Now she was speechless. It had been years since she’d last seen Liam McAllister in person. Twenty years. He’d been thirteen years old and she’d been eleven. He’d spent a week that summer with his grandmother and Allie had spied on him for hours at a time from the tip-top branches of the big cottonwood tree on the edge of Mary McAllister’s property.
Since then Allie had heard of Liam, read about him and seen his pictures as part of numerous media stories. The public’s fascination with the former playboy aristocrat turned devoted husband seemed insatiable, and reporters had relentlessly stalked him through the sad and happy dramas of his life till he must have felt like screaming…or finding a secluded island to escape to.
But why on earth to Annabella? To see Mary, she supposed. But what was he doing on her front porch in the middle of the night instead of Mary’s, and why did he have such a stricken expression in his eyes?
“Allie, we’ve got a sick child here. Maybe dying.” Doug slipped past her frozen form and into the living room. Liam followed, along with a small, thin girl who clutched the back of his shirt. She appeared frightened and pale, but hardly at death’s door.
Confused, Allie bent down and peered into the child’s pinched face. “Don’t you feel well, honey?”
“It’s not Bea,” Liam said shortly. “It’s the baby.”
Allie straightened up. She’d registered the name “Bea.” She’d read that Liam had a five-year-old daughter named Beatrice, nicknamed Busy Bea, but she’d never seen a picture of her because Liam refused to allow her to be photographed. She’d read about and sympathized with his tragic losses a year ago, but since his premature son had died along with his wife that terrible day, Allie wasn’t sure what baby Liam was talking about.
She gave a helpless little shrug. “What baby?”
Allie had been so shocked to see Liam, she hadn’t noticed that he was clutching what looked like a balled-up sweater in his arms. Now he tipped his bundle toward her and turned back the sweater to reveal a baby, sallow and still, its umbilical stump raw from an obviously recent birth. Allie’s breath caught in her throat, rattled there for a stunned, horrified moment, then gushed out with her next words.
“Bring him back here to my office.”
Chapter Two
All business now, Allie jogged ahead of them to the back of the house where the three rooms that constituted her home office were located adjacent to the den, where she’d just been sleeping in front of the television and dreaming of a baby. The dream coinciding with a real baby’s arrival at her office would seem weird…if she didn’t dream about babies most of the time. She flipped on the bright overhead lights, making everyone wince and blink, then immediately moved to a large stainless steel sink and turned on the hot water tap.
“Whose baby is it?” she asked over her shoulder as she soaped up her hands and rinsed them in scalding water.
“We don’t know,” Liam answered. His brows drew together as he closely observed her movements. “I found him in a rubbish bin.”
“The Dumpster behind Johnsons’ Gas ’n Go,” Doug clarified.
Allie’s whole body revolted at the idea of someone putting a newborn baby in a Dumpster to die a cold, miserable death. She was again stunned into momentary silence and immobility. Liam’s frown stirred her to action, though, and she quickly grabbed a wad of paper towels and dried her hands. “When?”
“Fifteen minutes ago,” Liam said, then abruptly, “What’s taking you so long? Shouldn’t you be doing something?”
“I am doing something,” Allie replied calmly, attributing his uncivil tone to worry and fear. “You don’t want him to get an infection on top of everything else, do you? Put him on the table.”
Allie noticed a muscle ticking in Liam’s jaw as he laid the baby on the examining table. Then, without being told, he spread his hand on the baby’s midsection to keep him from accidentally rolling off—unlikely with a newborn, but still you couldn’t be too careful—leaving Allie free to rummage through her supply drawer.
She ripped open a sterile plastic bag containing an infant-sized oxygen mask, attached the tubing to the free-standing tank by the table, adjusted the flow and placed the mask over the baby’s nose and mouth.
“Hold this over his face, while I adjust the strap.”
Liam obeyed instantly, one hand holding the mask in place while the other hand remained securely on the baby’s stomach.
Allie found it rather unnerving ordering Liam around, and she didn’t suppose he was at all used to it. But she had learned to be as bossy as necessary when it came to saving lives, not holding back even when male egos were involved…or in this case, the ego of a viscount with the fancy-schmancy title of Lord Roderick, who also just happened to have been the romantic hero in some of her more vivid girlhood fantasies. She supposed it was all those hours in the tree, watching him, making up stories about him….
She grabbed the digital thermometer from the countertop and swiped the probe with an alcohol swab.
“Do you need me?” Doug demanded. “Because if you don’t, I’d better get back to the Gas ’n Go. I’ve called Lamont and I’m meeting him there.”
Allie looked up. “You called Lamont out tonight?” Lamont was the county’s Crime Scene Investigator.
Doug nodded curtly. “Attempted murder is pretty serious stuff, Allie. Got to get the evidence while it’s fresh.”
Murder. Allie could hardly believe something like this was happening in Annabella. She nodded, then said, “Go to the hall closet and get the small quilt Grandma Lockwood made, please.”
Doug immediately turned and headed for the door. She caught sight of Bea hovering just behind her father, trembling with either excitement or fear. “Get a blanket for Bea, too,” she called after him.
Doug was a lot easier than Liam to order around, even if he only did what he was told when he wanted to, or really needed to, as now. Besides, he knew where everything was.
She turned back to the baby, pushed the sweater just far enough aside to expose his bottom, and inserted the probe. She could have used the ear thermometer and got an instant reading, but she’d found the rectal thermometer to be more accurate and it took only a few seconds longer.
Liam kept his hand on the child’s chest and stomach, his fingers making tiny, caressing circles. With his free hand, he reached back and rubbed Bea’s neck and shoulders, trying to calm her. Once upon a time Allie had watched those hands whittling sticks, building a birdhouse, digging in the dirt for nightcrawlers or for stones to skip on the pond by Mary’s house. Liam’s grown-up hands were elegantly shaped, the fingers long and tapered, the nails immaculately groomed.
But it was the way he was trying to comfort both children at once that made her smile up at him and say, “Don’t worry. I think the baby’s going to be fine. By the looks of him, he has only a mild case of hypothermia…thanks to you. You must have found him very soon after the birth. You did just the right thing bundling him up in the sweater and finding help. I’ll know exactly what to do, too, as soon as I get this temperature reading.”
Liam didn’t return her smile. His green, matinee-idol eyes stared back at her for a moment, then his gaze shifted to the baby. Her overture rejected, Allie felt a little stab of hurt, of annoyance.
The thermometer beeped and she read the temperature with a sigh of relief. She was tempted to smile, but remembered the response to her first smile and didn’t. “Just as I thought, his temperature is only slightly below normal. We can treat him here and save him the trauma