Rookie Cop. Nikki Benjamin
When she spoke again, her tone had also changed, revealing the agitation she had, up until then, succeeded in hiding from him.
“Someone left him on my front porch,” she blurted out. “Just left him in a stroller. His name is Matthew, and he seems to be healthy. He’s obviously been well-cared-for, too. Whoever left him, left diapers and formula and clean clothes for him in a diaper bag. And a note—a note addressed to me personally—asking me to take care of him.” She sighed. “I want to do that. More than anything, I want to take care of him. But I know I can’t. Not the way she meant. I can’t just pretend he’s mine and go about my business. I have to turn him over to the proper authorities.
“That’s why I’m here. To turn him over to Children’s Protective Services. And to ask you, please, to see if you can find his mother. I’m afraid she’s in some kind of trouble. Otherwise, why would she leave her baby with me?”
Her voice breaking suddenly, Megan ducked her head again, but not before Jake saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. He closed the distance between them then, her misery lodging deep in his own heart. Limiting himself to just a light touch on her shoulder so as not to upset her any further, he guided her to one of the two chairs positioned in front of his desk as he tried to make sense of all that she’d told him.
“Let me make sure I understand the situation,” he said after she’d settled into the chair and drawn a steadying breath. “This morning someone, most probably the mother, left the baby you’re holding on your front porch?”
“Yes, unbelievable as it sounds, that’s exactly what happened,” Megan replied.
Against her shoulder, the baby squirmed and snuffled, then snuggled back to sleep as she smoothed a soothing hand down his back.
Seeing how naturally she mothered the abandoned infant, Jack ached for her even more. She was determined to do the right thing, to give up the baby to Children’s Protective Services, but she’d said herself it wasn’t what she wanted to do. Her tenderness toward the baby made it even more evident.
Telling himself he could help Megan best by setting aside his own feelings and doing his job, Jake stepped back, propped a hip on the edge of his desk and picked up his notebook and pen. He didn’t want to crowd her, but at the same time, he didn’t want to put the width of his desk between them, either.
Finding herself caught in a situation that had to be almost too painful for her to bear, she was barely hanging on, riding a roller coaster of emotions. Yet she’d had the courage and the common sense to come to him for help. He didn’t want her to think that he would let her down, even for a moment. Not this time, no matter what hell he had to go through himself.
“What time was it when you found him?” he asked, trying to keep his tone matter-of-fact as he opened his notebook and jotted down the date on a fresh page.
“Just after dawn.” Megan drew another steadying breath and met his gaze, her composure somewhat restored. “I fell asleep on the living room sofa last night and woke up this morning to the sound of the doorbell ringing. I was pretty sure it was just kids from the high school playing a prank. I went to the door and opened it to be sure they hadn’t left behind any little gifts. Nobody was there, of course. I stepped out on the porch to take a look around the yard, and almost tripped over the stroller. Luckily, he started to cry and I saw him just in time.”
“You seem fairly sure that his mother is the one who left him there. Why is that?”
“Instinct, mostly. I had a feeling that he hadn’t been abandoned completely, that someone was close by, watching to make sure he was okay. I called out, asking her to please come back. As I started down the porch steps, I heard a rustle in the shrubbery alongside the house, and a few moments later, I saw someone running down the sidewalk.”
“Can you give me a description of her?” Jake asked, eyeing her questioningly.
“Not in any great detail,” Megan admitted. “It wasn’t light enough outside, and she was running pretty fast. I had taken the baby out of the stroller and was holding him, so I couldn’t really go after her. I’m sure it was a young woman, though. She was tall and slender, she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and she had her hair tucked under a baseball cap.”
Tapping his pen against his notebook, Jake frowned thoughtfully. He had seen someone dressed much the same way as Megan’s early-morning visitor when he was heading to work around seven o’clock. She had been walking away from the Serenity bus station.
He, too, had assumed the jeans-clad figure was a young woman. He hadn’t paid her much attention, but then, he hadn’t had any reason to. Just another college student home for the summer, he’d mused, eyeing the loaded duffel bag and backpack weighing her down.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten a good look at her face, either. And thanks to the baseball cap she’d worn, he couldn’t have said if her hair was short or long, dark or fair.
“What are you thinking?” Megan asked, her tone soft and tentative.
“I saw her this morning, too,” Jake answered. “Around seven o’clock, apparently after she’d been to your house. She was leaving the bus station, carrying a duffel bag and backpack. I assumed she was a college student home for the summer.”
“That would mean she has family here in town, wouldn’t it? So why leave her baby with me?”
“That’s what I need to find out. Do you have the note she left with the baby?”
“It’s in the diaper bag hooked onto the handle of the stroller. I brought everything she left so you could take a look at it. CPS will want his things, too.” Megan hesitated, shifting her gaze away. “I guess you’d better call over there and ask them to send a social worker to take him.”
Jake couldn’t help but notice how her grip on the baby tightened imperceptibly, and his heart ached for her even more. Talk about a rotten set of circumstances. She shouldn’t have had to deal with something as agonizing as finding an abandoned baby on her front porch. Not after the loss she had suffered almost three years ago. The loss they had suffered.
For one long moment, Jake wished he had the power to whisk her, the baby and himself back in time so they could be a family again—he, Megan and their own sweet Will. As if to remind him of how impossible his fantasy was, the baby started to fuss, his snuffling cries an obvious supplication.
“He’s probably hungry again,” Megan said by way of explanation. “There’s a bottle of formula in the diaper bag. Would you run it under some hot water for me for a minute?”
“Sure thing.”
Glad to have a task that not only took his mind off the past, but also grounded him firmly in the present, Jake hurried out of his office. He asked one of the young officers to call Children’s Protective Services for him and request that a social worker be sent to the police station at once. Then he walked back to the stroller, found the bottle of formula in the diaper bag and headed for the station’s small kitchen. Along the way, he paused to ask Darcy to wheel the stroller back to his office just in case the baby also needed a change of diaper.
By the time he made his way back to his office, warm bottle in hand, the baby’s cries had increased in volume. Megan paced the narrow space in front of his desk, patting the infant’s back and murmuring words of reassurance while Darcy looked on sympathetically from the doorway.
“Phone’s ringing,” Jake said, shooting her a reproving look as he walked past her.
“I’d better answer it, then.” Obviously regretting what she would be missing, Darcy backed out of the office and headed for her desk.
Taking the bottle Jake held out to her, Megan spared him a grateful glance, then sank into her chair again, shifted the baby in her arms and offered him the bottle. He quieted immediately, latching onto the nipple and sucking greedily.
As he hovered just inside the doorway, Jake was hit yet again by a twist of pain deep in his gut. Watching Megan, her attention focused solely on the