Christmastime Courtship Read online

  She had this all mapped out, didn’t she? He didn’t like being told what to do. “You’re assuming a hell of a lot, aren’t you?”

  Miranda gazed up at him with what had to be the most innocent look he had ever seen. “So far, I’ve been right, haven’t I?”

  “Well, guess what? Your lucky streak is over,” he informed her.

  But just as he was about to break free and walk away, Colin heard a high-pitched squeal coming from the far side of the room. Looking in that direction, he saw a small figure with a flurry of blond hair charging toward him.

  Obviously, someone had woken the little girl and told her he was here. She must have put the rest together on her own.

  “You did it!” Lily cried. The next moment, she had wrapped herself around him like a human bungee cord. “You found her! You found my mommy, didn’t you?” Tilting back her head so that she could look up at him, Lily gushed, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Utterly stunned, Colin looked at the woman standing behind Lily. “How?”

  “It’s not just the walls that have ears here,” she told him, beaming just as hard as Lily. She nodded toward the cluster of children who had been steadily gathering around them as if that should answer his question.

  “Can we go see her now?” Lily pleaded. She looked from her hero to Miranda and then back again. “Please, can we? Can we?” she asked, giving every indication that she intended to go on pleading until her request was granted.

  Looking at the officer’s expression, Miranda made a judgment call. The man looked far from eager to go with them and he had done enough.

  “Officer Kirby has to go home now, Lily. But I’ll take you,” Miranda said, putting her hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

  “And I’ll drive,” Amelia told them, approaching from yet another side.

  The director had been drawn by the sounds of the growing commotion and just possibly by her own pint-size informant. In any case, the woman appeared relieved and thrilled at the news.

  “Officer Kirby found my mommy,” Lily told the director excitedly.

  “So I heard,” Amelia replied. Nodding at Colin, she smiled her thanks. “All of us here at the shelter—especially Lily—really appreciate everything you’ve done, Officer Kirby,” she told him.

  Colin wanted to protest that he really hadn’t done anything. He certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to find Lily’s mother. The information had literally fallen into his lap and all he had really done was follow up on it.

  But something told him that the more he protested, the more gratitude he would wind up garnering. His protests would be interpreted as being modest rather than just the simple truth.

  So he left it alone, saying nothing further on the subject.

  Instead, he decided that going home could wait awhile longer.

  Turning toward the director, he addressed her and the little girl who was jumping up and down at his side. “I’ll lead the way to the hospital, since I know what floor Lily’s mother is on.”

  He deliberately avoided looking at Miranda, sensing that if he did glance her way, he’d somehow wind up being roped into something else, and his quota for good deeds was filled for the month.

  Possibly the year.

  Chapter Six

  “Wait!”

  The order came from the head nurse sitting at the second-floor nurse’s station.

  When the three adults and child continued walking down the corridor, she hurried around her desk and into the hall to physically block their path.

  Surprised, Miranda told the woman, “We’re going to see Gina Hayden. We won’t be long,” she promised.

  “Clearly,” the nurse snapped, crossing her arms over her ample chest. “Visiting hours are done,” she informed them in a voice that would have made a drill sergeant proud. “You can come back tomorrow.”

  Lily looked stricken. “But she’s my mommy and we just found her,” the little girl protested in distress.

  “She’ll still be here tomorrow,” the woman told her, sounding detached. It was obvious she wanted them off the floor and wasn’t about to budge.

  Lily’s lower lip trembled. “But—”

  “Rules are rules, little girl,” the nurse maintained stiffly.

  Colin felt Lily tugging on his sleeve, mutely appealing to him for help. He made the mistake of looking down into her worried face.

  Swallowing an oath, he took out his badge and held it up in front of the nurse so she couldn’t miss seeing it. “But they can be bent this one time, can’t they?” It wasn’t a question.

  The head nurse looked no friendlier than she had a moment ago, but she inclined her head and backed off—temporarily.

  “Ten minutes, no longer. Ten minutes or I’ll call security,” she warned.

  “No need,” Miranda promised the woman. A small victory was better than none. Taking Lily’s hand, she urged the little girl, “Let’s hurry.”

  “She’s in room 221,” Colin told them gruffly.

  They moved quickly. He followed at his own pace.

  There were four beds in the room, two on either side. Lily’s head practically whirled around as she scanned the room looking for her mother. Seeing her lying in the bed next to the window, she sprinted over.

  “Mommy!” she cried happily, and then skidded to a stop as she took a closer look at the woman in the hospital bed.

  Her mouth dropped open in surprise. Her mother was hooked up to two monitors as well as an IV. The monitors were making beeping noises.

  The scene was clearly upsetting to the little girl, as were the bruises she saw along her mother’s arms and face.

  Inching closer, Lily asked in a hushed voice, “Did you fall down, Mommy?”

  Gina turned her head and saw her daughter for the first time. Light came into the woman’s eyes and she tried to open her arms so she could hug the little girl, but she was impeded by the various tubes attached to her.

