The Baby Wore a Badge

The name belonged to yet another one of her distant relatives, this one being really distant. On the stocky side and more than a little opinionated, Nick Pritchett was one relative she certainly didn’t mind keeping distant.

Erin nodded, deliberately masking her own thoughts on the matter. “The very same.”

Calista laughed shortly. “Well, you can tell Rose she doesn’t have anything to be nervous about. All she has to do is show up and breathe. From what I hear, Nick’ll take it from there and do all the talking. And I do mean all. The man really does like to hear the sound of his own voice.”

There was no point in pretending that this was a good thing. Erin surrendered the charade.

“Well, she has to start somewhere,” she said helplessly.

At least she hadn’t been the one to arrange this, Erin thought. Nick had asked Rose out and her sister-in-law, responding to some sort of newly instituted panic that she was liable to be alone for the rest of her life, had jumped at the chance.

Picking up on the less-than-thrilled note in Erin’s voice, Calista’s inner optimism suddenly rallied and rose to the surface.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she told the other woman encouragingly.

Blowing out a breath, Erin nodded again, more to herself than to Calista. She needed to deal with what was, not with what she wished would be. And Rose needed to learn how to take baby steps. Whatever her sister-in-law might be thinking about her future with Nick, this was really just a practice run, getting her prepared for when a more suitable man came along.

“And you’ll be there tomorrow?” she asked Calista.

Calista smiled and nodded, ignoring her own butterflies when she thought of seeing Jake Castro again. “I’ll be there tomorrow. What time do you want me to show up?”

Erin quickly calculated optimal time for everything to take place. Corey would be available around five-thirty or so. “Six o’clock okay?”

Six was when she left the mayor’s office. She really didn’t want to ask for a half-hour time-off so soon into her internship. “Six-thirty would be better.”

She wasn’t inflexible. “Fine. Six-thirty,” Erin agreed.

There was just one more thing Calista wanted to know before tomorrow night. “You are going to tell your brother about his ‘guys’ night out’ before I get there, right? I mean, he’s not going to be surprised when I just show up on your doorstep, is he? I wouldn’t want the guy thinking I’m stalking him.”

When they were growing up, Jake was the brother beset by females, all eager for his attention. All in all, Erin was fairly sure that by now, Jake was accustomed to having a woman turn up on the doorstep, looking for him.

“Don’t worry, I’m telling Corey about it tonight and I’ll have him twist Jake’s arm. He won’t say no to Corey,” Erin assured her. She could see that Calista was wondering why she wanted to get rid of both her husband and her brother for the evening because Rose’s “big date” didn’t really affect either one of them. “I don’t want either one of them hanging around while Rose gets ready. You know what brothers are like. She doesn’t need to be teased unmercifully about this. She’s already nervous enough as it is. I just want her to be as confident and poised as she can be under the circumstances.”

To Calista, it was a case of much ado about nothing, but she kept that to herself. Anything else she might have said would have to wait. Fowler came shuffling in from the back just then and peered at Erin, scowling.

“You still here?” It was more of an accusation than a question.

Erin shifted, turning toward the door. “I was just leaving, Mr. Fowler,” she informed him. With effort, she pasted a wide smile on her face for Calista’s sake. She didn’t want the old man taking Calista to task because she’d overstayed her welcome.

If she thought it might get her on Fowler’s good side, she’d wasted her time. It made no difference.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” he retorted, pointing a bony finger toward the door.

Most of the time she could just turn a deaf ear to the old man’s rudeness, but when it was aimed at someone else, it really irritated her. Walking Erin to the door, she debated that perhaps it was time for her to start looking for another job. It was just a matter of time before she couldn’t hold her tongue around Mr. Personality. Eventually, she was going to put him in his place.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Calista promised. She saw pity in Erin’s eyes as the woman glanced toward Fowler. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Erin was thinking.

“Maybe the mayor can give you a raise,” Erin suggested in a whisper as she crossed the threshold.

“That would really be nepotism,” Calista said with a laugh.

“I’m not paying you to stand there, jawing the day away,” Fowler informed her, raising his voice so that people in the street outside could hear him.

“No, you’re not,” Calista agreed, forcing herself to sound cheerful.

