Christmastime Courtship

Her luck had just run out, he thought.

Biting off a few choice words under his breath, Colin made a U-turn and took off after her.

Less than thirty seconds later, he realized that she wasn’t going anywhere. The woman with the soulful doe eyes had pulled over to the curb.

Something was definitely off, Colin thought as he brought his motorcycle to a halt behind her vehicle.

Training from his days on the force in Los Angeles had Colin approaching the car with caution. Every police officer knew that the first thirty seconds after a vehicle was pulled over were the most dangerous ones. If something bad was going to happen, it usually took place within that space of time.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the pulled-over driver was harmless. It was that one other time that turned out to be fatal.

Although he had volunteered for this detail, choosing to patrol the city streets on a motorcycle over riding around in a squad car with a partner, he was not unaware of the risk that came with the job. A risk that always had his adrenaline flowing and his breath backing up in his lungs for that short time that it took for him to dismount and approach the offending driver’s vehicle.

If he had a partner, there would be someone close by who had his back. However, Owens, his last partner, had been killed on the job, and although Colin never said anything to anyone about it, that had weighed really heavily on him, and still did. After that tragic incident, he operated alone. Patrolling alone meant he had to watch out only for himself. He liked it that way.

The second he peered into the passenger window and saw the driver, he knew that he was facing another kind of danger entirely.

No one was going to die today, but it was still a risk.

Miranda rolled down the passenger window and leaned toward him. “Hi. I wasn’t speeding this time,” she said, greeting him with a cheerful smile and a chipper demeanor he found almost annoyingly suspicious.

He scowled at her. “No, you were just executing a very strange turn.”

“I had to,” Miranda explained. “If I went straight and turned at the next light, by the time I came back, I was afraid that you’d be gone.”

Only if I’d been lucky, Colin thought.

Just what was this woman’s game? “And that would have been a problem because...?”

She never missed a beat. “Because I had to talk to you.”

The idea of just turning away and getting back on his motorcycle was exceedingly tempting, but for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on, Colin decided to hear this overly upbeat woman out.

“You are persistent, aren’t you?” he retorted.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Miranda did her best to try to get the officer to lighten up a little and smile.

His stoic expression never changed. “It is from where I’m standing.” He’d glimpsed her driver’s license yesterday and tried to recall the name he’d seen on it. Maybe if he made this personal, he’d succeed in scaring her off. “What do you want, Miriam?”

“Miranda,” she corrected, still sounding annoyingly cheerful. “That’s okay, a lot of people get my name wrong at first. It takes getting used to.”

“I have no intention of getting used to it,” he informed her. Or you.

As far as he was concerned, the woman was really pushing her luck.

“Look, I let you off with a warning yesterday,” he reminded her. “Would you like me to rescind that warning and give you a ticket?”

Colin was fairly confident that the threat of a ticket would be enough to make her back off.

“No. That was very nice of you yesterday. That’s the reason I came looking for you today.”

She wasn’t making any sense. And then he remembered what she’d said yesterday about asking him to pay a visit to some ward at the hospital.

That’s what this was about, he decided. Something about sick children. Well, he was not about to get roped into anything. Who knew what this woman’s ultimate game really was?

“Look, I already told you,” he retorted. “I’m not the type to come see kids in a hospital. I don’t like hospitals.”

Rather than look disappointed as he’d expected her to, the woman nodded. “A lot of people don’t,” she agreed.

Okay, she was obviously stalking him, and this was over. “Well then, have a nice day,” Colin told her curtly, and then turned to walk back to his motorcycle.

“I’m not here about the hospital,” Miranda called after him. “Although I’d like to revisit that subject at a later time.”

Colin stopped walking. The woman had to be one of the pushiest people he’d ever encountered, not to mention she had a hell of a lot of nerve.

Against his better judgment, he found himself turning around again to face her. “And just what are you ‘here’ about?” he asked.

There was absolutely nothing friendly in his voice that invited her to talk. But she did anyway.

“That little girl I told you about?” Miranda began, feeling as if she was picking her way through a minefield that could blow up on her at any moment. “The one with your aunt’s name,” she reminded him, hoping that would get the officer to listen, and buy her a little more time.

“Lily,” he repeated, all but growling the name. “What about her?” he asked grudgingly.

He wasn’t a curious man by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something about this overly eager woman that had him wondering just where she was taking this.

“Lily’s mother is missing,” she told him, never taking her eyes off his face.

Rather than show some sort of reaction to what she’d just said, his expression never changed. He looked, Miranda thought, as if she’d just given him a bland weather report.

She began to wonder what had damaged the man to this extent.

“So go to the precinct and report it,” Colin told her. “That’s the standard procedure.”

“The director at the shelter already did that,” Miranda answered.

“All right, then it’s taken care of.” What more did she expect him to do? Colin wondered irritably as he began to walk away again.

“No, it isn’t,” Miranda insisted, stepping out of her car and moving quickly between him and his motorcycle. “The officer who took down the information said that maybe Lily’s mother took off. He said a lot of women in her situation feel overwhelmed and just leave. He said that maybe she’d come to her senses in a few days and return for her daughter.”

“Okay, you have your answer,” Colin said, moving around this human roadblock.

