If I Loved You

Molly briefly touched his arm. “You’ve had a really bad time.”

“Not just me,” he said, wanting to change the subject before he totally fell apart. “I’m sorry about your husband. Mom told me.”

There was another long silence while Molly appeared to gather herself, and Brig wondered if she felt as uneasy talking about this as he had about Sean and Zada.

“Thank you,” she said at last, her voice husky. “Andrew was a great guy.”

And I wasn’t. She had a point, even unspoken. Brig couldn’t fault her for not wanting to dredge up her sorrow. But still he went on.

“I remember Andrew Darling from school,” Brig said, “but I didn’t know him very well. He was a couple of years ahead of me. Two, I think. He always seemed quiet, but he was friendly. A serious kind of guy.”

“He had this laugh, though,” she said. “It always surprised me—when he wasn’t the type for surprises. We were a lot alike, really, I guess. He was so steady, settled...”

Not like me.

The next words almost stuck in his throat. “Were you happy, Molly?”

He needed to hear her say yes, so he wouldn’t continue to feel guilty for leaving. Yet he dreaded hearing her say just that.

“We were,” she said at last, “but not nearly long enough. While we were together, yes, we were happy. Can we stop talking about this now?”

She fell silent, as if lost in her memories, and Brig knew again that the topic would have been better left alone. Like Sean and Zada. Still, this was his and Molly’s starting point. A crazy sort of catching up.

In the next second Brig stiffened. Warmth had spread through his sleeve. But not from the touch of Molly’s hand, which had dropped from his arm. He held out Laila and saw a widening stain on the fabric.

“She’s wet,” Molly noted with that little frown he remembered so well. “When was her diaper changed?”

Already feeling guilty, Brig checked his watch. “About five hours ago.”

“Five hours?”

“On the hard floor in the customs area at JFK while we waited for our bags. I never had time between planes to buy more diapers, and at Frankfurt we ran low. I’ve been rationing Laila’s changes.”

Molly’s soft eyes had turned steely, and her face appeared pale under the festive red heart stuck to her face.

Both he and the baby must look like dirty laundry, wrinkled and thrown together. Now they were both damp and not getting any drier. To Brig, that meant he was losing his grip on the situation—which had happened the first time Laila had screamed on the military cargo plane out of Bagram airfield near Kabul.

“Overseas,” he said, “a local woman took care of Laila while I took care of business. Guess I’m not doing so well now.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. Her expression challenged every one of his insecurities.

“You can use the spare room upstairs to change her.”

Brig could hear the doubt in her tone, and his male pride kicked in. Their brief rapport—if it had even been that—was over. And here he’d thought he and Molly were doing okay as long as they avoided any mention of his betrayal of her.

“You think I can’t change a diaper?” he asked icily.

That was pretty close to the truth.

Not waiting for her answer, he took Laila, the half-finished bottle, and stalked out of the room.

* * *

“WONDERFUL,” MOLLY MUTTERED. “Why not just give a lecture or four or five to a man who’s already half dead on his feet?”

And clearly hurting. The loss of his teammate and the orphaned child had shaken Brig. Just as Brig’s questions about Andrew and Molly’s marriage had shaken her.

She had noted the weary slump of his broad shoulders, and how he held the baby to him like a security blanket.

But Molly pushed aside the observations. There was a party going on, and for the next few hours she had to play hostess. With the rain still falling, she supervised the younger children’s game of indoor tag. She refereed a fight over a TV basketball game. Pop should have known better than to get involved. She comforted her teenage cousin’s angst and soothed toddler tears.

She taught four-year-old Ernie Barlow how to play pin the tail on the donkey—or, rather, on a SpongeBob SquarePants poster—then pretended not to see how her sister, Ann, ignored Ernie’s dad, a new local sheriff’s deputy who seemed to have a thing for her.

And Molly tried not to notice that Brig never came back downstairs to eat or to show off the baby.

By evening, when the festivities wound down, the house resembled a giant trash basket filled with broken toys and exploded balloons. As her guests prepared to leave, every child under the age of five was crying—a sure sign in Molly’s experience of too much stimulation and total but happy exhaustion. For everyone but Molly, the party had been a huge success.

