Lowering her head, Teri tightened her arms around the bundle, holding it against her with all the care a mother would give to her sleeping child. Shaw was right beside her, his arm wrapped around her protectively as he guided mother and child out.
Just before he closed the door, he shut off the last of the lights.
The darkness bathed them. Straining her eyes against it, Ilene looked toward the sofa where her son was still dozing. She didn’t want him suddenly waking up and panicking. Alex was afraid of the dark.
For a moment there was nothing, only darkness and the sound of Ilene breathing. Clay tried not to remember the last time that sound had wafted to him in the stillness of the night. Tried not to remember making love with Ilene until the sun began to slowly slip its fingers into the room, poking into the corners, coaxing away the shadows.
He tried but he failed. The memories came, anyway.
Maybe, he thought, when you made love with the right woman, it was a little like riding a bicycle. No matter how much time actually went by, when you come into the proximity of a bicycle, you can’t help but recall the feeling.
The same went for the woman.
Along with her breathing, he could feel her tension fill the air. Inbred instincts made him want to comfort her. “You all right?”
She ran her tongue along dry lips. It didn’t help. “I’ve been better,” she confessed. “I’m just worried about Alex.”
Kids could handle anything, as long as they had love, he thought. He’d learned that firsthand. “Don’t be. He’s going to think of this as one big adventure,” Clay promised.
“Right.”
She stiffened as she felt Clay’s arm slip around her shoulder. He was still wearing that same cologne, the one she’d given him so long ago. The scent stirred memories she wanted to forget. She couldn’t handle them and this, too.
She was as stiff as a lightning rod. “Just me,” Clay told her softly, “offering moral support.”
She didn’t want him offering moral support. She didn’t want him offering anything at all. She didn’t want him back in her life, no matter how professionally. Because she couldn’t think of him that way.
Ilene clenched her hands at her sides. “I should have never done this,” she said regretfully. If there was a way to click her heels and undo everything, she would have. “All I was supposed to do was just sign off on the report, not start going into the figures myself.”
He knew her, knew she didn’t sweep things under the rug or do things by half measures. If something bore her name, she had to make sure it was right. She had integrity and that meant something to her. He wanted her to be proud of herself, not angry. “Why did you start going into the figures yourself?”
“Because they didn’t look right.” She sighed. When was she going to learn she couldn’t be a crusader? Not anymore. She had a son, a life that had been entrusted to her, she couldn’t just think of herself anymore. “Because I didn’t want anyone buying stock under false pretenses.”
She heard him laugh softly and the sound wound its way to her belly, upsetting it even further. “You always did worry about everyone else.”
“And look where it got me.”
He didn’t like the fatalistic tone in her voice. That wasn’t like her. He remembered her as being feisty. She needed to draw on that now. “It’s not over.”
She covered her face for a second as a myriad of regrets assaulted her. She struggled for high ground. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“What happened to all that optimism you used to have?”
She turned to him and could just about make out his eyes. “It got dried up along the way.”
And he had been the one who’d dried it, he thought suddenly. Or was at least responsible for some of it drying up.
He was reading too much into it, Clay told himself. The man who had fathered her child had to be at least partially responsible for her attitude, as well.
Where was he?
Who was he? Had she loved him? Did she still love him?
Clay shut down his mind. There was no sense in going that route, in torturing himself with questions that might never be answered, questions he had no right to ask in the first place. He’d given her up. Willingly. That meant he had no claim to her now, and certainly not the time they’d been apart.
“That’s too bad,” he finally responded. Glancing down at his watch, he angled it so that the thin beam of moonlight struggling into the room highlighted the golden face. “We’d better get going. You ready?”
She nodded, her mouth suddenly twice as dry as it had been a moment ago. Going over to the sofa, she scooped Alex up in her arms.
Rousing, the small weight shifted against her, like a little monkey seeking a bit of comfort. “Mama?” he mumbled against her chest.
She stroked his head. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if she’d put even one hair of his head in danger, she thought.
“It’s okay honey, we’re going on a little trip.” It had been what she’d told him when he’d looked up at her with sleepy eyes as she’d hurriedly dressed him less than half an hour ago.
“De-neyland?”
“Not yet—” she laughed softly, pressing her to him, drawing comfort from the warmth of his little body against hers “—but soon.”
Clay was beside her. “Disneyland a big deal with him?”
