Free Home Before Midnight by Virginia Kantra Page B

appreciated her.
     
    “Well, for one thing, he lives here,” Bailey said.
     
    “So do you.”
     
    “Only temporarily. I could never get involved with a man who expected me to stay.”
     
    Dorothy sniffed. “You mean, like Paul Ellis does?”
     
    Bailey’s mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut. She didn’t expect her mother to be perceptive. She didn’t want her to be right. “I don’t have time for this.”
     
    “Exactly,” Dorothy said. “You’re twenty-six years old. Almost twenty-seven. When your sister was your age, she was already pregnant with Bryce, Junior.”
     
    And pasting her perfect life into even more perfect photo albums. Which was fine, if that was her sister’s dream. It had never been Bailey’s.
     
    Not that she had anything against kids. But in her adolescent dreams, she’d always imagined herself creating new fictional worlds. Writing books, not editing scrapbooks.
     
    “Can we please put off the biological clock discussion until dinner? I need to get back to work.”
     
    “And that attitude doesn’t help you any. No man wants to compete with a woman’s work schedule. Why, your father—”
     
    Bailey’s cell phone played the opening bars of “The Trouble With Love Is” from her pocket.
     
    Reprieved . She snatched it out. “Hello?”
     
    “Thank God you’re there.” Paul’s voice flowed, warm and fervent, over the line. If she’d been less distracted by her mother, less annoyed by Lieutenant I-Have-A-Prior-Engagement, her heart would have leaped. “Bailey, I need you. I’m in trouble.”
     
    Anxiety clenched her chest. She forced herself to breathe deeply. To speak calmly. To think.
     
    Steve had just left her mother’s house. Had he even had time to drive to the Do Drop and make an arrest?
     
    “Have you called a lawyer?” she asked.
     
    “What are you talking about? I called Feinstein in New York, but he won’t be in until tomorrow.”
     
    Feinstein was Paul’s doctor.
     
    “Are you all right?” Bailey asked.
     
    “Of course I’m not all right,” Paul said. “That’s what I’m telling you. My Xanax is in the house, and I can’t reach Feinstein for a new prescription. I need you to get it for me.”
     
    Relief washed over her in a warm tide. Relief and shame that she had ever doubted him. Only for a second, but the twinge lingered like the residual ache after a dentist appointment. It was Burke’s fault, she decided, poking in where he wasn’t wanted, prodding her with his questions and his bold, black eyes.
     
    “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll call the pharmacy.”
     
    “You’re not listening,” Paul chided. “The prescription can’t be refilled. I need you to get my pills from the house.”
     
    Can’t be refilled? How much had he been taking?
     
    But of course she couldn’t ask him that. Not when he was under so much stress.
     
    She turned to the counter, hunching her shoulders so she wouldn’t have to see her mother’s avid eyes and disapproving mouth. “Won’t there be an officer on duty at the house?”
     
    “You think I should ask him to go through my medicine cabinet and get my drugs for me?”
     
    Bailey’s flush deepened. Paul could be such an asshole. “I meant . . . What if he objects to my being there?”
     
    “He can’t. It’s my house. You’re my assistant. If he doesn’t like it, I’ll revoke my consent to search. I won’t be inconvenienced because some stupid cop is hunting for evidence of an intruder when it’s perfectly plain to the chief and everyone else that Helen drowned.”
     
    Bailey suspected Steve Burke wasn’t stupid at all. Twelve years with the Metropolitan police force . But that wasn’t what Paul needed to hear right now.
     
    “I’ll go right away,” she promised.
     
    “I never should have signed that damn consent.”
     
    Privately, she agreed with him. But he had been eager, even insistent, that he had nothing to hide.
     
    “I’m sure they’ll be done soon,”