A Lawman for Christmas Read online

The words came out haltingly. “Well, I thought maybe, because you’re not twenty-four anymore…”

  Reading between the lines, Kate took pity on her. “I know how old I am, Kelsey. And the doctor says I’m definitely healthy enough to go the distance.”

  Yes, her mother was healthy and energetic and all those good things. But having a baby was a life-altering decision. Her mother had to know that. “What about after the distance? This doesn’t just end with delivery.”

  Kate made no attempt to hide her amusement. “Are you under the impression that you’re telling me something I don’t know, Kelsey? I don’t have that short a memory, sweetheart.”

  Kelsey hadn’t meant to sound insulting. Because her mother was with her, she slowed down rather than raced through a yellow light. “No, of course not, it’s just that—that I’m worried.”

  Kate patted her hand just as the light turned green again. “Don’t be. This baby thing threw me for a loop, too, but I’m already getting used to it. It’ll mean changes, but it’ll also mean that I get to hear a sweet little voice say ‘Mama’ again.”

  “I can call you Mama again if you want,” Kelsey volunteered as she took the on-ramp to the northbound freeway. “What about the diapers and the sleepless nights and the cost?”

  In Kate’s mind, the reward was a great deal more than the sacrifice. “What about the love?” she countered.

  Kelsey spared her mother a quizzical glance. “Five of us loving you—not counting Dad—isn’t enough?”

  Her mother’s laugh was warm, reassuring, as if she sensed the ambivalent feelings Kelsey was going through.

  “There’s always room for more, Kelsey. Always room for more. A mother’s love is infinite. It’s not a pie with only so much to go around so that if you slice it seven ways instead of six, there’ll be less for everyone.” Kate shifted in her seat for a better view of her daughter. “I’ll still love everyone the same way, Kelsey. There’ll just be one more at the table, that’s all.”

  She was grateful to her mother for not saying that this was ultimately not her business to meddle in. But then, both her parents had made all of them feel that they were a unit, not parents and children or worse, individual strangers. In her family’s case, although individuality was encouraged, at bottom it was a case of one for all, all for one.

  And she needed to get behind this newest phase, Kelsey told herself sternly.

  There was sympathy in Kelsey’s voice as she asked, “Then you’re okay with this, Mom? With being pregnant, I mean?”

  “I am wonderful with this,” her mother assured her. Her eyes danced as she said, “Children keep you young.”

  For the first time since she’d rushed out of the school, Kelsey laughed. “I thought you said that children give you gray hair.”

  “That, too,” Kate acknowledged. “But gray hair happens at any age. I had an aunt who started going gray at twenty-five. And the dividends are so wonderful. Look at you,” she added to make her point.

  “You’re not afraid?” Kelsey asked, thinking of how she would have reacted if she were in her mother’s shoes.

  Kate let out a long breath. A great many emotions shifted through her. Joy was foremost, but other emotions, as well. “I’m terrified.”

  “Terrified?” Kelsey looked at her, then back at the road. How could her mother be happy and terrified at the same time? “You certainly don’t act it.”

  Kate was nothing if not honest. It was the cornerstone of her relationship with everyone in her family. That and love.

  “Doesn’t mean I’m not. The prospect of bringing a new life into the world is always terrifying. Will he or she be healthy? Will I do a good job raising him or her—”

  Kelsey stopped her. “Seriously?” she asked incredulously.

  “Seriously,” Kate responded.

  How could her mother possibly even spend half a second wondering? “Mom, you’ve got to be the world’s greatest mother. You know that.”

  “What I might know and what the baby thinks are two very different things.” Kate closed her eyes, momentarily slipping back into the past. “Remember when you packed up your storybooks and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, determined to run away from home because you were so angry at me?”

  Kelsey had forgotten all about that until just now. The memory evoked a nostalgic laugh.