She turned her head, whispering even though she knew the boy was asleep again. Bless him, he could sleep through an earthquake once he was in the right mode. “He’s never been,” she explained. “But he’s seen the commercials and he’s determined to go.”
Something stirred within him, something apart from his sense of duty and the odd nostalgia that pushed its way forward. Something that had to do with children and families and a life on its way to being misspent.
“Maybe when this is all behind you, I’ll take the two of you to Disneyland.”
No, she wasn’t going to allow Clay to seduce her with words, with images that flashed temptingly through her mind. She didn’t need or want anything from him beyond protection for her son. “That’s okay,” she replied crisply. “When this is all behind me, I’ll take my son to Disneyland myself.”
Clay shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
He didn’t like her defensive tone, the one that was holding up and waving the No Trespassing sign in front of him, even though he knew that he had at least partly earned it.
“Yes,” she replied tersely, “whatever I say.”
He first picked up the laptop she insisted on taking with her and then the suitcase she had hurriedly packed for the two of them. Inside was the note he’d taken down from her dining room window. With any luck, there might be a print on it. At least he could hope.
Taking her arm, he directed her to the rear of the house. “Let’s get going.”
He didn’t have to tell her again.
Chapter 5
I
f the tension were any thicker within Shaw’s four-door, unmarked vehicle, it would have been a solid entity. Clay searched for a way to distract the woman on his right who sat staring straight ahead, as rigid as the principles of right and wrong that had brought her to this juncture.
He glanced again in the rearview mirror. His line of vision shifted from the vacant area beyond the rear of the car to the small figure in the back seat. Alex was secured in place with a seat belt, but the boy was still of an age where car seats were the norm. He’d seen the look of concern on Ilene’s face when she’d strapped her son in.
“My father has an old car seat in the garage.” Clay remembered stumbling across it not that long ago, wondering if his father was saving it for his first grandchild. “I think it was Rayne’s.”
For a second, she didn’t realize that Clay was talking to her. Lost in her own thoughts, in fears that she was struggling to make sense of, it took Ilene a moment to replay the words that had been directed toward her. “What?”
Watching the car in the rearview mirror as he made a left-hand turn, Clay waited until it continued straight before answering. The car hadn’t been following him. Better paranoid than sorry later.
“A car seat. For your son.” Glancing at her, he saw no indication that she was following him. “We didn’t exactly have time to switch the one from your car to Shaw’s,” he reminded her.
Ilene’s complexion looked almost translucent, he thought, even factoring in the limited light from the passing streetlamps. She looked pale and drawn and worried. Not that he could blame her. He knew what it was like, having a world you thought secure suddenly upended. For him it had been his mother’s death. It was all you could do to keep from going under.
Ilene shook her head. What was he doing, talking about car seats and the weather? “Rain?”
“Rayne. Lor-rayne,” he enunciated slowly. “My youngest sister. We call her Rayne because when Teri was a little girl, she couldn’t say Lorrayne. She wasn’t as advanced as I was.” His joke fell flat, not even coaxing a smile from Ilene. He hated seeing her like this. She didn’t deserve to be frightened, to feel like a fugitive for doing the right thing. “If you ask me,” he continued in an easy voice, “Dad should have found a way to keep her strapped into it until she was about nineteen. She gave him a lot of grief.”
Ilene tried to keep her mind on the conversation and not on the huge knot that had formed in her stomach. “But not anymore?”
Clay felt himself smiling. There was a bet he would have lost. He had figured that nothing would ever get the youngest Cavanaugh to fly right, much less actually join the police department. Showed what he knew.
“She straightened out.” The amber light turned red before he could get into the intersection. He raised his eyes to the rearview again. Nothing. Good. “We all did. Fine, upstanding citizens, the lot of us.”
Beside him, he heard Ilene laugh softly under her breath. He’d forgotten how much he liked that sound, how it bathed over him, making him want more. “What’s so funny?”
She shook her head. Wisps of strawberry-blond hair brushed against either cheek. She combed them away with her fingers. “I don’t see you as that.”
“Oh?” The light turned green and he took his foot from the brake. “And what do you see me as?”
Not with me, for one thing.
“Free.” She thought a minute, then added, “Unencumbered.”
