The Sheriff's Christmas Surprise. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ there’s abandonment,” Lupe chimed in, speaking up for the first time. “You could get this guy for that.”

      The word “abandonment” suddenly sank in. Olivia realized that with her mind racing a hundred miles an hour and going off in all different directions at once, she’d gotten so caught up in finding the baby, she hadn’t asked the sheriff a very basic question. There was a huge chunk of information she was missing.

      “What are you doing with my nephew in the first place, Sheriff? Why do you even have him?”

      “I found your nephew on my doorstep this morning when I was leaving for work,” he informed her matter-of-factly.

      “On your doorstep?” Olivia echoed, stunned. “That’s impossible. Tina would have never let Bobby out of her sight.” She paled as a possible explanation came to her. “Unless something’s happened to her.” Her eyes widened as she caught hold of the sheriff’s arm, a sense of urgency telegraphing itself from her to him. “Sheriff, you’ve got to help me find—”

      “Don’t go getting ahead of yourself,” Rick told her. He thought of one plausible explanation, although it was a stretch. “Maybe your sister figured that what was ahead was too dangerous for the little guy.”

      He was being kind, making up an excuse to calm the blonde with the ice-blue eyes. In his heart, though, he believed that perhaps the woman’s sister had gotten bored with playing house and had decided to abandon her latest toy, leaving him in the first place that came up. Maybe they’d passed his place on their way out of town and impulsively decided to drop the baby off on his doorstep.

      Technically, his mother had done that, Rick thought, leaving him and his younger sister, Ramona, with her mother-in-law. He could still remember what she’d looked like as she’d promised to be “back soon.”

      “Soon” had turned into close to eighteen years. By the time she actually had returned, he didn’t need her, or her lies, in his life. She’d come back too late. He’d grown up with a substitute mother, his tough-as-nails grandmother, molding his life and Mona’s. Maria Elena had been a hard taskmaster, but her heart had been in the right place and she had made him the man he was today. And for that, he would always be grateful to the pint-size martinet.

      “Or maybe Don felt that the baby was dragging them down and he told my sister to get rid of Bobby—or else,” Olivia said.

      “But he is the baby’s father, isn’t he?” Lupe asked, horrified.

      “The baby’s his,” Olivia allowed slowly. “But it takes more than getting a woman pregnant to make a man a father,” she said with feeling, raising her chin.

      Rick saw the anger in her eyes and found the sparks oddly fascinating.

      “That vermin has no more of an idea on how to be a father than a panther knows how to walk around in high heels,” Olivia declared angrily.

      “Interesting imagery,” Rick commented. He glanced down at her feet and saw that she was wearing fashionable shoes whose heels could have doubled as stilts. They had to be around five inches. How did she manage to walk around in them?

      “Feet hurt?” he guessed.

      They did, but that was something else she wasn’t about to admit. Besides, she’d gotten used to the dull ache.

      “No,” she denied. “Why do you ask?”

      “Haven’t seen heels that high since the circus came through a couple of years ago.” He glanced at her shoes again, shaking his head. The women he knew were given to jeans and boots. But on the other hand, he had to admit the woman had a great set of legs. Best he’d seen in a very long time. “They just look like they might hurt.”

      She lifted the shoulder the baby wasn’t leaning against in a partial shrug. Bobby’d fallen asleep and she wasn’t about to disturb him. Olivia lowered her voice. “That all depends on what you get used to,” she told him, the inflection in her voice distant.

      The woman wasn’t kidding when she said she knew her way around words. “I suppose you have a point. By the way,” he said, and extended his hand toward her. “I’m Sheriff Enrique Santiago—Rick for short.”

      There was no way this man came up short in any category, Olivia caught herself thinking before she blocked any more personal observations.

      Where was her mind?

      Impatient with her oversight—names should have been exchanged immediately—rather than put her hand into his, she wrapped her fingers around his hand, automatically assuming the dominant position. “Olivia Blayne.”

      “Olivia?” he echoed. She couldn’t tell if the sheriff was amused or charmed. “Now there’s a name you don’t hear every day.” Amused, she decided, he definitely sounded amused. Why? “What do they call you?” he asked.

      Undoubtedly he was waiting for her to render up a nickname, something along the lines of “Livy,” or maybe “Livia.” He couldn’t possibly be thinking of “Olive,” she thought in horror. That name conjured up the image of a certain tall, skinny cartoon character from her childhood days.

      There’d been a boy in the neighborhood, an older boy—nine to her seven—Sloan something-or-other, who’d teased her mercilessly. He’d called her Olive because she had been that skinny back then. The nickname had turned into the driving force that motivated her to not only put some meat on her bones, but to get fit as well. She’d been relentless about the latter in her teens.

      “Olivia,” she informed him tersely. Only Tina got to call her something else. Tina called her Livy, but right now, Olivia didn’t know if she was up to hearing that name.

      Many thoughts crowded her head. She was far too worried that something had happened to her sister. She was absolutely certain that Tina would have never just left Bobby like that. Not unless she wasn’t around to prevent it.

      Don’t go there!

      If it turned out, mercifully, that Tina was all right, she was going to kill her sister with her bare hands for putting her through this, Olivia thought angrily.

      She took a deep breath, forcing the dark thoughts into the background. Instead, she focused on the infant sleeping on her shoulder. Focused on how good, how soothing that felt, to know that he was safe and that he was here, with her. It allowed her to pretend, just for the moment, that everything would be all right. That Tina was all right.

      “Where are you from?” Rick asked.

      “Dallas,” she told him. A look she couldn’t read came into his eyes. “We’re both from Dallas.”

      That was over four hundred miles away. She was a long way from home. “How did you happen to track them to Forever?”

      “Luck,” she replied. Because she could feel his eyes on her, waiting, she elaborated. “Tina called a friend of hers, Rachel. She told Rachel that she thought she’d made a mistake, but it was too late to change things. Rachel knew I was looking for Tina so she kept Tina on as long as she could. I have a…” Olivia hesitated for a moment, looking for the right word, then settled on “friend at the cell phone’s service center.”

      There was no need to say that Warner had also been someone she’d once cared about СКАЧАТЬ