Saving Alyssa (Mills & Boon Heartwarming) (10 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A
LYSSA
 
HAD
 
CLIMBED
 
onto his big rolling chair. At first, she'd bent over the desk, muttering as her pencil scratched on the paper, filling the fat blue lines with words like
grab
and
band
and
flat.
She'd spent the past few minutes, though, spinning and singing, “Round, round, I get around, wa-ooh, wa-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh.”

“I need to limit your time with that Beach Boys CD,” Noah said, squirting oil onto the squeaking cabinet hinge. “Having trouble with spelling a word, cupcake?”

“Just the extra-credit one,” she said, grabbing the edge of the desk.

“Do you remember how to sound it out?”

She exhaled a sigh of frustration and, retrieving the pencil, made the hard
G
sound, followed by
R,
then
A.

Noah gave the hinge another squirt. “How many letters in the extra-credit word?”

He could hear the pencil point tap-tap-tapping as she counted.

“Seven.”

“That's a long, hard word...for third grade.”

“Oh, it isn't hard. I can spell it. I just don't want to.”

And then it hit him: the word was
grandma.

Back in Chicago, they'd lived fifteen minutes east of Jillian's mother. Half an hour in the other direction put them at his mom's. Weekends, holidays and summer vacations had included lots of family activities, most involving the grandparents. And Alyssa, who'd been four when he'd taken her from them, remembered it all. There was a time when he'd looked down his nose at people who said, “If I could live that part of my life over again, I'd live it differently....” The mind-set was pointless at best, he'd thought, narcissistic at worst. Well, he didn't feel that way anymore.

He put down the oil can and went to her. Crouching in front of the chair, he held her beautiful little face in his hands. “I'm sorry, sweetheart.”

She met his gaze, looking innocent and wise beyond her years at the same time. Common sense told him he could never give back all he'd taken from her, not even if he lived three lifetimes. But at the moment, Noah felt anything but sensible.

“You worked real hard on the rest of the list, so I think you can skip the extra-credit word.”

Her eyes widened, and so did her smile. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Whew,” she said, shoulders sagging. “That's
 
a relief. For a minute there, I thought you and me were gonna have another one of
those.
”

“One of what?”

“You know. Those nights where I say something about Mommy or Gran or Pop,” she began, bobbing her head, “and it makes you sad, and then
I
get sad, and then you feel bad....” She sighed.

Yeah, he knew, all right. Those nights weren't happening as often as they once had. But they happened. As recently as Mother's Day, when a commercial had appeared on TV, and Alyssa had said she wished the two of them could have shopped for a heart-shaped pendant for
her
mom. It had hit him like a roundhouse punch to the gut, and he'd locked himself in the bathroom to get hold of himself.

When he had emerged ten minutes later, and Alyssa had seen his red-rimmed eyes, she'd known he'd been in there blubbering like a baby. And when she'd hugged him, tiny hands patting his back as she'd said, “It's okay, Daddy. It's going to be all right, I promise,” he'd almost lost it all over again.

The bell above the entry door jangled, and he straightened. “How would you feel about driving over to Ledo's for supper?”

“I'd say
let's!
”

“Then it's a date.”

A husky female voice called, “Anybody home?”

“It's Max!” Alyssa said.

“Hey, short stuff. Why aren't you in school?” She held up a palm. “Whoa. You're not gonna sneeze and make me sick, are ya?”

“No, I'm not sick. Me and Daddy couldn't sleep, on account of I took two allergy pills instead of one. So he let me stay home so I could take some naps.”

Hands on her hips, Max looked at Noah. “What's this? You overdosed your kid?”

“It wasn't Daddy's fault. He gave me a pill, but I wanted candy. So I didn't tell that to Billie, and asked her to give me another one.”

“Billie. Here. Doling out meds to your kid. Unsupervised.”

She knew very well what had happened, but Max was Max, and he knew better than to point it out. She adopted a tough New York cop voice and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Why, I oughta cuff the both of yas—you an' this Billie character—an' throw yas in the slammer.”

Alyssa looked from Max to Noah and back again, and satisfied that the adults were joking, giggled.

“We're going to Ledo's for pizza,” she said. “Would you like to come, too?”

