Assumed Identity

chapter Six



Jake shrugged into his insulated gloves and lifted the two cases of bottled beer. The strain on his muscles was as welcome a distraction as the blast of cold air from the walk-in fridge had been.

He’d had a fitful morning of sleep, plagued by images of Robin Carter soaked to the skin, tearing at his clothes while he tangled his fingers in her soft, sable-brown hair and plundered those bewitching lips and other parts of her body with a hunger he hadn’t indulged since the day he’d woken up without a past. The erotic dreams had been as disturbing as the violence that normally haunted his sleep, and had required a cold shower to wash most of them out of his head.

Plus, he hadn’t been able to catch the guy in the trilby hat who’d been watching him. Either the guy had walked away before Jake could reach him, or he was really good at blending in with a crowd. As good as Jake was when he put his mind to it.

His snarly mood hadn’t improved much at work, either. Instead of figuring out why the guy at the newsstand might be interested in him, Jake had been thinking about events he could remember, like the feel of Robin’s long, lean body pressed against his side. He could recall the exact moment when the fear in her eyes had turned to trust. And he’d never forget her thrusting that baby girl into his arms. If the mama was a temptation he didn’t need, then that infant with the big blue eyes and snuggling instincts was downright dangerous to his determination to fly solo through the shadows of the world.

The woman was pretty in that classy, PTA mom kind of way that meant she was more at home with a white-collar executive who drove a minivan and lived in the suburbs than with a...whatever he was. In the light of day, he’d like to think she was too skinny to entice a man with his baser tastes. But he’d seen the curves on that backside. He’d touched that soft, cool skin. How could he justify getting attached to anyone—a stubborn woman or a sweet little girl—if he didn’t know who he was and what he had done? And if he thought his brain was screwed up now, what if the things he’d done came back with a vengeance and hurt the people he cared about?

“Care about,” Jake sneered. What a ludicrous idea to think he’d formed any kind of attachment to the Carter girls in the short span of hours he’d known them. Swearing at his own weakness for even considering such a thing, he hit the insulated door’s release handle and carried his load through the back hallway into the front of the Shamrock Bar.

He pushed through the swinging door behind the polished walnut bar and froze. Speak of the devil. No, not the devil—more like a pair of angels walking through the front door. Robin Carter looked pretty nice all dried off, too.

Jake took a breath, recovering from a jolt of eager recognition, and thumped the cases down on top of the bar. “What are you doing here?”

The armed suit who’d held the door open for Robin and the kid in the stroller moved in before she could speak and flashed his badge. “Spencer Montgomery, KCPD. You’re Jake Lonergan?”

For now. “Yeah.”

Robin pushed the stroller right up to the barstools. “That’s him, Detective.”

So she’d brought the cops right to him, served up his name and face on a platter despite every effort to disappear from her life. Thanks for nothin’, honey. His effort to glare Robin Carter back out the door made her pull her shoulders back and tip her chin. Oh, yeah. She was quivering in those running shoes she wore, but she refused to be intimidated.

“Hello, Jake.”

“I don’t do the niceties, remember?” Jake pulled a box cutter from his apron pocket, sliced open the top crate and starting loading beer bottles into the cooler beneath the bar.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” said the detective. “Namely, why would you flee the scene of a crime?”

Yeah. He was ignoring him, too.

“Jake?” Robin cleared the husky catch in her voice and spoke again. “It is Jake, isn’t it? I told him you didn’t run away—that you were there, watching over us, all night.”

He tossed the empty box to the floor and proceeded to open and unload the second one. “I don’t need you to defend me. Am I under some kind of suspicion, Officer?”

Before the detective could answer, the door swung open behind Jake, and Robbie Nichols, Jake’s boss, carried out a freshly washed crate of beer mugs.

“Customers, already?” Robbie’s Irish heritage was evident in both his accent and his jovial greeting. He set the glasses on the bar and grinned through his bushy black beard and mustache.

