The Lawman's Baby

Benjie blinked a couple of times, and then there was another rumble.

“Wow. Kiddo. This is really something,” Mike said, looking around the room. Some leaks were starting to seep into the sleeper, and Mike quickly realized he was in a bind. This baby needed a new diaper—heck, maybe two, at this rate—and he had a very faint idea of how to make this happen.

“Benjie, you and I have a problem,” Mike said, pulling the baby back against his body again. There was going to be a smell, and probably some leaking, but he couldn’t just walk around for the next ten minutes, holding a five-pound newborn like an offering to the gods. He’d have to survive a little baby poop.

The diapers were in the box in the kitchen. So he headed in that direction. There would be wipes, too. He knew that much. He rummaged around, past bottles, soothers, some plastic doodads he didn’t recognize...and emerged with a small package of diapers. He tossed them overhand toward the couch, then snatched up the tub of wipes.

He was feeling better already. This wasn’t so bad. He’d been a little freaked out when Paige took off to run those errands, but maybe she was right—he was doing okay.

There was a sweatshirt hanging over the arm of the couch, and he tossed it onto the floor to give a bit of padding. Then he sank to the floor next to it, lowered Benjie onto the sweatshirt and started undoing snaps on that little sleeper. Getting him out of the soiled sleeper was easy enough, but the diaper was a whole new challenge. He couldn’t figure out how to get it off Benjie, and it was more than full—it was overflowing. Mike eyed it for a moment, considering his options. He briefly considered just using some scissors and cutting the kid out of the diaper, but pointy scissors and a tiny, squirmy baby were a bad combination.

But then it occurred to him that he could just slide the baby out of his diaper like a pair of shorts. The whole diaper, now that it was overflowing, was hanging rather loose and low, anyway, so he gave it a little shimmy, and his plan worked...for the most part.

He now had a dirty diaper, and a baby dirty from the waist down, since he’d pulled Benjie through the diaper to get him out of it. He left the diaper where it was on top of the sweater and carried Benjie out in front of him, thumbs under his arms and fingers supporting his tiny head from behind, and headed for the kitchen.

He needed the sprayer nozzle on the tap, but before he could do anything with the sprayer, he needed a hand free. That meant the dirty baby went back up on his shoulder, and one hand went over the dirty bottom. He grimaced. There was an easier way for all of this, he was sure.

Once he got some warm water, Mike rinsed off his hand under the tap, then lowered the baby into the empty sink and sprayed him off, too. He was being gentle, but Benjie scrunched up his face and started to cry.

“Hey, buddy...it’s not so bad. You’ve got to be clean. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry...”

Behind him, Mike heard the front door open.

“I’m back!” Paige’s voice filtered over to the kitchen. There was a pause. “Oh, my God! What happened in here?”

“I’m in the kitchen,” he called, and he turned off the water, then scanned the room for something to wrap the baby in. Benjie’s plaintive wail made him feel bad—no one liked being hosed off, even if the hose was warm and gentle.

Paige appeared in the doorway, her eyes wide as she took him in.

“There is baby poop literally everywhere,” she said.

“Except on the baby,” he said, lifting up Benjie as proof. He was feeling rather proud of that achievement. He snatched a dish towel off the handle of the stove and wrapped it around Benjie, who stopped crying the minute he was wrapped up again. “Would you mind holding him?”

Paige stepped forward and took the baby without complaint, staring at Mike with a look of bewildered shock.

“I’ll just...change,” he said, looking down at his now smeared uniform. “This comes out in the wash, right?”

Paige didn’t answer, and he headed for the bedroom to find something else to wear. The smell of the diaper followed him, and he wrinkled his nose.

“So what did you pick up?” Mike called as he grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his dresser.

“A bassinet, some burp cloths, a few preemie sleepers, since he’s pretty tiny still,” Paige called back. “Mike, what did you do to that diaper?”

“Nothing.” Mike emerged from the bedroom fully dressed. He went over to the sweatshirt protecting the carpet, picked it all up with one swoop and headed for the garbage. Whatever—he wasn’t attached to that sweatshirt, anyway.