After all the guests left, she hurried upstairs. She found Brig in the spare room, where her offer to heat a late supper for him died on her lips. Brig lay sprawled on the double bed, sound asleep. Clearly he was down for the count. His face told her nothing, which was probably what he wanted after Molly’s earlier criticism. Lying beside him, with Brig’s arm over her like an anchor, the baby stared wide-eyed at the overhead light, flinching each time thunder rumbled in the night sky.

Now at last Molly gave in to the urge churning inside her during the party and slipped to her knees next to the bed. Brig must have dozed off in the midst of dressing Laila for the night. Her right arm was in one sleeve of an aquamarine sleeper, the other, still bare, waved in the air. Half the snaps on the sleeper were undone.

“You giving your old man a hard time?” Molly whispered.

At the sound of her voice, Laila turned her head as if searching for her. Molly reached out, brushing Brig’s arm without meaning to, and quickly touched the baby’s silky hair. Laila’s gaze, dark as a midnight sea, met hers.

Molly’s breath caught. She was a beautiful baby, another victim of the senseless violence that had taken both her parents. “Oh, sweetie,” Molly murmured.

Blinking, she eased Brig’s arm aside and heard him grunt in his sleep. She could hardly wake him and make them leave. Where would they go? A glance out the window told her Brig’s parents were still gone. Not a single light glowed in the house next door. She tucked Laila into her sleeper, then snapped the garment all the way. The little girl’s skin felt like velvet, and she smelled, as only a baby could, of sheer innocence. A baby like the one Molly had always yearned for, and lost.

Children were the best, yet the hardest, part of her job. She got to spend so much time with them, yet they were other people’s, not her own.

On impulse she peeled the red heart from her face and leaned closer to stick it on Laila’s chest, then nuzzled the infant’s small belly.

And, against every instinct to protect her heart, Molly fell in love.

Like the rain that pounded against the windows and the thunder that still grumbled overhead, the feeling seemed to Molly another omen.

CHAPTER TWO

BRIG AWOKE THE next morning fully clothed with no memory of having gone to bed—and no knowledge of where he was. Disoriented, he checked his watch, then made a quick calculation. It was six-thirty in the evening in Kabul, but eleven in the morning was late enough here. He’d overslept.

For another moment, he lay yawning in the sun-splattered bedroom—then recognition dawned. Ah, right. He was in Molly’s house. Almost immediately, he heard a snuffle. Brig shot upright and spotted the baby nearby in a portable crib. Laila! Some guardian he made.

“Hungry, cupcake?”

He tucked in the shirt he’d worn all night, fighting a growing sense of parental neglect, and picked up the baby, who was swaddled in a pastel-striped receiving blanket that smelled of fresh air. He didn’t recognize it as one he’d crammed into their suitcases, which he assumed were still on the porch next door. Molly must have donated the wrap. Wearing yesterday’s socks, he carried Laila downstairs. She needed more milk, and Brig needed coffee.

At the bottom of the steps in the front hall, as if running into an ambush, he met Molly’s father. Thomas Walker turned from the door with the newspaper in hand. He didn’t smile, and Brig remembered his stiff manner at the party. He imagined that Molly, not her dad, had let him stay the night—as if they’d had an option once he’d fallen asleep, one hundred ninety pounds of deadweight.

“The Reds are in trouble,” Thomas said, reading the headline on page one.

For a second Brig thought the Russians were stirring up trouble again.

The older man gave a snort of disgust. “Barely into spring training and already headed for the bottom of the standings. Would you believe? Just traded their best pitcher for some rookie.” He glanced out the front door’s side window. “Look at that,” he muttered.

Again, Brig missed the connection. “What?”

“Nosy woman across the street. Every time I get the paper, she’s peering out.” Without missing a beat, he said, “Doesn’t look to me like your folks are home yet. Didn’t see anyone next door. You get any rest, Brigham?”

Brig nodded his head. “Passed out as soon as I got horizontal.” He still felt drained and his eyes were grainy, but his stomach growled. Or was that Laila’s tummy? And where had his parents gone, if not out for the evening?

“Molly said you never ate dinner.”

“Wasn’t hungry.” And where was she now? “My stomach’s off schedule, still in central Asia.”

“Well, there’s coffee in the kitchen.”

But Thomas sounded begrudging.

Brig shifted Laila from one arm to the other. Dark haired, dark eyed and oblivious to the undercurrents between the two men, she sucked on a fist.

