The Sheriff and the Baby Read online

  Beth looked down at her daughter and couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d fallen asleep. “Typical!” she muttered again. “Keep me up all night and now you want to sleep!”

  After cleaning Sarah’s face and hands, she placed her in the crib.

  Despite not wanting to see Matt today, she was grateful he’d shown up, if only to give her a break from Sarah.

  When she’d seen him standing there, looking so dependable, his eyes full of compassion, Beth had felt gratitude right down to her toes.

  Careful! she warned herself. It isn’t wise to rely on Matt O’Malley. He’s a cop.

  In her mind she believed this, but her heart was having trouble agreeing. Ever since he’d lifted her from the car, she’d felt safe, protected. The way he’d held her securely against him as he carried her to his vehicle had penetrated through the pain, instilling a sense of calm and sheltering her from her fear of what was to come. And he hadn’t deserted her when he’d got her to the hospital. Instead, he’d stayed, held her hand and provided her with some focus outside the pain of childbirth.

  No matter how hard she tried to deny it, she felt a bond with Matt O’Malley.

  When a light knock sounded at the door, Beth glanced up, hoping Matt had returned.

  The man who stood in the doorway bore every indication of being a close relative of Matt’s. He was tall, with thick, dark brown hair graying at the temples, brown eyes and a lazy smile. He held a large bunch of flowers. “Hi, there. I’m Luke O’Malley,” he said. “May I come in?”

  Since it would be downright rude to refuse, she said, “Of course. Matt’s just stepped out for a moment.”

  Luke advanced toward her bed. “I brought you these to cheer up your room,” he said and laid the flowers in her arms. “Becky told me she visited you yesterday, so I knew you’d only get candy from her.”

  “You seem to know your sister-in-law very well.” She smiled and offered her hand. “I’m Beth, and thank you. The flowers are lovely.”

  He shook her hand, and Beth noted that she didn’t experience the same wonderful feeling as when Matt had accidentally touched her the day before.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he drawled and released her hand. “Matt’s told me a lot about you, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance at last.”

  He turned his attention to Sarah lying peacefully asleep in her crib. “Now, isn’t she just the prettiest little lady? Reminds me of my own beautiful daughters when they were babies. You’ll have to come out to the ranch and meet them. They’ve grown up into beautiful girls. ’Course they miss having a mom—”

  “Luke!” Matt stood in the doorway; his expression was thunderous.

  Deep in her belly, Beth felt a prickle of something she couldn’t quite name. Sarah stirred in her crib.

  “Hush, Matt! Now look what you’ve done,” Luke admonished. “You’ve gone and woken the little darlin’ up.”

  IMMEDIATELY SUSPICIOUS of the stupid grin his brother wore, Matt narrowed his eyes in warning. He’d watched Luke weave his charm from the doorway and didn’t like it one bit.

  He moved to Sarah’s crib and lifted her into his arms. “There, there, sweetie,” he soothed, and Sarah rewarded him by returning immediately to sleep.

  Luke had resumed his pathetic attempts to charm Beth, oozing his best country-bumpkin charm and prattling on about her and Sarah coming to visit his ranch. Last time Matt had heard, Two Elk belonged to all the O’Malleys!

  Luke was saying, “Just give me a call and I’ll come and get you.”

  Fixing his brother with a look of contempt, Matt snarled, “Hadn’t you better be getting along? I’m sure you’ve got calves to brand or torture in some other diabolical way.”

  When Luke refused to budge, Matt suspected he was up to something, and if his instincts were right, Becky was in collusion with him.

  Luke crossed his arms over his chest and set his feet at a wider stance. “Now, now, Matt, you can’t go keeping Beth all to yourself. I’m sure she’d like to meet the rest of the single O’Malley men.”

  Luke’s challenging stance meant he thought he was settling in for a long session. Matt needed to get him out of there, and fast.

  “Like I was saying, haven’t you got a whole barn full of animals waiting back at the ranch for you to torment?” Matt said, holding Sarah protectively against him.