  “I remember,” she said with feeling. “You took Trevor’s side against mine.” She recalled how hurt she’d felt. Running away had been her only way to retaliate. She was convinced her mother would come searching for her, tears streaming down her face. After a sufficient amount of time, she would have forgiven her mother’s transgression and returned.

  God, had she ever been that young? Kelsey wondered.

  “I mediated, I didn’t take sides,” Kate corrected. “And you were a little bully,” she added with great affection. “You kept hitting him because you knew he wouldn’t hit you back.”

  Kelsey shook her head. If anyone should have run away from home, it was her mother. “How did you put up with all that?”

  The answer was simple. “Love makes everything easier to deal with.”

  “I guess,” Kelsey murmured.

  She’d never had that in her own life. Oh, she loved her parents and her brothers dearly, and she was even getting there with her new sisters-in-law. But as far as eventually having her own life partner, someone who would be there at her side until the end of time, Kelsey sincerely doubted that would ever happen.

  At the moment, she was still working on trying to be okay with that scenario. So far she wasn’t having all that much luck. But eventually, she’d get used to it, she promised herself.

  Kate took a deep breath as Kelsey pulled the car up into the driveway. In a way, she was mentally bracing herself for what lay ahead. She turned to her daughter. “I’m counting on you to be there for me when I tell your father about the baby, you know.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Kelsey assured her, turning off the ignition. “I’ll bring the smelling salts.” She saw her mother looking at her, arching one very expressive eyebrow. “You’ve got to admit this is going to hit him like a bombshell.”

  “Not a bombshell,” Kate protested, softening the description. “Maybe a little like getting caught in an unexpected summer downpour.”

  “If you say so. Hey, wait, let me help you,” Kelsey cried as her mother opened the passenger door and began to get out.

  “Kelsey, I’m perfectly able to—”

  Her mother didn’t get a chance to finish. Morgan had pulled his car up behind them and was now at the passenger side of Kelsey’s vehicle. Placing his hand beneath her elbow, he was gently helping Kate out of the vehicle.

  Kate smiled her gratitude as she gained her feet. “Thank you, Morgan.”

  “My pleasure, Kate.”

  He said it as if he meant it. What was the man’s angle? Kelsey couldn’t help wondering. Why was he being so accommodating?

  “Once you’re settled in,” Morgan continued, “your daughter and I will get your car.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Kelsey protested. She couldn’t ask her brothers for help, but there were other people she could summon. “I’ve got friends I can call—”

  “I’m sure you do,” he said, cutting her off. “But I like seeing things through. It won’t take long,” he promised, addressing Kate again. “Besides, I’ll be off duty soon.”

  Kelsey eyed him a little uncertainly. “I don’t know much about being a cop,” Kelsey admitted, “but don’t you have to sign out or something?”

  “Don’t worry about ‘or something,’” he told her. “I’ve got it covered. For all intents and purposes, I’m all yours.”

  Kelsey was about to quip “Lucky me” but stopped herself at the last minute when she realized that Morgan was no longer talking to her. Her mother was the recipient of the “I’m all yours” comment.

  “This is all very nice of you,” Kate protested, “but don’t yo
u have something else you should be doing?”

  Morgan shook his head. “Not at the moment. This all comes under the heading of ‘protect and serve.’” He slanted a look in her direction.

  The man was obviously anxious to get going, Kelsey surmised. “Do you need anything before we go, Mom? Maybe you should lie down. I can take you up—”

  Kate placed her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m pregnant, Kelsey, not fragile. I’ll be fine, trust me.” Dropping her hands, Kate fished out a set of keys from her purse and held them out to her. “Here, you’ll be needing these.”

  Kelsey merely smiled and accepted the keys. This wasn’t the time to tell her mother that she knew how to hotwire a car, having learned how from one of the boys she’d dated while in high school. A boy who, once her brothers got wind of him and his reputation, never showed up at the house again. When it came to outsiders, her brothers had been fiercely protective of her. They still were.

