Saving Madeline

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “Sounds perfect. That way if you don’t like it you can take your time to find something better.”

  “I’ll probably need a different place for Madeline when she stays with me.” The words came with difficulty, because having Madeline with him seemed almost impossible at the moment. He was glad Caitlin didn’t remind him just how impossible.

  Darkness had fallen while they’d been in the building, and the moonlight reminded him of last night when they’d been alone in the darkness of her house. “Caitlin,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her. But he couldn’t make her feel the same for him. “Nothing.” With effort he turned and strode toward his truck.

  Chapter 16

  You’re going to what?” Sally asked, practically yelling the words.

  Caitlin had to hold the phone away from her ear because the sound threatened to break her eardrum. “Stop screeching!”

  “Well, you can’t be serious about taking Amy with you to dinner. You complain all the time about how she gets when she’s tired, and you sound as if you’re about to drop yourself.”

  “It’s been a long day,” Caitlin admitted. “Maybe I should just go home.”

  “No, you deserve a dinner out, and you said yourself you had things you had to discuss with Parker.”

  “Nothing that can’t wait. Keep in mind that usually I don’t even see my clients more than once before trial.”

  “Parker’s not just anyone.”

  “I know.”

  “Ah,” Sally said, her voice rife with meaning.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m picking up Amy, and I’ll take her home to play with Randi. It’s been too long since they’ve been together. And Tony loves Amy, you know that.”

  “It’s not necessary, Sally. I’m really worried about setting her off again.”

  “Nonsense. She loves coming to my house. She’d live there if you’d let her. Now stop worrying and go out and have a nice, quiet dinner. And if something interesting presents itself, go for it.” Sally hung up.

  Something interesting? Sally’s suggestion was altogether too close to Caitlin’s private thoughts for comfort. She glanced in her rearview mirror where she could see Parker’s truck following her. She turned on her blinker and pulled out of traffic. As Parker followed her to the side of the road, she dialed his phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Change of plans. Sally butted in and is taking Amy to play with her daughter. So we don’t have to pick her up.”

  “Are you still all right with having dinner?”

  She should say no. “Sure.”

  “Great. You know what? My new apartment is just down the street and around the corner. Why don’t we lose one of these vehicles at the apartment complex and go together?”

  “All right.” Then in case she sounded too eager, she added, “We can talk about your case on the way.”

  A few minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex at the edge of town. It wasn’t top-of-the-line, but it didn’t look seedy, either. “Want to come with me in the truck?” Parker asked.

  “I’d rather take my car.” That gave her some power, at least.

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Fine.”

  “Aren’t you going to peek inside your apartment?” She was curious, she had to admit. What about roommates? He hadn’t mentioned those. “You might need something they don’t have—sheets or whatever. I can lend you some until you can get down to your mother’s to get your things.”

  “Leave it to a woman to think of that. Remind me again after dinner, and I’ll run inside before you leave.”

  Caitlin planned to make sure she also went inside to check out the place. She told herself her interest was as his attorney—she had to make sure everything looked good when they went to court—but she was honest enough to admit to herself that it wasn’t her only interest.

  “Well?” he asked as she drove from the parking lot. “Where are we heading?”

  Caitlin shrugged. “I was thinking of Golden Corral, mostly because of Amy. It’s one of her favorites, but if she’s not with us, how about Marie Callender’s? The food’s decent, and I really love their pecan pie.” It was also more reasonably priced than the really excellent restaurants, and if Parker insisted on paying, she didn’t want to stick him with a huge bill. He’d likely need every asset he could gather to fight for his daughter.

  “Fine. Anything sounds good to me, as long as it’s edible.”

  She laughed. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d eaten at as many restaurants as I do.”

  “Hot dates?” He gave her a crooked smile.

  “A lot of working lunches. It’s part of the game.”

  He tilted his head and as the oncoming cars passed, illuminating his face, she could tell that he was considering her words. “Do you enjoy being a lawyer?”

  Her first idea was to spout off the same platitudes she told everyone when this question came up—that she loved her work but the hours were sometimes a challenge. And then whip into some funny story about one of her past cases that would make them laugh and forget they’d ever tried to ask her such a personal question.

  “I’m good at being an attorney,” she said instead. “I don’t know what else I would do.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  “I know, but that’s too hard to answer.”

  “Why?” He seemed honestly curious.

  “Because some days I love it so much I want to sing.” She smiled. “There’s absolutely no better high than doing a great job and seeing the law work as it’s supposed to. But then there are the other times, far too many of them, when you wish you never had to see another criminal again.”

  “I suppose it’s worse being a legal defender.”

  “You see a lot of evil everywhere, but it does seem lately that I’ve been given more than my share of the really bad guys.” She thought of Belstead and shivered. “I should be flattered, though, because the harder and more serious the case, the more they trust you. It might even end up reflected in my pay someday.” She’d reached the restaurant now and pulled into the parking lot. Parker was silent as she searched for an empty spot. “There,” she said, turning the wheel and coming to a stop. She set the emergency brake and glanced at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  His stare made her feel uncomfortable. “For what?”