  A slow grin spread across his brother’s face. “That I do,” he agreed, a little too readily, making Matt even more suspicious about his motives.

  His stomach sank to his boots when Luke said, “Seems my little brother’s in an awful hurry to be left alone with you, so I’ll be taking my leave, if you don’t mind.” He turned and winked at Matt, then slipped out the door.

  Matt stole a glance at Beth. Her face was bright red with embarrassment. He didn’t know what to say in answer to Luke’s parting shot. He’d been set up and he hadn’t seen it coming! The silence in the room stretched to a minute, then two. He wished Sarah would start fussing, but she slept on, contented in his arms.

  BETH FIDGETED WITH the sheet. Was Luke implying that Matt was…interested in her? Surely not! They hardly knew each other.

  She changed the subject. “Becky said you’re a widower.”

  From his pained look, she knew she’d struck a raw nerve.

  He put Sarah in her crib, tenderly covered her with the blanket, then raised his head. “My wife died three years ago,” he murmured.

  The agony she saw etched in his eyes made her regret her prying. “And you’re still in love with her,” she said softly.

  “No.” He spoke too quickly and drew his hand through his hair in what seemed to be an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.

  He stood and said, “I’d…better be off. But first I want to apologize for that outburst earlier. I think my busybody of a brother was trying to matchmake. It was inappropriate and I’m sorry for any embarrassment it caused you.”

  Matt O’Malley was blushing! Beth found it touching.

  “It didn’t embarrass me,” she told him, although that wasn’t true. “And…I’m so sorry about your wife.”

  Matt gave her a curt nod and left.

  “Phew!” Beth fanned her face after the door closed behind him. Questioning Matt about his wife sure had him heading out in a hurry. He must still love her, she thought, smoothing the sheets. In spite of his denial.

  She nestled beneath the covers and thought about the sheriff. He was a complex man, an intriguing man. Big but gentle, physically strong yet weak stomached. She smiled at that one. He’d been so good-natured about Lucy’s teasing in the delivery room. And he obviously cared about his family, just as they cared about him.

  He had the one thing she’d always wanted—a big, loving family. She’d always craved siblings to play with, fight with and go on holidays with. Instead, she’d been a lonely child who’d had to rely on her own company. She supposed there was one benefit to her upbringing; it had stood her in good stead for the past months of enforced solitude.

  There was something inherently appealing about a man who could grieve for his wife for years. Unlike me, she thought with a pang of conscience. She’d grieved more for the sham that was her marriage than for Marcus, after his treachery was revealed.

  How could she have lived with someone for so long and not really known him?

  THE DAY BEFORE Marcus’s funeral, she’d found a safety-deposit-box key taped beneath a kitchen drawer.

  While searching for a silver cake knife her mother-in-law had given them and now wanted back, she’d become frustrated when the drawer had stuck. Worn out with grief and exhaustion, she’d wrenched it so hard, it came completely off its runners. As she was trying to replace it, her fingers had made contact with something taped under it. She pulled off the tape and withdrew a key. It looked like the one Marcus claimed he’d returned to the bank after they’d installed a home safe.

  Curious to see if it was the same key, she’d gone to the bank and used it. Turned out it fit the
ir old safety-deposit box and inside were stacks of hundred-dollar bills and a notebook containing names and numbers. And another key.

  Sickened, confused, she’d slammed the box shut and been about to stagger out of the vault. The bank security officer had seen her distress, suggested she rest for a moment and gotten her a glass of water. While she drank it, a dozen reasons why their former safety-deposit box would be full of money swam through her head. None of them made any sense—except the one that kept nagging her. Marcus was a dirty cop.

  The second key had opened another box in the vault. However, this one was stuffed to the brim with bags of white powder. Stunned at the implications, she’d left the bank and gone through the motions at Marcus’s police funeral, been given due respect by his fellow officers, sat by his grave, listened to the mournful wail of the bagpipes, accepted the folded flag.

