Connor nodded. He hated to think Shelly and Max would be separated. For a woman who’d been completely at a loss when she’d walked into his office with the baby, she now handled him very well and was learning every day.
“Go home to Vickie,” Connor said again, “so I can get some sleep if I do get called out tonight.”
“Connor…”
“Go. I’m going to be up anyway. I may as well be productive.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Nathan left and Connor spent the next few hours restocking the two examining rooms. Then he spotted the current Pine Run Plain Talker on Nathan’s desk and took it upstairs with him to get serious about finding a house. Something with a fireplace, he thought, remembering playing with Max on the carpet in front of Shelly’s. Something with a garage or a shed big enough to house a shop—like Shelly’s father’s old shop. Something old with a ball and claw tub like…
He fought the image that tried to form in his mind as he remembered making love to her in the bathtub. But it was so woven into his senses, into his memory, that it came without his consent. He saw himself stretched out in the water, his knees bent because he was longer than the tub. Shelly astride him, water dripping from the tips of her hair, clinging to the curve of her shoulders and breasts as she took him inside her, her hazel eyes caressing his face with love and wonder.
He balled the newspaper into his hands and threw it across the crowded storage room. He went back downstairs, made a pot of coffee and searched the small refrigerator Nathan kept there for something to eat. He found a cup of blueberry yogurt and half a bagel.
It was going to be a very long night.
SHELLY DROVE the one block to work Tuesday morning because she hadn’t slept a wink and was already exhausted.
Dan took one look at her and suggested she call in Betsy Wagner, a single woman in her middle twenties, who occasionally waited tables when Shelly had to be away.
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” she said, placing Max in the playpen.
“You guys have a fight?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” she replied testily, “and that’s all I’m going to say about it.” She glanced at the clock. “Dean and his friends will be here any minute, Dan. We don’t have time to chat.”
He accepted her rebuff with a nod and turned back to the grill he was warming.
She was halfway to the counter when conscience drove her back. “I’m sorry,” she said, putting a hand to his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I just can’t talk about it or I won’t be able to get through the day.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”
She put the first pot of coffee on the warming plate and, knowing it’d be gone in a heartbeat when Dean and his friends arrived, she made a second pot.
Dean, Finn and Henry arrived and placed their orders, and she filled the pastry tray while waiting for Dan to tell her it was up.
She stacked two plates on her arm and one in her free hand as she’d done a million times before and started toward the back booth. She was halfway there when she went down.
She had no idea what happened. She didn’t feel herself trip or slip, she simply went down, eggs, bacon, hot butter, French toast sliding off the plates and onto her body and face.
“Oh, my God!”
“Shelly!”
“Dan!”
Shelly was less embarrassed than stunned when Dean and his friends helped her up. Dan came running from the kitchen, pulled a nearby chair out and sat her down.
“I told you you shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Are you all right? You need to see the doc?”
“No!” she said a little more sharply than necessary. Then she repeated it again more calmly. “No. I just…I don’t know. Slipped or something.” She looked apologetically at her favorite long-time customers. “I’m sorry, guys. Dan’ll get your order right up again while I clean—”
Dan caught her arm and dragged her toward the kitchen. “I’m calling Betsy. Get cleaned up, you’re going home.”
Before she could object, he dialed the phone.
As she tried to think of an argument, Dean went to the back of the kitchen, grabbed the mop and a spray cleaner and carried them both back into the restaurant. Finn and Henry passed him on their way to the kitchen with broken plates and all the food she’d dropped collected on the empty pastry tray she’d left on the counter.
So she wasn’t needed. Apparently not by anyone.
“Dean, will you drive her home?” Dan asked as he hung up the phone. “Betsy’s on her way in.”
“But I drove in this morning,” she shouted as she hurried toward the bathroom to change into an old pair of sweats she kept there for cleanup.
“I’ll drive you home in your car,” Dean shouted, “and walk back. But hurry up. I want to actually eat my breakfast this time.”
“Ha! Ha!” she retorted, dropping her clothes and apron into a plastic bag she handed to Dean. Then she scooped up the baby, and they trooped out to her car.
Dean had her home in a minute, carried the baby into the kitchen for her and placed the carrier on the table. “You’re sure you don’t need to see the doc?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” she replied, putting Max in the playpen in the middle of the kitchen floor.
“Okay.” He gave her a quick hug. “You always work too hard. Relax, okay? Now you can afford to hire help, you know.”
She walked him to the door. “Thanks, Dean. Sorry about your breakfast.”
“It’s okay. I just wish I’d had my camera. It’s too bad Harvey Brinkman missed that move.”
She swatted his shoulder as he headed down the steps.
Shelly closed the door behind him and headed back to the kitchen, where Max sat up straight, completely occupied with a squeak toy. He shook it, threw it, then picked up the pacifier on the mat beside him. He put it in his mouth and looked up at her, pleased with his own accomplishment. He grinned around the plastic disk.
Her heart swelled with love. In the brief six days she’d cared for him, he seemed to have developed so much. She put dry Cheerios in a bowl she put down beside him, and while he concentrated on getting one from the bowl to his mouth, wondering what to do with it since there was already a pacifier there, she looked into the refrigerator, trying to find something to fix for herself.
