A Family for Christmas (13 page)

She had no idea whether Brock was part of some elaborate sign or not, but she understood he was a huge distraction. One she could ill afford tonight when the baby inside that room needed her to be singularly focused on her welfare. Now that the handsome deputy was gone, she could get back to her job. And she could finally breathe normally again.

A
llison lowered the pay phone onto its cradle with a click as she studied the list of names again. Already she'd crossed all but the last one, so this time, with a heavy hand, she put a line through it. What was she supposed to do now?

From inside the room, she heard the first small whimpers that probably would escalate into newborn wails as Joy came awake. A peek at her watch told Allison it had been three hours since the baby's last bottle, and she was probably hungry, wet or soiled—or all three.

Instead of dropping coins in the pay phone again, she walked back into the room and lifted the phone on the bedside table as she opened the side door on the crib. Tucking the phone under her chin, she used both hands to lift Joy. Once resting against Allison's chest, the baby began rooting against her, obviously accustomed to nursing.

Allison only felt more useless as the child fussed
and searched hopelessly for sustenance. She'd been unable to find temporary housing for the child, and now she couldn't even give her a mother's milk. She couldn't fulfill any of her needs. Lifting a pacifier from the bag, she slipped it between the child's lips and hoped it would sustain her a few minutes longer until she could ask the nurse for another bottle.

She dialed the phone with her free hand and started talking as soon as her boss answered. “Clara, I've been through all the names. I can't find anyone.”

Clara strung together a few of those colorful words she was prone to using in stressful situations, and Allison tried not to listen, feeling just as frustrated.

“What are we going to do?” Allison used the word
we
even though it was really up to the department director. There had to be some advantages to not being a supervisor, outside the long hours and low pay that were the bane of a career in social work. “I have no options left.”

The older woman was quiet for a several seconds before she spoke again. “Well, there is one.”

“I've been over the full list of foster parents. There's no one.”

“I know of someone.”

“Are you listening to me? No one is available.”

She wanted to reach through the telephone wire and shake her boss, who had become uncharacteristically dense in the past few hours. “If you have some other name, I need it now because the nurse is bringing the baby's release papers.”

Clara cleared her throat. “I was talking about
you.
”

 

Some Christmas Eve this had been, Brock thought as he trudged through the sheriff's department and dumped his notebook on his desk at dinnertime. If he weren't so cross-eyed exhausted from pulling an extra shift, he might have looked over his shoulder to see if the notebook had toppled his desk's mountain of chaos. But at this moment, he could only look straight ahead…to coffee.

The day had suffered from a lousy start, and it had gone downhill from there. Even the morning headline had read “What Child Is This?” as some clever headline writers had played on the words from the old Christmas carol.

If the weekly
Destiny Post,
best known for its no-longer-news content, had scored the scoop, then even the three or so people in town who missed last night's comedy of crèches and didn't have a direct link in the gossip chain knew about the abandoned baby. They also knew about his failure to apprehend the suspect. And it was only a matter of time until the Indianapolis networks descended on Destiny like ants on an uncovered brownie to report the cheesy Christmas story. No doubt they'd write a sidebar article on police incompetence over the response.

For the hundredth time today he wished the crime hadn't occurred in a public venue. But wishing did no more to change the facts than it did to make his cup of coffee taste less like tar smelled. He took a swig of the brew anyway and grabbed the stack of pink messages off his desk. He riffled through them,
hoping at least one would provide the lead he hadn't found all day.

Contacting hospitals and shelters all the way from Greenfield to Kokomo hadn't produced a single, solid clue. But he was far too stubborn to let the case grow cold. Someone had to have seen the mother after the show, and he was determined to find that someone, even if he had to interrupt every Christmas celebration in town.

When he was on the next to last message, he shot a glance at the sheriff's dispatcher, Jane Richards, in her windowed office.

“How's it going, Chandler?” she asked, but turned back to her computer without even waiting for his answer.

