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  She remembered the morning she'd finally given in and marched herself down to her gynecologist where she'd heard what she already, in her heart, knew to be true. She was having a hard enough time dealing with the thought of what being pregnant represented. She'd always loved children, there was no doubt about that. But the children she interacted with all went to their homes at the end of the day. They only required so much from her emotionally. Being a mother, moreover bearing Wade's child, that was something else again.

  The tiny being growing inside of her didn't change anything, really. She still wasn't in love with Wade, never had been, she thought, letting herself into the darkened apartment. But now there was more to think of than just herself, or even Wade. There was a child being brought into the world through no fault of its own. It deserved the best advantages. That meant a real home. Not the kind she'd had, with only one grudging parent in attendance, if he could be called that.

  She remembered the gnawing feeling at the pit of her stomach when she'd come to her conclusion. Knowing that she had to really make a go of her marriage. For everyone's sake. Wade still wanted her. He'd made that clear throughout the long weekend they'd spent together. And every child wanted to have a "normal" family: a mother and father within sight of one another.

  She paused before the refrigerator, taking out the container of milk. Reaching overhead, she took out a glass from the cabinet, narrowly avoiding hitting the container of prenatal vitamins. She kept them where she could see them, so she couldn't forget to take them every morning. These days it felt as if her mind was scattered in a hundred places.

  Just like it had felt as she began to place her call to the base that afternoon to tell Wade that he was going to be a father. But before she had finished hitting the numbers on the keypad, there was a knock on her door. Two solemn-faced marines stood on her doorstep, telling her that they were very sorry to have to inform her that her husband had been killed in a freak accident during regular maneuvers.

  The news had left her feeling completely hollow. She felt caught in a tailspin. After thanking them for coming in person, she'd shut the door on them and their offers of help and retreated to her bed, where she'd stayed for two days, wishing the world would swallow her up. But it hadn't.

  At the beginning of the third day, she'd crawled out of her bed, out of her shell, and got back to the business of living again. She tried to find the bright side the way she always did. She told herself that at least now she wouldn't have to be caught up in an emotion-sapping marriage, didn't have to pretend to be happy when she wasn't.

  But oh, the thought of facing motherhood completely on her own scared her beyond words.

  For the time being, she'd kept the news to herself, not letting any of the teachers at the academy or even Harwood himself know about her condition. She couldn't find the words to tell them. Not until she had some kind of firm plan.

  In the meantime, she'd lost herself in the task of teaching the children in her first-grade class, being all she could for them. That meant opening up new worlds for them and in some cases, as with Annie, it meant opening up feelings.

  But now the tables were turned and the teacher found herself being the pupil, she thought, rinsing out her glass and putting it on the rack to drain. This tall, dark detective with the dimples had opened up an entire new box of feelings for her. Reminding her what it felt like to feel.

  No, there'd been more than that, Brenda thought as she made her way to the bedroom, kicking off her shoes as she went. This was more like what she'd once thought a kiss would be like. Something to erase the nail polish right off her toes.

  The first time Wade had kissed her, she'd waited for the lightning, waited for that wild, heady feeling she just knew had to be part of the process. But it had never come. And eventually, she'd told herself that she'd expected too much. Reactions like that only happened in the movies, not in real life.

  Except that now it had.

  No, she told herself firmly, it hadn't. She slipped out of her clothes and into the worn running shorts and T-shirt she slept in. What had happened had been more than liberally helped along by her heightened emotional turmoil. It wasn't real. It couldn't be. Because if it was, someone would have kidnapped Detective Dax Cavanaugh and run off with him a long time ago, tucking him into a private cave where only they could have access to him.

  She threw her clothes onto the back of a chair. Tomorrow she'd have enough energy to put them in the hamper, but not tonight.

  A sensation shimmied over her. Brenda closed her eyes and relived the moment his lips had touched hers. The man's mouth should be registered with the local authorities as a lethal weapon.

  Her eyes opened again and she shook her head. She was tired, stressed out, she silently insisted as she lowered herself into bed. It had been one hell of a day. By morning, things would feel as if they were almost back to normal.

  It took a long time for her body to stop humming.

  Morning didn't feel normal.

  She'd spent a restless night, tossing and turning. Sleep, when it finally came, had been inky and dreamless. And far from refreshing.

  When she woke up, the first thing that popped into her brain—exploded would have been a more apt description—was that Annie Tyler was missing.

  The thought throbbed in her head as she hurried through her shower and then into her clothes. A sense of urgency pervaded every fiber of her being even though she wasn't sure just where it was she was hurrying to. She knew that Simon Tyler—Annie's father's jet had to have touched down by now—probably wouldn't welcome the sight of her any more than her mother did. But the kidnapper had said he was going to call there today and she needed to be there. For herself and more importantly, for Annie. If only just in a silent capacity, standing on the sidelines. She seriously considered taking a leave of absence to focus full time on finding Annie.

  She looked at the boxes of flyers she'd brought into the house last night. Dax had said something about her using them as an excuse to gain entrance to the mansion.