She had decided on stew, despite the early hour, when there was a knock at the front door.
She went to it, hoping it was Connor prepared to apologize for last night’s argument.
It wasn’t.
A tall young man, probably in his late twenties, stood there in jeans and a short denim jacket. His hair was a little too long and looked as though it hadn’t been washed in a while. He had thickly lashed blue eyes that lingered on her a moment, then darted past her into the room. He smiled.
“Miss Dupree?” he asked.
She couldn’t account for her sudden sense of unease, but it was there. She kept her hand firmly on the half-open door.
“Yes?”
“I’m Max, Senior,” he said. “My little wife abandoned our baby, but I don’t hold with ignoring your kin. I’ve come to take him home.”
Her heart punched against her ribs. She looked into the man’s face, searching for family resemblance. Of course, that was difficult to find in a baby so young, even if it existed.
“Really,” she said, trying to buy time. “Well, I’m sorry, but Max isn’t here. The sheriff has him.”
A cloud darkened the man’s expression, lending it a suddenly frightening quality. Then another man who’d apparently been hiding against the side of the house, stepped out beside him.
There she did detect a family resemblance to the Max, Senior, in the dirty hair and the dark expression. His brother?
“Now, the lady workin’ at the coffee shop told us you’d brought the baby home.”
Her composure was holding by a thread. “Well, she was mistaken. Now, if you�
�ll excuse me…”
As she began to close the door, a loud baby squeal came from the kitchen.
The first man kicked the door out of her hand and reached for her. She took off at a run for the kitchen, but he caught her by the back of her shirt.
“Now, we don’t want any trouble,” he said, his voice polite though his grip was vicious. “We just want the baby.”
“You’re not his father!” she said, struggling against his hold.
“Now, you don’t know that,” he said. “And you told a reporter that you opened a bank account for the baby for $50,000 for his education. You and me are goin’ to the bank and put that account in my name, or I’m going to have to bruise your pretty little face and burn down your restaurant!”
Shelly struggled to remain calm, to think about where to get help. She studied the man who now had a fistful of her hair and tried to analyze whether he would really do her arm, or if he was just bluffing. He was big, but he didn’t seem particularly smart. The plan was fraught with problems. In a town as small as Jester, where everyone knew everyone, he’d be identified as a stranger and if she appeared at all uncomfortable with him, someone would notice. The bank manager. And Luke’s office was only half a block away.
And she might have thought it through and come up with a solution if the other man hadn’t reached into the playpen for the baby. She felt herself turn into a wild woman, like the Hulk bursting out of his shirt.
She screamed, elbowed the gut of the man who held her, and leaped at the other one, grabbing his arm and smashing her other fist into his face. As he doubled over in pain, she swept the baby up and ran for the front door, her heart pounding.
She was halfway to the door when the first man caught her by the hair and dragged her to a stop. She clutched the baby to her as the man leaned over her, his lip curled in anger.
But a large fist connected with his face and he flew backward with a cry of surprise and pain. She stared at Connor in shock.
Then he shoved her out of the way as the second man dove at him. As they struggled, she ran to call Luke, whose number she had on speed dial since she’d found the baby, and pleaded for him to hurry. Then she snatched the frying pan off the stove and returned with it raised for action.
“Max, Senior” had been struggling to his feet, but changed his mind when he saw her coming. He lay on his back, leaning heavily on one arm and raising the other hand in surrender.
Connor was just getting to his feet, the second man out cold near the door.
“What happened?” Connor asked breathlessly as he came toward her. The baby was screaming and he took Max from her, then wrapped an arm around Shelly’s shoulders. “Are you hurt?”
She leaned into him, hardly able to believe he was there. It seemed to make everything in her world right again. She put her fingertips to his eye where a bruise was already forming. “I’m fine, but you’re going to have a shiner.” She pointed to the first man. “He claims to be Max’s father, but he was just after Max’s bank account. He wanted me to go to the bank with him and put it in his name.”
Connor turned to the man with a look of hatred. “Max, Senior” raised both hands in surrender this time, and lay back as though to prove his intentions. “I’m done,” he said. “I’m done.”
Luke was there in two minutes. “Well, well,” he said, looking from the second man, who was just regaining consciousness, to the first, who was now propped up on his elbows looking confused. “If it isn’t the Yates brothers from Pine Run. Tried to work a scam on Shelly, did you?” he asked, his grinning glance bouncing off the frying pan in her hand. “Don’t tell me you’re into your bookie again.”
The first man pointed to his brother. “Arch said it’d be easy,” he explained, letting his arm drop to his propped knee in disgust. “Just a little woman and a baby. God!” He fixed Shelly with a look of injury. “You train with the Green Berets, or somethin’?”
“He tried to take the baby,” Connor explained, “because of the bank account Shelly set up.” He told him about the trip the man wanted her to make to the bank.
A sudden flash interrupted their conversation, and they all turned to the door to see Harvey Brinkman and his photographer.
