The Baby Wore a Badge

Jake laughed shortly. “I’m not even in a relationship. How am I supposed to find someone to marry me?”

Calista looked from the baby to him and, without hesitation, said, “You could ask me.”

Jake stared at her, stunned. The woman his daughter took to so readily couldn’t possibly have meant what he thought she’d just said.

“Ask you what?” he asked her, enunciating each word slowly.

“Ask me to marry you. Because I would.”

Dear Reader,

This is my first visit to Thunder Canyon, Montana. (Love that name. Can’t you just see the cowboys heading them off at the pass?) A town, I’ve been told, that has been around for a while.

This is the place that Jake Castro turns to when the world as he knows it crumbles on him. A New Orleans cop who suddenly finds himself a single dad to an infant when his former partner, Maggie O’Shea, is killed in the line of duty, he comes to Thunder Canyon and his family for the emotional support—and help with diapers—he needs. The latter is supplied, along with humor and understanding, by Calista Clifton, his sister Erin’s friend. A recent college graduate, Calista has her eye on a career in politics and to that end is already an intern working in the mayor’s office. Coming from a family of eight, Calista is an old hand at knowing exactly what babies need. She also, as the story progresses, intuitively knows just what emotionally shell-shocked Jake needs. A little TLC. Neither one of them expected to find love at this point in their lives, but that was the bonus that life in Thunder Canyon provided.

As always, I thank you for taking the time to read my book and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Love,

Marie Ferrarella

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon®, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

The Baby

Wore a Badge

Marie Ferrarella

To

Marcia Book Adirim

without whose fertile

imagination

I wouldn’t have been able to write

this book.

Thank you.

Chapter One

He was burning the candle at both ends.

More than that, both ends were closing in on him. Fast.

New Orleans police officer Jake Castro dragged his hand through his unruly light blond hair as if that could somehow help him drag his mind into some sort of optimal focus instead of the dazed fog it had been in for the last few weeks, ever since his life had taken this dramatic turn that had completely changed his life.

With a deep sigh that came from the bottom of his toes, he glanced at the clock on his nightstand.

Five minutes.

That was all he’d had. Five minutes.

Five minutes of sleep before Marlie had begun to cry loud enough to wake the dead. Or, at the very least, him.

Getting up, still more than half-asleep, he stumbled over to the newly placed crib at the other end of his heretofore bachelor bedroom. Bleary-eyed, he stared down at the small occupant.

“I’ll buy you a car if you let me sleep just twenty-five more minutes.” His efforts at bargaining fell on completely unreceptive ears. If anything, Marlie cried even louder.

So much for bribery.

With another, now-resigned sigh, Jake reached into the crib and picked up his seven-month-old daughter.

For the moment, Marlie began to quiet down. Ordinarily, he might take some pride in that, that the baby was bonding with him, but he was way too worn out to take comfort in even that.

He was running on empty and had been for a number of days now.

“I can’t keep doing this, you know,” he said as he made his way over to the rocking chair, also newly acquired, as was his status as a single dad.

Marlie responded best to the swaying motion of being walked around, but Jake was far too wiped out to pace the floor. He’d pulled a long, draining shift today and had come home later than usual, a fact that had made the woman he paid to watch Marlie—Mrs. Rutherford—none too happy.

At this insane juggling act for less than three weeks and he was discovering, much to his chagrin, that he couldn’t be Officer Castro, super-cop by day and then turn into super-dad at night. Somewhere in that time span he needed to get some sleep—desperately—before he had a complete meltdown.

“It’s my own fault,” he acknowledged, addressing his words to the tiny human being in his arms. Oblivious to her father’s words, Marlie began to suck on her thumb—hard—as if it could give up some sort of sustenance if she sucked on it hard enough. “All I had to do was say ‘no.’ ‘No, Maggie, I won’t do it,’ and none of this would have happened. Hell—sorry.”

Jake came to a skidding halt in his self-examination. No more cursing, at least not in the house while Marlie could hear him. He’d made up the rule himself, but it wasn’t easy sticking to it, especially not when he was this punchy.

“Heck,” he amended, “who am I kidding? Your mother was so pigheaded she would have found someone else to say yes to her. In a heartbeat.” Someone else to donate the male component that had gone into creating this tiny miracle of nature with the mighty lungs made of steel whom he was holding in his arms.

Besides, he’d been half in love with Maggie O’Shea from the first moment she had walked into the squad room and Lieutenant Franco had told him that this vision in a blue uniform was his new partner. Maggie had been sharp and witty and so damn gorgeous with all that red hair that it made him ache just to look at her.

They’d had a good relationship, both on the job and off. And they’d talked about their futures, their goals and visions. That was when he’d discovered that she was determined to be all that she could possibly be—a kick-ass police officer and a mother as well.

