Father Christmas Read online

  She glanced at her watch. One week ago, that wrist had held the most magnificent charm bracelet in the world. Now it felt naked, deprived.The bracelet was lying on her night table so she could torture herself by letting it be the last thing she saw before she fell asleep, and the first thing she saw when she awakened. No, she couldn’t face John, not yet. She hadn’t even glimpsed John, and already her eyes were beading with tears.

  As soon as the door opened at five, signaling the arrival of the first parents, she waved Arlene toward the entry. “You go greet the parents,” she said. “I’m going to help Shannon keep the kids occupied.”

  Nodding, Arlene headed down the hall to the front desk while Molly joined the circle of children sitting on the floor, singing “The Wheels On The Bus.” Molly had her back to the hall, but her gaze lingered on Michael. Once he bellowed, “Daddy!” and leaped up, she would know John was there. Waiting for that inevitable moment made her head ache.

  Arlene came to fetch Abigail first. Then Keisha let out a whoop and raced to the entry shouting, “Mommy!” Taylor was the next to depart.

  Across the circle from her, Michael wore a toothy grin and bounced on his bottom, singing, “The people on the bus go up and down, up and down, up and down!”

  For the zillionth time that day, Molly had to fight the urge to dissolve in tears.

  “The wet-wipes on the bus go swish, swish, swish,” he belted out, “all through the—Daddy!”

  A sharp pain seared through her heart and embedded itself in her soul. Even before Michael had announced John’s arrival with a shout, she’d felt his nearness subliminally. Without turning, she’d known he was there, just a few feet behind her, breathing the same air.

  She could be a coward and remain in the circle. She could be even more of a coward and sprint for the back door. Or she could pretend to be composed and confident. The third choice required her to stand up, turn around, and smile politely at John.

  She could not recall ever attempting such a difficult task, but the cowardly choices didn’t sit well with her. Inhaling deeply, she pushed herself off the floor, wiped her suddenly damp palms on the legs of her jeans, and turned.

  Oh, God. He looked wonderful and terrible all at once. He looked as if the most sorrowful piece of her soul had split from her and infected him. In his eyes she could see her own pain mingled with his.

  She could also see resignation. He wasn’t going to ask her to forgive him—as if there was anything to forgive. He was what he was, and that wasn’t going to change.

  He looked gaunt and tired, his hair mussed and his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His mournful eyes locked onto her. He showed no sign of backing away from her, but he didn’t appear interested in starting a conversation, either.

  “Daddy, I saw Molly!” Michael boasted. “We played all day. I had a new teacher and we played all day, and we saw movies! We saw The Lion King!”

  John spared his son a quick glance, then lifted his eyes to Molly. Tension hardened his jaw as he moved his lips. She prayed for him to say something, but he didn’t. Not with his mouth, anyway. His eyes communicated all sorts of profound messages—if only she could translate them.

  “I made a dog with the clay,” Michael prattled, tugging at his father’s pants. “I made a doggie.”

  “Very good,” John managed, his voice barely audible above the chorus of children singing about the wipers on the bus going swish-swish-swish.

  “It got a big tail,” Michael continued. “I’m gonna put on my boots. Can Molly come with us?”

  “No,” John said softly, his eyes searching her face. What should she say? That she would gladly come with him only if he got rid of his gun and quit police work?

  He wouldn’t give up his gun. And she couldn’t ask him to.

  A sharp scream from the other end of the front hall jolted them. John spun around, groping under his jacket. “Don’t!” Molly whispered, fearing that he was going to draw that horrible gun again. Whoever was screaming—a mother, from the sound of it—didn’t call for John’s macho cop routine.

  Pushing past him, she hurried down the hall. Elsie Pelham, Abigail’s mother, stood in front of the front desk, shouting unintelligible curses at Arlene, the substitute teacher.

  Molly clasped Elsie’s shoulder and eased her away from the dismayed teacher. “Elsie, what’s wrong?”

