by Julie Miller
“No, it’s good publicity for your online floral company.”
“Well, clearly I can run the business without you. I’m ready to branch out.”
“But you don’t run the business.” Robin had to put some space between them before she either smacked him or burst into tears at this betrayal. “You’re not responsible for paychecks. You don’t pay the bills. I do.”
She barely heard the soft knock on the door. “Robin?”
“That’s stealing, Mark.” She looked up into those gentle features that had been a part of nearly every working day for almost a decade now. “It hurts me to say this, but I have to fire you.”
He raised his hands in a placating gesture and closed the gap between them. “We can work together. Let me develop an online presence for you.”
“No.” She swatted his hands away when he grasped her shoulders. “How can I trust that you won’t keep cheating me?”
A louder knock shook the door in the frame behind her. “Robin. Is everything all right?”
Jake. Of course, he’d be worried about her being out of his sight. “I’ll be right out.”
Angry color was creeping above the neck of Mark’s bow tie. “Would you keep your voice down? We both have clients here.”
Of all the nerve. Robin pointed two fingers at him. “You owe me at least two thousand dollars. Either you repay every cent or I’m going to press charges.”
Mark snagged her wrist and squeezed it in his grip. “Press charges?”
“I’m giving you the option because of our friendship, but you know I’ll do it.” She tugged against his hold, but he wasn’t letting go. “Do you know how stressed I’ve been with all the crazy stuff happening around me? I trusted that you were taking care of my shop when I couldn’t be there. I thought you had my back.”
“I wasn’t hurting anybody.”
The sharp crack of splintering wood spun them both around as the door swung into the room and Jake stepped inside. He looked from Robin to Mark, who instantly released his grip on her, and back to Robin. “Everything okay?”
Mark sputtered beside her. “You just broke a door in the church. Who’s paying for that? Me, I suppose?” He tried to make a quick exit, but Jake was blocking the open doorway. He glanced over his shoulder at Robin and his slender shoulders sagged. “Add it to my tab.”
It wasn’t until she nodded that Jake stepped aside. “I’ll have my lawyer contact you.”
When Mark turned and walked out into the crowd of curious onlookers, Robin followed him to the door and clung to the splintered frame around the lock, scarcely aware of the organ music turning the guests’ attention back to the sanctuary. She drew in a heavy breath, wishing she felt better about knowing the truth. “One mystery solved.”
“Mark was cooking the books?” Jake came up behind her, cupping her shoulders. Robin leaned back against his solid strength. “Do you think he could have attacked you?” Jake asked against her ear. “Maybe to get you out of the way so he could recover any proof of his embezzlement?”
“I don’t know. Mark doesn’t seem like the violent type. Sneaky, yes—but swinging a baseball bat?” She turned when she could feel Jake stewing about something behind her. “What? Do you recognize Mark from the attack?”
“No, but...” Answer the question, Jake. No more secrets, please. He squeezed her hand where it rested against his chest. “Stay here.”
“That’s not an answer.” The crowd parted as Jake moved through it. He caught up with Mark Riggins on his way out the side door to the street. Something Jake said—or maybe the hand clamped over Mark’s shoulder—convinced him to turn around and come back into the office where Robin waited. “What are you doing?”
“Not a nice guy, remember?” Jake shoved Mark into the room, closed the door, then pushed Mark back against it, pinning him to the carved panels with a forearm pressed against his throat.
“Jake.” She tugged at his arm, but it wasn’t budging.
“What, you haven’t humiliated me enough?” The forearm caught beneath Mark’s chin and lifted him onto his toes. “Robin, call off your thug before he breaks my neck. That’s going to leave a mark.”
“I can do something worse if you don’t answer my questions,” Jake threatened. “Understand?”
Mark nodded.
“Jake?” Robin was more worried about Jake getting into trouble than Mark’s comfort. “You said he didn’t attack me.”
“A few nights ago, I followed you around the corner from Robin’s shop and saw you selling an envelope of photographs to a man wearing gloves.”
“You followed me?” Jake’s arm and Mark’s common sense quickly silenced that protest. He nodded.