“No.” The place was nearly deserted this early in the evening, so there was no mistaking that Robin and the suit with the badge were here to see him.

“Friends of yours, then.” The fact that Jake had never had one friend stop in for a visit didn’t seem to faze Robbie. The burly Irishman stretched his arm across the bar to shake hands with the detective. “Spencer Montgomery—we don’t see enough of you around here anymore.”

The carrot top with Robin nodded. “Mr. Nichols. Since my partner got engaged, he’d rather take his fiancée out for drinks after work than come here with me. Go figure.”

Robbie chuckled. “So it’s a date then?”

“No.”

“No.”

“No.” Jake, Robin and the detective all answered in unison.

Seeming oblivious to the tension in the room, Robbie lifted the gate at the end of the bar and circled around to squat down beside the stroller. “And who might this little beauty be?”

He poked his fat finger into the stroller and laughed when Emma Carter batted at it and then latched on. He tilted his face to Robin. “I’m Robbie Nichols, the owner of this fine establishment. May I, Mrs....?”

“Ms. Carter. Robin.” Jake watched a smile warm her face as she bent down to unhook the baby and pick her up. “This is Emma. She can hold up her head now, but you still want to make sure you support her.”

A protective impulse, as instant as it was foreign, heated Jake’s blood as he watched Robin place the baby in his boss’s arms. “Be careful with her, Robbie.”

Robbie waved off the warning and buzzed some motorboat noises that made Emma giggle and tug on his beard. “I know how to handle a wee babe like this. Don’t I take care of my great-nephew just fine when Josie brings him in for a visit?”

Jake remembered how small and fragile Emma had felt in his hands. “Aaron’s a boy and he can walk.”

“He’s one and a half. Still in diapers. He was this size once. Josie—my niece,” he explained to Robin, who didn’t seem to have any problem handing her baby off to men she’d just met, “trusts me with him.”

“Yeah, well...be careful,” Jake warned. The notion that it wasn’t his place to warn anyone away from the little girl registered a moment too late.

Robin’s eyes narrowed with a question for Jake before she smiled at Robbie again. “You handle her like a pro, Mr. Nichols.”

“Robbie,” he said, making both the Carter girls feel welcome.

While they spent a minute getting acquainted, and Jake tried to bury that troublesome penchant for rescuing damsels in distress by diving into his work, Detective Montgomery slid onto the green leather seat of a barstool and slyly voiced a comment. “Thanks for the tip on the license plate.”

Jake stopped with his fists around the necks of two bottles and flashed an accusatory glance at Robin. Her cheeks flushed with rosy heat before she defended herself. “I didn’t tell him you gave it to me.”

Montgomery coolly eyeballed Jake and vice versa. He’d have to be careful around this perceptive cop if he wanted to maintain his anonymity as the strong, silent type who served beers and threw out drunks who disrupted the peace. The detective probably made a hell of a poker player in most circles, but Jake had known men like him before. He wasn’t sure who or when, but he recognized a man who was a lot smarter and more aware than he let on. Maybe because Jake was that type of man himself.

He had to respect the kind of cop Montgomery was. But that also meant he had to work a little harder—or maybe play a little nicer—to stay off the detective’s radar. “You have to include my name in that police report if I answer your questions?”

Montgomery’s gray eyes were wary. “Any reason why I shouldn’t?”

Jake placed the last of the beers in the cooler and ditched the box. Robin seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for his answer. He didn’t want the perceptive detective to get too curious about him. Robin, either. “I’m just a guy who likes his privacy.”

“Jake, I don’t mean to intrude,” Robin apologized, “but I asked Detective Montgomery to find you because I wanted to—”

“Ask your questions, Detective.” She wanted something from him? Jake nipped that notion in the bud before he even acknowledged that he liked the idea of Robin Carter wanting something from him.

“Mr. Lonergan, what were you doing in the alley behind the Robin’s Nest Floral Shop last night?” he asked.