“Did you get hurt, Shelly?” Harvey asked, taking a step inside. “Was there any attempt to…you know…” He waggled his eyebrows in a way she could only imagine suggested that the men had had illicit intentions as well as robbery on their mind.
Connor strode to the door. The photographer had already backed out of the room, but Connor put a hand to the middle of Harvey’s chest and pushed him backward. “But she’s the darling of Jester,” Harvey was saying. “People will want to know…”
Connor gave him one final shove and closed the door.
Luke put one man, then the other in the cage in the back of his car. “I’ll need to talk to you this afternoon, Shelly,” he said, sticking his head in the door. “But I hear you took a tumble at the restaurant and came home to get some sleep. So you don’t have to hurry. You okay?”
“Fine,” she replied, going to the door. “I’ll see you after lunch. Is that okay?”
“Fine. ’Bye. ’Bye, Doc.”
“’Bye, Luke.”
Connor shifted the now sniffling baby to his other arm and followed Shelly into the kitchen. “Tumble?”
She stopped at the refrigerator and shrugged. “I fell while delivering an order. I made a terrible mess, but didn’t get hurt.” She took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at the baby’s wet cheeks. “Dan sent me home. I own the place, but he has his bossy moments.”
She was trembling inside, and she held the refrigerator door, hoping it didn’t show in her hands. She couldn’t imagine what was wrong with her.
Fear, of course, she thought as she opened the door and peered inside. Fear for the baby, fear for herself. The perfectly understandable fear at being closed in her house with two scary men and no rescue in sight.
Except that Connor had appeared out of nowhere. Connor, who thought she couldn’t make her own decisions.
She waited for resentment over the things he’d said last night to overpower the sheer relief she’d felt at his arrival, the joy she couldn’t help now as he stood just a few feet away, rocking the baby from side to side.
It didn’t happen. She was just so glad to see him on several levels.
“So…” she asked, taking a container of stew out of the freezer “…what brought you here in the first place?”
He patted Max’s back as the baby leaned his head on his shoulder and yawned. “I was coming to pick up my stuff.”
That was not at all the answer she’d hoped for. She pried the top off the container, set it back on again and put it in the microwave. “I haven’t touched anything,” she said with a polite smile, indicating his room. “You want a box or a bag?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said.
She dug in a drawer for a wooden spoon. “Oh?” Now he would give her the answer she wanted.
“I hadn’t thought about you and the baby being in danger from someone wanting your money. Or his money.”
That wasn’t the answer, either. But it occurred to her that it might serve for the moment if it would keep him here without her having to ask. Though she couldn’t appear too eager. “Oh, we’ll be fine,” she said. “Once Harvey gets the photo of me brandishing the skillet in the paper, it’ll serve as a warning to anyone else with the same intentions.”
“I’m staying,” he said. “When Mrs. Pearson picks up Max tomorrow, I’m out of your life.”
Great. He was giving her nothing to work with, here. “It’s a deal,” she said. “You want some stew?”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s not even ten o’clock.”
She smiled at him, trying to look as uninvolved as he sounded. “Are you one of those who eats only breakfast stuff for breakfast? No cold pizza, leftover Chinese food?”
He nodded. “I used to in medical school and during my residenc
y when my life was upside down. But I’ve been trying to get myself better organized.”
“Bacon and eggs, then?” she offered, opening the fridge again.
“No,” he replied. “I’d love the stew.”
She leaned her weight on one hip and closed the door. “Now that doesn’t even make sense.”
“I know.” He started toward the living room with the baby, then stopped in the doorway to add over his shoulder, “Nothing about this relationship does, so why bother trying?”
The microwave dinged. She took the container out, broke up the thawing mass with the wooden spoon and put it back in again, smiling privately to herself. That was the most hopeful thing he’d said since he’d come to her rescue.
SHELLY’S HOME INVASION was the lead story on the ten-o’clock news from Helena, with Harvey Brinkman answering interview questions in his flack jacket and a Marlow-esque air. His article on the event appeared on the front page of the Pine Run Plain Talker and was picked up by most of the other Montana papers. And Shelly had been right. The photo that accompanied the story was of her wielding the frypan.
Connor noted that he and Luke were identified in the caption but hardly mentioned in the story except to say that they’d arrived after Shelly had subdued the criminals.
Luke, sitting beside Connor at the Cup’s counter the following noon, laughed at their apparent insignificance. “Darn women’s movement,” he said, downing the last of his coffee. “Makes it hard to be a hero anymore. You decked both of them and I hauled them away, and we get no credit at all. Though, according to Calvin Yates, she was fighting like a tiger.”
Connor nodded. “Frying pan scared me.”
“Me, too.”
“What time’s Mrs. Pearson coming?”
Luke shook his head. “I told Shelly just before you got here that Mrs. Pearson isn’t coming till Friday. She’s got the flu everybody else in her office had. They’re all overworked catching up, so her cases have to wait.”
Connor was happy to hear that. Shelly had been morose that morning and called him at the medical center to tell him that she was formally filing for custody and asked him to ask Nathan if he’d be prepared to back her up. He’d thought she seemed a little giddy this afternoon.
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