Page 3 of Vanishing Point
She laughed at that, shifted the baby onto her other hip. But that tension didn’t leave her. Not fully. Maybe because the baby was still whimpering. But she didn’t say anything else.
“Uh, so, are you visiting?” he prompted.
“Um.” She looked back at a car parallel parked—poorly—a few yards away. It had Wyoming plates. “I moved back a little while ago. I… I’m living out closer to Sunrise. My cousins have a ranch.”
Thomas nodded, not sure what to do with this very strange trip down memory lane. But her baby was crying, and she was standing outside the closed general store. “Can I help you with something?”
“I just… Mags is running a bit of a fever, and I ran out of Tylenol. I thought the general store was open until six.” She gestured helplessly at the store.
“Not anymore. Closes at four on Sundays.”
“I should have checked.” She smiled thinly. “That’s what I get for thinking I know things. I guess I’ll drive up to Fairmont. Surely something there is open?” she asked, a little desperately.
The baby was inconsolable, and Vi looked like she wanted to melt into the concrete. Thomas glanced around. “Yeah, you’ll have a few options, but hey, just wait here one second, okay? Just one minute.”
She frowned but nodded. Reluctantly, he could admit. Still, she nodded. So he jogged around the back of the store. His friends Zach and Lucy were staying in the apartment abovewith their two-year-old while their house out in Hope Town was getting a new addition fortheirupcoming new addition. Surely they’d have something on hand.
VIREYNOLDS FIGUREDas far as rock bottoms went, she’d already reached hers. So running into her ex-boyfriend while she looked like a bedraggled sea witch and Magnolia screamed her adorable little head off wasn’t going any deeper in the rock bottom department.
It was just icing on the garbage cake of her life.
And still, this was all better than what she’d managed to drag herself out of. She reminded herself of that, almost every single day.
Magnolia wriggled and did that awful head swinging thing that usually ended with thembothcrying when head smacked into head.
“Come on, baby. I know you’re miserable, but now I am too, if it helps any.” She tried to hum a lullaby as she bounced Magnolia, who was as exhausted as she was cranky from the fever. Vi tried to offer Mags quiet reassurances, but her throat was getting too tight. She should just get in her car and drive. What could Thomas possibly manage to do?
Thomas Hart.
God, she’d loved that skinny little goofball. He wasn’t skinny anymore. No, he looked very…sturdy. And that baby face had aged. Same blue eyes, but the face had that…rugged Western look about it. Broad shoulders that had once housed a skinny frame now looked more filled out. His hair was cut short, so the color was some indistinguishable light brown, and his eyes…
Well, they were the exact same. It sent a pang of longing through her—for a simpler time, for a time before she’d made so many mistakes.
Why did he have to behotnow? Instead of just cute and sweet?
Well, he probably wasn’t sweet anymore. He was a cop. He’d pulled out a badge. Just the thought made her tense. She knew how that went, didn’t she?
She squeezed Magnolia tighter. “Let’s run, Mags,” she muttered. She even took a step back to turn and go, but Thomas reappeared before she could even get her keys out of her purse.
He was holding a box of children’s Tylenol. He held it out to her. It was opened.
Why would he have access to children’s Tylenol? Opened at that? Did he have kids? Oh, God, he probably had a parcel of them with some beautiful, skinny, smart, perfect mother who didn’t run out of medicine.
He took the bottle out of the box, pulled one of the little syringes they gave out at pharmacies for oral medication for babies. He unwrapped it. “How much?” he asked, like he did this all the time.
She found herself absolutely speechless at the idea of him married with kids, which was ludicrous since she’d been married for a time. And had a child.
He smiled at her gently. “I’m friends with a ton of people with babies.” He didn’t ask, but she couldfeelthe question in the air.
Is she yours?
Vi hugged Mags a little tighter.
“My friends live upstairs,” he said. “They’ve got a kid, so I know how it all works. How much?”
She told him the correct dosage for Magnolia’s weight. She watched him expertly fill the syringe with the right dosage, then hold it out to her. But she had both hands supporting Mags, so then he offered it to the baby.
Mags leaned forward a little and took the medicine. She’d always been a good medicine taker, probably because she’d been so sickly those first few months. But she was healthy now.
