Maggie's Guardian (Harlequin Super Romance) Read online

  “Tessa.”

  This time Noah whispered her name—as if their shared past drew his breath from depths she hadn’t known she’d reached. His gaze washed her with the same insatiable need she felt. A yearning that had nothing to do with sex.

  They were two people who’d lost everything. Seeing him brought it all back. The joy as well as the pain. Joy scared Tessa more. She didn’t want to remember that much happiness now that she’d lost it.

  “I don’t want you here.” What she meant was she never wanted to need him again.

  His grimace acknowledged what she couldn’t say. “Who did this to David? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She wasn’t. She wanted to cry—for David, for his daughter, for herself and maybe a little for this empty-eyed shadow of Noah.

  Dear Reader,

  Imagine that the loss of your beloved baby girl has broken your marriage. You’ve taken refuge in a small Maine town, working with your best friend in a law practice that drags you back into life. But then you find your friend murdered, leaving you as his daughter’s guardian—and somehow as the prime suspect.

  Only the threat of losing another child would make you call your ex-husband for help. That’s what happens to Tessa Gabriel when she becomes Maggie’s guardian. She calls the best homicide detective she’s ever known, her former husband, Noah—and he comes because he believes clearing her of the charge might make up for letting her down in the past.

  I hope you’ll enjoy finding out what Maggie has to teach Noah and Tessa as they discover the killer who’s still threatening Tessa and their future.

  I’d love to hear what you think. You can reach me at [email protected].

  Best wishes,

  Anna Adams

  Books by Anna Adams

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  896—HER DAUGHTER’S FATHER

  959—THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

  997—UNEXPECTED BABIES

  1023—UNEXPECTED MARRIAGE

  Maggie’s Guardian

  Anna Adams

  To the ones who were there and to those who could only

  watch. We continue to survive September 11.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  ICY RAINDROPS PLUMMETED out of the gray sky to pound on homicide detective Noah Gabriel’s head. He planted one foot in front of the other, hoping to reach District C6’s station door before he dropped to his knees. He’d stayed out too late, drunk too much and recounted each second of his broken marriage too thoroughly last night. His ritual for the past eighteen months.

  He kept meaning to put Tessa and their lost baby girl out of his mind, just as Tessa had turned her back on him. But he never drank quite enough. And the next day, he always battled a hangover that felt like an anvil player composing inside his head.

  He reached the sidewalk in front of the station just as two female patrol officers burst through the glass doors. Their high-pitched voices sliced through his scalp, excising the last functioning sections of his brain. Ducking around the women, he skidded on an empty soda can and rammed his shoulder into the building’s dirty brick wall.

  Laughter at his expense actually raised the women’s voices to a more lethal tone. Noah dragged the door shut behind him to escape the pain, but once he was inside, the disgruntled swearing and shouts that grew louder as the afternoon progressed battered him.

  Suck it up, he told himself, taking the stairs two at a time. By the top, he considered passing out. Fighting dizziness and unfamiliar pangs he faintly recognized as hunger, he followed the squares of gray—once white—tile floor that led him to his desk.

  “Gabriel,” his commander, Captain Larry Baxton, barked.

  Noah concentrated on not looking as if he wanted to kill someone before he let himself focus on the other man. Baxton brandished a fistful of pink telephone message slips.

  “Glad you could make it—why don’t you let these people know I’m not your secretary?” He slammed the messages on Noah’s desk. “We have two from your ex-wife, and I’ve lost count of the rest—from some police chief in Maine. I especially don’t want to talk to that Podunk crossing guard again. Got it?”

  Baxton pivoted toward his own office. From their respective desks, Noah’s fellow detectives eyed him. They weren’t idiots, and they couldn’t know he’d made sure his vices hadn’t begun to compromise a gift for catching bad guys. They seemed to think he’d forgotten this group of men and women were a homicide team.

  With their stares like stilettos in his back, he dropped into his torn leather chair. His body weight butted it into a stanchion that bounced him forward again. He ignored the knowing snickers that insinuated he’d come to work under the influence. Why try to prove he was sober?

  He scooped up the scattered messages. From the top slip, Tessa’s name leaped off the “who called” line.

  His mouth tightened, a painful, involuntary response. As “Tessa” whispered inside his mind, angry grief stirred to a boil. Not content to raise hell in his off-duty head, she had to sabotage his working hours, too?

  He held the pink paper square over the garbage can beside his desk and then opened his fingers. Not bothering to watch it flutter away, he concentrated blurring eyes on the next message. Left by Chief Richard Weldon.

  The chief was from Prodigal, Maine. Noah glanced back at the garbage can. Tessa had moved to Prodigal after the divorce. It’d be one hell of a coincidence if she and the chief of police in her new hometown wanted to talk to him about something different.

  He searched for Tessa’s other message. Beneath her name, he read the words, “She said never mind.”

  Never mind? She called him out of the blue after eighteen months, and she thought “never mind” was enough explanation?

