“Honey, Wake Up And Feed The Baby” Joe Said. Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Epilogue Copyright

“Honey, Wake Up And Feed The Baby” Joe Said.

It struck him that for a single man who intended to stay that way, he was beginning to sound dangerously domestic. Downright paternal, in fact.

And then he heard something that slammed him in the belly like a fist.

Sophie whimpered in her sleep, and Joe groaned. He touched her lightly on the arm, just enough to rouse her.

In the second before she awakened, she was totally vulnerable.

In that moment, Joe knew that he could no more walk out and leave her—leave her and her baby—than he could fly to the moon. It was even worse admitting he could be turned on by a woman who had just given birth to another man’s baby. Either he was totally depraved, or the human instinct for survival and reproduction was a hell of a lot stronger than he’d suspected.

Dear Reader,

Happy Holidays to all of you from the staff of Silhouette Desire! Our celebration of Desire’s fifteenth anniversary continues, and to kick off this holiday season, we have a wonderful new book from Dixie Browning called Look What the Stork Brought. Dixie, who is truly a Desire star, has written over sixty titles for Silhouette.

Next up, The Surprise Christmas Bride by Maureen Child. If you like stories chock-full of love and laughter, this is the book for you. And Anne Eames continues her MONTANA MALONES mimseries with The Best Little Joeville Christmas.

The month is completed with more Christmas treats:

A Husband in Her Stocking by Christine Pacheco;

I Married a Prince by Kathryn Jensen and Santa Cowboy by Barbara McMahon.

I hope you all enjoy your holidays, and hope that Silhouette Desire will add to the warmth of the season. So enjoy the very best in romance from Desire!

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

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Look What the Stork Brought In?

Dixie Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DIXIE BROWNING

celebrated her sixtieth book for Silhouette with the publication of Stryker’s Wife in 1996. She has also written a number of historical romances with her sister under the name Bronwyn Williams. A charter member of Romance Writers of America and a member of Novelists, Inc., Browning has won numerous awards for her work. She divides her time between Winston-Salem and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

One

He was closing in. So close he could almost smell blood. Lifting one hand from the steering wheel, Joe Dana pinched the place between his eyes where it throbbed. It was just past ten on a steamy July morning, and he’d pulled over onto the side of the road. Briefly, he’d considered checking into a hotel, catching a shower and a few hours’ sleep first, but he was too close. After going flat out for the past five weeks—the last twenty-two hours of it without sleep—he wanted only to wind things up and go home.

Wherever home was. At the moment, it was a storage unit in Fort Worth. That and some unfinished plans.

For the time being, he’d seen enough sheriffs and small-town cops to last him a while. As for women hanging all over him, soaking his shirt with their tears, he could do without those, too.

He yawned again, inhaling the stale aroma of his own sweat and too many fast-food containers. Once this gig was finished, he was going to the best hotel in town to soak his carcass in hot water for a few hours, send his boots out to be polished, his laundry out to be finished, order in a slab of beef, cooked just the way he liked it, with a basket of fries, a gallon of milk and half-a-gallon of ice cream....

And then he was going to sleep for a week.

The slip of paper with instructions to the Bayard woman’s house said turn right off Highway 158 onto the first dirt road past Frenchman’s Creek; pass a mobile home on the left, a log tobacco barn on the right, go a mile farther and look for a mailbox mounted on a busted hay-rake.

“Can’t miss it,” the deputy had said. “Last place on the road. County don’t gravel past there. She wanted for something? Heard she worked in a bank in town till she moved to Davie County a few months back. I went and got a raccoon out of her attic, first week she moved in. Seemed like a real nice woman, but these days you never know, do you?”

No, thought Joe, you never know. He didn’t know if she was the brains of the organization—if there even was an organization, instead of just a one-man scam—or one more in a long line of tearful victims.

He did know that the eighteenth-century jade vase she’d described in The Antique and Artifact Trader was a part of the collection he’d been tracking all the way from Dallas. He’d picked up the trail in Amarillo, lost it in Guymon, found it again in Tulsa and chased it all the way to North Carolina. Along the way, he’d checked out every pawn shop, every law enforcement office and heard more sob stories than any broken-down ex-cop needed to hear when he was officially retired.

He had a hunch about this one, though. A strong feeling that he was finally closing in.

Then again, the feeling could be just the result of too many chili dogs. As for his headache, that was a result of too many hours behind the wheel. His knee was killing him—also the result of driving too long without a break.

On the other hand, it was usually at a time like this, when he was scraping the bottom of the barrel, that his luck suddenly took a turn for the better. Hell, he’d been flat on his back in a hospital bed when he’d thought of the one thing they’d overlooked in the Drayton case. Once he was back on his feet again, he’d been able to wrap things up. All three brothers were indicted and behind bars, and he’d earned himself another commendation to go with his early retirement papers.

Joe yawned again, then pulled onto the highway and turned right on the graveled state road. A mile or so farther, he turned off onto a rutted, weed-cluttered driveway. The house looked like a few million other old farmhouses. Four rooms up, four down, with a one-story shoot off the back. This one had flowers. Vine-covered trellises at each end of the porch and blooming beds underneath the windows. Crook or not, the lady had a way with plants.

He pulled up in front, set the parking brake and eased himself out of the cab, moving stiffly until he worked out a few kinks. Before he even reached the front door he had a feeling the house was empty, but he knocked anyway, because it was the polite thing to do.

Knocked twice and waited. And then his instincts kicked in. It was called situation awareness, and his was usually right on target when it came to sensing if a house was really empty or if somebody was in there hiding, ready to blow his head off.

This one was empty. He’d bet his best boots on it. Quietly he eased down off the porch and headed around back. With or without a badge, he wasn’t into breaking and entering, but if the back door just happened to be open...

And then he saw her and stopped dead in his tracks, staring over the chicken-wire fence. His first thought was that she was big. His second, that she was a genuine blond. No dark roots. His third, that she was in trouble, which was an indication of just how tired he was. Normally in a situation like this, he’d have taken her vitals by now, and might even be administering mouth-to-mouth.

