Her reaction forced him to do a double take as she gawked at him with wide eyes.
“What?” The intensity in her voice was obvious. “I didn’t think you even knew that word.”
“Yes, well, that may explain why I’m still trying to fix something that happened nine months ago.”
He’d already said too much. She must have read his concern, he was sure it was written all over his face, and to her credit, backed off.
Dottie was a Kenny Rogers fan. She always knew when to hold and when to fold.
“This should go without saying, but you do know I’m Team Arnie. Anything you need.”
She put a hand on his arm and squeezed. Then without another word, she turned and left him alone with his thoughts and a fat lip.
Summer awoke feeling achy and stiff. Her head was foggy, and she had a strong urge to cry.
Struggling like a turtle on its back, she wiggled and scooted to the edge of the mattress. Hooking her legs over the side and using the covers as a towrope, she managed to sit.
Everything ached. Her hair. Her skin. Her bones. Her muscles. Everything.
A rushing onslaught of tears was not cathartic or cleansing. In fact, each whimper and sob made her feel worse.
Motherhood was not for the weak. With her due date so close, she didn’t have the luxury of time to fall apart. Her only option was the stiffest of upper lips and secretly crossed fingers.
Nobody was going to ride in at the last minute. She didn’t have a white knight or a rescuer waiting in the wings to save her, and crying about it wasn’t going to change a goddamn thing.
She had to figure it out by herself. This was a solo flight with no first mate by her side.
Shuffling from the bedroom, she moved through the apartment using furniture and walls as aids. It took forever to make it to the bathroom.
Nothing was easy or simple. Pulling her sundress up took effort. Wiggling out of her under-the-bump panties took even more. Exhausted, with pink cotton down around her ankles, she squatted inelegantly and peed a river.
Standing and pulling her panties up nearly wiped her out.
In the living room, she rested a hand on her tummy and stared out the windows into the backyard. It was quiet and dark. The pool lights were on a timer. They’d go off at eleven. Solar light pagodas hung from garden stakes, illuminating the pool patio. The setting was calm and pleasant.
Settling into her spot on the sofa, she was rearranging pillows when her eyes landed on the tabletop shadow box she made from a kit. The project turned out to be fun, and the result exceeded her expectations.
Stretching to reach it, she maneuvered the box closer and studied the objects inside. The treasure memories from the day she and Arnie hiked into the Santa Barbara mountains rested on a cloud of aqua-colored velvet reminiscent of the ocean.
Happy memories stirred before Tinker Belly disturbed her reverie with a jarring kick. Gasping, she rubbed her belly just as a bolt of truth lightning hit her between the eyes.
She’d grown up a motherless child. The experience affected every area of her life. It was so painful she didn’t have the heart to wish it on anyone. Yet here she was with history repeating itself only this time her baby would know the sting of growing up without a father.
Agony engulfed her soul. It was one thing to get her heart broken and something else entirely to imagine the lifetime of heartbreak waiting for her daughter.
He doesn’t know. The words from her inner self were spoken softly. A gentle reminder she wanted to believe with all her heart.
If only that horrible woman hadn’t insinuated he was okay with her selling his baby.
But what if her intuition was correct and he didn’t know? Should she have tried harder to tell him he was going to be a father before she disappeared?
The last call she made to his phone bordered on embarrassing. Instead of telling him about the pregnancy, all she did was cry.
An uncomfortable admission gnawed at her emotions. She’d made a grievous mistake. A man who joyously pigged out on whipped cream and animal crackers wasn’t afraid to be a dad.
Regret landed in her gut like a one-ton boulder.
If only there was some way for her to send a message. Her phone was the first thing she surrendered when she ran. It was locked away on purpose. The device made her traceable. Without another way to contact him, she was screwed.
Her eyes shifted to the shadowbox. Arnie had handled the objects—all of them.
“I wonder,” she murmured.
Biting her lip while questioning her grip on reality, Summer opened the glass lid. A shudder of awareness shook her when his scent filled her senses. The display box wasn’t hermetically sealed. It wasn’t airtight. Arnie’s scent trapped inside had to be a sign.