Max's job with the U.S. Marshals Service wasn't common knowledge; rather than risk being recognized by someone who might connect her to the witness protection program, they could never be seen in public together. She'd purchased a ten-speed and car carrier at Walmart for the sole purpose of having a legitimate excuse to visit Ike's Bikes.

“Wish I could, but my boss will have a fit if he sees me out having fun when I should be working.”

“We could order a pizza instead.”

Max tugged gently at Alyssa's ponytail. “Tell you what, if it isn't too late when I get all my reports turned in, I'll be back, and we'll do that. Deal?”

“That's exactly what Billie said when we were at her house, right before we high-fived!”

“Far be it from me to be outdone by a...by a Billie!” Max gave Alyssa's little palm a gentle slap, then looked at Noah. “I have news for you.”

The agent stopped by often, always with no warning whatever. Occasionally, she delivered a message that got stuck between post offices when the Marshals Service didn't have time for in-person deliveries. More often than not, though, the sole purpose of her visits was to see how things were going.

Noah tensed, and studied her face for signs that O'Malley had found them. No...she didn't look anxious, and didn't seem to be in a hurry to get them out of here and on to a new location. And since she hadn't suggested they talk in private, away from Alyssa's tender ears, he relaxed a little.

“If you ever get tired of marshaling, I'm pretty sure you could find work in Hollywood, teaching screenwriters how to build suspense into movie scenes.”

“And if spinning bike wheels ever gets too boring, you might consider stand-up comedy.” She rolled her eyes. “On second thought, maybe not.”

“Max...” He held out his hands in a gesture of silent supplication. “You're killin' me here.”

“Okay. I've had my fun. Now it's your turn to have some.” She lowered her voice, to keep Alyssa from hearing. “O'Malley was moved into the general population.”

If not for Max, Noah wouldn't know anything about the senator. Phone calls could be traced and internet trails could be followed...straight to his door. If O'Malley had lost the safe haven of his Pay to Stay single cell, he wouldn't last long.

Noah glanced at Alyssa, preoccupied by a blue jay splashing in the birdbath out back.

“How long ago?”

“Just happened.” One eyebrow rose slowly. “I know what you're thinking, but don't get your hopes up just yet. O'Malley reminds me of the giant squids I read about in
Smithsonian
—huge, powerful, dangerous predators, with forty-foot tentacles covered by sharp-toothed suckers. They've been around since...since forever, because they sit quietly in the dark until—”

“See? I was right. You were born for Hollywood.” It was a good thing that Alyssa was watching the bird, because a description like that might give her nightmares. It might give
him
nightmares. “I don't buy it. No one has ever seen one.”

“Alive... Scientists have studied the ones that washed ashore, dead, or got tangled up in fishermen's nets.” Max put her hands on her hips. “So, smart guy, they do exist. But that isn't my point. My point is it's way too soon to let your guard down. O'Malley is like that sea beast. He still has friends in high places on the outside. Who knows what strings he could pull? We're not out of the woods...yet.”

She went to the window, spent a few minutes whispering with Alyssa about the strange and sometimes comical habits of birds, then came back toward him.

“Thanks for the update, Max.”

“My pleasure. You can rest easy about Billie and her brother, too. They're okay.”

It didn't surprise him that she'd had them checked out. She'd run his neighbors, Alyssa's teachers and all his customers through the Marshals' database. It had always been a relief, hearing the people he and Alyssa were interacting with wouldn't harm them, but never more than this time.

Before he could fully accept what he'd just acknowledged, Max said, “I saw you coming out of her house this morning.” She lowered her voice to add, “If you want to keep up this ‘it's strictly business' facade, you'd better do a better job of controlling your facial muscles.”

Noah didn't know what to say, so he shrugged.

“I know, I know,” she said, and began counting on her fingers. “You don't think you're ready for a relationship, that even if you were, you're not good enough for you-know-who. Yeah, okay, so you were a workaholic, made some mistakes—big ones. But, Noah, you paid for them. You aren't that guy anymore. I know, because I've walked that rocky road, right alongside you.”

Noah rubbed his chin. “Here's something I never told you, something that might finally change your mind about me—or at least about whether or not I'm entitled to a regular life.” He made sure Alyssa wasn't listening, and continued.

“A few months before Jillian's murder, we left Alyssa with my mom and went out to dinner. No special reason. Jillian just wanted some time alone.”

