Happy New Year--Baby!

by Marie Ferrarella

  She felt cold now.

  Nicole drew the covers back up over herself and watched the shadows on the ceiling slowly melt away as dawn approached.

  “So what are you telling me?” Marlene handed Nicole a cup of eggnog.

  Marlene nodded absently at a familiar face she recognized from one of her numerous visits to Dr. Pollack’s office while she was carrying Robby. The doctor, in the spirit of generosity and Christmas, had invited all of her patients to a Christmas party at a restaurant owned by her uncle. It was a nice way to mark Christmas Eve.

  Even nicer was actually being taken into her sister’s confidence. As a rule, Nicole kept to herself about matters that concerned her. She’d had to learn from the pages of a society column just what a womanizer her late brother-in-law had been. Nicole had never said a word.

  Nicole frowned as she sipped her drink. The eggnog was delicious, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped chase away this restless feeling she’d had ever since that vivid dream had captured her two days ago. It was still holding her prisoner.

  “I don’t know what I’m telling you.” Nicole sighed impatiently. “There’s a man living next door to me who I’m having erotic dreams about.”

  And she didn’t look happy about it. Nicole had never been this unsettled about a man. This was something new, Marlene thought. “What’s he like?”

  Nicole shrugged, feeling helpless. How did she begin to describe Dennis? “He fixed my garbage disposal for me.”

  Marlene struggled to piece together what her younger sister was saying. “He’s a plumber?”

  This was coming out all wrong. Nicole shook her head. “He’s a tax lawyer.”

  Marlene felt as if she were stumbling around in the dark. She’d been doing a great deal of that lately, ever since Sullivan had entered her life. But the dark could be a very nice place, she thought, when you were there with the right person.

  She looked at her sister, bemused. “But he fixes garbage disposals as a hobby.”

  Nicole let out an exasperated breath. “He messes with my mind as a hobby.”

  Marlene threaded her arm around Nicole and hugged her. “And he seems to have done a very good job of it, too.” She studied her sister for a moment. Nicole had always been the wild one, the one who met life head-on and got up after every bruise. Even so, she felt very protective of her sister. “Do you like him?”

  Nicole wanted to say no, but couldn’t. The truth was, she didn’t know. “If my dream is any indication, I guess I must.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” But Marlene had gotten her answer. If it had been no, Nicole would have said so straight away. The last thing she wanted was for Nicole to be hurt again. Though she had never actually complained about it, Marlene knew that Craig had done a job on her sister’s heart. “Go slow, Nic, okay?”

  Nicole laughed shortly. “I don’t intend to go anywhere, Marlene.” With her free hand, she patted her stomach. “Except to the hospital to have this baby.”

  A plate materialized between them, attached to a very dainty hand. “Well, before you do, you have to try this cake. It’s to die for,” Erin Collins declared behind them.

  The redhead maneuvered between the two women. She knew Nicole from the time they had spent in the doctor’s waiting room. She had just been introduced to Marlene earlier.

  She had three slices of chocolate fudge cake on a festive looking paper plate and offered one to each of them. “I think the doctor is just filling us up with food so that she can lecture us about moderation during the next weigh-in.”

  Marlene glanced over toward Sheila Pollack. The statuesque blond physician was standing in the middle of a circle of patients, most of whom were pregnant. “I think she’s too pleased with her Baby of the Month Club to issue any lectures.”

  “Baby of the Month Club,” Erin echoed. “Is that what she calls us?”

  “Anywhere you look here, you could gather twelve women and come up with a continuous calendar.” Nicole nodded toward her sister. “Marlene gave birth a little over three weeks ago and I’m due in January.”

  Erin playfully raised her hand. “I’ve got dibs on February and I know Mallory is due in March.” She pointed toward a bubbly, dark-haired woman by the brick fireplace. She was carrying on an animated conversation with two other guests.

  “Wonder who’s got April?” Nicole murmured as she looked around the large room.

