Mary's Child Read online

  There was no question of the infant still feeding; no, this was a question of the colicky, persnickety baby using Hallie as a pacifier.

  Downstairs the doorbell buzzed again. Hallie looked at Maura. Sure as sin she wasn’t going to answer the door hooked to the infant like this. Not even if she pulled a blanket up over the baby to hide herself. Neither door-to-door salesmen nor religious canvassers required her attention badly enough for her to go to the trouble. And if it was Frank or one of the other guys from the squad, they’d be embarrassed as all get-out, and she’d never live it down tomorrow.

  At the back of the second story she could hear her sons, Sam and Ben, ages seven and eight, playing in their room, too far away or too involved to hear the bell. Unfortunately, she didn’t dare yell for them and risk waking Maura completely. And they weren’t allowed to answer the door by themselves yet anyway—even with the dog beside them—but at least they could look out a window and see who was on the porch. It was probably only their father come to pick them up for basketball practice, but Zeke usually didn’t use the front door and only rarely knocked. He simply let himself in.

  Another buzz from below, accompanied by an insistent rapping, informed Hallie that whoever was at the door had no intention of leaving without seeing someone. The knowledge rankled: she didn’t suffer fools kindly, unexpected visitors who couldn’t call first—especially when they interfered with Maura’s rare bouts of real sleep. She had half a mind to... Well, never mind. Suffice it to say, the thought wasn’t nice.

  Still, this time when the baby startled and lost suction, Hallie was ready for her. Quickly she put space between her breast and the infant’s questing mouth, pulled her bra up and her shirt down, righted the ready-to-fuss Maura, pulled the baby’s bib and blanket to her shoulder and went downstairs to answer the door.

  And pity the poor fool who stood on the other side.

  His initial reaction when he saw her was depraved and violent, robbed him of speech.

  Hunger. Greed. Craving. Want.

  Possession.

  Now.

  He stared at her through the screen she always waited as long as possible to remove from the storm door and blinked, stunned, telling himself it was only Hallie, for God’s sake, only Hallie.

  But it wasn’t. The scent, the subtle essence of her, an undertaste—a call to his senses—of something primal he couldn’t identify, wafted gently into the thirty-degree air, filled his nostrils, his lungs; curled like breathable lightning in his gut.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected to feel when she opened the door, but this wasn’t it: this breath-stealing torquing in his lower belly, this shockingly questing thrust of his sex against his zipper; this raw and avaricious need.

  This base lusting urge to back Hallie against the door and take her like something out of an X-rated movie, have her again moments later on her front hall steps, then on the chair beside her telephone table. And then...again and again and again. Anywhere. Everywhere. Until this hot thing inside him cooled. Until he could see straight and breathe again.

  Until he was too sated and too limp for the cruder passions to interfere with what he’d come here to do: pick up his house keys, find his bail jumper and get the hell out of here so he could pick up his body receipt, collect his cash and get on with the process of bringing down his late wife’s killer.

  He’d never in his life reacted to Halleluia Thompson—or indeed, to any woman—like this.

  Had never even considered he might.

  He knew the year since Mary died had changed him, but this was the first inkling he’d had of just how savage he’d become.

  The first time he’d scared himself.

  He drew a harsh, steadying breath. The entire experience lasted less than fifteen seconds, but it was enough to warn him, make him know that he should run far and fast, and now. But then he looked at her, took in the short, straight, uncooperative, almost-too-blond hair, the frank dark blue eyes, the steely “You-have-interrupted-me-whoever-you-are-and-you-are-going-to-pay-for-it” set of her mouth—took in, in short, all the things that made her Hallie, and knew that he was damned. Because in the long run, if his body didn’t torture him to death with his first image of her in a year, then his conscience would scourge him for not staying at least long enough to find out why her new partner, Frank Nillson, had wanted to deck him when he’d tried to avoid seeing Hallie at all.

  “Yes?” she asked coolly.

