In Hope's Shadow

He shrugged. She glanced toward Clement Rowe’s house and this time saw fingers pulling the drapes back and a shadow in the opening.

Shivering again, Eve told herself she just didn’t like winter. No ghost had brushed by; she hadn’t just spoken what sounded way too much like famous last words.

* * *

BEN KEMPER SIGHED and leaned back, causing his chair to squeak. “Thank you, I don’t mind waiting on hold.”

Actually, he did, but he’d become resigned. Nobody had told him before his promotion to detective that he would spend more time poring over his computer or on hold—and often both at the same time—than he would out in the field. The chills and thrills of police work were few and far between these days.

The hours, though, those still sucked. The lengthy and erratic hours he worked explained why he was now a divorced man who counted his blessings when he was permitted to have his six-year-old daughter two days out of every fourteen.

Not a minute later, the cell phone lying on his desk rang. The name appearing on the screen was his ex-wife’s. As always, he couldn’t help feeling a spurt of hope. He missed Nicole every day.

Juggling phones, he answered. “Nic.”

“You got a sec?” Nicole asked.

“I’m on hold. I’ll have to call you back if someone comes on.”

“You can’t hang up on whoever it is and call back?”

“It’s important, and I’ve already been waiting for a while.”

“What, I’m not entitled to two minutes of your concentration?” she snapped.

Irritation rose to poison the hope. “I am at work,” he pointed out.

“Like you aren’t always.”

He closed his eyes. “Can we not do this?”

Silence. Finally, “I know you’re supposed to have Rachel tomorrow, but something has come up and we need to change weekends.”

Of course it had. He’d decided last time that he wasn’t taking this shit anymore.

“I’ve already made plans,” he said with a semblance of calm. “This is my weekend, Nicole. You have her the majority of the time. You need to schedule anything that includes Rachel on your days.”

“We agreed we’d be flexible—”

“You’ve abused my willingness too many times. Please have Rachel ready when I pick her up at five tomorrow.” He stabbed his phone to end the call, anger burning beneath his breastbone.

His phone immediately buzzed. Nicole. This time, Ben muted it.

The detective who sat directly in front of him in the bull pen swiveled his chair to look at Ben. Seth Chandler was near Ben’s age of thirty-three. Both worked cases individually, but often partnered. Even when they weren’t conducting an investigation together, they bounced ideas off each other. In the past year, they’d moved toward real friendship. In fact, Seth had invited Ben to bring his daughter to dinner tomorrow night. Seth’s fiancée, Bailey, was arriving for a long weekend. Seth was champing at the bit for her to get her degree in May and move up here from Southern California. They were hanging in there with a long-distance relationship, but Ben imagined it was tough.

Had to beat having no relationship, though, he thought grumpily.

A woman’s voice in his ear pulled his attention back to the moment.

“Uh-huh,” he said, writing fast. He recited back the address and two phone numbers she had just given him as well as a string of dates for insurance claims, then thanked her and hung up. Seth had wandered away to refill his coffee cup, but returned just then.

“That your ex who called?” he asked.

“Unfortunately,” Ben growled.

“Wanted to change your weekend again?”

“That was the idea. Funny how ‘change’ always ends up with me losing a weekend with Rachel.”

“It sounded like she backed down this time.”

“I didn’t give her a chance to do anything else. It’s a great weekend for me to have Rachel. I’m not tied up with anything big, so I can concentrate on her. I’m taking her sledding on Saturday. Nic hates to get cold, so she never does anything like that with Rachel.” He hesitated. “You sure you don’t mind me bringing her tomorrow night? If she’ll be the only kid...” As far as he knew, the only other guests were Bailey’s parents.

Seth smiled. “Hey, she’ll get all the attention.” His phone rang and he started to turn around, but then looked over his shoulder. “Forgot to tell you Eve will be there, too. You know, Bailey’s sister.”

Adoptive sister. Without knowing Bailey well and having never met Eve, Ben had heard enough from Seth to know how complicated a relationship the two women had. Bailey—whose birth name was Hope Lawson—had been abducted as a little girl, sexually molested and eventually abandoned by the man who’d taken her. By then she’d forgotten her name and where she came from and went into foster care in California. Seth liked to take up a cold case now and then, and had pursued finding pretty, blonde Hope Lawson, expecting improved DNA technology and databases that allowed law enforcement agencies to communicate better might help him bring the little girl’s body home for her parents to bury. Instead, Hope had walked into the sheriff’s department one day, stunning Seth, her grieving parents—and the woman her parents had adopted several years after her disappearance.

Seth had once told Ben privately that the first words out of Eve’s mouth had been, “The real daughter returns.” Probably said sardonically. And who could blame her for feeling that way? However much the Lawsons loved the girl they adopted, she had to have grown up conscious of the shadow cast by their beloved missing daughter.

Now, staring at the other man’s back, Ben wondered if this was intended to be just a family gathering that happened to include him and Rachel, or whether Seth was trying subtly to hook him up with Eve. Ben remembered, after seeing a press conference on TV about Hope’s miraculous return, telling Seth that he thought Eve was the beauty of the two “sisters.” Had that given Seth the idea?

But he shook his head. No, of course not; if Seth had anything like that in mind, he’d have done it a long time ago. That press conference had taken place last August, six months ago.

Yeah, but the Lawsons had invited Ben to have Thanksgiving with them. He’d declined because Nicole had asked him to join her and their daughter. There’d been a party at Christmas, too, which Ben had gone to but Eve had missed. Supposedly she’d been sick. Ben had wondered idly if she really did feel crappy or was dodging seeing Seth. The two of them had gone out some before Bailey’s reappearance. Eve might still find it tough seeing him crazy in love with another woman.

So...maybe this dinner party was a setup. Maybe Seth was desperate to find her a boyfriend and get her off his conscience.

Ben grunted at that thought, remembering the petite woman he’d seen on television. Heart-shaped face, big, melting dark eyes, masses of dark, curly hair, slender body. Yeah, safe to say Eve Lawson could find her own dates and wouldn’t appreciate any help from a guy she once had a thing with. And what would make Seth think she’d look twice at Ben? Women probably had a type, just like men did, and Ben and Seth were...well, not quite opposites, but certainly didn’t look much alike.

Anyway, if he had a type, it was china-doll-beautiful, blue-eyed blondes.

Uh-huh. If that was true, why had Eve caught his eye instead of Bailey, with her spectacular cheekbones, blue eyes and ash-blond hair?

He didn’t know. Maybe he’d needed an anti-Nicole to spark his interest. He’d definitely reacted to Eve’s appearance back then, and, damn, it was past time he started something that included regular sex. Long-term, though, that he couldn’t see. His commitment to his daughter and, yeah, even Nicole, didn’t leave much leftover.

Might be interesting actually meeting Eve, though, he decided, then had no trouble putting her out of his mind as he studied the notes he’d made a minute before and reached for the phone to dial the first of the two numbers.

* * *

EVE STILL FELT a tiny bit of sting every time she saw Seth and Bailey together, but she knew that had more to do with Bailey aka Hope than it did Seth. It did figure the long-missing Hope had not only returned triumphantly to the joy of her—and Eve’s—parents, but had also snagged the guy Eve had been seeing.

Get over it, she’d told herself a few dozen times, and really she had. Mostly.

As far as she knew, her parents were the only other guests tonight, so she was surprised when the big, dark SUV she’d been following for the last couple blocks parked at the curb in front of Seth’s rambler. Hmm. The silver sedan in the driveway beside her parents’ car was probably a rental Bailey had picked up at the airport. No reason Eve couldn’t block it in. She and Seth probably wouldn’t leave the house all weekend.

Yep, minor sting.

After parking in the driveway and getting out, Eve glanced back to see a man lifting a girl from the backseat of the SUV, laughing up at her as he swung her high before setting her carefully on her feet on the sidewalk.