by Meg Maxwell
From the way he was looking at her now, she had the feeling he was remembering too.
“Well,” he said, glancing away, “if you’re both all right, I guess I’ll leave you alone.” He turned to go, but Georgia sensed he wanted to stay, wanted a reason to stay.
She would give him one. And give Operation Dad more time to work.
“Nick, would you mind holding Timmy for a minute while I go wash my hands? I’ll be back in a second.”
He looked from her to Timmy and back again. “Okay,” he said, and held out his arms.
She placed Timmy in his arms and he lifted up his forearm to protect Timmy’s head and neck. “The more I think about it, the more I think someone must love this baby a lot to have left him with you. It must be killing his mother not to be with this precious treasure right now.”
He was looking down at Timmy. When he moved his hand to straighten Timmy’s little blue cap, Timmy reached up and wrapped his impossibly tiny hand around Nick’s pinky.
She heard his intake of breath and watched a smile slowly soften the hard line of his mouth.
Thank you, Timmy, she said silently, one hand on her belly as she excused herself to the restroom, giving Nick and baby their time together. Just what he didn’t even know he needed.
As she walked through the doorway she felt something furry against her leg and looked down to see a small black-and-white cat rubbing against her shin. “Well, hello, Mr. Whiskers,” she said, bending down to scratch along the cat’s back.
“I guess it’s just me she hates,” Nick said.
Indeed, the cat rubbed against Georgia’s leg again, glanced at Nick, and then padded away.
Nick laughed. “Told you.”
Georgia smiled. She’d work on the cat too. Nick would be a master diaper changer and baby burper in days, and he’d have that cat literally eating out of his hand. It was good to have a mission.
Chapter Seven
What Nick wanted to do this morning was get in his car—alone—and drive, blasting the radio or an old Rolling Stones CD and not think about that little hand gripping his pinky last night. Or how Timmy looked right at him with such trust.
I won’t fail you, little guy, he’d told Timmy last night. I’m making sure you’re well cared for. Georgia will take good care of you till I find your mother.
How did he know Georgia would take good care of Timmy, though, really? Instinct. He had faith in her. She’d survived a bad situation and had sacrificed herself and her happiness to ensure the safety of others.
That took courage. Courage she didn’t even seem to know she had.
But that didn’t mean she had to face being pregnant with their child alone.
He sat down with his mug of coffee on the living room sofa and leaned his head back. That meant going with her to the ultrasound appointment at her obstetrician’s office. Go. Don’t go. Go. Don’t Go.
At just before nine, Georgia came in—and this time she used her key. She wheeled Timmy in the baby carriage, parking it by the front door and lifting out the carrier. As she came into the living room, he realized she smelled like lemon. And there was chocolate in the ends of her hair. He resisted the urge to pull her against him the way he’d wanted to last night.
“Baking frenzy at Hurley’s?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
She smiled, setting the carrier down on the coffee table. “Some lemon bars, two kinds of pie and three chocolate layer cakes. Apparently, the two I made yesterday morning sold out after Harold Handleman had a bite and announced how good it was at his rancher association meeting.”
His mouth watered. “I’ll have to try it sometime.”
“You don’t think I brought you home a slice?” she asked with a smile, carefully taking a small box out of her tote bag.
He laughed. “I do have a terrible sweet tooth.”
“You’d never know it by the sight of you,” she said, her eyes sweeping the length of him as her cheeks turned pink. She shot her gaze to his as if determined to make clear she was no longer checking him out.
But instead of letting her off the hook, giving her the out and letting the moment pass into nothing, he held her gaze with exactly what he was feeling right then: desire.
What the hell are you doing, Slater? he chastised himself. Playing some kind of flirting game? The woman is pregnant with your child. You’re not interested in marriage or fatherhood—beyond living up to your responsibilities. So stop being a class-A jerk.