  “That idiot—” she wagged an accusing finger at Arlene “—let Abbie leave with my ex-husband! He’s kidnapped my baby! He’s stolen her!”

  Molly turned to Arlene, who shrugged helplessly. “He came in and said he was Abigail’s dad. And then Abigail saw him and shouted, ‘Hi, Daddy!’ I just assumed—”

  “That bastard doesn’t have custody of my daughter,” Elsie wailed. “He told me if I didn’t give him custody, he’d take it! Oh, my God, oh, my God!” She broke down, sobbing, sagging against the wall as if her legs could no longer hold her up. “Oh, my God, I’ll never see her again! My baby!”

  “What kind of car does he drive?” John’s voice, though muted, cut through her hysterics to capture her attention.

  She blinked at him through tear-filled eyes. “What?”

  “What kind of car does he drive?” John pulled a notepad and pen from an inner pocket of his jacket. When Elsie continued to blink dazedly at him, he added, “I’m a police detective. We can track the car down if you tell us what he’s driving.”

  “A Volvo,” she said, her voice dulled by her sobs. “Dark red. Maroon, actually.”

  John scribbled on his pad. “Do you know the plate?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “It’s a New York plate. He moved to New York, and he’s going to take her across the state line, and I’ll never get her back. He said there’s a judge there who’ll give him custody. He told me—he warned me—he was here for a holiday visit and I thought he was leaving today, but he stayed. He stayed just to do this. He stole my baby.” Her voice shattered into a low howl of rage.

  “What’s his name?” John asked, as calm as Elsie was frantic.

  “Who? Oh. Frank. Frank Pelham.”

  “Description?”

  “He’s about five-foot-ten and he has brown hair. Everyone says he looks like Robert Downey, Jr.”

  John dutifully wrote this down. “And you’re sure he has your daughter with him?”

  “Of course he does! She doesn’t know there’s a custody fight. She doesn’t know the kind of man he is. I let her see him, but I know he’ll never let me see her if he keeps her. He hates me. He’s going to keep her from me forever!” She succumbed to sobs again.

  “All right.” John clicked his pen shut and turned to Arlene. “When did they leave?”

  She shrugged again. “Five minutes ago. Molly, I’m really sorry...”

  Molly shook her head. She kept files filled with detailed instructions regarding who was and wasn’t allowed to pick up a child. Her staff was required to memorize the information. But Arlene wasn’t a staff member. She hadn’t known any better.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked John, her worry about Abigail Pelham pushing aside her selfish worries about her broken heart.

  “I’m going after him. If he’s heading for New York State, he’ll likely be on I-84. I’ll radio a description of the car and we’ll see if we can stop him.”

  “Abbie won’t come with you,” Elsie Pelham warned. “She thinks her dad is fine. She doesn’t understand the custody arrangement. She won’t leave her dad’s car for a stranger.” She lifted her chin, though she still seemed barely able to stand. “I’ll come with you. If she sees me, I—”

  “No,” John said so quickly, Molly would have smiled if the situation hadn’t been so grave. She couldn’t imagine John trying to chase down Frank Pelham’s car with Elsie bawling and babbling next to him.

  “I’ll go,” Molly volunteered. “Abbie knows me. Arlene, you keep Michael here, okay?”

  “Anything,” Arlene said, clearly shaken by her error. “Whatever you want.
”

  “Go to the police station and wait,” John ordered Elsie. He eyed Molly dubiously, then shoved his pad back into his pocket and strode toward the door. Molly grabbed her jacket from the coat tree behind the desk and chased him out of the building.

  Neither spoke as he opened the passenger door of his car. He pulled from the floor near her feet a bulky, hemispheric object trailing a wire. A flashing red light, she realized as he lifted it through the window and fastened it to the roof of his car. “You can roll up the window, but don’t crush the wire,” he said as she sat.

  She rolled the window halfway up, then folded her hands in her lap and waited while he revved the engine, tore out of the lot, and lifted a radio handset from the console. He flicked a button and spoke into the mouthpiece, describing the car, the circumstances, the passenger. “I’m on him, but if there are any Staties out there, I think I-84 is our best shot,” he said before hanging up.

