The Off Season Read Online Free PDF

hook.
    She blew out a breath, feeling both relieved and foolish. “Then this was all for nothing, dragging you out here at this hour.”
    He turned to look straight ahead, his Adam’s apple working. “Least I can do . . .”
    For a moment, she held her breath, certain he would bring it up. That he’d apologize or say something to make the moment even more difficult.
    Instead, he shrugged it off. “It’s the job they gave me, after all.”
    “The way I hear it, you’re a hero.” When she’d first heard the details of how he’d nearly lost his own life protecting others, she’d been blindsided by a rush of pride for the same boy she had spent so many years hating. In a way, she realized, it had felt like a vindication, the knowledge that the potential she’d seen in him had been more than a case of raging hormones—or naïveté.
    He made a scoffing sound, still not looking at her. “Well, this hero needs to catch some burglars before somebody else gets hurt.”
    “Somebody else ?”
    “You didn’t know? There was an older man three blocks from here.” He filled her in on the specifics.
    “I don’t understand.” She shook her head. “Why haven’t I heard about this? I mean, I work at the med center, right in the ER.” That was no guarantee, what with HIPAA laws protecting patient information. But in a community as small as Seaside Creek, news of a brutal assault in the neighborhood where she lived should have filtered back to her, even if the poor man had been brought in on one of her off days.
    “They took him to Presbyterian, over in Woods Crossing,” he explained, referring to a private hospital about thirty minutes inland. “And, anyway, we haven’t publicized it.”
    “Why on earth not?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t I have known if my daughter and I were in danger?”
    At the anger in her tone, Lilly shifted with a whimper.
    “Let’s say we talk about this inside,” Harris said, laying a hand on Christina’s arm, “where you’ll be more comfortable.”
    She flinched away from his touch, and their gazes clashed as awareness arced between them, a reminder that she would never be comfortable as long as she remained in his still-too-handsome presence. That while two days ago she might have passed him on the street with no more than a cool nod, the words she’d heard these past two nights had left her too shaken for pretenses . . . the words still ringing in her memory, words that couldn’t be explained away by any glitch in a monitor.
    I need you to come find me, Katie.
    But where was she to look, when the investigator she’d hired two years before had turned up nothing? And what if she didn’t find the woman who had once dragged her to the dumpster and demanded that she stay there and take care of the baby?
    What if the only thing Christina found was proof that she was no more fit to be a parent than her mother had been?

CHAPTER FOUR
    It took longer than the five minutes Christina had promised Harris before she came back downstairs. Though Lilly settled with merciful speed once she was tucked into her own bed, Christina stood watch over her daughter for some time before leaving Max curled on the rug beside her—as if the big lug offered anything more in the way of security than a tripping hazard.
    Leaving the door ajar, she stopped by the master bedroom to change into comfortable jeans and a thick blue cotton sweater. Two pairs of socks, too, along with her coziest lined slippers. But no matter how much clothing she piled on, she couldn’t escape the chill that had burrowed down inside her. Couldn’t stop shivering as her mind continually replayed the events of the past hour.
    Steeling herself, she headed downstairs, only to pause midway when Harris’s voice echoed from the entry. He was instructing someone, presumably one of his officers, to check all possible points of entry, the phone line, and the detached two-car garage as well. In one sense, it was a relief to know he