He shifted and grabbed his coffee mug off the table. Dammit, this was complicated. When he looked at Georgia, beautiful Georgia, he wanted to be with her in bed, exploring every inch of her. But when his brain caught up to below the belt buckle, he was aware of a lukewarm bucket of water knocking the fantasy out of him.
She lifted her chin and stared at him for a moment, and he got the feeling she could tell he was having some kind of internal war. “My appointment for the ultrasound is in an hour. I’d like to take a quick shower and get the chocolate out of my hair if you’ll watch Timmy.”
“Of course.”
She headed toward the hallway. “Oh,” she said, turning back. “I’m sure it’ll be fine for me to take Timmy to the appointment so you can get back to work.”
Ah, there it was again, something to force his hand. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to have to watch Timmy while you’re trying to focus on your own baby. I’ll go.”
She smiled.
* * *
Okay, if Nick had known Georgia’s entire family would be at the appointment to watch Timmy and to ooh and aah at everything, maybe he would have stayed home. Why had he thought she’d be all alone at the appointment?
That wasn’t the point, he reminded himself. The point was for him, as the baby’s father, to be present for anything related to their baby.
Georgia lay on the padded table in the large examining room, the doctor scanning her belly, while Nick stood anxiously on one side as her grandmother and two sisters stood on the other side, staring from her to the monitor across from them all.
He heard a communal gasp and looked from Georgia to the screen and almost gasped himself. He could just make out the face, tiny fused eyes, a bit of a nose, a mouth, arms.
“Oh, Georgia,” Essie Hurley said, dabbing under her eyes with a tissue.
Annabel slung her arms around Clementine. “We’re aunts!”
“Congratulations, you two,” Clementine said, looking from Georgia to Nick.
Nick cleared his throat. He offered a tight smile, the collar of his shirt suddenly feeling tight around the neck. Was it hot in here, despite the air conditioner?
He kept his eyes off the monitor.
“If you’d like to know the sex of the baby, I can tell you,” the doctor said.
Georgia was looking at him. “Would you like to know? I admit it—I would.”
Nick took a deep breath. This was about to go from “baby,” the future baby, it, to him or her. Son or daughter. This was about to get very real, as his sister would say.
“Okay,” he said, nodding, his stomach uncharacteristically full of butterflies.
“Georgia, Nick,” the doctor said, “Unless I’m mistaken and of course it won’t be one hundred percent until the baby is born, but I’m very sure you’re having a baby...boy.”
There was the communal gasp again. Georgia started crying and reached out her hand to him, and Nick clasped it, desperately wanting to pry her fingers from around his and run screaming from the room. Could an adult man do that? Could a law-enforcement official do that? Probably not.
The butterflies swarmed. He would have a son.
Suddenly, Georgia’s family was hugging him, hugging each other, hugging the surprised doctor. Nick glanced at Georgia, and the happiness on her face gave him some relief.
He wanted her to be happy. Especially because he’d never be the cause of that happiness.
As everyone was about to step outside the room so Georgia could get dressed, Nick’s phone vibrated and he pulled it out of his pocket in case it was police business. The chief’s number flashed on the screen.
Talk about perfect timing. “I’d better take this,” he said. He gave everyone another tight smile. “Congratulations,” he said to Georgia. Like a total idiot. And then he fled from the room, his heart beating like mad, sweat breaking out across his forehead as he stepped outside the building.
He gulped in the fresh morning air. Nick with a son. He shook his head, fear crawling around his stomach. He’d been someone’s son and only knew his father’s heavy footsteps, his father’s disappointment, his father’s rage. Everything he knew about the father-and-son relationship was inside that strain.
For at least five minutes he stood there practically hyperventilating to the point that he never did answer the chief’s call. Get it together, Slater, he ordered himself. Do what you do. One: assess the situation. Check. Georgia was really and truly pregnant with his child. If he hadn’t known that already, the image on the monitor made it crystal clear. Two: come up with a plan of action. Half a check mark—in that he was determined to do right by Georgia and the baby, though “right” certainly had its levels and layers. Three: act. Standing here like a frozen jerk wasn’t acting. If he was going to step up, he had to actually step up. He had shown up for the appointment, so there was that. “Act” had the makings of a check mark.
