Truly Daddy

I’m thanking about husbands and babies and whether I’m suited for my job. Get me out of here. Fast.

“The man who runs that jewelry store you were in today has been reported missing by his mother.”

“Oh, no!” Her hand flew to her mouth in genuine horror.

“And your hotel room has been virtually dismantled.”

“Is anything missing?” she asked.

He looked at her shrewdly. “Such as?”

“I have a camera. I saved two years to buy it—oh, never mind. How ridiculous to worry about my camera when that poor man is missing.”

“I’ll ask about the camera next time I call. Meantime, how would you feel about lying low for a while? Here.”

“Here?” she cried in unison with Garret.

“Somebody’s looking for you. The question is who? By now, they probably know more about you than your own mother. If these people are sophisticated, and it seems they are, the first time you use your credit card, they’ve got you.”

“But they’ll stop looking once it’s been made public the ring has been found. Won’t they?”

“This ring,” the constable said softly, “might be all that’s keeping that jewelry store owner alive.”

“Good grief!”

“Seems to me, the way you left town is almost providential. You vanished into thin air. You can’t be traced. Nobody is ever going to look for you in Eliza. Ever.”

She was gaping at him. So was Garret.

“There only appeared to be three or four houses in Eliza,” she pointed out. “You weren’t like, um, going to take me into protective custody or something, were you?”

“Nah. Garret’s got a spare room.”

Garret said something very rude.

“And,” Constable Frey added with a sweet smile, “he desperately needs a sitter for a few days.”

Toni said something very rude. “I don’t know anything about babies!”

“Neither did he a few months ago.”

“Angelica hates being called a baby. She’s sensitive about her size.” Garret said this absently, looking at her differently now that she might have some value to him.

He tried out a boyish grin on her. If he’d been handsome before, he was incredibly so when he put a little effort into it.

She gave him a look that could have curled steel rods.

“Ten minutes ago, you thought I was an international jewel thief and now you want me to look after your ba—child?”

“I never said I thought you were a thief.”

“I never thought you were a thief,” Constable Prey said with surprise.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she persisted desperately.

“You don’t have a criminal record,” Constable Frey offered helpfully. “I ran it.”

“Thank you very much,” she snapped.

“I’ll help you, and you help me. Just for a few days.” Garret’s voice was as smooth and sensual as silk.

“Do I really have a choice?”

“Not really,” both men informed her.

“I don’t have anything to wear.”

“My stuff will fit you.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“I’ll go get Angelface,” Constable Frey said. “Let you two get to know each other.” He wagged his eyebrows fiendishly.

“Oh, brother,” Toni muttered.

“Ditto,” Garret said.

They both stared stubbornly at the flickering TV screen.

A few minutes later the door burst open. Constable Frey ducked so he wouldn’t knock off the passenger who rode high on his shoulders.

Even before Toni saw the girl, the whole room seemed to brighten.

When she looked up, her breath caught.

The child looked around three or four and was absolutely beautiful, the spitting image of her uncle, only in a more delicate form. Dark, tumbling hair, huge sapphire blue eyes.

She stopped midsentence when she saw Toni. “Down,” she commanded royally.

She crossed the room with a hop and a skip and then solemnly gazed at Toni before her whole face lit up with a smile.

“Hello, Auntie,” she said.

“What?” Garret asked. “What did you say?”

“I said hello,” the little girl said with a careless shrug.

“Didn’t you say ‘Hello again’? Do you know this lady?”

Angelica looked at her with mischief dancing in her eyes.

And Toni had the oddest sensation of indeed knowing this child. And of something deeper and more breathtaking, something like stepping off the edge of a cliff.

Looking into those wonderful shining eyes, she fell hopelessly in love.

Why had the little girl called her “Auntie”? And why had Garret heard something different?

“I thought she said ‘Hello, angel.’” Constable Frey said.

“What did you say, Angelica?” her uncle asked.

“I just said hello,” she replied easily. “That’s all. It’s snowing out,” she said with pleasure. “I have a new toboggan. Will you go with me tomorrow?”

A chubby hand crept into Toni’s.

“A toboggan?” Toni said uncertainly. “Like a snow sled?”

Angelica nodded vigorously. “I like to go really fast,” she warned.

Suddenly, Toni, who had never seen real live snow before tonight, wanted nothing more than to go really fast down a hill with this little girl.

Suddenly, this whole adventure seemed tinged with magic.

Four days here did not seem like prison but like something else entirely. Fate. Destiny guiding her back to something that had always been and always would be.

She looked into those shining blue eyes and then glanced at Garret’s, the same shade but his tinged with darker mystery, sternness, a hint of sexuality.

She shivered.

Hello again...

Chapter Three

Garret had started to feel differently about Toni when she’d looked at the trees in his driveway and, with almost childish delight, pronounced them Christmas trees.

And even more differently when she walked up the pathway to his house.

Until then, he could feel his defensive wall rise up. Way up. She was like a model, hair a tangled flame, eyes intensely jade, straight nose, full lips, peaches-and-cream complexion. She was long-legged and willowy, in a beautifully cut suit, the skirt short enough to make his mouth go dry.

She was perfect and beautiful in a way that made him dislike her. She was the kind of woman men made fools of themselves over, lined up to be with.