She’d been well on her way to becoming the first when her damn biological clock had begun to nag her. And she, in turn, had begun to subtly nag him, working on him every day, eventually relentlessly, until he had finally given in.

For a fleeting moment, he had thought they would go about it the age-old, time-honored way. But Maggie had been very up-front with him about her intentions. She’d told him that she didn’t want any sort of a romantic entanglement, definitely didn’t even want any sort of physical encounter happening between them.

“It’s not that I don’t feel attracted to you, Castro,” she’d said. “It’s just that I don’t like complications. Never have.”

Seemed ironic, in light of all the complications he was facing now.

She’d laid out the plan. It was all going to be very clinical, very professional. And once the process was in motion and the procedure “took,” Maggie made it clear that he was free to move on. She wasn’t going to ask him for anything further.

Until she’d asked him for everything.

Somewhere along the line, between agreeing to this antiseptic, clinical insemination procedure and acting as her coach in the delivery room when her actual coach couldn’t be reached in time, Jake had found himself really falling in love with Maggie. Hard.

She’d seen it, too.

Seen it in his eyes, heard it in his voice. Enough so that it had spooked her into asking for another partner once she went back to work.

That, too, had been a bone of contention between them. She’d gone back to work a great deal sooner than he’d thought was prudent. He certainly wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t think she should leave Marlie so soon and secretly—or not so secretly—worried about the risks she’d be facing every day with that badge pinned to her chest.

But he couldn’t talk her out of it. The more he talked, the less she heard. The upshot was that Maggie had gone back to work three months after bringing Marlie into the world.

And three months after that, she was gone.

He remembered how he’d felt when he’d heard the news over the dispatch radio. As if someone had shoved a blade right into his belly and gutted him. He remembered the speedometer reaching the other side of a hundred miles an hour as he’d raced to the hospital where they’d taken Maggie.

She’d managed to stay alive long enough for him to arrive and see her. Long enough to extract a promise from him to take care of their little girl—as if he would have allowed anyone else to take the baby. Marlie was all he had left of Maggie.

Maggie had died right after he’d said yes. Died with a smile on her lips.

Died despite the fact that he’d been holding on to her hand so tightly, trying with all his might to pull her back among the living. He must have been crazy to believe that he could.

All his efforts had naturally come to nothing. He hadn’t been able to save Maggie, hadn’t been able to pull her back. She’d died in front of him, leaving him to deal with monumental guilt. Guilt that had sprung from the very real belief that partner or no partner, he should have been there for Maggie, covering her back. Protecting her.

But he hadn’t been able to and now Maggie was gone and he was here, trying to be what he’d been before a crack in the world had shaken his foundations, plus something new. Trying to be a father.

Right now, in his opinion, he was failing miserably at both.

Marlie began to fuss again, her displeasure growing louder. Jake recognized the cry. The infant was hungry. Did that mean he was getting better at this, or just lucky when it came to guessing?

He didn’t know.

Getting up, keeping Marlie tucked against his chest, Jake made his way into the kitchen.

He already had a small saucepan half-filled with water waiting to be pressed into use on the stove. Heading straight for the refrigerator, he opened it and reached in.

Like tall, innocent soldiers, bottles of formula were standing on the top shelf. Right beside equally tall bottles of beer. They clinked slightly as he pushed a couple aside to get at the milk.

“That was your mom’s favorite brand,” he told Marlie, pausing to let her “look” inside. “Your mom liked to kick back at the end of the day and have one or two, just to unwind—before she was pregnant with you, of course,” he qualified.

Jake closed the door with his hip, then leaned against it for a second, trying to pull himself together.

He had to stop doing this to himself, had to stop connecting every deed, every detail he came across with something to do with Maggie. Weaving her into every single second of his life was not going to change anything.

It wasn’t going to bring her back.

Jake went through the familiar steps, steps he knew in his sleep now, then stood there, staring at the bottle he’d just placed into the saucepan, waiting for it to heat up.

Three minutes later, he took the bottle out, testing the liquid against the back of his wrist. It was stone-cold.

“Why isn’t this—?” The rest of his question evaporated as he looked down again at the burner. No wonder the formula hadn’t warmed up. He hadn’t turned the burner on.

He needed help.

Putting the cold formula bottle back into the saucepan, Jake switched on the burner and turned up the temperature. Only then did he reach for the cordless phone on the wall and call his sister.

The phone rang five times on the other end. Jake was about to hang up and redial when he heard a sleepy voice answer, whispering, “Hello?” uncertainly.

Even when she whispered, he recognized Erin’s voice. “Uncle,” he said, giving the universal word for surrender. “I give up. You’re right. I need help. I’m in way over my head.”

“Jake?” His sister still sounded somewhat confused, but she was no longer whispering hoarsely.