  Why not? It was as good a reason for her to come by as any. They couldn't refuse the flyers. Chances were, they hadn't had a chance to think about that yet. Shock had a way of blanking out your mind, she remembered.

  Forcing down a piece of toast and a cup of coffee that would have been more useful for patching gaping holes in the driveway—decaffeinated in deference to the baby—Brenda picked up the boxes and headed toward the door.

  She was almost out of the apartment before she remembered her prenatal vitamins. With a sigh, she doubled back. She'd never been much for taking vitamins herself, but this wasn't for herself, this was for the baby. She wanted to make sure she did everything right while she was carrying around this tiny passenger inside her body.

  She used milk to wash down the vitamins, making a face as she did so. She'd never liked milk, not even as a child. "I hope you appreciate all this," she murmured to her stomach just before she picked up the boxes again.

  She was on the road within a blink of an eye.

  There were police cars parked up and down the winding driveway in front of the mansion. If they were meant to hold the media at bay, they weren't entirely successful. Vans representing all the major local stations were camped before the mansion as well, waiting for a glimmer of one of the main players in this real-life drama.

  Frustration ate away at Brenda. From the looks of it, several vans had been there through the night, hungry for a new tidbit to throw to the detail-hungry audiences. This was a circus, she thought.

  Snaking her way through the various vehicles, she looked around for someplace to park. She recognized Dax's unmarked sedan almost instantly.

  He was already here, she thought.

  All the way over, she'd tried not to think of him. Which caused all her thoughts to center on the man. Over and over again she kept telling herself that last night had been the result of a combination of stress and vulnerability. And besides, men just didn't fall all over themselv
es to be with a woman who was pregnant with another man's child. Granted, she wasn't showing yet, but she would be. By and by she would be.

  Her waist had already thickened by half an inch, despite her bouts of morning sickness. Now that they appeared to be a thing of the past, she knew her body was going to begin to assume a ripening shape. How attractive was that to the average man?

  Oh, but Dax Cavanaugh was anything but average.

  She upbraided herself for letting her thoughts get tangled again. Okay, so he'd shaken up her world, but, like life in the aftermath of an earthquake, it had to go on.

  "Sorry, you'll have to turn around, ma'am. This area's restricted."

  Bunking, she realized that she'd stopped moving as she looked for an available space, and a policeman had ducked his head into her car on the passenger side. He looked as if he was running very short on patience. The officer probably thought she was part of the media, Brenda realized.

  She said the first thing that came into her head. "I spoke to the kidnapper yesterday." Belatedly, she realized that had a rather crackpot sound to it. "I'm Annie Tyler's teacher." The policeman continued to look dubious. Brenda looked toward Dax's car again. "Ask Detective Cavanaugh. He'll vouch for me."

  For a second, she thought the policeman was going to refuse and demand she leave. But then, with a sigh he pressed down on the button on his walkie-talkie, backing away from her car as he did so.

  "Wait here," he ordered sternly.

  Because he was standing directly in front of her car now, there was nothing else she could do. "I'm not going anywhere," she promised.

  He lowered his voice, murmuring something into the mouthpiece. Within two minutes, she saw the front door to the mansion opening. All around her, she both saw and felt a heightened anticipation as the members of the fourth estate moved forward as one.

  Instead of one of the Tylers, considered far and wide to be one of Hollywood's golden couples, or their lawyer, it was Dax who emerged from the sprawling building. Looking neither left nor right, he ignored the media and walked directly toward the policeman. And her.

  Obviously the officer had given him coordinates ahead of time, she thought. Either that, or the man had an uncanny homing device to go along with his uncanny lips.

  Get a grip, she warned herself.

  "It's all right, Hadley," Dax told the policeman as soon as he was within hearing range.

  Then he stopped and looked into the car. A din of noise accompanied him and she realized that there were reporters hurling questions at him while scores of cameras rolled in hope of securing something new, something exciting.

  Dax grinned at her, causing her pulse to skip a beat or two before suddenly launching into four-four time. "I was beginning to think you'd changed your mind." He pointed to a place on the far left, close to the building. "Park over there."

  Nodding, she did as he told her.

  All last night, after she'd driven away, he'd tried not to give Brenda too much thought, concentrating instead on the case and what they had so far. But the sensation he'd experienced kissing her, no matter what kind of a spin he kept trying to put on it, insisted on popping up again and again, taking his system hostage each time. Vividly replaying itself all through his body.

  Whatever the reason, there was no denying the fact that the lady had shaken him up. He knew he wanted a second go-around, if only to see if what he'd experienced the first time was just a figment of his over-stressed imagination, or if he'd actually felt what he'd felt.

  But right now, there was something more pressing to take his attention. He walked up to her vehicle just as she got out. He noticed that she'd brought the flyers with her.

  "Get any rest?" he asked as he took the boxes from her hands.

  "Not much," she admitted, keeping her voice low. Wanting to keep her response away from the prying ears of the media.

