Father to Be Read online

  J.D. felt her gaze on him, and he gave her a smug grin. Her only response was to look away.

  Ingles went on. “I can understand your curiosity about who this Noelle is. Pretty little thing, wasn’t she, J.D.? And she sure seemed to know what she was doing. But since everything worked out fine in the long run, it’s not like it’s really a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal, Sheriff,” Kelsey disagreed. “We can’t have some stranger going around choosing foster parents for wards of the state. Our job is to protect these children. We have rules, regulations, and procedures for just that reason. You should know that.” Sending an accusing glare J.D.’s way, she added, “You should know that.”

  He did know. When a child was removed from his home, the caseworker made an emergency placement, usually for a few days, with one of the agency’s preapproved foster parents. During that time a petition was filed with the court for temporary placement—again with a preapproved foster parent. Later, if it became necessary to terminate the parental rights, the caseworker sought a permanent home for the child.

  They didn’t just go out, pick a likely candidate—or, in his case, an unlikely one—and say “Here, take this kid.”

  But Noelle had done just that. And he’d taken the kids. And now Ms. Malone wanted them back.

  Lucky for her, he had no problem with giving them back.

  “We don’t get a whole lot of foster care placements in Bethlehem,” the sheriff said mildly. “That’s one reason we don’t have a social worker here.”

  “Well, as of this morning, that’s changed.”

  The intercom buzzed, and the dispatcher announced Max’s arrival just as he came through the door. The deputy greeted his boss and J.D., then gave Kelsey an appreciative look that made J.D. take another look. Since opening his door to her, he’d been too annoyed or dismayed to notice much beyond the great legs, but now he saw what Max had seen in five seconds—Kelsey Malone was an attractive woman. Her suit was too severe, her attitude too stiff, but the rest of the package—curly brown hair semi-tamed in a bun, hazel eyes, full lips with a lush cupid’s bow, delicately shaped jaw—more than made up for the rest.

  She asked Max for his version of events, and after taking a seat, he began. Friday evening he’d gotten a call from Nathan Bishop about four abandoned children. Before going out to the Brown place, he’d called Mary Therese Carpenter, who had met them there. She’d ordered the kids taken into custody, they’d packed their belongings, and he had transported them to the hospital.

  “What did Mary Therese tell you before she left?” Kelsey asked.

  “She said someone would be in touch regarding the disposition of the kids. Then Noelle showed up Saturday afternoon, asked for a criminal history check on J.D. She said he would be taking the kids.”

  “Did she say Mary Therese had sent her?”

  Max thought it over. “I don’t think so. She said … she said she’d been assigned the Brown children and wanted to get them placed as quickly as possible. With J.D.”

  “Had you ever met her before?” He shook his head, and she directed the same question to the sheriff, then J.D. When he added his no to theirs, she shook her head too. “So a total stranger showed up and told you—a deputy, a sheriff, and a psychiatrist—that she was with the Department of Family Assistance. She offered no proof beyond a business card that didn’t even have her name on it, and you took her word for it. Not only that, but you gave her four children to do with as she pleased. Do I have it straight?”

  Though she didn’t come right out and call them all incompetent idiots, she might as well have. It was clear she thought it. J.D. couldn’t even take offense because she was right. They had been incredibly careless with the kids, and the result could have been disastrous.

  He reached for the phone. “Good point, Ms. Malone. Sheriff, do you have Social Services’ number over there in Howland?”

  “What are you doing?” Kelsey asked as he dialed.

  “A total stranger has come in here, telling us she’s from the Department of Family Assistance. She has no proof beyond a business card that doesn’t even have her name on it, and she wants to take four children who are legally in my custody.” He offered her a cool smile. “I’m checking you out, Ms. Malone.”

  Of course she did check out. Mary Therese Carpenter described her from the top of her unruly hair all the way down to the no-nonsense flats on her feet. She ended with a question of her own. “Is there a problem, J.D.?”