He heard a deep male voice in the background ask, “Who is it, Erin?”

Jake heard a noise that told him Erin was attempting to cover the receiver in a semi-bid for privacy as she apparently turned her head away to answer, “I think it’s Jake.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Jake acknowledged. “How many other men do you know who are in over their heads?”

“No one who would call this number at two in the morning,” she replied. “I thought that I was still asleep and dreaming.”

“Damn—darn,” Jake corrected himself again, in deference to the infant in his arms. Curbing his words was turning out to be a lot harder than he’d thought. “I forgot about the time difference,” he confessed. He was calling from New Orleans. His sister lived in Thunder Canyon, Montana. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll call back in the morning.”

“No, no,” Erin insisted, her voice now clearer and insistent. “Don’t hang up.”

It was half a plea, half an order. Erin knew her older brother. She knew he could very well not call back in the morning. He’d sounded desperate just then. Who knew how long that would last? But while it did last, she could use it to her—and more importantly to Jake’s—advantage.

Jake could be incredibly stubborn at times and making him see reason was not always an easy matter—or one that was very readily accomplished. She couldn’t afford to allow this opportunity to slip right through her fingers.

“My offer to help still stands, Jake. You and the baby can stay with Corey and me for as long as you need to,” she told him, referring to her brand-new husband. Like the rest of the family, he’d been there for the wedding, and then had gone back to New Orleans. “Lord knows we’ve got plenty of room here.”

Jake laughed shortly. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the offer—he did—it was just that he wasn’t so self-centered or desperate that he couldn’t put himself into his new brother-in-law’s position.

“That’ll sure endear me to my new brother-in-law,” he told his sister. “Nothing like having a third—and part of a fourth—party around as you’re trying to adjust to married life.”

Erin had to concede that her brother had a point. “Okay, maybe you’re right, but this isn’t a small house,” she pointed out. “You could stay here for weeks and we wouldn’t even know you were here. Besides, I can help you out taking care of my new niece.”

Jake sighed. In a moment of desperation, he’d been selfish and he knew it. “You have a life, too, Erin,” he pointed out. And he couldn’t just impose on it because he found himself drowning.

Even when he was saying “yes”—tantamount to agreeing with her—her brother could be difficult. Actually, she should have expected this, Erin thought. But she was not about to allow Jake to talk himself out of coming back to Thunder Canyon. The bottom line was that Jake needed help and he had admitted it, however fleetingly.

“Family comes first,” Erin reminded him. It was a principle she believed in with her whole heart, as did Corey. “Besides, I know a great babysitter who can pinch-hit when you need a break and I’m not available.”

“A babysitter?” he echoed, saying the word with great disdain. “What, pay some teenager an arm and a leg while she’s on her cell phone all night, twittering—”

“Tweeting,” Erin corrected patiently. Even though she’d be the first to acknowledge how smart Jake was and how street-savvy he could be, her brother was a babe in the woods when it came to anything electronic.

“Whatever,” he dismissed impatiently. “Or some old woman who smells like cats and falls asleep the second I close the front door?” he continued, then dismissed both with a “No, thanks.”

“Calista Clifton isn’t a teenager,” Erin informed him of the young woman she was thinking of. “And she doesn’t smell like cats. She’s bright, cheerful and comes from a huge family, so she’s no stranger to baby spit-up or diapers. You’ll like her,” Erin promised, for now not bothering to cite the young woman’s other credits or mention her incredible work ethic. There was no response on the other end of the line. “Hello? Hello? Jake, are you there?”

His sister’s voice roused him.

Jake realized that he was no longer looking at anything. Jerking, his eyes flew open.

It was at that moment that he realized that the water in the saucepan had almost boiled completely away and that he’d just dropped the phone receiver he’d been holding on the counter. He’d literally been asleep on his feet and the receiver had slipped out of his fingers.

Snatching it up, he pressed the receiver against his ear.

He didn’t bother with an explanation, or apologizing. It would only give Erin more of an upper hand than he was already giving to her.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” he answered.

Pressing his ear against the receiver, he tried to hold it in place using his head, neck and shoulder as he twisted the dial to the off position and moved the saucepan over to another burner.

Jake stifled a yelp as the metal handle he’d grabbed burned the center of his palm. The pain shot up to the roots of his hair.

Sucking in a steadying breath he pushed beyond the pain and said, “Okay, you talked me into it. I’ll take a leave of absence and come up. You can get this Callous person—”

“Calista,” Erin corrected.

“Yeah, her,” he agreed. And then the policeman inside him came out as he added, “But I want to interview her before I let her watch Marlie.”

He heard his sister laugh. The warm sound was comforting. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, big brother.”

She didn’t really need the money.