“Walking.” Jake ignored the expression on Robin’s face—hurt? confusion? frustration?—and concentrated on what information he’d share with the detective. He pulled out the dishtowel hooked into the band of his apron and wiped down the bar.

“After midnight?”

“I got off work early and couldn’t sleep.”

“So you got up in the middle of the night and went for a walk in a thunderstorm?”

“I really couldn’t sleep.”

Despite his nod, Detective Montgomery didn’t look like he was buying Jake’s excuse. The red-haired detective would make a worthy adversary. Or a solid ally. It was hard not to speculate on which Spencer Montgomery would have been if Jake had his memory back and knew what kind of man he was.

He moved to the glasses Robbie had brought in and finished drying them and putting them away. It was just as hard not to speculate about what kind of woman he’d been with before he’d been shot. Blonde? Brunette? Tough and street savvy? A no-strings-attached sex buddy? Or someone wholesome and trusting like the woman slipping him sly looks as she chatted with Robbie and played with the baby.

Maybe he’d been such an awful S.O.B. back then that he hadn’t had any woman in his life. Shards of need and regret cut through the emptiness inside him. With no link to his past and no one in his current sham of a life, he understood loneliness the way most folks understood breathing. He didn’t want to think he’d lived his whole life feeling this way. But if there was some good in his past, someone he’d been important to, then why hadn’t they come to see him in the hospital? Why had none of the addresses in his stash led to a real home? Every lead had taken him to a warehouse or an empty lot. All the clues to his past life were fake except for the nightmares.

He had a feeling if there’d been anyone like Robin Carter in his life, she wouldn’t have stopped searching until she’d tracked him down. Which was exactly what she’d done. Jake fisted his hand in the dishtowel and muttered a curse. Now that was irony. The thing he wanted most was the one thing he’d sworn he’d never let himself have.

“Did you see anyone in the neighborhood while you were out walking?” Montgomery asked, interrupting his thoughts.

Jake pulled his hungry gaze away from the dark brown waves of Robin’s hair that bounced around her face every time she laughed with Robbie or shook her head after reaching into her pocket to check her cell phone. “You want to know if I saw the guy who went after Ms. Carter.”

“Yes.”

Good. They were past subterfuge now and Jake gave a straight answer. “I didn’t. I heard her whistle, heard her scream and went to check it out. The guy was average height. On the skinny side. He wore black coveralls and a stocking mask, and he ran fast. Didn’t know much about fighting—probably why he had to ambush her with a baseball bat.”

“You had the wherewithal to pull the attacker off Ms. Carter and subdue him, but you never looked at his face?”

“Seemed more important at the time to make sure she was still breathing.” What was with the phone? Robin had checked her cell twice now that he’d seen. The easy explanation was that she was expecting an important call, but she had to reaffix the smile on her face each time she stuffed the cell back into her jeans and resumed her interest in Robbie’s chatter.

Something was off. It wasn’t his concern, though. It couldn’t be.

Spencer Montgomery must have finally decided Jake wasn’t going to be much help to his investigation. He pulled out his cell phone and set his notepad on top of the bar. “I’ll run the plate through the DMV and see if we can get a hit on who was loitering outside the shop. Maybe he’ll match your general description of Ms. Carter’s attacker and we can bring him in for questioning.” The detective slid one of his business cards across the bar. “If you think of anything else, call me.”

With the interview over, Jake knew he should pick up the empty boxes and carry them out to the trash, giving Robin and the kid plenty of time to leave before he did something stupid like go over there and ask what was bugging her about her phone.

But he was a cursed man. Cursed to have amnesia. Cursed to look like the aftermath of a lost battle. Cursed to feel that compulsion to atone for the violence from his nightmares.

When he saw Robbie lifting Emma over his head and pretending she was an airplane, Jake dropped the boxes and charged around the end of the bar. It didn’t matter that the baby was laughing from deep in her belly, or that Robin was carefully watching the ride through the air. Emma was too tiny, too pretty—too perfect—to risk her getting hurt.