Closing the door, she looked at her part-time employer. In truth, she felt sorry for the old man. He obviously had no friends and he alienated almost everyone he came in contact with. She had no idea how he even made a living. Since she’d started working at the shop, there had been only a handful of customers and maybe five sales. Of course, she was only here part-time, so maybe the bulk of the sales were conducted when she wasn’t around. For his sake, she hoped so. Otherwise, she couldn’t see how he would be able to manage to stay in business for any length of time.

But that, she reminded herself, wasn’t any of her concern. Instead, she focused on the fact that she was going to be seeing Jake again tomorrow night, however briefly.

The butterflies in her stomach returned, bringing friends.

Chapter Four

Jake really didn’t feel like going out for dinner that night. There were a number of rentals he’d circled in the newspaper that he wanted to review. Beyond that, he’d just planned a quiet evening getting in some bonding time with his daughter. This being a father thing was all still pretty new to him.

But when Corey had asked him to go out and grab some dinner with him, Jake felt that he couldn’t very well turn down his brother-in-law, not when Corey and Erin had taken him in like this with open arms. At the very least saying no to Corey’s invitation could come off as being ungrateful.

To win him over, Corey had even told him that he could be the one to pick the restaurant—as if he was familiar with the area, Jake thought.

But, on the other hand, going out would serve as a mental diversion for him and right about now, he needed to be diverted. And he really needed to put pressing, serious matters out of his mind.

Jake glanced at the letter he’d balled up and tossed on the coffee table earlier. The letter that had been tracking his whereabouts and had finally caught up with him here.

Maybe he shouldn’t have left a forwarding address at the post office in New Orleans, he thought. But then, if he’d just up and completely disappeared, he might have been charged with kidnapping by the people who’d sent him this letter. He was certain that by now, Maggie’s parents had gotten themselves a lawyer to contest their daughter’s final decision.

He knew that Mr. and Mrs. O’Shea maintained that Maggie hadn’t been in her right mind on her deathbed when she’d given custody of their little girl to him, especially because up until that point, she’d insisted that he have nothing to do with raising the baby, that the responsibility was all hers.

But nothing in the world was going to make him not honor his late partner’s request. Hell, even if she hadn’t asked him to take care of their little girl, he would have been there to watch over Marlie. He couldn’t imagine himself doing anything else.

He might not know what the hell he was doing, but those were just details. They’d work themselves out. The main thing was that Marlie was his blood, his child. He hadn’t thought the feeling would be so strong, but the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, it had been there, full-blown and vital. Marlie was his and he intended to do whatever it took to hang on to her. If that meant having to go into hiding someday, so be it.

As a police officer, he considered himself exceptionally law-abiding, but this was his child and there was no way on God’s green earth he was about to just turn her over to anyone, even her own grandparents. When she’d gotten pregnant, Maggie had told him stories about her childhood, about how almost fanatically strict her father had been, so much so that she ran away from home the moment she turned eighteen.

Someone like that wasn’t going to get his hands on Marlie, Jake thought. The little girl belonged with him. And he was doing his best to become the competent father she deserved.

Granted he was still tangled up in the learning curve, but he was getting there. Slowly but surely, he was getting there. He figured that by the time Marlie was in her teens, he’d have it all down pat. With any luck.

“You probably won’t want to have anything to do with me by then,” he told the infant he was holding tucked against his chest with one arm.

He could remember Erin when she’d been a teenager. She’d wanted to have nothing to do with either of her parents. Instead, she’d been hell-bent to try her own wings and be independent. There were arguments practically every day.

It wasn’t that their parents had been particularly strict—not anything like what Maggie had said about her father—it was just that Erin had been a stubborn mule, determined to have things her own way. He was fairly certain that Erin’s unruly behavior was why their father—and their mother—had prematurely gone gray.

“You wouldn’t do that to me, would you, Marlie?” he asked out loud, looking down at the tiny round face. Cornflower-blue eyes stared back at him, wide and intense, as if the infant was hanging on every syllable that he uttered. She might have Maggie’s red hair, but she had his eyes, he thought, pleased. “You wouldn’t turn my hair prematurely gray because you wanted to stay out all night doing God knows what with God knows who, right, Marlie? You’re my good little girl.”

“I don’t know, Daddy, I think you might look good in gray hair,” a high-pitched voice—obviously pretending to give him an answer as Marlie—said behind him.

Caught off guard, Jake swung around, only to see Calista walking into the living room. She flashed an apologetic grin at him.