“I think we need some diaper lessons,” she said. “Grab me a diaper, and I’m going to run through the basics.”

Mike passed a diaper over, and she held it up in front of her one-handed, the baby in the other arm. “This is the front. This is the back. These little tabs work like stickers.”

And for the next five minutes, Paige gave him a brief overview of diapering and dressing a baby—Benjie getting buttoned into a sleeper in the process. So, yeah, there had been an easier way, but in his defense, he’d panicked. Looking over at Paige’s sparkling blue eyes as she gave her super-detailed explanation of diaper duty, he realized that he was more than glad she was here to help him out—he was deeply grateful.

“They’re throwing me a baby shower at the precinct,” he said when she stopped talking.

“Good.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You need baby things,” she said, rising to her feet and cuddling Benjie close in her arms.

“What about that box in the kitchen? And you just bought baby things, I thought.”

“I got a few necessities,” she said with a small smile. “Trust me, Mike, you need a whole lot more baby stuff than you already have, and baby showers are a great way to get it.”

“I don’t like this,” he said.

Paige shrugged. “You’ll survive. You also might end up with something really useful, like a stroller, so...”

He found her lack of pity annoying, but he shot her a grin, anyway. “I take it the baby stuff is in the car still?”

She rummaged in her pocket for her keys and tossed them over to him. He caught them and headed for the front door. “I’ll write you a check.”

He was a lot more comfortable carrying boxes out of the car than he was dealing with his infant nephew, but when he glanced back at Benjie snuggled up in the crook of Paige’s arm, already fast asleep, he felt a wave of tenderness. Funny how an explosive diaper could be so bonding.

He and Benjie would be okay. Eventually.

CHAPTER THREE

PAIGE AWOKE FIVE minutes before her alarm went off the next morning, and she rolled over to grab her cell phone from the bedside table. When she pushed a button to light up the screen, she saw she had no missed calls. She yawned and put it down, then rubbed her hands over her face. She’d left her number with Mike before she left last night, just in case he found himself in over his head and in need of help. So she had slept lightly, expecting the phone to ring.

But it hadn’t, and she wasn’t sure what that meant. She’d agreed to be at his home by seven in the morning. So she flung back the covers and shivered in the chilly predawn. She grabbed a bathrobe and pulled it on before she flicked on her light and opened her closet.

Paige got dressed in some warm layers, ending in a soft, mauve sweater and a pair of jeans. It felt good to be dressing down for a change—she had to admit that. But waking up this early and plunging out into the morning cold still felt like it was a workday.

She’d had a few appointments with a counselor about her panic attacks and decisions for her future, and one of the things the counselor had pointed out was that Paige had never taken a proper break. What would life look like if Paige didn’t have this job? Stress leave was about more than giving her frayed nerves a rest—it was an experiment in what life would be like without her duties as a social worker.

So far, that had meant ordinary days—grocery shopping, watching Netflix, looking through the want ads at the jobs that came up in Eagle’s Rest. She hadn’t found an encouraging number of jobs she was qualified for, or interested in.

She’d considered getting another appointment with the counselor, but she needed to make her own decision. No one else could do this for her. If she left her career, she’d be the one to reap the rewards or live to regret it. And this assignment with Mike and Benjie was a bit of a relief. It was less time in her own head. Less agonizing about her decisions.

Paige’s house was a two-bedroom bungalow with an unfinished basement and ancient plumbing, but it suited Paige just fine. She stopped in her little kitchen for a cup of hot tea and toast with extra butter. Then she cleaned up, put on a bit of makeup and let herself out into the chilly predawn darkness.

The sky was clear of clouds, and she paused in the driveway in front of her house to look up. It was a habit from childhood—looking for the constellations she knew. But she could see only the brightest of the stars still visible. The mountains loomed like a black wall to the west, and she shivered as a gust of icy wind wormed its way against her neck.

Paige unlocked her car and got in. She turned the key and rubbed her hands together, then pressed them between her legs while the engine warmed up and the frost melted off her windows. Winter was coming—and soon enough the mountain snow would work its way down to them.