Between her summer internship for her cousin Bo Clifton, who just happened to be the mayor of Thunder Canyon, and her part-time job clerking at the Tattered Saddle, the local antique store, her finances, though not exactly overflowing, were in relatively decent shape. And what with the two jobs, free time wasn’t exactly hanging heavily on Calista Clifton’s hands.

But the fact of the matter was she really liked children, especially babies. And she also liked the feeling she got when she helped people. So it was hard for her to say no to the situation, as Erin Traub explained it to her, involving Erin’s older brother because it actually encompassed both a baby and helping.

Even so, the thing that had ultimately cinched it for her was when Erin’s brother, Jake Castro, walked into the room. She’d agreed to meet him and was sitting in Erin’s spacious, sun-drenched living room when Jake came in holding his seven-month-old daughter in his arms.

If she was being honest, Calista would have had to admit that she’d noticed the baby belatedly. But that was only because Jake Castro was quite possibly the most incredibly handsome man who had ever crossed her path.

He was certainly handsome enough to cause her stomach muscles to tighten more than a little and for her palms to grow just the slightest bit damp. The latter hadn’t happened to her since she was sixteen years old and had that wild crush on the captain of the football team—a guy who had turned out to be as empty and soulless as he was handsome.

Jake didn’t look as if he was guilty of being empty or soulless. Not from the way he held that baby.

“It wouldn’t be very often,” Jake was saying to her after Erin had made the introductions and stated what they hoped her role would be in this situation, then slipped away so they could get acquainted. “Maybe once or twice a week at most, but—”

There was no need for him to try to convince her, Calista thought. He’d had her the second he’d walked into the room. Before he’d ever opened his mouth and she’d heard that baritone voice.

“Yes,” Calista said with enthusiasm as she interrupted him.

Jake stopped, shifting his daughter to his other side. It was uncanny how Marlie always picked the wrong time to fuss. He looked at the young woman his sister had selected. Because he hadn’t finished giving her the background information, he wasn’t sure just what she was saying yes to.

“What?”

“Yes,” Calista repeated with the same smiling, sunny enthusiasm.

“Yes?” He hadn’t really even gotten into his sales pitch yet, something that made him feel decidedly awkward because he wasn’t accustomed to asking for anything, even something he had every intention of paying for. But this eleven-pound bundle in his arms had all the makings of being his own personal Waterloo.

Calista smiled. “Yes, I can be available for babysitting once or twice a week,” she told him. “Or more often if the need arises.” Her schedule was filled to overflowing, but she could find a way to make it work. She was utterly determined.

Having taken the job, Calista bit her lower lip, hesitating for a moment, wondering if she should say anything. The next moment she decided that if it was her in Jake’s present position, she would appreciate being told.

She nodded at Jake’s daughter. “Um, the baby—Marlie, is it?”

“That’s right. Marlie,” he confirmed. He wasn’t all that crazy about the name. Had it been up to him, he would have named her something a little less fancy, but Maggie hadn’t asked for his input in that. Maggie had been very specific about what she’d wanted—and didn’t want—from him.

“Marlie just spat up on your shoulder,” Calista told him.

“What?” He glanced down, embarrassed rather than annoyed.

“Here, let me take her,” Calista offered. The next moment, she was very competently taking the baby into her own arms, drawing the infant away from the scene of the crime.

Even with his limited view, he could see that his daughter had spat up about a fourth of her last meal on the front—and shoulder—of his shirt. That left him with exactly one shirt that hadn’t been christened with recycled baby food and/or formula.

He bit off the oath that automatically rose to his lips. He was still in training when it came down to that. But he was getting there.

Chapter Two

Calista didn’t need to be a mind reader to figure out what the man standing in front of her with the newly stained shirt was thinking. When Erin called to ask about her availability to babysit occasionally in the evening, Jake’s sister had given her a very brief summary of his present situation, including how he’d come to this point.

Although Erin hadn’t gone into any specific detail, she assumed that Jake and Marlie’s mother had been lovers, but that nothing formal had transpired, other than his name appearing on the birth certificate, which gave him legal guardianship to the infant.

However, all that was not any real business of hers. What she felt was her business was that Jake was obviously going to need all the help he could get to facilitate his getting accustomed to this brave new world of midnight feedings, formula runs and ever-increasing pile of stained shirts.

For starters, she thought, she could tell him how to deal with the last.

“If you give me your shirt, I can show you how to treat it,” she said.

He looked at her, not quite sure what she was offering to do. “Treat it to what?”

Calista pressed her lips together, struggling not to laugh. “Not to something, for something. I can help you get rid of that stain,” she explained. “Especially if I can get to it before it has a chance to really set in. Timing’s important when it comes to things like that.”

She could tell by his expression that he felt as if he was navigating in strange, uncharted waters. Most men, like her brothers, weren’t into everyday, mundane complications. Clean clothes were a given, not something you needed to strive for.