  “I’ll be back soon, Mom,” she promised, brushing a kiss against her mother’s cheek.

  “Don’t forget, Kelsey, you’re having dinner here tonight,” Kate reminded her.

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” Kelsey promised.

  Kate turned toward the departing policeman. “You’re invited, too, Morgan.”

  Kelsey stared at her mother, speechless.

  The invitation took Morgan by surprise, as well. It was a couple of moments before he found his tongue. “Thanks, but I’ve got plans.”

  He hadn’t, but in his judgment, this evening would be tough enough for the woman without making her husband share it with some total stranger.

  Kate inclined her head, accepting his answer. “Some other time then, perhaps.”

  “Some other time,” he echoed.

  Morgan understood the worth of a line like that. It might have actually been uttered in the belief that “some other time” would happen, but he knew it wouldn’t. The woman’s gratitude, which had prompted her to tender the invitation in the first place, would quickly fade as she returned to her routine and the need to make the invitation a reality would fade along with it.

  Still, it was a nice gesture, Morgan thought, following the attractive woman’s equally attractive daughter outside.

  “She’s a nice woman, your mother,” Morgan said, finally breaking the silence that had followed them into his squad car. The silence had spilled out throughout the vehicle and accompanied them for the first five minutes of the trip. It threatened to continue indefinitely.

  “She is,” Kelsey agreed. “Mom is one of a kind.” She shifted in her seat, curious. “How long were you following her?”

  Morgan glanced at her before looking back at the road. “Excuse me?”

  “You said you saw her weaving erratically in the lane. How long were you following her? A minute? Two? Three?”

  Morgan shrugged. “A minute, maybe two. I turned on Harvard where it intersected University Drive. Your mother had just driven by.”

  “And when you turned on your siren, she crashed into the bushes?” Kelsey asked.

  Morgan knew where the young woman was going with this. She probably thought that his following her mother had made her nervous and that she’d hit the bushes because of him, not because she’d fainted. But Kelsey was wrong.

  “I hadn’t turned on my siren—or my lights yet,” he added. He’d witnessed other accidents that hadn’t turned out nearly as well. “All in all, your mother’s a very lucky woman.”

  “Mom likes to call it the luck of the Irish,” she told him.

  His father’s father had emigrated from Ireland when he was a boy. “Is your mother from there?”

  “Why?” Kelsey asked guardedly.

  “No reason. I just thought I detected a slight accent.”

  Periodically her mother tried to lose her accent, but her father always protested, saying he really loved the slight Irish lilt in her voice.

  “The same could be said about you,” Kelsey pointed out. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No,” he deadpanned, “I live in Tustin,” he said, mentioning the name of the city next to Bedford.

  She frowned. He was deliberately being obtuse. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Morgan dropped the act. “I know what you meant, Ms. Marlowe. I’m from Georgia originally. Now do I get to ask a question?”

  “As long as you understand that I don’t have to answer if I don’t want to.” Her eyes met his. The ground rules were accepted. “Go ahead.”

  “Is this chip on your shoulder something recent,” he asked amicably, “or is it some congenital thing?”

  She opened her mouth to retort that it was none of his business what she had on her shoulder, but then she closed it again. She could almost hear her mother reprimanding her. And she’d be right. She was taking out her tension—and Dan’s behavior—on Donnelly. Because he’d come to her mother’s aid, he didn’t deserve this.

  “I’m sorry if I’m coming across a little testy—”

  He laughed shortly. “Little being a relative term here,” he interjected.

  “Okay,” Kelsey backtracked, “a lot testy,” she admitted. “But nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

  He glanced at her thoughtfully. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Ms. Marlowe, but ‘this’ didn’t happen to you. It happened to your mother. She’s the one you should be thinking about, not yourself.”

  “I am thinking about her. About how awful it would have been if she’d been hurt.” She drew herself up, taking offense. “And just where do you get off lecturing me, Donnelly?”

