Книга - Millionaire M.D.

Millionaire M.D.
Jennifer Greene


Legendary Texas surgeon Justin Webb faced his biggest challenge– winning the heart of brash, bold and beautiful detective Winona Raye. When Winona discovered a baby abandoned at her door, the bachelor doc saw his chance and offered a hand– in marriage.Independent Winona was in no hurry to walk down the aisle, but Justin was going to be there for her…whether she wanted him to or not.







This month, in MILLIONAIRE M.D.

by Jennifer Greene, meet Dr. Justin Webb—

premier surgeon in the Lone Star State. When Justin

is on a mission, nothing gets in his way, not

even…the stubborn heart of Winona Raye—the

childhood friend he’s determined to make his wife!

SILHOUETTE DESIRE

IS PROUD TO PRESENT THE






Five wealthy Texas bachelors—all members of

the state’s most exclusive club—set out to restore

the “Royal” jewels…and find true love.


Dear Reader,

Happy New Year from Silhouette Desire, where we offer you six passionate, powerful and provocative romances every month of the year! Here’s what you can indulge yourself with this January….

Begin the new year with a seductive MAN OF THE MONTH, Tall, Dark & Western by Anne Marie Winston. A rancher seeking a marriage of convenience places a personals ad for a wife, only to fall—hard—for the single mom who responds!

Silhouette Desire proudly presents a sequel to the wildly successful in-line continuity series THE TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB. This exciting new series about alpha men on a mission is called TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: LONE STAR JEWELS. Jennifer Greene’s launch book, Millionaire M.D., features a wealthy surgeon who helps out his childhood crush when she finds a baby on her doorstep—by marrying her!

Alexandra Sellers continues her exotic miniseries SONS OF THE DESERT with one more irresistible sheikh in Sheikh’s Woman. THE BARONS OF TEXAS miniseries by Fayrene Preston returns with another feisty Baron heroine in The Barons of Texas: Kit. In Kathryn Jensen’s The Earl’s Secret, a British aristocrat romances a U.S. commoner while wrestling with a secret. And Shirley Rogers offers A Cowboy, a Bride & a Wedding Vow, in which a cowboy discovers his secret child.

So ring in the new year with lots of cheer and plenty of red-hot romance, by reading all six of these enticing love stories.

Enjoy!






Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire




Millionaire M.D.

Jennifer Greene







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To my fellow Texas Cattleman’s Club authors, Sara Orwig, Cindy Gerard, Kristi Gold, Sheri WhiteFeather— you were all so wonderful to work with! I hope we have another chance to commit murder, mayhem and jewel thefts together.




JENNIFER GREENE


lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.

Ms. Greene has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including three RITAs from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement award from Romantic Times Magazine.


“What’s Happening in Royal?”

NEWS FLASH, January—Royal, Texas, is in a state of shock! The plane that made an emergency crash landing in the nearby West Texas desert was carrying both a European contingent and some of Royal’s own….

Just a few nights ago, all were reveling in the “Party of the Year” at the Texas Cattleman’s Club to honor peace brought forth between archenemy European countries Obersbourg and Asterland…a feat our Texas Cattleman’s Club members may have had a hand in. And to go from celebration to misery so quickly…can our boys come to the rescue once more?

Also, there’s been a sighting of Winona Raye doing her cop thing—with a baby in tow! Sources tell us the tiny tot appeared on Winona’s doorstep. Hmmm…perhaps dashing Dr. Justin Webb—card-carrying Texas Cattleman’s Club member—will help out his childhood friend!

Stay tuned….




Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue




One


Ask Dr. Justin Webb, and “The Tennessee Waltz” was a downright ridiculous—if not insulting—song to play at a Texas bash, but what the hey. He didn’t care what it took to get his arms around Winona. Never had. Never would. He didn’t even mind having to wear a tux and be on his best starched behavior for an exhaustingly long evening, as long as he could catch some private moments with her now and then. Like this one.

“I swear, honey, you look good enough to marry.”

“Why, thank you, doc.” Wearing spindly tall dress pumps, Winona almost reached his cheek in height, but she still had to tilt her face to make eye contact. He marveled. Those eyes of hers were the same soft, wistful, breathtaking blue of a dawn sky—but her smile, so typically, was full of the devil. And that was when she was being reasonably nice to him. “You haven’t proposed marriage to me in, what, two weeks now?”

Twelve days and six hours, but who was counting. “Give or take a few days.”

She nodded demurely. “And how many times do I have to tell you? If I’m ever in the mood to marry a hard-core womanizing bachelor with way too much money, I’ll let you know.”

Justin grinned, since there was no point in taking the insult to heart. In the past, she’d dished out far, far worse.

Come to think of it, so had he.

Tightening his grip, he whirled her past the banquet table, the fiddlers, the receiving line of dignitaries and Asterland royalty. He wanted to waltz her past and out the tall balcony doors and into the star-studded night—where he’d have Win to himself—but the idea just wouldn’t fly. Unfortunately, the January night was typical of west Texas, the temperature colder than a witch’s heart, and the wind twice as bitter. “Well, shoot, darlin’. If I can’t talk you into marriage tonight, how about a nice, immoral, amoral, down-and-dirty affair?”

“I’d love to, doc—with anyone else. But you’ve already done that with so many women in town that I’d just be one in a long line. Thanks, but no thanks.”

He winced—not from her comment, but because she’d just stepped on his foot. God knew, Winona was adorable, but she did have the grace of a coyote on a dance floor. A hand at the small of her back coaxed her physically closer to him. Close enough for him to feel the tips of her nipples beneath the monk-black dress that zipped straight and plain, right to her throat. Close enough so that he could see her light blue eyes dilate when her tummy rubbed against his satin tux cummerbund. Close enough to see the spare, soft gloss on her small mouth.

Close enough to see her scowl.

“Behave yourself, you dog.”

His eyebrows arched, trying out the charmingly innocent expression that had always worked on the softer sex. With one exception. “Now, Win, you know I’m just trying to help. I’m afraid you’re going to trip and fall. And I know you’re not fond of advice, but if you’d just quit trying to lead, I swear you’d have a lot easier time on the dance floor.”

“You’re trying to help? Said the wolf in the fox den. And what do you think your hand is doing on my butt? You think I won’t punch you?”

Actually, he knew she’d punch him—in public, in private, in church, at a black-tie gala or anywhere else. She’d been doing it ever since she was a furious, bad-tempered twelve-year-old, and he’d been a suave, worldly seventeen who’d known everything—except why the hell such a squirt-age girl had managed to wind his heart around her finger. “I’ve had my hand on your butt before,” he reminded her delicately.

“That was significantly different. I was hurt, I’d fallen on some broken glass and you were playing doctor—”

“And I’m so glad you brought that up. I never had a chance to tell you before how much I always loved playing doctor with you,” he said fervently.

There now. She had to choke back laughter. Winona never could keep that terrific sense of humor under wraps for long—but this time, she turned serious again all too quickly. “Cut it out, you. And this time, I mean it. The point is, you know I’d never be attending this fancy shindig if I weren’t working. Just because I’m not in a cop’s uniform doesn’t mean that I’m really here to play. I’m here in a professional role—which means that you either put your hand where it belongs, or I really just might slug you—and I’m not kidding, Justin.”

He heard her. And he not only believed her, but he’d never have done anything to publicly embarrass her in a million years. A teasing pat was one thing, an inappropriate grope in front of others, another—not just because he respected Winona and her job, but because if he ever got a shot at really getting to Win, he wanted no audience around. Anywhere. Preferably for a several-hundred-mile radius.

Temporarily, however, it seemed that he was incapable of removing his hand from her fanny. It wasn’t a choice. Normal honorable, ethical standards of behavior simply couldn’t apply. His palm slid down the silky dress from the hollow of her spine to the fullest slope of her rump. He squeezed several times, because hell, he had to.

