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Maggie's Guardian
By Anna Adams Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Copyright © 2002 Harlequin Enterprises Limited
All right reserved. ISBN: 0373710828
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 consideredpassing 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 palms 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.
Excerpted from Maggie's Guardian by Anna Adams Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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