  He stared at the stack of Weldon’s messages. Baxton had just slashed the word “urgent” across each of the slips. Urgent must be an understatement. Tessa wouldn’t have called him for anything less vital than the end of the world.

  He toed his chair in a circle until he faced his desk again. The divorce Tessa had demanded gave him an excuse to ignore her summons.

  But if she was in trouble? He reached for the phone, his body a drum that vibrated in time with his pulse. The sight of his own shaking hand made him back off. He shrugged out of his black leather jacket. He’d started to sweat.

  Get a grip. He closed his eyes and faced truth in the darkness. A grip on what? Pressing his fingertips hard against his throbbing temples, he fought wave after wave of pain. Nothing put Tessa in perspective. And her “never mind” hadn’t let him off the hook. She wouldn’t have called if her problem was something she could handle by herself.

  He stared at the phone again, dreading the rejection in her voice, disillusionment that had swallowed any softer feelings she’d had for him. He’d survived the eighteen months since his daughter’s death, by learning to make himself numb. Opening his eyes again, he swiped his hand across his mouth.

  What kind of man let a woman do him this way?

  “If you’re sick, go to the men’s room.”

  Noah turned, an answer ready for the smart-ass colleague who’d offered such sound advice, but the Ann Landers with the big mouth was actually a suspect being booked.

  Noah planted both p
alms on his desk. He could either sit or clock the guy. And clocking the guy might impinge on their case against him. They didn’t get jaywalkers up here. Just scum who’d killed one or more innocent human beings.

  Breathing deeply, he stared at Richard Weldon’s name. He’d talk to Weldon first, and maybe he wouldn’t even have to call Tessa. He snatched up the receiver and then punched in the number. After one ring a man identified himself as the police chief.

  “Noah Gabriel, returning your call.”

  “I’ve tried to reach you all day.”

  He took enough of that tone from Baxton. Noah eyed the stack of messages. “Yeah?”

  “It’s about your wife. I don’t know how to tell you—I’m not even sure I should tell you, but I’ve put her in an office in my station.”

  “So?” An office—that was Tessa’s big crisis?

  “Look, buddy, when your wife called you, I heard her ask for ‘Detective’ Gabriel. As a professional courtesy, I’m letting you know I have her.”

  “For what?” He wasn’t holding her for anything big if he’d only shut her up in an office. Noah almost smiled as he pictured Tessa’s reaction to being “held” at all. Five feet four inches of trained lawyer, dogged independence and, if you crossed her, notable fury. He remembered how he’d crossed her, and his urge to smile passed. He swallowed hard, his throat muscles contracting.

  He’d been the one to find their baby daughter in her crib that hellish morning. Her name stole across his thoughts, too. “Keely,” a body blow that caught him unaware. He usually tried not to let himself think her name. He hadn’t said it out loud since her funeral.

  Not since the moment he’d realized Tessa blamed him. He’d checked the baby last the night before she’d…

  But SIDS gave you no warning.

  He hadn’t known he should plant himself beside his infant daughter and listen to her breathe all night. He hadn’t even known he should have kissed her cheek one more time, stroked the downy black hair off her warm forehead before her skin grew cold. He shook his head and swallowed, trying not to get sick at the memories that raked him.

  Rage, his abiding companion for the past year and a half, clenched his hand around the receiver. He saw himself throwing the telephone through the nearest damn window—but he didn’t do it.

  Civilized men held on. For what? How the hell was he supposed to know?

  “What did you say, Chief Weldon?” Even to himself, he sounded as if he were strangling.

  Weldon hesitated a lengthy moment. “I’m letting you know your wife may be in deep trouble.”

  “I’m not married.” He’d said it so many times he’d learned how to make it sound as if it didn’t hurt.

  “Your ex-wife, then. Man, I don’t know what’s wrong with you two, but you’d both better listen to me. She found her partner dead in his office today, stabbed. At least she says she found him, but we have no witnesses, and I’ve heard some ugly stories about her and Mr. Howard. I’m not holding her officially right now, but I thought you’d want to know I plan to question her again.”

  “David? Stabbed?” One more death shouldn’t shock him. It did. The pounding in his head built up steam until Noah suspected his brain must be all veins, no gray matter.

  “David Howard, that’s right.”

  Grief for his friend and for David’s small daughter overtook him, until instinct intervened and he stopped himself from feeling anything. He focused on the small-town policeman’s crazy accusation. “You think my wife murdered her best friend? With a knife?”

  He forgot the “ex” part of his relationship with Tessa. “She couldn’t lift a finger, much less a knife, to hurt anyone, and especially not David. They’ve known each other since kindergarten. David and their law firm—” He broke off. David and Tessa’s firm had dragged her out of the ashes of the divorce.

  “I’m not sure what I think. Mr. Howard’s wife hasn’t been dead a year yet. We know he and Mrs. Gabriel were close, and we heard your marriage broke up about five months before Mrs. Howard passed away.” The chief’s wary breath wheezed in Noah’s ear. “Their receptionist tells me they argued lately. Frequent arguments. I have to wonder if they were lovers’ quarrels.”