As if he couldn’t help himself, Thomas studied her. And Brig studied him. Molly’s dad was still a solid-looking man. Retirement had added a slight paunch to Thomas’s stomach, but even so, except for his brown hair with touches of gray at his temples, he didn’t look his age.

Thomas gestured at Laila. “Baby sleep okay?”

“I never heard her,” Brig confessed, knowing that wouldn’t win him any points. “Thanks for finding her a crib.”

“Molly keeps one here,” he said in what sounded like a wistful tone. A condemnation of Brig for leaving Molly practically at the altar?

A dozen questions ran through his brain, but he didn’t ask them. They were for Molly to answer, although maybe he had no right to ask. After the loss of her husband, she should find another man and have the family she’d always wanted, the family she and Brig had planned until he’d thrown a wrench into things and hightailed it out of Liberty.

Better for her, he had tried to think.

And if he’d stayed...he wouldn’t have Laila now.

“And Molly must have dressed the baby for bed,” he said.

Thomas eyed him like a bug he wanted to squash.

“Must have.”

Which meant she’d seen Brig asleep, lying down on the job. He glanced toward the kitchen. Inhaled the lingering smells of bacon and toast, and that freshly brewed coffee.

“Molly’s not here,” Thomas said. “You can fix yourself anything you like. She was up at six cleaning the mess from yesterday, made me breakfast, then took her second cup of coffee to the office.” Thomas waved toward the backyard.

Office?

Thomas’s casual statement told Brig just how little he knew of Molly these days. All he remembered seeing was an old carriage barn at the rear of the property. His mother, the neat freak, had complained it was an eyesore.

Laila squirmed in his arms and Brig’s shaky parental confidence took another nosedive. Mano a mano with Thomas, he’d nearly forgotten his original mission in coming downstairs.

“I’d better grab some of that coffee, then get going. I heated the last of Laila’s formula yesterday. Hope I can find the same brand in Liberty. Fast.” If he bought the wrong stuff or used whole milk instead of the prepared infant kind and the baby got sick, Molly would likely be on him in a second. And how had Laila made it through the night without waking him to feed her?

Thomas took another, longer look at the baby. For an instant Brig was sure he saw yearning cross the older man’s face.

“Molly went to the corner store for you last night. She fed the baby around eight, at midnight and four, and again this morning. She left another bottle ready on the stove.”

Wow. Surprised by the information, Brig didn’t know whether to feel guilty because Laila must have kept Molly up most of the night, grateful that she’d let him sleep or relieved that she’d done both. Actually, he felt all three.

“Thanks,” Brig said, which seemed inadequate.

“Don’t thank me.” Thomas had turned away and was taking his newspaper into the living room. End of discussion, or so Brig thought. But Thomas wasn’t finished. “Oh. Molly said to tell you her sheriff friend brought your bags and the baby seat from next door before he left the party.”

Then, as if his feelings had built like a volcano set to erupt, he spun around again.

“I’m not going to ask why you’re here, Brigham. I guess this baby is answer enough. For now.” Thomas pointed the rolled-up paper at him. “But don’t think I’ve forgotten what happened between you and Molly. She and Ann are the best daughters I could ever have, and Molly’s had enough grief in her life. I swear, if you hurt her—”

“I don’t intend to hurt her.”

“—like you did before, you’ll answer to me.”

Brig had no reply. He’d been a “father” himself for a short time and he was still all thumbs at the job, but, like Thomas with Molly, he knew he would protect her to the death from any threat.

To Thomas, Brig must represent six feet plus of threat.

Brig headed for the kitchen, duly warned.

He would need more caffeine than usual to get through the day in this close-knit family, which he understood even less than he did taking care of Laila. Far less than he might the workings of the Taliban.

But before Brig exited the room, he got in the last word.

“I’ll work on finding a key to Mom and Dad’s house. Move Laila next door as soon as I can. That would be best for you—and for Molly.”

* * *

MONDAY WAS NOT Molly’s favorite day of the week at Little Darlings, or anywhere else, and sometime between last Friday and this morning she had lost her equilibrium.

Oh, who are you kidding, Molly? She knew exactly when.

Around her, toy trucks clashed, the laughter of children shrilled and someone pounded on a drum. She couldn’t term the noise unusual, yet her jangled nerves wanted her to shout surrender. Today her day care center’s proximity to Pop’s house seemed way too close. That was, way too close to Brig.

