Maggie's Guardian (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Adams, Anna

  She clamped her mouth shut to keep from crying out. He’d come. He was going to help them. Nothing bad would happen now.

  He lifted his arm, motioned for her to come down, and then stepped back into the darkness.

  She whirled toward the bed, but then eased Maggie into her arms. The baby stretched, mewing a soft sound that wrapped Tessa’s heart in a vise. She waited for Maggie to settle down and started for the door, but then stopped.

  Only an idiot would unlock that door and leave this room without even the semblance of a weapon. She couldn’t turn on the light, but she made a mental inventory of the things she’d brought along.

  Hairspray. If she got close enough to spray it in Joe or Eleanor’s eyes, she could run like hell. She eased to the bag she’d left on a chair beside the door and shifted Maggie so that she could hold the spray bottle and the baby. She twisted the bottle, so that if the baby grabbed it, the nozzle would be pointing out.

  She cursed herself for choosing the environment over aerosol.

  The lock made the faintest click as she turned it. She waited again, straining to hear any sound outside her door. No need to rush. She just had to get Maggie outside, away from her insane grandparents.

  She moved into the hall, concentrating with all her might on keeping her footsteps silent. She stepped, rolling her foot from heel to toe, and waited. Another step, heel to toe. Another wait.

  At the end of the hall, she faced a choice. A light still burned in the kitchen they’d used upon arriving. The living room Joe and Eleanor had left dark remained dark.

  She’d seen the outline of a door on the living room’s far wall. It would be farther from Noah than the kitchen, but she was willing to risk the extra distance if it was a room Joe and Eleanor rarely used.

  She started again—heel to toe. Until she’d carried Maggie halfway across the room.

  “Tessa, we know about you and David. Joanna told us.” Eleanor’s voice floated out of the darkness, a nightmare in the making that stopped Tessa dead. Eleanor had sat in this room, waiting. Knowing. “That’s what made Joanna unhappy,” she said. “Your affair with her husband drove her car into that tree. I wanted you dead for that, but now you’re helping Weldon spread that lie about Joanna using drugs. You can see we have to kill you.”

  Horror crept over Tessa’s scalp. “Joanna was wrong about David and me. We were friends, and you killed him for no reason.”

  “I don’t expect you to admit the truth.” Joe spoke from somewhere between her and the door.

  Tessa turned her head toward the sound of his voice, thinking fast. She could still reach the kitchen. That put her closer to Noah anyway.

  “I don’t want Joe to hurt you in front of the baby,” Eleanor said. “In a way I’ve grown fond of you. I don’t know how you could wreck Joanna’s family—steal her husband, arrange to take her daughter and then start carrying on, within days of David’s death, with Noah. But you love Maggie. I’ll give you that.”

  “I do love her. And I won’t let you touch her. You’re sick, Eleanor.”

  “A sick woman can’t plan with my wife’s cunning.” Joe sounded proud. “You seemed to forget we were in the house. We overheard everything you and Noah said—to each other—him to his office.”

  “I treated you as my family.” Not that they seemed to mind killing family.

  “You gave us everything we needed. That Sloma guy’s name. Eleanor dictated that file to me. And then she knew Noah wouldn’t be able to resist being the big hero for that woman in Boston, so she had me call Baxton.”

  “What’s your role, Joe? You just do the stabbings?”

  “And I used your flashlight on the deputy outside your house tonight. I’m still strong for my age. But maybe having a vendetta keeps you young.”

  If she thought too long about what he’d done to David, she’d fall through the floor, and she might hurt Maggie on her way down.

  “Tessa?” Joe’s sharp tone implied she might have been trying to escape in silence.

  Light flooded the room. Tessa, blinking, didn’t dare move. They wouldn’t set out to hurt Maggie, but she might wake in a grumpy mood, and Tessa didn’t want to test Eleanor or Joe’s patience with a crying baby.

  “Give me my granddaughter.” Eleanor stood, arms outstretched.

  Behind her, along the wall, they’d hung all the pictures Noah had said were missing from David’s house. Joanna smiled from the photos, and Maggie laughed. David had been blotted out. In each photo of him, they’d simply taken a marker and painted him out, then hung the photos as if they didn’t see the inky blobs.

