dragged through his hair. “This hasn’t exactly been one of my better mornings.”
Miss Joan smiled understandingly, then her brown eyes shifted toward the baby.
“I’m sure this little guy could say the same thing.” Leaning in closer, she cooed at the infant. “Where’s your mama, honey?”
“You remember what his parents looked like?” Rick pressed again, hoping that he would be able to get to the bottom of this fairly soon.
If the boy’s parents had really abandoned him, then there were consequences to face, but he was hoping a logical reason was behind this.
“I sure do, they were the only strangers here on Thanksgiving. They looked like two sticks,” Miss Joan told him. “One thinner than the other.” She frowned, recalling. “The guy hardly looked old enough to shave and he had one short temper. Kept complaining and telling the little bit of a thing with him to shut the baby up. The little guy kept fussing.” She smiled as she nodded at the infant. “Like the way he is now.”
“The baby’s mama seemed kinda tense,” Guadalupe Lopez, one of Miss Joan’s three waitresses and the only one who worked part-time, volunteered as she set down the sugar dispenser she was refilling and crossed over to them. “I thought she was going to cry a couple of times. I wanted to say something, but it wasn’t my place. The customer’s always right.” She raised her eyes to her boss. “Right, Miss Joan?”
“Most of the time,” Miss Joan amended. She turned her attention toward Rick. “I felt sorry for the baby and for his mama, but can’t rightly say I was sorry to see them all go. That baby’s daddy had a mean streak a mile wide. Didn’t want any trouble—” Her knowing eyes shifted to Rick’s face. “Unless it means that it would keep you hanging around here—and us—a little longer,” Miss Joan said, looking at Rick significantly.
So what happened between yesterday and this morning to separate thin parents from chubby baby? Rick wondered. “Did you happen to see if his parents were leaving town or if they were visiting someone?”
“Looked as if they were headed out of Forever to me. I heard the guy saying something about wanting to burn rubber.” Miss Joan slid her forefinger along the baby’s cheek. Her smile deepened. “So where did you find this little guy?”
“On my doorstep.”
The two women looked surprised. “Huh,” Lupe uttered, looking amused. “Don’t that beat all.”
“Not hardly,” Rick muttered. This didn’t make any sense. He definitely didn’t know anyone who resembled sticks. Why had they picked him to be the one they left their son with? Or had they picked him? Maybe it was just a random choice. “Look, I’ve got to go see if I can find these people and find out what the—” he glanced at the baby and switched words “—heck is going on. Would you look after him for me?”
He deliberately didn’t address either woman, leaving it up to them which one would say yes. When there was no immediate taker, he added, “I can’t take him with me while I’m running down his parents. No telling how long I’ll be out and I think the little guy’s hungry.”
The infant was back to shoving his fists into his mouth.
“I can see your point,” Miss Joan agreed. She pursed her lips as she looked at the infant. “I’ve got a diner to run and I don’t have much experience with short people.” Her eyes shifted over to the petite waitress. Lupe came from a large family. Eleven kids in all and she was the oldest. “Don’t you have a bunch of little brothers and sisters, Lupe?”
“Too many,” Lupe said with a sigh. “Why? You want one?”
“No, but…” Miss Joan’s voice trailed off, but her meaning was quite clear.
Lupe seemed to know better than to resist. Besides, it was obvious she thought the little guy was cute.
“I can take care of him for you, Sheriff,” she volunteered. She turned the infant seat around toward her and began to unfasten the straps securing the baby. Freeing the infant, she picked him up. “But make sure you come back.”
“Don’t worry, I will,” he promised. With that, he made his way to the door.
Rick was back faster than he intended.
Strictly speaking, he was back before he left. Opening the door, he was about to walk out of the diner when a statuesque blonde all but knocked him over. Contact was hard, jarring, and oddly electric as their bodies slammed together, then sprang apart.
Stunned, with some of the wind knocked out of her, the woman staggered, somehow managing to keep from falling, but just barely.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to run into you like that,” she apologized in a deeply melodic voice that reminded him of aged whiskey sliding down the side of a thick glass on a chilled winter morning.
His badge and uniform seemed to register belatedly in her brain and she added, “But you’re the man I need to see—” The baby made another noise, pulling her attention over to where Lupe stood holding the baby. Her eyes widened.
“Bobby!” she cried, appearing stunned and thrilled all at the same time.
Chapter Two
Trial attorney Olivia Blayne was seven steps beyond bone tired.
The twenty-nine-year-old had been on the road for more hours than she cared to think about, taking off the second she finally managed to get a lead on her younger sister’s location. That was thanks to an ex-boyfriend who knew someone who could track down the coordinates of her last cell-phone call, a service which, ironically, she paid for.
In reality, she’d been paying for her sister since the day their parents had been killed, victims of a senseless robbery at the small jewelry store they owned and operated.