  “Not lecturing,” he countered mildly, “just pointing the obvious out. Your mother’s okay. A bit shaken up, but okay. That makes her one of the lucky ones.”

  Something in his voice caught her attention. Donnelly wasn’t just spouting rhetoric, he was speaking from firsthand experience. Undoubtedly, as a policeman he’d seen things the average person hadn’t, and they’d left a lasting impression. He was right. She had to take a page out of her mother’s book and just focus on the positive.

  Kelsey took a deep breath. She stared down at her hands. They were folded and clenched in her lap. She willed herself to relax as she tried to banish the tension gripping her.

  “Yes, it does,” she acknowledged. Kelsey knew she owed this policeman a debt for being so nice to her mother. A debt she didn’t take lightly. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t even thank you for taking my mother to the hospital. You could have just called for an ambulance and gone on your way.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” he answered too quickly. When he caught the confused expression on her face, he tried to shrug away his near slip. “It’s all part of that protect and serve thing I was telling you about. It’s the job,” he emphasized. Gratitude always made him feel awkward. He didn’t know how to accept it or give it.

  “Protect and serve,” she repeated. “And which was this?”

  A smile crept over his lips. A smile, she thought, that made him look more approachable. Not to mention sexy. She banished the last part from her mind. Policemen weren’t sexy. If anything, they were trouble.

  “A little of both,” he answered.

  With that, he turned the squad car onto University Drive. That was when she got her first glimpse of her mother’s vehicle. From the rear, the car looked to be all right. But then they drew closer. And Kelsey saw the front of the vehicle. It definitely wasn’t what she expected to find.

  “Oh God,” she cried without fully realizing it as Morgan got closer to the car.

  It was not a pretty sight.

  Chapter Four

  The closer they came, the further Kelsey felt her heart sink. Although the back of her mother’s car was untouched, the front was bruised, scratched and badly dented. If human, it would have easily been deemed the loser in a fight. She could just imagine what it was like under the hood.

  Her mother’s car held a very special place in her heart. She’d learned ho
w to drive in it.

  Kelsey could remember her mother sitting beside her while she practiced early in the morning in a deserted parking lot. She’d felt as if she was flying when in reality she was only going eleven miles an hour.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?” she cried, staring at the vehicle.

  Waiting until the road was clear, Morgan made a U-turn and guided the squad car directly behind the badly battered sedan. Kate’s car had spun out before crashing into the bushes that ran along the perimeter of the college’s athletic field.

  By the time he opened his door, Kelsey had already left his squad car and was examining the damage to her mother’s vehicle.

  “To be honest, I didn’t focus on the vehicle,” he told her. “I was focused on making sure your mother was all right.”

  He had his priorities straight. And she was being waspish, Kelsey upbraided herself. Contrite, she nodded at him.

  “Sorry. You’re right. My mother definitely matters more than a mashed-up grill,” she murmured, then circled around again to the front. The hood was pushed in, proving that the bushes were tougher than they looked. It was a miracle that her mother didn’t sustain any bad cuts or bruises.

  The driver’s-side door creaked and groaned like an arthritic eighty-year-old man when she opened it. The door made even louder noises when she attempted to shut it again. It resisted complete closure.

  Morgan nodded at the door. “Doesn’t sound promising,” he commented.

  Sitting behind the wheel, Kelsey put her mother’s key into the ignition and turned. The engine wheezed, then coughed and sputtered before finally giving up the ghost. With an exasperated sigh, Kelsey tried again. This time, the engine remained silent. There wasn’t even a weak sputter. The third attempt was no better. Kelsey got out again.

  “I’m going to have to call a tow truck,” she sighed, resigned. She looked at him. “You have any recommendations?”

  “Pop the hood.”

  He caught her by surprise. “What?”

  “Pop the hood.” He nodded toward the driver’s side. “There should be a release right under—”