HIS BABY’S KEEPER

by Evelyn Glass

  “Yes,” Emma replied. She’d checked the list earlier when she was trying to decide what to do. There definitely was a Dean Grisham listed. “I just have to ask for ID.” She tried not to stare at the way his T-shirt stretched across his clearly well-defined pecs. And biceps. And the impressive definition in his forearms. That would be rude. Of course, maybe it was rude not to look? When someone was this gorgeous, wasn’t it a crime to remain neutral? Down, girl.

  “Oh, absolutely,” he said, reaching around to his back pocket. She noticed that he wasn’t exactly being subtle with the up-and-down glances, either. Which was a shame, really. If he’d seen her at a club, she might have appeared interesting — worn out jeans or a leather mini, a metal T-shirt she’d inherited from her dad and cut down to fit her, winged eyeliner and lipstick to match. It would have been a lot more tempting. Right now, she probably looked as cute as his mother. Or his grandmother.

  “I’m really sorry Abbey was running late,” he said, pulling his wallet out of a back pocket and opening it to show her a driver’s license. She looked it over quickly, then passed it back.

  “Come on in,” she said, pulling the door wide. He gave her a wide smile, but there was something off about it. Something tense. Mia was still in the classroom, gathering her things, and Emma took a moment to step in just a little closer. His entire body came into total awareness. That was interesting. It didn’t seem like a sexual reaction, but it wasn’t really guarded, either. She made herself focus. Not on the thin layer of hair she could see at the neck of his T-shirt, or the subtle interplay of muscles in his neck. Those were clubbing thoughts, not working thoughts.

  “Is Abbey all right? Do you need me to prep Mia for anything?”

  His eyes were wary, but not unkind. “I’ll take care of it.” He’d said the words in a firm tone that brooked no argument. Emma resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. She’d grown up with a million aunts in the kitchen who wielded spoons like swords. He might be able to cow other women with that kind of alpha male attitude, but he’d have to level up if he wanted to put Emma in her place. Of course, he was probably thinking of her as a kind of quirky school teacher, not a woman who was working her ass off to put herself through school to try and make a difference in her community. She tried to see herself from his point of view, and it was all too easy. She looked like a Spanish girl – pale brown skin, dark amber eyes, curly hair that was too wild to contain in the ponytail she’d used to pull it back this morning – trying desperately to pass for white in her I’m-gonna-fit-in-I’m-not-scary clothes. She looked like a damn clone, and she knew it. He stood out like a sore thumb, and he did it on purpose.

  She forced herself to back down. Verbal sparring was her favorite form of foreplay, but that wasn’t how things were going to end today. She was at work, and she was a professional. God knew there were plenty of part-time teachers at different centers around the city who were eager to make the leap from after school care to nanny, and from nanny to trophy wife, or at least kept mistress, but that had never been Emma’s game. Not that she cared, if that was how other people made their way through the world. They weren’t hurting her, and she wasn’t hurting them. But now that she’d let the thought in, she couldn’t shake the idea of this whipcord strong man pressing her up against a wall, pulling up her skirt and pushing down her leggings, plundering her body and finding out just how wet she already was.

  “See something you like?” he asked, his voice lower and more dangerous.

  “It’s all right,” she replied, and his mouth widened into a grin. He lost that gonna-hurt-you appearance when he grinned. He looked her age all of a sudden - mid-twenties - and interested. He shut down the expression as fast as he let it out.

  “Another time,” he said. “But right now, I gotta take care of the girl.”

  “Of course,” Emma said, stepping back. She could feel heat flooding her skin, and wondered if he’d noticed her blush. She was way out of line, and if he complained to Abbey, it could mean her job. She needed to be more careful. “This way.” She stepped back into the classroom, and then her heart absolutely stopped. The room was empty.

  ###

  Dean

  Dean forced himself to breathe as the pretty teacher turned away from him, her hips swaying gently as she walked. He didn’t know who she thought she was fooling, dressing all neat and prim – he could sense the wild girl underneath the layers. She was at home here, that much was clear, and he admired her for that. But she would have been just as at home dancing on a table, slinging booze behind a bar, or bent over a table riding his hand while he slapped the shit out of her round, plump ass. God, she was a looker, and she kept looking at him.

  It wasn’t that he lacked female company when he wanted it. But having your high school sweetheart die on you, especially in a gory and tragic fashion, just kind of sucked the will away. Especially because of Mia. She was his top priority, his number one secret, and there was no way he could have a serious relationship with a woman and fail to tell her about Mia. There would be too many giveaways, too many little things.

  He’d sworn to Sam that he’d give up riding when the baby was born. He had gone out for one last ride with Connell, just after Sam got home from the hospital. She’d gone out for a gallon of milk. A car jumped the curb while she was walking in, and crashed into her. She’d hemorrhaged, badly. She’d already bled after the baby, and the way the EMTs explained it, they couldn’t get it to stop because it was all internal and happening too fast. She’d bled out at the scene.