She was lying flat on the ground—or as flat as possible under the circumstances—in some kind of a garden. Rows of growing stuff, mostly vegetables. Her knees were bent, there was a big floppy hat with a sunflower on the brim resting on one of them, and a pile of weeds beside her left elbow. Her face looked flushed to him, like she was either feverish or she’d been out in the sun too long.

Heatstroke? Possibly. The temperature was hovering around the century mark, with the humidity not far behind.

Her eyes were closed. Both her hands were resting on top of a belly so big it hiked her skirt halfway up her thighs.

As for the thighs, they were long, firm and tanned. Just for the record.

Long years of training kicked in before he could actually start drooling. Moving swiftly to her side, he let himself inside the fence, mentally skimming files of all the things that could go wrong with a woman who looked to be about twelve months pregnant. He was halfway down on his good knee, reaching for her pulse when she opened her eyes and smiled up at him.

It was the smile that froze him in a muscle-killing crouch. It was slow, sleepy and nowhere near as wary as it should have been, under the circumstances. “Do I know you?” she murmured.

“Are you all right?” He settled on his knees, ignoring the stiffness and the hard, rocky ground. The Ch’ien Lung vase had waited this long—it could wait a few minutes more.

“I’m not real sure.” Her voice was like her smile, sort of slow and sleepy. And sweet.

“You’re, ah...lying down?” In other words, why the devil are you lying down in the middle of the yard, in the middle of the morning?

“My back hurt. I was weeding, but it’s so hot. Who are you? If you’re selling something, I’m afraid I can’t buy. If you’ve come about my car, the garage already called. I’ll pick it up Monday, if that’s all right.”

“I’m not selling, and I don’t know anything about your car. If you’re Ms. Sophie Bayard, I’d like to—”

“Help me up, will you? I’m clumsy as an ox these days but if you can get me on my feet, I’ll go inside and pour us some iced tea. Lawsy, it’s hot, isn’t it? What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t, but it’s Joe Dana. Ma’am, I’d like to—”

She grabbed the sunflower hat with one hand and held the other one up for him to take. Both hands were dirty. And ringless. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything. “Don’t hurt yourself, I weigh a ton,” she warned.

She was a big girl, all right. Big boned. He figured her for about five foot eight, a hundred-fifty, maybe one fifty-five, at the moment. She was carrying a lot of excess cargo. That denim tent she was wearing looked about ready to give up the ghost.

Joe glanced at the prominent breasts resting on her even more prominent belly and quickly looked away. Funny thing, he’d never before noticed just how female a pregnant woman looked.

He got her up off the ground with only a few minor twinges in his bad knee. Her skin had a nice smell. She was hot, dusty, and she’d been working in onions, but underneath all that she had a nice, soapy, womanly, herbal smell. Joe was a noticing man. Too many times his life had depended on just such subtle details.

For one brief moment she leaned against him, and he let himself be leaned on, but then he steadied her and stepped back. It didn’t pay to get too friendly with the enemy. It only got in the way of what he had to do, which no longer seemed as simple as it had back when he’d first picked up the lead.

“All right now? Not dizzy or anything, are you?”

“No, I’m just fine except for my back. It—” She reached back and rubbed down low, and then a startled look came over her face. Joe was watching her closely for any sign of—well, for any sign of anything. Guilt. Shame. Fear. She sure as hell wasn’t going to try to run from him, not in her condition.

His eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

“Warm. Wet. Oh, my mercy, something’s happened.” Her eyes got as round as marbles, and Joe noticed their color for the first time. They were gray with a hint of green. Like Spanish moss after a rain.

“You got a cramp? Where? Your leg? Your back?” Not your belly. Please, lady, not your belly. Don’t go into labor on me now...this I don’t need!

“I’ve wet my pants, and oh—! It’s still happening!”

He uttered a profanity under his breath. “Your water just broke. When are you due?”

“My water?”

“Yeah, your water. Don’t you know anything?”

“If you mean about having babies, I’ve never actually had one before, but I went to a few classes at the Y. And I’ve read all this stuff—you know, about what to expect and all, but—oh, lawsy, this is so embarrassing!”

“Tell me about it,” Joe muttered, and calmly went into action. “First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to get you inside.”

She moaned. He didn’t think she was actually hurting, just scared, but then, he’d never had a baby. How would he know?

“You can walk, can’t you? I can carry you if you think you’ll have trouble with the steps, but walking’s supposed to be good for a woman at a time like this.”

He hoped it was. If he had to carry her, they might both come to grief right here between the onions and the butter beans. Joe was a big man—six-two, a hundred eighty-seven. But he’d been horse-busted, gunshot and otherwise mistreated a few too many times in his thirty-eight-and-a-half years. No sense in pushing his luck.

With his arm to steady her, she made it just fine. She had nice, delicate features, but that jaw of hers told a different story. He might not be able to wind things up here quite as easily as he’d hoped.

“I want to take a real quick shower before I go to the hospital. Will you stand outside the bathroom door so I can call you if I need you?”

Joe was busy looking around, just in case she was dumb enough to keep the stuff right out in plain sight. His grandmother always had, but then, she’d had the right to show it off.

“Are you sure you ought to do this?” he asked. First time or not, she might be one of those women who popped out babies like spitting out watermelon seeds.

“Nothing hurts. I feel fine. In fact, I feel better than I’ve felt in ages.”

“Euphoria.”

“I beg your pardon?” But before he could explain that sometimes, even in the midst of a crisis, a feeling of well-being could overcome a body and make him think everything was all right when it wasn’t, she was already headed down the hall.

“Can you do it in three minutes?” he asked, going after her.

“Not if I shampoo my hair. Give me five.”

“Lady, they’re not mine to give. If you get into trouble in there, I’m the one who’s going to have to bail you out, and I’ve got a bad knee, so don’t push your luck, all right?”

She beamed at him. Positively beamed. Joe forgot all about her big, gravid belly and her dirty, green-stained, onion-scented hands. And the fact that she was trying to sell off a trinket belonging to his grandmother that was valued at eighteen grand.

