had to rebuild her life so she could take care of her baby. For her own survival, that life couldn’t include Joe.
Nikki tipped her head back against the silk upholstery and wearily closed her eyes. She knew how vulnerable the little pig in the straw house must have felt when the big bad wolf showed up at his front door.
“Sir?”
Annoyed, Joe looked up from files on M. Raymond Walker to see a rookie cop standing beside his desk. He looked excited about something. Joe couldn’t remember the last time he felt like this kid looked.
“Yeah?”
“My partner and I just worked a home invasion. On the way back to the station he remembered you had an open case involving a member of the victim’s family.”
Joe went still. He knew the answer before he asked the question. “Name?”
“Walker, sir. Brick mansion in Mission Hills.”
“When?” He stood up. He’d been on Nikki’s front porch two hours ago.
“Around six. We were the first ones there,” he said, pride evident in his voice.
Joe nodded, his heart beating painfully hard in his chest.
“Was she injured?” He’d find the bastards who’d broken in and kill them with his bare hands if they’d hurt her.
The rookie took a step back from Joe’s desk and shot him a nervous look. “Not badly. She refused medical treatment.”
Joe grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and started for the door when the cop’s next words halted him in his tracks.
“She was more worried about her kid than herself. Claimed she didn’t know why they’d broken in.”
Kid? What kid? His gut tight, he turned and faced the young cop. He had to take a few deep breaths before he could talk.
“How old was the child?” Joe demanded, his voice harsh enough to send the man back another step.
He looked wary. “I don’t know much about babies. It wasn’t very big.”
Palms sweating, his mind tried to find a reasonable explanation. Nikki was an only child. Couldn’t be a niece or nephew. Don’t jump to conclusions, he cautioned himself. Could be she was looking after a friend’s child.
But as far as Joe knew, Nikki no longer had friends in town. They had pretty much disappeared from her life when the scandal about her father had become public.
Who was he kidding? Joe knew odds-on who the child belonged to. He felt blood rush to his head and roar in his ears. A child. More than likely his. He rubbed his fist over his head. He had a child, he thought, dazed. He felt a flash of anger that she had withheld something so important from him.
The possibility had him moving. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“No problem.”
Joe was already jogging out the door as he heard the rookie’s reply. Why hadn’t Nikki said something this afternoon?
From the precinct parking lot it took exactly eight minutes to get to the Walker house observing the speed limit. Joe pulled up behind the black-and-white in under five, his mind in a turmoil.
Worry for Nikki and anger that she kept such a vital fact from him warred in his head.
Two vans from local news stations were already on scene. Apparently the press wasn’t done covering last year’s crime. When two of the city’s wealthiest men had disappeared along with their company’s assets, leaving nothing behind except a dead secretary, the media had had a field day.
He ignored the knots of neighbors standing across the street. Upscale neighborhoods rarely saw police activity and people had come out to watch. The reporters were harder to avoid, but he held up his hand and kept walking, muttering a curse that made them step back.
Damned vultures. The publicity a year ago had upset Nikki to the point of making her ill.
Joe fished his badge out of his pocket, flipped it open and slid it into the breast pocket of his jacket. A uniform at the door put up a hand to stop him, then spotted his badge and stepped back to let him pass.
“Where are they working?” He needed to get to Nikki, but he didn’t want to barge in and contaminate a crime scene.
The patrolman pointed. “They’re on the north side of the house. Perps came through the side doors.”
Joe remembered the French doors that led from the garden into the breakfast room. Easy to breach. “Where’s Ms. Walker?”
He wanted to see her, alone.
The uniform gestured. “Upstairs.”
Taking the graceful, curved stairs two at a time, Joe poked his head in Nikki’s room. Empty. It looked the same as it had a year ago. Smelled the same too. Sweet and spicy. Like her.
A scent that got stronger when she was naked, and aroused.
Joe muttered a curse under his breath as his body responded to the memory.
He found her in the next room. She was sitting in the dark, wrapped in a blanket and huddled in a big stuffed chair. The only light came from the hallway behind him and didn’t reach across the room to touch her.
Joe stopped in the door and took a deep breath to steady himself.
“Are you all right?” He reached for the light switch.
“Don’t turn on the light,” she said in a flat, unemotional tone.
Ignoring her, he flipped the switch. He needed to see her, make sure she was okay.
She flinched against the flood of brightness, tucking her chin against her chest. He took a step into the room and glanced around.
“Go away. I don’t want you here.” Rhythmically she rocked from side to side.
He had no intention of leaving until she answered the questions buzzing in his head.
The way she was rocking bothered him. He’d seen enough traumatized victims do that in times of stress. She must be much more upset than she sounded.
Now that he saw she was not badly injured physically, her child was uppermost in his mind. He wanted to know everything, but given her current mental state he curbed the urge to interrogate her like a suspect. It would be best to lead up to the subject.
“Who broke in, Nikki?” He struggled to keep his voice low and calm. He wanted to strangle the bastards who’d hurt her.
“I already told the detective. I don’t know who they were.” Her face still averted, she huddled deeper into the blanket pulled up around her shoulders. She looked like a turtle retreating into a protective shell.
“What did they want?” He wanted to cross the room and tip her chin up
