Maggie's Guardian

She didn’t like being pushed around. She bit her lip, curling her toes inside her shoes as she refused to walk away. Responsibility for Maggie pinioned her to the floor.

“Just let me in.” His strained patience was anything but familiar. They’d long since stopped trying to bear with each other. “Give me a chance to help you. And David’s baby.”

Tessa opened her mouth to answer. At the same time, Maggie sensed anger in the air. She teared up, puckering her lips.

Damn.

Tessa turned to a second keypad by the door. She didn’t want him in her house or anywhere near her life again, but Noah would help her keep Maggie safe. He’d turned away before, but he wouldn’t have driven all the way from Boston to turn his back on her now. She tapped out the code that disarmed the security system.

The moment she opened up, Noah pushed inside. She’d forgotten his scent. All male, it tugged at her, slipping between memories too intimate to face, too insistent to ignore. She hated the need that absorbed her in his drawn cheeks and the lines she’d never seen before, at the corners of his eyes. Emotion she couldn’t understand and certainly didn’t trust thinned his mouth.

“Tessa.” This time he whispered her name, as if their shared past drew his breath from depths she hadn’t known she’d reached inside him. His gaze washed her with the same insatiable need she felt. A yearning that had nothing to do with sex.

They were two people who’d lost everything that mattered most. Seeing him brought it all back. The joy as well as the pain. Joy scared her more. She didn’t want to remember that much happiness now that she’d lost it.

“I don’t want you here.” What she meant was she never wanted to need him again.

His grimace acknowledged what she couldn’t say. With shaking hands, he dragged his hair away from his face. Black strands stuck to his scalp, and moisture clung in drops to his fingers. He shut the door and turned the dead bolt. “Who did this to David? Are you all right?” His eyes looked like holes in his face. “Is someone trying to hurt you?”

“I’m fine.” She wasn’t. She wanted to cry—for David, for Maggie, for herself, and maybe a little for this empty-eyed shadow of Noah.

Somehow she’d managed to forget the ghost who’d walked out long before she’d left him. She’d been angry with the Noah she’d loved, the husband with whom she’d planned at least one brother or sister for Keely and a future as long as forever.

Another reason to forget about counting on life being fair or normal. She’d better just tell Noah what had happened and hope he’d be able to help before he vanished again.

“David must have interrupted a burglary. Whoever—” She stopped. David’s death grew more real each time she had to talk about finding him. She wiped her mouth. She had to function for Maggie. “Whoever hurt David also tore the office apart.”

“You—” He sounded scared, except Noah didn’t get scared. “You found him?”

His question confused her. “Didn’t Weldon tell you? Why are you here?”

Noah shook his head, as if he realized he didn’t sound coherent. “Weldon told me, but I hate thinking of you seeing him like that.”

She backed up a little, distancing herself from his concern. If David was still alive, she’d be planning to tell him about this crazy conversation. David had been the one she could rely on. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out loud.

David would never come back again, and Noah hadn’t come to comfort her. Better count her blessings he was such a good cop. Closing her eyes on her tears, she turned away, but Noah caught the arm that wasn’t clutching Maggie.

“You’re not all right.”

She stared at his hand until he let her go. “I was better until I had to ask you for help.”

“I know you called back and changed your mind, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know.” One step brought Noah closer. “And I know why you don’t want me around. You don’t think about…her, until you see me.”

She resented him for never saying Keely’s name. “Do you forget her?”

Maggie cried out at Tessa’s hostility, but Noah didn’t have to answer. Grief hollowed his eyes and his gray face made him look like the walking dead.

Tessa scaled down her anger. She wasn’t being fair. “I shouldn’t have called you the first time.”

She shifted the baby against her breast, and Noah stared, mesmerized by Maggie. When he looked slowly back at Tessa, he staggered. At first, she thought he was upset, maybe even drunk, if the rumors she’d heard from their Boston friends were true. But he reached behind himself, grasping for anything solid.

“You’re sick.” He’d had so many migraines after Keely died Tessa had begged him to see a doctor. He hadn’t.

With a grimace, he ignored her. “How can you take on that child?”

He’d gone to the heart of her doubts. She wasn’t certain she’d make a good substitute parent for Maggie. “What choice do I have?”

“Are you being fair to her? You can’t just give her up if it doesn’t work out. You won’t.”

He shut his mouth in lines of pain. After Keely, they’d forgotten how to love each other, but he did still know her, and she knew him well enough to recognize his anguish.

He backed unsteadily into the wall, and she forgot to be wary of him.

“I’ll make it work, Noah. She needs me.” She slid her free arm around his waist. His muscles tensed against her, from her shoulder to her thigh.

Feel nothing, she warned herself. He’s temporary here.

“Migraine,” he muttered.

“I guessed. Come sit down.”

Noah shrugged off her helping hand. “Carry the baby. I’ll manage.”

Shadows intensified the paleness of his cheek where his beard grew more sparsely. Tessa swallowed, trying to wet her dry mouth. She’d forgotten that small patch of skin she’d kissed so many times she could feel its texture now against her lips.

“How did you get out of the police station without an attorney, Tessa?”

“I don’t need an attorney.”

“Weldon hinted you did, and you should pay attention when a cop talks like that.” He enunciated each word too carefully. “Don’t tell me you’re representing yourself.”

With sudden impatience, Maggie brought the fleshy part of Tessa’s thumb to her mouth. Sharp baby teeth grazed Tessa’s skin, making her draw a deep breath. Leaning down, she grabbed the shopping bag and then headed for the kitchen. “Let me feed her and I’ll drive you to a hotel, Noah. We can talk tomorrow.”

She switched on the kitchen light, but Noah, who’d driven at least four hours in excruciating pain, gazed at her through slitted eyes, trying to filter out the brightness. “What hotel?”

Maggie’s protest at the lack of anything filling in Tessa’s hand left little time to argue. “You can’t stay here.”

“Why? We don’t love each other anymore. I can’t hurt you.”

“You know why.” She wasn’t about to admit how long she’d worked at sleeping in a house where she couldn’t even hope he’d be coming home. “We got divorced. We didn’t part on good terms. I called you because with David…gone…I didn’t know who else to turn to.” She pushed the shopping bag onto the kitchen counter.

“I’m sorry about David.”

“Me, too.” She couldn’t keep moisture from gathering at the corners of her eyes, but she used her forearm to wipe it away. Better get Noah out of here before the shock of David’s death finally wore off.

She kept remembering how painful “never” was when you realized you wouldn’t see someone you loved again. Saying goodbye to David would feel something like letting Keely go. She couldn’t do that with Noah watching her.

He’d been unable to share her pain for the daughter they’d both loved deeply. She wouldn’t expose herself to his reserve again.