Said squeezing produced the obvious biological response in him—he was hard as a hammer in three seconds flat. Above the neck, though, his forehead produced a frown darker than a Texas thunderstorm. “What in God’s name are you wearing under that dress?”

He would never have asked the question, except that the answer seemed to be nothing. Absolutely nothing. There wasn’t a woman in the Club—except for Winona—who wasn’t dripping diamonds and sequins. Jewels winked from ears, throats, wrists and fingers, all across the dance floor. Win’s ears were naked and so was her throat; the long, soft black dress made all the pricey designer gowns look overdone and fussy. To Justin, she stood out as a hopeless beauty. Always had, in his eyes.

It was just…he couldn’t feel any underwear. He certainly hadn’t put his hand on her fanny expecting to feel underwear. But the silky dress was a thinnish material, so that his hand instinctively expected to find panty lines, a sense of fabric. And when they didn’t, alarm bells clanged in his mind on a par with a fire truck’s siren. There weren’t too many reasons a woman would neglect to wear underwear to a very public, very fancy gig—especially Winona, who didn’t reveal nuttin’ to no one—normally. When it came down to it, Justin could only think of one reason she’d be running around sans panties. There had to be a lover she was trying to turn on.

A lover.

A man.

A man—who wasn’t him.

“Justin, what the Sam Hill is the matter with y—”

He sensed her right fist clenching, preparing to punch him.

“Get your hand off my… The dress showed lines,” she hissed. “I couldn’t wear anything underneath it. Not that I owe you any explanation, you low-down, overprotective, bossy son of a gun. Now you’ve got five seconds, max, before I—”

He was removing his hand. Really. Right then. It just took a couple seconds for relief to catch up with him, and for those few seconds he really couldn’t seem to breathe. In the meantime—possibly because Win didn’t realize he was sincerely getting around to behaving better—that small right fist of hers was still aiming straight for his solar plexus. That is, until a tall, handsome, dark-haired dude showed up on the scene, winked at Win, and smoothly lifted her clenched fist to his right shoulder.

“I’m cutting in,” Aaron Black announced, “before either of you come to blows. Besides which, I dance a ton better than he ever will, Winona. And I’m better looking.”

“Well, hell,” Justin grumbled. But he let Aaron take off with Winona across the dance floor. For one thing, the orchestra changed tunes to a rousing, foot-stomping bluegrass, so any cheek-to-cheek opportunities had abruptly disappeared. For another, Aaron was not only a fellow member of the Texas Cattleman’s Club, but a friend that Justin would trust to the wall—and had. And for yet another reason, damn Aaron, but he was a diplomat in his professional life as well as his private one, and when he motioned a thumb toward the bar, Justin picked up the subtle, tactful clue that, just possibly, he needed to get out of Winona’s sight for a minute or two.

He loped over to the bar, all right…but watching Win whirl off in Aaron’s arms still gave him a case of the glums that a whole well of whiskey couldn’t cure.

They’d always bickered like two toddlers in the same sand-box. Justin didn’t specifically mind that, because they mutually enjoyed teasing each other. But she’d always treated him like a friend, a neighbor, a loved but insufferable big brother. Never as a man.

He must have asked her to marry him fifty times—and all fifty times, she’d cracked up laughing, as if the idea of marrying him was the best joke they’d ever shared.

He got it, he got it. It didn’t matter if half the women in town chased him nonstop. Winona just couldn’t seem to imagine him as a lover. For several years now, Justin kept thinking if she could just need him. If he could just get a chance to show her a different side of himself. If something could jolt her into looking at him differently, maybe, just maybe, he’d have a serious shot with her.

“Hi, Dr. Webb.” Riley Monroe, the Club’s longtime caretaker, had a smile waiting even before Justin reached the bar. “You guys sure outdid yourself with the party tonight. This is quite a shindig. What can I get you?”

“Whiskey. Straight. And thanks, Riley.” Justin didn’t have to wait thirty seconds before the glass of liquid gold was in his hands. Riley might be the Texas Cattleman’s Club night caretaker, but he’d subbed as a bartender for formal functions for as long as Justin could remember. The ladies loved him—likely because he had a dose of flimflam in his character. Occasionally he could spread on the Las Vegas-type charm too thickly for Justin’s taste, but that didn’t matter. Riley was as dependable as the sunshine and as loyal as a hound. Good qualities in any man, and normally Justin would have chatted for a few minutes.

Tonight, he gulped down a big enough sip to feel the whiskey burn some new holes in his tonsils, then leaned back against the bar.

He spotted her, still out there, still high-stepping with Aaron…and damnation, looking like she was having a hell of a good time.

He looked around, determined to get his mind off Winona—and to keep it off. The party was in full swing, and although good taste had to be an issue with so many royal guests, so was having fun Texas-style. Messy, finger-dripping lobster and Texas barbecue was set up on the same table as the fragile hothouse roses and elegant ice sculptures. The formal orchestra was all dressed in black tie—but naturally, it had a damn good fiddling section. The giant boar’s head hanging on one wall looked down on more diamonds and rubies than the bugger had ever seen in the wild, for darn sure, but the blaze of firelight winked on the iron-studded plaque over the entrance door. Leadership, Justice and Peace was burned into the wood—the long-term logo for the Club that had a uniquely special meaning this night.

Justin gulped down another slug of whiskey, trying to ignore the short-haired brunette dancing past him yet again. He winked at a blonde instead. The Princess Anna von Oberland of Obersbourg—at least that’d been her title until she’d married Greg, who was plastered against her on the dance floor in total oblivion to the foot-stomping, sassy rhythm of the current song being played.

The whole purpose of this black-tie shindig was Anna. An outsider would surely find the situation confounding—what could a bunch of Texans possibly have in common with royalty from the small European countries of Obersbourg and Asterland? But months earlier, Princess Anna had been in grave trouble, and the Texas Cattleman’s Club had stepped in to rescue her. Two days from now, twelve citizens from both Asterland and Obersbourg were returning to Europe via private jet—without Anna, of course, who was head over heels for her bridegroom and Texas both. But this party was it. A chance for Anna’s family—and government—to say thank you to the Texas Cattleman’s Club boys…and a chance for the Club to strengthen the ties between the governments.

Justin finished the last gulp of whiskey, thinking how unusual this whole shindig was. Not the party itself. Truth to tell, the Texas Cattleman’s Club used any excuse to throw a formal brawl—and the bigger the better. But the group generally kept a low profile about their “quieter” activities. The world was pretty damn lousy at protecting its innocents. It’s not like the Club stuck its nose in a hornet’s nest if there was any choice, but sometimes an innocent’s life could hang in the balance—a situation where diplomacy either failed or where politics were so ticklish that tuning to normal channels simply didn’t get results.

An edgy thought needled through Justin’s mind, stealing the jubilant party mood and making him shift uneasily on his feet. He was the only Club member who didn’t own a gun. He used to. His grandparents were big in ranching and oil both, and anyone owning a big spread who lived in that kind of isolated country knew how to handle a gun. So did Justin, but that was years ago. At this point, he was starkly aware that he was the only member who never shot anything but a hypodermic. The others had strong military skills in their background. He did his rescuing with a scalpel.

And there was nothing precisely wrong with that, but suddenly his mind was whirling, spinning down dark roads. He’d come home from Bosnia to abruptly and completely change medical specialties. No one had asked him why he’d switched to plastic surgery. No one had noticed that there were certain medical cases he no longer touched. And so far it hadn’t mattered, because none of his private work with the Texas Cattlemen’s Club had forced him into situations that he couldn’t handle. But it could, Justin knew, and he feared letting his Club members down.

So far, thank God, the only one he’d let down was himself.

The orchestra suddenly changed to a slow dance. Swiftly, Justin lifted his head. A redhead winked at him as she sashayed past. Moments later, an elegant blonde wagged him a hello over her dance partner’s shoulder.