This really did feel like going to work, except for the casual dress, and she had to remind herself that this wasn’t. Not really. Mike had agreed to pay her a fair wage for the three weeks, but this wasn’t the job that had her heart in knots. This was a strange break—a newborn, a clueless guardian and a couple of weeks where she could put off making the biggest decision of her career. She sucked in a few deep breaths, counting four seconds in, holding it for four seconds and then releasing for four seconds. It helped to center herself in the moment.

“I’m fine,” she murmured to herself. “It’s early, and I’m tired, but I’m fine.”

Her phone dinged, and she looked down at an incoming text. It was from her friend Liv Hylton. She’d just gotten married and was both pregnant with her first child and running a successful bookstore in downtown Eagle’s Rest, but she’d made time to chat with Paige last night. For that Paige was grateful.

Speaking of new career ideas, ever think of running a day care? Eagle’s Rest could use one.

What were friends for, if not to help a girl brainstorm a whole new career? She was too young to call this a midlife crisis, but it was a crisis. She flicked on the heater in the car before she started texting back.

Not a bad idea actually. I’m looking forward to being a nanny for a few weeks. This baby is so adorable... 5 lbs of cute!

She was making light of things, as if a cute baby and three weeks with a ruggedly good-looking cop could solve her problems. They couldn’t, obviously, but neither could Liv, so Paige wouldn’t unload on her pregnant friend this morning. Paige might feel overwhelmed, but that was no reason to be a burden on her friends. She wasn’t even willing to call her brother this morning, and she and Nathan had always been close.

She tossed her phone onto the passenger side seat and put her car in Reverse. She didn’t want to be late.

Her phone pinged again, and Paige glanced at the incoming text from Liv.

The 250 lbs of cute can’t hurt, either.

“Har, har,” Paige said aloud, then chuckled as she backed out of her driveway. But Mike wasn’t quite the diversion from reality that Liv seemed to think.

The drive across town only took ten minutes, and most of that was stopping at empty intersections. This time of year, there were fewer tourists to clog the roads, but they still had the traffic lights that were so necessary in the busy season, and Paige seemed to hit every single red light. She stopped at the elementary school, the window already aglow this early, and then she stopped again at the corner with the laundromat and the diner. The next red light was by the bus station, and she watched a teenager sitting with a backpack inside the well-lit waiting area.

Going somewhere...alone. It sparked Paige’s instincts because she had dealt with a few runaways in her career. But then an older woman appeared at the girl’s side, handing her a can of pop and sitting down next to her. The light turned green, and Paige pressed on the gas again. Eagle’s Rest was her town, and she felt like one of the guardians here—keeping it safe and secure for everyone else.

When Paige pulled into Mike’s driveway, the sun had started to peer over the horizon, flooding the sky with pink, setting the snowcapped mountain peaks into a golden glow.

Lights shone from the windows of Mike’s little bungalow, and when she knocked on the side door, it opened almost instantly.

Mike stood in the doorway barefoot, Benjie wrapped in an afghan, his little eyes open wide and his downy hair standing up straight. Mike’s uniform shirt was unbuttoned and hung open, revealing a white undershirt beneath, and he looked like he’d had a rough night.

“Morning,” he said, stepping back. “Am I glad to see you.”

“How’d it go?” she asked. She closed the door behind her, then bent down to touch Benjie’s soft little cheek with the back of her finger.

“Long. He kept waking up hungry. Like, every hour.”

“I warned you,” she said. “That’s actually a good sign.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mike yawned. “You want to hold him?”

“Sure.”

Mike eased the baby into Paige’s arms, and she looked down at Benjie with a smile. She smoothed a hand over his ruffled hair and sighed. This was soothing... She glanced up, expecting Mike to head back the bedroom to get ready for work, but instead he yawned again and opened the fridge.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Not much,” she admitted.

“I fix a mean omelet,” he said. “Interested?”

“Will I make you late?” she asked.

“Nope, I’m cooking, anyway,” he said, pulling some ingredients from the fridge.

Paige peeked into the living room and spotted a few cloths strewn across the couch, three empty baby bottles sitting on a side table.