  “What did you do?” Tessa breathed.

  Eleanor glanced around. “He had no right to those pictures of my baby. Look how happy she was. He took her from us, and then he tried to take Maggie.” She looked back, madness lighting eyes that had only glowed with warmth before tonight. “Just like you thought you could take Maggie.”

  Tessa backed one step toward the kitchen.

  “Stop,” Joe said.

  “Give me our girl.” Eleanor held out her arms.

  Tessa backed up again, keeping them both in front of her. “I won’t even let you hold her, after what you did to David.”

  “After what you did to him, you mean.” Joe leveled a gun at her. “You stole him from his family. He thought he could keep Maggie away from us after Joanna died. He hired that lawyer to tell us we might lose any rights to Maggie if we didn’t stop telling her the truth about him.”

  “She may be a baby, but she had to know the truth about her father,” Eleanor cut in. “I’ll make sure she grows up hearing the truth so she won’t ever trust a man like David Howard.”

  “I killed him, and I won’t mind killing you the same way.” Mired in his anger, Joe didn’t seem to notice his wife had spoken. “I want to see you suffer. When I think what you did to my daughter…”

  “I helped her find treatment, and I would have helped her again, if I’d known.” Tessa turned to Eleanor, moving ever steadily toward the kitchen. If Noah had seen the light, he’d know they’d been waiting for her. He’d come. “Eleanor, you’re the one she didn’t want to disappoint. She lied to you about David and me as an excuse—and if you knew she was using, you should have persuaded her to go back to the rehab center.”

  “She didn’t touch drugs. She wanted to die because you started an affair with her husband while she was giving birth to his daughter.”

  At Eleanor’s low, furious tone, Maggie jumped. Tessa arched her hand over Maggie’s eyes, to shield her from the light—and to make it easier to grab the hairspray wedged between their bodies.

  “Give me my granddaughter.” Joe came at her. “I’m going to stop your filthy lying, and I want Maggie.”

  “Joe, wait. Don’t hurt her in front of the baby.”

  “She’s asleep, honey. She’ll never know—”

  Tessa took advantage of their concentration on each other to speed into the kitchen.

  Behind her, the door burst open. Joe raced at her, waving the gun. Tessa snatched the hairspray bottle, prayed the nozzle was aiming at his face and sprayed. It hit him but hardly slowed him. A hand yanked her from behind, and suddenly Noah was in front of her.

  He and Joe stood, toe to toe, gun to gun.

  “I want to kill you, Joe. Please don’t put that gun down.” Twisted pleasure in his voice turned him into a stranger, and fear ripped through Tessa.

  “I don’t intend to give up,” Joe said. “I was hoping you’d make it in time.”

  “No.” Tessa reached for Noah’s arm, but her hand didn’t even cover half the girth of his flexed muscle, and he shook her off.

  “Get out of here.” His voice brooked no argument.

  “If she moves, I’ll kill you.”

  Tessa believed Joe. She didn’t move.

  “Think of Maggie,” Noah said.

  “They won’t hurt her.”

  “You don’t know for sure. Remember what they did to David, and get out of this h
ouse.”

  He turned his head as if to look at her, and Joe must have relaxed. In that instant, Noah moved.

  And Joe hit the floor, his gun skidding toward Tessa. Eleanor dashed into the kitchen, her hands curled like claws as she went for the baby.

  Noah pointed his own weapon at her. “Don’t.”

  “You won’t hurt me,” she said.

  “I’m dying to hurt you. For what you did to David, for the way you’ve made Tessa grieve. You and your husband deserve to die, and I’m sick of your kind.”

  Folding Maggie, restless, but still mostly asleep, to her breast, Tessa gasped a breath. “Noah, where are the police?”

  “I sent them to the bottom of the driveway. They’re probably rushing the hill.” He cocked his gun at Joe. “They won’t get here in time to save you. They’ll wait for a signal as long as we’re quiet, which means they won’t come in until they hear me shoot you.”

  Tessa grabbed his arm again. “You can’t.”