  And all this time she was wondering what to do. Just after midnight, Marcus’s former partner, Detective John Hennessey, who’d made such a display of his grief during the funeral service, had come to the house, demanding the key.

  Terrified, Beth knew that if she handed it over, her life would end as surely as Marcus’s had. So she’d played dumb, deflecting the issue by admitting they had a safe. Did he mean the key to that? Hennessey had dragged her by her hair to the safe and told her to open it. Inside, all he’d found was her jewelry and some stock certificates.

  Infuriated, he’d commanded his henchman, “Morgan! Search the place. Tear it apart.”

  Morgan ransacked the house, dumping the contents of drawers on the floor, tearing down curtains and slicing through her leather sofas and the canvases covering her walls in his frenzied hunt for the key.

  As Morgan wreaked devastation on her once-lovely home, one certainty kept emerging—these men couldn’t afford to leave any loose ends lying around. If she gave Hennessey the key, he’d kill her to cover their tracks. If she didn’t hand it over, he’d still kill her. She needed to buy time to figure out what to do.

  When Morgan returned from the master bedroom, shaking his head, Hennessey snatched the knife from his hand and held the blade against her belly.

  “I’ll give you twenty-four hours,” he whispered, menace dripping from every word. “Or else.”

  “Or else what?” she asked, pretending not to understand, hoping to convince him she was as ignorant of the whereabouts of that key as she’d been forty-eight hours earlier.

  “Meaning,” he growled, “that if you haven’t called me by then, I’ll come after you—” he turned the blade over so she could feel the point pressing against her abdomen “—and your baby.”

  Her intake of breath as she felt her baby move had him sneering with triumph. “Twenty-four hours. You report this to anyone, you and your baby are dead. Understand?”

  Mute with terror, Beth had nodded.

  She’d sat amid the wreckage, weeping. Weeping for her dead husband and her sham of a marriage but mostly trembling with fear for her unborn child. By the time her tears were spent, any love she’d felt for Marcus Jackson had shriveled into a tiny, hard kernel of resentment and anger.

  She couldn’t go to the police. Hennessey was the police. How far could she trust Internal Affairs or the media? If she hadn’t been pregnant, she would’ve considered IA or the newspapers, but her first concern was the safety of her baby. It was too risky to expose herself that way—at least until after her baby was born.

  Beth called the only person she knew she could trust implicitly—her grandmother, Elizabeth Wyatt.

  Her father’s mom had been more mother than grandmother to Beth. Her own mother, Patrice Whitman, was an actress who, after several minor Hollywood roles, had married James Wyatt, a respected L.A. stockbroker. Beth was conceived on their around-the-world honeymoon, and as Patrice liked to tell anyone within hearing distance, her daughter’s birth was so painful and traumatic she swore she’d never go through it again. And she hadn’t.

  Patrice was at best a distant mother, devoted to James and throwing lavish parties. Since James’s death in a boating accident ten years previously, she’d traveled the world seeking “enlightenment.” From ashrams in India to sweat lodges in Arizona. Patrice had exhausted just about every self-help, mind-expanding, navel-gazing ritual possible. She’d recently changed her name to Aurora and was currently seeking messages in the northern lights north of the Arctic Circle.

  By contrast, Beth’s grandmother—after whom she’d been named—had been her rock throughout her life, her wise mentor, her best friend.

  After telling Elizabeth what had happened—Hennessey’s shocking revelations about Marcus and the evidence she had to support it—Beth told her grandmother that in order to protect her baby’s life, she had to go into hiding until her child was born. And maybe after. She could have no further contact with anyone from her former life.

  Always practical, her grandmother had agreed, then said, “I’ll help you any way I can. What do you want me to do?”

  Beth outlined her plans. She would leave L.A., disappear. Tomorrow she’d take some of the money from the safety-deposit box and live on it until the baby was born. When she was stronger and could leave the baby somewhere safe, she’d reveal everything about Hennessey. And repay the money, although she didn’t know to whom. “I can’t tell you where I’m going, because I’m not sure and I don’t want to put you in any danger. And please, whatever you do, don’t tell Mother about this. You know what a drama queen she is.”