He winked back and smiled back, but his heart wasn’t in it. Tarnation, where had Winona disappeared to? Invariably he got a lot of female attention at these gigs, and that was nice, real nice, but primarily the reason he got such a rush from the single females in town was because of his wealthy, jet-set reputation.

The wealth was real enough—his grandparents had left him a ton, on top of what he hauled in as a plastic surgeon. But believe the social columns, and he only did tummy tucks and nose jobs when he wasn’t taking off on impulsive, lavish vacations.

He not only didn’t mind the stupid image. He catered to it. Since people expected him to disappear on a whim, it made his projects and missions with the Texas Cattleman’s Club easier to pull off. In this particular situation, though, the media had been led to believe that some good old Texas boys had “accidentally” become involved in Princess Anna’s dilemma. Justin had never kept his association with the Club a secret. He never kept secrets. Nothing in life got out faster or caused more trouble than a secret. But he did believe in keeping quiet when….

There she was. Win. His narrowed gaze soldered on her brilliant smile. Who was the blasted woman smiling at now? She wasn’t still dancing with Aaron Black. This guy had lighter hair, broader shoulders, wasn’t quite so tall…Justin’s stomach muscles suddenly unclenched. It was Matt. She was just dancing with Matt Walker, and although God knew the rancher was known to turn more than one single woman’s eye, he was also a member of the Club. A friend.

Still, that didn’t mean Justin had to like the way he was holding Win. Or smiling at her, for that damn matter. There was a limit to loyalty and friendship. Come to think of it, there was a limit to loyalty and friendship and honor and ethics.

And that damn limit was Winona Raye.

Aw, hell. He was losing his mind. It was her. She’d always made him lose his mind, and every year it was getting worse. He was beginning to sound like a lovesick cow. More pathetic yet, he was beginning to act like one.

“Hey, Dr. Webb, can I get you another?”

Justin’s head snapped around. “Sure, Riley. I’d appreciate a refill.” Well aware he’d been acting—and thinking—way too soberly for a party, he offered a companionable grin for Riley Monroe and another for the stranger next to him.

The short gentleman offered his hand. “I believe that we met on one other occasion, Dr. Webb. My name is Klimt. Robert Klimt.”

“Oh, yes. Of course, I remember.” Actually Justin had no memory of the man whatsoever, but he scrounged his brain for some connection. Klimt, Klimt…he was almost sure somebody’d told him that Robert Klimt was a minor cabinet member in the Asterland government.

“I was just asking Mr. Monroe about the sign over the entrance door.” Klimt motioned to the Leadership, Justice and Peace logo. “I heard someone say that slogan came from a historical story about the town. I gather that there’s some kind of romantic legend about Royal, Texas, and some jewels?”

“Oh, there is, there is.” Riley topped off Justin’s glass with a flourish, then reached behind the bar for Klimt’s poison—imported schnapps. “Next door to our Texas Cattleman’s Club here is a park. You probably noticed. In the early l800s, there was a mission here, an old adobe church. It’s just part of the park now, but back in the War with Mexico, l846 or so, there was a Texas soldier found a comrade fallen in battle, tried to save him….”

The fiddlers had picked up the pace for “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Justin, half listening to Klimt and Riley, researched the dance floor for the black, bouncing curly hair again. She wasn’t with Aaron, wasn’t with Matthew. In a sense, she really was working this evening, even if she was wearing formal attire. Win had never been a carry-a-gun kind of cop—she normally worked with juveniles, kids in trouble, kids at risk. But everyone on the local police force had been quietly coaxed to attend the gathering tonight, because the whole town wanted this shindig to go well, and Winona was always pulled into special problems like this. She was ideal. Everyone knew her. Everyone trusted her. And that was just great, except that she was so damned beautiful, Justin figured some guy, sometime, was going to zip down those cool defenses of hers….

“… So anyhow, this Texas soldier was just trying to save a wounded comrade, but it was just too late. Our Texas soldier had no idea the guy was carrying these three fancy jewels until he’s caring for the body, trying to bury him. Anyway, the old guy was gone, no identification on him, so he took the jewels back to Royal—”

“And this is a true story?” Klimt asked.

Justin yanked his gaze off the dance floor and looked at Klimt again. The man couldn’t be five foot five, but for a little guy, he sure had the puff of a banty rooster. Everything about him was starched—posture stiff as a ramrod, linen shirt perfectly creased, hair perfectly brushed, smile perfectly appropriate. Even his shoes shone like mirrors. Justin’s glance strayed to the smaller man’s left temple. There was a mole there, right by his eye. There were beauty marks, and then there were moles. This happened to be a plain old ugly mole—Justin immediately looked away; it was just second nature as a doc to notice a precancerous physical condition. And in this case, the minor flaw was particularly striking because everything about the guy was so spiffed-up-perfect in every other way.

Riley was laughing. “Aw, none of the story is true. Or maybe it is. The truth is that none of us seem to care. The town loves the legend, so we’ve been passing it on for years.”

“So tell me more about these jewels,” Klimt requested.

“Well, to start with, each of the jewels refers to the motto on the Texas Cattleman’s Club sign, see? Each of the gems is really unusual, partly because they’re so rare as to be priceless. You couldn’t buy one for love or money, not then and not now. Which made it all the more interesting and mysterious, why this Texas soldier was carrying them—but we’ll never know that answer. The point is that he had them. And one stone was a red diamond—”

“I never heard that diamonds came in a red color.”

“They don’t, they don’t,” Riley said. “Except once in a real rare while. And you study some gem lore, now, and you find red diamonds were the stones of kings, because they were that rare. So you look up in our motto sign, and that’s what the first word—leadership—is about. That’s what the red diamond is a symbol for. Right, Dr. Webb?”

“Right, Riley.” The orchestra had switched tunes to an old-fashioned waltz. Aaron Black glided past with a tall, plain young woman in his arms. Justin thought he recognized her. Pamela something? A teacher? Very shy, very proper—and how typical of Aaron to pick out a wallflower and make sure she wasn’t pining on the sidelines.

Even better that he wasn’t dancing with Win. Justin searched the crowd again. He saw Aaron, he saw Matt, he saw… Finally, he caught a glimpse of her again. This time she was partnered by a man with coal-black hair and striking gray eyes, teeth shining stark white in a face that so rarely smiled—the Sheikh. Ben. And another Texas Cattleman’s Club member, thank God, so it wasn’t like Justin had to worry she wasn’t in a gentleman’s hands.

Exactly.

He trusted Ben the same way he trusted Aaron and Matt. With his life. But trusting them with a single, attractive woman was a different story—particularly when the men had no idea how much he cared about her.

Nor would they.

“Dr. Webb, Mr. Klimt was asking about the other stones….” Riley prompted him.

“Yeah? Well, the legend has it that there’s the red diamond…and then a black harlequin opal…and then an emerald.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Riley agreed, and settled on his elbows on the bar to keep spinning the tale for his willing listener. “See, technically the opal’s the least valuable of the three stones. But a black harlequin opal—she’s a rare mother. And those who get into the magic of gems tend to see the harlequin opal as both having healing power and as somehow having the inner light and power to bring justice—so that’s where the second word in the Club motto comes from. Justice. As an ideal, you know?”

“Yes, Mr. Monroe, I believe I know what an ideal is,” Klimt said impatiently. “And the third stone, the emerald?”

“I’m coming to that one. Around the world, for centuries, emeralds were always considered the stone of peacemakers, and this particular emerald was said to be one giant stone besides. So peace was naturally the third word they put in the Club motto.”

“Leadership, justice, peace,” Klimt echoed. “That’s quite a story. But it seems such an elaborate legend if the stones never really existed.”

“And there’s more to it than that,” Riley said happily. “Our guy brought the stones back to Royal after the war with Mexico. He was gonna be rich, you know, sell ’em, buy a big spread, put up a fancy house and all? And he meant to, only he got home, and oil was found on his homestead. He had black gold coming out of his ears, so he never did need to sell those stones to have his fortune made.”

“So what happened to them?”