  “I’m not out of control.” Terrifying satisfaction curved his mouth in a smile that left her aching to scream. “These two are lunatics. They’re going to do a little time and get out. For all we know, they’ll come after you and Maggie again. I lost my father. I lost my daughter, and for a while I lost you. Now I’ve found you and Maggie, and I don’t plan to lose anyone again. I’m going to destroy the problem, Tessa. That’s all.”

  “You don’t have the guts,” Joe said. “You actually believe in the system. You threw your life away. No one took anything from you.”

  Noah aimed. “Tonight I’m a man who finds joy in fixing my problem.”

  Tessa shook his free arm. “You don’t know how to kill. You do your job because you still want to save your dad and Keely. You have saved Maggie and me.”

  “I don’t plan to clean up after your murder.”

  Tessa stepped in front of him. “You’ll have to shoot me first.”

  His beautiful mouth twisted with fury. “What are you doing? They butchered your best friend. They want to kill you.”

  “I’m not going to lose you. Don’t let them turn you into a murderer. Put the gun down and let the police take them. You come home with me and Maggie. Be my husband and her father—not a killer.”

  Hatred left his gaze, and love replaced it. Tessa nearly cried out in relief.

  Behind her, Joe actually growled. She turned. On his feet again, he pulled a knife from his sock, like a damn B-movie villain. “I gave you a chance, Tessa Gabriel, but you didn’t take it. Now, you die.”

  Noah fired and jumped to shield her at the same time. On her way to the floor, Tessa’s only thought was to cushion Maggie, who finally woke and wailed in terror. Tessa found herself completely covered by a male body she would recognize if she didn’t see Noah again for sixty years. She tensed beneath him as they both waited for the stabbing blade.

  Nothing happened. The only thing she felt was Noah, protecting her with his own life.

  She twisted her head, but Noah cupped his hand over her face as if he could shield her with a thin barrier of bone and skin. Through his splayed fingers, she watched Eleanor grab Joe’s knife.

  “The sirens, Joe,” she said. “The police are coming.”

  Without making a sound, Noah uncoiled from the floor. Again, with movement so swift Tessa hardly saw what he was doing, he took the knife from Eleanor and threw it at the sink. Then he grasped the older man’s wrists and pushed him to the ground.

  “I want you dead,” Joe shouted.

  With a knee to his back, Noah cuffed him and drew his gun from the waistband of his jeans before Eleanor could take more than a few steps toward the sink.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Shoot. I have nothing to live for if I can’t kill your wife.”

  “Don’t say anything else.” He shoved Joe and rose, planting his foot in the small of the other man’s back. “If you can persuade him to shut up, he’ll be better off, too.”

  Scrambling to her knees, Tessa unzipped Maggie’s puffy snowsuit and checked her little body to make sure she hadn’t been hurt when Noah threw them to the floor.

  “May I hold her one last time, Tessa?”

  Eleanor’s pitiful voice dragged back all the pain Tessa had known at losing her own child. Eleanor would never see Maggie again, but the knowledge of how long never lasted weakened Tessa. Until she remembered how desperate Eleanor had been to destroy them all. With no hope of keeping Maggie for herself, what might she do?

  Tessa climbed to her feet, balancing the baby. She carried Maggie, still whimpering, to shelter in the warmth of Noah’s long, strong body. He wrapped his arm around her. His heart pounded like a jackhammer against her shoulder. His free hand clenched convulsively, biting into her waist.

  The only risk Tessa ever intended to take again was the sure one of loving Noah. “I don’t think so, Eleanor.”

  EPILOGUE

  “COME LOOK,” Lucy Gabriel said.

  Dusty and hot, Noah and Tessa turned from trying to hook up the dryer vent. He glanced at his bride. A line of dust crossed her sweatshirt, from shoulder to waist. The people who’d sold them this house hadn’t bothered to clean much before they’d left.

  Tessa didn’t mind. She said they had to claim every nook and cranny to make it their home. Noah doubted the need, but he didn’t say so out loud. Tessa knew some things better than he did.

  As if she felt his gaze on her, she looked up, and a soft smile begged him to take her mouth for the millionth time since their wedding the week before.