“Stop!” Jake plucked the baby from his hands before Robbie sent her flying. “You’ll break her.”

Baby saved. Now what? He pulled Emma into his chest, keeping one arm beneath her bottom and leaning back a bit so she wouldn’t fall. But she kept wiggling around, batting at his neck and bobbing in his grasp. It was like handling a squirming piece of blown glass. Two tiny fingers hooked into the side of his mouth while the other miniature hand brushed across the stubble of his jaw. She squealed in his ear.

“She’s going to scratch herself,” he mumbled awkwardly, afraid to close his mouth around her fingers. “I haven’t shaved since last night.”

“Jake, she’s okay.” Robin’s smile probably meant his inexperience handling a baby amused her. But her hand on his arm softened the sting of overreacting and feeling out of his element. She guided his hand to the baby’s back and pulled the clinging fingers from his mouth. “Babies like to feel different textures. Touch is a big part of how they learn.”

They also didn’t seem to care a whit for how big and ugly the man was behind those textures. Emma flashed him those sweet blue eyes and squealed with delight as she rubbed both tiny palms along his scarred jaw. Oh, man. He was screwed.

He wasn’t the only one in the bar to notice that, either.

Robbie’s gut shook as he laughed and winked at Jake. “I see how it is. The heart of the beast has been smitten by the wee beauty.” He reached over to tickle the back of Emma’s neck and then pat Jake on the arm. “I’ll take the trash out for you and leave you be with your friends. You’ve got about twenty minutes before the first round of customers stops by after work.” He had a wink for Robin, too. “Nice to meet you both. Now that I know we’re practically neighbors, you come visit again, anytime.”

“Nice to meet you.” After Robbie had picked up the boxes and exited into the back hallway, Robin peeked around Jake’s shoulder and confirmed that the detective was on the phone to someone at precinct headquarters. She had that determined tilt to her chin again when she looked at Jake. “Are you done talking with Detective Montgomery?”

The woman just wouldn’t leave him alone and give him the chance to get her out of his head, would she.

“Didn’t have much to say. Here.” He leaned in and carefully handed Emma over, pulling away just as quickly as it took for him to know Robin had a good grip on her daughter. “You get her out of here. A bar is no place for a baby.”

“I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want. But I need to talk to you first. Will you listen?”

He wasn’t getting rid of the Carter girls until he did, Jake suspected, so he reluctantly pointed to a booth away from the main bar. “I’ll give you ten minutes.”

“Robbie said we had twenty.”

“I’ll give you ten.” Especially since his shirt now smelled faintly of baby, and he wanted to swap it out for a clean shirt he kept in his locker in the back room before he had to spend the entire night getting whiffs of the “wee beauty” who had somehow gotten under his skin.

At Robin’s request, he retrieved the stroller and followed them over to the booth. With Emma propped up on her mother’s shoulder, smiling at him the entire way, Jake had to wonder if the little minx knew she was casting a spell over him.

He’d let Robin have her say. But then he’d make it clear that helping her the night before had been a one-time thing. As far as he was concerned, their paths need never cross again.

Jake waited for Robin to strap Emma into the stroller at the end of the table, and pull out a set of colorful plastic keys for her to play with before they slipped into opposite sides of the booth. He leaned back, folded his arms over his chest and waited for Robin to start the conversation.

He had to give the woman credit for getting straight to the point. “I’d like to take you to dinner to thank you for what you did for us. Better yet, I’d like to fix you a meal. I’m guessing you’re not a man who gets much home cooking.”

Jake patted his stomach. “You don’t think I eat?” So what if most of his meals came from a microwave or were takeout? It didn’t mean he was starving. Or that he wanted to become a charity project for her. “You already said thank you. More than once.”

She tucked one of those chin-length strands of hair behind her ear and breathed deeply, gearing up to try a different approach. “It doesn’t seem like enough. You didn’t just water my plants while I was on vacation—you saved our lives. I’d like to do something a little more tangible to express our gratitude. I think you’d be insulted if I offered you money—”

“I would.”

