Laura Marie - Temporary Dad

She especially didn’t want to see the really great framed print over his bed. Gauguin’s And the Gold of Their Bodies.

She’d always loved that painting.

Interesting that Jed did, too.

The full-figured island women evoked paradise and pleasure.

Waaa huh!

On her way out of the room, Annie trailed her fingertips along the cool, dust-free surface of an ornate antique dresser.

She loved antiques.

The stories behind them.

Where had this piece come from? Was it a family heirloom? Or something Jed picked up at auction? Did he like auctions? Annie did. Maybe they could go together some time? Share a Frito-Lay chili pie during—

Waaaaaaaaahh!

Casting one last curious look around the room, Annie hustled downstairs.

She’d scooped Pia out of her carrier and was feeling her diaper for thickness when the phone rang.

If it was Patti, she wasn’t missing her.

Running up the steps, Annie cursed herself for not bringing the cordless phone downstairs.

“Hello?” she said, out of breath. By the glow of the lamp she’d forgotten to turn off, she stared into the blue eyes of a grinning, wide-awake baby.

“Hey, Annie. Good—you found the phone.” There went that curious flip-flopping in her stomach. Could it be because Jed sounded as hot over the phone as he did in person? No. And to prove it, she changed her focus to plucking Pia’s pink Velcro bow off her pajama sleeve where it was once again stuck to return it to her hair.

“Were you hiding it?” she asked.

“What?”

“The phone.”

“Nah, I keep forgetting to move it. Lightning fried the one downstairs.”

“Did you serve it with ketchup or tartar sauce?”

He groaned. “That stank.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“You’re forgiven. So? Everything going okay?”

“Sure. Pia’s up, but the boys are still sleeping. Oh—and your sister called.”

“You didn’t get to talk to her?”

“It took me forever to find the phone, and by the time I did, she’d been cut off.”

A long sigh came over the line.

Annie asked, “Want me to play the message for you?”

“Sure.”

She pressed the red button beside a blinking light, then held the phone to the speaker. When the woman’s voice abruptly ended, she said, “Well? That tell you anything?”

“Yep. Tells me to call off the cops and move on to Plan B.”

“What’s that?”

“Going to get her.”

“But you don’t know where she is.”

“Oh, yes, I do.”

Annie shifted the cooing baby to her other arm. “Care to let me in on the secret?”

In the specially designated cell phone waiting area, Patti held an ancient-model cell phone over her head, waving it back and forth in the hope of finding a signal. The man she’d borrowed it from, Clive Bentwiggins of Omaha, was visiting his mother. Clive was at least ninety-eight and on oxygen. The hissing from his portable tank sounded like wind shushing through the Grand Canyon.

“Get one yet?” Clive asked, cradling a cup of black coffee.

Edging toward the Coke machine, holding up her phone arm, Patricia shook her head. “I had one over by that fake ficus, but I—oh, here. Right here.” Yes. Between the Coke machine and a corral of IV poles, the light indicating a signal glowed an intense green.

“Dial fast,” Clive said. “Don’t want you getting cut off again.”

She cast her phone benefactor a smile and dialed Jed’s number. It rang three times before the answering machine picked up. After the beep, she said, “Jed? Jed, honey, are you there? Jed!” She heard static on the line. Crap. She inched closer to the IV poles, but the green light disappeared.

Wheeling his hissing tank behind him, Clive walked toward her. “Losing it again?”

Patti nodded, tears welling in her eyes.

Where could they be?

Something had to be wrong. It was too late for Jed not to answer his phone.

He didn’t have a woman over, did he?

She should’ve known better than to leave her babies with him.

The green light came back on, but all she could hear was the hissing from Clive’s tank.

Covering the phone’s mouthpiece, she said, “Would you mind scooting your tank just a little bit that way? I’m having a hard time—” Too late. The signal was gone.

Patricia sighed.

Clive patted her back. “I raised six kids and twenty-three grandbabies. Trust me, your flock is fine. It’s that busted-up husband of yours you need to worry about.”

“HELLO?” Annie said, hands on her hips. “Care to finally let me in on your big secret?”

Jed had been home from his twenty-four-hour shift for five minutes. In those five minutes, he’d replayed Patti’s latest message ten times. Now he definitely knew where his sister had gone.

He shot into action, barreling into the kitchen. He’d take everything Patti left with him. There were only a few cans of formula and three or four diapers, but that should at least get him over the Colorado state line. In Denver, he’d grab whatever else he needed.

“Jed?” Annie’s sweet voice jolted him from his todo list.

Arms laden with his few requisite supplies, Jed looked up on his way back to the living room. “Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

“Packing.”

Annie’s eyes narrowed as she kissed the top of Pia’s head. “Please tell me you’re not planning to load up these sweet, sleepy babies and trek them wherever you think your sister may be.”

“Hey,” he said from the living room, dumping the baby grub into the diaper bag, “I can see why you might think I’m crazy to go traipsing blindly across the country. But for your information, I happen to know exactly where Patti is.”

“Oh, you do?” She followed him into the living room and gently set Pia on a fuzzy pink blanket on the floor. “Mind telling me how you worked it out, Sherlock?”

“Love to, Watson.” He grinned. “You like those old movies, too?”

Frowning, she said, “I prefer the books.”

“La-di-da.”

She stuck out her tongue. “Just get to the part where you unravel the mystery.”

“Simple deduction.” He snatched the diaper wipes from the coffee table. “Remember all that hissing and shushing on the answering machine message?”

“Yeah…” she said, arms crossed, eyebrows raised. “Can’t wait to hear where this leads.”

“She’s at our family cabin just outside Fairplay, Colorado.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Patti hardly said two words on that message, and from that you’ve deduced she’s holed up in some cabin?”

Snatching a few teething toys—plastic key rings and a clear plastic thingamajig with fish floating around inside—Jed said, “You know babies, right? Well, I know my sister. Ever since having the triplets, she’s had a rough time of it.”

“Duh.”

He shot his smart-mouthed neighbor a look.

She shot him one back.

Try as he might to stay on topic, Jed couldn’t help thinking that he liked this feisty side of her. As soon as he got things settled, he just might tackle a whole new case—figuring out how to take Annie’s PG-13 rating to a wicked-fun R!

He shook his head to clear it of the sweet sin threatening to muck up the next task on his road-trip agenda.

“Well?” she asked. “You’re zero-and-one. Gonna go for zero-and-two?”

Jed glanced up as he stuffed a blue blanket into his now-bulging duffel bag. “Anyone ever tell you that for having such a fine package, you sure have a sassy mouth?”

Annie’s face reddened and she looked away.

Hmm…Apparently he’d just pulled off his first TKO. “For your information, Little Miss Sassy Pants, all that hissing on the answering machine wasn’t hissing, but wind. Wind whistling through the pines and firs outside our family cabin to be specific. Cell-phone service is touchy up there, which explains why she constantly gets cut off.”