  “Brady.” The answer slipped out before Erin could think better of it.

  “Brady?” Marlene raised her brow. It seemed an odd name for a woman.

  Erin flushed, her light complexion growing almost crimson. “That’s the name of the bum who walked out on me.” She tried to sound flippant, but even as she said it, her eyes clouded over with the sheen of unshed tears.

  You’d think by now, they’d be all gone.

  Nicole slipped her arm through Erin’s. Compassion filled her. Erin had shared the story with her last month. She knew what it was like to be abandoned.

  Nicole explained for Marlene’s benefit. “He stepped out on her almost what, five months ago?” she asked Erin.

  It felt a great deal longer than that when she counted it in sleepless nights. “Almost. I haven’t heard a word from him. No one has.” It was as if Brady had decided to disappear off the face of the earth rather than to deal with the issue between them.

  That sounded rather odd to Marlene. “Have you filed a missing person’s report on him?”

  Erin nodded. “So far there’s been no response. It’s as if Brady doesn’t want to be found—” she shrugged helplessly. “We had a fight.”

  It must have been some fight to have lasted this long without a resolution. Marlene thought of the recent battles in her own life, the misunderstandings that had been straightened out. There were always solutions as long as you had the courage to look for them.

  “Have you thought of taking out an ad in the personals to get in contact with him?” she asked Erin.

  Erin looked at her. “A what?”

  “A personal ad,” Marlene repeated.

  “Marlene’s in advertising,” Nicole explained affectionately. “She thinks everything can be solved with an ad.”

  Erin looked at the other women thoughtfully. An ad, she thought, turning the idea over in her mind.

  Just maybe…

  Chapter 7

  Nicole spent the night before Christmas at home. Dennis debated going over to see her, then decided against it. He still needed some time to sort out what had happened between them. In the last few days he had made it a point to maintain his distance. He pretended to leave each morning and to return after six each evening.

  His attraction to her bothered him. This was a case, nothing more. No different than the ones that had come before, no different than the ones that would follow. He could say it, he just couldn’t make himself really believe it.

  He felt edgy. There was no doubt in his mind that either Standish or someone like him would show up again. Word at the department had it that Standish was spending the holidays with his family at Lake Tahoe. Dennis knew better than to relax.

  On Christmas Day Nicole left her apartment early. Through his monitor, he saw that she hesitated before his door, then obviously thought better of what she was about to do. Turning abruptly, she hurried away to her car.

  Dennis picked up his transmitter. “She’s on her way out.”

  “I see her,” Winston answered a beat later. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Yeah, Merry Christmas.” For them, the holiday would come later, when the job was done.

  Holding the transmitter in one hand, Dennis grabbed his jacket from the sofa where he had thrown it the day before. He tucked it under his arm and opened the refrigerator. He quickly tossed a few things into a paper bag. He had a hunch this might be a lengthy ordeal.

  “I’m following.”

  “Why don’t I get to follow once in a while?” Winston complained.

  “The van’s too big and I’m bette
r at this,” Dennis answered. He knew Winston would take no offense. They’d been partners almost from the first and had worked out an amiable camaraderie and a verbal shorthand that made working together easy and comfortable.

  “That’s because you get all the practice,” Winston grumbled in reply. “Well, get your tail out here or you’ll lose her, homing device or no homing device.”

  “On my way.”

  Dennis followed Nicole at a discreet distance. The homing device he had attached to the underside of her car made keeping track of her simple. When she turned onto MacArthur, heading south, he knew she was on her way to her sister’s house.

  Dennis called the information in to Winston. “Looks like she’s spending the day at Marlene’s.”

  “Wish I was spending the day at Marlene’s instead of in a van.”

  “Make yourself at home in the apartment while I’m gone,” Dennis suggested. “Just don’t forget which monitor you’re supposed to be watching.” He knew that Winston had a weakness for football games.

