Father Christmas (35 page)

“
No,” John said so
quickly, Molly would have smiled if the situation hadn’t been so
grave. She couldn’t imagine John trying to chase down Frank
Pelham’s car with Elsie bawling and babbling next to
him.

“
I’ll go,” Molly
volunteered. “Abbie knows me. Arlene, you keep Michael here,
okay?”

“
Anything,” Arlene said,
clearly shaken by her error. “Whatever you want.”

“
Go to the police station
and wait,” John ordered Elsie. He eyed Molly dubiously, then shoved
his pad back into his pocket and strode toward the door. Molly
grabbed her jacket from the coat tree behind the desk and chased
him out of the building.

Neither spoke as he opened the passenger
door of his car. He pulled from the floor near her feet a bulky,
hemispheric object trailing a wire. A flashing red light, she
realized as he lifted it through the window and fastened it to the
roof of his car. “You can roll up the window, but don’t crush the
wire,” he said as she sat.

She rolled the window halfway up, then
folded her hands in her lap and waited while he revved the engine,
tore out of the lot, and lifted a radio handset from the console.
He flicked a button and spoke into the mouthpiece, describing the
car, the circumstances, the passenger. “I’m on him, but if there
are any Staties out there, I think I-84 is our best shot,” he said
before hanging up.

The light on the roof of the car splashed a
pulsing red wash across the windshield and hood. John navigated
aggressively through the rush-hour traffic, crossing the
double-yellow line, running red lights until he reached the
entrance ramp onto the interstate. The highway was also sluggish
with rush-hour traffic, but he wove deftly among the cars, paying
attention not only to the hazards of the road but to the license
plates of the cars around them.

Molly studied the plates, too: Connecticut,
Connecticut, Connecticut. Up ahead she saw a dark red
Volvo...Connecticut.

John tapped a switch on the dashboard and a
siren began to bleat. Molly flinched, her heart pounding from the
noise and John’s manic driving. It occurred to her, somewhere in
the deeper recesses of her mind, that like the night she’d lost
him, John was currently off-duty. And like that night, he wasn’t
letting his being off-duty stop him from doing a job. He was a cop,
and regardless of the fact that he’d finished his working day, he
was doing his job now. This time, it wasn’t to flush some
inebriated kids from a neighbor’s house, though. It was to rescue a
little girl from her pigheaded father—and to save Arlene’s butt
and, indirectly, Molly’s.

Up ahead, she saw a pair of flashing blue
lights above a sedan. “Statie,” John murmured, veering onto the
shoulder and accelerating to catch up to the state trooper’s
car.

“
Do you think he’s on
Frank Pelham’s tail?” she asked, wide-eyed in spite of
herself.

“
He can’t be after a
speeder. I’m the fastest car on the road, and I’m barely pushing
fifty.” Remaining on the shoulder, he pulled up alongside the state
trooper’s car, rolled down his window and shut off his siren. “Have
you seen him?” he shouted.

“
Not yet. If he gets past
the city limits, he’s gonna fly. The road gets empty about five
miles west of here. Any chance he took another route?”

“
Yeah,” John yelled into
the winter wind.

“
Well, if he thinks he can
outsmart us by going through Massachusetts, we’ve got men all over
the roads. Maybe we’ll intercept him.”

“
Let’s hope,” John
hollered, then rolled up his window and tore ahead of the trooper’s
car.

Amazed that he could converse from speeding
car to speeding car, amazed that law enforcement was so quick to
respond to the crisis, amazed that she was in the middle of it,
exhilarated by it, Molly returned her attention to the cars
clogging the road. She nearly jumped when she spotted a
non-Connecticut license plate, then sagged when she saw it was a
Rhode Island tag. John turned the siren back on and continued down
the shoulder.

“
Thank you,” she said
quietly, still searching the license plates.

John shot her a quick look, then steered
around a pile of trash someone had dumped on the side of the
highway. “Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything.”

“
You’ve offered to help.
You didn’t have to—”

“
Yes, I did,” he cut her
off.

Because it was his job? she wondered. Or
because he was a father who loved his son, who had to help a mother
whose daughter was missing? Was he helping because he was a cop, or
because he was a good man?

Maybe there wasn’t such a huge difference
between the two.

“
There!” she cried out,
spotting a New York license plate on a car stalled in traffic about
twenty feet ahead of them. The plate was attached to a dark red
sedan, and the silhouette of a man’s head rose above the driver’s
seat. If Abigail was in the car, she was too short to be
visible.

“
Where?”

“
There!” Molly pointed
emphatically. “Right there!”

“
Got it.” John cruised
along the shoulder until he was astride the car behind the Volvo.
He signaled with his directional light to pull into the traffic
lane, and then flashed his lights and honked for the Volvo to pull
of the road.

As John followed the Volvo onto the
shoulder, Molly held her breath. What if it was the wrong car? What
if they lost precious minutes dealing with this car while Abigail
and her father were speeding toward some other border crossing?

Leaving the motor running, John yanked on
the parking brake. “You stay here,” he commanded. “If I go like
this—” he made a beckoning motion with his hand “—come over.”