And he’d never been a fool or lined up for a woman and he wasn’t about to start.

But a brick had fallen out of that defensive wall when she called that scraggly line of balsams and spruces and lodgepoles Christmas trees. And then the wall had started to crack at the precise moment she bent over and picked up a handful of snow.

And it hadn’t been just because that short skirt had ridden up deliciously high on her thigh, either.

It had been because he’d glimpsed something else inside her—a heart behind the polished facade, a child within the sophisticated woman who could tie the male population in knots with a blink of her tangled lashes.

She had glanced back at him, caught with little flakes of snow around her mouth, and actually blushed.

It had made him feel vulnerable as hell.

Which was probably why she had jumped to the entirely erroneous conclusion that he believed her to be a jewel thief. Because when he felt vulnerable as hell, he hid behind a mask of icy remoteness.

He wasn’t really used to feeling vulnerable. Maybe he wasn’t really used to feeling, period. But the loss of his brother, Matthew, and his sister-in-law, Sarah, and having Angelica come into his life, made the region around his heart feel oddly tender all the time.

He was in no position to defend himself against an assault on his heart right now. As if she would, he told himself with an inner snort.

But he made the mistake of glancing at Toni’s face when Angelica had come through the door on Frey’s shoulders. Her whole face had softened, her green eyes lit from within with gentleness.

She was the kind of woman who could make a full frontal assault on a poor wounded heart without even knowing she was doing it.

What if she was everything she appeared to be? Gorgeous, inside and out? Not to mention here for four days?

“What did you say, Unkie?”

“What? Nothing!” But Frey was grinning at him like a cat that had swallowed a canary.

Angelica, with a final smile at Toni to ensure she had charmed her completely, came and settled herself on his lap.

That Angelica accepted him so absolutely, trusted her love to him so completely without question, never failed to amaze him and make him feel humble. What had he done in his life to deserve this?

“Did you bring me my cookies?”

“What cookies?” he asked, drawing down his brows in pretended puzzlement.

She didn’t buy it. “My cookies with the future in them. Where are they?”

He laughed. She knew too well her every wish was his command.

“Fortune cookies,” he told her. “By the front door.”

She came back a moment later, her eyes glittering expectantly at the huge sack of cookies. She politely offered the bag to everyone, then, taking her own chair, sat eagerly on her knees, broke open her cookie and moved her eyes back and forth as if she could really read her fortune.

“You first,” she told her uncle.

Garret read, “‘You will be richly rewarded for all your efforts.”’

He and his rescue buddies had always played a game in which they spiced up the fortune by adding the words “in bed” to the end of it He glanced at Miss California over there and couldn’t stop the thought from going through his mind. I wish.

He reminded himself sternly to be a proper daddy.

“You next,” Angelica ordered Frey, her adoring slave.

“You will catch many criminals and be a hero,” Frey deadpanned.

Angelica eyed him cynically. “Liar,” she proclaimed.

He laughed and read her the real one. “‘Leam to let go of past troubles. The future is bright.’”

“Now you,” Angelica said to Toni.

“‘You will know great happiness,’” Toni said, but the fortune did not seem to make her happy. A faint frown pulled at her lips and lowered her brows.

Garret added a silent “in bed” and his blood turned so hot he had to leave quickly to get more water for the cocoa.

“That’s almost exactly what the man in Chinatown said when he gave me the ring,” Toni mused.

Her voice was thick and rich, like whipped cream. Not that he wanted to be thinking about her and whipped cream in the same sentence.

“Read mine.” Angelica pressed hers into Toni’s hand.

He felt mildly annoyed. Replaced already? He told himself Toni was closer, that he was still over at the counter fussing with hot-chocolate things. Little old ladies fussed, he corrected himself. Men—what—managed?

An hour ago, he wouldn’t have been giving mere semantics so much thought. See? She was the kind of woman who changed things.

“‘People look to you for leadership,’” Toni read.

He chose that moment to turn from the counter with a stray laden with a kettle and more hot chocolate. He looked at his miniature niece, who was glowing prettily, and then at Toni, who had broken into the most beautiful smile. She had deep dimples when she smiled.

He bet she smiled often. He bet some men would make it a full-time job trying to coax that smile out of her.

He set everything back on the counter. Enough was enough.

“What does that mean?” Angelica asked.

“It means people follow you,” he told her. “Eat your cookie, and then we’ll all follow you to bed. It’s getting late.”

Angelica nibbled her cookie in painfully small bites while grilling Toni about where she lived.

“Is it hot in California all the time? Do you go to the beach every day? Do you wear a bikini?”

Another thought that made his mouth go dry. He’d been living like a hermit too damn long. She said she didn’t wear bikinis. He wondered why the hell not. If ever a woman was born for one, she was.

“Do you see whales? Dolphins? Kangaroos? Gophers?”

He recognized his darling niece was now using stall tactics to delay her bedtime despite the heaviness of her eyes. In a minute, her head would flop down on the table and she’d be asleep. Once, she had slipped from her chair and onto the floor so quickly, he hadn’t even realized what was happening.

“Angie, bedtime,” he said firmly. He scooped her up and went down the hall with her.

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