On the Doorstep. Dana Corbit

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СКАЧАТЬ stitched edge and nodded. “The basket’s nice, too.” She studied it for several seconds, her gaze following the intricate weaving and designs. “Maybe even an heirloom.”

      The wheels in Zach’s brain started spinning. Clearly, the mother wasn’t destitute, so what had brought her to this point? Maybe she was a wealthy, married woman who’d become pregnant from an illicit affair. He doubted that idea, as other socialites would have noticed her pregnancy during charity guild meetings and country club parties.

      Maybe the mother had postpartum depression, or she was a pregnant teen with a pair of furious parents, just like Jasmine. He shook the thought away and tried to guess what the baby’s mother looked like. His hands perspired with the effort. Every time he imagined a blond woman with either blue or brown eyes, the image would transform into a wavy-haired brunette with the cutest dimples and blue eyes similar to his own.

      No, he couldn’t think about his sister here. Not now. He didn’t want to see that pair of caskets again, one white and impossibly small, and he didn’t want to wonder again how he might have helped if he’d only known Jasmine’s secret sooner. This time could be different. This time he could help prevent a crisis from becoming a tragedy.

      “Hey, look at this.” Pilar spoke just above a whisper, waving a hand for him to draw closer.

      She showed him the label on Gabriel’s blue sleeper. He shrugged, no fashion aficionado. He took plenty of ribbing at the station for his wardrobe choices.

      Pilar pointed to the label again. “That’s definitely not Ralph Lauren. The receiving blanket, too. I could buy both of those for ten dollars together at any of the local discount stores. Why would a mother who could afford cashmere choose these?”

      “Maybe she couldn’t.” Could the blanket and basket have been products of a larceny? “I’ll check back at the station to see if there were any recent B and E’s—ah, breaking and entering cases—that might be related.”

      As if they’d called to coordinate their arrivals, the patrol car and the ambulance arrived at almost the same time from opposite directions. All the noise awakened the baby, who cried out the moment his blue eyes opened. Two emergency medical technicians emerged from the ambulance, and Pilar rushed over to them. Zach conferred for a few minutes with Officer Steve Merritt before the junior officer turned the case over to him.

      After he was gone, Zach scanned the crime scene for more clues. The suspect certainly had left enough to make him wonder if she wanted to be caught. Was abandoning her child a way of crying for help? He wouldn’t know until he found her, but he wanted to be that help if she needed it.

      Though he tried to focus on the crime scene alone, something kept drawing his attention back to the ambulance where Pilar stood. This time she wasn’t paying attention to him at all. She only had eyes for the baby who was giving the EMT hearing damage as he tried to get a heart rate.

      Zach figured from the baby’s healthy cry that he was going to be fine, but Pilar’s expression was stark and anguished. Was that just her empathy for the baby who had lost a mother that morning?

      For a few sick seconds, Zach was jealous of that baby. He wondered how it would feel to be the recipient of Pilar’s empathy or her compassion. Then he grabbed hold of his wayward thoughts. He didn’t need anyone to care about him. People who cared got hurt, felt losses so profoundly that their hearts seemed to have been riddled with bullets.

      Though he didn’t need it himself, Zach still valued the kind of compassionate care Pilar brought to her work. As a police officer, he’d seen far too few people who truly cared for their fellow human beings. The children of Tiny Blessings Adoption Agency were fortunate to have someone like Pilar on their side.

      Chapter Two

      Pilar took several long, deep breaths as she waited for her world to stop spinning. The knowledge that the baby appeared healthy wasn’t enough to slow this Tilt-A-Whirl she’d been riding on and couldn’t get off. If she looked up the word “surreal” in the dictionary, she would find a photograph of this scene outside the Tiny Blessings building. She would see flashing lights and uniformed emergency workers and a crying baby.

      And she would see the man she’d secretly mooned over for the last two years standing not ten feet away from her and still looking past her as if she was invisible. Obviously, the crisis hadn’t changed anything.

      She’d been overwhelmed enough just discovering the abandoned child, but that was before Zach’s deep voice had rolled into her ears and jolted her pulse. He was so out of context away from the church that it had taken her a few seconds to get her bearings. Not that she wouldn’t have recognized his voice anywhere, as many times as she’d overheard him talking with church friends and had wished he’d been laughing with her instead.

      She glanced at him over her shoulder, careful not to get caught staring again. She’d been humiliated enough the first time. He looked so strong and proficient, taking charge of the scene and offering direction to the young uniformed police officer standing next to him. Usually the one to volunteer to head projects, Pilar felt relieved to leave the situation in Zach’s capable hands.

      The wind was whipping through his wavy brown hair, forcing him to shove it out of his eyes. He wore his hair a tad longer than the current extreme styles, so it fell low across his forehead and curled the tiniest bit at his nape. Zach marched to his own fashion drummer, as well, even now looking endearingly rumpled in his sport jacket matched with a pair of khaki slacks that had never known a knife crease.

      When she’d already watched him longer than she should have, Zach glanced back at her. The most startling pair of cornflower-blue eyes in, well, the history of cornflower-blue eyes, trapped her in their examining stare. Her breath hitched, and goose bumps appeared on her forearms, but she couldn’t look away.

      At first he didn’t, either—his eyes wide. What did he see when he looked at her? Just another witness to interview? A case number? A day on the job? She hoped he didn’t see her yearning. She’d hidden it so well before just as all secret crushes should be carefully guarded, but her resistance was down this morning, her self-protection compromised. She exhaled when he finally looked back at his fellow police officer, but she felt oddly disappointed.

      A hearty laugh pulled Pilar back to the commotion next to the ambulance.

      “This one’s got a pair of lungs on him,” said one of the EMTs.

      The other one laughed with him. “He’s just offended that you’re poking at him. I would be, too.”

      “You take him. I’ll call in his vitals.” Before the second guy could protest, the first was off with the radio.

      Gabriel continued to wail, his face becoming reddish-purple and his feet beating against the blanket. She couldn’t help smiling at him. He’d been dealt a tough blow that morning, but he was a fighter. He was going to be okay. She just knew it.

      Pilar touched his head once more, her fingers tracing a path through the sweaty fuzz, and then the paramedic took him inside the ambulance. Her eyes and nose burned. She should have been praising God that little Gabriel appeared to be all right. He would be fine, and Zach would locate his mother for him. That was what she wanted, right? With surprise and a fair amount of guilt, Pilar realized she didn’t want Gabriel’s mother to be found.

      As the ambulance pulled away from the curb, its precious cargo inside, Zach turned back to Pilar, anxiety heavy on his chest. He should have taken the easy-out clause Sergeant Roy СКАЧАТЬ