  “Oh, Lily-pad, I did. I tripped and fell down,” Gina told her daughter.

  Miranda squeezed the woman’s hand lightly, letting Gina know that she understood she was lying for Lily’s sake.

  “We were all worried about you,” she told her. “But Lily never gave up hope that we’d find you.”

  The expression on Gina’s face reflected confusion and embarrassment. “I don’t remember what happened,” she admitted.

  “That doesn’t matter right now, darling,” Amelia said in a soothing, comforting voice. “All that matters is that you’re here and you’re being taken care of.”

  “Officer Kirby found you for me,” Lily told her mother excitedly. Taking Colin’s hand, Lily pulled on it to bring him closer. “This is Officer Kirby, Mommy,” she explained, showing off her brand-new champion to her mother.

  Eyes that were the same shade of blue as Lily’s looked up at him. They glinted with sheer appreciation. “Thank you.”

  “No thanks needed,” Colin told her, then explained, “It’s complicated.”

  Miranda suppressed a sigh. The man just couldn’t accept gratitude, she thought. She wanted to call him out on it, but this definitely wasn’t the moment for that.

  “We’re out of time,” she told Lily, as well as Amelia and Colin. And then she explained to Gina, “We promised the nurse on duty to only stay for ten minutes because it’s after hours.”

  “We’ll come back tomorrow, Mommy,” Lily promised her solemnly.

  Miranda bit her bottom lip. She wouldn’t be able to come by with Lily until after her shift at the hospital. She looked at the director, a mute request in her eyes.

  Picking up the silent message, Amelia nodded obligingly. “See you then,” she told Gina, then patted the young mother’s hand. “Feel better, dear.”

  Colin waited for t
he three females to file out of the room before he started to leave himself. He almost didn’t hear Gina say, “Thank you, Officer Kirby.”

  Again, he wanted to tell the woman that he hadn’t been the one who had located her. But that would take time and the nurse at the station had given every indication that she would come swooping in the second their ten minutes were up. He didn’t trust himself not to snap at the nurse, which would undoubtedly upset the little girl, and in his estimation, she had been through enough.

  So he merely nodded in response to the woman’s thanks and left the room.

  “Mommy has to be more careful,” Lily said authoritatively as she and the three adults with her headed toward the elevator.

  Miranda looked at the little girl as they got on. It wasn’t entirely clear to her if Lily actually believed what she was saying, or if she was saying it so as not to let the adults with her know that she knew something bad had happened to her mother.

  In some ways, she felt that Lily was an innocent girl; in other ways, she seemed older than her years. Only children were often a mixture of both.

  “That was a very nice thing you did,” Miranda told Colin once they reached the ground floor and got off the elevator. When he stared at her blankly, she elaborated. “Getting the nurse to allow us to see Gina.”

  The officer said nothing. There was no indication that he had even heard her, except for his careless shrug.

  The man was a very tough nut to crack. And she intended to crack him—but in a good way. Miranda smiled to herself. Whether Officer Kirby knew it or not, he had just become her next project.

  They split up when they reached the hospital parking lot, with Miranda and Lily going back with Amelia, while Colin headed for his vehicle, a vintage two-door sport car that was a couple years older than he was.

  “Goodbye, Officer Kirby!” Lily called after him. When he glanced over his shoulder in response to her parting words, Lily waved at him as hard as she could. It looked as if she was close to taking off the ground.

  Colin nodded once, climbed into his car and drove off.

  Lily insisted on standing there until she couldn’t see him any longer.

  “He’s a hero,” she told the two women when she finally turned around and got into the director’s car.

  “Yes, he is,” Miranda agreed.

  A very reluctant hero, she added silently.

  * * *

  “Hey, Kirby, there’s someone here who’s been waiting to see you for some time now,” the desk sergeant told Colin when he came into the precinct and walked by the man’s desk.

  It was past the end of his shift and Colin was more than tired. It had been two days since he’d led that little safari of females into the hospital and he’d assumed—hoped, really—that Miranda was now a thing of the past.

  But the moment the desk sergeant said there was someone waiting to see him, he knew in his gut that it had to be her. Granted, it could have easily been anyone else; Bedford wasn’t exactly a minuscule city and it felt as if the population was growing every day. But somehow he just knew it had to be the woman he had made the fatal mistake of pulling over that day.

  The annoyingly perky, pushy woman he just couldn’t seem to get rid of. She was like a burr he couldn’t shake loose.

  “Where?” Colin growled.

  “Need your eyes checked, Kirby?” the desk sergeant asked. “She’s sitting right over there.” He pointed to the bench situated against the wall fifteen feet away.

  Reluctantly, Colin sighed and looked in the direction the desk sergeant was pointing.

  Damn it, he thought.

  It was her—and she was looking right at him. It was too late to make an escape.

  He might as well find out what she wanted.

  Striding over to the bench, he saw her rise to her feet. The woman appeared ready to pounce on him.

  Now what?

