“Will do.”
After the cops left, Noah locked the doors, checked all the windows, then made a sweep of the house.
Nothing was missing. Did that mean the intruder hadn’t been a thief but something else? Or just that he or she had been scared off by the alarm?
The lack of an answer didn’t rest easily.
Noah’s parents had had the first-floor doors and windows wired to the alarm years before. Noah would be adding to the second-floor windows. He’d do whatever the alarm company recommended.
This wasn’t supposed to be Noah’s life. He was the stable one, the guy who got up at four to exercise, the guy who was at his desk by seven, the guy who’d turned his dad’s small software business into a multimillion-dollar enterprise by predicting what would happen next and getting there first.
Nothing about his life made sense anymore, nothing except the little girl sleeping upstairs, who’d turned everything upside down, including his heart.
CHAPTER TWO
Delaney Wright pressed her face deeper into the pillow, willing herself back into the dream. She’d been home in Shadow Cove, where her bedroom smelled like sea salt and her mother’s lavender sachets. Reality smelled like stale tobacco and unwashed bodies.
A harsh cough from one of the beds across the room shattered the last wisp of her peace.
Delaney pushed herself upright on the thin mattress, springs creaking as the familiar weight of dread settled on her. Sunlight filtered through the dirty windows, casting dappled shadows across the worn linoleum. A few days in this place and already she could feel it trying to claim her—the despair that clung to the peeling wallpaper, the resignation that echoed in every conversation.
But today would be different.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet touching the cold floor, and checked the time.
Then checked it again.
She hadn’t slept past six thirty since she’d moved in here. But it was an hour after that. Why hadn’t her alarm gone off?
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was that she had forty-five minutes before she had to leave for her interview, forty-five minutes to transform herself from a down-on-her-luck shelter resident into someone worthy of caring for a precious child. Someone who deserved a chance.
Delaney pulled her robe around her shoulders and hurried down the hall. The night before, she’d pressed her outfit and hung it in the laundry room, since the closet in the bedroom she shared with two other residents was too packed with stuff to hang anything.
She hadn’t brought a lot with her when she’d left Maine, but she’d thought to pack clothes suitable for an interview—a navy blazer, matching slacks, and a cream blouse. They made her look professional and competent, like someone who belonged in the stately homes that lined Driftwood’s old-money neighborhoods.
She reached the laundry room and stopped cold in the doorway.
Her slacks were on the hanger, but her blazer and blouse lay on the floor in a heap, wrinkled beyond recognition. The acrid smell of cigarette smoke hung thick in the small room despite the no-smoking sign plastered on the wall.
Two women sat on folding chairs near the open window, sharing a cigarette between them, blowing the smoke outside. As if that worked.
“Sorry,” one of them said, glancing at her crumpled clothes. “They were like that when we got here.”
Delaney’s throat was too tight to respond. She bent to retrieve them, her hands trembling as she shook out the blazer. Aside from the wrinkles, it was unharmed.
The cream blouse bore a brown stain across the front—coffee, maybe, or something worse. The careful plans she’d made, the confidence she’d tried to build up since she’d gottenthe call from the agency about the position, crumbled like the cigarette ash flicked onto the floor.
She wanted to scream. Wanted to demand an explanation, to insist her housemates show some basic respect. But the words would do no good. If she didn’t get the job, she’d have to come back here, have to keep living with these people.
Lord, please give me favor.
“You okay, honey?” The second woman’s voice carried a note of genuine concern, though she made no move to put out her cigarette.
Delaney didn’t trust her voice. Of course she wasn’t okay. She was a thousand miles from home with exactly forty-seven dollars in her wallet and clothes that now looked like she’d pulled them from a donation bin.
But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she swiveled and hurried back to her room.
