occurs to normal people? If she’s truly just someone with a crush on you who’s following you around because she thinks you’re hot, she wouldn’t really think about trying to hide her identity, would she?”
“Depends,” Rafe said, slowing the car down as we approached the driveway for the mansion, “on what her end goal is. If she just wants to look at me, she’ll probl’ly get tired of it sooner or later.”
I hadn’t. And I couldn’t really imagine anyone else getting tired of looking at him, either. But it was a nice idea. “She knows you’re married. And that we have a baby. That doesn’t seem to have cooled her interest any.”
“It’s too soon to say that,” Rafe said and pulled the car to a stop at the bottom of the steps. “You OK with me parking here for the night?”
“It’s your car,” I said, “you can do what you want. Just be careful getting out.”
He cut the engine and glanced at me. “She ain’t gonna shoot me. She prob’ly don’t even own a gun.”
Probably not. It was the ‘probably’ part that worried me. This was the sticks, and all sorts of people have guns here.
“You wait for me to get there before getting out, though.” He opened his door and slid down before I could answer. I held my breath—it wasn’t that long ago that he’d done this very thing one night: stopped in front of the steps and been taken down by a rifle shot from across the fields—but tonight, nothing happened. He slammed the door and jogged around the car and pulled my door open. “C’mon.”
He handed me out, and then reached in for Carrie and the seat. A few seconds later, we were on our way up the stairs to the front door. He stayed between me and danger every step of the way. I let him unlock the door while I turned around and surveyed what I could of the area in front of the mansion over his shoulder.
Nothing stirred, and if anyone was looking at us—you know that prickly feeling you get sometimes?—I couldn’t tell.
“Go on,” Rafe told me, and gave me a nudge across the threshold. I scrambled inside, and turned to shut the door behind him after he had moved Carrie to safety inside the foyer. Down the darkened hallway, the scrabbling coming toward us was Pearl’s nail clicking on the hardwood floors.
“This is crazy,” I said. “Hello, Pearl. Yes, I know you have to go outside, sweetheart. Just let me—”
“I’ll do it,” Rafe said and turned back to the door.
“Go out the back,” I told him. “Less chance anyone’s going to take a potshot at you.”
“This woman don’t want me dead,” Rafe said, but he snapped his fingers at Pearl and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen. She followed, prancing excitedly and getting in his way. His voice faded as he moved away. “Take the baby upstairs. I’ll be there in a minute.”
A bit longer than that, if I were any judge. But I gathered the carrier, the diaper bag, and the baby, and hauled them all up the central staircase to the second floor. I was in the process of changing Carrie’s diaper and wrestling her into her pink pajamas when he stuck his head through the door. “I’m gonna rinse off.”
Pearl was with him, tongue lolling in a canine grin. She’d spent her formative years chained under a camper up on the Devil’s Backbone, and while she’s gotten used to, and pretty happy about, living inside, she isn’t all that keen on those things called stairs. In this case, Rafe must have cajoled her upstairs with a doggie biscuit, because it was still in his hand.
“Here you go.”
He handed it over. Pearl took it daintily and then crunched into it. I had my mouth open to protest—“Not in the nursery!”—but it was already too late. Crumbs scattered on the floor, and Pearl proceeded to demolish her bone, stubby tail wagging. Rafe headed for the bathroom.
By the time he came out, I had put Carrie on the floor for some tummy time. She’s spent a large part of the evening cooped up in her seat, and it’s good for her to move around. Since she’d figured out how to roll over once, she was trying to do it again, her small, pink body rocking back and forth with the effort. Pearl had licked up the remaining crumbs from the floor and was prone across the threshold with her big