Assumed Identity - By Julie Miller Page 0,34

crate of beer mugs.

“Customers, already?” Robbie’s Irish heritage was evident in both his accent and his jovial greeting. He set the glasses on the bar and grinned through his bushy black beard and mustache.

“No.” The place was nearly deserted this early in the evening, so there was no mistaking that Robin and the suit with the badge were here to see him.

“Friends of yours, then.” The fact that Jake had never had one friend stop in for a visit didn’t seem to faze Robbie. The burly Irishman stretched his arm across the bar to shake hands with the detective. “Spencer Montgomery—we don’t see enough of you around here anymore.”

The carrot top with Robin nodded. “Mr. Nichols. Since my partner got engaged, he’d rather take his fiancée out for drinks after work than come here with me. Go figure.”

Robbie chuckled. “So it’s a date then?”

“No.”

“No.”

“No.” Jake, Robin and the detective all answered in unison.

Seeming oblivious to the tension in the room, Robbie lifted the gate at the end of the bar and circled around to squat down beside the stroller. “And who might this little beauty be?”

He poked his fat finger into the stroller and laughed when Emma Carter batted at it and then latched on. He tilted his face to Robin. “I’m Robbie Nichols, the owner of this fine establishment. May I, Mrs....?”

“Ms. Carter. Robin.” Jake watched a smile warm her face as she bent down to unhook the baby and pick her up. “This is Emma. She can hold up her head now, but you still want to make sure you support her.”

A protective impulse, as instant as it was foreign, heated Jake’s blood as he watched Robin place the baby in his boss’s arms. “Be careful with her, Robbie.”

Robbie waved off the warning and buzzed some motorboat noises that made Emma giggle and tug on his beard. “I know how to handle a wee babe like this. Don’t I take care of my great-nephew just fine when Josie brings him in for a visit?”

Jake remembered how small and fragile Emma had felt in his hands. “Aaron’s a boy and he can walk.”

“He’s one and a half. Still in diapers. He was this size once. Josie—my niece,” he explained to Robin, who didn’t seem to have any problem handing her baby off to men she’d just met, “trusts me with him.”

“Yeah, well...be careful,” Jake warned. The notion that it wasn’t his place to warn anyone away from the little girl registered a moment too late.

Robin’s eyes narrowed with a question for Jake before she smiled at Robbie again. “You handle her like a pro, Mr. Nichols.”

“Robbie,” he said, making both the Carter girls feel welcome.

While they spent a minute getting acquainted, and Jake tried to bury that troublesome penchant for rescuing damsels in distress by diving into his work, Detective Montgomery slid onto the green leather seat of a barstool and slyly voiced a comment. “Thanks for the tip on the license plate.”

Jake stopped with his fists around the necks of two bottles and flashed an accusatory glance at Robin. Her cheeks flushed with rosy heat before she defended herself. “I didn’t tell him you gave it to me.”

Montgomery coolly eyeballed Jake and vice versa. He’d have to be careful around this perceptive cop if he wanted to maintain his anonymity as the strong, silent type who served beers and threw out drunks who disrupted the peace. The detective probably made a hell of a poker player in most circles, but Jake had known men like him before. He wasn’t sure who or when, but he recognized a man who was a lot smarter and more aware than he let on. Maybe because Jake was that type of man himself.

He had to respect the kind of cop Montgomery was. But that also meant he had to work a little harder—or maybe play a little nicer—to stay off the detective’s radar. “You have to include my name in that police report if I answer your questions?”

Montgomery’s gray eyes were wary. “Any reason why I shouldn’t?”

Jake placed the last of the beers in the cooler and ditched the box. Robin seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for his answer. He didn’t want the perceptive detective to get too curious about him. Robin, either. “I’m just a guy who likes his privacy.”

“Jake, I don’t mean to intrude,” Robin apologized, “but I asked Detective Montgomery to find you because I wanted to—”

“Ask your questions, Detective.” She wanted something from him? Jake nipped