“Dandy,” he said anyway.

His co-worker appeared annoyed at having to work while everyone else spent time with family, attending Christmas Eve services or roasting chestnuts, if people outside storybooks really did that. Too bad for her she had a family to go home to. On nights like this one, when law-enforcement officers worked double shifts while the rest of the world celebrated, it paid to be alone in the world. Just the way he wanted to be.

So why did a picture of that know-it-all caseworker appear in his thoughts like a neon sign blinking on and off with the word
liar?
And why had his apartment, perfectly sized for a bachelor who didn't put much stock in furniture or electronics or clothes or anything that took up space, seemed so tiny this morning? And empty?

The holidays were probably getting to him. No wonder suicide rates increased between Christmas and New Year's. Newspaper articles and commercials featuring Norman Rockwell holiday images were designed to make people like him wonder if they were missing something.

Did Allison Hensley ever worry she was missing anything? She was single and lived alone; he'd checked out that information himself earlier in the day. And she'd made a point of calling David Wright a friend; whether for his benefit, Brock wasn't sure.

Maybe she'd just been searching for something to say to cover up her discomfiture over the outfit she'd been wearing. He couldn't understand why the sweats had made her so uncomfortable. She'd looked fine. More than fine—even with her hair all messy like that. All soft and feminine and relaxed enough for a night of videos and popcorn. At least until he'd mentioned her costume.

Still, she wasn't the only one who'd been feeling discomfort in that hospital hallway. Otherwise, why would he have said some idiotic thing about not recognizing her? As if he wouldn't have known those intense, long-lashed hazel eyes, even if she were dressed in a pillowed pumpkin costume and had painted her face orange.

That reality bothered him far more than facing the sassy social worker at the hospital. Since when did he go around noticing women's eyes, even if this particular pair seemed to change at will between green and golden brown? And since when did he suffer from such a chemistry shock upon simply shaking a
woman's hand? Well, no matter when it had started, it needed to stop right now. Unless those eyes—or hands—happened to belong to a particular deserting mother, and if he did touch her hands, it would only be to snap on her cuffs.

Joy. How ironic that someone had given that nickname to the baby. Joy was likely the one emotion this child would never experience.

Shaking off the strange musings that he could attribute only to a lack of sleep, he lowered his gaze to the last two messages in his hand. The one on top was a tip regarding his most crucial local case prior to this one—a rash of power tools burglaries. As that case would just have to wait, he flipped past it to the last message.

His breath caught as he looked down at the same name he'd been trying all day to forget. Allison Hensley. His palms started sweating before he'd even read what she had to say. Her message was as surprising as the fact that she'd called at all. She'd be providing temporary foster care for the infant? At her own home?

Brock didn't have to ask himself where he was going as he gathered up his notebook and his jacket. And he refused to ask himself why. He didn't even have to look up her address again, since he'd already done that and had passed by her small ranch home three times since then, always on his way to somewhere else. And always wondering if she had more interesting plans than his for Christmas Eve.

Now he knew for certain that she did, but they
weren't the kind he'd imagined with a bit of jealousy he had no right to feel.

Despite the misgivings forming a jumble of knots in his gut, Brock hurried past the dispatcher and out into the early-evening darkness. During the three-minute ETA to her house, he would have to come up with some plausible excuse for being there. But he didn't care. None of his valid reasons for staying away from her seemed to matter right now, even if he couldn't explain his attraction for the woman who dressed like Mary. He could tell himself he was only checking up on the abandoned infant, but truth be told, he was far more curious about the baby's temporary caregiver.

 

“What are you doing here?” Allison asked as she pulled the front door open, her expression a blend of shock and confusion. Her gaze followed his tan sheriff's department uniform from boots to service belt and weapon to hat.

She stood in the parquet entry, her damp hair hanging loose to her shoulders, bare toes peeking out from the flared bottoms of her jeans. Like the night before, she looked fresh-faced without makeup, and she appeared nervous again, this time pushing her hair behind her ears.

