Linda Goodnight - Saved By The Baby

From somewhere in the building came the static of a police radio. Tate cocked his head to listen, not taking his eyes off her for a minute.

She’d wondered about him many times over the years, but nothing had prepared her for this moment. Her ears rang and blood pulsed at her temples. Some deeply buried emotion threatened to rear its head as she took in the man she’d once loved with all the teenage passion possible. She fought it back. Tate was the past, and she was here for Megan. Only for Megan.

Suddenly short of breath, Tate stared at the tall, willowy brunette with a death grip on his office doorknob. Julee Reynolds was not only back in town, she was standing outside his office, looking up at him with anxious blue eyes that threatened to undermine his resolve never to get emotionally involved with a woman again.

With steely control, he drew some air into his tortured lungs. She’d always been beautiful to him, even when the other guys had called her “Olive Oyl” and “Toothpick,” but years of working in an industry where beauty is carefully cultivated had enhanced her natural assets. He didn’t want to notice, didn’t want to feel a thing in her presence, but he did.

“Hello, Tate.”

She extended a hand—a long, manicured hand with those fancy fake nails women liked. Fool that he was, he wrapped his fingers around hers. The jolt of awareness from her skin to his was as powerful as the stun gun they’d zapped him with in the police academy. She was warm and soft and—criminy, she was Julee, the woman who’d taken his heart to L.A. and never sent it back. That’s why he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t talk. Heck, he couldn’t even think.

Like his father, Julee had been relegated to a mental file marked “unsolvable case” so he could move on with his life. Maybe that’s why seeing her affected him so strongly and brought back an avalanche of unwanted feelings. Time and hard work had distanced him from most of the pain in his past, but nothing had ever filled the void Julianna had left when she’d stepped on that old Greyhound bus and ridden away.

He’d known she had to give the modeling world a shot, had wanted that for her. She and her mom had already lost their house and were barely holding things together. He just hadn’t realized it would hurt so much when she never came back, especially after his career-ending injury. Eventually, pain turned to resentment and resentment to bitterness. She’d proved him right. He wasn’t worth her coming back to. He’d fallen into a black hole after she left and nearly destroyed himself. Since then, he’d kept his heart locked away, taking care not to risk that kind of rejection ever again.

If he had a lick of sense, he’d find out what she wanted and send her back to L.A.—ASAP.

“How are you?” Her voice was that smooth honeyed alto that had once sent his teenage libido into overdrive. Just talking to her on the phone had been a sexual fantasy. Sexiest voice, sexiest legs, sweetest girl on the planet.

He slammed the cover on that file so fast his brain ached.

“Doing good. Yourself?” He willed himself to release her hand, then reached around her and unlocked his office so they could go in. Lord knew he needed to sit down and get a grip.

Standing aside, he let her enter first, catching the subtle drift of some designer perfume. He couldn’t name it. Never was good at that sort of thing, though he could sniff out a meth lab or a drunk driver with his eyes closed.

“It’s been a long time,” she said, her blue gaze drifting around the old, narrow office that he’d worked so hard to gain. His desk, always a cluttered mess, looked even more so today. The air-conditioning wheezed and rattled and little dust wads flapped in the vent. To her big-city eyes, accustomed to the best, he supposed this place looked and smelled like a musty hole in the wall.

“A very long time,” he repeated, glancing at the calendar on his desk. Nine years, seven months and thirteen days, to be exact. The date she’d left him was a permanent scar on his heart, like a bad tattoo that no amount of surgery could remove. “I heard you did all right for yourself.”

“You heard?”

He shrugged, not willing to let her know how he’d scrounged for every drop of information, praying she’d make it big then praying she wouldn’t. He’d even fantasized about her coming back, broke and lonely. In his dreams, he’d been the man she needed, the only one who could help her. He’d been a dumb kid then who’d believed in the impossible.

Tate shifted the weight off his bad knee. Weather must be changing for the old injury to act up this much. Or maybe it was the eighteen-hour day he’d spent on duty, half of it on his feet, searching the lake woods for a lost child. But Tate had no complaints. He’d felt like a million bucks when he’d placed the boy in his tearful parents’ arms.

He knew his stance had given him away when Julee’s gaze came back to him, drifting down his body to rest at his aching knee. Though her attention was purely curious, Tate’s body grew warmer than the April weather dictated.

“I never did get a chance to tell you how sorry I was about your knee injury. Does it still bother you?”

So she had known. And never even called. Apparently, she hadn’t given him another thought once she hit the big city.

“Sometimes,” he admitted gruffly. Nearly ten years had passed. Why was she bringing it up now?

Julee touched his arm lightly, but enough that the electric shock of her touch still made his insides quiver. Not just physical wanting, though she had that power, too, but emotional need so intense he wanted to collapse at her glamorous feet. After all this time, he was still a fool.

“I always hated what happened to you.”