Euphoria. By the time he snapped out of his version, she was barricaded behind the bathroom door. He could hear her humming something that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby.

“Hand me that bottle of lotion from my dresser, will you? Second door to the left,” she called over the sound of rushing water.

Well...not exactly rushing. Trickling would be more like it. He’d already noticed that up close, the house lost some of its bucolic charm and was just an old house, with worn floorboards, rattling windowpanes and a couple of wheezing window units fighting a losing battle to overcome the heat and humidity.

He fetched her lotion, and while he was at it, he glanced around the bedroom. Just in case. Joe, after all, was a man with a mission.

Seven hours later he was on his fifth cup of black coffee, which was the last thing he needed, when a nurse wearing scrubs came through to the waiting room. He stood, thinking it was about time, and she came on over.

“Are you Joe?”

“Has she had anything yet?”

“Not yet. She’s asking for you again.”

As frustrating as it was, Joe had figured it was only common decency to let her have her kid and catch her breath before he got down to business. Not that he’d had much option. Back at the house she’d been too distracted. While she’d timed her pains, he’d asked if she’d ever heard of a Ch’ien Lung vase, and she’d said, oh, that reminded her—she needed to feed her fish.

She had a goldfish. Women were wacky, and broody women were worse than that. He’d given up on getting any reasonable answers and asked if there was anybody he could call for her.

She’d said, yes, he could call her a cab because she might as well go in and stay instead of waiting until the last minute. So he’d made up his mind to stick it out. It wasn’t like she could run out on him, not in her condition.

He’d stuck by her, and when the pains were eight minutes apart, he’d helped her climb into his truck, gone back and gotten her suitcase and driven her to the county hospital.

After she was settled in her room and a string of folks wearing white or green had pulled the curtains shut and done whatever it was they had to do, he’d dragged a chair up beside her bed and helped her wait.

He could’ve questioned her then, but he hadn’t. They’d talked about nothing in particular. Her goldfish. He was called Darryl. The weather. It was hot. Her garden—it needed rain. And then the pains started piling in on her, and he’d let her crush his fingers and wished there was more he could do.

Not that it was any of his business, but she needed someone, and nobody else had showed up.

“It won’t be long now,” he’d told her, hoping to hell he was right. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

“I think I...left the...back door unlocked,” she’d said through clenched teeth.

“I checked. It’s locked.” She had nice teeth. Not perfect, just nice and white and square. Joe tried to convince himself that she couldn’t possibly be involved. In the hospital gown, in spite of a few fine lines at the outer corners of her eyes and a few more across her forehead, she looked more like an overgrown kid than a woman in the process of having a baby.

But she had the goods. She was fencing the stuff. None of the other women he’d talked to had been left with anything. The jerk had seduced them, promised them marriage, cleaned them out and left them, every last one Joe had interviewed, flat broke and either mad as hell or brokenhearted. Or both.

This one was still in possession of the J. J. Dana jade collection. A collection that had been valued at a million and a half nine years ago when the old man had passed away and was probably worth a lot more now. And if she was carrying either a grudge or a torch for the jerk, she covered pretty well.

Once they’d rolled her into the delivery room, Joe had returned to the waiting area. He’d considered going out and finding himself a hotel, figuring he could come back in a day or so, talk to her once she’d had time to settle down and wind things up. There was time. She wasn’t going anywhere.

But he hadn’t. Instead he’d hung around some more. Waiting.

“Are you the father?” Roughly an hour and forty-five minutes had passed. The woman in scrubs was back.

Not about to get himself thrown out on a technicality, Joe cleared his throat and said, “He couldn’t be here. I’m standing in for him. Is she okay? Has she had it yet?”

The nurse shoved a lank chunk of hair back up under her paper hat. “It’s a girl. Mother and daughter doing fine. She’s been moved to Room 211 and is resting now, but you can see the baby if you want to.”

Joe didn’t know what to say. It seemed pretty callous to tell her he had no interest in babies, but the truth was, he didn’t. He’d delivered a few. Cops occasionally did. Sometimes he’d followed up with a visit, sometimes a donation, but it wasn’t his nature to get involved with the people he came into contact with through his work. Not that this case was work, exactly. It was more in the nature of a family obligation. Still...

“Sure,” he heard himself saying. “Might as well.”

Well, hell—somebody had to welcome the little tyke into the world. Once he’d done his duty he would check into that hotel and get something to eat. He’d had enough of machine food to last him a while. Candy bars. Peanuts. Barbecued pork rinds. One of these days he was going to have to get started on a health food and exercise regimen. Maybe after he wound up this business for his grandmother, Miss Emma, and returned home.

Two

She was no beauty, he’d say that for her. Practically bald, with a red face, fat cheeks and a sour expression, she looked like a bird that had fallen out of the nest about a week too soon. You had to feel sorry for something like that.

“Hi there, Fatcheeks,” Joe whispered, after checking around to be sure no one was close enough to see him making a fool of himself. There was an elderly couple ogling the runt on the end and a man with his necktie dangling from his shirt pocket making googoo noises at the bundle in the crib three rows down. Assured that no one was paying him any mind, he relaxed. “You gave your mama a pretty rough time, you know that?”

It occurred to him that looking after a newborn infant wasn’t going to be any cinch for the Bayard woman. Did she have any friends? Any family? What would she have done if he hadn’t happened along when he had?

She’d have gotten along just fine, he told himself quickly, because he needed to believe it. She didn’t strike him as the helpless type. She wasn’t neurotic. She wasn’t sleeping under a bridge out on I-40. He’d learned a lot about her while she talked her way through labor. She’d grown up in an orphanage. Still—if things got tough, there were agencies she could call on. She was bound to have somebody. Nobody was completely alone.

So he’d wait until she caught her breath, and then he’d ask her how the devil she’d come to be in possession of a valuable jade collection that belonged to a woman in Texas, and why she was selling it off, piece by piece. And while he was at it, he’d find out what her connection was to the joker who’d cut a swath across the south, leading women into one indiscretion after another, cleaning them out and skipping town.