Riley peered over Justin’s glass, then Klimt’s, then ducked down to bring up bottles again. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. The Texas Cattleman’s Club…well, there were some men formed this group, back even before Club founder Tex Langley’s time. Some say they first got together to guard the jewels. Some say they were just the leading citizens of Royal, who passed on responsibility for the town’s security from generation to generation. Some say they just used the legend of the jewels to create that motto, because, well, it was a good motto. Those are our values around here. Leadership. Justice. Pea—”

“You think the jewels exist?”

Riley fingered his chest. “Me? Oh, you bet. I think they existed for real, back then, and they exist somewhere now.”

“So what do you think happened to them?”

“Well, everybody’s got a theory….”

Someone cut in on her with the Sheikh. Dakota Lewis. Justin’s eyes tracked the two of them on the dance floor, and he almost had to smile. Dakota wasn’t much on dancing. Win’d be lucky if she left the floor without broken toes if she stuck with him long. Dakota looked what he was—no uniform, but the retired military status was obvious from his unyielding posture and scalped haircut. On the surface he looked tough and hard—and truth to tell he was—but Justin couldn’t worry about Winona with Dakota. Since his divorce, Dakota had shown no interest in any women.

“Well, if the jewels did exist, where is your best guess they’d be hidden?” Klimt asked Riley.

Again Justin turned his head to the other two men. Klimt could only seem to march to one drummer. The town loved its legend. Actually, outsiders seemed to love it just as much; tourists consistently ate it up. But Klimt was pushing it beyond anyone’s normal interest. “If the jewels really existed, they’d be under heavy lock and key,” he said mildly. “We only encourage the legend because it’s good fun for everyone. And who’d want to be the one to break hearts by confessing that Santa Claus didn’t exist? I sure plan to believe until I’m ll0.”

Riley chortled appreciatively. “You saying you believe in Santa or the jewels, Dr. Webb?”

“In Santa, of course. You can have the jewels. I’ll take the loot Santa carries around any day.”

Riley laughed again. Klimt even threw him a sour smile, and, temporarily, Riley seemed to be off the hook for entertaining Mr. Banty Rooster. Klimt, carrying a fresh schnapps, wandered off into the crowd.

And Justin was about to do that, too…until Winona caught his attention again. She was still on the dance floor, but dancing with a stranger this time.

A non-Texan. One of the Asterlanders that Justin didn’t know. He watched the dude’s big hand sift down to her fanny.

She smiled at the guy. And then reached back and removed his hand.

Justin shifted on his feet. Something kicked in his pulse. Not just jealousy—God knew he knew all the shades of green there were in that particularly annoying emotion. But Winona was clearly handling the guy—no matter how protective Justin felt, the truth was, he’d never seen a man that Winona couldn’t handle with both hands tied.

That was, in fact, why she so often got conned into attending these kinds of shindigs. Regular cops were always around for security, but it wasn’t the same. The few serious crimes in Royal tended to be robbery. Sure, there was a crime of passion now and then, a fight at the Royal Diner occasionally, domestic dispute problems and that sort of thing. But basically this just wasn’t a high-crime community. This was oil country. Those who’d made it, made it big. And those who hadn’t made it were paid well, simply because there was ample to go around. The school systems were top-drawer, the whole area supported with fine services. The only “risk” prevalent in a small, ultrarich town like Royal was its being a draw for thieves.

Which was exactly why and how Winona was irreplaceable at these galas. She always showed up in the same evil black dress, the same sassy high heels. It wasn’t that she showed off anything—ever—but there just didn’t seem to be a man born who wouldn’t talk to her. On top of that, she sensed things. She had an intuition when someone or something wasn’t right.

And Justin frowned again suddenly. No guy was eyeing her at that specific moment—and her dance partner had quit trying to put the make on her. But her gaze was roving the room. She tripped in her partner’s arms—which wasn’t that much of a shock, because unless a man let her lead, she couldn’t dance worth a Texas jumping bean. But it was the way she suddenly moved—stiffly, warily—that had Justin suddenly alert and pushing through bodies to get to the other side of the room.

Maybe she didn’t know he was in love with her.

Maybe she’d never think of him as anything more than the old friend she’d grown up with.

For damn sure, maybe she’d never realize that his offers to marry her were sincere.

But if Winona were in trouble, Justin was going to be there for her—whether she wanted him there or not.




Two


Winona was in such trouble.

She’d slept with the same dream two nights running, replaying the evening of the Texas Cattleman’s Club gala. She knew it was just another dream, because the same details kept getting embellished. In the dream, she was breathtakingly gorgeous—which was a lot of fun, but not remotely realistic. She’d been whirling and swirling on the dance floor, not tripping, being graceful—which was another reason she knew it was a dream. And she kept dancing with different men—man after man after man, all of them adorable, all of them charmed by every word that came out of her mouth, fighting to have another spin with her around the floor….

Okay, okay, so these were pretty ridiculous dreams. But they were her dreams, and she was having a great time with them.

Only in this particular night’s version, Justin pulled her into his arms. For “The Tennessee Waltz”—which had to be one of the schmaltziest songs of all time, a song doomed to bring out romantic feelings in even the toughest of women—such as herself—and suddenly she was naked. Whirling around the floor. Waltzing. Without a stitch on. Only being naked was okay, because there wasn’t a soul in the room who realized that she was naked. Except for herself.

And Justin.

Alarm bells started clanging in her ears, but Winona determinedly ignored them. Obviously this wasn’t real, and since this happened to be her personal, wicked dream, she didn’t want to let go of it until she had to.

Justin couldn’t take his eyes off her. She whacked him upside the head—which was such a real, logical thing for her to do that for a second, Winona freaked that this wasn’t a dream—but he didn’t seem to mind, and the whack didn’t seem to stop him from looking, either…a long, slow look that began with her naked toes, dawdled past long slender legs (this was a dream, for sure), past hips without a single spare ounce of fat on them (and a damn good dream), up, his gaze a caress that took in waist and proud, trembling breasts and white throat, then up to her vulnerable, naked eyes.

Yeah, she wanted him.

She’d always wanted him.

Another alarm bell clanged in her mind—but for Pete’s sake, in the privacy of a dream, a girl should be able to be honest with herself. Justin looked like a young Sam Elliot. Tall. Lanky. With a slow, lazy drawl and a lot for a girl to worry about in those sexy eyes. Cover those broad shoulders in a tux and a woman just wanted to sip him in—correction—sip him in and lap him up both.

A vague memory surfaced in her dream. She’d been twelve. Until she’d been fostered with the Gerard family, she’d never had a bike, and she was new to the family, still waiting for someone to hit her, someone to scold her. It’d happen. She just didn’t know when yet, but she was wary this time, prepared to protect herself. She didn’t need anybody to watch out for her…it was just the bike. Oh man, oh man, she wanted to ride a bike so badly, and everybody assumed she knew how, at her age. But she didn’t. And the first time she took it out, it was almost dusk, because no one was on the street then, no strangers to see her.

And Justin had been there when she’d crashed into a tree. Helped her up. Righted the bike. A gorgeous heartthrob of a seventeen-year-old—with a chivalrous streak—enough to make her tough, hard, mean, cold heart go hoboyhoboyhoboy. He’d touched her cheek. Made her laugh. Then she’d had to punch him for helping her, of course. What else could a twelve-year-old do?

More alarm bells clanged in her mind. The same, annoying, insistent alarm bells.

Winona’s eyes popped open on a pitch-black bedroom. She wasn’t twelve and falling into a sinking-deep, mortifying crush with Justin Webb. She wasn’t dancing naked with Justin at the Texas Cattleman’s Club, either. It was just her bedroom, and the telephone was ringing off the hook, at seven in the morning—according to the insane neon dials on the bedside clock.

The instant she read the time, though, she snapped awake fast. There was only one reason for a telephone call at this crazy hour. Trouble. And although technically she was a nine-to-five cop, working with at-risk teens, reality was that kids never got in trouble at nice, convenient hours.