She hadn’t been herself since she’d spied him yesterday standing in the doorway with Laila, like a broken dream come back to haunt her.

No, make that a nightmare.

At least the rain had finally stopped last night. The clouds had disappeared as if someone had rolled up a rug, and by midnight the sky had been full of stars. Holding Laila, feeding her while Brig slept, Molly had watched the weather improve even as a storm still roiled inside her.

Fortunately, for the rest of the day, she wouldn’t have another chance to dwell on the situation. Which was a good thing, because without half trying, she could summon the image of Brig’s lean, fit body and handsome, serious face.

Too bad for her, but he looked better than ever. Any remnants of boyishness in his face were now gone. In their place was an uncompromising set of male features with interesting planes and angles.

It wasn’t every day that an old love walked back into her life, and when she added Laila to the picture, Molly felt shaken anew. Better to keep her mind on business.

At the end of the afternoon, many of “her” children had left by the time Jeff Barlow, little Ernie’s dad, arrived dressed in his tan sheriff’s deputy uniform. At the same time, her sister, Ann, who helped with the babies in the nursery, reached the front door from outside after walking baby Ashley Jones and her mother out to their car. Under a darkening sky, she stopped cold.

Her expression told Molly that her sister’s timing couldn’t have been worse for her. The distinct chill in the air didn’t just come from the freezing wind.

Molly bit back a sigh. Jeff was one of her favorite people, and she wished her sister would stop giving him the cold shoulder.

As if he hadn’t noticed Ann’s frostiness, Jeff held the door open for her, but Ann took care not to brush against him as she came inside. She hurried down the hall with just a murmured “Thank you.”

Jeff raised an eyebrow at Molly. “Hello to her, too,” he said.

“I don’t know what gets into her,” Molly said, hoping to soothe his feelings.

But of course she did.

He looked glum. “I called twice last week to ask her out. Once, for dinner, and then to see a romantic comedy playing in town—don’t most women enjoy a good chick flick?—but she said no. Both times.” He paused. “Not that I’ve been dating enough to be up on what a woman might like.”

Molly had heard about Jeff’s bitter divorce. Clearly he was wounded. But when he and Ann had started dating a few months ago, Molly had hoped that their relationship would take root and grow, and that Ann could be happy again, as well. Then, all at once, to Molly’s dismay, Ann had pulled back like a turtle withdrawing into its shell.

“I know she wanted to see that movie,” Molly said without thinking.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Just not with me.”

She eyed him sympathetically. Jeff was just the latest example of romance gone awry in her sister’s life. Ann didn’t date often or, when she did, for very long. Molly had no idea what—if anything—she should do about that.

“Ann’s a good-looking woman,” Jeff added, “and she can be very funny when she lets her hair down. We like the same kind of books, Mexican food, sunsets... I don’t understand what happened. I thought we had clicked,” he went on. “I mean, she seemed to enjoy the one dinner we had together. We found a lot to talk about. And we went hiking one weekend with my son—”

“Daddy! Guess what I made?”

As if on cue, Jeff’s four-year-old son, his spitting image, raced up to them, his mop of sandy hair flopping into his blue eyes. He thrust a green construction-paper triangle studded with spiral pasta dyed a fluorescent pink into Jeff’s face.

“Whoa, buddy.” Jeff dodged the pointed artwork that threatened to put out an eye and gathered Ernie up with a grin. A blob of glue dripped onto Jeff’s clean uniform. “This is one great-looking...” He scrambled for a word.

“You know. It’s a tree!”

“Ah.” Jeff shot Molly an amused glance. “Ernie, I’ve never seen a better one.”

Ernie beamed. “I did it all by myself.”

Jeff’s plain-to-see love for his son caused Molly’s throat to tighten. Her Andrew would also have made a good dad, and Ernie was like the child they’d never had.

“Molly, do you like it, too?” the little boy asked.

She ruffled his hair. “I love it. Your father is an excellent judge of art.”

Smiling, Molly walked them to the outer doors. A couple of homeward-bound little stragglers ran past them, scuffling and laughing. Benjamin Crandall, a pint-size troublemaker of late, made sure to knock against Ernie on his way. But Molly focused on her more pressing problem. As she said goodbye to each child and parent, she could sense the tension still radiating from Jeff’s broad-shouldered body.

