She gathered her breath and snuggled Lily just a little closer. “The lawyer wants me to hold off on the adoption petition until after the killer is caught and I can guarantee that the babies are safe. Added to that, she believes I should include a statement in my petition outlining future safety measure I’ll take to make sure there’s no repeat of what happened.”
He continued to stare at her. “Will the abduction affect your application for adoption?”
Addie wanted to say no but couldn’t. “Maybe,” she admitted and then went with the truth. “Probably.” She had to take a moment to tamp down the churning in her stomach over the possibility of not being able to become a mother to these babies. “There’s no doubt others want them, and the adoption agency might consider them to be better parents than I can be.”
“No one would be better than you,” Judson was quick to assure her.
He believed that. And she hoped it was true. But Addie couldn’t forget that they’d had sex just hours earlier and that might be playing into his assessment of her. Heck, their entire past together certainly colored his thoughts.
“The powers that be might not see it that way,” she muttered.
Judson started walking again and stopped right in front of where she was sitting. “I’ll marry you if you think that’ll help your petition.”
Addie’s mouth dropped open, and while she was stunned, she was pretty sure that Judson was, too. She was betting he hadn’t given that a lot of thought before he’d thrown it out there like that.
“Marry,” she repeated, and because she didn’t know what else to say, she repeated it a couple more times.
“That proposal isn’t about the sex,” he spelled out before she could manage to say just that. “It’s about Lily and Rose. And, I mean, it’s not as if we don’t know each other.”
“So, it is partly about the sex,” she said.
He looked ready to shrug and then seemed to remember he had a baby on his shoulder. A burping one. The sounds added a bit of lightness to the serious tone that’d settled over the room.
“All right,” Judson conceded. “The sex plays into it. Things are…good between us in that department.”
They were better than good. However, she could practically hear thebutto follow that. Good sex was a start, but it shouldn’t be the foundation for a marriage, one that included a ready-made family with preemie twins who were going to need a lot of care, love and attention.
“I appreciate that,” she told him. And she voiced thatbut. “It’s a bad time for either of us to be making big decisions about our future.” Then she spelled out another issue. “And I don’t want to tie you into a relationship for the sake of the babies. It’s honorable, yes. Very honorable,” she amended. “But if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see it isn’t what you really want.”
She frowned and felt the stir of fresh emotions. Disappointment was leading the pack, followed closely by the dread that she’d just shut down something she shouldn’t have.
Something she wanted.
She did want Judson. Addie wanted him, marriage. Heck, a bright, rosy future together with their twin girls. But this wasn’t a fantasy she could force or lure Judson into. If he truly proposed, she wanted it to be for the right reasons.
For love.
Judson opened his mouth to speak, and Addie held her breath. Then she heard the silent profanity in her head when his phone vibrated doing its little dance across the desk.
Talk about lousy timing, but when he walked to the desk, looked at the screen and muttered, “It’s Grace,” Addie knew the phone call could be more important than the personal stuff going on between them.
Because until this investigation was over and the killer was caught, any and all personal plans had to be on hold.
Judson eased Rose into her bassinet and took the call. Thankfully, he didn’t step out of the room so she wouldn’t be able to hear, but instead he moved closer to her and put the call on speaker.
“Addie’s here with me and listening in,” Judson let his boss know right off the bat.
Grace sighed. “I was hoping she’d be asleep.”
“I slept some,” Addie piped in.
“Good. We’ll all need a long sleep once this ordeal is over,” Grace replied. “And we might be closing in on that. Finally.” Addie was ready to cheer or at least blow out a breath of relief, but then Grace added, “There might have been another murder, though.”
Judson bit off the profanity that he started. “Who?”
“Possibly Trevor,” Grace was quick to let them know. “After he didn’t show for the GSR test, I had two reserve deputies go to the hotel where he was supposed to have been staying. When they arrived, the door was ajar so they entered, and they saw blood on the floor. But no sign of Trevor.”
Addie had to stop herself from cursing, too. She wasn’t a fan of Trevor, but if he’d been murdered, that meant the killer wasn’t stopping.