“What pictures?” Like those horrible threats she’d been receiving in the mail? Mark had something to do with that? She didn’t know her friend at all, apparently.
“Who were those pictures of?” Jake prompted. “Robin?”
Mark glanced at Robin as his cheeks turned red from a dwindling oxygen supply.
“Tell him,” she ordered.
“Emma. They were pictures of Emma. I’m so sorry.”
“You sold pictures of my daughter?” Robin felt her own face heat up. She was livid. He got a break on cheating her business. But exploiting her daughter? “To some stranger?”
“Not lewd ones. Nothing illegal. Just pictures of her sleeping, or in her swing.” Mark didn’t seem to know whom he should be more afraid of. “The guy wanted them for his sister. She lost a baby and was really sad. He thought the pictures would cheer her up.”
“What guy?” Jake demanded.
Another terrible thought had Robin turning about the room. “Where’s Emma?”
“I left her with Shirley, the lady from your shop,” he assured her before resuming the inquisition. “What guy?”
“I don’t know his name. He came to the shop a couple of times while you were on maternity leave. Bought flowers. Paid cash. Left pretty quickly when he found out you weren’t there.” Mark’s face was as red as the checks on his tie now. “I was getting the money to pay you back. To get some cash back into the accounts before you figured out what I was doing.”
“Can you describe him?” Robin asked, as anxious to get eyes on her daughter as she was to find the truth. “The police can ask you these questions, too.”
“I don’t know. Brown hair. Business suit. Too buttoned-down and uptight for my tastes.” Robin tugged on Jake’s arm again, and this time he let Mark go. She grabbed Mark by the scruff of his starched collar herself and opened the door. She swept her gaze through the lobby, searching the line of waiting guests for one in particular. “There.” She pointed to Brian Elliott, leaning down to hear a comment from his assistant. Mark knew Brian, didn’t he? She’d dated Brian Elliott for almost two years before she’d broken it off. What other man in a suit showed up at her shop on a regular basis? “Is he the man you sold the pictures to?”
“No.” With Jake flanking his other side, she didn’t think Mark was lying. “Are you going to tell the police about this?” Mark dropped his voice to a pleading whisper after she released him. “Please. Yes, I was skimming business away from you—but I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Emma.”
Brian’s questioning gaze found hers across the lobby, but she quickly shook her head and turned away. She never answered Mark. She was deep in thought, thinking through all the men she knew. And how far too many of them, like every male guest here, wore business suits. Robin looked from acquaintance to acquaintance, from stranger to stranger, in the lobby, wondering if any man here had an interest in her and her daughter.
While she was distracted by wary suspicion and fear, Jake scooted Mark along his way toward the door again. “Get out of here. And if you’re thinking of skipping town before you pay the lady back, I will find you.”
Mark scuttled away, ignoring the curious looks and questions from the people he passed. He even blew off Leon when he stormed past him out the door.
Robi
n jumped at the brush of Jake’s fingers against her back. “Now, can we go?”
She had a very bad feeling. Like the answer to whoever had threatened her was right here under her nose. Only she wasn’t seeing the right picture. Only one thing would reassure her now. She spotted Shirley chatting with one of the ushers next to the table where Emma’s carrier sat. “Emma?”
Jake guided her through the line of guests to the table set up beside the vestibule doors. “I’ll get your coat and her bag. Be right back.”
Robin thanked Shirley and dismissed her as Jake fetched their things. It almost made her smile to see that he’d set Emma’s carrier on the Vanderhams’ gift table. Emma truly was a gift in Robin’s life, and the thought Mark taking pictures, of a stranger wanting to buy those pictures—of anyone wanting to separate Robin from the child who’d given her her first taste of true love—filled Robin’s eyes with tears, instead.
But the smile won out when Emma saw her and squealed a happy laugh.
“Hey, sweetie. Are you watching all the people...?” Robin’s voice trailed away when she saw the moisture on Emma’s cheek. But Emma wasn’t crying. Robin immediately wiped off the cool wetness. There was a smear of something on her pink-and-white blanket, too, as though someone with a dirty wet hand had touched it.