Dammit. He’d return the chief’s call, then go back inside. He had to buck the hell up and go back in, be there for Georgia.
She has her family with her. She’s okay.
The makings of that check mark on “act” began fading as he held on to that rationalization. He was about to press in the chief’s number when he heard someone calling his name. Someone out of breath.
“Detective Slater!”
Nick whirled around. Joe Black, a fiftysomething rancher with a spread about ten miles from here, was running toward him from the police station walkway across the street, panic on his face.
“One of Logan Grainger’s nephews is missing!” Joe shouted as he raced over, a bag of supplies from the hardware store in his hand. Joe and Logan had neighboring ranches. “Logan just called me to see if I’d seen the boy on my property. He was doing some fence work and let the twins tag along. Harry was showing him a frog he’d caught, and when Logan turned around, Henry was gone. He looked everywhere. I’m going to check my land.” Joe raced for his truck.
Oh hell. The twins were only three years old. Nick rushed to his car and followed Joe back toward the Grainger ranch, calling the chief and checking in and then calling Georgia.
“I’m sorry I left on you like that,” he said. “Turned out to be a problem at the Grainger ranch.”
“The Grainger ranch?” Georgia asked, worry in her voice. “Clementine babysits for the twins. Is everything okay?”
“Henry went missing while the boys were tagging along with Logan as he did some fence work. I’m about to gun it to get out there fast. I’ll see you and Timmy at home.”
He was on adrenaline and what he’d said barely registered, but it sounded funny to Nick’s ears, as if she was his wife and Timmy was their baby.
* * *
As Nick arrived at the Grainger ranch, about fifty acres heading up to the woods, two patrol cars were there as well as Chief McTiernan’s vehicle.
Logan Grainger, the missing boy’s uncle and legal guardian, looked distraught. His shaggy dark hair was full of bits of leaves and brush, indicating he’d done some searching already. Tall and muscular, he pounded the hood of his truck with his fist, desperation in his blue eyes. “I need to be back out there looking for Henry, not going over this again,” he shouted, getting in his pickup and heading up the dirt road toward where Nick had been briefed that the boy had been last seen.
Nick glanced at his boss, upped his chin at Logan’s retreating truck and quickly got back in his SUV to follow Logan. According to the chief’s debriefing on Nick’s way out here, two volunteer search-and-rescue workers were also out looking, focusing on the hard-to-see places on the other side of the fence near where Henry was last seen.
Logan got out of his truck a mile up and raced along the fence, looking for a child-size tear in the fence. “Here!”
Nick ran over and the two of them pulled the tear wider and they ducked through.
“Henry!” Logan called.
The woods were dense with evergreens, making it difficult to see very far. Nick, Logan and a search party that grew bigger every few minutes started off in opposite directions. Ten minutes later, there was still no sign of Henry. Nick checked in with Logan and the chief by cell phone. The chief had called a neighboring town’s police station to borrow their search-and-rescue dog, and the K-9 team would be here in ten minutes.
Everyone was calling for Henry, pushing aside brush and branches to the point that Nick wondered if he’d even hear Henry call out. Could he have tripped and fallen and was unconscious in an area they hadn’t yet searched? Why hadn’t he come running? How far could a three-year-old have gotten? This made no sense.
“Henry! Honey, can you hear me, it’s Clementine!”
Up ahead, coming through a thicket of brush, Nick saw Clementine, Annabel and Georgia taking part in the search. “Timmy’s with Gram,” Georgia called out as she continued to look carefully around her for the missing boy.
Nick nodded, his mind on the time, years ago, that a teenager had gone missing in the woods not too far from here. Nick had been thirteen and wanted to join the search party that was forming, but Nick’s father refused to take part because he was off duty. And halfway to being drunk. Nick had rushed out on his own and searched the woods, his face and hands scratched, but all he’d found were other members of the team. Finally, after two hours, the missing boy had been located, unconscious but alive from a fall. The kid had survived—no thanks to Nick’s dad.