  “Not at all,” he lied. “I just wanted to be sure she is who she says. You can’t be too careful these days.” He hung up, then sprawled back in the chair. “So you’re legit. Now what?”

  “Now we do things the right way. Deputy Davis, thank you for coming in. Sheriff, I would appreciate it if your department would locate this Noelle. I’m sure my department would like to investigate further. And, Dr. Grayson, would you please call Mrs. Larrabee and ask her to pack the children’s things. I’ll pick them up when I go back to get my car.” With a nod, she left the office.

  So it was that easy, J.D. thought. A little upheaval, a little rearranging of his life, and now, in less than twenty-four hours, it was over. All he had to do was give the kids to her, restore his office to its former order, and he was home free.

  For some reason, he didn’t feel as if he’d just been given his freedom.

  He got to his feet and strode out to the lobby, where Ms. Malone was waiting for the elevator doors to open. She gave him the slightest of glances before stepping inside. “You’ve already called Mrs. Larrabee? Good. Then you can go on. I’ll find a way over to get my car.”

  He followed her into the elevator, waited until the doors closed, then faced her. “What do you mean, we’ll do things the right way?”

  “Exactly what I said. I’ll go over the parents on our list, find a temporary placement for the children, and—”

  “They’ve been placed. With me.”

  “But you’re not on our preapproved list.”

  The annoyance in his voice was mild compared to what he was feeling. “I’ve been approved by the whole damn town. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “You don’t even want them.”

  He wished he could deny it, but the situation was more complicated than wanting or not wanting. He wasn’t even sure that what he wanted mattered. What did matter was that he could help the kids. They needed him. And while he didn’t exactly want them, he might not mind having them.

  She fixed a challenging look on him. “Can’t deny it, can you?”

  Scowling, J.D. followed her to her office. It was small, drab, and depressing—to match certain aspects of the job, he thought as he seated himself in a vinyl chair.

  She squeezed behind the desk. “You can go home, Dr. Grayson, and get the children ready for me to pick up.”

  “I don’t think so. I have legal custody.”

  “The state has custody, Dr. Grayson. You’re just a temporary guardian, and that will end as soon as I find another home for them.” She grabbed a stack of files, opened the top one, reached for the phone, and began dialing.

  J.D. stared at a water stain on the wall. Why wasn’t he doing what she suggested—going home, packing their ragged clothes in paper sacks, and reclaiming his office, his home, and his life for himself? Why didn’t he just make an appointment to see the kids at some time in the future and forget about them for now? The kids wouldn’t care this early in the game. It wasn’t as if they’d formed any sort of bond with him. Hell, Caleb would be happy to get away from him.

  It was exactly what he should do.

  So why was he waiting?

  Her first call was fruitless. So was the second. She began muttering to herself after the third.

  “Is the state going to give you a receptionist?” he asked idly as she started to dial the next number on her list.

  “They gave me an answering machine.”

  “A big-budget operation, huh? Since it’s just you, you should move a
couple of these file cabinets into the other office. Get ’em out of the window and get some light in here.”

  “I have plenty of light.” She tapped a fingernail on the desk while listening to the steady ring at the other end of the line.

  He leaned forward to see the list of preapproved foster parents, reading upside down. “If you’re calling the Taylors, they’re on vacation—went to California to visit her mother, with a stop in Montana to see her dad. They won’t be back for a week.”

  She started to dial number five.

  “I’d think twice about the Howards. They’re great people, but they’ve got a son.”

  Her index finger hovered above the keypad. “And that’s a problem because …?”

  “Ever see The Bad Seed?”

  She disconnected and gave him another of those challenging looks. “And whom would you recommend, Dr. Grayson?”

  Rising to his feet, he leaned across the desk and smelled musty papers, dust, and a faint hint of perfume. “This couple’s moved. This one’s divorced. He doesn’t see his own kids, and I think the Brown kids would be more of a burden than she can handle right now. The Thomases are out because he’s the kids’ court appointed lawyer.” For one reason or another, he legitimately eliminated every other name.