From the moment she’d left Dallas behind in her rearview mirror two days before Thanksgiving, Olivia had haunted every roadside diner from there to here—a small town two steps away from the border—in hopes of finding her sister and her three-month-old nephew, Bobby.
Ordinarily extremely law-abiding, she had driven like a woman possessed, determined to bring both of them back to Dallas—preferably over Don Norman’s dead body, she thought bitterly.
But as the hours peeled away—and her stomach protested more frequently that she’d put off eating—Olivia started to despair that she was on a fool’s errand and was never going to find either her sister or the baby.
Robert Blayne, her father and ever the pragmatic one, had taught her to rely on logic; Diana, her mother, to believe in miracles. In Olivia’s estimation, she needed the latter, not the former. The former was far too daunting to think about now.
When she all but collided with the six-foot-something rugged officer in a khaki uniform, she found her miracle. Or at least half of it.
It took Olivia less than a second to recover and rush over to the young, fresh-faced Hispanic woman holding her nephew.
Her heart, all but bursting with
joy, leaped into her throat.
“Bobby,” she cried again, tears smarting her eyes. She blinked twice, refusing to let them escape. She’d always hated women who broke down and cried. Crying was a sign of weakness and she couldn’t allow herself to be weak, not even for a moment. Far too much depended on her being strong.
Olivia stretched out her arms to the infant, eager to take him from the petite, dark-eyed waitress.
Hesitating, Lupe looked toward Rick for guidance and he nodded. Only then did she let the baby be taken from her by the woman in the deep blue—and somewhat dusty—power suit.
Bobby felt like heaven in her arms. For a second, Olivia pressed her cheek against his, just savoring the moment, the contact.
“Oh, Bobby, I was beginning to think I’d never see you again,” she whispered to him.
Bobby wriggled, making a noise and seeking freedom. Reluctantly, Olivia loosened her hold on him, resting him against her shoulder. She’d discovered that, at least for now, it was his favorite position.
“So ‘Bobby’ is yours?” In Rick’s estimation, the question was a needless one, but he still had to ask it. There were rules to follow, even in a town as small and laid-back as Forever.
The question indicated that the sheriff thought Bobby was her son, so she said, “No.” The second the word was out, she negated her response, afraid that the man might think she was just some crazy woman, jumping at the chance to grab a baby.
God knew she probably looked the part, she thought, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the aluminum-covered bread box.
“Yes.”
The woman in the expensive suit looked just a bit flustered, her pinned-up hair coming loose in different sections. Rick allowed his amusement to show. “Is this like some kind of a Solomon thing?”
For a moment, Olivia didn’t answer. She hadn’t realized how good it would feel to have this little bundle of humanity in her arms again until she’d begun to believe that she never would.
“No.” Swaying just a little to lull the baby, Olivia continued to hold him against her shoulder as she looked at the man with the rock-solid chest and the annoying questions. “Bobby’s my nephew.” One hand cupping the back of Bobby’s downy head, she turned and scanned the all-but-empty diner. A sinking feeling was setting in again. Tina wasn’t here. “Where’s my sister?” she asked.
Rick had a question of his own for her. “I take it that’s the baby’s mother?”
At twenty-four, Tina had turned out to be much too young to be a mother. Or at least, much too immature. But, for better or for worse, Tina was still Bobby’s mother.
“Yes.”
Rick nodded, leaning back against the counter. “I was hoping you could tell me where she was.”
Damn.
Olivia focused on the small-town sheriff for the first time, her eyebrows drawing together as she did a quick assessment of the man, a skill she found useful in the context of her present vocation. She could tell if a man was being sincere, or if he was lying. The only time her ability seemed to fail her was when it came to Tina. But maybe that was because the thought of her sister lying to her, after all that they’d been through, was particularly hurtful.
She wanted to believe that Tina was better than that. Wanted to, but really couldn’t. Not any longer. Not after the disappearing act she’d pulled.
“Sheriff, I’ve been trying to find Tina and the lowlife who forced her to run off with him for the last forty-eight hours. All I know is that she should be somewhere around here.”
As she spoke, Olivia became aware that the matronly looking woman behind the counter, who was quite blatantly listening intently to every word, had placed a cup of coffee and a powdered bun on a small plate practically directly in front of her.
Olivia raised her eyes to the woman’s, an unspoken question in them.
The woman was quick to smile. “Thought you might need that right about now, honey,” the older woman said. “You look like you’re running on empty.”
Admitting a weakness, or even that she was human, was not something Olivia did readily, even to someone she’d never see again. But she had been turned so inside out these past few days, what with one thing and another, that the protest that quickly rose to her lips turned into a simple “Thank you.”
The next moment, giving in to her tightening stomach, she look a long sip of the inky coffee. And felt human again. Almost.
