Christmas in the City - Jill Barnett Page 0,71

"What is it you want?"

She turned away, pulling him by the hand. Their trip to toy shops that one day had only been about a doll they couldn't find, though he'd tried to buy her anything to stop the tears. The toys in her room, even the books, were what the designer thought she needed. She hadn't even seemed to care about the boxes of things that had arrived two weeks later from San Francisco, and in the end, they had stored them in the attic.

She pulled him across the room to a bright corner where a small children's replica of a Queen Anne tea table and chairs was set with a miniature china tea service. He watched her and smiled to himself. This was her train.

If he'd learned one lesson in parenting, it was he would not come back for it because it might be gone. Ed immediately summoned the saleswoman, bought the whole thing as it was, and asked for it to delivered. He squatted down to her level. "Well, Miss Penelope, little one," he said, then added, "my lucky Penny. It looks like very soon you're going to have to make me some tea. And crumpets. I insist on blueberry crumpets."

"No," she said, "my Uncle Eddie," mimicking him and she laughed, this sad little girl who held his heart in her small hands, a free and easy laugh that was the most lovely sound he'd heard. He looked away for a moment, feeling an emotion well up in his eyes. "Cinnamon buns," she said firmly.

He understood then that Josie had shared more than family photographs with her young daughter. He took Penny's hand. "Aunt Martha's cinnamon buns," he said.

"Yes," she said. "Thank you, my Uncle Eddie."

Six whole words together. Relief and something like joy ran through him. He was "her Uncle Eddie."

Someone was following her.

Idalie had left early for Brooklyn, to the distributors offices with her newest batch of doll clothes, and noticed nothing unusual, until she left and was crossing the bridge, then went through to a series of trolley runs that gave away the man in jacket and bowler hat who coincidentally happened to be leaving J. Morris and Sons Wholesalers and was heading back to the city, first to Washington Square, then the 6th Street Line to Lexington and now Broadway. There was safety in the crowds, if she believed she was in danger, which she did not.

She wondered what Edward Lowell was doing. She had signed the release. No, she has not done anything with the bank draft but she doubted that was the problem. The money exchanged hands. This man was not Lowell, a hired minion no doubt, but she did not for a moment believe running into him on the 3rd floor was a coincidence. there was no secrecy in what passed between them. He was about to kiss her. And to her horror was the momentary realization that she might not have stopped him.

Slightly flushed, she checked the small, oval watch face dangling from a hummingbird pin with garnet eyes that she wore on the lapel of her tweed jacket. She had plenty of time, Thursday being her light day, when she went in later and was off by 3 o'clock because her duties were only the scheduling of department employees and deliveries. She worked four hours yet they paid her for eight, one of the perks of longevity in the same department and company loyalty.

At an intersection near the park square, she stopped, casually looked around while she waited for the street officer to blow his whistle and allow them to cross. Nearby a nut seller stood with his red and white pushcart and hawked his paper bags of hot peanuts, chestnuts and pecans. Behind him was Mexican food seller with strings of green flags above shiny cookpots from which he dished cups of Chili Con Carne and Jo's favorite cornhusk- wrapped tamales.

The whistle sounded but she didn't cross and instead bought a small container of chili and tucked it inside her bag, then waited again. He really should have crossed the street and waited for her on the other side. But her tracker stood back, his hands shoved into his pants pockets and he rocked on his heels like a man who couldn't wait long for anything.

He couldn't follow her inside the employee entrance once Idalie was at work. But to her dismay he was there when she left work and he followed her almost to her front