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He walked over to the sofa and put his head in his hands.
Her heart was breaking for him. It was obvious he was blaming himself for this. Even though it had been entirely out of his control.
She sat next to him, the length of her thigh in contact with his. Even the slightest touch gave her a little comfort. But she couldn’t find the patience to wait. Two hours had been long enough. She had to know. She had to know Abraham still had a mother.
‘What happened, Dan? Does Abraham belong to Mary Shankland?’
He nodded and lifted his head from his hands. His eyes were heavy with fatigue and strain. ‘It was just as I suspected. She hid the pregnancy and gave birth in secret. She knew she would have to hide him from Frank, and thought she would have made it to a women’s shelter or a hospital. But everything conspired against her.’ He held up his hands. ‘The weather. The snow. Then Abraham came four weeks early. She was desperate. She didn’t know what to do. Frank was at the pub and was due home any minute. She didn’t have time to pack up the kids and leave, and they didn’t have anywhere to go.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘She couldn’t even get through to emergency services.’
‘So she left the baby here, with you?’ Carrie wrinkled her nose. ‘Why didn’t she ring the bell? Why didn’t she ask for your help?’
He thumped his hand on the table. ‘She did, Carrie! She did ring the bell. My darn music was on too loud. I never heard it. Frank was due back any minute and she’d left the children by themselves. She had to get back home before he knew anything was wrong.’ He turned to face her, his eyes full of sorrow. ‘If you hadn’t been upstairs and heard Abraham...’ He was shaking his head, obviously imagining the worst.
She clutched at his hand. ‘But I did, Dan. And Abraham’s safe.’ She took a little moment to look at the sleeping baby on her lap. Perfect. Perfect in every way. And more importantly, safe. Something squeezed at her heart. Every baby like Abraham and every child like Dan had the right to be safe. Had the right to be cared for and loved. Had the right to be treated with respect. If only everyone in this world felt the same.
‘How are Mary and the other kids?’
Dan nodded slowly, letting a long stream of air out through his pursed lips. ‘She’s safe now. We arrived just as Frank was kicking off. It looks as if his temper has got worse and worse over the past few days with the family being snowed in together. Mary was crouched in a corner sheltering her youngest son.’ The words sent a horrible shiver down her spine.
‘Oh, those poor children.’
He nodded. ‘Frank’s been arrested. Mary is being checked over at Grace Jordan Hospital.’ He reached over and touched Abraham’s tiny fingers. ‘I almost couldn’t persuade her to go. She wanted to come straight here and check on Abraham. It was awful, Carrie. The tears of pure relief when she saw me and knew that I was there to help. It was a look I recognised.’ He shook his head again. ‘I should have got there sooner. I should have known.’
‘But you didn’t know, Dan. We didn’t know.’
‘But you didn’t let your past history cloud your judgement—stop you from looking at other possibilities.’
‘Of course I did, Dan! How many times did I tell you I couldn’t do this? I couldn’t look after Abraham? I couldn’t help you?’
But Dan was still fixated on his own failings. ‘I shouldn’t even be doing this job. How can I be a good cop when I can’t even think straight?’
‘Stop it. Stop it right now. You’re the finest cop I’ve ever met, Dan Cooper. You have the biggest, kindest heart in the world. You can’t help what happened to you in the past. And even though you had a crummy mother with a terrible addiction, even though you experienced things a child should never experience, it’s shaped you, Dan. It’s made you become the fine man that you are.’ She reached over and touched his cheek. ‘You feel passionately about things. You have a clear sense of right and wrong. You have the courage of your convictions. You looked at the example of the cop who looked out for you and used him as your role model. Him, Dan—not your mother. He would be proud of you. I know he would. Just like your grandmother would be.’ She could feel her eyes pooling with tears. ‘I couldn’t have got through the past few days without you.’ She looked at Abraham in her lap. ‘No, we couldn’t have got through the past few days without you.’
The tension seemed to dispel from his muscles, the frustration to abate from his eyes. He reached over and cupped her cheek, brushing her curls behind her ears. ‘Carrie, you know what I need to do now, don’t you? I need to take Abraham to Angel’s. Shana is waiting to see him. And I need to reunite him with his mother.’
Carrie could feel the pooled tears start to spill down her cheeks. Of course. This was what she’d always wanted to happen. For Abraham to be safe, to be returned to his mother. So why did it feel as if her heart were breaking?
These past few days had been hard. But they’d also been wonderful. She finally felt healed. She finally felt as if she could start to live again.
And she’d found someone she wanted to do that with.
But their cosy little bubble was about to burst. The snow was melting. Things would get back to normal. New York would get back to normal.
Dan would get back to normal. There would be no reason for them to be stuck in his apartment together. There would no reason for her to be in his life at all.