  Elizabeth had snorted and said, “Actually, that might work well for you because when she files a missing person’s report and they see the damage to your home, she’ll kick up a hell of a stink and demand answers. It’ll look as though you’ve been kidnapped rather than gone into hiding.”

  Trust her grandmother to see the situation clearly. “I won’t be able to contact anyone in the family, even you, Gran,” she said. “No phone calls, no e-mail, no letters. But I’ll somehow get word to you when I’ve had the baby.”

  “Thank you.” She heard her grandmother sob. “I doubt I’ll sleep a wink for worrying.”

  Beth had spent the next few minutes outlining her plans. She couldn’t fly, because her name would be traced to her destination. The only way out of town was to drive, except she couldn’t take her own car and she couldn’t rent one. A bus ticket paid in cash would offer some anonymity….

  But Elizabeth wouldn’t hear of it and had immediately come up with a solution. “Take my car. I’ll park it in the garage under the building next to yours. You go to work in the morning as usual, but take a disguise. Some dark glasses, something to cover your hair. Change at work and use the passageway that connects the two buildings. I’ll leave my car on the second basement level. You have a set of keys to it, don’t you?”

  Beth was astonished. Her grandmother had thought of everything. “The set you gave me in case you ever lost yours?” Beth had laughed. “No chance of that steel-trap mind forgetting anything, Gran.”

  “Thank you, darling. I’m only happy I can help.”

  “And what will you drive? I’ll be gone for months. I can’t return the favor and let you use mine.”

  “I have your grandfather’s old truck to get around in. I’m sure he’d appreciate seeing it get used.”

  Her grandfather had died five years earlier and Gran had been unable to part with any of his possessions.

  “I’m getting dressed now,” Elizabeth said, breaking into her thoughts.

  “But it’s barely dawn!”

  “I need to get there before they put a watch on your building. That snake Hennessey is bound to have people stationed everywhere. We need to be careful. I’ll leave my car and take a cab home.”

  “Gran,” Beth said urgently. “Be careful! If something doesn’t seem right, just keep driving. I’ll figure out what to do.”

  “I’ll be fine, darling. I’m looking forward to outsmarting a bunch of dirty cops. I never did like that Marcus.”

  No, Gran hadn’t ever really war
med to him. If only Beth had confronted her about it, Elizabeth would have told her why. If she’d heeded her grandmother’s instincts about Marcus, perhaps she wouldn’t be in this situation now.

  She experienced a grim satisfaction that she’d kept her maiden name.

  “I love you, Gran,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “I love you, too, darling. Take care.”

  Her grandmother had hung up before they both burst into tears.

  It took Beth an hour to collect her thoughts about what she had to do and to prepare for her day. She showered and dressed in one of her work suits. After packing a change of clothes and some toiletries in her briefcase, she grabbed her trash and headed out her front door.

  Her eyes, hidden behind dark sunglasses, scanned the street as she walked to the trash can at her front gate. Opening the lid, she dropped the garbage bag beside the can and bent down to pick it up, lifting a piece of turf with the toe of her shoe as she did.

  The key was still where she’d hidden it.

  With trembling fingers, she retrieved it, then stood with the bag, flipped the turf back with her shoe and dropped the trash into the can, along with her wedding ring.

  The key concealed in her hand, she crossed to her Lexus and backed it out of the driveway. “You bastard,” she muttered, passing the vehicle parked farther up the street, glad she’d gone through the charade with the trash. Morgan pulled out and followed close behind her.

  A half hour later, Beth turned into the underground garage of the building that housed the architectural practice she worked for.

  At the ATM located inside the building, Beth was about to withdraw all the cash she could from several of her credit cards, but then she noticed, apart from people rushing to work and the obligatory security guards, several people loitering in the lobby. They didn’t look as if they belonged there. Suspecting they were plainclothes cops posted by Hennessey, she detoured to the elevators and rode up to her floor.