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that room, right under the window. What if we all kick in? I’ll call Cass.”
    “And I’ll call Elena.”
    “Perfect! The blue of the fabric on that blotter is going to look amazing.”
    “This is a great idea, Bree—”
    Kara couldn’t speak when she stepped back in front of the stroller. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The paperweight slid from her fingers, crashed to the floor.
    She crumbled after it.
    The stroller was empty.

Chapter Three
    ‡
    R eid strolled down the street, enjoying the warm sun and air. It galled him to spend his unexpected day off shopping, but he’d given Gene his word he’d try to make a nice impression on his girlfriend’s cousin. Even though he wasn’t all that into double dating, he’d show up and give it his best shot. And that meant a shirt that fit well, didn’t have any missing buttons or advertising logos or catsup stains. His sisters were always going on about his hazel green eyes, said he should play them up, so he was on a mission to find a decent green shirt. He shrugged. Eyes were eyes. Didn’t much matter what color they were.
    Thinking about eyes suddenly put that pretty blond back in his brain. The way she’d told off the three rude women in his class, eyes blazing. Kara Larsen was her name, according to her registration form. She was a wonder. He loved that she’d taken his class seriously. He loved the way she’d looked, the way she’d dressed, even the way she’d spoken.
    Stop . He told himself.
    There could be nothing with her. She was a mother.
    That baby. Big blue eyes, honey-colored curls—she looked so much like Erin, he had a brief moment of terror that it was Erin and that he’d fallen into some kind of nightmare.
    Jaw clenched, he forced himself to regroup and move on. With any luck, Vickie’s cousin from Atlanta would enjoy his company. He pulled open the door to TJ Maxx, determined to find a shirt that might make his sisters happy.
    Inside the store, he made his way to the men’s department, picked through the shirts. Button down, polo or T-shirt? He had no damn clue. With a sigh, he stepped back, ran a hand over his head and froze.
    There, at the end of the shoe display, stood a baby.
    “Erin.”
    He pressed a fist to the hole in his gut.
    The baby squealed and took off at a waddling run, waving a plastic cup with a lid on it. He chased her, caught up to her seconds before she reached the escalator. His heart damn near stopped at the thought of escalators and those curls. He scooped her up into arms that felt like two strands of spaghetti and just stared at her.
    It was the same baby from the CPR class. Where was her mother? Where the hell was her mother?
    “Ma,” the tiny human said, thumping his chest with a fat little hand.
    “Good question.” He found his voice and with it, his temper. Mouth tight, he strode through the store, spotted the pretty blond from his class taking snapshots of desk accessories, for God’s sake. Her stroller was parked two feet away. Just as he was about to call out, she noticed the empty carriage. Her face lost all its color and everything in her hands slid to the floor.
    “NADIA!”
    Her eardrum-shattering scream bounced off all the walls in the store. People stopped and stared. A security guard ran toward her just as she fell to her knees. Reid crossed the aisles, the baby rubbing her hand on the bit of stubble on his cheeks. “Hey! Miss Larsen!”
    The woman was hysterical.
    “Ma!” The baby in his arms shouted and that got her attention.
    “Nadia? Oh, God. Oh, my God!” She scrambled to her feet, ran toward him and snatched the baby from his arms, pressing kisses to her face. “Thank you, thank you. Oh, God! I thought she was taken, kidnapped, murdered—”
    “Stop,” he snapped out the order that had mother and child blinking up at him in shock. “She wasn’t taken or kidnapped or murdered. She was toddling along by men’s shoes, completely unsupervised while you’re over here chatting