And he’d get his answers, too. Not for nothing had he been called the Inquisitor, with a capital I, back at DPD.

He waggled his fingers against the nursery glass and whispered, “Yeah, life’s a pretty tough gig, kiddo, but with a little luck you’ll come through it just fine.” It didn’t particularly bother him that he sounded like a nutcase. The baby couldn’t hear him through the glass. Couldn’t even see him. Her eyes were swollen shut.

“What you want to do is find yourself a nice farmer and settle down out here in the country where it’s pretty and peaceful, make a few babies, have yourself a few laughs—stay out of any major trouble and chances are pretty good you’ll make it through okay. Most folks do. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s the truth.”

The infant labeled only Bayard Girl puckered up and began to wave her fists and kick her tightly bundled feet. She opened her mouth, as if she was expecting a worm to be dropped in it, and, feeling helpless, Joe left.

He needed a real meal, a bath and a three-day nap. Then he was going to get to the root of this business before the Bayard woman figured out what he was after and dug in behind her defenses.

It was a wonder she couldn’t tell just by looking at him that he was a cop. Most folks could. His youngest sister, Donna, said it was attitude. Said it stood out all over him, even after he left the force.

But then, both his sisters had proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that they were lousy judges of men.

“Ms. Bayard—when can I see her?” he asked a nurse at the station.

“Are you family?”

He nodded. He was his sisters’ brother and Miss Emma’s only grandson. “I was just down the hall looking at the baby. She’s really something, isn’t she?” Which wasn’t an outright lie, either.

“Then you might as well go on in if the door’s open. Supper trays’ll be coming around any minute now. After that, they’ll bring the babies around.”

On the way to Room 211, Joe lined up his questions in firing order. If she was feeling up to it, he figured there was no real point in postponing the inevitable. The first round would have to go right to the heart of the matter, though, because once she tumbled to the reason he was here asking questions, she’d clam up, guilty or not. One thing he’d seen happen over and over again—a woman who’d just been made a fool of didn’t like to talk about it. Protecting her pride, she could come across as guilty as sin. On the other hand, a woman who really was guilty as sin could act as innocent as a preacher’s maiden aunt.

In other words, there was no understanding a woman.

“You awake?” He whispered. Her eyes were closed, but Joe had a feeling she wasn’t really asleep. He told himself she should have looked like hell, considering she’d just delivered a baby that weighed in at nine pounds, seven ounces. She did look tired, but mostly she just looked vulnerable and innocent and guileless.

He studied her features, telling himself it wasn’t really an invasion of privacy because he’d announced his presence. At her best, Sophie Bayard was probably one damned good-looking woman. She wasn’t at her best, but there was still something about her worth noticing.

Personally Joe had always preferred peppery little brunettes. Had married one, in fact. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a big, easygoing, sweet-smiling blonde when he happened across one in the line of duty.

Sophie knew he was there. For some reason, she didn’t want to face him yet. She felt...raw. But she opened her eyes and even managed a smile. She couldn’t remember ever being this tired in her entire thirty-four years. Or hurting the way she’d just hurt. They said she’d forget the pain in a matter of days, that new mothers always did, but she hadn’t forgotten it yet.

Besides, she was embarrassed. She’d panicked, which wasn’t like her. Normally she was calm and levelheaded to a fault. Everybody said so.

How on earth could she have allowed a perfect stranger to mop her off, change her clothes, drive her to the hospital and sit with her all through her labor? She’d practically broken his fingers, hanging on to him while she waited to be wheeled into the delivery room.

So much for her independent, self-sufficient new life-style.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” she said, her voice huskier than usual. She had a dim recollection of yelling a lot when the pain wouldn’t go away. She didn’t recall it helping much.

“Nope. Still here. How’re you feeling?”

“I hurt,” she said, which wasn’t what she’d intended to say at all.

“You want me to call somebody?”

“No, just pour me some water, will you?”

He did, and then held her head up off the pillow so she could sip from the straw. “Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere, mostly. My toenails. My hair really hurts. My...well...like I said, mostly everywhere, but it’s getting better.”

She remembered making an attempt to braid her hair at some time during the procedure, but then the pains had started piling in hard and heavy and she’d let it go.

“Thank you for staying. You really didn’t have to. We’ll be just fine now. But thank you.” That sounded like a bread-and-butter note written by a second-grader. Her brain was functioning, only she couldn’t seem to hook it to her tongue.

“You feel like talking?”

She didn’t, but said she did because he’d been so nice and he seemed to want to tell her something. And she owed him, because if he hadn’t happened along at the right time she might have had her baby right there in the garden between the onions and the butter beans.

No, of course she wouldn’t have. There’d been plenty of time. She would have called a taxi. She would have gotten over her momentary panic and handled everything just fine.

“Have you seen her yet? Isn’t she beautiful? I still haven’t settled on a name.” As tired as she was, she felt all warm and glowy, just thinking about her precious little daughter.

“Yeah, she’s really something. Listen—” He looked so fierce. She’d noticed that about him right off, even when she’d been all wrapped up in her own situation. He had a hard face, not a handsome one. Not like Rafe. “Are you up to answering a few questions?” he asked her, and she nodded, wondering how many times his nose had been broken.

“Sure. My mouth’s about the only part of me that doesn’t hurt. Isn’t it funny how something as simple as having a baby can make you feel like you’ve been in a car wreck? Especially my feet.”

Joe reached down and jerked the crisp white spread loose from the mattress. “Your toes are bent. Hospital corners. Always hated ’em, myself.”

“Oh, that feels better.” She wriggled her toes and smiled at him. “Go ahead, ask away. I’ll tell you anything I can, but if it’s about—”

The clatter that had started down at the far end of the hall grew louder and stopped right outside her door. Someone brought in a tray, plopped it on the stand at the foot of the bed and left without a word.

“Sink or swim, huh?” Joe said as he rolled the stand into position and then cranked the bed up a few turns.

