Christmastime Courtship

“That’s what the woman said,” Colin countered impatiently.

“No, that’s what she did,” Miranda stressed. “Gina Hayden has an eight-year-old daughter. She wouldn’t just leave her like that.”

“How do you know that?” Colin challenged. The woman lived in a cotton candy world. Didn’t she realize that the real world wasn’t like that? “Lots of people say one thing and do another. And lots of people with families just walk out on them and never come back.”

Miranda watched him for a long moment. So long that he thought she’d finally given up trying to wear him down. And then she spoke and blew that theory to pieces.

“Who left you?” she asked quietly.

“You, I hope,” he snapped, turning back to face his motorcycle.

He sighed as she sashayed in front of him yet again. This was beginning to feel like some never-ending dance.

“No, you’re not talking about me,” Miranda told him. “You’re talking about someone else. I can see it in your eyes. Someone walked out on you, probably when you were a kid. So you know what that feels like,” she stressed.

He needed this like he needed a hole in the head. “Look, lady—”

“Miranda,” she corrected again.

He ignored that. “You can take your amateur psychobabble, get back in your car and drive away before I haul you in for harassing a police officer.”

Was that what he thought this was?

She had to get through to him. Something in her heart told her that he’d find Gina, She just needed him to take this seriously.

“I’m not harassing you—”

He almost laughed out loud. “You want to bet?”

Miranda pushed on. “I’m just asking you to go out of your way a little and maybe make a little girl very happy. If her mother doesn’t turn up, Lily’s going to be sent to social services and placed in a foster home. The only reason she hasn’t been taken there already is that the director of the shelter agreed with me about waiting for her mom to come back. The director bought us a little time.” And that time was running out, Miranda added silently.

“The kid can still be taken away,” Colin pointed out. “Her mother abandoned her.”

Why couldn’t she get through to this officer? “Not if something happened to her and she’s unable to get back.”

Colin sighed. He knew he should just get on his motorcycle and ride away from this woman. For the life of him, he didn’t know why he was allowing himself to get involved in this.

“Did you call all the hospitals?”

She nodded. “All of them. There’s no record of anyone fitting Gina’s description coming in on her own or being brought in.”

So what more did this woman want him to do? “Well then—”

“But there could be other reasons she hasn’t come back,” she insisted. “Gina could have been abducted, or worse.” Miranda looked at him with eyes that were pleading with him to do something.

Colin shook his head. “I should have given you that ticket yesterday,” he told her gruffly.

He was weakening; she could just feel it. “But you didn’t because you’re a good man.”

“No, because I should have had my head examined,” he grumbled. “All right,” he relented, taking out his ticket book and flipping to an empty page.

Miranda’s eyes widened. “You’re writing me a ticket?” she asked.

“No, I’m taking down this woman’s description. You said you’d give it to me. Now, what is it?” Colin demanded.

“What did you say your name was?” she asked.

“I didn’t.” He could feel her looking at him. Swallowing a couple choice words, he said, “Officer Colin Kirby.”

“Thank you, Officer Colin Kirby.”

Maybe he was losing his mind, but he could swear he could feel her smile.

“The description?” he demanded.

Miranda lost no time in giving it to him.

Chapter Four (#uda029983-d22c-565e-86fb-751b9ed4baff)

“Okay,” Colin said, closing his ticket book and putting it away. “I’ll check with the other officer your director talked to. What’s his name or badge number?” he asked.

Miranda shook her head. She hadn’t thought to ask for that information when the director had given her an update. “I’m afraid Amelia didn’t mention either one.”

Colin looked at her. The name meant nothing to him. “Amelia?”

“Amelia Sellers,” Miranda specified. “That’s the shelter’s director. She didn’t give me the officer’s name, but seemed pretty upset that he wasn’t taking the situation seriously.”

Colin read between the lines. He assumed that the officer the shelter director had talked to hadn’t told her that he would get back to her. Not that he blamed the man.

“I take it this Amelia isn’t as pushy as you,” he commented.

Miranda wasn’t exactly happy with his description, but the situation was far too important for her to get sidelined by something so petty.

“Actually, she can be very forceful. But the officer taking down the information really didn’t seem to think that Gina was missing,” Miranda said.

She was looking at him with the kind of hopeful eyes that made men seriously consider leaping tall buildings in a single bound and bending steel with their bare hands in an attempt to impress her.

If he was going to interact with this woman for any length of time, he was going to have to remember to avoid looking into her eyes, Colin told himself. They were far too distracting.

“I bet you were prom queen, weren’t you?” he asked.

The question came out of the blue and caught her completely off guard. It took Miranda a moment to collect herself and answer, “Actually, I didn’t go to the prom.”

“No one asked you?” He found that rather hard to believe. She struck him as the epitome of a cheerleader. Was she pulling his leg?

Miranda didn’t answer his question directly. She actually had been asked, just hadn’t said yes.

“I had a scheduling problem,” she said vaguely. “The prom interfered with my volunteer work.”