She fumbled for the lamp switch, then hit the ground running, shagging a hand through her tousled hair as she grabbed the receiver.

“Winona?”

Not a kid. An adult’s voice. Her boss, from the precinct. “You know it’s me. What’s wrong, Wayne?”

“You know the jet that was supposed to take off last night for Asterland? The hotsy totsy flight with all the royalty and dignitaries and all?”

“Yes, of course.” So did the whole town.

“Well, something went wrong. She lifted off, barely got in the air before they were radioing in some garbled, panicked message about a problem. Next thing, they’re making an emergency landing about fifteen miles out of town, middle of nowhere, flat as a pancake. Fire broke out—”

She got the gist. The details didn’t matter. “Holy cow. How can I help?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know.” Winona could well imagine Wayne squinting and rubbing the back of his head. He didn’t like trouble in his town. The way Wayne saw it, Royal belonged to him. Anyone took the crease out of those jeans ticked him off. “I’m calling from the scene. Everything’s a mess. This all just happened less than a half hour ago. First thing was getting everybody off the plane safely. Only a couple seem badly injured, the rest are just shaken. But what the hell happened, I don’t know. And I don’t want every Tom, Dick and curious Harry messing with my crime scene. It’s still dark. Only so much I can get done until daylight—”

He was talking more to himself than to her. Winona knew how her boss’s mind worked. “So where could I be the most help? At the hospital? The plane site? The office?”

“Here,” Wayne said bluntly. “You gonna kick me straight to Austin if I admit I just want a woman here?”

“Probably.” Holding the phone clamped to her ear with one hand, she reached for the deodorant on the dresser and thumbed open the lid. Applying deodorant one-handed was tricky, but she’d done it before.

“Well, then, you’re just going to have to kick me. To be honest, everything’s being handled that needs to be. It’s just, that ain’t good enough. Not for this. Dad blame it, we seem to have the makings of a major international incident. First, we have a plane that I’m told is top of the line, perfect, nothing can go wrong—but it still crash-landed. Then we have embassies calling. We have Washington calling. We’ve got fire trucks from Midland to Odessa joining in to help us. Then half the town—naturally—is starting to show up as the sun comes up, it’s like trying to stop an avalanche. Next thing the women’ll be bringing casseroles. It’s a madhouse. We got to find out what caused this plane crash and to do that, we have to get everybody out of here and get some kind of order. I just want my whole team here, that’s all. Even if—”

“Wayne?”

“What?”

“Stop talking. Give me directions.” He did. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” She hung up and started moving. Plucked white panties from the drawer, pulled them on, then hopped into low-rise, boot-cut jeans. She stood up, head scrambled. Not by Wayne’s call in itself. Maybe she was hired to work only with juveniles, but this wasn’t some big eastern city. This was Texas. People pitched in whenever there was a crisis, and no one gave a rat’s toenail over whether helping fit a job description.

But a plane crash-landing was big news—and troubling. She knew every single face that had been on that flight—they’d all been at the Texas Cattleman’s Club gala two nights ago—and a few of them were personal friends of hers besides. Pamela Miles had been flying to Asterland to be an exchange teacher. Lady Helena had made herself known around town because she was the kind to involve herself in caring causes. On top of that…well, the whole world was troubling these days, but not Royal. Things just didn’t happen here. Sure, there were some thefts and squabbles and people who lost their screws now and then, but nothing unusual. Nothing happened there that would ever draw attention from outsiders.

Suddenly she heard a sound—a sound odd and unexpected enough to make her quit jogging down the hall and stop for a second. The sound had seemed like a mewling baby’s cry—but of course, that was ridiculous. When she heard nothing again, she picked up her pace.

In the peach-and-cream kitchen, she flicked on the light, started her espresso machine, then peeled back toward her bedroom, mentally cataloguing what she still had to do. She needed coffee, her hair brushed, an apple for the road, and yeah, something to wear above the waist. She never wore a uniform—if you were going to dress for success with kids, you wore jeans and no symbols or labels to put them off—but that wasn’t to say she could arrive at a crash site topless. There were times she fantasized about giving Wayne an attack of apoplexy—God knew her boss was a hard-core chauvinist—but not today.

She pulled a sports bra over her head, burrowed in a drawer for an old black sweater…then jerked her head up again.

Damn. Somewhere there was a sound. An off-kilter, didn’t-belong-in-her-house sound. A puppy crying? A cat lost in the neighborhood somewhere nearby?

Silently, still listening, she straightened the sweater, pulled on socks, shoved her feet into boots, grabbed a brush. Her hair looked like a squirrel’s nest, but then that’s how it looked when it was freshly styled, too. A glance at her face in the bathroom mirror somehow, inexplicably, made her think of Justin again…and that dream in which his gaze had been all over her naked body.

She scowled in the mirror. First, strange dreams, then strange sounds—she’d seemed to wake up in la la land today, and on a morning when she needed to be her sharpest.

Swiftly she thumbed off the light and started hustling for real. In the kitchen, she poured coffee, then backtracked to the hall closet for her jacket, scooping up the stuff she needed: car keys, an apple, a lid for her espresso, some money for lunch. Almost the minute she finished collecting her debris, her feet seemed to be instinctively making a detour. One minute. That’s all she needed to check all the rooms and make absolutely positive that nothing was making that odd sound from inside the house. It wasn’t as if she lived in a mighty mansion that would take hours to check out. Her ranch-style house was downright miniscule—but it was hers. Hers and the bank’s, anyway.

She’d put a chunky down payment on it last year. She was twenty-eight, time to stop renting. Time to start making sure she had a place and security and in a neighborhood with a lot of kids and a good school system. Her bedroom was cobalt-blue and white, and, since decorating choices scared her, she’d just used the same colors in the bathroom. A second bedroom she used as a den, where she stashed her TV and computer—and anything she didn’t have time to put away. The third bedroom was the biggest, and stood starkly empty—Winona wasn’t admitting the room was intended for a baby, not to anyone, at least not yet. But it was.

The kitchen was a non-cook’s dream, practical, with lots of make-easy machines and tools, the counters and walls covered with warm peach tiles that led down into the living room. A cocoa couch viewed the backyard, bird feeders all over the place, lots of windows…damn. There, she heard the sound again. The mewling cry.

Either that or she was going out of her mind, which, of course, was always a possibility. But she unlatched the front door and yanked it open.

Her jaw surely dropped ten feet. Her ranch house was white adobe, with redbrick arches in the doorways. And there, in the doorway shadow, was a wicker laundry basket. The basket appeared to be stuffed with someone’s old, clean laundry, rags and sheets…but damned if that wasn’t where the crying sound emanated from.

The car keys slipped from her fingers and clattered to the cold steps. The apple slipped from her other hand and rolled down the drive, forgotten. She hunched down, quickly parting the folds and creases of fabric.

When she saw the baby, her heart stopped.

Abandoned. The baby had actually been abandoned.

“Ssh, ssh, it’s all right, don’t cry….” So carefully, so gingerly, she lifted out the little one. The morning was icy at the edges, the light still a predawn-gray. The baby was too swathed in torn-up blankets and rags to clearly make out its features or anything else.

“Ssh, ssh,” Winona kept crooning, but her heart was slamming, slamming. Feelings seeped through her nerves, through her heart from a thousand long-locked doors, bubbled up to the pain of naked air. She’d been abandoned as a child. She knew what an abandoned child felt like…and would feel like, her whole life.

A crinkle of paper slipped out of the basket. It only took Winona a few seconds to read the printed message.

Dear Winona Raye,

I have no way to take care of my Angel. You are the only one I could ask. Please love her.

Winona’s cop experience immediately registered several things—that there’d be no way to track the generic paper and ordinary print, that the writing was simple but not uneducated, and that somehow the mother of the baby knew her specifically—well enough to identify her name, and well enough to believe she was someone who would care for a baby.