  “You do your job, Lincoln, I’ll do mine.” Winston broke the connection.

  Dennis retracted the antenna on his portable telephone and settled back in his seat, making himself as comfortable as possible. He was parked behind the structural skeleton of a custom-made house that was only partially completed. Located near the top of the hill, it was the perfect cover, allowing him to see without being observed by anyone else.

  Around noon, having depleted half a bag of the cookies he had brought with him, he called Moira to wish her Merry Christmas.

  “And Merry Christmas to you, too. Why don’t you drop by and bring that sorry partner of yours with you? I’m having a few people over, but there’s plenty to go around. There’s a present under the tree with your name on it,” she coaxed when he didn’t answer.

  There was a dog barking in the background. Knowing Moira, he was surprised it was only one. “Can’t, I’m working.”

  “But it’s Christmas.”

  “The bad guys don’t know that.”

  She sighed. “Which is what makes them bad guys. Okay, come when you can. And I don’t have to tell you—”

  “Be careful,” he finished for her. “Always am.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He knew she was thinking of the time he had been shot. The doctors hadn’t held out much hope. But he had gone on to confound them all. “Stop worrying.”

  “Can’t. I love you even though you’re ugly and stupid.”

  “Same goes,” he answered. He heard a doorbell ring and the dog barking again. “I think you’re being paged.”

  “’Bye.”

  He flipped the phone closed and went on waiting. He entertained himself by playing solitaire until he ran out of light.

  It was nine o’clock and Nicole was still at Marlene’s. It looked as if she was going to spend the night. He crossed his arms before him and closed his eyes, confident that the signal from her car would wake him up if she turned on the ignition.

  He’d spent worse Christmases.

  Dennis was awake long before Nicole left Marlene’s house at eight the following morning. He glanced at his depleted food supply and sighed. Breakfast would have to wait until he was in the apartment again. If that was where she was going.

  He tailed her car, keeping a good city block between them. He was just pulling his Mustang into the carport when he heard Nicole scream. This time he knew the difference between annoyance and anguish. This wasn’t a garbage disposal acting up. His car door was still hanging open as he ran for her apartment.

  “Nicole!” He pounded on the door. “Open the door, it’s Dennis.” What the hell could have gone wrong? Winston was supposed to be monitoring her apartment from the van.

  She was pale when she opened the door. Pale and shaking. He grabbed her by the shoulders, afraid that she was going to faint.

  “What is it? Is it the baby? Is it coming?”

  For a moment, she couldn’t speak. She felt so violated, so angry and so completely impotent all at the same time. It almost paralyzed her. Finally, she shook her head, struggling to get control over herself.

  “Look,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Look.” Nicole repeated the word, her voice growing stronger. She wrenched free of his grasp and turned to gesture around behind her. “Look at what they’ve done!”

  For the first time, he saw. The apartment had been completely torn apart. The sofa had been almost dismantled, cushions were knifed, their insides savagely dragged out and slashed. Paintings that she had hung on the wall were either dangling on their sides or ripped off, lying on the ground, with their frames broken. In the kitchen, the cabinets had all been emptied, their contents thrown on the ground. A shattered jar of sauce congealed in the strewn contents of a cereal box. Glasses that had previously lined a shelf had been swept to one side and had fallen on the floor, shattered.

  There wasn’t a single place that had been left untouched.

  The dazed look in her eyes gave way to horror. “Omigod, the nursery.”

  Before he could stop her, Nicole ran into the spare bedroom. The room she had worked over so diligently to transform into her baby’s nursery. Dennis hurried after her.

  Chaos had entered here as well. Everything had been overturned and emptied. Savage, plundering hands had been everywhere.

  Nicole stood in the center of the room without saying a word.

  Dennis began to place his arm around her, wanting to comfort her. He was at a loss as to what to say. Anger choked him.

  She shook him off. When she spun around to face him, the fear in her eyes had been replaced by fury. She didn’t have to be told who had done this.