  He breathed through his nose, expelled a breath of what he might once have identified as regret. She didn’t know him. “Hallie?” he asked.

  She didn’t recognize him at first, he’d changed so much physically.

  The product of a Swedish-Viking and Hungarian heritage, at five feet eleven inches and one hundred forty-five pounds, she was not a little girl; delicacy was missing from her genes. But at six foot five and a good two hundred thirty muscular pounds, he filled her doorway, dwarfing her, emanating testosterone and danger.

  Her eyes narrowed, and every nerve she possessed stood to attention. Instinctively she turned slightly sideways to the doorway, protectively holding Maura as far away from this black-haired, gray-eyed, heavily bearded stranger as she could. But even then, from underneath her she-bear reflex, something reckless poked out its head, sized up the undeniably hunky creature in her doorway and said Woof!

  “Yes?” she asked, hoping she sounded cool and coplike, instead of like the dithering idiot inside her who was wondering what he’d look like without the beard and his shirt at the same time she wondered if she could slam the door and lock it, put Maura down safely and get to her gun if he turned out to be as hazardous as he looked.

  Then he said her name.

  “Hallie?”

  She stared at him, did a double take, and stared again, unable to reconcile the voice with the furry face and beef cake body.

  The voice was tired and dry, distinctly bass—even “basso profundo” as their high-school choral director had been fond of stating. A voice able to command attention with a whisper, tumble the walls of Jericho with a shout—or stop a rebellious suspect with a word.

  A voice that had destroyed her concentration every time he sang from the time they’d turned fifteen, sent chills down her spine with every confidence they’d shared since. Joe’s voice. The voice of the child, the boy, the man she’d loved since kindergarten.

  It was only the body that had belonged to somebody else.

  Joe’s body should be—had always been—lanky to the point of thinness. This man’s body was, well, not quite Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, but a heck of a lot broader and more muscularly defined than Joe’s had ever been.

  She swallowed, worked her jaw, put her hand on the door for support. “Joe?” she asked—cautiously.

  He nodded, equally watchful.

  The baby squirmed under the blanket against her shoulder, drawing his eyes. She clutched Maura tighter, and felt the panic of a mother who fears her child will be taken away from her start to rise.

  “Joe Martinez?”

  He nodded again, eyeing the twitching blanket with bemusement, suddenly impatient. “Yes, damn it, it’s me, Hallie. Now open the freaking door and let me in.”

  Panic risen turned to anger. “Get off my porch, you bastard,” she returned, and moved to slam the door in his face.

  The movement was too abrupt, joggled the ready-to-fuss Maura from half sleep to thin crankiness to full howl without apparent transition. Hallie automatically let go of the door, put her hand to the infant’s back to prevent her from sliding sideways. Joe, who’d already yanked open the screen to catch the inside door before it closed, pushed into Hallie’s entryway, head cocked in puzzlement that quickly turned into shock when the blanket covering the darkhaired, brown-skinned baby slipped and dropped to the floor. He stooped to retrieve the covering, held it out to Hallie who backed away from him, clutching Maura tightly, protectively, at the same time she tried to soothe the infant.

  “Hallie?” he asked,
too dazed to be entirely sure what he was seeing.

  A mother cornered with both her maternal heart and her child to protect, Hallie snarled at him, “You’re not taking her from me, Joe Martinez, do you hear me? You left her. You left me with her. She’s mine! So you just get out of my house now.”

  Chapter 2

  Undone as he was by his initial reaction to the scent and sight of Hallie, Joe couldn’t quite get his mind around the implications: Hallie, baby. Hallie, baby. Hallie... ¡Madre de Dios! Hallie, baby.

  “You’re not taking her from me, Joe. You left her. She’s mine!”

  But she wasn’t.

  At least not biologically.

  Without a sound he sagged against the wall and slid to the floor, poleaxed. He’d returned to Cuyahoga County for a single reason only: in pursuit of a man who’d jumped bail, then hunted down, tortured and killed his estranged wife and fled with his kids in this direction. There was no indication the guy had harmed the kids—yet—but Joe’s goal was to get to him before that happened. Not to mention that the bounty on this particular body would allow him to finance another step in his search for Mary’s killer for a while. Maybe even long enough this time. But now...