Which, God knows, she would.

As swiftly as Winona read the note, she put it aside. There was no time for that now. The baby was wet beneath the blankets, the morning biting at the January-freezing temperatures. She scooped up the little one and hustled inside the warm house, rocking, crooning, whispering reassurances…all past the gulp in her throat that had to be bigger than the state of Texas.

God knew what she was going to do. But right now nothing mattered but the obvious. Taking care of the child. Making sure the little one was warm, dry, fed, healthy. Then Winona would try to figure out why anyone would have left the baby on her doorstep specifically…and all the other issues about what the child’s circumstances might be.

That fast, that instantaneously, Win felt a bond with the baby that wrapped around her heart tighter than a vise. The thing was, as little as she knew—she already knew too much.

She was already positive that the child was going to get thrown in the foster-care system, because that’s what happened when a child was deserted. Even if a parent immediately showed up, the court would still place the child in the care of Social Services—at least temporarily—because whatever motivated the parent to abandon the child could mean it wasn’t safe in their care. A change of heart wasn’t enough. An investigation needed to be conducted to establish what the child’s circumstances were.

Winona knew all those legal procedures—both from her job and from her life. And although she knew her feelings were irrational—and annoyingly emotional—it didn’t stop the instinct of bonding. The fierceness of caring. The instantaneous heart surge—even panic—to protect this baby better than she’d been protected. To save this baby the way she almost hadn’t been saved. To love this baby the way—to be honest—Winona never had been and never expected to be loved.



There were several coffee machines spread through Royal Memorial Hospital, but only one that counted. After he’d switched from trauma medicine to plastic surgery, Justin had generally tried to avoid the Emergency Room, but by ten that morning, he was desperate. Groggy-eyed, he pushed the coins into the machine, punched his choice of Straight Black, kicked the base—he knew this coffee machine intimately—and then waited.

He wasn’t standing there three minutes before he got a series of claps and thumps on his back. It was, “Hey, Dr. Webb, slumming down here?” and “Hi, Doc, we sure miss you” and “Dr. Webb, it’s nice to see you with us again.”

As soon as he could yank the steaming cup out of the machine, he gulped a sip. Burned all the way down. The taste was more familiar than his own heartbeat. Battery acid, more bitter than sludge, and liberally laced with caffeine.

Fantastic.

He inhaled another gulp, and then aimed straight ahead. Down the hall, through the double glass doors, was his Plastic Surgery/Burn Unit. The community believed that the wing had been anonymously donated, which was fine with Justin. What mattered to him was that in two short years, the unit had already developed the reputation for being the best in the state. He couldn’t ask for more. The equipment was the best and the technology the newest. The walls were ice-blue, the atmosphere sterile, serene, quiet. Perfect.

Nothing like the chaotic loony bin in the ER. Royal Memorial was a well-run small hospital, but a crisis stretched the capacity of its trauma unit—and the crash landing of the Asterland jet earlier that morning was still stressing the trauma team. Nobody’d had time to pick up towels and drapes. Staff jogged past in blood-and debris-stained coats. A kid squealed past him. A shrieking mom was trying to chase the kid. A nurse trailed both of them, looking harassed and taking mother-may-I giant steps. He heard babies’ cries, codes on the loudspeaker. Lights flashed; phones rang; carts wheeled and wheedled past. Somebody’d spilled a coffee; someone else had thrown up, so those stinks added to all the other messes and noises. Just being around it all made something clutch in his chest. Something cruel and sharp.

Justin loved his Plastic Surgery/Burn Unit. He made a difference in his Burn Unit, for God’s sake. He wanted nothing to do with trauma medicine anymore. Nothing.

He sucked down another gulp of sludge, and this time aimed down the hall and refused to look back…but he suddenly caught sight of the top of a curly-haired head coming out of a side room.

“Winona?” He wanted to shake himself. One look at her—that’s all it took—and his hormones line-danced the length of his nerves and sashayed back again. At least he promptly forgot his old hunger for the ER. “Win?”

Her head jerked up when she heard his voice. That was the first he noticed that she was carrying a baby—not that there was anything all that unusual about Winona being stuck with a kid in the Emergency Room. Her job often put her in the middle between a child and school or parents. But something about her expression alerted Justin that this was nothing like an average day for Win.

Her smile for him, though, was as natural and familiar as sunshine. “I figured you’d be in the thick of this,” she said wryly. “What a morning, huh? Were you out at the site of the crash landing?”

“Yeah, first thing. I’m not one of the doctors on call for something like that, but you know how fast news travels in Royal. I got a call, someone who’d heard there was a fire associated with the crash—so I hightailed it out there, too. I’ll tell you, it was a real chaotic scene. But any outsider was just in the way, so all I did was the obvious, help the trauma team get patients routed back here. Particularly those going into my Burn Unit.”

Her eyes promptly sobered. “I haven’t heard anything about how many serious injuries there were yet. Was it bad?”

Something had happened to her. Justin had no more time for idle chitchat than he suspected she did, but he kept talking, because it gave him a chance to look her over. His gaze roved from the crown of her head to her toes—the way the jeans cupped her fanny, the boots, her wildly tousled hair, the way her cheeks had pinked from the slap of a cold morning wind—none of that was unusual. But there was something different in her eyes. A fever-brightness. She stood there, rocking, rocking the bundle in her arms—the baby made no sound at all—but that liquid softness in Win’s eyes was rare. Vulnerable. And Winona just never looked vulnerable if she could help it.

A blood cart pushed between them, but he wasn’t about to stop their conversation just because all hell was still breaking loose. “Things could have been a lot worse. At least no one died. In a crash landing, that’s pretty much a miracle in itself. Robert Klimt—one of the minor cabinet members from Asterland? He was knocked unconscious, head injury—I don’t know how he is right now, I took care of some minor burns and left him to the neurologist. Pamela Miles was also on that flight—”

“I know, I know! She was headed overseas to be an exchange teacher in Asterland—did you see her, Justin? Do you know if she’s okay?”

“I didn’t take care of her myself, but I heard she was basically fine. Lady Helena, though—”

“Serious injuries?”

“Well, not life-threatening. Complicated break in her ankle. And once she’s done with the bone man, for sure she’s going to be mine. She did get some burns—”

“Oh, God. She’s such a beautiful woman.”

Justin couldn’t say more on Helena. For him to discuss a patient, any patient—he just never did. Not with anyone, even Winona. But he still hadn’t taken his eyes off her and didn’t want to give her the excuse to shoot past him. “Well, at this point, I think everyone on the flight’s been through here, checked out, even if they seemed to be fine. And the whole town was as shook up as the passengers on that flight, it seems like, because people were flooding in right and left.”

“You didn’t hear what caused the emergency landing, did you?”

On that he had to lift his eyebrows. “I was just going to ask you that, Ms. Police Officer. If anyone had answers, I figure it would be the cops first.”

“Well, normally I’d be elbowing my way to the middle of the mess from the start,” she admitted wryly, “but I got sidetracked.”

When she lifted the corner of the pale pink flannel blanket for him to get a peek, Justin finally figured out what the emotion was in her eyes. Fierceness. The fierce protectiveness of a mama lion for her cub, or a mama eagle for her eaglet. There was nothing strange about thinking of Win and motherhood, or of her wanting to be a mom, but it just hadn’t crossed his mind before what a major thing it might be for her. His knuckles—almost accidentally—brushed her hand when he touched the baby’s cheek.

“Don’t tell me anyone hurt this darling, or I’ll have to go out and kill someone,” he said gently.

Her voice melted. “Oh, God. Justin. That’s exactly how I felt. Isn’t she beautiful?”

Considering she was swaddled up with nothing showing but about two inches of face and some blond spriggy hairs, Justin was hard-pressed to use the word beautiful. On the baby. “What’s the story?”

“Her name’s Angel. I ran out my front door this morning, headed for the crash site—Wayne called me around seven in the morning—and there she was. In a basket on the doorstep. With a note saying her name was Angel and asking me, specifically, to take care of her.”