  How did people in the public eye stand it, she wondered. How had Annie stood it, the few times she'd been allowed out with her parents? She was such a shy little girl, she must have been terrified to have these one-eyed beings invade her world.

  He used his body to shield her from the cameras trained in their direction. "Me, neither."

  Brenda paused to look at him. It wasn't clear to her whether he was telling her that the case, or what had transpired between them, was the reason for his flirtation with insomnia.

  But there was no way she was about to ask, if for no other reason than it seemed disrespectful to Annie and what she was going through. So she decided just to assume he was talking about the case.

  "No new clues came in?"

  He indicated that she should walk in front of him to the house. She realized that he was shielding her and flashed a grateful smile at him.

  "A few hundred loonies have already called in," he told her. It hadn't taken long for the deluge to begin. "Every case that gets on the news attracts them."

  She tried to decipher his meaning. "But you have to go through each one, just in case there's a germ of truth to it, right?"

  He nodded grimly. "Right."

  Luckily, he hadn't been one of the people manning the phones. Since he was the primary on the case, he could allocate that job to others. He'd put in his time on other cases and had quickly come to the conclusion that he hated being behind a desk, hated having to deal with what he felt were the sidelines. He liked being out in the field, sifting through the evidence or potential evidence firsthand. Being on top of things. There was nothing like it. He'd never been one to take life in small doses. And standing on the sidelines was enough to drive him crazy.

  Which was why he empathized with Brenda York. He could see the frustration in her eyes when she thought about being kept from the front lines. For now, since she was helpful, since she might prove to be further useful, he saw no reason not to keep her in the loop.

  Opening the door for her, he ushered her inside the mansion and past a distraught looking Martha Danridge, who in Brenda's estimation looked even paler than she had yesterday.

  Even before they took one step toward the living room, Brenda could hear the sound of raised voices. Or rather, one raised voice. Simon Tyler was making his grave displeasure known to anyone within earshot. If the look on Martha's face was any indication, the very sound threatened to bring down the mansion's walls.

  "Just what the hell are you people doing to find her?" Simon Tyler was demanding of Nathan when they entered the room.

  Dax's partner looked amazingly unruffled and calm in the face of the storm he was weathering. "Mr. Tyler, we already explained that we have—"

  "I don't want words, I want action," Simon bellowed. "I want Annie found. I want every inch of this city covered until you find my daughter, do I make myself clear?"

  For Brenda, the show of parental concern was a matter of too little too late. Why didn't you show her you cared this much when she was here?

  The words burned on her tongue. Brenda bit them back, knowing she couldn't say anything. Knowing that this wasn't the time, but still thinking that it would have done Annie a world of good to feel, just once, that her father actually cared about what happened to her. It might not have changed a single thing that was happening now, but it would have been good for the little girl to know nonetheless.

  She couldn't help wondering how much was really concern for Annie and how much was anger because something of Simon Tyler's had been taken.

  "We're already doing that, Mr. Tyler," Dax told the man as he entered the room.

  Simon swung around to face Dax and Brenda. His eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to deduce her identity as he looked at her.

  "Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

  Rebecca turned her head from the cushion. She'd been lying on the sofa the entire time. Her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had spent the night crying. Brenda felt guilty over the condemning thoughts she'd had about the woman. Maybe, beneath all her carelessness, Rebecca Allen-Tyler actually cared about her daughter.

  Sitting up
from her reclining position, she swung her legs down to the floor, her hands gripping either side of the sofa. Her eyes were accusing as she looked at the person her husband was addressing.

  Rebecca's attractive face tightened into a scowl. "That's Brianne something-or-other. The woman who lost Annie."

  * * *

  Chapter 7

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  "Brenda York," Brenda corrected the woman without missing a beat. Despite her efforts to the contrary, she'd never met Annie's father before. "My name is Brenda York, not Brianne and I'm your daughter's teacher, Mr. Tyler."

  Simon glared at her before turning to Dax. "What is she doing in my house?" he demanded.

  "She ran off flyers to help find your daughter." Dax set the boxes down on the coffee table, then took off the lid from the one on the top.

  Simon barely glanced at the exposed flyers. "I can have someone at my studio run off ten thousand of those," he snapped dismissively.

  It was evident that Simon Tyler was accustomed to instilling fear into those around them. Equally evident was that Dax was far from intimidated, or impressed. If anything, he was struggling to hold his annoyance in check.

  "The point is, Mr. Tyler, it's already done." Brenda had the distinct impression that Dax was being protective of her. It left her a little in awe as well as striking a receptive chord within her. She couldn't recall the last time someone had been protective of her. "She's also the one who spoke to the kidnapper yesterday when they called."

  Simon turned toward his wife. It was well known that he didn't like being caught unprepared and this piece of news had done just that. "I thought you said that Martha spoke to them."

  Rebecca looked bewildered as she shook her head. "I told her to."

  Dax cut in before they could get sidetracked. "Your housekeeper was afraid she'd say something wrong." He nodded toward Brenda. "Mrs. York stepped in and pretended to be her. It's because of her quick thinking that we got the kidnapper to agree to give us proof of life."