Karen Smith - The Baby Trail

Gwen was feeling as though she was poking her hand into a lethal animal’s cage but she extended it anyway. “My name’s Gwen Langworthy.”

He didn’t shake her hand; however, his grip loosened on the hammer and he dropped it onto the seat of the mower. “How can I help you?”

It had been five days since little Amy had been left in her sunroom. Gwen still didn’t know who had left her or why, but she did know the sheriff hadn’t gotten anywhere on identifying the infant. Impatient with him, she was now taking matters into her own hands. She didn’t want Amy going through life never knowing where she came from. Gwen had carried that burden on her own shoulders—she’d been abandoned in a church when she was only two. She knew all the self-doubt that went with not knowing her birth parents…the introspective questions no one could answer.

Quickly stuffing both hands into her pockets, she wondered why her stomach fluttered when she looked at the former FBI agent. Was she afraid of him? No. She was mesmerized by him. He reeked sensuality, power….

Grabbing on to her reason for coming, she explained, “I know you can find people. I need you to find someone for me.”

“I don’t find people.”

“You find children.”

Now he finally looked interested. “Did you lose a child?”

Was she imagining it or had his voice turned almost gentle? “No I didn’t, but I need to find a child’s mother.”

The gruffness returned. “I’m not FBI, anymore.”

She wasn’t about to give up without a fight. This man was good at what he did. He was the expert she needed and she would convince him that Amy needed him. “I know that. You have a security consulting business now. But you were an FBI agent and I need your help. Someone left a baby at my back door. I won’t let that little girl grow up never knowing who her birth parents were. And I know that each day that goes by the trail gets colder.”

His right eyebrow quirked slightly as if she’d finally made a dent in the shield he’d wrapped around himself. “Why do you care so much?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Because I was adopted and never knew who my birth parents were. And neither did anyone else.”

The September wind whistled through the lodgepole pines and Russian olive trees, then gusted through the door of the shed, sending leaves scattering.

After a few moments of thoughtful consideration, the ex-FBI agent said, “Let’s go to the house.” He motioned outside at the granite stepping stones that led to his back deck.

Although Gwen’s surroundings might have taken her attention any other time—there was something primitively beautiful about the property—she couldn’t keep her gaze from Garrett Maxwell’s broad back or the way he fit his jeans. Something about him, maybe that innate sensuality she’d sensed, stirred a deep womanlike corner inside of her. It was a terrifically odd, exciting, confusing sensation.

They passed a gazebolike structure on the deck. At the back door, he stopped and stepped aside to let her precede him. He was scowling and she couldn’t imagine why.

Inside his kitchen, the pleasing knotty pine atmosphere surrounded her immediately. A small round wooden table and chairs stood in a breakfast nook with windows overlooking the back of the property.

When she turned her gaze back to him, he was watching her. A free-fall sensation made her catch her breath as she looked into his very gray eyes.

He broke eye contact and motioned to the counter. “Coffee?” he asked as if he was aware he had to be civil to a guest.

Her mouth had gone dry and she needed something to wet her tongue if she was going to tell her story. She nodded.

Pouring coffee into two large mugs, he motioned to the counter. “I only have powdered creamer. Sugar’s in the canister beside it.”

When Gwen opened the stoneware canister, she found her hands were shaking. She’d never found herself in quite this situation before—highly attracted to a stranger and alone with him in his secluded house.

The lid on the canister flipped and clattered onto the counter.

Garrett Maxwell picked it up, held it and pinned her with his stormy eyes. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. I’ll listen, but I might not be able to help.”

“I’m not nervous,” she returned defensively. She was used to handling everything that came her way—her parents’ divorce, her dad’s drinking, her attempt at intervention to make Russ Langworthy finally face reality.

“Then you’re doing a good imitation. How much sugar?”

She blinked, forgetting why she was standing at his counter.

“In your coffee.” He nodded toward the mug he’d poured for her.

“A teaspoon.” Her voice came out thready.

When he reached around her, his long arm brushed her hip. She swallowed hard, frozen for the moment.

Opening the drawer beside her, he pulled out a spoon and handed it to her. After he closed the drawer and leaned away again, she finally released her breath, took the utensil without allowing her fingers to brush his and spooned sugar from the cannister. He was watching her and she didn’t like the idea that he was trying to “read” her.

With a half smile, he took a pack of creamer from a jelly jar. “One or two?”

“One is fine.”

This time when he handed it to her, their fingers did brush. The expression on his face didn’t change, but she glimpsed a sparklike flicker in his eyes. Could he be attracted to her, too?

So what if he was. She’d come to enlist his help, not to step into another romantic quagmire.

Maxwell let her precede him to the table in the breakfast nook. When she was seated, he dropped into a ladderback chair across from her, took a few sips of his coffee and assessed her over its rim. “So…tell me what this is about.”

After her own sip of coffee, she told him how she’d found baby Amy in her sunroom.

“And you didn’t hear anyone outside?” he asked.

“No. I just heard the baby cry. After I found her, I looked out and thought I heard a car start up. But it was getting dark and I couldn’t see.”

“A smooth start or a rough start?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Think about it.”

As she tried to take herself back to that evening, she remembered holding Amy in her arms and attempting to search through the dusk. She’d heard a chug-chug, then a va-room, before the vehicle sped away. “It wasn’t a smooth start. There was chugging first.”

Maxwell seemed to make a mental note of that. “You said your friend, Shaye Malloy, who is a social worker, arrived. And then the sheriff came. What did he do with the note with the baby’s name on it?”

“He looked at it, then slipped it into his pocket.”

Garrett Maxwell shook his head and his jaw tightened. Then he asked her, “What was the baby wearing?”

The former agent’s face had lines around his eyes and mouth. Gwen guessed he was nearing forty. Had he left the FBI because the job had taken its toll? His face was so interesting, so ruggedly angular, she could look at him all day.

But that wasn’t why she was here.

“Amy was nestled in a blanket, but she had on this cute little sweater and hat and one of those one-piece terry playsuits…in yellow.”

“Why did you call the social worker? Wouldn’t the sheriff have done that?”

“Shaye and I have been friends a long time. I wasn’t about to let Amy out of my hands without knowing someone who cared was looking after her.” Before Shaye and the sheriff had arrived, Gwen had cuddled Amy, rocked her, crooned to her, and it had been very difficult to let Shaye take her.

When Garrett Maxwell’s penetrating gaze focused on her, Gwen felt turned inside out.