“But that gold charm you found clinches it,” he finished for her.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Ridge and Lizzie believed it was her when they had their own Josie sightings.”
“I know. At least she’s alive. For the longest time I...” Chris’s throat closed as he thought of how he’d imagined the worst. Young women disappeared all the time. Murdered. Their bodies disposed of in the most callous ways. It had killed him to imagine that was Josie’s fate.
Annabel seemed to understand Chris couldn’t talk about it, and she changed the subject. “Speaking of sightings, Mia told me she spotted you coming out of your apartment this morning carrying a suitcase and your laptop bag. You taking a trip? Something to do with your work?”
Chris hesitated, then remembered his heart-to-heart conversation with Annabel last month and his promise that he would take her seriously as a police officer going forward. She’d earned that right and then some. “No,” he told her. “Remember that missing-person case I mentioned the other day? The one I was taking pro bono?”
“The widow who ran off with her twin sons? The one the in-laws are trying to track down?”
“Yeah, her. Turns out I was way off base.”
His sister snorted. “Told you there was more to the story.”
“Don’t rub it in.” Chris massaged the furrow he could feel forming between his eyebrows. “Anyway, long story short, I found her. But she had a damned good reason for running—her in-laws tried to kill her.”
Annabel gasped. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. She’s been living in the Rosewood Rooming House with her boys for the past three months, but she was just about to run again.” He took a deep breath. “So I convinced her it would be safer for the three of them to live in my house for the time being...with me.”
“Your house? You mean the one you built for Laura?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t let her run, Bella. I wasn’t going to tell the in-laws I found her, but I couldn’t let her run. If she did and the in-laws hired someone else...” He knew he didn’t have to draw his twin a picture.
“So you’re living there with her?”
“And her sons,” he was quick to point out. “Just until we can set a trap for her in-laws.”
“We?”
“I was thinking Sam, you and me. Unless you don’t want to.” He knew when he said it what Annabel’s answer would be. Set a trap for would-be murderers? If they pulled it off, it would be another professional coup for his sister.
“Count me in.”
Annabel’s enthusiastic response made Chris smile to himself. “I haven’t asked Sam,” he told her, “so don’t say anything to him yet, okay? This all just happened this morning.”
“No problem. Just let me know when and where. So, what’s her name?”
“Holly. Holly McCay. And her boys are Ian and Jamie.”
“Cute names. What’s she like?”
Chris smiled again. Knowing his sister, he’d known the question—or one very similar—was coming. “You’d like her. She’s very down-to-earth. Very unassuming. And a good mother. You’re not going to believe this, but Holly and Peg are friends,” he said, knowing the message that would convey. “Other than Peg and me, you’re the only one who knows where Holly is right now, and until we can prove anything against her in-laws, that’s the way I want to keep it.”
“Works for me. When do I get to meet her?”
Children’s voices from the hallway outside his office alerted Chris that Holly and her boys were approaching, so he cut off his conversation with Annabel. “I’ll let you know,” he told her quickly and disconnected. He swung his chair around and stood up, but Wally was faster. The dog bounded across the room toward the hallway, tongue lolling out, tail wagging.
“Holly, I—” Chris began but stopped as if he’d been poleaxed when a blonde woman appeared in the doorway with Ian and Jamie. Long blond hair that owed nothing to artifice. Long blond hair that shimmered under the lights with a hundred different layered shades of gold. Long blond hair parted slightly off center, paired—unusually—with pale brown eyes. The eyes he’d seen before, but not with the blond hair. Holy crap, he thought as desire unexpectedly slashed through him, but all he said was, “What happened to the dark-haired wig?”
Holly laughed ruefully. “Ian thought it was funny to pull it off and dunk it in the tub.”
He didn’t mean to say it, but the words just popped out. “Your pictures don’t do you justice.”
She laughed again, but this time a slight tinge of color stained her cheeks. “Thank you... I think.” She stood there for a minute staring at Chris as if caught in the same trance as he was, and her not-quite-steady breathing drew attention to her breasts rising and falling beneath her damp T-shirt. But when the twins tugged free of her hold to play with Wally, the spell—or whatever it was—was broken. “We came to tell you good-night,” she explained, the color in her cheeks deepening.
“Oh. Right,” Chris said, forcing his eyes away from Holly and down to the toddlers and the dog. Their well-scrubbed cherubic faces were misleading, he knew—if they were like most boys, Holly’s twins were no angels. But they were all boy, just as Wally was all dog. Boys and dogs went together like...well...like boys and dogs. And Chris had a sudden memory of his younger brothers Ridge and Ethan—four and two to Chris’s six—and his dog back then, Bouncer, a golden retriever, just like Wally. It was a memory from his early years that didn’t stab at his heart for once, a memory that made him smile for a change. He glanced at the clock on the wall and said, “Kind of early for bedtime, isn’t it?”
“I start early,” Holly explained. “I read them stories, then they get lullabies, and...” She smiled. “All of that can take an hour or more before they finally settle down and go to sleep.”
He didn’t know what made him make the offer, but he said, “How about I read them their bedtime stories?” When Holly looked doubtful, he added, “I’m a pretty good bedtime-story reader. Peg’s daughter, Susan, would vouch for me if she was here.”
Holly chuckled. “Okay,” she agreed. “I wouldn’t mind a few minutes to myself for a change. Let me get the books. We have a ton of library books—I was going to return them on my way out of town today,” she rushed to explain, as if she didn’t want him to think of her as a library thief. “And we have some books I bought for the boys. I let them pick the books they want me to read.”
She was back in no time, carrying a stack of books that Chris quickly relieved her of. “Their favorites are on top,” Holly told him. “But I usually just spread the books out and they choose based on the cover.”
“Fly,” Jamie said. “Want fly.”
“A Fly Went By?” Chris asked him, juggling the stack until he found the Mike McClintock title three books down from the top. He handed it to Jamie, who hugged it.
“You remember that book?” Holly asked, surprised.
“Hell—heck, yeah,” he amended. “That was one of Josie’s favorites. I read it to her so many times I think I have it memorized.”
“Me, too.” Holly smiled at Chris, a somehow intimate smile, and something he hadn’t felt in forever tugged at his heart. Holly’s smile made him realize there was more to life than merely putting one foot in front of the other. More to life than the work he’d thrown himself into with even more dedication after Laura’s death. Except for his relationship with Peg, Joe and their kids, except for his relationship with his sister and brothers, his life revolved around his work. Work that gave meaning to a life that held little else.