“—and you don’t strike me as a man who’d appreciate a big bouquet of flowers. Besides, up until thirty minutes ago, I had no idea where I’d have my man deliver it. I thought you’d appreciate something practical. You have to eat. I cook. Pretty well, I think. And I almost always fix more than...”

Robin stopped mid-sentence with a soft gasp and looked down. She pulled out her cell phone and Jake heard another, almost inaudible, gasp. She was doing it again—that little shake of the head, as though she was dismissing something unpleasant. She closed the phone in her fist and set it down in her lap, out of sight beneath the table.

“You need to answer that?” Jake asked, before she could resume the argument.

“I have it on vibrate. It startled me, that’s all.” The pink scrape mark on her jaw stood out as the rest of her skin paled. She picked up Emma’s toy keys and gently cupped the baby’s face.

“What’s wrong?”

Jake didn’t buy the smile she gave him when she looked up to meet his assessing gaze. “I was assaulted last night. What do you expect? Of course I’m jumpy.”

“Don’t give me that. You found out my name, tracked me down, dolled the kid up—all so you could feed me dinner? I’m not buying it.” He reached across the table take hold of the hand she rested there. Jake damned himself for doing it. He damned her for shifting her grip to hold on. “Something’s got you spooked. And whatever you just saw on your phone is part of it.”

Setting her phone on top of the table, she showed him the message written there. “My assistant, Mark, keeps texting to tell me this woman I talked to before I left the shop has called three more times asking for me.”

“What woman?”

“I answered the first time because I thought she was a reporter.”

“What woman, Robin? What did she say?”

“It was a prank call. She sounded drunk. I’m assuming she read about me in the paper.”

“And?” Her long, artistic fingers were like ice to the touch. And Jake couldn’t seem to stop from stroking his thumb against the pulse in her wrist, trying to instill some warmth into her.

“She said I didn’t deserve her.” She was holding on with both hands now. “She said I should have died last night.”

Jake concentrated every nerve on his grip to keep the surge of anger from fisting his hand too tightly around hers. “Lousy coward. You don’t believe that, do you?”

“I don’t care what anyone says about me. But she was so adamant about how terrible a mother I am. I know I’m a single mom, but I do my best. I get tired sometimes, but I can support Emma on my own. She has a good doctor, a safe home...” A deep breath shuddered through her. “I read every book, I took classes—so I’d be ready when my chance to have a child came. I fought so hard to have a baby on my own. I don’t have that many years left when I can have a healthy pregnancy. But none of the relationships I’d been in were right for starting a family. And none of the science I tried took.” She pulled one hand from his and reached over to touch Emma’s cheek. “And then this little miracle fell into my lap. I wanted to adopt her as soon as I met her. It was love at first sight.”

Even a blind man could see how much Robin adored her daughter and what a fiercely protective mother she was. “This crackpot said you didn’t deserve her? I’m assuming she didn’t give her name?”

She shook her head. Her gray-blue eyes darkened like a starless night. Her fingers convulsed around his and Jake tightened his grip. “She said I put Emma in harm’s way last night.”

The bastard who’d attacked Robin had put the baby in harm’s way. Did the sliced seat belt and tipped car seat mean that lowlife had been after Emma? Was the attack on Robin collateral damage to the unthinkable crime of kidnapping or hurting her infant daughter? Without thinking, Jake stretched his arm out to touch Emma. But at the last moment, he wised up and settled for returning the slobbery plastic keys to her surprisingly strong grasp. No sense completing a circle that had nothing to do with him—that shouldn’t be his concern.

He let go of Robin, too. These weren’t his women to protect. He couldn’t be swayed by searching eyes and needy grasps. Curling both hands into fists, Jake tried to think like the tough guys on the IDs in his apartment. He had to think like that ruthless survivalist from his nightmares. “You didn’t recognize the phone number?”