“How do you feel about me taking Benjie out today?” Paige asked. “I might want to go out for lunch or something. Are you comfortable with that?”

“Sure.” He glanced over his shoulder. “That’s not daunting for you?”

“Not really,” she said.

He turned back to the stove. “You weren’t the one up all night.”

“You could have called,” she said. “I actually expected you to.”

“Nah.” He stifled a yawn. “I’ve got to soldier through, right?”

Paige headed for the coffeemaker. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black. Why?”

She poured a mug and slid it across the counter toward him. “Drink up.”

Mike accepted it without another word and gingerly took a sip.

“Here,” she said. “Take the baby. Drink your coffee. I’ll make breakfast.”

“It’s my home, I feel like I should do the cooking,” he said.

“This is also your baby, and I think he needs a change,” she retorted with a grin.

Mike chuckled. “Just you wait until I’m all the way awake.”

But he did as she asked, and took the baby from her arms. He blew on the coffee, took another sip, then headed into the living room. Paige started sautéing some mushrooms and onions for the omelets, and for a few minutes there was nothing but the hiss of frying food.

“There you go, buddy...” she could hear Mike say from the other room. “You’re awake now, aren’t you? Well, I’m not. No one lets me nap like they do for you. You could get away with murder because you’re smaller than a loaf of bread. I’m bigger than a loaf of bread, so there’s more judgment there.”

She couldn’t help but smile as she listened to Mike talk to the baby. He didn’t seem to have the regular baby talk that most people used on infants. His was earnest and logical...and he sounded exhausted.

By the time Paige poured the egg mixture into the pan, Mike emerged into the kitchen, the baby in one arm and wheeling the bassinet ahead of him.

“Almost done,” she said.

Mike laid Benjie in the bassinet, then straightened, stretching his shoulders and back.

“I’m not normally this helpless,” he said, coming up beside her and opening an upper cupboard. He pulled down two plates and put them on the counter next to her. “I feel like I need to say that.”

“I believe you,” she replied, then used the spatula to cut the omelet in half and serve it up. “Maybe it’s lucky you’re here in Eagle’s Rest right now. At least your shift should be an easy one.”

“Yeah, that’s part of the problem,” he replied, and she could hear a note of bitterness in his tone. “I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t relax too easily. I need a challenge. A bad guy. A crime ring. Something.”

“A baby?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

Mike passed her a fork. “That came out of left field.”

“This boring tourist trap is actually a great place to raise kids,” she said. “I grew up here. It’s calm. Safe.”

“How calm is it if you’re burning out in Social Services?” he countered.

“To be fair, I service the surrounding towns, as well,” she replied.

But he had a point. That was the problem with this job. She could live in a gorgeous little tourist destination, and still be faced with the most heartrending cases. No community was immune, because it was life. She believed in the job, in the importance of what social workers did for the community. She just wasn’t sure she could do it anymore. There were tougher people who could pick up where she left off.

Paige followed Mike to the table and sat down. He pulled the bassinet a little closer and looked inside. Benjie had fallen back to sleep, and for a couple of minutes they both ate in silence.

“You know what it’s like,” she said. “There’s always someone getting hurt, needing help. And for the longest time, I thought that if I could just offer that help, I’d be doing something for those vulnerable people.”

“But it’s always more complicated than that,” he concluded.

She nodded, then leaned back against her chair. “Aren’t you ever tired of being seen as the bad guy? I mean, you’re the one who has to arrest the abusive dad in front of the kids. You’re the big, bad authority figure. For a lot of people, you’re the enemy.”

“It’s all perspective,” Mike replied. “I’ll be the bad guy to someone. Especially, if I’m locking him up. But I’m the good guy to someone else who’s being protected.”

“Even if you’re doing the right thing in arresting the abusive dad, the kids don’t think you’re the good guy,” she countered.

“Sure. I guess.”

“The very people you’re protecting are going to hate you,” she said. “At least, that’s the way it seems to turn out all too often.”

“I figure anything worthwhile is going to tick off somebody.”

Paige wanted to make a difference, too, but how much of her own emotional health was she willing to sacrifice in order to do that?