  Numb, he eyed his best friend’s defensive, defiant stance, the infant in her arms, and everything inside him lurched and twisted, the bottom of the universe dropped away beneath him. He had a daughter. Knowing the truth was that simple. He and Mary had a child. He was a parent. A father.

  Dios.

  In the past year he’d occasionally wondered, but the statistics he’d had to work from were all in the negative: the first embryo transfer usually didn’t take; the odds of success of any transfer taking, although greater than they used to be, were still limited; the odds of success would have increased dramatically if he and Mary had allowed the embryo transfer using a donor egg—preferably one of Hallie’s —which they hadn’t. And on and on.

  Disbelieving, he rubbed a hand across his face and stared up at Hallie. So this was what the guys at the department had meant. This was why Frank had wanted to deck him: for deserting Hallie while she’d been pregnant with his baby.

  He swallowed, jaw clenched against the urge to selfcastigate in favor of self-defense. Who the hell were they to judge him? He hadn’t known. How could he have known?

  Since he’d successfully gone underground, as it were, and hadn’t checked in, he couldn’t. It was no excuse, merely the reason. He’d done what he had to do. Was still doing it. Somebody had to relieve his nightmares. Somebody had to lay Mary to rest. And he couldn’t do that with an infant strapped to his chest—even if he could find a bulletproof vest that would accommodate them both.

  Yet, even as the protests occurred to him he heard himself ask, “She’s mine, isn’t she? And Mary’s? The transfer took.”

  “You abandoned her. She’s not yours.”

  He didn’t hear her—or he heard what she said from a distance and ignored her. Even he didn’t know which. “Does she have a name? How old is she? When’s her birthday?”

  Hallie backed away, protecting both the infant and herself from him with both arms. “None of that matters to you at this point,” she said flatly. “You left her, I had her anyway, it’s in the courts. I’m adopting her with your family’s blessing, Mary’s family’s blessing and my family’s blessing. Even Zeke’s family offered their blessing and they don’t have a say except for the boys.”

  The numbness grew to a dull ache at the back of his skull. Family. His family, Mary’s family. He hadn’t even considered them.

  Hadn’t considered anyone or lived by anything but guilt, survival and revenge for fifty-one weeks, three days, six hours and ten minutes—give or take.

  And now when he’d finally woken up enough to care about finding and protecting someone else’s kids, he wheeled back into his past to find a best friend who not only hated him, but whom he wanted to bed and who’d borne him a daughter of his own.

  Frank had been right to want to deck him; he was a scumbag. He wanted to deck himself, too. But he still had three little kids and their murderer father to find and return to Duluth, and Mary’s killer to identify and take down. Personal confusion wouldn’t cut it here.

  He hauled in air, let it out slowly. Pushed himself to his feet and headed for Hallie’s living room. He knew you either dealt with a moment or you let it plow you under.

  He had no intention of ever getting plowed under again.

  “Shut the door,” he said over his shoulder. “We have to talk.”

  She watched his back—the loose, arrogant, owner-of the-earth strut—and anger contained for a year pooled and flared in her gut—much the same as it had when they were kids and he’d behaved this way. He was not in charge here. This was her home, her life—her sons’ lives and futures—he wanted to mess with. Allowing him an inch of “in charge” would be unacceptable; much like giving a fugitive the upper hand during the chase and capture. She not only couldn’t do it, she wouldn’t.

  An ache took root in the vicinity of her heart. Not even for Joe.

  Or maybe it was especially for Joe.

  “No,” she told him softly. “We don’t.”

  Then she turned and walked back up the stairs, leaving Joe in the hallway alone.

  At the top of the curved staircase she paused, trembling with sudden reaction, holding on to Maura for all she was worth. He was back. He was here.