He remembered the way she had looked that night, cheeks flushed from too much wine, eyes glittering in the candlelight.

“She asked me if I loved her. Not one of those ‘stroke my ego' things you women are famous for... Jill honestly didn't know. That wasn't on her. It was on
me.
I'd spent so many years putting career advancement ahead of everything else that I forgot what was important.”

“But that night, you reassured her.”

“Yeah, I did, because despite my conceit and self-centeredness, she was the love of my life. Every promotion and award I earned were more hers than mine. Because—to cite a tired old cliché—she held down the fort while I did it all.”

“You were lucky. I'll give you that.” The agent paused, stared hard at him. “But so was Jillian.”

Max opened the door. “See ya, kiddo,” she hollered to Alyssa. Then, facing him, she said, “There are no parallels, you know, between her and Billie.”

And then she left him to think about her parting comment.

CHAPTER TWELVE

N
OAH
 
JOCKEYED
J
EFF
'
S
 
Venge onto the repair stand and inspected the bike's pulleys. The teeth were worn down, keeping them from spinning freely. “Yep,” he said to himself, “gonna need to replace those.”

As he assembled his tools, Noah pictured Billie's tiny house. It wasn't large by anyone's standards, but she had made the most of every square inch, filling the rooms with comfortable old furnishings that reminded him of his grandmother's house.

It had been nearly a week since Noah and Alyssa had paid Billie the impromptu visit. He remembered how she'd welcomed them with genuine warmth, despite the early hour, then patiently explained the objective of each website page. Pleasant as they were, those things hadn't kept him up nights. Nor had the scent of fresh-baked cookies, or the yellow sweater that brought out the green flecks in her dark eyes. The scene he couldn't shake had happened so quickly; he would have missed it if he'd blinked: Billie, tenderly brushing crumbs from Alyssa's face in a gesture he could only call motherly, and it set his heart to beating double time
.

Any day now, she'd call to let him know the website was ready for his final approval, and when she did, he'd have to go back there, to the place that made him feel—for the first time since leaving Chicago—
at home.
And Noah didn't know how he felt about that.

It seemed easier to focus on those tense moments when her brother had picked up a camera and aimed it at Alyssa. Since leaving Chicago, Noah had done everything humanly possible to ensure there would be no photographs of her, anywhere. Other kids her age had stacked up three years of school photos. Alyssa did not, because he'd kept her home on picture day. It was the only way to ensure facial recognition software wouldn't lead one of O'Malley's henchmen to their door.

Noah couldn't apologize for his brusque behavior and hasty departure without explaining why he'd behaved like a paranoid lunatic. And yet, for the first time since entering the WITSEC program, that's exactly what he wanted to do. He heard his little girl singing in the back room. The thumps and bumps accompanying her solo told him she was dancing, too.

“Alyssa, you're supposed to be doing your homework, remember?”

He heard silence, then, “Yes, Daddy.”

“When you're finished, we'll walk across the street and get some ice cream, okay?”

Her “Okay, Daddy” harmonized with the bell above the entry door. Deidre O'Toole was the last person he expected to see in his bike shop. The article he had read in the
Howard County Times
highlighting her Little Theater stated that the former Broadway star was sixty-five years old. He'd never been a math whiz, but even Noah knew she couldn't have worked with stars like Ethel Merman and Carol Channing unless she was in her late seventies.

“Noah Preston, you handsome devil,” she gushed, “just the man I wanted to see.”

“Got a hankering to buy a bicycle?”

“Handsome and funny, too? If you tell me you're on the Forbes 500 list, I'll leave that old husband of mine and we'll run away together.” She threw back her head and laughed.

Noah wiped his hands on a cleaning rag. “Sorry, looks like you're stuck with Felix. I'm so poor that church mice put money in the collection basket for me
.
”

“I do love a man with a sense of humor,” she said, winking. And then, with a flourish of her great black cape, she hiked up her skirt and climbed onto the counter stool.

“I'm here to offer that beautiful child of yours the lead in my next production. I've looked and looked, and you know me...why settle for second best when you don't have to?”

Noah swallowed. His daughter's love of music was rivaled only by her talent for memorization, something Deidre must have figured out as Alyssa sang her way past the theater as they walked to the hardware store. But what Noah knew even better than Deidre was that a good memory also helped her keep details of her new life straight. Her old life was precisely why the audition could never happen.

