First Comes Love

by Heather Heyford

  “Marcus is out of town on business. That means Paige is already shorthanded with her two, so I asked Ryan and Indra. They have three kids of their own. They were taking all six to the big playground in the park, in two cars so they had enough seat belts. You can imagine what their day is going to be like.” She grinned and rolled her eyes.

  “Actually,” said Alex, looking at his feet as they walked, “I have no idea. But it sounds kind of fun.”

  Kerry looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You really think so?”

  He shrugged.

  “Tell me. Have you ever changed a diaper? Stayed up all night with a puking kid when you yourself have the worst flu of your life?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about it. Got to admit, though, the boxing has been going better than I thought.”

  “It’s been the best thing that’s happened to Shay since we moved back to Newberry.”

  Alex shot Kerry a look of gratitude. “I said it before. Shay’s a special kid.”

  Kerry hesitated, weighing her next words. “She thinks you walk on water.”

  Tears stung the back of Alex’s eyes. He shouldn’t have invited Kerry O’Hearn into his off-duty life. She stirred up a barrage of emotions he didn’t know how to deal with. They weren’t even inside the winery yet and here he, Alex Walker, veteran detective, witness of countless despicable, violent crimes without so much as batting an eye, was on the verge of crying over—of all things—a child.

  He cleared his throat and switched his focus to the reason they were there: meeting the owner of one the valley’s premier wineries and taking a ton of notes for what was sure to be his best blog posting ever.

  “Is your cousin meeting us in the tasting room?”

  “He said he’d be here around two. It’s a quarter of.”

  “Gives us a few minutes’ head start.”

  Kerry squinted up at the sun shining through the dense canopy of green and sighed with obvious pleasure. “It’s so nice to have an afternoon off, without rushing.”

  Maybe I’m overanalyzing, thought Alex. Maybe it’s good Kerry came along after all.

  As they reached the tasting room and ascended the first step, Kerry’s phone rang. She frowned and paused at the top of the steps. “My phone’s on Do Not Disturb except for family.” She glanced at the screen. “It’s my brother. The one who’s watching my kids.

  “Hello?”

  Alex stopped along with her, his cop’s sixth sense going haywire.

  “Oh, no.” Her eyes, full of concern, flew to Alex’s. “How bad is it? Of course.” She paced across the porch, rubbing her forehead. “Um, let me see . . . no, how about you stay with Indra and I’ll come get the kids . . . yes, all six of them! . . . I can manage. She does? That’s insane . . . hold on.”

  She lowered the phone and took a deep breath before addressing Alex. “I really hate to ask you this, but my sister-in-law injured her eye at the park and she needs to go to the emergency room. Her own family’s in India and we’re more like real sisters than sisters-in-law. We’ve gotten super close, and she’s asking for me . . .”

  Alex cupped Kerry’s elbow and was struck to realize she was trembling. She, the invincible Kerry O’Hearn. “Whatever you need. Name it.”

  “It’s all so confusing, but young Seamus has a ball game at four, and if Ryan has all six kids, there’s no way he can legally get them all into the same car—”

  “Calm down. Get to the point.”

  “Can you follow me to the hospital in your car and then take my kids back to the farmhouse and watch them till we know what’s going on with Indra’s eye?”

  “Let’s go.” Alex’s hand slid down Kerry’s forearm, grasping her hand in his and, together, they skipped down the steps and made a beeline back to the parking lot, his excitement at meeting the Sweet Spot’s owner already gone.

  “Are you okay to drive?” he asked as they walked briskly to their cars. They hadn’t had so much as a drop to drink, but she was clearly shaken.

  She nodded.

  “We’ll need to transfer Ella’s car seat.” She pulled up short. “I just thought of something. What if you get called out on a case?”

  “I’m not on call.”

  “But—” Worried sapphire eyes ground into him.

  “For God’s sake, Kerry. Just trust me.”

  “Right,” she said, starting off again.