“They don’t have much help. I’ve been considering maybe applying for a job here myself, once the baby’s a little older.”

“You a nurse?”

“No, but I can do office work. I can use a computer. I could even help in the kitchen.”

“You’re out of work?”

“No, not quite. But I’m ready for a change, and they have a nursery here. That’s a big plus.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Joe lifted the cover off the plate. He knew hospital food. Texas or North Carolina, it didn’t make much difference. Meat loaf was meat loaf. Vanilla pudding was vanilla pudding. “You want me to cut anything up for you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my hands. But thanks. I don’t usually act this way, you know. Helpless, I mean. I’ve been looking after myself ever since I left school, and I’ve hardly been sick a day in my life. Maybe that’s why all this threw me.” She took a bite of meat loaf, grimaced and looked for the salt. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

She threw him off stride. She was supposed to be evasive. Instead she was asking for it, which screwed up his theory.

So he dragged up a chair, sat down and lined up his questions, but before he could begin, she asked one of her own.

“Why did you stay? You don’t know me—you certainly weren’t under any obligation. Are you from the home? Should I know you? It’s been so long... I’ve kept up with a few classmates, but they’re all girls. Well, women, now.”

She sipped her coffee, and Joe made a few mental notes and got set to try again.

And again, she beat him to it. “Want my corn bread? It’s dry, but there’s some...well, I don’t suppose it’s butter, but it’s something, anyway. I could ring for a nurse and see if she could bring you something to drink.”

So they talked about the food and whether or not caffeine was any worse than decaf. Joe still hadn’t managed to get around to asking her if she was the brains behind Rafe Davis’s long string of robberies, or if she’d only acted as his fence when a woman in a lab coat came in and asked him to step outside.

He did, feeling frustrated, but as soon as he went back inside and started to question her again, someone else came along with a clipboard, and he gave up.

Forty minutes later, he had checked into a hotel, ordered room service, set the air-conditioning on max and run himself a tubful of hot water. He’d waited this long. He could wait a few more hours.

The next morning Joe slept through the alarm. Slept until a crack of sunshine sliced through the drawn draperies and drilled through his eyelids.

He ordered pizza for breakfast, did a few of the exercises the physical therapist had promised would put him back in peak working condition and then eased the resulting kinks out of his carcass under a hot needle-spray shower.

He thought about riding out to the house while it was still empty, going over it with a fine-tooth comb and then facing her with the evidence. They could cut through a whole lot of crap that way.

But he didn’t. Instead he called his grandmother and asked how she was feeling, and what she’d been up to. Frowning, he listened to her lethargic responses. “Well, look—I’ll be headed back in a few days. Right now I’m going to go by the hospital and check on Sophie and the baby. Remember, I told you about her last night? You wouldn’t believe how homely she is. The baby—not Sophie. I thought all babies were supposed to look like the kid in the toilet paper ads.”

Sophie didn’t feel like getting out of bed, but then, it wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something she didn’t want to do. At least this time she had a good reason to get up. They were going home. She was taking Iris Rebecca Bayard home, and then they’d see how much of her old training from the Children’s Home she remembered. She used to be pretty good with the babies but that had been a long time ago. Nearly eighteen years.

She could have used another day to rest up and prepare herself for the responsibility of motherhood, but her insurance wouldn’t cover it. And thanks to a handsome, smooth-talking rascal who had stolen her heart, her savings, her self-respect and just about everything else of value she possessed, she couldn’t swing it on her own.

At least he’d left her with something, although that was purely accidental. If she hadn’t taken it to the bank with her that day to show it to her friends and see if it would fit into a deposit box, he would’ve taken that, too.

She was wearing her old maternity tent. The going-home outfit she’d packed wouldn’t fit over her flab and her outrageous bosom. She’d felt like crying, but then they’d brought in her baby and she’d felt wonderful all over again. Tired, aching, but still wonderful. Euphoria, her new friend would’ve called it.

She had just asked the orderly to call her a cab when he poked his head around the door and then followed it with a pair of shoulders wide enough to scrape highways. Joe Dana, she decided, was a man who didn’t like to reveal too much of himself. Yesterday she’d seen his scars. Before that she’d noticed only that he was big, even bigger than she was. And dark. Black hair shot with gray. Dark eyes that reminded her of the tinted glass some people had in their cars. From the inside you could see out, but those on the outside didn’t stand a chance of seeing in.

Even as distracted as she’d been then, and as tired as he’d obviously been, she’d felt his intensity. It was almost audible. Like humming power lines.

“Good morning,” she greeted, a self-conscious smile trembling at the corners of her lips. “We never got around to finishing our conversation, did we?”

“You’re fixing to go somewhere?”

“Home. I’m already cleared for takeoff, as they say in all the airplane movies. I’ve never flown. One of these days I’m going to, though.”

She beamed at him. He looked baffled, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, which was understandable. She always talked too much when she was nervous. “I just sent someone to call me a cab. The hospital’s lending me a car seat for the baby until I can get one of my own. Isn’t that nice of them?”

“No need to call a cab. my truck’s right outside.”

“Oh, but I can’t—”

“Sure you can. I’ve got a vested interest in little Miss Fatcheeks, remember? The least I can do is see her home.”

“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. And then you can ask me whatever it was you wanted to ask me.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, and saying something about pulling his truck up to the front entrance, he left.

For one crazy moment Sophie started to call him back. Didn’t want him to leave her. She told herself it was only postpartum silliness, and that it would pass. She was already forgetting the birth pangs, just as the nurse said she would. In a few days she’d be back at her computer, juggling nursing, diaper changing and writing ad copy for the agency that currently helped pay the bills while she mailed out résumés and tried not to get her hopes too high.

All the same, she wondered just who he was, and why he was still hanging around.

Miss Fatcheeks, indeed! Her name was Iris Rebecca Bayard.

Three

“It was the yard that convinced me. That big old oak tree will be just perfect for a swing. And you saw my garden. In a year or so I’m fixing to fence in the other side to make a play yard. I might even get a few laying hens. Out here in the country, you can keep chickens, you know. It’ll be a wonderful place for Iris to grow up.” Sophie only hoped she sounded as confident as her words implied as they turned off the highway.