  “Cut that out and come with me,” Lucy said.

  Grinning, Tessa grabbed a handful of his shirt, and they followed Lucy in her astoundingly pristine white caftan, into Maggie’s playroom. Lucy had been unpacking boxes while Maggie had reacquainted herself with her toys and books. At the door, Lucy pressed her finger to her lips and pointed.

  Though snow still lay high on the ground outside, sunlight splashed through the window to warm the mountain of packing paper and the baby curled up on top of it.

  “She wore herself out,” Lucy said. “She was tearing and inspecting and singing, and then all of a sudden, she climbed to the top and passed out.”

  Tessa toed the bare, light pine floor with her filthy sneaker. “Should we put her in her crib? She might hurt herself if she rolled onto this.”

  “I’ll take her.” Lifting Maggie still felt awkward to Noah. He’d made himself forget what being a father felt like, but he cradled her against his chest, and she felt right in his arms.

  Tessa linked elbows with his mom and they both beamed as if they’d created him from the ground up. He allowed them their moments of Mother Earth serenity. They liked to feel in charge.

  The second he reached the hall, the phone shrilled from his and Tessa’s bedroom. Maggie arched as if she were a cat about to fall, and then she screeched as if she knew she wasn’t going to land on her feet.

  “I’ll get it.” His mother flew past them, startling Maggie even more with her fluttery white dress.

  With impressive outrage, the baby howled until he turned her to his shoulder where she got a better view of her new world.

  “It’s for you, Noah.”

  He turned into the bedroom, using his knuckle to wipe away Maggie’s tears.

  “He says he’s the mayor,” Lucy whispered. She handed him the phone and took the baby. “Offer him pizza and ask him to come help unpack.”

  “Mom.” He buried the phone in his sweatshirt. “He’s my new boss, and aren’t you still dating—”

  “I like Vermont.” She winked. “And after two days with the three of you, I’m thinking I might just take a whack at commitment if I found myself a nice, steady mayor. You’d better answer, son. He sounds anxious.”

  She flitted away, and he reminded himself she’d been a good mom. She’d looked after the baby so he and Tessa could have a honeymoon, and he had plenty of time to caution her about influencing Maggie in adolescence.

  He lifted the
phone, but he’d barely said hello before the mayor, who’d labored hard to talk him into the job as Holden’s Chief of Police, started filling him in on plans for his first day.

  In fact, if he wanted to drop by this afternoon, they could start his paperwork.

  They’d agreed on a couple of days to let Noah and his wife and child settle in to their new house. “I can’t come to the office today,” Noah said.

  “But I want to talk to you about a safety program for the high school. I thought we might include instruction for new-driver etiquette with our substance-abuse program.”

  Noah glanced at the phone. If teenagers in Holden, Vermont, studied etiquette of any kind, they were kids like he’d never known.

  “Oh, and by the way, welcome to your new hometown,” the mayor said.

  “Thanks.” Paper rustled behind Noah, and he turned to find Tessa unpacking a box he’d set at the foot of their bed. He’d put Keely’s pictures in that box. “I have to go,” he said, “but I’ll see you on Monday morning, and you can fill me in on the rest of my duties.”

  He doubted his ability to stay busy in a town that was even smaller than Prodigal, but, as Tessa had pointed out after he’d almost killed Joe Worth, he might be due for a break from big-city crime.

  He’d scared himself that day, thinking he could right all wrongs, win back all he’d lost, by destroying the killer who’d tried to take the most from him.

  “I’ll pick you up, Noah. You’ll be lucky if we don’t plague you with a parade—been trying to fill this post for nearly a year.”

  He should have held out for a higher salary. He didn’t look forward to his wife being the major breadwinner again. “Thank you, sir. A parade would be uncomfortable, but we can talk about that safety program. I’ll talk to you Monday.” He hung up and took the top picture from Tessa, uncertain she was ready to see it.

  “Where’s Maggie?” he asked.

  “Your mom took her downstairs for a snack.”

  “I hope they don’t try to make s’mores in the fireplace.”

  “What is that?” She pointed to the picture frame upside down in his hands.