She sat there for a long, long time staring at the feather and remembering why she picked up each stone.
As the clock approached midnight, she scooped up her treasures and marched outside into the moonlight. Placing the cherished objects on the cushion next to her as she wriggled onto a porch swing, Summer visualized mother moon charging each precious memory.
Clutching a small bluish stone in her left hand, she waved the feather through the air, catching moonlight with each sweeping gesture.
Minutes ticked by. She held the feather in front of her face and blew on it, imagining it taking flight and drifting for miles until it landed in the lap of her Viking Adonis.
“Arnie, hear me,” she called out to the midnight sky. “We need you.”
Swirling and unseen forces gathered energy. She felt the warm current connecting her heart to the baby inside her. With all her might, she willed a sliver of their combined life force out into the universe, hoping it found a way to him.
“Find us. Please. And hurry.”
The hour between two and three in the morning dragged on for an eternity. Arnie turned, punched his pillow, and tried a different position. The display of the digital clock sitting lopsided atop a stack of books on his bedside mocked him.
2:36
Sigh.
2:37
Oh, for fuck’s sake. He punched the pillow. Turned his face the other way and demanded sleep come and take him.
The attempt was good for less than a minute. He turned his head, cracked open one eye to check the time, and muttered, “Two forty-four.”
Growling with frustration, he threw off the covers and sat up. Any other time he’d jerk off, hoping the explosion of energy would put him to sleep, but he abandoned the idea. His unenthused dick was tired of being manhandled.
Stomping from the bedroom into the kitchen, he nearly ripped the refrigerator door off with a forceful yank. A single bottle of Yoo-hoo sat alone on a shelf. Everything else was a condiment, takeout leftovers, or a science experiment.
Drinking the watery chocolate beverage as he strode into the living room and noticed a stack of ignored mail.
“Guaranteed ninety percent is wasted paper.”
He pawed through the ads, flyers, and bulk mail with little interest. It wasn’t like a decorated envelope bearing a schmaltzy Hallmark card from Summer was suddenly going to turn up, so why bother?
A folded newsletter addressed to ‘Eat More Vegetables’ turned out to be a splashy four-page visit to his dad’s organic farm. Hawaii was good for his old man. Island life took the sting out of a twenty-year nightmare. For a long time, Arnie worried Giselle’s relentless reign of post-divorce terror would break the man, but contentment came with a change in continent. Going by the smiling faces of his farm crew, Ned Wanamaker’s life was now full of happiness.
A large envelope contained two tickets to a Broadway show, compliments of a legal firm trying ever so hard to worm their way into NIGHTWIND’s good graces. Without thought or care, he tossed the tickets aside. Dottie could have them. Or Milo. Not Neal or Rolf, though. He was still mad at those two fuckers for stealing a bag of coffee beans a client had given him. The Detroit Bold Coffee Company’s 8 MILE BASELINE ble
nd purportedly delivered a serious jolt. He’d gone through half the beans before declaring it a caffeine fail.
Neal and Rolf thought it’d be hilarious to switch the beans with something of far less quality. Unused to being the jokee instead of the joker, Arnie’s nose got out of joint about the whole thing. As far as he was concerned, they could both eat shit for the foreseeable future.
Leaving the empty Yoo-hoo bottle beside a stack of shit he should have walked to the recycling bin, Arnie wandered around his apartment. Unless he was entertaining, and by entertaining, he referred to hosting poker night, or the times when the ball team hung out, he hated the place. In fact, he hated everyplace he’d lived. It didn’t take hundreds of thousands of dollars and decades of therapy to know why. No place ever felt like home.
Flopping onto the sofa like a gawky rag doll, his clasped hands hung between his knees while his forearms rested on his thighs. He stared at his feet.
Head hanging, Arnie vigorously scraped his hands back and forth through his hair. He needed to catch a break. A sign of some sort … something, anything.
Settling in, he propped his feet on an ugly ottoman and breathed deeply to clear his thoughts.
His eyes drifted closed.
Each breath took him deeper.
