Safe in His Arms. Dana Corbit

now?”

      She dropped the cabbage and knife on the cutting board and hurried down the hall to the living room.

      “Remember, Emma, don’t answer the—” The word “door” died on her lips as she glanced around the living room. Emma wasn’t on the couch or near her pile of toys. Even her portable CD player lay abandoned.

      “Emma?” Lindsay called, as she started up the stairs, her pulse scrambling. She expected the child to come racing down the hall. It and her bedroom were empty.

      “Emma Claire, where are you?” She started down the steps again.

      “Hey, Lindsay. Out here.”

      Her heart was pounding, but she stopped as she recognized the familiar voice coming from outside. What was Joe doing here? She hurried across the living room and opened the door. Joe stood on her porch with Emma resting on his hip. Lindsay could only stare at them, her mouth falling slack.

      She wanted to yell at him for showing up at her condo after she’d expressly told him she didn’t need his help, but how could she, when he was standing there holding the child she hadn’t been watching closely enough? When Emma’s escape was proof positive that she was doing a lousy job.

      Joe stepped up to the storm door and opened it. “Look who just slipped out the front door to greet me.”

      “I can see that.”

      His smile grated on her. Okay, maybe she wasn’t the best guardian, but he didn’t have to rub it in. He was the one who’d popped in uninvited and had given a three-year-old a reason to sneak outside. And if he was insisting on showing up as the protector of the public, why was he out of uniform again, wearing jeans and a snug T-shirt that hugged his well-formed arms, chest and shoulders? She didn’t even want to think about whether she should have noticed those things at a time like this, or at any time for that matter.

      “I was just telling Emma here that even when she sees a friend outside, she can’t go out without her Aunt Lindsay.” He lowered the child to the ground.

      “Trooper Rossetti is right,” Lindsay said, no matter how much it grated on her to admit it.

      “Sorry,” Emma said in a small voice.

      “It’s okay, but you’d better come inside now.”

      Lindsay made just enough room for her niece to slip past her, and then she reached for the door handle and tried to close it.

      “Thanks for coming by, but it’s a crazy time of day around here, and we were just about to eat, so …” She paused, hoping he would get the hint to leave, but the oven timer went off, and he still hadn’t turned down the walk.

      “Shouldn’t you get that?”

      “Yeah, I’d better.”

      She waved and started down the hall. She’d only taken a few steps when a squeak of the door had her turning back. Emma had grabbed Joe’s hand and was pulling him inside, and Joe was letting her. Was the trooper always this dense over social cues, or was he being this annoying on purpose?

      “Do you want to play dolls?” Emma asked, as she led him toward the toy box Lindsay had moved from her old bedroom.

      Lindsay started back toward them, but the buzz kept coming from the kitchen. Finally, with a frustrated sigh, she stalked out of the room.

      Just as she pulled the pan from the oven, she sensed Joe behind her. Either that or the skin on the back of her neck was becoming gooseflesh for no good reason. Setting the pan aside, she turned to face him.

      Joe stood in the doorway, with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, like a blue-jeans model. Only his jeans had the spotted look of someone’s painting pants, and the hole in one of the knees appeared to have been earned the hard way. At least he had the decency not to look smug that he’d managed to stay despite her wishes.

      Lindsay peeked behind him, but Emma must have stayed in the living room.

      “Wasn’t I obvious enough that I was trying to get you to leave?”

      The side of his mouth lifted. “No, you were real clear there.”

      “So why are you still here?”

      “I was invited.”

      That lazy smile annoyed her, but the jolt of electricity she felt shocked her in more ways than one. What was wrong with her? She crossed her arms. Just who did he think he was, staying when he knew she didn’t want him there? And an invitation from a three-year-old didn’t count, either. Joe must have sensed that she was about to say something acidic enough to bore a hole through his skin because he held up both hands to ward off the assault.

      “Look, I’m already here, so you might as well put me to work. I could hang out with Emma while you’re finishing dinner. You said it’s a hectic time of day, so …” He glanced around the chaos in her kitchen. “And, besides, Emma is already setting up dolls in the living room. Do you want to be the one to tell her I can’t stay to play?”

      Lindsay caught sight of her saucepan in her side vision. Steam was seeping from under the lid where the asparagus had to be overcooked. The head of cabbage lay on the cutting board where she’d abandoned it.

      “Fine,” she said, blowing out a frustrated sigh. “You can stay. But this is my house and my rules, and I—” She stopped, wincing. “Did I really just say that?”

      “From your parents?”

      “My dad.”

      “My brother tells me that, as a parent, you say every one of those things you promised yourself you’ll never say to your own kids.”

      In a roundabout way, he’d just called her a parent. During all of the discussions with her mother and father and even with Delia’s attorney, no one had called Lindsay a “parent.” She liked the way that sounded.

      “So …?” Joe gestured toward the living room with a flick of his thumb.

      “Go ahead. Just play with Emma until I can get food on the table.”

      Farther down the hall, he turned back. “I’ll be sure to follow your rules. In your house.” With a grin, he was off and around the corner to the living room.

      Emma must have been hiding because giggles drifted down the hall. Lindsay could tell the exact moment when Joe found her hiding place as those giggles multiplied. Joe really was amazing with her niece. Fun but firm. Playful but not a pushover. Maybe he could teach her a few things about working with children.

      No matter what it took for her to become the best caregiver for Emma, the kind that Delia had hoped for when she’d named her guardian, Lindsay was willing to do it. And if that meant taking unsolicited advice from a Michigan State Trooper, then she would do that, too.

      “You could stay for dinner,” she heard herself saying.

      Joe popped around the corner with Emma hanging on his leg. “Sure, I’d love to stay. Thanks.”

      Lindsay nodded. He’d won. She should have been frustrated that he’d gotten his way, after all. But she was relieved that Trooper Joe Rossetti wasn’t leaving, and she couldn’t explain why.

      Yet, relief wasn’t the worst of what she was feeling. Her sweaty palms and the butterflies in her belly felt an awful lot like anticipation. Was she really looking forward to sharing dinner with the guy who reminded her of everything she’d lost and whose presence there today was like a neon sign announcing her weaknesses as a guardian? Even telling herself that he was there on her terms, not his, didn’t make her feel any less edgy. Anticipation … now, that worried her most of all.

       Chapter Four

      “That was great,” Joe said, as he pushed back from Lindsay’s blond-wood dinette table and wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin.