The Stranger's Sin by Darlene Gardner Read Free Book Online Page A

Kelly’s face looked even sweeter in sleep, her lashes sweeping her cheeks, her lips slightly parted as she breathed in and out softly.
    He gently removed her shoes, then straightened. She stirred, rearranging herself into a more comfortable position. He held himself immobile, reluctant to make a sound that would wake her. He’d check on Toby next, but he already knew with a soul-deep certainty that the baby was fine.
    The irony struck him even as he watched her sleep.
    A few hours ago he didn’t trust she’d told him the truth about Mandy, but he’d trusted her with something infinitely more precious.
    Toby.
    His desperation to find Mandy had driven his suspicion but his gut made the decision to accept what Kelly had told him at face value.
    What possible reason could she have to lie anyway?
     
    K ELLY AWAKENED T HURSDAY morning to the sounds of a baby’s giggles, followed by a man’s deep laughter.
    Unlike the previous afternoon when she’d woken up disoriented after dreaming of Mandy and the kidnapped baby, she knew instantly where she was. She’d fallen asleep on the sofa while waiting for Chase Bradford and his father to return from the hospital.
    She remembered her eyelids growing heavy while she puzzled over why a woman who left behind a baby as darling as Toby would resort to kidnapping. Thinking she’d rest for just a little while, she’d closed her eyes. Now it was morning.
    “Here comes the train,” she heard Chase say. “Choo choo choo choo. Open the tunnel.”
    She swung her legs off the sofa and got to her bare feet. Had someone taken off her shoes? She put them on, then found a bathroom where she smoothed her hair and clothes the best she could before following the voices to the kitchen.
    “Good job, buddy.” Chase sat in front of Toby’s high chair, a small bowl of oatmeal in front of him.
    Toby rapped his hands on the pull-down tray, his face and bib surprisingly free of food splatter. The choo-choo had a good engineer.
    “Let’s try an airplane. Scratch that. Too ordinary. How ’bout a flying saucer? Your mouth can be a black hole. Open up.” Chase made believe the spoon was flying, then started humming the theme to X-Files.
    Kelly laughed aloud.
    Chase swung his head around, grinning when he spotted her watching them, yesterday’s suspicion nowhere in sight. He was already dressed in his ranger’s uniform, the light-khaki color of the shirt bringing out the tan of his skin. Funny how she hadn’t noticed what a handsome man he was until this moment.
    “We’ve got company, bud. Could be the government. There could be trouble if she reports a UFO sighting.” His spoon was still hovering above Toby’s mouth. “Quick. Open up. Get rid of the evidence.”
    Toby might have been obeying Chase or he might have been smiling with his mouth open. Either way, Chase put the spoon in his mouth and the oatmeal—er, the UFO—disappeared.
    “Way to go, Toby!” Chase raised his palm, partinghis middle and ring fingers in the Vulcan salute from the old Star Trek shows. Toby clapped with glee.
    “Doesn’t that mean live long and prosper?” Kelly asked.
    “Not in this case,” Chase said. “In this case it means Toby just kicked some baby butt. Didn’t you, sport?”
    The baby laughed louder, making it impossible not to join in. With Chase’s face creased in a smile and laugh lines showing around his eyes, he barely resembled the man who’d questioned her with such fervor the night before. Her inability to understand Mandy deepened. The woman hadn’t left only her baby, she’d left Chase.
    “I hope you slept okay,” he said.
    “I did,” she said, surprised it was true. Since her arrest, a good night’s sleep had been an elusive commodity. “But you should have woken me when you got back.”
    “I tried,” he said, “but you couldn’t hear me over your snores.”
    Horrified, she put a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I snored.”
    “You don’t,” he said,