Joe had hardly spoken a word since they’d left the hospital, but then she’d already discovered that he wasn’t much of a talker. She’d chattered all the way home because it was what she did when she was nervous, but she was beginning to run out of things to talk about. The truth was, she was feeling less confident with every mile. What on earth had she been thinking of, moving way out here in the country? The closest neighbor was nearly a mile away, and not even particularly friendly. She’d made the mistake of paying a call soon after she’d moved in, and it had been plain from the first that she’d interrupted the grumpy old man in the middle of his morning nap, or something equally important. The first words out of his mouth were that if she was selling something, he wasn’t buying. If she was collecting, he wasn’t giving anything, either, because he was living on social security and there was dagnabbed little of it.

If her house were to catch on fire, she’d thought at the time, and he happened to see the smoke, he might stir himself to call the fire department. But what if she just needed someone to talk to? What if she needed advice? Looking after a house and a brand-new baby took a certain amount of experience, and she was beginning to think she might’ve bitten off more than she could chew. Not that she’d had much choice. Once the first domino had fallen, the rest had come tumbling down before she even realized what was happening.

When it came to soaking up guilt, however, Sophie had plenty of experience, dating back to a time when she’d been too young to understand what it meant and had overheard someone say that it was because of her that her father had run off. Since then, she’d collected guilt the way a magnet collects steel filings.

Flies in the house? Her fault. She must’ve left the window open.

The cake fell? Oops, she must’ve slammed a door.

Rained all over the Sunday school picnic?

Well. She wasn’t quite that powerful. All the same, if she’d prayed a little harder, it might not have rained.

Now Joe was frowning, and that was probably her fault, too. She’d allowed him to drive her home when she could easily have called a cab. It would have cost a fortune, but any day now she’d be hearing from the ad she’d put in the paper. Last time, she’d taken the whole set to an antique dealer to have it appraised, and he’d offered her five thousand dollars for the lot. Thank goodness she’d had sense enough not to be taken in. He’d ended up paying her twice that for one eensy-weensy piece that looked like something you could buy at Walmart. She’d been patting herself on the back ever since.

She’d also learned a lesson. The stuff might be tacky, but it was valuable. And it was hers. Rafe had given it to her, and dead or not, he owed her something for all the things he’d stolen. Not to mention child support.

She slanted a glance at the man beside her. He looked as if he had something on his mind.

Well, of course he did. He’d told her that yesterday, when he’d strolled into her garden and gotten trapped into playing Good Samaritan. He might be frowning now—he might try to act tough, but she knew better. Underneath it all he was a kind, decent man. The kind of man a woman trusted instinctively. The kind with a good heart.

And she was even getting used to his face. It was interesting, with all the sharp edges and angles. It was certainly masculine. And strong. And at the moment, scowling.

“You wanted to ask me something?” Heaven help her if it was about her taxes. She’d always done them herself and never had a smidge of trouble, but along about April 15 of this year she’d been in no frame of mind to concentrate on filling out forms.

At least not government forms. Her own had filled out so fast it had boggled the mind.

“It’ll keep,” he muttered.

“Are you headed back to Texas?”

“What makes you think I’d be going to Texas?”

“You have Texas plates. And you mentioned staying at a hotel, so I didn’t think you were from around here.”

“Right.”

Right, which? That he was from Texas, or that he’d be going back? She didn’t want him to go. And if that wasn’t scary, she didn’t know what was. Any woman who’d been stupid enough to believe that a handsome, charming scamp like Rafe Davis could take one look at her and fall head over heels in love, needed her head examined. He’d told her she was his golden goddess, and she’d wanted so desperately to believe him she’d let herself be taken in.

Stupid. That said it all. Here she’d been on her own since she was sixteen-and-a-half, and she hadn’t learned anything at all about men. There was probably a psychological term for women who allowed themselves to be hornswoggled, but she didn’t want to hear it, she really didn’t. At the rate she was going, she’d probably be first in line to buy that oceanfront lot in Arizona if the right man offered it for sale.

Instead the wrong man had come along and offered something entirely different, and she’d bought it. And before she’d come to her senses, the skunk had ransacked her jewelry box, turned her closet inside out, stolen her bank card and her three-year-old car, driven to the nearest ATM and cleaned out her account.

And kept on going. Three weeks later he had driven her car into the side of a passenger train down in Georgia.

But he’d left her with something far more valuable than anything he’d taken. Iris. Her baby. Her family.

Not to mention all those tacky little jade whatnots that were worth a fortune.

Joe cleared his throat. From the baby seat between them, Iris smacked her gums without waking up. “Joe, what was it you wanted to ask me?” Let the man state his business and leave, Sophie. You don’t need a crutch to lean on, you only think you do.

“Have you got a crib? Some kind of baby bed?”

“Better than that, I have a complete nursery all painted, furnished and ready to receive. Almost the first thing I did when I leased the house was fix a place for her. I knew my ladder-climbing, paint-smelling days were numbered.”

Sophie laughed. Joe didn’t. So far he’d proved to be kind, helpful and dependable, but a barrel of laughs he was not.

She thought he might be a policeman, from a few things he’d said while he’d been seeing her through her labor. Now, why on earth would a Texas policeman want to ask her anything? She’d never even been west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Unless it had something to do with Rafe. As far as she knew, Rafe had never been to Texas, either. But then, what did she know about the man? He’d told her he was in the commodities business and like a dunce, she hadn’t even asked him what kind of commodities he dealt in. By the time he left and she’d had to report the robbery to the sheriff, she wished she’d been a little more wary. And six weeks after that, when the two men had come out to tell her that her car had been found totaled and that the thief was dead, she’d been too dazed from losing her job and learning that she was pregnant. Most of what they’d said had gone in one ear and out the other.

Joe pulled up beside the house and cut the engine. “Looks like rain.”