Justin felt his pulse still. “This isn’t the first time you’ve had to handle an abandoned kid,” he said carefully.

“No, of course not. But this baby’s so young that obviously I had to bring her here first. I’m sure you know the beat. This day and age, a deserted baby could mean drugs or AIDS or all kinds of things in the child’s background—so before we can do anything else, we have to know the state of the child’s health for sure.”

“And…?”

“And Dr. Julian gave her a terrific bill of health. Just under three months old, he thought.”

“So, the next step is…?” He was watching her face, not the baby’s.

“Finding the mother, of course. It’s not like Royal is that huge. And if anyone has a bird’s-eye view to kids in trouble, it’s got to be me in my job. So if anyone can track down the parents, I’ve got the best shot.”

“Uh-huh. And where will the baby go in the meantime?”

Her head shot up. Blue eyes blazed on his. “I spent years in foster care,” she said belligerently.

“I know you did.”

“The system’s overcrowded. Even in an area this wealthy, there’s no answer for it. Adoption is at least a possibility for a blond, blue-eyed baby—but not for this one, not for some time. Even if I run a hundred miles an hour and get answers zip-fast, there’s still no way to rush a—”

“Win, you sound like you’re fighting with a judge in a court of law. You’re just talking to me. What’s the deal here? I take it you want to keep the baby?”

Her shoulders sank, losing all that tough stiffness. And again her eyes got that softness, that terribly fierce vulnerability that he’d never seen before. “No one’s going to let me keep her. I’m single. And I’m working full-time besides. But right now—especially today—the town’s in chaos because of the Asterland jet crash. So the only thing that makes sense—”

Justin heard his code paged on the loudspeaker. An orderly pushed past both of them to clean up the examining room. Bodies were still hustling in both directions, they were blocking the hallway—and the baby suddenly opened her rosebud mouth, yawned, and blinked open sleepy, priceless, exquisite blue eyes.

He looked at the baby…and then at Winona again. “We’ve both got our hands full right now,” he said casually. “How about if I stop by for a short visit right after dinner?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Oh yeah, he thought, he definitely did.




Three


Just as Winona lifted a fork to her mouth, she heard the baby’s thin cry. Somehow there’d been no time for lunch. Now it looked as if the odds weren’t too hot on sneaking some dinner, either. Not that she minded. Who needed food? Dropping the fork with a clatter, she charged toward the living room. “I’m coming, Angel! I’m coming!”

Well, shoot. It wasn’t quite that easy—as a woman or a temporary mom—to deliver on those optimistic words. Although it was only the distance of a fast gallop between the kitchen and the living room, reaching the baby was becoming more challenging by the hour.

She’d only called a couple of neighbors that afternoon, but it seemed that the news about the baby had spread and help had been pouring in nonstop. The whole neighborhood was kid-studded—which was one of the reasons she’d chosen to buy her house here—and almost everyone had some baby gear stored in their garages or back rooms. Buying anything would have been silly: Winona had no idea how long she would be allowed to keep the baby. But her neighbors’ loans had been extravagantly generous. She had to dodge a half-dozen car seats, a couple of high chairs, several playpens and walkers, backpacks, front packs, diaper bags, toys, enough blankets to warm a child in the Arctic, and heaps of baby clothes. Finally she reached the white wicker bassinet with the pink quilted lining.

Inside was the princess, who happened to be garbed in her fifth outfit of the day. Winona figured they surely wouldn’t go through quite so many clothes tomorrow. She was getting close to mastering disposable diapers.

“There, there. There, there….” She picked up the precious bundle, and started the crooning, patting and rocking movements that seemed to be the eternal song of mothers. But on the inside, panic started to ooze through her nerves.

“Are we hungry, sweetheart? Wet? Do you want the TV on? Off? More lights, less lights? More noise, less noise? Are you cold? Constipated—no, come to think of it, I’m positive that’s not a problem. Are you mad? Bored? Sick? Sad? Whatever it is, I’ll fix it, I swear. Just don’t cry. There, there. There, there, love….”

The panic was new. All day, she’d been in seventh heaven. Babies had been on her heart’s agenda for a long time, and no, of course Angel wasn’t hers and wasn’t likely to be for long. Winona was trying her best to be completely realistic about that. It was just…carrying the little one around had seemed as natural as breathing. There’d been a thousand things to do, starting with taking the baby to the hospital for a checkup, then carting her back to the station, talking to Wayne, then claiming some computer time, then calling some moms in the neighborhood before stopping at a store for supplies. The busier she was, the more the baby seemed to love it. But then they’d come home.

Alone.

And Angel had lived up to her name tag all day until, it sure seemed, the point when Winona realized she was alone with the baby. And knew nothing about child care. The baby had barely let out a peep all day, but now she seemed to be scaling up every few minutes. The darling either desperately missed her real mother, or Angel had suddenly figured out that she was stuck with a complete rookie.

The doorbell rang. Winona whipped around, thinking, please, God, not another car seat or another well-meant baby blanket. Hunger was starting to set in. Exhaustion.

A nightmare-strength panic.

Before she could reach the front door, the knob rattled and Justin poked his head in. Her pulse promptly soared ten feet. There was no stopping it. So typically, even after a long workday, he looked as revved as the satin-black Porsche in her drive. He stepped in like a vital burst of energy, his face wind-stung, his eyes snapping life, his grin teasing her before he’d even said a word. “Win? Are you there—well, I can see you’re there. And a little on the busy side, huh?”

“I never thought you meant it about coming over! Come in, come in!” She wished she’d had a chance to brush her hair and put on lipstick, but what was the difference? It was just Justin. And no matter how mercilessly he ended up teasing her, she was thrilled to see him. “What do you know about babies?” she called over the caterwauling.

“Nothing.”

Never mind. She didn’t care what he knew or didn’t know. She closed the door with him firmly on the inside. He was still another body. She wasn’t alone. “You’re a doctor, you have to know something—”

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to tell my patients that for a long time.” He peeled off his sheepskin jacket, took a step toward her living room and froze. “Holy cow. Did you have a cattle drive in here this afternoon?”

“Very funny. It’s just baby gear. Loans from the neighbors. Now listen, Justin, whether you know anything or not—you could hold her for a second, couldn’t you? I just need a minute. Time to get some dry diapers and fresh clothes and a bottle warmed up—”

“Okay.”

“It won’t take me long to do any of that stuff—”

“Okay.”

“Don’t panic because she’s crying. She’s really a darling. I just have to figure out what’s wrong. That’s all there is to it. You figure out what’s wrong, you fix it, she quits—”

“Hey, Win. Could you try and believe it’s okay? I really did come over to help.”

It’s not that she didn’t believe Justin. It was just that his offer to help seemed so unlikely. The town may have labeled Justin a devil-may-care bachelor, but Winona had always known better than that. Something had happened to him in Bosnia, because he’d come back a different person—quieter, more closed in, and he’d left his once-loved trauma medicine specialty in favor of plastic surgery. But his reputation as a surgeon spanned the southwest. His participation with the Texas Cattleman’s Club was another unrecognized involvement. And she’d never forgotten meeting him back when she was twelve, on the first day she’d been fostered with the Gerards. To her, he’d been the best-looking teenage guy in the universe. Even that young, he’d had the sexiest eyes. The laziest drawl in Texas. A way of looking at a woman. And a way of picking up a little girl—and her bike—from the sidewalk, and somehow making her skinned pride feel better in spite of impossible odds.

Most of their relationship, though, he’d been an inescapable, nonstop tease. He’d shown up to check out the guy who’d taken her to the senior prom, had a conniption fit when she sunned in a bikini, regularly asked her to marry him as if he thought that was funny, taught her to drive stick shift, and damnation, held her head when she’d come home from a party after her first (and last) experience with rum-and-colas. Short and sweet, he’d been a friend in her life forever—when he wasn’t being insufferable. And it was forgetting that “insufferable” adjective that was tough for her.

