In Bed With the Badge Read Online Free PDF Page B

the woman pressed.
    “Yes.” His eyes had narrowed as he’d studied the woman in his doorway. “Do I know you?” It was a gratuitous question because he prided himself on never forgetting a face.
    “No. But you ‘knew’ Lisa’s mother.” She nodded toward the little girl. “In the biblical sense,” she emphasized. “Andrea Coltrane.”
    He never forgot a name, either. When the woman mentioned Andrea, an image instantly materialized in his mind’s eye. It was accompanied by half a dozen memories that spliced together in a quick mental slideshow.
    Andrea, a cool, statuesque blonde, proved to be a red-hot lover. So hot that for a very short while, he’d contemplated entering into a long-term relationship with the upwardly mobile tax attorney, but he never got the chance.
    Inexplicably, things suddenly cooled between them. Before he knew it, Andrea had disappeared from his life. He’d tried calling her a couple of times. The second time, he’d been informed by a metallic voice that the number he’d dialed was no longer in service. When he discovered that she’d moved as well, he figured he would take the hint.
    It never occurred to him that Andrea had moved for any other reason than she’d wanted a change. During their time together, she’d insisted that she wanted no strings tying her down.
    Glancing at the little girl, an uneasy feeling told him that he’d made the wrong assumption.
    “Where is Andrea?” he asked the woman, his tone guarded.
    Rather than answer, the woman handed him an eight-by-ten manila envelope and then, still holding the little girl by the hand, she walked into his apartment.
    “I’m Carole Gilbert. I worked with Andrea for the last five years.” She nodded at the envelope. “This’ll explain everything.”
    Worked.
    Sam’d had an uneasy feeling that there was a specific reason for the reference in the past tense, probably not because Andrea had moved on again.
    Fingers poised over the envelope’s clasp, he’d raised his eyes to look at Carole. “What am I going to find in here?”
    “In a nutshell, ‘Congratulations, Detective Wyatt,you’ve just become a daddy.’ She moved the little girl forward. “This is your daughter, Lisa. She’s six.” Carole bent down so that her face was close to the little girl’s. “Say hello to your father, Lisa,” Carole instructed gently.
    Cornflower blue eyes widening ever so slightly, the little girl gave him a shy smile and in a voice that was soft and delicate as the first spring breeze, she said, “Hello.”
    Everything inside of Sam shouted no! even as he found himself looking down into Andrea’s blue eyes. Lisa was Andrea’s daughter, all right. A perfect miniature of her mother.
    The word “perfect” really was not applicable here, he’d thought as he felt his stomach sinking past his knees.
    Despite the fact that she appeared anxious to leave, Sam made the bearer of his unsettling news stay as he read, then reread the letter and the will enclosed. And then he fired questions at her as he tried to reconcile himself to this wildly abrupt turn of events.
    Andrea, killed the week before by a drunk driver, had left very specific instructions as to whom was to take care of Lisa in the event of her untimely death. An only child whose parents were both deceased, Andrea had felt that Lisa needed to be raised by at least one parent and he, Sam, met that minimum requirement.
    He stared at the birth date that Andrea had written down. Apparently Lisa was the direct result of the “wildly romantic” two months he and Andrea had spent together. When she’d discovered that she was pregnant, Andrea was determined to raise Lisa on her own and so she had disappeared.
    “‘Nothing against you, Sam,’” he read. “‘But at the time, you didn’t strike me as exactly father material. But since you’re reading this, circumstances have obviously dictated otherwise. Lisa is a wonderful, intelligent little girl—with us as her parents,