Assumed Identity(32)
Plus, he hadn’t been able to catch the guy in the trilby hat who’d been watching him. Either the guy had walked away before Jake could reach him, or he was really good at blending in with a crowd. As good as Jake was when he put his mind to it.
His snarly mood hadn’t improved much at work, either. Instead of figuring out why the guy at the newsstand might be interested in him, Jake had been thinking about events he could remember, like the feel of Robin’s long, lean body pressed against his side. He could recall the exact moment when the fear in her eyes had turned to trust. And he’d never forget her thrusting that baby girl into his arms. If the mama was a temptation he didn’t need, then that infant with the big blue eyes and snuggling instincts was downright dangerous to his determination to fly solo through the shadows of the world.
The woman was pretty in that classy, PTA mom kind of way that meant she was more at home with a white-collar executive who drove a minivan and lived in the suburbs than with a...whatever he was. In the light of day, he’d like to think she was too skinny to entice a man with his baser tastes. But he’d seen the curves on that backside. He’d touched that soft, cool skin. How could he justify getting attached to anyone—a stubborn woman or a sweet little girl—if he didn’t know who he was and what he had done? And if he thought his brain was screwed up now, what if the things he’d done came back with a vengeance and hurt the people he cared about?
“Care about,” Jake sneered. What a ludicrous idea to think he’d formed any kind of attachment to the Carter girls in the short span of hours he’d known them. Swearing at his own weakness for even considering such a thing, he hit the insulated door’s release handle and carried his load through the back hallway into the front of the Shamrock Bar.
He pushed through the swinging door behind the polished walnut bar and froze. Speak of the devil. No, not the devil—more like a pair of angels walking through the front door. Robin Carter looked pretty nice all dried off, too.
Jake took a breath, recovering from a jolt of eager recognition, and thumped the cases down on top of the bar. “What are you doing here?”
The armed suit who’d held the door open for Robin and the kid in the stroller moved in before she could speak and flashed his badge. “Spencer Montgomery, KCPD. You’re Jake Lonergan?”
For now. “Yeah.”
Robin pushed the stroller right up to the barstools. “That’s him, Detective.”
So she’d brought the cops right to him, served up his name and face on a platter despite every effort to disappear from her life. Thanks for nothin’, honey. His effort to glare Robin Carter back out the door made her pull her shoulders back and tip her chin. Oh, yeah. She was quivering in those running shoes she wore, but she refused to be intimidated.
“Hello, Jake.”
“I don’t do the niceties, remember?” Jake pulled a box cutter from his apron pocket, sliced open the top crate and starting loading beer bottles into the cooler beneath the bar.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” said the detective. “Namely, why would you flee the scene of a crime?”
Yeah. He was ignoring him, too.
“Jake?” Robin cleared the husky catch in her voice and spoke again. “It is Jake, isn’t it? I told him you didn’t run away—that you were there, watching over us, all night.”
He tossed the empty box to the floor and proceeded to open and unload the second one. “I don’t need you to defend me. Am I under some kind of suspicion, Officer?”
Before the detective could answer, the door swung open behind Jake, and Robbie Nichols, Jake’s boss, carried out a freshly washed crate of beer mugs.
“Customers, already?” Robbie’s Irish heritage was evident in both his accent and his jovial greeting. He set the glasses on the bar and grinned through his bushy black beard and mustache.
“No.” The place was nearly deserted this early in the evening, so there was no mistaking that Robin and the suit with the badge were here to see him.
“Friends of yours, then.” The fact that Jake had never had one friend stop in for a visit didn’t seem to faze Robbie. The burly Irishman stretched his arm across the bar to shake hands with the detective. “Spencer Montgomery—we don’t see enough of you around here anymore.”
The carrot top with Robin nodded. “Mr. Nichols. Since my partner got engaged, he’d rather take his fiancée out for drinks after work than come here with me. Go figure.”