  Alex wasn’t fooled. She was only relying on him because it was an emergency. It stung a little. But this wasn’t about him. It was about three little girls who needed his protection.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Ella’s whimpering at leaving her mother with a stranger turned into a full-fledged meltdown the moment she, Alex, and her sisters exited the ER’s sliding glass doors into the bright haze of the July day.

  “Mommy!” she howled, arms outstretched over Shay’s shoulder, her face distorted in anguish.

  Ignoring the spectacle of her screaming baby sister’s hands grasping pitifully at thin air, Chloé calmly latched onto Alex’s hand and gazed up at him through impossibly long, pale lashes with a look of complete and utter trust.

  So, this was what it felt like to be an all-powerful god. He resolved to slay dragons for Chloé from that moment forward. Or at least until her mother got home.

  “Coach Walker? Is Aunt Indra going to be blind like Helen Keller?”

  “Helen Keller was blind, deaf, and dumb,” said Shay in a superior tone. She adjusted the bawling Ella on her hip. “Aunt Indra will probably just have to wear one of those black eye patches for the rest of her life, like in Pirates of the Caribbean.”

  “The doctors are taking good care of your aunt.” Indra was, indeed, in good hands. The girls, not so much. In his entire life, Alex had never so much as babysat one kid, let alone three. He had no idea what he was in for.

  “Mommeeeeeee!”

  Alex cringed. How could a scream that spine-tingling originate from lungs that small?

  A matronly woman on her way into the hospital gave him a bland smile, and Alex was sorely tempted to offer her half his weekly salary on the spot to accompany them back to the farmhouse until Kerry got home.

  But another part of him had the urge to prove to Kerry—and her girls—that he was perfectly capable of being a substitute parent.

  He lengthened his strides, swinging open the back door of his vehicle and putting Ella’s special seat in, then, satisfied that it was secure, moved aside for Shay to deposit Ella in it, and slid into his own seat up front.

  But then he immediately felt bad that he’d left Chloé to open her door for herself. It was his first glimpse of what it was like to be a middle child.

  He was shifting out of park when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw Shay, still leaning over Ella. “Pile in, Shay. This ship is sailing.”

  “I can’t just sit her in there. I have to buckle her in!”

  Of course. “I meant, after you’re done.”

  In the rearview mirror, he watched Shay buckle the squirming, screaming child in so tight it was a wonder she could still breathe, then slam the door and scramble around to the front.

  “I want”—sob—“Mommeee,” cried Ella, plucking at some random heartstring Alex hadn’t known he had. At least she had stopped howling. Now there were occasional breaks between sobs.

  They’d only been outside of the air-conditioning for a few minutes and already Alex was perspiring.

  “What’s that?” asked Shay the minute she got in, reaching for a switch on the dashboard.

  “Don’t touch that!”

  At the wail of the siren, Shay jumped.

  In the parking lot, people stared.

  Alex flipped the siren off and pointed his finger in her face. “Don’t. Touch. Anything.”

  Shay withdrew from him and huddled up against her door. “All right.”

  “Hungry,” sobbed Ella.

  “What does she eat?” asked Alex, pulling onto the road.r />
  “It sounds like you’re talking about a dog or something,” said Chloé.

  Shay was already absorbed in browsing the pictures on her phone screen. “Huh? Who?”

  He frowned. “Is that thing connected to the Internet?”

  “Uh, yeah. How else could I play my games?”

  “Shut it down.”

  “But—”

  It wouldn’t kill her to do without her phone for a couple of hours. “I’m going to need your help, okay? You’re the oldest. You know what to do.”

  “Hungry,” cried Ella again.

  Shay whipped her head around. “Mom usually keeps some animal crackers in her purse for her.”

  “Animal crackers?” His foot let off the gas. “Where do you buy those?”

  “Any store,” said Chloé.

  “Thrifty Market,” said Shay simultaneously.

  “Thrifty Market’s not on our way.”

  “Waaaaaa! Mommy!” wailed Ella.

  Recalculating.

  “Keep your eye out for any kind of food store, men.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.” In the rearview, he saw Chloé salute.

  God love her.

  Shay raised a brow. “I could look it up on my phone, if I was allowed to.”