“What do you mean, you came over to help?” she asked suspiciously.

“Just what I said.” He scooped the baby out of her arms. “Right now, though, we don’t have a prayer of talking over the sound of Ms. Bawler. Go. Do the bottle thing. And I’ll try and figure out the diapers if you’ll steer me toward the supplies.”

Her hand shot to her chest. A mere twenty-eight and she was almost having a heart attack. “You’re volunteering to change a diaper? Have you had these symptoms long? Are you suffering from fever? Brain tumor? A history of lunacy you never mentioned before?”

For those insults, he tousled her hair—as if it wasn’t already a royal mess—before walking off with the baby. The phone rang six times over the next hour, and two more neighbors stopped by bearing car seats and blankets. But somehow all the confusion and running wasn’t the same with Justin there. The terror factor had disappeared. Contrary to his claims of inexperience, he acted like a veteran with both diaper sticky tabs and burping. And Angel seemed to forget that she was ticked off at the world in general. At the first sound of his voice, she started blowing bubbles and drooling.

“Just like all the other women in town,” Winona muttered.

“Pardon?”

“I said the baby fell in love with you from the first instant you picked her up.”

“Yeah, I noticed she quit crying. You think she recognizes a good-looking guy, young as she is? Someone with class and taste and brilliance—hey!”

As hard as she’d tossed the couch pillow at his head, he just pushed it aside with a grin. By then it was around eight o’clock. Angel had not only been fed, burped and changed, but she’d settled down in the bassinet. Winona couldn’t quite remember when Justin had ordered her to sit on the cocoa couch and pushed a hot plate of food in her hands, but she finally seemed to have caught some dinner; she was slouched down like a lazy slug and one stockinged foot was keeping the bassinet-rocker in motion.

Justin—for the first and likely only time in the universe—was kneeling at her feet. She’d felt obligated to mention, several times, how much she approved of his kneeling position. “It’s really where all men belong. In a submissive position to their superiors—meaning we women, of course. Waiting on us. Obeying us. Working to please us—”

“If you don’t cut it out, I’m going to have to get up and tickle you. Then you’ll start laughing and screaming. Then you’ll risk waking the baby—”

“All right, all right. You’re so right. I don’t want to wake her up,” she agreed. Still, it was tough, not pushing his tease-buttons, when he looked so adorable. He was trying to bring one of the borrowed baby walkers back to life, which was why he was hunkered down on her peach carpet, surrounded by nuts and bolts and tools. She usually saw him flying around town in his Porsche, or looking like Mr. Drop-Dead-Handsome Doctor at some gathering. And maybe these were images that Justin chose to cultivate, but Winona had still had the feeling that finding a place where he could kick off his boots and just tinker wasn’t something Justin got to do often.

The TV was on in the background, but neither was watching the sitcom. They just wanted the chance to click up the volume if any further developments were reported on the Asterland plane emergency landing. Temporarily, though, they might as well have been on an island alone together—except for the sleeping baby.

“So…what’d your boss say about the Angel situation?” Justin asked her.

“Well, deserted and neglected kids generally come under my bailiwick, anyway, so Wayne didn’t have to give me permission to handle the problem. It was automatic. He did seem a little startled when I showed up at the station this afternoon with the baby in a front pack. But no one at the station right now has time to worry about anything but the plane crash. Everyone’s descended on Royal today, if not in person than through the wires—from state cops to feds, TV and press, the aviation safety folks, diplomats and state people—”

“I know.” Justin motioned toward the TV. In the hour they’d had the tube switched on, the local news had interrupted every few minutes to provide an update on the circus. “My Texas Cattleman’s group was especially involved with the citizens from both countries. We’ve offered to help, and I hope the authorities take us up on it. I realize that they have to sweep for evidence and prints and all first…but you can see how much this crisis is driving the town nuts. Everyone wants to know the same thing. What caused that emergency landing? Fine, if it was a mechanical failure, but could it have been terrorists or sabotage?”

“From what I’ve heard, that specific jet has an outstanding history for being one of the safest planes in the air. And she was deluxe to the nth degree, no expense spared for security or comfort. It’s pretty hard to swallow that it was just a plain old mechanical failure—at least if the problem was carelessness.” Winona pulled a couch pillow on to her lap, finding it hard to take her eyes off Justin. Last she knew, he’d long reached the multi-millionaire status…which made it all the more fun to watch him bumbling with a screwdriver.

“So what was the buzz at your station house? Your cops find any reason to think there was foul play connected to the emergency landing?”

“There was no evidence leading in that direction this afternoon…but really, it’s way too soon to say. They may have collected all the relevant evidence, but it will still take weeks of testing procedures before we have complete answers. The whole world knows how much tension there was between the two countries of Asterland and Obersbourg, though…and that Texas party was the first and only thing that brought those two countries together and talking in more than a decade. I really think you’re right, Justin. You and the Texas Cattleman’s Club guys should be brought in, both to question and get some advice, and I’ll be surprised if you don’t get that call.”

“I wasn’t as involved as some of the other members. But I still want to help, if there’s any chance. And I did know all of the people involved.” Justin righted the baby walker, pushed it around the carpet. Sighed. And then turned it upside down to work on it again. “Frightening. To think you could eat dinner with someone, shake their hand, make a joke and laugh with them…and that they could deliberately have had something to do with a near-fatal plane crash.”

“Or that someone could intend harm to so many good people.” She leaned forward to peer over the edge of the bassinet. She cared about the plane crash. She cared about her job. But at the moment—all day really—only one thing dominated her mind and heart.

“You’re not going to wake her up again, are you?”

Winona’s jaw dropped. “Are you out of your mind? I may have only been a mother for a day, but I learned that hours ago. Never wake up a sleeping baby. And if you do, I’ll have to kill you.”

His chuckle tickled her into a smile, but then he shot her a more serious look. “So, what’s the deal on your squirt there? What’s the legal process—what happens to her now?”

“Well, the first thing you already know. An abandoned baby starts out with a medical checkup, no matter how healthy the child appears to be. In this day of AIDS and drug use and all, there’s no placing a baby—even temporarily—without knowing the health picture. But that was a piece of cake. She couldn’t have gotten a cleaner bill of health.”

“Yeah, so you said this morning. So, then what?”

“Then, normally, she’d be turned over to Social Services, and they’d find a foster-care arrangement for her.” Winona’s arms tightened around the pillow. “The court will get more directly involved as soon as something more definitive is established about the parents. And that’s my job. Finding the parents. Especially the mom. I have to find out what their story is, and why the baby was abandoned.”

“And how do you go about doing that?”

It seemed odd that she’d never told Justin any details about her job before, but then, there’d never been a reason for this kind of thing to come up in conversation. “There are lots of ways for me to pick up clues. Now that I have the baby’s age pinned down—at least ballpark—I can start checking hospital records, see if I can get a lead into young women having babies at that time. Then I can check the papers, same reason. Check the 9ll calls, emergencies, abuse, deaths, anything called in around the time the child was abandoned, to see if there could be any obvious connection.”

“Uh-huh. What else?”

“Then…well, after that, I zoom straight for my at-risk kids. You know how it is in Royal. This is a wealthy community, so on the surface it’d seem we wouldn’t have that many kids in trouble. But I keep finding that the very rich and very poor have a lot in common. In both types of families, there are kids raising themselves. Alone a lot of hours. Parents moving near an edge with drugs or alcohol. Divorces, absentee adults. Any way you cut it, it’s the lonely kids who tend to sleep around—and look for trouble. So one of the things I always do is run a computer check for runaways.”

“And—?”

“And then I’ll check the truancy lists. The arrest lists. Then I’ll call the high schools and junior highs for girls with a high absentee record. Talk to the counselors about girls who were pregnant. I started some things in motion this afternoon, but it’d be pretty unusual to land answers overnight. It almost always takes some time.”





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