  He couldn’t give up riding after that, but he could keep the baby safe. The car hadn’t stopped after it had hit her, and no one had ever been blamed for it. Her story was tragic but ultimately it was easier for the cops to just shrug their shoulders at another dead black girl than it was to really investigate and find out what had happened to her. Abbey moved to town and Mia became hers. The kid called Abbey, Mommy, and called him, Uncle Dean, and he was okay with it. He wouldn’t be any good in her life as her father. He couldn’t keep her safe that way. But he still wanted to be close to her. How could he ever expect a woman to measure up to that when he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell her what was going on?

  He fucked a few women here and there, always keeping things safe, though he used his hands more often than not. No risk of causing himself more problems that way. But this girl in front of him, she caught his attention in a way that no one else had in recent memory. Maybe it was because she was close to Mia? Or maybe he was just on high alert, worried about what might have happened to Abbey. Both were very possible.

  The teacher froze, and every nerve in his body fired at once. Instantly, without hearing her speak, he knew something was wrong.

  “Mia?” she called, and there was something very wrong in her voice. He stepped closer, half expecting to see a man with a gun to the little girl’s head, but the room was empty. Somehow, that was much, much worse.

  The teacher moved into the room, and he followed her.

  “Mia?” he called. “It’s Uncle Dean. Where are you hiding, baby?” He didn’t know this room, the exits or entrances, and his desire to start tearing things apart wasn’t going to help them figure out what was going on. Maybe the child was playing hide and seek? Maybe she needed to pee? There was a backpack on a table, and he recognized it from Abbey’s house.

  “Mia!” the teacher called out again, and her voice was firm now, instead of nervous. “Where are you hiding?” The teacher opened doors to small bathrooms in the back of the classroom, then opened another door to what looked like a bank of offices. “Where did you go, sweetheart? Your uncle is here for you.”

  Dean stood still, his hands clenching and unclenching at his thighs as the pretty young teacher turned back to him, panic in her eyes.

  “She’s gone,” the woman said, and he was already reaching for his phone. “I have no idea—”

  He held up his hand for silence as he tapped Connell’s contact number. He was surprised it worked. He watched a
s she went to the small backpack and started to sort through it. Probably looking for anything out of the ordinary? He wouldn’t know what should and shouldn’t be there. That thought twisted him up more than he expected, so much that when Connell came on the line with his typical, “Yap?”, Dean choked for a moment before he could speak.

  “Henry,” he said, knowing that using the man’s given name would get his attention in a way that nothing else really would. “Shit just got worse.”

  Chapter Three

  Emma

  Emma’s pulse throbbed in her ears and throat as Dean picked up his phone and dialed. She assumed he was calling 911 until he said someone’s name, and that things were getting worse, like some kind of movie villain. She thought of walking to the staff room, grabbing her own phone and calling the police, but his gaze was fixed on her in a way that made her wary making of any sudden moves. She wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. He’d had the right ID, and he was on the emergency list, but ID could be faked. The list would be harder, but not impossible. Abbey had never mentioned Mia’s father, other than to say that he wasn’t in her life. Could this be some kind of custody kidnapping?

  No, that didn’t make any sense. Dean was on the list. More likely, if the father was suddenly back in the picture Abbey was caught up with him, and Dean was here to make sure that Mia was safe. But if they thought she’d been kidnapped, surely the first thing to do was to notify the authorities?

  Emma needed to think. How could someone have gotten Mia out of this room? The staff offices were closed off, and there was only the one door, unless…

  She grabbed Mia’s backpack — she didn’t know if Dean had noticed, but Mia’s inhaler was still in the bag, and that was potentially a real problem for the girl — and headed back into the staff offices. She didn’t have asthma flares often, but when she did, they were intense. Emma hadn’t been working at the center at the time, but she knew that last year, someone had to call an ambulance because Mia’s breathing had turned to wheezing so quickly.

  She’d glanced around the staff room quickly, looking for a little girl who might be hiding to play a silly game. Now, she looked more closely — and, yes, the table in the corner, which they used for meetings and which blocked the unused door to the playground, was out of alignment. As if someone had tried to pull it back when they had closed the door, but there was no way to get it all the way shut, not in a hurry.

  “Dean!” Emma shouted and heard his footsteps behind her. She went to the door, hauling the table out of the way. The door was unlocked and the screws that had held it shut previously had been removed. At a quick glance, she couldn’t tell when it had happened, but that didn’t matter right now. She pulled the door open and glanced around the playground. Yes — there. Across the long field, she could see someone running, a small bundle tossed over their shoulder.

  There was a small bloom of fear in the center of her chest, but most of her body was consumed by anger. Someone had taken a child, a child who was under her care, and from the limp way that the small body was bouncing, she had probably been sedated. Emma didn’t know a ton about asthma, but she knew that when her older brother had been sedated for surgery, the anesthesiologists had to give him different meds because sedation and asthma combined could lead into a deadly situation. Whoever that person was, did they know? Were they going to take care of Mia? It certainly didn’t look like it from here.