  “For being one of those criminals.”

  “What are you talking about?” She made no effort to hide her surprise. “You’re one of the innocent, Parker. The ones I set out to protect way back when I was in law school.”

  He grinned. “Well, I’m glad I’ve convinced you of that.”

  “You don’t have to worry. All I need is a little evidence, and we’ll not only get you free of these charges, we’ll bring Madeline home.” She meant his home, of course, but the way it came out seemed as if she was referring to a home they shared. Suddenly feeling self-conscious, she busied herself collecting her keys and purse.

  “So do you like your work?” she asked as they walked into the restaurant.

  “Actually, I do. I like working with my hands and building things, and it’s not bad pay if you work your way up. I’ll be taking out my contractor’s license soon, after I’m sure I have a feel for everything.” He held the door open for her. “Then I’ll be doing my own projects.”

  “Did you always like to build things? I mean, I was always pretending to go to court as a child. Poor Amy was accused of more wrongdoings by the time she was five than most people are in ten lifetimes.”

  He laughed. “I bet. I can just see you.”

  “Of course I always got her off.”

  “What about now? Do you always get them off? The innocent ones, I mean.”

  Their hands brushed, sending a jolt of electricity through her veins. She swallowed hard. “Always. So far.”

  “Good
.”

  Yet she’d always known there would come a time in her career when she might not win the case that should be won at all costs. It was assumed that such a thing would eventually happen in every career. She and other students had held endless debates about such an event in their college days, but so far she’d been able to win any case where she honestly believed the client to be innocent. Of course, in her line of work that might not be saying much, since she mostly defended the guilty.

  Mostly.

  She hoped her time to fail hadn’t come with Parker. She didn’t know if she could live with herself if he ended up behind bars. Stop it, she told herself. I’ll find what I need to prove he was acting in Madeline’s best interest. Or at least that he thought he was.

  “I built a lot of things when I was young,” Parker said. “Though sometimes my family didn’t appreciate it when I borrowed their belongings to use in construction.”

  “Something tells me there’s a story or two behind that statement.”

  “My brother wasn’t too happy when I used his bike to build my two-level go-cart. Or go-bus as my friends and I called it.”

  “Go-bus.” She had to smile at that.

  “Yeah, it fit all three of my close friends, too. You should have seen us cruising around town.”

  “What’d your brother do?”

  “He didn’t talk to me for two weeks.” He winked. “That was actually a blessing. Because when he did talk he was always trying to get me to do something I didn’t want to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like my chores, my homework.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  They fell silent as they were taken to a table, and then Parker spoke again. “I had to pay for the bike. I didn’t know it then, but my father was teaching me responsibility.” The words came out low and thoughtful, and Caitlin had the impression that something in the memory had made him sad.

  Before she could decide how to respond, Parker picked up their former conversation. “What I like best about my job is that I have a lot of time to think.”

  “I wish I did. Sometimes the legal field is way too hectic.”

  His eyebrow quirked. “Sometimes?”

  She laughed. “Okay, all the time.”

  “I go camping in the summers. There’s this bit of land my family owns out in the middle of this small valley near Mt. Pleasant. I’ve always dreamed of buying up all the rest of the land and building a house there. Room to walk. No neighbors too close. You know, where you can go out in your backyard and no one’s around for miles.”

  She had the feeling he’d shared something he didn’t normally talk about. “Sounds beautiful.”

  “Well, building the house isn’t the most important thing to me anymore. Not since Madeline.”

  “I can understand that.” She’d once had dreams that hadn’t involved mothering Amy—not that she would give Amy up for all the dreams in the world. Her sister was everything to her.

  The waitress appeared before them, a big-boned, twenty-something brunette with heavy lipstick and a ponytail. “May I take your order?”

  Parker ordered turkey with mashed potatoes and cranberries with no gravy, while she ordered the chili and cornbread. Cornbread was one of her favorites, but she didn’t have it often.

  “So,” Parker said. “What do you dream about?”

  She looked at him from beneath her eyelashes, wondering that he’d thought to ask. “I want to go back to Chicago where I was born, maybe for a year or two, or longer if I could make it work, to look up old family friends, visit a few of my father’s favorite Irish pubs. You know. There are a lot of Irish people there who would have known my parents.”

  “So why haven’t you gone?”

  “I decided it’d be too difficult with Amy, especially on my own. She’s settled here. We’re settled. If my parents were alive, it might be a different story.” Or if she had someone to help—but that wasn’t a thing to say to a man whose presence made it difficult for her to remember what food she’d ordered. She shrugged. “I really haven’t thought about it much in the past few years. I’m too busy.” Not quite true. Sometimes she still thought about it, even while understanding that it wasn’t likely to happen. To imagine herself walking down the roads she might have walked with her father as a child, to perhaps meet a few people who still spoke with the Irish accent that filled her soul with music.