He saw no contradiction. “Free spirits can be upstanding.” His mouth curved. The term was one that always came to mind when he thought of his youngest sister. “Matter of fact, that probably best describes Rayne. I don’t think she’s ever going to settle down.” She was too independent, too bullheaded for that matter. “Much to my father’s dismay. I’ve got this feeling he sees himself at the head of this overpopulated dynasty, having all of us turn up at the table with our assorted spouses and a gaggle of kids.”
“Gaggle?” She looked at him. “Isn’t that what you call a gathering of geese?”
Clay shrugged as he took another turn. This was the long way home, but he wanted to be certain that there was no one following him. “Gaggle, bunch, herd, you get the idea.”
“Yes, I do.” Ilene set her mouth grimly. “That you think children are animals.”
Conversations from the past returned to her. Clay had made a point of saying he never wanted to settle down, never wanted children. That kids didn’t belong in a world that wasn’t stable. She’d agreed with him, but that didn’t change the fact that in her heart, she’d always wanted at least one child of her own if not more.
“They can be,” he said. And then he thought of his father. At what he’d endured at Rayne’s hands. The air between the two had been as volatile as a tray filled with nitroglycerin. “They can also be a huge emotional drain on you. Look at what my father went through.”
She had absolutely no idea what his father had gone through. When they’d been together, Clay had never shared that part of himself. What he’d shared was the moment. “Ever ask him if he regretted it?”
Clay watched the road ahead intently. For the umpteenth time he wondered where his father had found the strength to go on. If he’d loved a woman the way his father had loved his mother and then lost her, he didn’t think he would have been able to go on. “Maybe not now, but he must have somewhere along the line.”
It was Ilene’s turn to shrug. “Everybody regrets even the best of things somewhere along the line.” She remembered how she’d felt when she discovered she was pregnant. In theory, she’d always hoped the day would come. In reality, it had come at the least opportune time, a frightening prospect when she was least prepared for it. But she’d managed and had lived to be grateful. “A celebrity busts her tail to get to the point where she’s rich and famous, then yearns for when she was unknown and could go to the grocery store unnoticed. To find out if you’re really happy with how things have turned out, you have to look at the big picture.”
He surprised her by turning toward her as they came to another stop. “So, what about your big picture, Ilene? Are you happy?”
In her case, she didn’t look at the big picture, because that should have included someone to love her who measured taller than three feet. Instead, she looked at the small, precious picture, at her world captured in Alex’s eyes.
“I love my son.” And then, just as it had the past two days, events came up to haunt her. “And up until last week, I loved my job. I was good at it, good at details, at order.” She turned her face away from him. A note akin to cynicism came into her voice. She’d been so close to finally getting to the top, and now she was back to square one. Maybe even below square one. “I guess I can’t exactly expect a letter of recommendation from Simplicity now.”
“Sometimes a clear conscience is better than a letter of recommendation,” Clay said.
“Since when did you get philosophical?”
Without a philosophical approach, what he had seen during the course of his police work would have made him quit almost before he ever signed on.
“The job does that to you. We all develop some kind of defense mechanisms. We have to, and philosophy is a hell of a lot better than drinking yourself under the table every night just to be able to keep the nightmares at bay.”
Was he just talking, or had his work changed him? By how much? For the better?
Not your business anymore, Ilene.
“I always thought staying one step ahead of a commitment was your defense mechanism.” Ilene blew out a breath. He was trying to help her, help her son, and she was being bitchy. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. My mind is in a hundred places right now.”
“You’re entitled,” he told her.
He never stewed over anything for very long, firmly believing that was the shortest route to an ulcer. Making the next right, he glanced in the mirror. So far, so good. He wondered if he was getting too complacent. Had he missed anything?
She turned around in her seat to look behind her. The street stretched out, long and dark. “You keep looking in the rearview mirror. You think anyone’s following us?”
“Doesn’t look that way.” He was glad to be able to level with her. “Shaw and Teri should be checking into a motel right about now.” The car he’d seen parked in the vicinity had followed after them. With luck, that was the only tail. “They’re going to stay there and keep up the ruse for a few hours to hopefully buy you a little time.” He grinned, sparing her a glance before looking back on the road. “Whoever tried to scare you off isn’t going to expect you to come home with the police,”
She laughed again. “I didn’t expect to be coming home with the police, either.” She folded her hands in front of her. It annoyed her that they still shook a little. “I appreciate you doing this, I know this isn’t business as usual for you.”