  “Who does he think he is?” she demanded hotly. “Who the hell does that bastard think he is, coming in here and tearing apart my things?” Tears stung her eyes and she blinked, keeping them back.

  She ran her hand along the railing of the crib she had spent hours assembling. The crib had been broken like so much kindling, shattered purely out of spite.

  Nicole’s anguish was almost palpable. This shouldn’t have happened, Dennis fumed. “I’ll tell you who. The number two man in a very powerful gambling syndicate.”

  She looked at him, stunned. She had thought the man was just one of the sleazy people Craig had kept in his inner circle the last couple of years. She had no idea Standish was anyone of notoriety. “How would you know that?”

  He shrugged carelessly, making his knowledge seem nothing out of the ordinary. If he still thought she was knowingly involved, this clinched it for him. “You hear things and get to know the underbelly of society when you’re a lawyer.”

  She wouldn’t have thought that he knew anyone like that. Nicole let out a shaky breath as she looked around the room.

  Nicole jumped when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

  He hated the fear that had leaped into her eyes. He knew it would take her a long time to get over it. “Want to sit down?”

  She shook her head. “No, I want to kill him with my bare hands.”

  He laughed shortly, but there was no smile on his face. “You and probably a lot of other people.”

  She didn’t doubt that for a moment. She hated the man and the power he had over her life, the power to make her afraid.

  “I was wondering when he was going to contact me.” There was irony in her voice as she mocked herself. “I thought he’d call.”

  “He did, just not the way you expected him to.” Dennis wanted to get her out of here; he didn’t care what his superiors had to say about his interference. “You can’t stay here.”

  “Why not?” It was going to be all right. Standish had been here and gone. Why would he come back a third time? “He saw that I didn’t have whatever it is he’s looking for.”

  That wasn’t a foregone conclusion. “Maybe he thinks you hid it.”

  Nicole turned from the wreckage and looked at him incredulously. Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “He’ll be back?”
r />   He hated doing this to her, but better this than having her hurt. “Maybe.”

  That wasn’t good enough. How long was she expected to stay away? A day, a week, a month?

  “I’m not running based on a ‘maybe.’ This is my home,” she insisted heatedly. “Mine.”

  He knew how she felt, but that didn’t alter the facts. “A dead bolt isn’t going to keep him out.”

  Nicole set her mouth stubbornly. Frustration filled him. His hands were tied. He couldn’t make her leave if she didn’t want to, and he couldn’t tell her who he was without surrendering his cover. He couldn’t afford to do that. Even if he did risk it, she might not believe him. Or believe anything he told her after that.

  There had to be another way.

  “But a dog might.” It was thin, but it was better than nothing.

  She looked over to the window. A piece of the lamp Marlene had given her was sticking up. A lamp that matched the one in Robby’s room. She picked it up.

  “I don’t have a dog,” she said dully.

  “But Moira does.” She looked at him, confused and he hurried to explain. “My sister loves animals and trains dogs as a hobby. She’s always picking up strays, bringing them home and training them.”

  His words weren’t making any sense to her. “I don’t see how—”

  She was in shock, he thought. She just didn’t know enough to realize it. He took the fragments of the lamp out of her hands.

  “You need some sort of protection. We’ve already seen what they can do with locks. If you have a Doberman or a German shepherd in the apartment—temporarily,” he added, “it can protect you.”

  She’d never had a dog. Her father hadn’t allowed it. The idea of a large dog looming around didn’t make her feel better. “What’ll protect me from the Doberman?”

  He smiled, wanting to reassure her. “All of Moira’s animals are good-natured and well trained.”

  She had her doubts. “So they’ll lick intruders to death.”

  “Something like that.” He was already crossing the threshold. Moira was home. He knew she’d have no objections to helping out. “Let me make a call—” Dennis stopped. Nicole, despite her anger, was still very pale. “You’ll be all right alone?”