  The light on the roof of the car splashed a pulsing red wash across the windshield and hood. John navigated aggressively through the rush-hour traffic, crossing the double-yellow line, running red lights until he reached the entrance ramp onto the interstate. The highway was also sluggish with rush-hour traffic, but he wove deftly among the cars, paying attention not only to the hazards of the road but to the license plates of the cars around them.

  Molly studied the plates, too: Connecticut, Connecticut, Connecticut. Up ahead she saw a dark red Volvo...Connecticut.

  John tapped a switch on the dashboard and a siren began to bleat. Molly flinched, her heart pounding from the noise and John’s manic driving. It occurred to her, somewhere in the deeper recesses of her mind, that like the night she’d lost him, John was currently off-duty. And like that night, he wasn’t letting his being off-duty stop him from doing a job. He was a cop, and regardless of the fact that he’d finished his working day, he was doing his job now. This time, it wasn’t to flush some inebriated kids from a neighbor’s house, though. It was to rescue a little girl from her pigheaded father—and to save Arlene’s butt and, indirectly, Molly’s.

  Up ahead, she saw a pair of flashing blue lights above a sedan. “Statie,” John murmured, veering onto the shoulder and accelerating to catch up to the state trooper’s car.

  “Do you think he’s on Frank Pelham’s tail?” she asked, wide-eyed in spite of herself.

  “He can’t be after a speeder. I’m the fastest car on the road, and I’m barely pushing fifty.” Remaining on the shoulder, he pulled up alongside the state trooper’s car, rolled down his window and shut off his siren. “Have you seen him?” he shouted.

  “Not yet. If he gets past the city limits, he’s gonna fly. The road gets empty about five miles west of here. Any chance he took another route?”

  “Yeah,” John yelled into the winter wind.

  “Well, if he thinks he can outsmart us by going through Massachusetts, we’ve got men all over the roads. Maybe we’ll intercept him.”

  “Let’s hope,” John hollered, then rolled up his window and tore ahead of the trooper’s car.

  Amazed that he could converse from speeding car to speeding car, amazed that law enforcement was so quick to respond to the crisis, amazed that she was in the middle of it, exhilarated by it, Molly returned her attention to the cars clogging the road. She nearly jumped when she spotted a non-Connecticut license plate, then sagged when she saw it was a Rhode Island tag. John turned the siren back on and continued down the shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, still searching the license plates.

  John shot her a quick look, then steered around a pile of trash someone had dumped on the side of the highway. “Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything.”

  “You’ve offered to help. You didn’t have to—”

  “Yes, I did,” he cut her off.

  Because it was his job? she wondered. Or because he was a father who loved his son, who had to help a mother whose daughter was missing? Was he helping because he was a cop, or because he was a good man?

  Maybe there wasn’t such a huge difference between the two.

  “There!” she cried out, spotting a New York license plate on a car stalled in traffic about twenty feet ahead of them. The plate was attached to a dark red sedan, and the silhouette of a man’s head rose above the driver’s seat. If Abigail was in the car, she was too short to be visible.

  “Where?”

  “There!” Molly pointed emphatically. “Right there!”

  “Got it.” John cruised along the shoulder until he was astride the car behind the Volvo. He signaled with his directional light to pull into the traffic lane, and then flashed his lights and honked for the Volvo to pull of the road.

  As John followed the Volvo onto the shoulder, Molly held her breath. What if it was the wrong car? What if they lost precious minutes dealing with this car while Abigail and her father were speeding toward some other border crossing?

  Leaving the motor running, John yanked on the parking brake. “You stay here,” he commanded. “If I go like this—” he made a beckoning motion with his hand “—come over.”

  Molly nodded. She wished she could find a hint of personal emotion in his gaze, something meant for her. But at the moment, he was strictly a cop. Nothing else—not even his and Molly’s star-crossed romance—mattered to him.