Her smile faded. He was a nice man. A decent man. A solid man.

And it wasn’t as if men like Jeff Barlow grew on trees, including pink ones like Ernie’s collage.

“I’ll talk to Ann,” she said, following Jeff’s glance toward the nursery.

“I don’t know that you should, Molly. But is it—” he nodded toward his small son “—you know. Because if that’s her problem—” His voice had hardened in Ernie’s defense.

“I’ll talk to her,” Molly repeated.

As if she was an expert on romantic relationships.

Jeff didn’t wave goodbye when they left, but Ernie gave Molly an exuberant flip of one chubby hand. He was the most lovable four-year-old at the center.

Once Jeff had buckled Ernie into his car seat in the back of the cruiser and pulled out of the lot, Molly took off for the playroom adjacent to the nursery.

She organized paint cups in the art cupboard for the next day. Within a moment, Ann appeared.

“Don’t say a word,” she warned. “I don’t need the big-sister act.”

Molly faced her, intent on speaking her mind anyway. “I can’t believe how you treated Jeff. I’m disappointed in you.”

Ann tossed honey-brown bangs out of her eyes. They were a rich hazel, their mother’s color. “Maybe I just like being an old maid.”

“Don’t be smart. There are no old maids these days.” Molly tried to lighten the mood. “Not since Aunt Tilly went to her heavenly reward still ‘intact,’ as she always said, at the age of ninety.” They shared a weak smile before Molly went on. “You’re only twenty-seven, Ann. You can’t seriously want to be alone for the rest of your life.”

“Why not? You are.”

Ouch. The words echoed in the silence.

“I’m sorry,” Ann murmured. “That was an awful thing to say. But I should never have gone out with him, and the sooner Jeff Barlow realizes I’m not interested, the better. With Ernie here at the center, I can hardly avoid him.”

Molly’s eyes still stung from Ann’s earlier words. “You sure try.”

“Yes, and my new best friend is caller ID.”

The throwaway tone didn’t sit well with Molly. She bustled around the room, gathering stray blocks, stacking them and trying to wrestle the remnants of her own fresh pain into some sort of order.

She didn’t have a choice about being alone, but in Molly’s view, Ann was throwing away her potential for happiness with both hands—if not with the sheriff, then with someone else.

Molly shut the cupboard doors for the night and turned to find Ann with tears in her eyes. And Molly’s shoulders sagged. “Is it because of Ernie?” she asked, echoing Jeff’s earlier concern. “He’s a great little kid.”

Ann sniffed. “I know.”

“And I know you like children. You’re wonderful with the babies here. You like them so much you just had to carry Melissa Jones’s diaper bag to the car so you could spend one more minute today with her little Ashley.”

As if caught committing some terrible crime, Ann flushed.

“Well, you are good,” Molly said. “Would I have hired you if not?”

Ann rolled her eyes. “You hired me because you were shorthanded, and I had my degree in education and no other job.”

Which was only part of the reason. Yes, Molly had needed to fill that staff position, but was she simply enabling her sister to avoid dealing with the long-ago tragedy that had changed her life?

For years Ann had not only kept to herself, but she refused to go more than a mile or two from home. Her apartment was just blocks away from Little Darlings, and every day she walked to work. Ann owned a car, which she maintained, and for which she renewed her registration and driver’s license. But she never got behind the wheel. She hadn’t driven once since the accident.

Just as Molly rarely drove past the house she and Andrew had shared in Cincinnati’s Hyde Park neighborhood—and always told herself it was out of her way now. She’d been living with Pop since shortly after Andrew died.

Molly softened her tone. “I also hired you because I love you,” she said. “And to keep you close,” she added with a teasing grin, “so you can take over when Pop gets to be too much for me. In the meantime...I honestly thought you and Jeff were going somewhere. Why not give him—”

“A chance?”

“If it doesn’t work out, you can move on.”

“Like you?” Ann asked.

Another barb for Molly.

“That’s enough,” Molly said, barely holding her temper in check.

“Or maybe I’m wrong.” Ann hesitated, frowning. “Maybe I’m not the only one here with man trouble. I’ve talked to Dad. What is Brigham Collier doing in the house?”