Robin rubbed her hands together on top of the table, perhaps missing his touch, more likely just feeling chilled again. “She’s only called the shop. I don’t have caller ID there. She didn’t tell me who she was, of course.”

“How specific was the threat? Did she mention Emma’s name?” So his tone was a little sharper than he intended. That was the whole idea of being a tough guy, right?

“No. But how does she know I’m not her real mother? Adoptions aren’t public record, and only my attorney and friends know I didn’t give birth to her. She talked to me like I’d done something wrong, like...like I’m the one who put Emma in danger. She sounded like she wanted to take Emma away from me.” He realized that Robin’s suspicions were following his own. “KCPD is focusing on the Rose Red Rapist. I’m trying to figure out who’s doctoring the books at my shop and stealing from me. Maybe there’s someone else out there none of us have thought of whom I need to be worried about.”

“Why are you telling me?” Ah, hell. There it was—the trust in those pretty eyes. She was looking at him as though he was the go-to man who could save the day for her. He’d lost enough sleep already fighting that whole damsel in distress complex that could do nothing but get him into trouble. “I don’t do relationships, Robin. Of any kind. Don’t bring your troubles to me.”

“You’re the one who asked. All I did was offer you dinner.” At last, a hint of color dotted her cheeks. Temper. Good. He could deal with anger a lot easier than he could deal with need and trust and trying to be this woman’s hero.

“My mistake.” Jake slid out of the booth and stood up. “Montgomery!” he shouted at the detective, startling Emma. The little girl dropped her keys and burst into tears. Robin quickly unhooked the baby and lifted her into her arms, cooing comforting words and staring daggers at Jake as the detective looked up from his phone.

“Making friends, Lonergan?” the detective asked.

Wiseass. Jake ignored the knot of guilt that twisted in his stomach at making Emma cry. “Did you find out who owned the car I saw last night?”

“Rental company. It’ll require a little more digging to get the driver’s name.”

Good. KCPD needed to be working this case. Not him.

“Ms. Carter has been getting harassing calls she needs to report.” Jake looked back at Robin, absorbing the disappointment that darkened her gaze. “You stay out of my life, lady. Don’t come to me again.”

* * *

“COME ON, SWEETIE.” ROBIN DIDN’T know whether to feel anger or humiliation. Something was pulsing through every muscle as she pushed the stroller out the Shamrock Bar’s front door. “Did that big, scary man make you cry?”

Robin adjusted the top of the stroller to shade Emma from the late-afternoon sun, and set off at a brisk walk. It had taken a good ten minutes to get Emma calmed down. Singing a soft lullaby, Robin had carried her back and forth through the tables at the Shamrock, while Jake disappeared into the back rooms. She’d reported the disturbing phone call to Detective Montgomery, then gathered her things and strapped Emma into her stroller as the first of the bar’s early customers wandered in.

Had she really asked so much of Jake Lonergan? Was it beyond him to give a rat’s ass about anyone besides himself?

One minute, he’d been transformed by Emma’s curious touches and squeals of delight. The next, he’d been loud and crude and pushing them away as fast as he could. His words said he wanted nothing to do with Robin, yet his touch—rough like a cat’s tongue and just as gentle—against her hands and wrist had told a different story. He’d offered comfort and strength, and had hinted at the inexplicable attraction smoldering between them. But he didn’t want dinner. He didn’t want a thank-you. He didn’t want to help and he didn’t want her. The man was completely infuriating and Robin had been a first-class fool to think he wanted to get any further involved with her problems.

A car slowed down on the street and drifted toward the curb. Instinctively, Robin steered Emma closer to the brick and concrete block buildings and kept walking.

“You can’t have it both ways, Lonergan,” she muttered. “Either you’re our friend or you’re—”

The car’s passenger-side window went down, and she realized the car had been keeping pace with her. “Ms. Carter?”

Huh? She jerked to a halt and glanced over at the driver—a man in his mid to late thirties. No one she knew. She took note that the car was black, not green, before shaking off the discomfiture of a stranger calling her by name and starting on her way again.

But her reaction had been confirmation enough for the man to park his car and call out to her again. “It is you.”

For a brief second, she imagined a black stocking mask, a leering glare and a baseball bat. But the driver wore a suit and tie. The skies were sunny and clear, her vision was good and her imagination was simply working overtime. She couldn’t afford to be spooked every time a man spoke to her. She shook her head and urged the stroller forward again. “I don’t know you.”

He ignored the dismissal and got out of the car. “We’re practically family.”

Other than a slight stutter in her step, Robin kept walking. Her parents had retired to Arizona and she was an only child. The only family she had in Kansas City was right here in this stroller.

The man buttoned his suit jacket and followed her onto the sidewalk, falling into step a few paces behind her. “Ms. Carter, you’re going to have to talk to me. Either here or in a courtroom.”

That stopped her. “A courtroom?” Keeping Emma and the stroller behind her, she turned to face him. Maybe six feet tall. Brown hair, green eyes, clean-shaven. Black suit and white shirt like an executive or an attorney would wear. She knew the type. But she didn’t know him. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Mr....?”

“Houseman. William Houseman. My friends call me Bill.”

“Are you a reporter, Mr. Houseman?”

“No.” He reached inside his suit jacket and handed her a business card. Robin was half afraid to take it at first, but she supposed a man who meant her harm wouldn’t so readily identify himself.

She verified his name on the card. “A banker?”

“What I do for a living isn’t important. I just want you to have my contact information.”

This one-way familiarity was getting on her nerves. Robin folded the card in her fist. “How do you know me? And don’t give me that family story again. We’ve never met.”

Bill Houseman leaned to one side and smiled down at Emma. When he wiggled his finger in Emma’s direction and elicited a chortle, Robin pulled the stroller closer to her body. “Actually, your daughter and I are family.”

A chill shivered down Robin’s spine despite the sun shining down on her. Was this another threat? “I’m her family. We have to go.”

“I need only a few minutes of your time.”

Traffic was picking up as employees in the nearby office buildings got off work. Robin hurried to catch up with a group leaving the business in front of her, but Houseman grabbed her arm. Robin shrugged him off. The people ahead were quickly disappearing into a parking garage. She wasn’t going to catch them and Bill Houseman apparently wasn’t going to leave her alone.

“Ms. Carter, you and your daughter are in great danger.”

The matter-of-fact statement stopped her in her tracks. “Is that a threat?”

“Why? Do you feel threatened?”

With a strange man following her? She took off again. “What do you think? Do you know something about what happened to me last night?”

“I think you’ll want to have this conversation in private.” He didn’t slur his words or ramble the way the woman on the phone had. Yet the effect was the same. This man was a stranger—and he knew a lot more about her than any stranger should.

She’d already passed a couple of buildings, but the intersection up ahead and her shop half a block beyond that seemed miles away. What would be her closest escape route? Going on to her shop? Back to the bar? Straight out into the middle of traffic where he couldn’t follow? With no promising option in sight, Robin spun around, trying a more confrontational tactic to get rid of the man strolling behind her. “Did you read about me in the paper? How did you find me?”

“I knew you long before you made the headlines, Ms. Carter.” He called her bluff, smiling as he walked past her. But he stopped and turned in front of the stroller. “That’s a beautiful baby. What did you name her?”

When he knelt in front of Emma, Robin jerked the stroller back. “Get away from her.”

He smiled and rose to his feet. “I think she looks like a Hailey.”

“What did you say?” The blood drained from Robin’s body, leaving her ice cold. That was Emma’s birth name—before the adoption. He did know her daughter. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “She isn’t Hailey anymore. She’s my daughter. If you want to talk to me, call my attorney and make an appointment.”

With fear flagging every step, Robin pushed the stroller around him.