If she’d cared so much, why hadn’t she come home? Why hadn’t she been the one to see him through those black days? Why had she left him alone to drown in alcohol and self-pity and to marry the first woman who would tolerate both?

“That was a long time ago.” He stepped back from the subtle lure of her perfume, placing the desk between the two of them. “It all happened a long time ago.”

They’d been so young, thinking they could have it all. Julee would be a famous model. He’d play pro football. Then they’d find their way back to each other. Trouble was, her dream came true about the same time his died on the ten-yard line with three minutes to go in the first half of the season opener.

He’d fallen into the black abyss of anger and alcohol, too proud to call her, but furious when she didn’t call him. Then Shelly had come along, sweet and sympathetic, willing to tolerate his drunken rages and self-pity. She’d been his anchor during a time when he’d wanted to die. Out of some alcohol-distorted sense of gratitude, and because he needed to believe someone cared, he’d married her after less than a month.

Tate squeezed his eyes shut and blotted out the memories. Too much time had passed to go there now. “So. What brings you back to Blackwood?”

And how soon will you be on the next flight out?

Some emotion stirred behind her beautiful blue eyes. What was it? Nerves? Anxiety?

Squinting in thought, he studied the intense set of her jaw, the shadows above her elegant cheekbones. That’s when he knew. Julianna was afraid.

The loose rollers on his chair clattered against the brown tile as he pulled it away from the desk. One hand on the nubby gray backrest, he waited, cop instinct on alert.

What was she afraid of? And what on God’s green earth could it have to do with the hometown she’d abandoned years ago? Better question, what did it have to do with him?

“Mind if I sit down?” she asked. Tate tried to ignore the tingle in his gut whenever her lips moved. “I have some important business to discuss with you.”

Fighting the need to protect her from whatever demon chased her, and the greater need to protect himself from her, Tate indicated the green vinyl-covered chair across from his desk, then settled into his own. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. Julee sat, crossing her long beautiful legs directly in his line of vision. His chest tightened. Sitting upright, he steepled his hands beneath his chin to block the view. He had to get her out of this office.

“Business?” Curiosity got the best of him. What kind of business could bring Julianna Reynolds back to Blackwood?

When she leaned forward, expression earnest, her silky blue blouse gapped slightly, affording him an unwanted glance of creamy skin. Infuriatingly, his body reacted. She was sexy, vulnerable and beautiful, a combination that spelled danger for any man but was deadly for him. She was big city and he was small town. She was rich and he was a working stiff. And she was, as her mother had once said, “too good for that McIntyre boy.”

Criminy! Why he was thinking this way? He didn’t know this woman. Hadn’t known her for years. All they had was the past, and that was better left alone.

The phone emitted a soft buzz, and he barely held back a curse. He was too busy to worry over Julianna Reynolds, and the sooner he found out what she wanted, the sooner she’d be gone and he’d be safe from thinking too much.

Holding up one finger of his left hand in a “wait-a-minute” gesture, he punched a button with the right. “Yeah?”

His receptionist’s voice came out of the speakerphone. “Mrs. Barkley needs you to drive by her place. She’s sure the Peeping Tom is back.”

Taking out his annoyance on the receptionist, he growled, “Where have you been?”

“Even Rita the Magnificent has a bladder, Tate. Don’t get your tail in a twitch.”

He glanced at Julee, saw her struggling with a grin, and was relieved when she rose and starting roaming the room. He swiveled sideways to avoid watching the swish of her blue skirt against silken thighs.

Having Julee in his office was bad enough without the hired help humiliating him. Smart-aleck receptionist. But he knew better than to cross Rita the Magnificent. She was a lot more than a receptionist, and he couldn’t manage without her. “Tell Mrs. Barkley I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

“Oh, she said there’s no big hurry. And she wants to know if you’ll stop by the store and get Penelope some cat food before you come out.”

Tate gave in to a grudging grin. He’d investigated her “Peeping Tom” four times in as many months. Poor old Mrs. Barkley. Anything for a little company. He wondered what kind of cake she’d baked this time and hoped he’d have time to eat a piece of it while she entertained him on the piano.

“No problem.”

From the corner of his eye he could see Julee surveying the row of framed certificates and citations hanging around his small, cluttered office. He hoped she wouldn’t miss the college diploma. She’d had success handed to her on a silver platter, but he’d worked plenty hard for his.

As he started to disconnect, Rita spoke again. “Don’t forget you need to be back in time for Little League practice.”

“Anything else?”

“I left the list on your desk. A meeting with the county commissioner at four, the task force tomorrow morning, Martha’s birthday party and the slave auction at the high school—”

“Hold on.” He scrounged around in the enormous stack of folders and papers. The list lay in plain sight beneath a snow globe paperweight that Jacob, his seven-year-old buddy from the Big Brother program, had given him last Christmas.

“I found it.” He stuck the list in his shirt pocket and shut off the receptionist’s disembodied voice.

Julee’s blue gaze, wide with curiosity, drifted back to him. “You are a busy man.”