  Bracing himself for the worst, he skipped right over any kind of a formal greeting and asked, “Something else you want me to do?”

  Just as sunny as ever, Miranda thought, more convinced than before that he needed her to turn him around. “No, actually, I brought something for you,” she told him, hoping that would get rid of the scowl on his face.

  It didn’t.

  He needed to stop her right there, Colin thought, instantly on guard. “I can’t accept any gifts,” he told her. “The department frowns on its officers taking any sort of gratuities in exchange for services rendered, either past, present or in the future.”

  He sounded so incredibly uptight, Miranda thought. They’d crossed paths not a moment too soon.

  “This isn’t a gratuity,” she assured him, trying to put his fears to rest.

  He wasn’t about to stand here exchanging words with her. For one thing, she was far better equipped for a verbal battle than he was. For another, he didn’t have time for this.

  “Whatever you want to call it—gratuity, gift or bribe—I can’t accept it.” He concluded in a no-nonsense voice, thinking that would be the end of it.

  He should have known better. The woman had shown him that, right or wrong, she wasn’t one to back off.

  And she was clearly not listening to him but was reaching into the large zippered bag she’d picked up from the bench. Extracting something from inside it, she held up what appeared to be an eleven-by-fourteen poster board for him to look at.

  It was a drawing.

  “Lily drew this just for you,” Miranda told him. She pointed to the blue figure in the center of the page. It was twice as large as the four other figures present. “In case you don’t recognize him, that’s you.”

  And then she proceeded to point out the other people in the drawing. “That’s Lily, her mother in the hospital bed, Amelia, and that’s me.” Miranda indicated the figure in the corner, who was almost offstage, appearing to look on.

  Colin couldn’t help staring at the central figure. “I’m a giant,” he commented, surprised that the little girl would portray him that way.

  As if reading his mind, Miranda explained, “That’s how she sees you. You are a giant in her eyes. Heroes usually are,” she added.

  The term made him uncomfortable. “I’m not a hero,” he retorted.

  “I hate to break this to you, but you are to Lily,” she told him.

  Colin continued looking at the drawing, still not taking it from her. His attention was drawn to the stick figure the little girl had drawn of Miranda.

  “You could stand to gain some weight,” he observed, still not cracking a smile.

  “That’s good,” she responded, as if they were having an actual serious conversation. “That means I get to indulge in my craving for mint chip ice cream.”

  He glanced at her rather than the drawing, his eyes slowly running over her, taking in every curve, every detail.

  “You don’t look as if you indulge in anything that’s nonessential,” he told her.

  She laughed. It was a melodic sound he tried not to notice.

  “You’d be surprised,” she told him. When she saw him look at her quizzically—most likely because she was thin—Miranda explained, “I do a lot of running around—at the hospital, at the women’s shelter and especially at the animal shelter.” They had her exercising the dogs, which meant that she was exercising, as well.

  “Don’t you take any time off for yourself?” Colin asked, positive that she was putting him on.

  Miranda smiled. The man just didn’t get it, did he? “The women’s shelter and animal shelter are my ‘time off’ for myself,” she stressed. “I like feeling that I’m helping out and doing something productive. It makes me feel good about myself,” she explained.

  He still wasn’t completely convinced. “Did you ever hear the saying ‘Too good to be true’?”


  She tried to suppress the grin that rose to her lips. “Are you saying that you think I’m good?”

  “You’re missing the point of the rest of the saying,” he pointed out. Taking a breath, he decided that this meeting was over. “Anything else?” he asked her, impatience pulsing in his voice.

  “Well, since you asked—have you thought any more about visiting my kids at the hospital?”

  She called them ‘her’ kids, not just ‘the’ kids. Did she feel as if they were hers? he wondered incredulously.

  He should never have asked if there was anything else. “No, I haven’t,” he answered, upbraiding himself.

  Not about to be put off, Miranda asked, “Well, would you think about it? Please?” she added. “Christmas is getting closer.”

  Why should that make a difference? Christmas had ceased to have meaning for him when he’d lost his mother.

  “Happens every year at this time,” he answered.

  Miranda gave it another try. “Well, like I told you, I think it would do them a lot of good. Their lives are really hard and they don’t have all that much to look forward to.”

  “And my visiting would give them something to look forward to?” he asked sarcastically.

  She never wavered. “Yes, it would.”

  The woman just wasn’t going to give up. He didn’t like being made to feel guilty.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, only because he felt it was the one way to get her to cease and desist. And then he looked at his watch. “Don’t you have to be someplace, volunteering?”

  “Actually, I do,” she said, slipping the straps of her bag over her shoulder. “I promised I’d come by the animal shelter. There’s this German shepherd that needs a foster home until she can be placed.”

  The woman was a relentless do-gooder. “Right up your alley,” he cracked.

  Miranda smiled at him. He saw the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Actually, it is.”

  “Then you’d better get to it.”

  “I will. Oh, don’t forget your picture,” she prompted. Picking up the poster board drawing, she forced it into his hands.