She snorted. “If you knew anything about my feelings, Mr. Halloran, you’d stop calling me ‘ma’am.’ Or maybe you don’t want to do that because you sleep better at night by treating people as if they’re just another nameless face.”
He felt a strong poke in his shoulder. It took every ounce of his self-control to remain relaxed and to not tense up. He assumed it was her finger and not a gun, but who knew to what extremes a distraught parent might go under the threat of having to give up their child?
“You take a good look at my face, Halloran,” she continued bitterly. “My name is Stef Shelton. This is my life we’re talking about. My family. So don’t you talk to me like I’m some nameless, faceless person.”
Her words hit Mitch like a match to a fuse. He jerked the car over to the side of the road, switched on the overhead light and turned to face her.
There was no gun. Just one very defiant woman, who was in real danger of losing her family. His stomach catapulted again.
He pointed two fingers at his eyes, his voice just as hard as hers had been. “Stef, look at me. Right here. I can’t afford to be emotional or I’d spend half my waking hours guzzling beer and the other half puking my guts out over the stuff I see day in, day out. I am thinking about your life. Your family. Your daughter. I want to know who took her, and I want to get her back for you alive. Now answer my goddamn question.” The hardness in his voice turned to a plea. “Please.”
He saw the defiance leak out of her, saw her eyes turn to liquid gold in her pale face as they filled with new tears. His chest grew unbearably tight. She was a nice woman. And hot enough that he’d take a second interested glance if she weren’t intimately connected with the case. Stef Shelton loved Keely the way mothers were supposed to love their children. She’d never dump her child with a relative and disappear for years. Mitch didn’t even know whether his mother was alive or dead. He hadn’t seen his own dad except for that one time when he was six years old.
“I know this doesn’t seem fair, but we have to move beyond that and make smart decisions.” He snapped his mouth shut before he added the sorry platitude that life was rarely fair. He knew damn well that there was a chance that Stef Shelton’s real daughter could be buried in a shallow grave that would never be found.
But he wasn’t going to consider that possibility until he had strong evidence to suggest it was the case. He reached into the back and touched her knee, breaking the fundamental rule of successfully sustaining detachment, the line he never should have crossed with Carmen’s grandmother: don’t touch, don’t feel.
The moment he felt the wiry strands of Teresa’s gray hair against his cheek as she’d hugged him desperately, he’d lost his perspective. But he needed Stef’s cooperation. He had no badge that he could wave to induce her to talk.
She felt brittle and delicate as if sheer force of will was holding her together. “Trust me,” he said. “I only want to help.”
She took a shaky breath, her eyes still fixed on his. He could see the decision-making process going on in her head. Do I hate this bastard? Or do I trust him to help me?
Trust won out.
Mitch had the uncanny sensation he were staring down a gold-paved tunnel into her soul as she wet her lips and finally confided, “I woke up around 3:00 a.m. The sound of the door woke me. I thought it was the nurse or my husband coming to check on us because he’d decided not to stay overnight in the hospital with us. Dads can do that, you know.”
And she blamed her husband for not being there. He could tell by the defensive shift in her body language and the rigid tilt of her chin. But then, she was probably still angry with her husband for dying. Mitch was familiar with that kind of anger. Paddy was the one person he’d counted on being there for him. Always.
“Did you see the person? Could you tell if it was a male or female? Did you notice anything they were wearing?”
“No, sorry.” She sounded sincere.
“Did you notice anything unusual about Keely at all? Her hair? Her weight? The ID bracelets?”
She frowned, thinking back. “Nothing significant. It was two and a half years ago. To be honest, I don’t think Brad or I looked that closely at the ID bracelets. Having a baby is a pretty exhausting experience.”
“I’ll bet. I don’t have any kids, but I suspect they call it labor for a reason.” He squeezed her knee, intending to leave things on a friendly note and to get the sedan back on the road, but she stopped him, catching his hand with hers. Mitch’s heart kicked up a beat at the hesitant, light-as-a-feather touch of her fingers.
“Mitch…?”
He nodded encouragingly. It was the first time she’d used his name. But it also triggered a tremor of unease on the back of his neck at the level of intimacy it created.
“The ransom note you showed me—it said the little girl had her father’s eyes and her mother’s smile. W-what color were Ross Collingwood’s eyes?”
He held her gaze, smiled gently, relieved to see that she was rallying and wasn’t going to stay in denial about her biological daughter’s fate. He imagined Stef Shelton had strengths she hadn’t tapped yet. “They were blue. And the hairs that accompanied the note were dark brown.”
“Brad had blue eyes,” she said wistfully, releasing his hand.
Mitch searched her determined, tear-streaked face and Keely’s slumbering form for a second longer, then turned out the overhead light and pulled back onto the road.
Her lost daughter was becoming real to her.
HUNTER AND JULIANA SINCLAIR waited anxiously in the penthouse suite of the New York Clairmont Hotel for Riana’s arrival. Unbelievably, incredibly, after thirty long months, Ross and Lexi’s daughter was safe in Mitch Halloran’s custody and on her way home to them.
But what should have been a joyous event was overshadowed by the grim knowledge that another child’s life was perilously at risk. Poor Stephanie Shelton, the woman who’d unknowingly been caring for Riana, had just learned that the child she’d raised was not her own.
Juliana empathized with what Stephanie must be thinking and feeling. When Ross and Lexi Collingwood were murdered in an explosion six weeks ago, The Guardian had expected her to give up the Collingwoods’ five-month-old son, Cort, whom she’d been raising in secret to keep him safe from harm. Ross and Lexi had appointed The Guardian as the legal guardian of their children, Riana and Cort. Even though Juliana had been raised in the Collingwood household, it spoke to The Guardian’s intense security that she hadn’t known that Ross and Hunter were best friends or that Hunter was Cort’s godfather.
Regardless, she had not been willing to give up Cort without a fight. To protect her precious charge until he was old enough to claim his inheritance, she had married Hunter Sinclair, aka The Guardian. They were raising Cort as a Sinclair, their own son, giving him all the love that Ross and Lexi would have given him.
She rested her head on her husband’s solid shoulder, her heart bearing equal burdens of elation and anxiety. In the short time since their marriage she knew Hunter so well she could practically hear the gears turning in his pragmatic mind, assessing the extraordinary situation for legalities and lawsuits and risk management options.
He’d been overcome with emotion when he’d taken the call from Mitch Halloran earlier this evening. He’d excused himself from the dining room when the call came, then returned a few minutes later and silently held out his hand to her, blinking back tears.
She’d walked out to the greenhouse with him where he’d told her the news. They’d wept together at the miracle, mourning the fact that Ross and Lexi weren’t alive to welcome their lost little girl home themselves.
Hunter had promised her that he’d do everything possible to ensure the safe return