“Jake?” Her knees wobbled. Who had touched her baby? She looked back and forth. There were lots of people coming in from the rain with wet hands or moisture on their clothes. Who could resist that sweet face, sitting there and cooing, as the guests dropped off their gifts and cards and wandered past? Only, she had a feeling this wasn’t some curious, cooing auntie who’d touched her child. “Jake?”
“What’s wrong?” Jake draped her raincoat over her shoulders and positioned himself between Robin and the clamoring crowd.
“Ms. Carter?” a woman’s voice called over the white noise of all the conversations in the crowded vestibule.
Robin ignored them all and lifted the soiled blanket away from her daughter. “Oh, my God.” The breath seized up in her chest. Robin tossed the blanket aside and reached for the hand-sewn doll that had been tucked into the carrier with Emma.
“Where did that come from?”
Robin shook her head. “It isn’t hers.”
She picked up the doll. Like the blanket and Emma’s cheek, it was soaking wet. Robin turned the unwanted gift in her hand. If she had found it in a craft store, she would have admired the even stitching and calico fabric. But everything about this gift was a vile incursion into her family, a threat that had literally touched her daughter. Who brought a doll to a wedding? This couldn’t be accidental. “Who did this?”
She glanced up at Jake for answers, but he was searching the crowd, too.
“Ms. Carter?” Chloe Vanderham was pushing her way through the crowd.
When Robin saw the venom in her expression, she turned away from the impending confrontation. Her hand bumped against the carrier and the doll fell onto the table. The calico pinafore flipped up and Robin saw the name embroidered across the doll’s chest.
Hailey.
“Robin?” Jake caught her when her knees buckled and wound his arm around her waist to keep her upright. “Stay with me. We’ll figure this out.”
“That’s her birth name. Hailey is Emma’s birth name. Bill Houseman—he said it was a matter of life or death that I talk to him.” Robin’s vision clouded over. She had to put her hands on Emma to make sure she was safe. “I never did.”
Chloe Vanderham was upon them now. She drummed her ruby-red nails on the white tablecloth beside the baby carrier.
Robin didn’t care that her client was unhappy. “Did you see who was with my daughter?”
“Are your people done?” Chloe wore a dressing gown over her long slip and petticoats. “The rain is already ruining my day, and all your drama is turning it into a disaster.”
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t her doll. There have been threats.... Did anyone see who gave it to her?” Robin looked all around, but now people seemed less interested in broken doors and spotting folk heroes from the newspaper, and more interested in getting away from the temperamental bride-to-be. Thunder rumbled overhead, punctuating Robin’s disappointment. She splayed one hand over Emma’s tummy and held on to Jake with the other. She wasn’t going to find any more answers here today. She wasn’t going to feel safe, either. “We’re finished.”
“Good. Now, please, both of you—” Chloe glanced down at Emma. “All of you—leave.” She snapped her fingers and nodded to ushers in their black tuxedoes. “Get everyone seated. More guests are coming in. And tell Paul I’ll be late coming down the aisle.”
“I’m sorry. I...” But Chloe was already sweeping back into her dressing room with a huff. “Take me home, Jake.” Robin reached for the vile doll. “I need to get Emma out of here.”
“Wait. Don’t touch it again.”
“I’m throwing it away.”
“Don’t.” He wrapped the doll up in the discarded blanket and closed his fist around it. He picked up the diaper bag that had fallen to the floor. “Do you have a plastic bag in here? The police may be able to get some kind of DNA off it.”
Robin nodded. “Do we need to call KCPD? Or is it time I used Bill Houseman’s card and ask him what he knows about this?”
“We’ll send the cops after Houseman. Right now, I think we need to get out of here and find someplace friendlier and quieter where we can—”
“Talk things out?”
That firm mouth almost twisted with a grin. “Something like that. Let’s go.”
