“Hmm.” Big Joe sounded interested. Finally. “Shoot me his photo and prints, and I’ll do some digging.”
Noel took the dead guy’s forefinger and thumb and rolled them over his phone, then sent the electronic prints, along with a photo.
“Be good, boy.” Big Joe’s trademark signoff as he disconnected.
Noel didn’t want to be overly alarmed, because hisassailant looked like a tweaker and smelled the part. Nevertheless, he had a feeling this was no ordinary robbery. No drug addict shakedown gone bad. The assault had been sloppy, but the perp looked way too kempt under the grime covering his body, and the method screamed professional.
Besides, what druggie would waste his own drugs in an effort to score more?
Tired, annoyed, andnow frustrated that he’d ruined his own homecoming, Noel tidied up the crime scene before leaving. He did his meditation on the go as he headed for the ferry. While keeping one part of himself always on the alert, he let the rest of his mind drift into that calm, kill-free state, knowing he headedhome.
The one place on Earth that made him feel human.
An hour and a half later,his head throbbing, Noel stood in Bainbridge Island, Washington, on the front porch of his Craftsman-style home. In the thick of the woods. Away from people.
Well,mostpeople.
He stared at the mess on his doorstep. Or rather, at the mess in the arms of the most annoying woman on the planet.
“I can’t believe she’d just drop him off like that.” Adeline Rose blinked her brightgreen eyes at him and shrugged a strand of blue-black hair off her shoulder. She shifted the bundle in her arms, letting the whimpering baby settle over her generous breasts.
A wave of disappointment crushed him, though he shouldn’t have cared that his neighbor had apparently given birth since the last time he’d seen her. She hadn’t looked pregnant four months ago, but he’d been in a rushto get to the Sudan for an assignment. So who knew?
Adeline blinked at him, her plump lips parting in question.
As usual, the sight of his neighbor dumped his thoughts straight into the gutter. She had a half-Japanese father, who’d given her a lean build, porcelain skin, and a slight slant to her eyes. Cat eyes. Sexy eyes. From her mother she’d inherited her curves, at least partof her intelligence, and that mouth. He’d had dreams about Adeline Rose’s soft red lips…
All the meditation he’d done on the ferry, his sense of peace—gone.
She said something else, and he tuned her out, trying to be just another guy on vacation, any other businessman on a break from a chaotic job that was stressing him the hell out.
“…your baby, and I couldn’t help…” shecontinued in that husky voice that aroused him every time he heard her.
Adeline Rose or “Addy” had been a thorn in his side since she’d moved into her parent’s old house two years ago. His only neighbor for half a mile, close enough to borrow a cup of sugar, but he couldn’t see her place past the fence, trees, and a spot of distance he liked to think of as his Addy buffer zone. Yet shemade her presence known whenever she so much as twitched.
Unfortunately, Noel had a healthy attraction for the nosy woman. Hell. Who wouldn’t? Just his type, Addy had intelligence, beauty, and a fierce need to go her own way. He knew almost everything about her, since he’d created a dossier on the woman the moment he’d moved into the neighborhood four years ago. But knowing about her andmeeting her in the flesh had proven what a difference reality could make. Words didn’t do this woman justice.
He gave her a subtle onceover and wished he hadn’t. The sight of her breasts never failed to arouse him, and her ass had given him more restless nights than he wanted to admit.
Then, to have her on his doorstep holding a…
“Wait a minute.” He blinked. “Whatdid yousay?”
Adeline held the infant out to him, and he stared blankly back at her. “He’s yours. His mother was dropping him off just as I’d come over to deliver a package mistakenly left at my place.”
“What. The.Fuck?”
She flinched. “Shh. You’ll upset him.”
“Upsethim?” Still, he lowered his voice, staring in shock at the bundle of—joy?—in her arms. “That’s a baby.”
“Yes. A baby boy,” she said slowly. “He’s four months old.”
“Not yours?”
She sighed. “I can see this is news to you. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but according to the lady who dropped him off, he’s yours. She left a note with his things.”
Noel followed her glance to the duffle bag at her feet.