Nick pushed aside the memory and scanned the area around him. Logan and the chief were coming from opposite sides of the forest, shaking their heads.
“He has to be around here,” Logan said, worry making his voice thick. “He’s too little to have gotten very far past where he crawled through the fence opening and not strong enough to push past the brush. He has to be near.”
Nick took off his sunglasses, squinting in the sunshine as he did a slow scan to his left. “Hey! There’s something glinting under that evergreen,” he added, pointing fifty feet to the left. “Something silver.”
“Henry’s sneakers have silver stripes!” Logan said, racing over.
All of them rushed over to the tree, its thick branches making it impossible to easily get to. A small opening led to what looked like some kind of den for a hedgehog or groundhog or prairie dog where the tree met the denser woods behind it. Logan began tearing apart branches.
Three-year-old Henry Grainger sat inside the little clearing between the opening and the den, just big enough for his hunched-over little body, tears running down his dirty face. His hands were caked with dirt and twigs were stuck in his light blond hair. “Am I in twuble?”
Logan gently helped Henry out and picked him up, holding him tight, his eyes clenched for a moment before he pulled back a bit and looked at his nephew. “Henry, why didn’t you come out when we were calling? We were all looking for you.”
Henry’s little shoulders slumped. “I wanted to find a frog too. But I didn’t.”
“You’re not supposed to go off by yourself,” Logan said. “These are big woods and it’s easy to get lost or hurt. Next time, just tell me if you want to find a frog, okay? And if you end up alone in the woods and you hear me calling for you, come on out or shout back, okay?”
“Okay,�
�� he said, entwining his arms around Logan’s neck. The little boy bit his lip; then his attention caught on Georgia’s sister Clementine past his uncle’s shoulder. “Hi, Clementine!” Henry called. “I didn’t find a frog. But Harry did.”
Clementine smiled at the boy, but if Nick wasn’t mistaken, she looked on the verge of tears.
“All’s well that ends well,” the chief said, calling off the search. He thanked everyone for coming out, shook Nick’s hand on a job well done, then tipped his hat to Clementine, Georgia and Annabel as he headed back toward the fence.
Nick watched Logan Grainger hug his nephew tight, Logan’s eyes glistening. Detective that he was, he caught Logan blink them away, slide a glance at Clementine that was full of tension and then turn away to face the small crowd. He thanked everyone for coming out.
“Detective Slater, I owe you one,” Logan said.
“Just glad to see your boy safe and sound.” As the search party dispersed, Nick glanced over at Georgia, but she and Annabel were deep in quiet conversation with Clementine, who looked very upset.
Ah. Something was going on—or not—between Clementine and Logan.
“I love you so much,” he heard Logan say to Henry, wrapped in his arms. “You and your brother mean everything to me. Don’t scare me like that again, okay?”
“Okay, Uncle Logan,” Henry said.
As Logan headed toward the fence and crawled back through the ripped opening, a posse had already formed to mend the fence. There was Joe, Logan’s nearest neighbor. The owner of the hardware store with wire. Even Officer Midwell, who couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything because of his crush on a coffee-shop barista, was rolling up his sleeves, ready to help.
“This town really knows how to pull together,” Georgia said from behind him. “I can’t believe I ever moved away, that I ever thought I’d be happy in the city. This is what I want. This is what I want for our son.”
Our son. Nick thought of that grainy image on the monitor, then stared at the ground, looking over at the tree where Henry had been hiding. What if he didn’t have that fierce love in himself that he’d just witnessed in Logan Grainger? What if his son went missing and Nick acted like his own father? What if caring, really caring, wasn’t part of his DNA? Yeah, he cared about his sister. But a kid sister wasn’t the same as a baby to raise.