“There’s not a cloud in the sky. Listen, I’ll pay you back for the diapers and all the rest,” Sophie said earnestly. “I’d planned to do my last-minute shopping next week. I get paid on Monday.”

“No problem. Call it a baby present.”

“You’re more of a present than a boxcar full of diapers. Honestly, Joe, I’ll never be able to thank you for all you’ve done. If you hadn’t come along—”

“You’d have picked up the phone and called someone else and everything would have turned out just fine.”

“I know that,” she said with a certainty she didn’t feel.

Call who? The few friends who hadn’t moved away were in Winston, at work. She couldn’t have asked any of them to walk out in the middle of a workday, drive all the way out to Davie County, hold her hand while she timed her pains, drive her to the hospital and stay with her until she delivered, and then come back the next day and drive her home again. “All the same, it was a nice thing to do. I guess policemen have to be jacks-of-a-lot-of-different-trades.”

“What makes you think I’m a policeman?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not anymore.” He’d told her yesterday when she’d questioned him, that he was retired. Before she could ask from what, she’d had another hard pain. “Better let me take the baby, then I’ll come back and get the rest of the stuff in. Have you ever thought about getting some decent locks installed? A kid with a paper clip could break into your house in ten seconds Sat.”

Sophie eased herself gingerly out of the high cab and reached back inside for her purse. “And do what? Rob me blind? In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have anything worth stealing.”

“Everybody’s got a few valuables. Important papers. Jewelry. Antiques.” Carefully he lifted the baby from the car seat and settled her in the crook of his arm.

Sophie labeled the thought that popped into her mind inappropriate and told herself to grow up. “Oh, sure,” she said airily. “When it comes to antiques, there’s the house itself, only it’s not mine yet. Unless the heirs of the woman who owned it stop squabbling, it might never be mine, but I do have a cookbook that belonged to my great-grandmother if that counts as an antique. As for jewelry, my watch came from the drugstore. Everything else went south a long time ago, but I still have a TV that’ll pick up four-and-a-half stations when weather conditions are just right.”

Joe didn’t even crack a smile. Hardly surprising. Sophie’s heart felt like a lump of wet dough. This was it, then. He’d leave in a few minutes. He was certainly under no obligation to stay and help her get settled and cheer her up when she got the blues.

That was probably what ailed her now. Postpartum blues. She’d heard all about it. It was miserable, but hardly terminal.

Forcing herself to smile, she said. “There’s some sliced beef and a Vidalia onion in the refrigerator if you want a sandwich before you go. Here, I’ll take her now.” She held out her arms for the small, pink-wrapped bundle.

Joe handed her over. “Feeling possessive, are we?”

What she was feeling was happy, tearful and hungry all at the same time. At this rate it might take her emotions even longer to recover from childbirth than it did her body.

“Sure she’s not too heavy for you to be carrying? You just got out of the hospital.”

“I carried her for almost nine months.”

“I’d have thought more like twelve.”

“She’s a big baby. Twenty-three inches long. I was twenty-two and weighed over ten pounds when I was born.”

“Your family runs to big babies?”

She shrugged. “I was an only child. When you’re little it’s hard to judge sizes. The whole world’s ten-feet tall.”

They were standing in the front room. Sophie had painted the walls and hung the curtains from her apartment when she’d moved in. Seeing it now through the eyes of a stranger, it struck her that the new furnishings she’d been so proud of when she’d lived in town weren’t quite right for a house in the country. Less glass and wrought iron, more wood and chintz would’ve been better. She’d sold off one of the jade pieces to lease the house, buy the appliances she’d needed and pay a mover. There’d been little left over for redecorating. Insurance had bought a replacement for her car, but she’d had to settle for a secondhand one. It had given her nothing but trouble ever since. By the time she sold off the next piece, she’d have another stack of bills waiting to be paid, but she was determined to save as much as possible for Iris’s future. Wood and chintz would simply have to wait.

Joe continued to watch her, his interest disguised by the lazy-lidded look he’d cultivated over the years. He couldn’t quite figure her out, and that bothered him. As a rule he was good at reading people. Give him half an hour, one-on-one, and he could tell you what motivated a particular suspect, whether or not he was hiding anything, how close to breaking he was and just where to apply the pressure to make him bust wide open and spill his guts.

Ms. Bayard appeared to be an open book. Unfortunately it was written in a foreign language. She was tired and edgy, which was only natural. She wasn’t a whiner. She’d struck him right off as the kind of woman who looked on the bright side of things, even when the going got rough. In that respect, she reminded him of Miss Emma. Or rather, of the way Miss Emma used to be.

“You got any family?” he asked.

“No.”

“Friends?”

“Well, of course I have friends. Everyone has friends.”

So where were they? Why hadn’t they showed up at the hospital with flowers and pink balloons?

At least she had neighbors. Correction—she had a neighbor. An old boozer who’d turn in his own mother for jaywalking if there was a reward.

He still wasn’t sure who the baby’s father was. Had a pretty good idea, but he wasn’t certain. If it was Davis, as he suspected, then what had their relationship been? Did she know he was dead? Did she know he’d had a wife in Rowlett, a suburb about twenty miles east of Dallas?

“Well, anyway, if you don’t want a sandwich, maybe you’d like a cup of coffee. One for the road? It won’t take a minute to make a pot, or I have iced tea already made. I don’t reckon it’s gone cloudy since yesterday.” She paused, and a wondering look came over her face. “Just yesterday. When I made that tea, I didn’t have any family at all, and now look at me—I’m a mother!”

Joe tucked his questions back into a mental file and managed to scrape up what passed for a smile these days. It was easier than he’d expected. She looked so damned earnest with her tired eyes, her frowsy hair and her baggy dress. “You’re mighty eager to get rid of me.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, of course, but I know you’re anxious to get on with—well, whatever. Anyway, I’m truly beholden to you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if—”

He cut her off. Dammit, now she was making him feel guilty.

Holding the baby in one arm, she went and shook a few flakes into the aquarium. “Hi there, Darryl. Look what I brought home,” she said softly.