  Alex pressed his lips together. In the short time he’d lived in Newberry, he had never driven the stretch of road between the hospital and the farmhouse.

  “Waaaaa!”

  “Do it.”

  Since when were twelve-year-olds able to shop online and navigate using GPS? Alex raised and lowered his eyebrows in the rearview, checking out his wrinkles to reassure himself he wasn’t quite as old as he felt.

  In the backseat, Chloé began singing to Ella, which, thankfully for his blood pressure, quieted her a little.

  A few miles down the road, when they pulled into the store, Alex automatically hopped out and headed toward the entrance before spinning on the ball of his foot when he remembered his precious cargo.

  Back inside the car, he pulled out his wallet and handed Shay a twenty. “You go. I’ll stay here with”—He nodded toward the back—“the prisoners. Oh, and if you see something you and Chloé like, get that, too.”

  “I hope she gets me a Snickers,” murmured Chloé a moment later as they watched Shay disappear through the glass door of the store.

  “What would you say the odds of that are?” He found he couldn’t take his eyes off the door, in case someone attempted to kidnap Shay.

  “What are odds?”

  He couldn’t have Chloé feeling slighted again. “Go in and tell her you want a Snickers.” He sighed.

  Left alone in the back, Ella started screaming again.

  “Hey, little baby,” he cooed in the rearview. Who knew he was capable of such a high pitch? He did a quick reconnoiter of the parking lot to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Don’t cry. Your sisters are coming right back.”

  He might as well have recited the Pledge of Allegiance for all the good it did.

  “El-la,” he sang, his voice cracking. He wished he knew the song Chloé had been singing. If only he had one song from his childhood he could draw on, but his mother had been too busy to sing to him.

  Wait. He knew one, from a book.

  “ ‘The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout—’ ”

  “Waaaa!”

  “Come on, girls,” he muttered. “Let’s get a move on.”

  But they still didn’t come.

  Finally, he got out, opened the back door, and fumbled around with the latch on Ella’s car seat. When it finally snapped open, the buckle smacked her in the face, her new screams making her earlier cries pale in comparison.

  “Oooh! I’m so sorry, baby! I’m sorry!”

  At last, she was freed from the contraption and in his arms, and he found himself gently bouncing her as he cuddled her warm, damp body against his chest.

  “Shhh. On your wedding day, you won’t even remember this. I promise.”

  He was dying to get a look at her forehead, hoping against hope there was no mark. That was just what he needed—returning Kerry’s kid to her with a welt on her face and no witnesses to back up his story—but he couldn’t risk changing position for fear of her getting hysterical again.

  “Hey, baby,” he cooed for what seemed like the hundredth time, stroking the back of her head where the soft, fine angel hair stuck to her scalp. “What’s the matter? What’s so bad that you have to carry on like that?”

  Ella frowned hard at him. But at least she had stopped screaming.

  “Your momma’s going to be back soon.” He made up a tune to accompany those words and began waltzing her around the parking lot, while still keeping an eye peeled on the door of the store.

  “Yes, she will.”

  Fingering a button she’d found on his shirt, Ella heaved a great sob.

  A moment later, to Alex’s great relief, the girls finally reemerged, Chloé biting off a chunk of a giant-size Snickers and Shay holding a bulging plastic bag in one hand and a fountain drink large enough to use as a vase in the other.

  “About time,” said Alex, putting Ella back into her seat, only to have her start to cry again. “Sorry, baby, but it has to be this way,” he said, all thumbs at snapping her in. Finally, he climbed back into the front. It seemed like they’d been on the road for hours.

  Shay sat down beside him, pulled a Hershey Bar out of the bag and, using her teeth, ripped the paper off the end.

  Alex held out his hand, whereupon Shay gave him a puzzled look.

  “Change?”

  “Oh,” said Shay, digging in her shorts pocket and dropping a few sticky coins into his palm.

  “That’s it?”

  “You said get whatever we want.”

  He peered into the bag to find it filled with candy and snack food, and his head fell back and hit the headrest.

