LITMIR.BIZ

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There were only three vehicles within sight and two of them seemed harmless: an empty Mercedes parked in a driveway and a landscaping truck at the far end of the cul-de-sac. Liam could hear members of the landscaping crew calling out to each other in Spanish as they loaded equipment onto the truck in preparation for leaving. The men were working too hard and much too efficiently to be undercover cops, Liam decided.

      By contrast, the phone company van parked a couple of houses down from the Mallorys struck him as highly suspicious. In his experience, phone companies no longer made service calls after six, whatever type of emergency the customer pleaded. In addition, there was no activity around this particular vehicle. The man in the driver’s seat had been staring at the same clipboard of papers ever since Liam first noticed him. Eighty-twenty the guy was a cop, Liam decided. Thank goodness there was no reason for him or his car to provoke any special interest.

      Taking care not to glance back toward the cop, he parked his BMW right in the driveway and jogged up the front steps. The Mallorys’ front door was opened by a man about Liam’s own age, holding a small boy in his arms. The boy’s nose was painted blue and he had green stars stuck on his cheeks, but otherwise he seemed a pretty regular kid bordering on the cute, in fact. Not that Liam considered himself an expert on toddler cuteness. His attitude toward kids was pretty similar to his attitude toward tiger cubs: they looked adorable, were incredibly difficult to raise and could bite off chunks of your flesh if you didn’t treat them right.

      “You must be Liam,” the man said, shifting the toddler to a different arm so that he could shake Liam’s hand. “I’m Tom Mallory, Chloe’s brother-in-law.”

      “Hey, Tom. Good to meet you.”

      “And this is Peter, our son. Chloe’s nephew.” Tom jiggled his arms, bouncing Peter, who didn’t crack a smile.

      Liam told himself it was ridiculous to feel intimidated by a toddler with a blue nose. “Hi, Peter, how are you doing?”

      The toddler stared at him in silence. Not hostile, exactly, but definitely assessing. Liam decided that a tiger cub would have been easier. At least nobody would have expected him to hold a conversation with a tiger.

      “Come on in,” Tom said, stepping to one side, apparently not expecting his son to speak. “This is a terrible situation, isn’t it?”

      Liam nodded, relieved to turn his attention back to a grown-up. “Yes. It’s bad enough that Chloe’s lost her husband, but it’s worse that she isn’t getting a moment’s peace and quiet to grieve for him.”

      “Jason was a good guy and a terrific mayor. His passing is a terrible loss for a lot of people.” Tom frowned and then shook his head. “Anyway, it’s great to know you’re on Chloe’s team. Her whole family is very relieved that she’s moved quickly to get the legal help she needs instead of relying on the fact that she’s innocent to protect herself.”

      Liam certainly agreed with that. “Innocence is a lousy defense if it’s all you have to bring to the table. But I’m hopeful we’ll soon find concrete evidence to point the cops in another direction.”

      “God, I hope so. And it can’t be too soon as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, Lexie’s just finished feeding the kids their dinner, so Sophie is good to go whenever you’re ready to take her.” Tom shoved a plastic horse out of the way with his foot, sending it skittering toward the staircase. “Sorry about the mess. Dinner time is always chaotic around here and tonight Lexie is trying to give Sophie a bit more one-on-one attention than usual, so clearing up has to wait.”

      “Don’t apologize. I’m awestruck by people who can cope with even one child, let alone multiple preschoolers.”

      “You don’t have kids of your own?” Tom asked.

      “I’ve never been married,” Liam responded, as if that answered the question. He had known the truth of his fatherhood for less than twelve hours and already he could see that everyday conversation was going to be filled with booby traps. His choice seemed to be constant lies or a head-on clash with Chloe. At some point she would have to accept that he wasn’t willing to abide by her wish that Sophie should spend her life in the mistaken belief that Jason had been her biological father. But for tonight, he’d given Chloe his word and he would stick to it. Eventually he would have to decide whether to be actively involved in Sophie’s life. He was pretty sure he’d make a lousy father, but at least he wanted his daughter to know his name, for God’s sake.

      The parallels to his own father’s life were too powerful to ignore, and not at all attractive. In the wake of their father’s death, Megan had suggested that it might have been a desire to protect his existing family that had propelled Ron into a twenty-six year pattern of criminal deception. Liam had found that explanation incredible two months ago. Now he was having second thoughts. Had the whole bigamous mess of Ron Raven’s life started as innocently as his father not wanting to hurt the people he loved? It was possible, Liam conceded grudgingly. After all, that was exactly what Chloe had chosen to do for Sophie—hide the truth beneath a more palatable sugarcoating. And Chloe’s ploy would have worked, if her husband hadn’t been murdered—just as Ron Raven’s ploy had worked for more than two decades.

      Liam circled a giant plastic tub of toys deposited in the center of the hallway, not willing to cut either Chloe or his father any slack. Ron had screwed up, literally, and then lied to cover his ass. Ron’s possible desire to protect his wife and children from being hurt didn’t excuse either his initial adultery or the next quarter century of deception. Chloe’s choices, in Liam’s opinion, had been just as wrong.

      He followed Tom into the family room, his breath catching in his throat when he saw a little girl sitting on the floor surrounded by an array of Barbie dolls. Chloe had claimed that Sophie was an amazing child and it seemed she hadn’t been exaggerating. This little girl was picture-perfect, from her mop of golden curls to her tiny button nose and petal-soft rosy lips.

      She jumped to her feet and greeted them both with a beaming smile the moment she noticed them. His daughter seemed to be friendly as well as adorably cute, Liam thought with a stab of irrational pride.

      “Hi,” she said to him, waving the naked Barbie clutched in her left hand. “I’m Morgan. I’m four. Soon I’ll be five.” She held up four fingers on her right hand and then pointed toward Peter. “My bruvver is three. It’s a long time till his next birfday.” She adjusted her fingers to provide Liam with a demonstration of the number three.

      The child’s name was Morgan? The delectable little girl was not, it seemed, Chloe’s child or his daughter. Liam pushed aside a twinge of regret and tried to decide how he was supposed to respond to Morgan’s overture. “I’m thirty-five,” he said finally, since age seemed big in her life at this point.

      Morgan’s eyes opened wide. “That’s old,” she informed him. “That’s very old.”

      “Er…yes, I guess it is.”

      “My grandpa is old. My grandma is old. My nana is old. My poppa is old. Miss Rose is old—”

      “Who is Miss Rose?” Liam asked, interrupting what threatened to become an endless litany of the aged. “Is she your teacher?”

      “No!” Morgan chuckled at his ridiculous mistake. “Miss Rose is my dog. She frew up on Mommy’s shoes ’cos she ate Peter’s chicken nuggets. Mommy shut her in the laundry room.”

      Liam had no idea how to respond to this wealth of information. Tom, on the other hand, simply laughed.

      “The bit about throwing up on Mommy’s shoes might have been more than we needed to know, Morgan, love. Peter, you can play with your sister for a while.” He set his son on the floor and dragged a box of wooden blocks into the center of the room. “Build a house for Morgan’s dolls,” he suggested. “Build a red house.”

      Peter, clearly a man of few words, sat down without complaint and carefully selected a dozen or so red blocks. “He’s very good with his colors,” Tom said proudly. “He knows them all.”

      “Er…great.”

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