  She was already running before she had the conscious thought to give chase. She heard a male voice shout behind her, and assumed Dean was close on her heels.

  The jerk ahead of them had too much of a lead, though. He skipped through the gate around the fenced in playground and ducked into a waiting car — new model and dark paint, something American, but she wasn’t sure from halfway across the field — and sped off. She sagged, her breath ragged from the run. She was never a sprinter, although she’d been built for it: small and lithe. She was better at yoga, and endurance events when she did track, and why in the name of all that was holy was she thinking about this right now.

  Dean pulled up next to her, his eyes were sharp. He was still on his phone, and his breath was quick, but not ragged like hers. “Late model Ford, Explorer, black. Yeah, I know, nothing really distinct.” A pause. “No, you shithead, there’s not an airbrushing of the Death Star on the side.” A laugh that carried nothing like humor. “Okay. Get to work. I’ll see you soon.”

  He clicked the phone off, and she found herself looking at him, waiting for him to dial the police. He looked back at her. The moment grew and grew until it was awkward and uncomfortable.

  “Aren’t you going to call the police?” she finally said. Her tone was snappish. His eyes narrowed, and his lips tightened.

  “No,” he replied. “And it would be best if you didn’t either.”

  “I—” she sputtered for a moment, then forced herself to refocus. “I didn’t really introduce myself before. I’m Emma Mills. I’m one of the care providers here, and as such, I’m responsible for the kids until they’re picked up by their representatives. I’m a mandated reporter in this state. Do you know what all of that means?”

  He watched her, clearly waiting.

  She forced herself to keep going, pretending it was just one of her aunties glaring her down. She’d mastered that at sixteen years old. Some super-gorgeous man with stunning eyes the color of bronze was absolutely not going to convince her to back down. “It means that I’m legally liable for her. If I don’t call the cops, it’s not just that I could lose my job, I could be prosecuted for all kinds of things. Interfering in an investigation, child endangerment — they could even decide that I was an accomplice.”

  He nodded. “I understand,” he said, but his tone didn’t convey much in the way of understanding. “Go back inside. I’ll call the police. You just go ahead and go home.”

  “But —” He couldn’t be in on it. He’d panicked just as hard as she had when Mia hadn’t been in that room. There was something bigger going on, but he wasn’t a part of it. She needed to believe that right now if she didn’t want to just crumple to the ground in a pile of fear and tears. “The police will want to ask me questions. They’ll want to talk to me. To both of us.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Give me your phone number so I can give it to them. I’m sure they’ll call you if they have any questions.”

  She shook her head. “You’re a really bad liar, you know that?”

  He laughed. “I’ve heard it before, now and then. Look. I can’t call the police. I don’t know who has Mia, but I have some guesses. If I’m right, then things are going to go from bad to worse. Involving the cops is just going to make things especially worse.”

  “Where’s Abbey,” Emma asked, watching his face carefully. She saw his jaw tighten and his gaze flick away from her face. “She isn’t just running late, is she?”

  He was quiet for a long time, his gaze focused in distance, staring at nothing but seeing everything.

  “No,” he eventually said. “No, I think someone grabbed her, too.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m not sure. But there’s stuff going on in this town that you don’t know.”

  It was Emma’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised what I know.”

  He looked her up and down, and this time his gaze didn’t tell her about how much he liked her curves and her hair and the way she stood. This time he saw nothing beyond the costume that she wore to fit in with a bunch of rich, white women who sent their kids here for “after school enrichment” like it was a fancy babysitting service.

  “Maybe I would,” he said. “But the truth is, Miss Mills, that you’re in danger now, just as much as I am. That shithead saw you running with me, and pardon me for stereotyping, but I doubt it would be hard to pick out the Latina who works here. I’m guessing you’re the only one?”

  Oh, she wanted to kick him in the ankle. Or higher. Asshole. “Is this the part where you tell me that I need to come with you if I w
ant to live?” She hadn’t meant to say the word “come” quite as hard as she did, and heat flushed through her again. He smirked, the heat and spark between them pushing the danger back for just a moment — or maybe making it flare all the hotter.

  “Would it work if I did?”

  “No,” she snapped, which of course made it even more obvious that it absolutely would. Shit. Shit forever. “I love that kid,” she said after a moment. “I can’t let anything bad happen to her. They didn’t even take her inhaler.” She held out the small Star Wars backpack, emblazoned with the latest female heroine. Mia had been so proud the first day she got to bring it to school. She’d said that one day, she was going to be in a Star Wars movie.

  “Do me a favor and don’t scream, okay?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” She liked a little rough handling in bed, but that was not what was happening here. She tried to jerk her arm free, but she didn’t have the leverage and he was hustling her along way too fast for her to go for a pressure point or try to really twist around on him. She could go dead weight and force him to drag her, but the odds were he’d just throw her over his shoulder, and then she’d be in an even worse position.