She tried to concentrate. She tried to focus. Last thing she wanted to do was appear like a blubbing wreck.
Abraham’s eyes flickered open and she leaned over him. ‘Well, Abraham, it’s time to say goodbye. Or maybe I should call you Baby Shankland now?’ She raised her eyebrows at Dan and he shook his head and gave her a sad little smile.
‘Mary loved the name. He’s definitely going to stay an Abraham.’
A tiny bit of the pressure in her chest felt relieved. He wouldn’t have another name. He’d have the name that they’d given him—together. At least that little part of their time together would live on, even if nothing else did.
She ran her finger lightly over his face, touching his forehead, his eyelids, his nose, his cheeks and his mouth. Trying to savour every second, trying to imprint on her brain everything about him. Something caught her eye. His little soft fontanelle, it was pulsing. She could see the proof of his heartbeat right before her eyes. She hadn’t noticed it before and it gave her even more comfort than she could have imagined.
She tried not to let her voice shake. ‘I’m going to wish you a long, happy and healthy life, Abraham. I’m going to tell you that you’re blessed. You’re blessed to have a mother who did her best to protect you. And every time I see snow I’m going to think of you and remember you here—’ she pressed her hand to her chest ‘—in my heart. Now and always.’
She wrapped him a little tighter in Mrs Van Dyke’s crocheted shawl. She was sure Mrs Van Dyke wouldn’t mind it going to a good home. She couldn’t even lift her head to look at Dan right now. She already knew he was holding out his hands, waiting for Abraham, to take him away.
She must have paused. She must have waited just a little too long. Because his hand touched her arm. ‘Carrie.’ It wasn’t a question. It was a prompt, in the quietest, subtlest way.
She put one final kiss on Abraham’s forehead and held him out with shaky hands. It took all her self-control not to snatch him back from Dan’s grasp.
She felt his hand on her shoulder. A tight squeeze. Followed by his voice murmuring in her ear. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be, Carrie. I could be all night. I need to stay with Abraham at the hospital, then fill out a mountain of paperwork downtown.’
She was nodding automatically at his words. Not really taking any of them in.
Her heart was thudding in her chest. Was this it? Was this it for them, too?
Dan hadn’t said anything. She had no idea what would happen next.
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All she knew was she wanted him to stay. She wanted him to stay with her. She wanted him to wrap his arms around her and tell her that everything would be okay. She wanted him to reach out and tuck her hair behind her ears. She wanted him to look at her the way he had the night before, right before he’d kissed her. She wanted to feel her heartbeat quicken and flutter in her chest as it did when they were together.
Anything other than this horrible leaden feeling that was there right now.
He released his fingers on her shoulder and she heard his footsteps heading for the door.
No words. He hadn’t said anything to her. He hadn’t told her to stay. He hadn’t told her to go.
She heard the final hesitant steps and then the click of the door behind her.
It sounded so final. It sounded like the end of everything.
And it probably was.
And then the sobs that had been stifled in her chest finally erupted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DAN’S WHOLE BODY wanted to go into shutdown mode. But his brain was buzzing. It had been twenty-four hours since he’d slept.
The check-over at the hospital for Mary Shankland had taken much longer than expected. She had three broken ribs and a minor head injury. It had taken hours before she was cleared for transfer and Dan didn’t want anyone else to have the job of reuniting her with her son.
He wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Abraham was fine and healthy. He’d even managed to squirt a little pee all over Shana, much to Dan’s amusement, as she’d examined him.
But the real heart-stopping moment had been when Mary finally got to hold her baby in her arms. She sobbed and sobbed, telling him how much she loved him and how she just wanted to protect him. The hospital social worker had been standing by to help find the family alternative accommodation and to assess them. And even though Frank had been taken to jail, a temporary restraining order had been put into place to protect the family in the meantime. All of which added to the mountain of paperwork toppling over on his desk.
His captain had been as understanding as could be. But there were still professional requirements that Dan had to fulfil. Pages and pages of paperwork that had to be completed before he could leave the station and get back home to Carrie.
Back home to where he wanted to be.
Back home to the one he wanted to be with.
Things had been too hard. Taking Abraham away from Carrie had been hard, and he’d tried his best not to make it any more difficult than it already was.
There was so much to say. So much to do. He didn’t have a single doubt in his head about Carrie McKenzie. But would she have any doubts about him? There was only one way to find out.
He’d made three pit stops on his way home, his stomach churning the whole way. Thankfully the New York florist he’d visited hadn’t even flinched when he’d asked her for ‘rose-coloured’ roses. There might have been a slight glimmer of a smile while she’d walked to her back storeroom and reappeared with beautiful, rich pink-coloured roses with the tiniest hint of red, and tied them with a matching satin ribbon.