  She gave him a smile that was all smirk. “And, conveniently, that leaves only you, who isn’t on the list at all.”

  “I am the best psychiatrist in town.”

  “The only one.”

  “I was the best psychiatrist in Chicago.” He said it mildly, without arrogance. He didn’t need arrogance when it was true.

  “Then why did you come here?”

  For an instant the air in the room grew heavier, damn near impossible to breathe, and faraway screams—his own—echoed in his ears. But his hands didn’t knot into fists, his expression didn’t change at all, and his voice sounded normal when he gave the lie he’d put together before he’d ever left the city. “I like small-town living. I wanted a slower pace, to know my neighbors, to have time for the things that are important. I wanted less crime, smaller crowds, and less traffic. Do you know that at the height of rush hour, you can get anywhere in Bethlehem in less than six minutes?”

  “I didn’t know that.” She was good at that dry, sarcasm-laced delivery. It both annoyed and amused him. “But back to the problem at hand, Dr. Grayson.”

  “The only problem seems to be you, Ms. Malone.”

  Kelsey wanted to grind her teeth, to throw something, to let out one great, frustrated scream. She felt stupid even trying to explain, but try she did. “I cannot leave those children with you. You’ve had no background investigation. There’s been no interview. Your house is too small. You have a full-time job. You can’t be available for the children whenever they need you. You’re not married. We know nothing—”

  The rest of the words fled her brain as she opened a single manila folder. It contained all the initial documentation a caseworker could expect to find on a prospective foster parent.

  And the name on the tab was J. D. Grayson.

  How was that possible? She had thumbed through these files in Mary Therese’s office and there’d been no file on Dr. Grayson. But here it was, in black and white—financial records, job history, confirmation of no criminal record from the sheriff’s department. He’d been born in Philadelphia, raised in Boston, and graduated from Harvard, and no one had a negative thing to say about him. Not the hospital administrator, the chief of staff, various hospital and school staff members, the school superintendent, his pastor, or his neighbors.

  “What is it?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he pulled the folder from her hands and flipped through the pages. “It’s a background check. You heard the deputy say Noelle asked for a criminal history. It’s logical to assume she was also looking at everything else.”

  “If she was a social worker.”

  His gesture was impatient. “The fact that you don’t know her doesn’t mean she isn’t. You said yourself you were new. You just got into town—when?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “And you were in the office yesterday afternoon? Jeez, don’t you have a life?” Without giving her a chance to respond, he went on. “Maybe she used to work for Mary Therese and filled in this weekend as a favor. Maybe she works in some other social services office and was in Bethlehem on a visit. Maybe—”

  He ran out of maybes because one of his two suggestions was most likely correct, Kelsey acknowledged with a sinking feeling. After all, what was the alternative? That someone was impersonating a social worker? That someone playing a convoluted game of let’s pretend knew exactly what was needed to get those children placed in a home? Noelle had done everything Kelsey would have done—except start with the preapproved parents before moving on to someone else. She’d conducted all the right interviews, asked all the right questions, gotten all the right background information.

  And she hadn’t benefitted personally. It wasn’t as if she’d tried to take the kids herself. She’d simply seen to it that they were placed in a proper home as quickly as possible, which would have been Kelsey’s own goal. And, judging by all the personal endorsements in Dr. Grayson’s file, she’d made a good choice.

  She must have some sort of official connection to the department, and Kelsey was simply unaware of it. If not notified by somebody in the system, how had she even known about the Brown children? Without the proper credentials, how could she have gotten all that confidential information on Dr. Grayson? And—most compelling—without some connection, how had her file gotten into Kelsey’s box?

