Watching Over Her. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ nodded. It was her automatic reaction to everyone’s condolences. Condolences she didn’t feel she really deserved, just the way she felt she hadn’t deserved Andy.

      “Would Andy have told anyone what you told him?” Blaine asked.

      “Why?” While he had listened to her, Andy really hadn’t cared about her job. He’d been proud that she’d gone to college, that she’d gotten her degree in finance, but he’d thought that she would quit working once they got married and started having kids.

      Andy really hadn’t known her at all. Or he would have guessed that, while she loved him, she wasn’t in love with him. So if Andy hadn’t known her that well, maybe she hadn’t known him, either.

      “I can think of hundreds of thousands of reasons why he might have told someone,” Blaine replied.

      Maggie defended her friend. “Andy didn’t care about money.”

      “But that was quite a ring he bought you...”

      He hadn’t just paid for that ring with money; he’d paid for it with his life, too. “He used his bonus—for re-upping and for his last deployment...”

      Blaine nodded as if she’d answered another question—one that he hadn’t actually asked. “Maybe he didn’t realize that he was revealing anything.”

      She hadn’t realized that something she’d said could have led to those robberies, to Sarge’s death. She hoped Blaine was wrong because she already had too much guilt to live with; she didn’t need any more.

Chapter Nine

      Maggie insisted on going to the bank, and Blaine agreed. The bank wasn’t open for business, though. Not yet. Repairmen were working on replacing the broken windows and fixing the damaged walls and furniture. So Blaine took her around the back, through the security door that the robbers had dragged her out.

      That was hard enough—watching her face drain of color as she relived those moments. She probably hadn’t thought she was going to get away from the robbers. And for a few moments Blaine hadn’t thought he was going to get her away from them—then or later at the hospital or the motel.

      He relived all those moments and found his arm coming around her thin shoulders. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” he murmured.

      “I need to go to my office,” she said. “And make sure I didn’t leave anything out yesterday.”

      “The manager closed up the bank yesterday,” he assured her. “I’m sure he locked up whatever paperwork you might have had out.”

      He did not want her going to her office. Since her walls were glass, it had also been damaged from the gunfire. And in the lobby was the outline where Sarge’s body had been. She didn’t need to see that, and neither did he.

      Maggie shook her head. “No, Mr. Hardy wouldn’t have done it himself. He probably let Susan do it and that’s how she got hold of my purse.”

      Blaine hadn’t been that impressed with the manager—especially when the guy had been firing questions at her while the paramedics were trying to assess her condition. It was obvious that most of the day-to-day administration had fallen on Maggie’s slim shoulders. “She got your purse, your keys and your credit cards.”

      She sighed. “I should cancel my credit cards.”

      “She already used a couple of them,” he said. While Maggie had been at the hospital, the greedy woman had used her cards. “Why did you ever have her as your roommate?”

      Maggie shrugged hard enough to dislodge his arm and stepped away from his side. Maybe he had offended her by implying that she wasn’t the greatest judge of character. “She was really nice to me when I first started working here,” she said in defense of their relationship, “so I agreed to let her move in when her boyfriend kicked her out and she had nobody else to stay with.”

      He wondered if that had been a ruse. Maybe he had underestimated Susan Iverson’s intelligence. He would take another look at her. But first he wanted Maggie to look at something; that was why he had agreed to bring her down to the bank.

      He had also wanted to get out of Ash’s small house before he lost all objectivity where Maggie Jenkins was concerned. She was too damn beautiful for his peace of mind. He couldn’t lose the image of her hair tangled from sleep, her body all soft and warm and sexy. When she’d tossed back the blankets and revealed her bare legs and the shapely curve of her hips, he had been tempted to crawl into bed with her.

      She sighed again. “But I learned quickly why her boyfriend had kicked her out.”

      “The woman can’t be trusted.” Blaine wondered if this one could. He wanted to trust Maggie Jenkins; he wanted to believe she was every bit as sweet and innocent as she seemed.

      But he couldn’t rule out any possible suspects yet. And she was a possible one—even after the attempts on her life. Or maybe because of them. Her coconspirators could be trying to prevent her from giving them up.

      He led Maggie to a back office, near the rear exit, where he had had the bank security footage set up across six small monitors. He pressed a remote and started it rolling.

      “What is all this?” she asked.

      “Security footage.” Sarge’s security footage. “I want you to watch it.”

      “All of it?” She sounded overwhelmed. The six monitors probably were a bit daunting.

      Blaine was used to it, as he often watched days, sometimes weeks or even months, of security footage when he was investigating bank robberies. But this time while they watched the monitors, he saw only Maggie—her full breasts and belly pushing against his old T-shirt. Those long, bare legs...

      How would they feel wrapped around him? How would she feel when he buried himself inside her?

      He shook his head, shaking off the thoughts. They would never happen. She wasn’t just pregnant with another man’s child; she was still in love with that man. It didn’t matter that Andy was dead. A love like theirs—where she had told him everything—was deep and enduring.

      Blaine had never had anyone in his life to whom he’d told everything. He had learned at a young age that if he told his sisters anything they would tell everyone. So he’d been keeping his own counsel for a long time—which was good because he had no intention of sharing his thoughts about Maggie with anyone else. In fact, he wanted to forget all about them.

      So he focused on the video screens playing out on the monitors in Sarge’s office. It might have been hard to be there, if Sarge hadn’t been like Blaine and Ash—too nomadic to personalize any space. It wasn’t as if they would be there long enough to put down roots anyway. If Ash hadn’t inherited that house in the Chicago burbs, he would have just had an apartment like Blaine had in Detroit—something devoid of decoration and sparsely furnished.

      Days of security footage passed before his eyes in a blur—slow enough to pick out faces but fast enough that hours passed in minutes. His head began to pound—maybe more from his mostly sleepless night than from watching the footage.

      If СКАЧАТЬ