Watching, Miss Joan slanted a quick look toward Rick and then chuckled, pleased that, once again, her intuition had been right.
“I was gonna ask if you wanted cream and sugar with that, but I guess not.”
“Better?” Rick asked the baby’s aunt when she came up for air and set down the cup.
Olivia nodded. “Better.” Her eyes shifted toward the woman behind the counter. “How much do I owe you?” she asked, setting her purse on the counter and attempting to angle into it with one hand while still holding Bobby.
Miss Joan waved away the gesture. “It’s on the house, honey.” And then she winked. “It’s my good deed for the day. Everyone should do one good deed every day. World would be a whole lot nicer,” she declared with a finality that left no invitation for debate.
Rick had waited patiently for the almost criminally attractive woman to finish her coffee. He figured it would help her pull herself together. He wasn’t going anywhere and there was no hurry, but he did want some answers. Most of all, he wanted to know why the infant had been left on his doorstep. Was it happenstance, or was there some reason he’d been singled out?
“Is your sister an underage runaway?” he asked the baby’s aunt.
Olivia sighed. “Tina’s not underage, she’s twenty-four and technically, she’s not a runaway.” She set her mouth hard as she thought of her sister’s boyfriend. She had tried, really tried, to make him feel welcome—she should have had her head examined—and drop-kicked the jerk into the middle of next year. “He forced her to go with him.”
Rick raised an eyebrow. First things first. “Who’s he?”
Olivia laughed shortly. The sheriff had inadvertently echoed her own sentiments. Just who was the tall, gangly, brooding individual who looked like a poor, dark-haired version of a James Dean wannabe? Or maybe it was that new sensation, the actor who was playing a vampire, that Don fancied himself to resemble? Whoever Don Norman envisioned himself to be, he had managed to brainwash her sister, turning Tina into some kind of mindless lemming who would follow this worthless human being off the edge of a cliff.
Well, not while she was around, Olivia silently vowed. Not while there was a breath left in her body. If she had to, she would drag Tina back kicking and screaming and sit on her sister until she came to her senses.
But none of this did she want to share with a virtual stranger no matter how good-looking he was. Her sister’s insanely poor judgment was her business. It was not up for public scrutiny. “He is Don Norman,” she told the sheriff. The moment stretched out and she knew the man was waiting for more. “And ever since he came into my sister’s life, Norman has turned it upside down, and turned my sister into some pathetic, mindless groupie.”
“Groupie,” Rick repeated. The word had a definite connotation. He made the only logical connection. “This Norman’s a musician?”
Olivia laughed shortly again. Don thought of himself as a musician, but as far as she knew, he’d never gotten paid and was currently part of no band.
“Among other things, or so he says,” she replied crisply. “Mostly he’s just a waste of human skin.” She looked down at the baby in her arms.
Please don’t take after your father, she implored Bobby silently.
“Sounds like you don’t like him much,” Miss Joan speculated, wiping down the same spot on the counter that she’d been massaging for the past few minutes.
“No, that’s not true. I don’t like him at all,” Olivia corrected. “I tried, for Tina’s sake.” She patted the baby’s back, moving her hand in slow, small concentric c
ircles. The repetitive movement tended to soothe him. “And for Bobby’s. But it’s really hard to like someone who repays you for putting him up for six months by stealing your jewelry.”
“He stole your jewelry?” Rick asked, his interest in the case piquing. “You’re sure that he was the one who took it and not—”
Olivia saw where the sheriff was going with this and cut him off.
“Tina didn’t have to steal anything from me. All she had to do was ask and I’d give her whatever she needed. I have been giving her everything she’s needed.” Olivia pressed her lips together. And how’s that working out for you? a voice in her head jeered. “Norman’s the thief,” Olivia insisted. “He stole the jewelry, he stole my sister. I don’t care about the jewelry, that’s replaceable,” she told the sheriff, struggling to hold on to her temper. It wasn’t easy. Just thinking of Don pushed all her buttons. “My sister is not. And I am really afraid that something terrible is going to happen to her if she stays with the man.”
She raised her eyes to the sheriff’s. It killed her to ask a stranger for help, but she knew when she was out of her element. Tina’s welfare took precedence over her pride.
“Can you help me find them, Sheriff?”
He’d always been a fairly decent judge of character. He had a feeling that the woman before him was used to taking charge of a situation. Was this actually nothing more than a glorified matter of power play? Did she resent the fact that her sister had run off with a boyfriend she disapproved of?
“If your sister left with this Norman guy of her own free will—” Rick began.
Olivia knew a refusal when she saw it coming. Quickly, she changed strategies. “All right, then go after him for stealing my jewelry. I’ll press charges. Whatever it takes to get him out of my sister’s life and mine, I’ll do it.”
The Sheriff’s Christmas Surprise Page 2