  Oh, sweet heaven, she prayed. What am I going to do?

  Never in her life had she been more afraid of the possible long-term effects of a single moment, a simple conversation, a man. But then, never in her life before could any of the above have cost her a child. Not even when she and Zeke divorced had custody been a question. They’d been friends before their ill-advised marriage and they’d been fortunate enough to remain friends since. In fact, the only thing that had ever gotten in the way of their friendship had been their marriage. Divorce, friendship and their jointcustody agreement were the things that let each of them—especially the boys—blossom and that now kept their family intact.

  But Joe was not Zeke. And for all its longevity and variety, she’d never looked at her friendship with Joe in quite the same light as her friendship with Zeke.

  Had never quite had the courage to name the light under which she did see her friendship with Joe.

  In her arms Maura fussed and squirmed, emitted a pair of fitful cries that quickly turned into full yowls. Her heart torn between anger, pain, not enough sleep and no control over the present situation, between her love for the needy infant in her arms and Maura’s father, Hallie clenched her jaw against the sudden deluge of hormones and tears. If he wasn’t going to be here that long, why couldn’t he at least have waited another three months before he showed up—after Maura’s adoption was final?

  Then she calmed herself by force, shifted Maura in the cradle of her arms and swayed gently across the hall to put the fussbudgety infant back to breast. Hallie herself might have to deal with Joe, but she would do it the way any other mother would: in her baby’s time and in her own way—after the baby went to sleep. And Joe could just live with that order of things the way any father who hadn’t run off to avenge his late wife might: he could wait.

  Until then, she took what little comfort she could find in wishing Joe to the devil.

  “No,” she’d told him softly. “We don’t.”

  Then she’d turned and walked back up the stairs, leaving Joe in the hallway alone.

  Arrested by her tone, the same quietly deadly quality she’d used, time and again, to bring desperate felons to drop their weapons in a standoff, knowing that she would not, Joe stopped and turned. He’d known her longer and better than any felon ever had; when she spoke this way, it was faster and less costly to back up, turn and go around rather than through. After a moment’s hesitation, he started up the stairway after her. He didn’t have time to spare for shock—his or hers.

  Didn’t have time to waste on emotions he couldn’t h
andle.

  He reached the top of the stairs and turned right toward the master bedroom with its half-open door where he could see Hallie seated in the low-backed, wide-bodied rocker Zeke had given her the Christmas before Sam was born.

  “Hallie...” he began, unsure what he meant to say, only that it must somehow make things better.

  Or at least approachable.

  She turned her head and looked at him with a wordless paragraph full of reproach—and warning.

  He misread the warning and didn’t heed it.

  “Hallie, I—”

  Underneath the covering blanket, his daughter broke from Hallie’s breast and emitted a thin, coughing cry, struggled against the covering. Even while Hallie sent him a killing glance, Joe saw her shift to soothe the baby with voice and hand, heedless of the fact the blanket had slipped low enough to reveal her breast. He knew the sight shouldn’t have been erotic but it was—unimaginably so, leaving him tight and breathless. He caught himself staring and cleared his throat, forced his gaze elsewhere: her bed—No, his mind-of its-own body advised him, wrong direction; find something else. Wits scattering, he made a visual tour of the safer aspects of the room: the baby’s crib, the ceiling, the floor, the toe of his right running shoe. Dios, what was wrong with him?

  And why was it wrong with him now?

  When he heard the baby quiet, the rocker’s gentle creak resume, he looked up once more; opened his mouth and shut it immediately. He’d already woken the baby twice by speaking; it might take more than one lesson, but he could learn. Instead he gestured back and forth between them, pointed downstairs, then eyed Hallie grimly, the glance between former law-enforcement partners as loud as words: Now or later, we’re going to talk No way out except through.

  For a moment she studied him, equally determined, hovering between responding Not a chance and Never. Then her mouth folded unhappily at the corners and she offered him the most clipped of nods before she returned her entire attention to Mary’s baby.