Free Devlin's Light by Mariah Stewart Page A

to her, filled with the sudden certainty that whether she worked tonight or not, Axel would not walk away with a sweet plea bargain this time, as he had done in the past. He may have dealt his way through other states, other jurisdictions, but this time he had chosen Paloma in which to play his evil games. Backed by a district attorney who had been elected on a strong anticrime platform, India had the blessing of the department to take this one all the way. Unaware of promises she had made long ago, promises she had spent her entire adult life trying to keep, Axel Thomas had made the mistake of getting caught in a city that had no interest in making deals. Had she been in any danger of forgetting those promises, the unvoiced threat to Corri had been more than enough to remind her.
    Tonight she would celebrate her birthday with a child who asked only that India love her. Tomorrow she wouldreturn to the task of putting away Axel Thomas once and for all.
    “Indy, can I play with your soaps?” Corri bounced into the bright kitchen, having emerged from the first-floor powder room with a basket filled with little soaps in various shapes and colors—a house-warming gift to India from a co-worker, which, until now, had been pretty much forgotten.
    “Sure,” India said, laughing.
    “How does one play with soap?” Nick asked from the corner of his mouth, and India nodded toward the carpeted area between the kitchen and the dining room, where Corri had planted herself and proceeded to remove the soaps, one by one, from the basket. All the starfish went into one pile, the flowers into another, the little animals into yet a third. Corri then separated them by color.
    “I see.” Nick grinned as he hoisted a large basket onto the kitchen table.
    “What’s in there?” India tried to peek under the lid, but Nick closed it from her view.
    “Dinner. Complements of August. She gave me strict instructions. Let’s see now, where did I—oh, here they are.” With a flourish, Nick removed a sheet of folded paper from the pocket of his blue and white pinstriped shirt and snapped it open. “Now, let’s see what I need here … a long baking pan—got one of those?”
    His eyes were dancing as he looked into hers, and she nodded, somewhat dumbly, that she did in fact have one of those … whatever it was he had asked for. It was hard to concentrate when he stared directly into her eyes like that, like they were the oldest, the very best of friends, friends who had shared so very much.
    But then again, she told herself, they had shared something special. They had both been blessed with Ry’s presence in their lives. It made Nick less of a stranger, more of a friend.
    “And we need to set the oven to 350 degrees,” Nick said, reading from her aunt’s crisply printed instructions.
    India rummaged around in her cupboard and emerged with a baking pan. “Will this do?”
    “That’ll do just fine.” He smiled, and those little dimples she’d noticed that day on the beach emerged to taunt her.
    She handed him the pan, wondering what she had done to deserve having a man like Nick Enright show up on her birthday to cook her dinner.
    “August said to heat these up in the microwave.” From the deep basket he removed a dish of rosemary potatoes in one hand and a brown bag in the other. He plopped the bag onto the counter. “These we can just steam. Green beans. The last from Liddy Osborn’s garden.”
    “And what’s in there?” She pointed to the long object wrapped in foil and packed in ice, which Nick had removed from the basket.
    “That’s what we need the baking pan for.” Nick began to unwrap the bundle.
    “Ohmygod!” India nearly melted in anticipation. “Aunt August’s stuffed bluefish.”
    “We caught it,” Corri piped up, “me and Nick. Out by Heron Cove.”
    “I can’t believe it!” Indy all but swooned. “My favorite dinner. You don’t know how I dreamed of Aunt August’s stuffed and baked bluefish. Just