Again Miranda shifted quickly so he couldn’t get to his motorcycle. She ignored the dark look he gave her. She wasn’t about to give up. This was important. Lily was depending on her to do everything she could to find her mother.

“But what if she doesn’t?” Miranda asked. “What if she didn’t take off? What if something’s happened to Lily’s mother and that’s why she never came back to the shelter?”

He felt as if this doe-eyed blonde was boxing him in. “That’s life,” he said, exasperated.

“There’s a little eight-year-old girl at the shelter waiting for her mommy to come back,” Miranda told him with feeling. “I can’t just tell her ‘that’s life.’”

Taking hold of Miranda’s shoulders, he moved her firmly out of his way and finally reached his motorcycle. “Tell her whatever you like.”

Miranda raised her voice so that he could hear her above the sound of the cars going by. “I’d like to tell her that this nice police officer is trying to find her mommy.”

Colin turned sharply on his heel and glared at this woman who refused to take a hint. “Look, lady—”

“Miranda,” she prompted.

“Miranda,” Colin echoed between gritted teeth. “You are a royal pain, you know that?”

Miranda had always tried to glean something positive out of every situation, no matter how bleak it might appear. “Does that mean you’ll look for her?” she asked hopefully.

Colin blew out an angry breath. “That means you’re a royal pain,” he repeated.

With nothing to lose, Miranda climbed out on a limb. “Please? I can give you a description of Lily’s mother.” And then she thought of something even better. “And if you come with me, I can get you a picture of her that’ll be useful.”

He had a feeling that this woman wasn’t going to give up unless he agreed to help her. Although it irritated him beyond description, there was a very small part of him that had to admit he admired her tenacity.

Still, he gave getting her to back off one more try. “What will be useful is if you get out of my way and let me do my job.”

Miranda didn’t budge. “Isn’t part of your job finding people who have gone missing?”

“She’s not missing if she left of her own accord and just decided to keep on going,” he told the blonde, enunciating every word.

“But we don’t know that she decided to keep on going. She did leave the shelter to go look for work,” Miranda told him.

“That’s what the woman said,” Colin countered impatiently.

“No, that’s what she did,” Miranda stressed. “Gina Hayden has an eight-year-old daughter. She wouldn’t just leave her like that.”

“How do you know that?” Colin challenged. The woman lived in a cotton candy world. Didn’t she realize that the real world wasn’t like that? “Lots of people say one thing and do another. And lots of people with families just walk out on them and never come back.”

Miranda watched him for a long moment. So long that he thought she’d finally given up trying to wear him down. And then she spoke and blew that theory to pieces.

“Who left you?” she asked quietly.

“You, I hope,” he snapped, turning back to face his motorcycle.

He sighed as she sashayed in front of him yet again. This was beginning to feel like some never-ending dance.

“No, you’re not talking about me,” Miranda told him. “You’re talking about someone else. I can see it in your eyes. Someone walked out on you, probably when you were a kid. So you know what that feels like,” she stressed.

He needed this like he needed a hole in the head. “Look, lady—”

“Miranda,” she corrected again.

He ignored that. “You can take your amateur psychobabble, get back in your car and drive away before I haul you in for harassing a police officer.”

Was that what he thought this was?

She had to get through to him. Something in her heart told her that he’d find Gina, She just needed him to take this seriously.

“I’m not harassing you—”

He almost laughed out loud. “You want to bet?”

Miranda pushed on. “I’m just asking you to go out of your way a little and maybe make a little girl very happy. If her mother doesn’t turn up, Lily’s going to be sent to social services and placed in a foster home. The only reason she hasn’t been taken there already is that the director of the shelter agreed with me about waiting for her mom to come back. The director bought us a little time.” And that time was running out, Miranda added silently.

“The kid can still be taken away,” Colin pointed out. “Her mother abandoned her.”

Why couldn’t she get through to this officer? “Not if something happened to her and she’s unable to get back.”

Colin sighed. He knew he should just get on his motorcycle and ride away from this woman. For the life of him, he didn’t know why he was allowing himself to get involved in this.

“Did you call all the hospitals?”

She nodded. “All of them. There’s no record of anyone fitting Gina’s description coming in on her own or being brought in.”

So what more did this woman want him to do? “Well then—”

“But there could be other reasons she hasn’t come back,” she insisted. “Gina could have been abducted, or worse.” Miranda looked at him with eyes that were pleading with him to do something.

Colin shook his head. “I should have given you that ticket yesterday,” he told her gruffly.

He was weakening; she could just feel it. “But you didn’t because you’re a good man.”

“No, because I should have had my head examined,” he grumbled. “All right,” he relented, taking out his ticket book and flipping to an empty page.

Miranda’s eyes widened. “You’re writing me a ticket?” she asked.

“No, I’m taking down this woman’s description. You said you’d give it to me. Now, what is it?” Colin demanded.

“What did you say your name was?” she asked.

“I didn’t.” He could feel her looking at him. Swallowing a couple choice words, he said, “Officer Colin Kirby.”

“Thank you, Officer Colin Kirby.”

Maybe he was losing his mind, but he could swear he could feel her smile.

“The description?” he demanded.

Miranda lost no time in giving it to him.

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