Molly nodded. She wished she could find a
hint of personal emotion in his gaze, something meant for her. But
at the moment, he was strictly a cop. Nothing else—not even his and
Molly’s star-crossed romance—mattered to him.

Sighing, she unclipped her seat-belt and
watched him stalk over to the other car. He held up something in
front of the driver’s-side window—his shield, she guessed—and then
peered into the car. Without looking at her, he made the beckoning
sign with his hand.

She hurried out of the car and jogged over.
The driver glowered and clung to the wheel, as if determined not to
let anyone drag him out of the driver’s seat. Behind him, in the
back, sat Abigail Pelham. “Hi, Abbie,” Molly called through the
partially open window.

“
Molly!” Abigail giggled,
wiggling her booted feet. “This is my daddy! We’re going to New
York!”

“
Not tonight,” John
muttered. The air began to pulse blue along with the red of the
light on John’s car, and the state trooper’s car coasted past the
two cars before pulling onto the shoulder, boxing the Volvo in.
While the trooper sauntered over, John murmured to Molly, “I’m
going to have the trooper take them back to the station. Explain it
to Abbie so she doesn’t get scared, okay?”

Molly nodded, swallowing a lump in her
throat at his consideration for the little girl. While John and the
trooper talked with Frank Pelham, Molly told Abigail that she and
her father would be going in another car and that her mommy would
be waiting for her once they reached their destination. Suitcases
were removed from the trunk of the Volvo, which was locked up, and
the trooper escorted the Pelhams to his cruiser. They got in and
drove away, leaving Molly and John on the side of the road, as
alone as they could be on a highway at the heart of rush-hour.

She felt shaky as the reality of what had
just happened sank in. She’d been involved in a police chase. She’d
helped save a girl from a custody-battle kidnapping. She’d sat
beside John, and she’d felt bold, and determined to right a wrong.
And now that the wrong was in the process of being righted, she
felt drained...but good. Very good.

She lifted her gaze to John. He was studying
her, his face glowing red and then falling into shadow, red and
then shadow as the light continued to flash on the roof of his
car.

“
You’re never off-duty,
are you,” she said.

“
No.”

She gave herself a moment to digest that
truth. “Were you on duty even when we were making love?”

Something flickered in his eyes, something
warm, comprehending. One side of his mouth twitched upward in a
vague attempt at a smile, but his voice was solemn. “When we were
making love, you got all of me, Molly. You got everything.”

And she’d loved everything, all of him, his
body and his soul, his tenderness and his fierceness, his reticence
and his strength. She’d seen and felt and loved all the many facets
of him.

She still loved him. Even if she was
frightened by what he did, frightened by what could happen to him.
She loved him, and that wasn’t going to change.

“
I’ll never feel
comfortable about your gun,” she warned.

“
The gun isn’t me, Molly.
It’s a tool I sometimes use in my work.” He risked a step toward
her. “It isn’t me.”

“
I think I understand,”
she whispered, moving toward him. “ But I don’t like
it.”

“
There are things I don’t
like about you, too,” he admitted, his smile widening
slightly.

“
Name one,” she challenged
him.

He lapsed into thought for a minute, then
said, “You’re quick to judge people.”

“
Who, me?” she scoffed
indignantly.

His smile grew even bigger. “Right. And in
your judgment, I’m—”

“
A wonderful man,” she
finished, taking the final step that obliterated the distance
between them. He spread his arms and she sank into them. It felt
like coming home. “I love you, John,” she whispered, hoping he
could hear her through the rumble of traffic and the muffling
tightness of his embrace. “I wish you didn’t have to do what you
do, but it’s who you are. It’s part of everything.”

“
Yes.”

“
It won’t
change.”

“
No.”

She closed her eyes and held him closer. “I
can’t bear the thought of your hurting someone, or getting hurt.
It’s scary.”

“
Not nearly as scary as
falling in love,” he argued.

She peered up at him. “Falling in love
scares you?”

“
More than you know,” he
confessed. “But I love you so much, I’ll just have to overcome the
fear.”

She reached up and cupped his face in her
hands, then pulled him down to her. They kissed, their hearts
beating in a strong, steady rhythm while the red light throbbed
above them and the cars of a thousand weary commuters rolled
by.

John and Molly kissed, and she was fearless
in his arms.

***

Judith Arnold is the award-winning,
bestselling author of more than ninety published novels. A New York
native, she currently lives in New England, where she indulges in
her passions for jogging, dark chocolate, good music, good wine and
good books. She is married and the mother of two sons.

You can find out about
Judith’s other books, contact her, and sign up for her newsletter
by visiting her
website
.

The Daddy School is an award-winning series
of contemporary romances about heroes, the children they love, and
the women who love those men and their children. Founded by best
friends Allison Winslow, a neonatal nurse, and Molly Saunders, the
director of a preschool, the Daddy School offers classes on how to
become a better father. The first three books of the series tell
how the school was founded and celebrate the love stories of
Allison, Molly, and Molly’s sister, Gail. Those first three books
were so beloved by readers, I just kept writing more Daddy School
books. Enjoy them all!

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