“I just came to—”

But from inside the white-painted house, an infant shrieked.

Allison grimaced. “I've got to get her.” Already, she backed away from the door. “Come inside. I'll be right back.” She turned and rushed down the hall.

All the calm he'd manufactured during the short drive in his sheriff's cruiser disappeared as he stepped inside. He shoved his hands in his pockets as much to wipe off his sweaty palms as to quit fidgeting. So much for the tough sheriff's deputy.

Inside, the house didn't seem to match the woman he'd met. It didn't have the same vibrancy so apparent in her smile or the intensity that flowed from her pores. Brock took in the floral wallpaper and the antique furniture, crowded with bric-a-brac. Even on the Christmas tree in the corner, ornate glass ornaments were crammed on branches next to paper-and-glue angels and loads of tinsel.

When Allison didn't return for several minutes, he ambled over to a claw-footed curio cabinet, staring at the figurines stuffed inside.

“Those were my mother's. This was her house.”

Brock startled at her words and turned to see Allison standing behind him, a sniffling baby resting against her shoulder. “Oh. They're nice.”

She chuckled and started swaying to some tune that perhaps only she and the baby could hear. Though the infant had been in her care less than twenty-four hours, Allison moved with a practiced rhythm. Her face glowed.

“Not exactly my taste, but she loved them,” she said, still talking about the figurines he'd already forgotten in favor of a much more interesting figure, this one dressed in faded jeans and a soft-looking red sweater.

Allison lowered her gaze to a bell collection on one of the dark wood end tables and smiled. “Mom and
I never agreed on decorating, but since she died a year ago, I haven't had the heart to change anything.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he said.

Instantly, Allison's gaze cleared, and she turned back to him. “I must have forgotten. Lack of sleep will do that to you. Did you say why you're here?”

“Rough night?” As soon as he said the words, Brock regretted them. He had no business asking her questions about how she'd spent last night or any other. Especially with the kind of innuendo that she couldn't have missed.

A pleasant flush crept across her cheeks, but she didn't call him on it. “Our Joy has her nights and days mixed up. So we watched a lot of infomercials together last night. And in the morning.”

As she spoke, Allison switched the wiggly infant to a reclining position, and immediately the child started rooting against her chest, so she lifted her back to her shoulder. “She's hungry.”

“I can see that.” Again, the words escaped before he could stop them. He'd seen that, all right. Now he could only watch her blush again. He had no business replaying the scene and wondering what it would be like to touch Allison himself. He had to either get control of his hormones or leave right away for both of their sakes. He chose control.

“I'm off-duty. I just stopped by to check on Joy.” Funny how much more believable that statement had sounded when he'd practiced it in the car. And even more surprising, he'd called Baby Doe by that nickname that suddenly seemed appropriate for a child
receiving Allison's care. If only every child were so privileged.

Allison stifled a yawn and nodded, as if she accepted his flimsy excuse for being there. “Well, I need to warm a bottle for her, and she's wet so—”

“Here, let me help.” He stepped forward and lifted Joy, a new and disturbing experience. She was so tiny, squirming and pushing her head back as he rested her against his shoulder. He lifted his finger to the child's tiny hand, and her fingers curled around it as if she, too, realized they were connected in their losses.

As natural as anything he'd ever done, he brushed his lips across the baby's forehead. She smelled so much like Allison's light, floral perfume that he wondered what it would be like to kiss the woman herself.

When he looked up, Allison was staring at him, her expression so strange that he worried she'd read his inappropriate thoughts. But she turned away, leaving him oddly disappointed. “The stuff's in the diaper bag. Could you change her?”

“Sure.” He was anything but, though he'd shoot his foot with his own sidearm before he admitted it. How hard could changing a diaper—only a wet one, thankfully—be? He crouched by the diaper bag and pulled out one of those changing pads he'd seen parents use and spread it on the floor before resting the baby on it.