“Where is she? I'd love to break the news myself.”

“Doing homework.” He took a deep breath. Noah liked the woman—everyone did—but if it came to a choice between disappointing her and risking a photograph falling into the wrong hands... “I appreciate the offer, but we're not interested.”

“What?”

“Sorry.”

“What can I say to change your mind?”

“Nothing. But we'll buy tickets.”

Alyssa stepped up beside him. “Hello, Miss O'Toole.” She looked up at Noah. “Are you talking about
Snow White?
”

“No, hon,” Deidre said, “we're talking about
Annie.
It's the next play I'm producing, and I need someone just like you for the lead role.”

Alyssa's eyes widened as Noah's heart thundered.

“But I don't have curly red hair.”

“No biggie. We'd get you a wig.”

“I don't have little black shoes or a red dress, either.” She frowned. “Well, I
have
black shoes, only I grew a lot since first grade and Daddy hasn't had time to get new ones for me.”

Deidre fluttered a long-taloned hand, setting half a dozen bangle bracelets to jangling. “Don't you worry about any of that. I'll see to it you have everything you need.”

Alyssa clasped her hands and tucked them under her chin, trembling with excitement. “Oh, Daddy,” she said, looking up at him, “could I be Annie? Could I,
please?
”

He'd been clenching his jaw so tightly that his teeth ached. How could Deidre put him in this position?

“I'm sure every little girl in town wants to be Annie,” he said, openly glaring at Deidre. Thankfully, she got the message.

“It's not like playing pretend,” Deidre said to Alyssa. “Starring in a play is a lot of hard work. You'd have to practice for hours, every single day, whether you feel like it or not.”

“How many?”

Deidre rubbed her chin. “Oh, I don't know...three or four hours, I guess.”

Noah watched as Alyssa's eyebrows drew together and her lips formed a thin line. Then she held both forefingers aloft. The first time she'd done it, she'd still been in diapers, inspiring Jillian to say, “Looks like she just gave birth to an idea!”

His daughter looked up at him now. “How long is four hours?”

“About as long as it takes to watch
The Sound of Music
twice.”

The birthing-an-idea expression returned, but only for a moment.

“There are a lot of other kids in
Annie,
because they're in a...” She looked up at Noah once more. “What's that place called where kids hafta live when they don't have a mom
or
a dad?”

“Orphanage.”

“Yes, that's it.” She faced Deidre again. “Would I have to work that long if I was one of the kids in the orphanage?”

“No,” Deidre said. “No, you wouldn't.”

“Good. Because
The Sound of Music
is a long movie.” She paused, then said, “Would I have to try out for one of the orphan parts?”

“Yes, yes, of course you would.”

Not if I have anything to say about it,
Noah thought.

“Auditions begin soon,” Deidre said as they walked her to the door. From the sidewalk, she said, “I'll make sure you get a flyer.”

And I'll make sure Alyssa never sees it.
But Noah knew as well as everyone else on Main Street that Deidre was accustomed to getting her way. Maybe just this once, he could relax the rules a bit. It had been three years, after all, without a single incident.

Father and daughter stood side by side, watching their famous neighbor cross the street, and when she disappeared into the Little Theater on the Corner, Alyssa took his hand and skipped all the way to the back room, singing, “I'm going to play an orphan, I'm going to play an orphan!”

He hated to disappoint her, but what choice did he have? “Time to get busy on that homework, cupcake.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She sat at her worktable, then said, “You know what?”

“What.”

“I love you to the moon and the stars, and more than anything in the Milky Way!”

He recited his portion of their mantra. “And I love you to every continent, to the bottom of the sea and around the equator ten times.”

Noah went back to work on the Venge, and with every pull on the crescent wrench, counted the things he'd left in Chicago: his wife's grave. His family. The career that afforded him a big house and status cars. He couldn't believe any of that had ever mattered, because the most important thing in his world was humming “Tomorrow.”

He tightened the pulley's hex-head bolt with a force that matched his anxiety. An ugly thought roiled in his head. It wasn't easy, admitting that the raw, unbridled hatred that put it there also put him on a par with O'Malley. One day soon, he hoped, Max would stop by to tell him that former senator Hank O'Malley was dead.