Mike finished the last of his omelet and stood up.

“Thanks for cooking breakfast. Leave the mess in the living room. I’ll take care of it tonight.”

“I can tidy up,” she said.

“I’m not the kind of guy who expects a woman to cook and clean. You’re here for the baby, not for me. I should be able to take care of myself at this point.”

“You’re part of the job, Mike,” she said.

“Not really.”

“Oh, completely.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m teaching you baby care, aren’t I? And Benjie won’t thrive unless you’re okay, too.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

“If you need anything, you have to tell me,” she said. “You’ve got me for three weeks, so make the most of this.”

“Yeah.” He met her gaze with a small smile. “I will.”

He started doing up his shirt buttons, then slowly turned and headed out of the kitchen, still buttoning. She watched him go. Mike was very much part of her job. Unfortunately, her emotions were at risk of getting entangled wherever she put her energy—into caring for a baby, or into the floundering dad.

* * *

“OFFICER MCMANN,” THE chief said as Mike came into the station that morning. Mike had a travel mug in one hand, and he took a sip of coffee as he turned toward the chief.

“Good morning,” Mike said.

“You look like a train wreck,” the chief said with a short laugh. “How’s the baby?”

“Eating often,” Mike replied. “But otherwise good.”

“Glad to hear it. Is Paige working out?”

Working out. She wasn’t a housekeeper or something... She was turning out to be a lifesaver, and an image of her concerned gaze and her hair tucked behind her ears as she shook bottles full of formula crowded his overtired mind.

“Yeah, she’s...great. She knows what she’s doing, and that’s what I need, right?”

She was also comforting, and a little distracting. Not that he’d tell the boss that.

“If you need another few days off—” the chief began.

“No, no,” Mike said with a shake of his head. “I’d rather get back to work.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.” Work had always been his solace, and right now, he didn’t need to be leaning on the too-pretty nanny. She said he was part of the job, but he didn’t intend to be. He’d take care of himself.

Mike headed toward his desk in the back corner of the bull pen, rubbing a hand through his hair. It was going to be a long day, but he had good reason to want to be here, and it had nothing to do with impressing his boss. It wasn’t only the baby that had kept him up last night. He was worried about Jana. His sister had just abandoned her newborn, and while Safe Haven laws meant that Jana was perfectly within her rights to hand her newborn to a hospital employee with no questions asked, Mike was her brother—and he was damn well asking a few questions. He just wasn’t sure how he was going to get those answers.

He logged into his computer and pulled up the phone numbers for the hospital where Benjie had been left. His sister had given the nurse a lot more information than most mothers did who were taking advantage of the Safe Haven laws. She could have simply handed the baby over and walked out, but she’d obviously wanted her son to go to family.

Was Jana going to change her mind? Would she want the baby back?

He had too many questions, but the main one was what had happened to Jana to make her give up her newborn baby? She had been together enough to know about the laws, to remember to give his contact information... Was she still with the father? Was she on her own and desperate? Or was there some loser involved who she couldn’t get away from? She was obviously doing some drugs, and that was never a good sign. But if he was going to help her, he needed detailed answers.

Mike called a few different numbers, and was transferred three times before he was put in touch with the hospital social services worker who had done the paperwork for Benjie.

“Officer McMann,” she said with a smile in her voice. “How’s the little guy doing?”

“Good. Really good,” Mike said.

“I’m glad to hear it. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping to get a little more information about my sister.”

“You know I can’t do that.” Her voice softened. “She was within her rights to relinquish the baby, and if we don’t respect those privacy rights, the whole system fails.”

Yeah, he did. The Safe Haven laws were in place so that babies need not be abandoned in unsafe environments. If a mother didn’t want her baby, she could simply hand it over to a hospital employee or a firefighter within three days of the birth. If they started chasing down parents who abandoned those babies, people would be afraid to do the right thing and those babies might be left in much worse environments.

“I’m worried about her,” Mike said. “She’s my sister. She’s recently given birth. She might be in medical distress—it’s a possibility! I just want to find her and make sure she’s okay.”