  J.D. held the last page out for her to see. Two typed lines recommended approval of J. D. Grayson as a foster parent and bore the signature of Noelle last-name-illegible. Underneath it were the initials of a supervisory caseworker, MTC. Mary Therese Carpenter.

  Heat flooded her face as she cleared her throat and fixed her gaze somewhere around his jaw. “I—I’m sorry, Dr. Grayson. It was my understanding that the children hadn’t been placed yet, and when I heard that you had taken them home with you, I—I—”

  “Overreacted,” he supplied helpfully.

  She ran one finger around the tight collar of her blouse. “Yes. When Mary Therese went over the case with me this morning, I assumed she had told me everything. I didn’t see this file. I didn’t know she had approved … I’m sorry.”

  He brushed her apology off with a shrug. “So what do we do now?”

  Needing a moment to shift from embarrassment to business, she straightened the pages in the folder, closed it, then took a pen and pad from a drawer. “The, uh, the question of child care wasn’t addressed in the records. What are your hours at the hospital?”

  He leaned back, looking totally relaxed. “I usually go in around nine and I rarely work past five or on weekends. Most of that time is at the hospital, though I spend about ten hours a week at the nursing home, and during the school year I put in ten hours or so a week in the schools—sometimes more, sometimes less.”

  “You didn’t get to be one of the best psychiatrists in Chicago by quitting at five and taking weekends off.”

  “The best,” he stressed. “You’re right. I didn’t. That’s one more reason I like Bethlehem.”

  “What do you intend to do with the children while you’re working?”

  “Mrs. Larrabee will keep them part of the time. So will Miss Agatha and Miss Corinna.” He watched as she made notes. “That’s Agatha Winchester and Corinna Winchester Humphries. They’re sisters—retired schoolteachers—and the grandes dames of Bethlehem.”

  “Three elderly women? Couldn’t you find someone younger?”

  He studied her so long that she was barely able to contain the urge to squirm in her seat. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, soothing—like a psychiatrist addressing a patient. “You really ought to do something about these prejudices of yours, Ms. Malone. If you’d like to make an appointment, perhaps I could help.”

  “I’m not prej
udiced!” she declared hotly.

  “You’ve already made it clear that the fact that I’m not married is a strike against my parenting abilities in your eyes. Now you think I should choose a baby-sitter based on age rather than experience, willingness, and capacity for caring?”

  “That’s not what I—” Drawing a breath, she made an effort to calm herself. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that young children are a handful. My concern is that they might overwhelm an elderly caregiver.”

  “Grandmothers have been taking care of grandchildren since the beginning of time,” he pointed out flatly. “Besides, if you’d ever met the Winchester sisters, you wouldn’t refer to them as elderly. Their daily routine could overwhelm you and me both.”

  She straightened her shoulders and carefully said, “I would like to meet them.”

  “I’d like to introduce you. We’ll stop by their house on the way home. Anything else?”

  She stared at the notes she’d made on the pad. “What about emergencies? I assume you get called out in the middle of the night.”

  “On occasion. There are plenty of people I can call if it happens.”

  “Such as?”

  He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Mrs. Larrabee. The Winchesters. Holly McBride—she owns the McBride Inn and is about a tenth-generation resident of Bethlehem. Emilie and Nathan Bishop—he’s the police officer who found the kids. Mitch and Shelley Walker—he’s the chief of police. Alex and Melissa Thomas—he’s the kids’ court appointed lawyer and she owns the plant nursery. Leanne Watson, who has the baby shop in town. Denise and Don Allen, the kindergarten teacher and football coach who live next door. Amy—”

  Kelsey raised both hands in surrender. “All right. Enough. One last thing.” She cleared her throat again. “Are you involved in a relationship right now?”

  Grayson’s scowl held steady, then in a heartbeat it transformed into a broad grin. “Why? Are you interested?”

  Her face flamed again. She chose to ignore his question and concentrate instead on her own. “If you are in a relationship, you must understand that you can’t, ah, bring someone into the house to, ah—”