  Sighing, she unclipped her seat-belt and watched him stalk over to the other car. He held up something in front of the driver’s-side window—his shield, she guessed—and then peered into the car. Without looking at her, he made the beckoning sign with his hand.

  She hurried out of the car and jogged over. The driver glowered and clung to the wheel, as if determined not to let anyone drag him out of the driver’s seat. Behind him, in the back, sat Abigail Pelham. “Hi, Abbie,” Molly called through the partially open window.

  “Molly!” Abigail giggled, wiggling her booted feet. “This is my daddy! We’re going to New York!”

  “Not tonight,” John muttered. The air began to pulse blue along with the red of the light on John’s car, and the state trooper’s car coasted past the two cars before pulling onto the shoulder, boxing the Volvo in. While the trooper sauntered over, John murmured to Molly, “I’m going to have the trooper take them back to the station. Explain it to Abbie so she doesn’t get scared, okay?”

  Molly nodded, swallowing a lump in her throat at his consideration for the little girl. While John and the trooper talked with Frank Pelham, Molly told Abigail that she and her father would be going in another car and that her mommy would be waiting for her once they reached their destination. Suitcases were removed from the trunk of the Volvo, which was locked up, and the trooper escorted the Pelhams to his cruiser. They got in and drove away, leaving Molly and John on the side of the road, as alone as they could be on a highway at the heart of rush-hour.

  She felt shaky as the reality of what had just happened sank in. She’d been involved in a police chase. She’d helped save a girl from a custody-battle kidnapping. She’d sat beside John, and she’d felt bold, and determined to right a wrong. And now that the wrong was in the process of being righted, she felt drained...but good. Very good.

  She lifted her gaze to John. He was studying her, his face glowing red and then falling into shadow, red and then shadow as the light continued to flash on the roof of his car.

  “You’re never off-duty, are you,” she said.

  “No.”

  She gave herself a moment to digest that truth. “Were you on duty even when we were making love?”

  Something flickered in his eyes, something warm, comprehending. One side of his mouth twitched upward in a vague attempt at a smile, but his voice was solemn. “When we were making love, you got all of me, Molly. You got everything.”

  And she’d loved everything, all of him, his body and his soul, his tenderness and his fierceness, his reticence and his strength. She’d seen and felt and loved all the many facets of him.

  She still loved him. Even if she wa
s frightened by what he did, frightened by what could happen to him. She loved him, and that wasn’t going to change.

  “I’ll never feel comfortable about your gun,” she warned.

  “The gun isn’t me, Molly. It’s a tool I sometimes use in my work.” He risked a step toward her. “It isn’t me.”

  “I think I understand,” she whispered, moving toward him. “ But I don’t like it.”

  “There are things I don’t like about you, too,” he admitted, his smile widening slightly.

  “Name one,” she challenged him.

  He lapsed into thought for a minute, then said, “You’re quick to judge people.”

  “Who, me?” she scoffed indignantly.

  His smile grew even bigger. “Right. And in your judgment, I’m—”

  “A wonderful man,” she finished, taking the final step that obliterated the distance between them. He spread his arms and she sank into them. It felt like coming home. “I love you, John,” she whispered, hoping he could hear her through the rumble of traffic and the muffling tightness of his embrace. “I wish you didn’t have to do what you do, but it’s who you are. It’s part of everything.”

  “Yes.”

  “It won’t change.”

  “No.”

  She closed her eyes and held him closer. “I can’t bear the thought of your hurting someone, or getting hurt. It’s scary.”

  “Not nearly as scary as falling in love,” he argued.

  She peered up at him. “Falling in love scares you?”

  “More than you know,” he confessed. “But I love you so much, I’ll just have to overcome the fear.”

  She reached up and cupped his face in her hands, then pulled him down to her. They kissed, their hearts beating in a strong, steady rhythm while the red light throbbed above them and the cars of a thousand weary commuters rolled by.

  John and Molly kissed, and she was fearless in his arms.