  So be it. He told Kerry he’d watch them. He never claimed to be able to feed them properly.

  “Wait.” He stirred around in the bag’s contents. ‘Where are the animal crackers?”

  Shay’s eyes got big and her lips came unglued from the straw stuck in her drink. “Oh.”

  “Don’t tell me—”

  “We forgot,” said Chloé.

  “Jesus Christ Almighty.”

  “I’ll run back in,” said Shay brightly.

  “No!” Alex’s hand clamped down on her shoulder. “Do not get out of this car, or—” In the nick of time, he caught himself before he threatened to cuff her. He dug in the bag again. “Is there something in here Ella can eat?”

  “A Pop-Tart,” suggested Chloé.

  “Yeah, a Pop-Tart. They’re soft.” Shay opened the box and passed a foil packet backward.

  “Can you give her a hand with it, Chlo?” asked Alex.

  “My name’s not Chlo. It’s Chlo-ée.”

  “Chlo-ée. Can you please help your sister?”

  “Sure.”

  After what seemed like a year, they finally drove down a tree-lined lane until they came to an old, white clapboard house with additions extending off the main structure indicative of the diverse eras in which they’d been built. It was a great example of an early Oregon farmhouse—if you were into that sort of thing. It was also a maintenance nightmare. Alex pitied the poor soul responsible for keeping it up.

  Scattered in the driveway were a pink tricycle, a two-wheeler lying on its side, and assorted dog toys.

  Alex and Shay got out. “We’re here,” said Alex, looking around with his hands on his hips. It seemed like a minor miracle.

  He went to unbuckle Ella yet again and he almost choked. “What in the world—”

  Seeing his wrinkled-up nose, Chloé leaned into Ella and sniffed. “Ella go poopy?” she asked in a singsong voice.

  Ella grinned happily and nodded her head.

  “Don’t tell me that toxic odor is coming from that little cherub. It smells like the entire Sonics offense took a crap in a bucket back here.”r />
  “Ommmm.” Chloé clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “I said, crap. Crap’s not a bad word.”

  “Mommy says it’s not nice to say—”

  “Don’t you say it.” Alex pointed his finger at Chloé, and in the voice he used with the most hardened felons growled, “Not a word to your mother. Do you understand?”

  “Mommy said if a grown-up tells us to keep a secret we’re supposed to tell her right awa—”

  “Do you understand?”

  She nodded slowly, blue eyes as round as marbles.

  “Let’s go in.

  “What time’s bedtime?” he asked Shay.

  “Nine o’clock on a school night. But in the summer, we’re allowed to stay up later.”

  Alex wasn’t sure he would make it.

  “Can you walk, Ella?” he asked, trying not to inhale as he freed her from the confines of her car seat. The prospect of handling her in her present state was daunting. There must be a knack to carrying a kid with a full diaper, but in all his forty years, he had yet to learn it.

  “Nnn.” Ella reached for his neck in a stranglehold and buried her face in his shoulder, giving him no choice but to gather her into his arms.

  “Whew-eee!” exclaimed Alex as he carried her down the crooked walk paved with bluestones toward the house, her butt resting heavily on his forearm.

  Swinging her plastic bag full of goodies nonchalantly, Shay looked over her shoulder and said, “Sometimes she still has accidents.”

  His eye paused on an inflatable pool in the front yard filled with water, and he got an idea. He halted and looked around. Bingo. A garden hose, coiled up against the house.

  Alex fished in his pocket. “Come here and get the house keys, Shay,” said Alex, dangling them toward her. “Now go inside and empty that bag of candy and bring me back the bag.”

  Shay opened the door, and when she did, a dog of medium-size and indeterminate breed sprang out past her into the yard.

  “Hobo! Come back here!” Shay dropped her bag on the porch and tore off after him.

  “Don’t ask me to help chase him. Last time, I got poison,” deadpanned Chloé, strolling up behind Alex, gnawing at her second, or maybe it was her third, candy bar. There was a ring of chocolate around her mouth and a smudge on her top with the cartoon pony on the front.