guy.”
“Maybe Officer Taylor could walk you and Emma home,” Robin suggested.
“No!” Her friend’s answer was too fast and too succinct to be polite and her cheeks instantly flooded with embarrassment.
“I don’t mind,” the big man offered. “Security is what Hans and I do best.”
“No.” Hope’s gaze darted up to meet Pike Taylor’s, but then settled, almost deliberately, at the middle of his chest. “I mean, no, thank you. Officer Wheeler’s outside. She’s a friend. I’ll ask her.”
Robin’s concern shifted from defending Lonergan to the situation at hand. The Hope she knew was a gentle, patient soul—not this skittish woman who was visibly shaking in her soggy slippers.
“Hope?” She put a hand beneath Emma before touching her friend’s shoulder.
Hope snapped her gaze to Robin. “I’ve got her,” Hope reassured her, hugging the infant in her arms. And though she sounded more like the friend Robin relied on, Hope’s gaze was darting from the officer’s chest down to the dog, where he lay on the floor, panting, while his tongue lolled out of the side of his long black muzzle. The shepherd looked completely relaxed and disinterested in the people coming and going around him. Her friend, however, seemed ready to bolt. “I’ll go find Maggie Wheeler. You still have the spare key I gave you?”
“Yes. I’ll let myself in.”
Hope forced a smile and flattened her back against the wall to scoot around the police officer and his dog. “Emma and I will be at home when you’re done. Good luck.”
She’d disappeared through the heavy steel door to the parking lot before Officer Taylor spoke. “Did I do something wrong? Is she okay?”
There was shy and tongue-tied, and then there was freaking out. Robin shrugged her confusion, then winced at the pain radiating through her shoulder. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen her act like that before.”
“Sorry I scared her. I would never sic Hans on her.”
Robin nodded, adding her friend’s behavior to the list of things that perplexed her tonight. “I know.”
“Well, we’d best be getting back to work. Ma’am.” Officer Taylor put his cap back on and tipped the bill to her before tugging on the dog’s collar and giving a command in German that prompted the dog to its feet and into step beside him.
Left alone for a few quiet moments, away from the chaos that had descended on her shop and the parking lot outside, Robin inhaled a steadying breath. Part of her wanted to go after Hope to find out what had upset her so, and part of her wanted to curl up in bed with Emma so they could get some sleep and recapture the serenity of their life before the man with the baseball bat.
But Robin knew she wouldn’t be much help to her friend, nor would there be any real relaxing, until she finished her interview with the police and got her life back to its normal routine. If normal was even possible.
While she considered herself infinitely practical, and was used to dealing with the problems in her life on her own, something in Robin’s world had shifted tonight. Her confidence had been rattled and, for the first time, she wondered if she’d been selfish to bring Emma into her life. She’d wanted a family to fill her big house and empty heart so badly that she’d jumped at the chance to adopt Emma when her birth mother had terminated her parental rights. But maybe she had no business being a single mom. Tonight she’d been terrified—not just for herself, but for Emma. She’d been helpless to defend herself or her daughter.
And then Lonergan showed up out of nowhere. Despite his ghostlike appearance, he was solid and real. She’d leaned on him when she’d been too weak to stand and too frightened to think, and he hadn’t budged an inch. Robin didn’t doubt that he could kill a man with those big hands of his—he’d tossed that creep aside like a bag of trash. Yet he’d cradled Emma as though she was the most fragile treasure in the world.
He’d been growly and gruff and overwhelming, and had no interest in accepting the proper thanks he deserved. Still, Lonergan’s sudden disappearance left a void in her world. Any real sense of security was gone. She was usually such a good judge of people. Hadn’t she sensed some sort of interest in his icy gaze? Even if it wasn’t sexual, she was certain that there’d been a connection between them.
But gone was gone. She had