girls meeting hordes of strangers. Chelsea Cameron was slender and tall, like her father, and wore jeans and a pink and brown windbreaker and her long dark hair was pulled up in a ponytail. Lindsey held her breath, waiting for the pang, the sense of recognition and of longing. But it had been years since she stopped seeing her baby, her precious Isabella, everywhere she went, and after a moment she relaxed and let the breath go slowly.
But now her mind insisted on taking her back to that time, making her remember the pain, the anger and betrayal she’d felt when her mother had taken Trent’s side. Both had been furious with her for refusing to try again to get pregnant.
Oh, yes, Mom had had all the arguments but Lindsey had been adamant. “How can you possibly understand?” she remembered telling her mother. “You’ve never lost a child-you don’t know what it feels like!”
The rift between them had been at its widest then, but eventually, to give her mother credit, when it came to the final separation, Susan had reluctantly accepted her decision and supported Lindsey through the trauma of the divorce. And later, no longer so self-involved and wrapped up in her own pain, Lindsey had come to realize how hard it must have been for her mother to accept the reality that she would never have grandchildren. They’d actually grown closer, it seemed, for a while.
Now, the memory of those words seared her soul. Oh, God, what if it was true, the story about the little boy named Jimmy? Eyes closed, she tried to see her mother’s face, the way it had been back then, tried to remember if there had been something there, some glimmer of the painful memories that were to come.
The sound of her name being called shivered the image of her mother’s face like a fresh breeze across the mirrored surface of a pond. Down below on the patio, her dad was waving, calling to her. She nodded and waved back, and Alan looked up and waved, too. He spoke to Chelsea, who looked up shyly from her place close by her father’s side, but didn’t wave.
Here goes, Lindsey thought. She took a deep breath, pasted on a smile, and turned and went back in the house and down the stairs to join them. Her stomach was a roiling mass of butterflies, and now the only thought in her mind was:
Chapter 5
There’d been a moment there, when she’d come through the doors, emerging into the sunlight like a diva onto her stage, when it had seemed almost as though she’d expected him to. And, Alan had to admit, when he’d wanted to. Very much wanted to. The kiss he’d planted on her several days ago in the car still haunted him, burning itself into his memory at the most unexpected times, the remembered sensation becoming more intense with each replay.
Today she was wearing a sweater in a color that was somewhere in the neighborhood of red and orange and pink and that made him think of ripe fruit, and her cheeks seemed to pick up some of that, making them more vivid than he remembered. Her eyes seemed brighter, too, shining bright blue out of that thicket of dark lashes. He didn’t know what it was about those eyes-he wasn’t the sort to think in literary imagery, and once again the only thing he could find to compare them to in his mind was Elizabeth Taylor.
He didn’t kiss her. He stepped toward her almost reflexively, but something stopped him, some inner voice warning him that it wasn’t the right thing to do, at least not then. And the moment passed.
She came to him, smiling, one hand holding back her hair, although the breeze off the ocean seemed benign enough that it probably wasn’t necessary. A sign of the awkwardness she was feeling, he thought. The same uncertainty he was experiencing, and which wasn’t natural to him, at least not that he could recall.
“Hey, babe,” he said, then wanted to chomp on his tongue. It wasn’t that he’d never called a woman “babe” before, but it had never before felt so wrong. Lindsey Merrill was definitely not a “babe,” which got him to wondering what kind of endearment would feel right, if their pretended relationship had happened to be real. He’d called her “honey,” and “Linz,” if his memory served, and none of those had felt right either.
“My daughter, Chelsea…Chelse, say hello to Lindsey,” he said, more brusquely than he meant to.
Chelsea dutifully muttered, “H’lo.”
“Hi, Chelsea,” Lindsey said, holding out her hand. Which Chelsea didn’t seem to have a clue what to do with, and Alan made a mental note to speak to her mother about maybe it being time to teach the kid some basic social graces. Covering up the awkward moment with a light touch on Chelsea’s arm, Lindsey added, “I love your jacket- pink is definitely your color.”
“Thank you,” Chelsea said-he was glad at least for that. “My mom bought it for me.”
“I hope you brought your bathing suits,” Richard said, every inch the jovial host. “Hard to believe it’s November, isn’t it? Pool water’s warm, and if it does get chilly later on, the heater over there does a pretty good job. What do you say, young lady? Feel like going for a swim? Plenty of time before we eat.”
Chelsea glanced over at the pool, where several children of various ages were engaged in a game of Marco Polo, then turned a look on Alan he knew could be roughly translated as:
“Uh…maybe a little later?” he suggested, directing a look of appeal at Lindsey. The awkwardness of the whole thing was beginning to make his jaws ache. What had he been thinking of, to bring Chelse along on what was essentially police business?
“Of course,” Lindsey was saying, and she slipped an arm around Chelsea’s shoulders and scooped up her backpack. “I’m sure you’d rather get your bearings first, wouldn’t you? In the meantime, how about if I show you where you can stash your stuff?”
Mutely, Chelsea nodded. Alan quelled another impulse to kiss Lindsey, this time out of sheer gratitude. He might have debated with himself whether it would be more productive to stay and chat with Richard Merrill rather than accompany the girls on their house tour, but his daughter’s death grip on his arm pretty much took the matter out of his hands. So, he found himself trailing after the two of them into the house, following Lindsey’s very nicely rounded bottom up a zigzagging flight of stairs.
If he’d been able to kid himself up to now about whether or not he was attracted to the lady for real, that would’ve put any remaining illusions to rest for good. No doubt about it, Lindsey Merrill had gotten under his skin. The only remaining question was, what was he going to do about it? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d met someone in the course of an investigation that made him regret the personal and professional code of ethics that put any such liaisons off-limits. Though it might be the first time he’d doubted his ability to stick to it.
“This was my room when I was growing up.” Lindsey had paused in an open doorway and turned to wait for Alan and Chelsea to join her. “Chelsea, if you like, you can leave your stuff in here. Then, if you feel like swimming, you can just come back up and change. Okay?”
“Oh, wow.” This, unexpectedly, from Chelsea, who was standing in the doorway, peering into the room.
A few steps behind her, Alan’s first general impression was of a whole lot of pink. Then he got close enough to get a good look. He looked at Lindsey and lifted his eyebrows.
“What can I say?” she said with a small shrug, amusement glittering in her eyes. “I’m a girl. I liked dolls.”
“I’d say so.” He’d moved past her, and his fascinated gaze was taking in what seemed to him like a museum of little-girlhood. Although he had to admit that, even with its very feminine pink, cream and pale green color scheme, it was in good taste, not too overwhelmingly frilly. The walls were pale green, the furniture painted cream, window