He grabbed her arm as she hurried past, tightening his grip when she tried to shake him off. “This can’t wait. I have a favor to ask.”

“Let go. If you’re who I think you are, you’re not supposed to have any contact with me. I’ll call the police. I know a detective back in the Shamrock Bar. He’s there right now.”

“Do you really think you ought to be taking your daughter into a bar?” She could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath as he whispered against her ear. “What kind of mother does that? Do you really have this child’s best interests—?”

“The lady said to let her go.” Jake Lonergan’s deep, menacing voice filled the air, washing over Robin like a protective hug and silencing the accusation in Bill Houseman’s voice.

Houseman’s grip tightened before he released her and stepped back. “I have business with Ms. Carter.”

“Not today, you don’t.”

Robin wasted no time asking why Jake was here. She quickly pulled Emma back and stood beside him.

Houseman straightened his cuffs beneath his suit jacket. Betraying either nerves or a sudden fastidiousness about his appearance, he adjusted his tie and collar, too. “One way or another, we will have this conversation. Preferably without your Neanderthal friend here. It’s important. A matter of life or death, I’m afraid.”

“Whose? My baby’s?”

Jake shifted at the possible threat, standing tall and immovable, his strong arms crossed over his chest. He’d shed the green apron he’d had on in the bar and looked like some sort of human tank blocking the sidewalk. He’d come to Robin’s rescue. Again.

“No. But it’s important. In a way, I’m trying to save you, too.”

“From what?”

Houseman seemed to consider continuing the conversation for about three seconds. His gaze skipped over Jake and he looked at Robin. “Please give me a call.”

With a subtle shift in his stance, Jake was suddenly positioned between her and Houseman. He’d even barred Emma from the man’s direct line of sight. Although there seemed to be more that Houseman wanted to say, the man clearly didn’t want to push his luck with Jake there. After a nod to Robin and a ‘Bye, little one’ to Emma, he returned to his car, started the engine and drove away.

“Thank you.” Robin flattened her palm against Jake’s back and felt him shiver at the unexpected touch. He moved away far too quickly to think she’d done anything more than startle him. Swallowing her pride, she let him put the distance between them that he apparently needed. “I didn’t handle that very well. I couldn’t think. I panicked. I guess I’m still rattled from last night.”

“Is the kid okay?”

“Yes. He touched her, but he didn’t hurt her.” Robin stooped down to check on Emma. Straps, secure. Blanket, fine. Blue eyes smiling and content. “I guess he didn’t do anything except...give me his business card.” She wound her fingers around the edge of the stroller as the strength ebbed from her. “I know this name. I didn’t know him, but the last name...I’ve seen it in legal documents.” She let Emma capture her finger in a tiny fist. “He said he was family.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Houseman. Emma’s birth mother—I never met her but...her last name is Houseman.” She held up the crumpled card for Jake to read. “Like him. Is he Emma’s father? Does he want her back? I can’t lose her.”

Jake didn’t take the card or speculate an answer to her question. Instead, he cupped his hand beneath Robin’s elbow and pulled her to her feet. If she thought he was being polite or showing concern, she was mistaken. He positioned her behind the stroller and gave it a nudge, forcing her to grab on to the handle and get moving before he pushed Emma down the sidewalk without her. “Like I said before—tell the cops about that phone call. This guy, too. And quit wandering off on your own. I won’t always be here to save you.”

Gratitude and irritation warred inside her. “Then why did you? If I’m such a burden, if we’re such an intrusion on your life, why did you come all the way down the block and get rid of Mr. Houseman for me?”

“It’s my job to keep trouble away from the bar.”

“Like men who accost women on the street?”

“Like you, lady.” He scanned the sidewalk and street as they walked, and Robin realized that she, too, was learning to check inside every car and doorway for anyone who might be watching or waiting for them as they walked past. “I’ll take you to the corner, and watch you down to your shop. But then you are no longer my responsibility, understand? We’re done.”

Again.