“It never was with you.” The words had just slipped out. When she looked at him sharply, he got into his cop mode. “You realize you can’t get in contact with anyone while you’re at my father’s house.”
“I realize that.” Did he think she was stupid? That she’d get on the phone and call a girlfriend? Damn, she had to stop being so defensive. He was just doing his best. More. “There’s no one to call.”
Clay looked back at the boy. “Not even Alex’s father?”
Ilene pulled back. The ice beneath her feet cracked a little. She couldn’t relax her guard for a moment. “Alex’s father isn’t in the picture.”
“Whose idea was that?”
She stuck to the truth as much as she could, wishing he’d drop the subject. “Mine.”
He’d felt more than seen her stiffen. His training had him reading her body language. “Was he abusive?”
Ilene gave him one of the reasons she’d given herself for keeping him out of Alex’s life. “No, but having him coming in and out of Alex’s life whenever the whim moved him would have been detrimental to Alex.”
“And he’s okay with this?”
“He has to be.” Feeling progressively more uncomfortable, she shifted in her seat. “Look, do we have to talk about this?”
“No, we can talk about anything you want.” He was just trying to get her to forget for a little while why she was here in the first place. “How long have you been back in town?”
“How did you know I left town?” As soon as she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d known she couldn’t stay and run the risk of running into Clay. Seeing her, he would have guessed he was Alex’s father. So she’d gone to stay with a friend until she’d gotten on her feet and struck out on her own.
“Because I tried to look you up about a month after our breakup.”
She hadn’t expected that. “Guilt?”
Probably in part. Since he was responsible for her finally giving him his walking papers. He’d orchestrated it, and once the melody ceased to play, he’d found himself battling regret and guilt at the same time. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I was doing fine,” she told him, saying lines she’d rehearsed over and over again years ago. “Took a job with Simplicity at one of their branch offices in Denver. Did so fine that they transferred me to their regional headquarters.”
She didn’t add how much soul searching she had done before accepting the promotion, battling the very real concern she had at the possibility of running into him if she accepted the job. She’d almost turned the promotion down, but the options for a single mother trying to make a career for herself and her son were still not that plentiful that she could afford to walk away from something as lucrative as the offer had promised to be.
Certainly walking away from it now, aren’t you?
He studied her profile and tried to fill in blanks. There was something she wasn’t telling him. Why should she, he argued. It wasn’t as if they’d just drifted apart; he’d ripped them apart. At the bottom of a bottle of very fine Kentucky bourbon, he’d come face-to-face with the reasons why some time back. He was afraid of loving someone. Afraid that they’d be taken away from him the way his mother had been taken away from his father. From him.
He made the logical assumption. “So Alex’s father doesn’t live in Aurora.”
She looked at him. “Why are you suddenly so interested in Alex’s father?”
Ilene wasn’t even sure why she was asking him that instead of shutting down the subject again. Maybe it was because she wanted him to make her believe that if Alex had been his child, he would have wanted to know about it. Maybe she wanted him to say something to convince her that she’d made a mistake in not telling him and that he truly wanted a child. Wanted her.
Damn it, she was letting all this get to her. She was punchy and tired and unreasonable, Ilene told herself. Why else was she hoping to hear something she knew she hadn’t a chance in hell of hearing? Clay was Clay. A footloose, fancy-free bachelor who made no bones about telling a woman right up front where he stood. There’d been no deception, no promises to feel cheated about. He’d been honest to her from the start.
The only thing was, she’d wanted him to change his mind. Because of her. And he hadn’t.
He lifted a shoulder, letting it drop carelessly. “Just wondering what kind of man would walk away from you.”
An enigmatic smile played on her lips. “Maybe you should angle that rearview mirror down a little lower,” she suggested.
He’d asked for that one, Clay thought. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ve had some thoughts about that, too.”
She felt her heart suddenly rise to attention. “Such as?”
Warning signals went up. He was going places he couldn’t back out of. But then he saw his reprieve. Clay nodded toward the well-lit house up ahead, at the end of the block. “We’re here.”
She’d been so intent, waiting for an answer, that she didn’t follow him for a second. “Here?”
“My house.” He nodded at it again. “My father’s house.”
But she’d heard just one thing. Something inside of her, a vein intent on self-preservation, came to life. “What do you mean your house?”
He slowed as an orange cat dashed across the street. Lincoln was older than the hills and by all rights should have been dead years ago.