  “What happened to your parents?”

  “My mother got really sick. It went on for months, and the doctors didn’t know what it was. When she died, my father took it really hard. He followed her the next year. It was a blessing, really, for him to go. He wasn’t himself without her. I’ve never known a man who loved a woman so much. In fact, there was never another person for either of them from the day they met.”

  There was comfortable silence as Parker considered her words. “He was a lucky man.”

  It was exactly the right answer. “They were both lucky. They found each other late in life, but it was enough. They were happy.” If she found only half her parents’ contentment, she’d be fortunate, though so far her luck in love had run to short relationships that had ended without fanfare. Probably because she wasn’t willing to settle for half of the happiness she’d seen in her parents. Deep down, she wanted it all.

  “You could still go to Chicago,” Parker said, his eyes glittering in the dim light. “Amy would probably love it. I think living in an Irish community would be enjoyable. Especially if all the women look like you.”

  Caitlin knew it was a compliment, and she did feel beautiful at that moment. “Thank you.”

  “It’s true.” He held her gaze for a long moment and had opened his mouth to say something more when the waitress came back with their food.

  What had he been going to say?

  They ate, though it seemed that neither of them was really hungry. Or at least not for food. They exchanged stories until their plates were empty and it was time to leave. Caitlin felt light and happy from laughing so much. Parker had a humorous side she hadn’t expected, and he seemed as content to be with her as she was to be with him. As though they belonged together. She scarcely noticed anyone around them. Only when talking about his youth was he hesitant with information, and Caitlin wondered why. He seemed to adore his mother and talked about his father with respect. What had happened? She’d read in his file that both his father and brother had died in a car accident. Perhaps that was what was so painful.

  Parker insisted on paying the bill, as she suspected, and finally there were no more excuses to stay. “Well, we’d better get going,” she said. “I still need to pick up Amy.” They walked out into the crisp night. The air was tingly cold and the dark sky so clear that she could see the stars. She sighed in appreciation.

  “You should see the stars in my little valley,” he said, smiling. “They stand out like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I believe it.” She’d believe anything at that moment.

  The drive to his apartment went all too quickly. “Thanks,” he said, reaching for the door. “It was nice.”

  It had been more than nice. She hadn’t enjoyed herself so much with a man for as long as she could remember, and she was loath to have it end. “What about checking out your apartment? You might need sheets or whatever.”

  “Oh, right.” He dug in his coat pocket and took out a paper. “Number 21-C. That means the second floor, I think.” He started walking, and Caitlin locked her car and followed.

  The three-bedroom apartment was clean, if worn, and the air inside hot and dry as though someone had turned up the heat. One of the bedrooms was locked, but the others had no sign of life. There was food in the fridge, labeled with the name “Bob.”

  “Apparently I have a roommate named Bob,” Parker said.

  Caitlin would never under any circumstances rent a room without knowing her roommates. Even in college she’d been particular about that. “Could be short for Roberta.”

  Parker laughed. �
��I doubt it. I guess I pick either of these rooms. Oh, wait. There’s another key here. Maybe it fits one of the other bedrooms.” He shrugged off his coat and experimented while Caitlin watched. He was wearing a flannel shirt, open at the neck where it revealed a T-shirt. He wore the clothes comfortably and with grace. She watched him move, unable to take her eyes away.

  “Ah, it fits this door.”

  She stepped closer to see that the narrow room sported a bookshelf, a dresser, a small closet, and a single bed with folded sheets and blankets at one end. That was it. Not much bigger than a college dorm room.

  He turned to leave and bumped into her. “Sorry. Didn’t realize you were there.”

  The connection sprang to life the instant he touched her. They stared at each other without speaking. Caitlin willed him to reach out to her, but he stood motionless, his hands at his sides.

  “Caitlin.” His voice was low, almost a plea.

  Everything was up to her. She could turn and lead him out of the apartment, or she could reach out and touch him. She stepped forward.

  He made a noise in his throat. “Last night you said . . .”

  “Forget what I said.” Her voice sounded as though she’d just awakened, and in a way she had. She liked Parker. She wanted to get to know him. She wanted to take a chance.

  His lips were on hers in an instant, pulling her close. She shivered at his touch, afraid and exhilarated all at once. So different from her practiced kiss with Mace Keeley earlier that day.

  She could feel the beating of his heart, pounding out a rhythm that matched her own.

  Sally was right. Not that she needed to let herself become too involved or anything. They could simply date a while and then she’d have him out of her system. If that was possible. She’d never before met a man like Parker Hathaway.

  He kissed her again, this time more tenderly, as though his lips never wanted to leave her skin. She loved the taste of him, and his smell, slightly tinged with sweat from his workday. The tremors his touch sent through her. She wondered what it would be like to see him every day, the possibility of having him become a real part of her life.