Café in Spindrift, Maine, just up the coast from Boothbay Harbor. Your grandfather has her number. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
Again, that long, slow gaze assessed her. But apparently the inquisition was over because he thanked her and walked out of the room. “There’s a twin bed in storage at Granddad’s house,” he called over his shoulder. “I think I can squeeze it in here.”
Erin trailed him through the hall toward the front door. “You don’t have to do that. Christie will be fine, sleeping with me.”
“She should have her own bed,” he said firmly.
Suddenly Christie barreled out of the great room, a page from her coloring book flapping in her hand. Her tiny face was all smiles, her voice a high-pitched squeak. “Wook, Mommy!”
Smiling, Erin scooped Christie into her arms, then held the paper out in front of her. She gasped dramatically at the wild purple and yellow swirls and swishes. “Oh, my! Did you do this all by yourself?”
Christie nodded excitedly.
“It’s beautiful. We’ll have to dig out our magnets and put it on the refrigerator.”
Heat rushed to her cheeks as Mac ambled back from the door. His deep voice gentled as he surveyed Christie’s handiwork, the way most adults’ voices did when speaking to a child. “Mommy’s right. This is a very nice picture. Can you tell me what it is?”
“Me!”
“I can see that now,” he replied chuckling. The skin beside his dark eyes crinkled. “Do you think you could make one for my grandpa’s refrigerator? I’ll bet he’d like that. I know I would.”
Beaming, Christie wriggled out of Erin’s arms and raced back to her crayons.
Mac’s gaze followed her. “How old is she?”
“Three. Well, she will be in three months. September.”
“She’s a cutie.”
“Thank you. I think so.”
His next words landed like a punch. “Her father must miss her very much.”
It was hard to breathe, hard to remain calm, hard to hide the jolt of fear that now accompanied any thought or mention of Charles. But she made it through the moment without betraying any of those things and stated simply, “He’s not with us anymore.”
“He passed away?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
When she didn’t offer more, new questions rose in Corbett’s eyes—curious questions—but apparently respecting her privacy, he didn’t ask them. Instead, the look in his eyes slowly began to change.
The difference was subtle, almost unnoticeable…but for the shortest of seconds, his gaze passed over her hair and the slope of her face—lingered for a heartbeat on her mouth. And Erin’s pulse quickened as awareness came tiptoeing back, all the more potent because they were alone, behind closed doors, and she now realized the attraction was mutual.
Time stretched out on tenterhooks.
The air between them quivered with a tension running just below the surface.
Then Mac abruptly jerked his gaze from hers and retraced his steps to the door. “I’ll see about that bed,” he said brusquely, exiting and closing the screen door behind him.
“Th-thank you again for your trouble,” Erin called.
“It’s no trouble. As I said,” he repeated, his growling baritone trailing, “she needs her own bed.”
Erin sank back against a polished pine wall. Their search for a safe haven was over. In a month or two they might have to look again, but they were all right for now. She stared through the screen at Mac’s broad shoulders and tapering back as he cut through the weeds bordering the pond on his way back to Amos’s…took in his trim hips and long muscular legs.
And suddenly she wondered if she’d traded one kind of danger for another.
Charles Fallon sat behind the antique desk in his opulent high-rise office, the glow of the setting sun coloring the Chicago skyline behind him. He adjusted the pocket silk in his Armani suit, smoothed his fine mustache and goatee, then steepled his fingers before him and called, “Come in” in answer to the soft rap at his door.
A good-looking young man with longish, sun-streaked blond hair and a pleasant smile entered and walked to Charles’s desk, his running shoes silent on the deep-orchid carpeting. He wore jeans and a white polo shirt with a sports logo on the breast pocket, and while he was not muscular, he appeared fit. He did not offer to shake Charles’s hand, and they did not exchange pleasantries.
They were alone on the floor. Everyone who worked for him here at Fallon Financial Consultants had gone for the day.
With an economy of motion, Charles took a folder from his desk and handed it to John Smith. It contained photographs and every scrap of information Charles could recall or gather that might lead Smith to her. Her pathetic little hobbies and interests, her education, the foods she liked. Still on Charles’s desk were her high school yearbook and a list of friends and associates she’d made at the elementary school where she’d once taught kindergarten. There was even a list of her e-mail contacts.
Several minutes elapsed while Smith studied the folder, the only sound in the room the hollow bubbling of the aquarium built into the cherry-paneled north wall. Presently Smith glanced up from the private detective’s report. “She was last seen near Boothbay Harbor driving a 1999 white Ford Windstar?”
“Read on. The vehicle is current, but my private investigator frightened her into running again. He was able to pick up her trail but lost her again in Boston. He said she obviously knew she was being followed, the way she changed lanes and used the on and off ramps.” So unlike his mousy little wife, who’d rarely driven in city traffic.
The square-cut diamond on his right hand caught the setting sun’s rays as Charles flicked a hand at the folder. “It’s all in there.”
Charles stared at the boy-man as he continued to peruse the file. He was thirty years old, and his name was not Smith. But Charles didn’t want or need to know what it was. He only had to know that Smith was short on scruples, long on patience, and used whatever means he deemed appropriate—legal or not—to accomplish his assignments. Which would make him far more effective than the fool who’d lost her.
Smith paged back to the photos. “Your ex-wife’s very beautiful. Little girl looks just like her.”
Charles nodded stiffly, hiding his rage as their faces coalesced in his mind. Beautiful, duplicitous Erin, with her serious cobalt eyes and raven hair, courtesy of the black Irish father who’d never given a damn about her. And Christiana. What an insult that none of his features had been repeated in his daughter’s face. He was the strong one. His genes should have been dominant. She should have had auburn hair and green eyes.
He thought of the divorce in which Erin had aired their private differences—differences every man and wife had—and the absurd judgment that had awarded her full custody because the judge considered him abusive, unfit.
Her