After bagging up the doll and blanket, Jake hiked the diaper bag onto his shoulder and cupped his hand beneath Robin’s elbow while she covered Emma with a clean blanket and picked up the carrier. Robin was thanking a gentleman for holding the side door open for them when Jake pulled her back inside.
“What are you doing?”
“This way.” He lengthened his stride, pushing a broad path through the guests in the lobby.
“But the SUV we rented is parked out back.” Robin had to quicken her pace to keep up with him. “I don’t mind a little rain.”
“We’re taking the scenic route.”
“No, we’re not.” Robin tried to slow down, but he simply pulled her against his hip and cinched his arm around her to keep her moving at his speed. She was starting to learn how to read these sudden defensive maneuvers of his. “What did you see? What’s happening?”
The rain hit her face and soaked through her hair to her scalp. Jake barely gave her time to pull the blanket over Emma’s head before pulling the carrier from her grasp and hurrying them into a jog around the corner away from any main entrances.
“Jake,” she protested as they crossed a gravel alleyway and entered the rear parking lot. “You’re scaring me. I thought we agreed that you’d let me in on whatever’s going on in that mind of yours.”
“The empty place that can’t remember anything? Or the scary part that thinks we’re being followed.”
“Followed?”
He punched the remote to unlock the car and set Emma in the backseat. “Get this thing attached.”
With a soft curse, Robin moved in front of him and situated Emma in her car seat while Jake turned a slow 360 degrees behind her. She tried to steal a few glances around them, too, but saw no one. Just empty parked cars. “Who’s following us? Mark? I’d be happy to tell him he’s fired again.”
“It’s not Riggins. It...may have nothing to do with you.”
“What?”
“You get in, too.” As soon as she finished, Jake pulled her back and shut the SUV’s rear door. In the same fluid movement, he opened the passenger door and lifted her onto the seat. “I thought I recognized someone in front of the church.”
Robin latched on to his hand before he could pull away. “You said you don’t remember your past.”
“Not that far back. Ever since that Ghost Rescuer stuff hit the papers, I keep seeing someone watching me. An
d I don’t think he wants my autograph.” He set the diaper bag in her lap. “Is your cell phone in there?”
“Yes.” While she unzipped the bag and pulled her phone out, she tried not to let his vigilant sweep of the parking lot and streets beyond unnerve her too much. “Who is it? The Rose Red Rapist? Does he think you can stop him? Is it a reporter? The man Mark sold the pictures to?”
“I don’t know.” Once she had her phone in her lap, Jake dropped the car keys into her palm and curled her fingers around them.
Rain drops beaded on his face as he stood just outside the door and his icy eyes searched her face. “Jake?”
He brushed the damp hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Just remember. I tried to be a good guy for you and Emma.”
She turned her cheek into his palm. “You are.”
He nodded, but she didn’t think he looked like he believed what she did. When she opened her mouth to argue the point, he leaned in and kissed her. He stamped his possession on her lips and she gladly accepted the claim. The kiss was hard and brief, and filled with something more poignant than goodbye.
“Lock this tight and stay put,” he ordered as he pulled away. “Call 911 if anything spooks you before I get back. If you don’t see me in five minutes, drive to KCPD and show Montgomery the doll.”
“If I don’t see you...?” She reached for him, but he was already closing the door. “Where are you going?”
“To introduce myself.”
Robin watched Jake head toward the corner of the building. The rain made dark stains on the shoulders of his T-shirt. He shifted his gun from his ankle holster to the back of his belt. He looked dangerous and determined and she wanted him back with her now. So she felt safe. So she knew he’d be safe, too.
Once he was out of sight, she checked her watch and marked the time. Five minutes.
What did he mean by I tried to be a good guy for you and Emma? Had he decided not to be a hero? What was he planning to do with that gun, anyway? Why was he kissing her goodbye?
She knew how to be alone. She knew how to take care of herself—and Emma. But that didn’t mean she wanted to be alone. She’d opened up her heart to the secretive, wounded beast who was different from any other man she’d known. He was passionate. Protective. Moody. He could be gentle as a lamb or ferocious as a lion. She trusted him. She needed him. She might even love him.