“I could’ve done that,” Joe muttered.

“Darryl’s no trouble. He’s real good company...for a fish.”

“Yeah, well...don’t overdo things.” He took the baby from her, jiggled the lightly wrapped bundle in his arms and said, “You mentioned coffee? Point me in the direction of the nursery and I’ll put her down and join you in a cup. I could use that sandwich, too, come to think of it. You like mayo or mustard on yours? I’ll make ’em.”

Jeez, would you listen, he thought. Cook, butler and baby-sitter, all rolled into one. He blamed the woman. She had no business treating him as if he were a lifelong friend. He wasn’t. He was a man with a mission, one that wasn’t going to endear him to her once he got down to brass tacks.

She reached up and set the can of fish food on a shelf, throwing her prominent bosom into even more prominence. Joe tried not to stare, but it wasn’t easy. He felt a crazy combination of lust and protectiveness streak through him, gone almost before he was aware of it. It wasn’t a feeling he welcomed.

Hell, it wasn’t even anything he recognized.

The baby hiccuped, reminding him of his mission, and he turned away, grateful for the distraction. “Listen, Fatcheeks, I need to talk to your mama, so be a good girl and give us a break, will you?”

The nursery was a nice shade of yellow, not too pale, not too brash. The white crib was obviously secondhand, but in good condition. There was a table, a chest of drawers and a lopsided wicker rocking chair, all painted white. She’d done a nice job of building her nest, he’d hand her that, especially if she’d had it all to do alone.

She was right behind him. “What do you think?”

He said it was nice, because she obviously expected it. One thing he’d noticed about her—she soaked up compliments the way a bone-dry field soaked up rain. As if she hadn’t heard too many.

“Is she wet? Do I need to change her? I’m not sure when I need to feed her again, but the nurse wrote down some instructions, and—”

“Sophie. Slow down.” She was twisting her hands. “She’ll let you know, all right? When she needs changing or wants to nurse, she’ll let you know. Babies have a way of communicating these things.” At least he hoped they did. “Now, come on into the kitchen and settle down while I make us some lunch.”

She looked kind of embarrassed when he mentioned nursing. As if he’d never seen a woman’s breasts before. Not hers, but hell, he was pushing forty and she was no spring chicken, herself. Judging her now, he figured her for about thirty-five, but he could be off a few years. She had a mature body—a body some man had done more than just look at. There was something about her face, though, about the way she looked at him, with those big, guileless gray eyes, that made him want to forget the damned jade.

But he’d promised Miss Emma. Sooner or later he was going to have to bring up the Ch’ien Lung, and the longer he put it off, the tougher it was going to be.

Damn Donna! He’d gone easy on her that day she’d called him because she’d been crying so hard he could barely make out what she was saying. And because he’d always been a sucker for his sisters’ tears. They were his baby sisters, after all. They’d gone through a lot together, even though they weren’t all that close anymore.

The arrangements had all been made. The museum had offered to send somebody after the stuff, but Donna had wanted to keep it over the weekend before she took it in to be photographed for the catalog. They had an old set of photographs, but they were pretty dog-eared and the quality wasn’t too great.

As it turned out, Donna had actually wanted to show the stuff off to a man she’d been seeing, who’d expressed an interest. An antique broker by the name of Rafael Davis.

According to her story, he’d waited for her to fall asleep—which was the first Joe knew that his sister had a new live-in lover—and then he’d cleaned her out and skipped town.

She hadn’t discovered the theft until morning. Then, instead of calling the cops to report it, she’d called Joe. Brother Joe, ex-cop, who had bailed her out of trouble more than a few times. The jerk had done a job on her. Missing were two expensive cameras, a diamond-and-emerald ring, Miss Emma’s jade collection and Rafael Davis, alias Richard Donaldson, alias David Raferty.

Twenty years ago, maybe even ten, the creep might’ve gotten away with it, but communications were too good these days. Even the smallest departments were coming on-line. That was how Joe had found out about the woman in Amarillo, who’d signed over her life’s savings to a securities broker named Rick Donaldson, thinking he was going to invest it for their future. Instead he’d walked off with her money and a small Andrew Wyeth watercolor.

In Arkansas, he’d bilked a widow out of her late husband’s insurance money, claiming he’d invested it in a house for them to live in after they were married. He’d taken her three-karat wedding ring out to be cleaned and remounted for her, and that was the last time she’d seen him.

All Joe could figure was that either women were criminally dense, or the guy was incredibly good. Or both. Donna had two college degrees and was working on her third, not to mention a lot of experience with men, all of it bad. Every time one of her marriages broke up, she swore off men, but it never lasted. She’d been fleeced just like all the rest.

He and Sophie ate in the kitchen, which suited Joe just fine. He needed a cozy, casual atmosphere to put her off guard. He planned to work his way around to the subject, even though he’d half decided to put off the hard questions until tomorrow.

“Salt?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“I shouldn’t. It makes my ankles swell, but just this once I’m going to celebrate. I might even make some chocolate pudding. Did you know that nursing mothers can take in a lot more calories and not gain weight?”

He murmured a response while he framed his first question. “Sophie, do you know what a fence is?”

Her gray-green eyes widened. “Certainly I know what a fence is. You’re not going to tell me I need a security fence, are you? Because I can’t afford—”

“Not that kind of fence. The kind I’m talking about is—”

“Picket. There used to be one out front, but it fell down. I cleaned up the last few sections after I moved in. I’m saving them to use on a play yard.”

Joe reached down and massaged his bad knee under the table. “I’m an ex-cop, not a landscape artist. A fence is street slang for a receiver of stolen goods.”

“I knew that. But why—? Oh. This is about Rafe, isn’t it? I was afraid of that.”

She was afraid? Now, that was interesting. “Rafe Davis. Is that what he called himself when you two hooked up?”

She bridled at that, and he warned himself to slow down. He had plenty of time. As much time as he needed. She wasn’t going to sell anything, not while he was here to prevent it. And she wasn’t going to wiggle off the hook, either, because he had her right where he wanted her.

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