  “You’re nuts.” This guy was implying Tessa had killed David because of what—unrequited love for her best friend? “Tell my wife to shut up until her lawyer comes.” Standing, Noah yanked his jacket back on, one-handed.

  “You’re not married anymore, remember?”

  “I’m on my way, Chief, and I’d advise you to go by the book with my wife. That includes letting her out of your two-bit station house.”

  “She’s resting. We’re doing her a favor.”

  Noah swore into the phone before he slammed down the receiver.

  SHE WASN’T AFRAID, but the moment the office door began to open, Tessa Gabriel swiped tears of grief off her face and eased around the desk. She brushed against musty dime-store drapes whose stink washed her in a wave of nausea. She covered her mouth briefly, determined not to show Weldon the least sign of weakness.

  “Mrs. Gabriel.”

  She searched his gaze for some sign he’d heard from Noah. He stared back, challenging her with his suspicions but not with rage. Illogical relief swept her. Noah would have fired him up.

  She’d called her former husband out of habit—the last remnants of once-upon-a-time days when she’d believed she could depend on him—before he’d proved he wanted nothing more to do with her. When she’d come to her senses, she’d called back and told him not to come, but who knew which message he’d pay attention to?

  Forget Noah. She’d deal with the cops on her own, and she’d call Child Protective Services and get Maggie out of whatever home they’d put her in. Planning for Maggie made her think of David, and she almost cried again.

  She forced a little steel into her spine. She knew how to honor his memory—by taking care of Maggie, making sure his and Joanna’s love for her figured more strongly in her life than their deaths.

  “The sooner you talk to me, Mrs. Gabriel, the sooner we’ll finish.”

  She hadn’t realized she’d gone silent. Her throat hurt as she held back grief. “I’ve told you everything I saw. What more do you want? I didn’t kill David.” And she couldn’t believe he thought her capable of plunging that huge knife into David’s body again and again and again.

  But she took a leaf out of her ex-husband’s book. Don’t let them see you care. They can’t touch you if they don’t know how bad it hurts. Her sorrow might even make her look guiltier to this half-blind police chief.

  “I think David must have disturbed a burglar.” She tensed as she pictured his body among the bloodied papers on the darkened rug. “You saw the office. It’s a mess. Obviously, someone was searching for money, or something.”

  Weldon just looked at her. And looked at her, until his pale blue eyes and tired, hound-sad face were all she could see.

  She knew this game. If he didn’t talk, she’d have to. She role-played, too, to get the effect she wanted in court. This game didn’t interest her.

  She used every muscle in her body to shake the chair in front of her. “Where’s Maggie Howard? You tell me where that little girl is right now.”

  Officious jerk—he looked pleased with her outburst.

  What did she care? She’d lost her best friend. She could only help David now by keeping her promise to take care of his child if something happened to him and Joanna. “Even you must see Maggie will be terrified in a stranger’s home.”

  “A foster home,” he said, as if Maggie, at nine months, would know the difference between foster caregivers and strangers. “And, Mrs. Gabriel, I want to talk to you about that baby girl.”

  His tone hinted at more trouble. He terrified her, and she leaned toward him. “She’s not hurt, too?” If someone could do…that…to David, what might have happened to Maggie?

  He narrowed his eyes, looking for guilt, as Noah would have done. “She’s fine, but tel
l me, do you believe in coincidence?”

  “What coincidence?”

  Weldon smoothed a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Your daughter died, didn’t she?”

  His soft question tossed her into the past. Tessa tried to breathe and not see the persistent image of Keely’s face as she’d lain in her crib that morning. Add that to her gore-filled last memories of David, and she could barely speak. “What does my daughter have to do with Maggie?”

  “You lost her and then your husband divorced you. How desperate are you to replace your family? Maybe you think a new child will bring Detective Gabriel back to you.”

  Struck dumb, she stared at him. She couldn’t think of the family she and Noah and Keely had been if she wanted to deal with the life she was trying to build. “Even if you think I’d hurt David, why do you suppose my ex-husband would come back to me for someone else’s child?”

  “You want the truth? I think the whole damn bunch of you are sick. I believe you were sleeping with David Howard, and his wife found out. To deal with his cheating, she relapsed into taking hard drugs and she was high when she wrecked her car. I think Mr. Howard knew he’d caused his wife’s death, and guilt made him move heaven and hell to persuade the power in this town to help him hide her drug use. And then he cut you off. But what do you want more than anything? You want to start over with what you lost—a husband and a baby. You may even love Maggie Howard, but if you couldn’t have her father, why not kill him and start over with your ex-husband and your lover’s child?”

  “You’re the one who’s sick.” How had he discovered so much about Joanna? In a miasma of postpartum depression, she had only imagined an affair, but she had started using drugs again. And when Tessa discovered the truth after Joanna’s death, David had begged her to keep quiet. He’d loved Joanna deeply, and he hadn’t wanted Maggie to find out her mother had died under the influence. He’d bribed or pressured some powerful men to keep Joanna’s secrets, and Tessa tried to lead the chief away from his suspicions.