Fog clung to the edges of his mind, but the dense, opaque haze was impossible to see through.
Inhale—hold—exhale.
The faint sound of water drew him deeper. He had the sensation of movement even though his immobile body felt lethargic and heavy.
He wandered deeper into the dense mist. Almost out of earshot came the sound of a charming giggle. Arnie followed it.
Every minute his beating heart got louder until he heard it thundering in his chest.
The haze enveloped him. He panicked when his orientation scrambled. A voice told him to be still.
Motionless and hardly breathing, he heard the air whisper his name. A shiver ran through him when the fog enveloped his body.
Words he couldn’t hear clearly enough remained out of reach.
Suddenly, a whooshing noise split the silence, and he felt himself sucked into the present.
Gasping like a dead man brought back to life, his eyes flew open. Clutching a hand above his heart, Arnie dropped his jaw.
Three words. The universe gave him three words. Three words to hang his entire future on.
Find. Please. Hurry.
20
She looked like shit.
Summer stared at her face in the bathroom mirror. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes. The blotches on her skin resembled a map of the moon.
Her hair wasn’t faring any better. The long, sleek, sun-kissed California blond style she’d sported since forever was a thing of the past. She didn’t have the energy to break out all her hair products and give herself a smooth blowout. The waves she tried so hard to tame took over like crabgrass, and her usual sunny blond color was washed-out and dull—another side effect of pregnancy.
Leaning closer to the mirror, she grimaced. The stories she read about ‘pregnancy nose’ seemed like bullshit until she noticed her once perky schnoz spreading like melting butter.
Oh well. What was one more indignity on top of the previous dozen? Once you explosively fart in public and become an expert on hemorrhoids, a bit of fat-nose barely raised her heart rate.
Flushing the toilet, she capped a bottle of poo deodorizer and tossed it into a basket with several others. The QVC impulse buy started out as a bathroom accessory. That was until the past couple of days of stomach distress became the new normal. Now she was obsessed with spraying the bowl—just in case—and praying for odor containment.
Padding barefoot from one corner of her little apartment to the other, she straightened up, fluffed the sofa pillows, and double-checked her overnight bag. Summer over-prepared. It gave her something to do and helped alleviate her growing anxiety.
Uber and Lyft were in her phone’s contacts list. So was the number for an emergency transport option available through the clinic.
With four days till her due date, she was more than ready even though everyone kept telling her most first pregnancies go longer.
Caressing her baby bump, she ate half a dozen Fig Newtons straight from the package. The baby was quiet—a sign of what was coming.
Another sign was the dull ache low, low, low in her belly. It felt like Tink’s head was pressing against Summer’s pubic bone.
Cy asked her to check in every day instead of once a month, even if all she did was leave a voice message. He seemed agitated the last time they spoke. When pressed about his demeanor, he’d only say he had a lot on his mind.
As she placed the check-in call, the words she’d rehearsed danced in her mind. It didn’t matter whether Cy or Joanne answered. She had something to say no matter who it was.
“You’ve reached the Westmoreland headquarters. State your business and be brief about it.”
Summer cleared her throat. “Hi, guys. It’s me, calling to check in. All is quiet here in hot and steamy Sherman Oaks.”
She paused for courage and went for it with wobbly confidence. Unless she tried, she’d never know.
“So, um, listen. I’ve been thinking about stuff, and I believe turning my phone on is a good idea.”
She had an alternate request if the first fell on deaf ears.
“I want a message sent. His number is in my contacts.”
All of a sudden, her speech was interrupted when Cy clicked in to the call.
“Slow down, missy.”
“Slow didn’t get results. I’ve run out of time,” she muttered. “I know using the number might set off alarms, but I need to know.”
He grumbled something she didn’t catch.
“Please, Cy. I need to know if he’s the man I hope he is or if he just doesn’t care.”
“Summer.” Cy cleared his throat a few times, and when he finally spoke, she felt the bottom fall out of her heart.
“After you left, I called his number every day for two weeks. None of the calls went through. The mailbox must have been full.”
Her mouth went dry. She felt dizzy and grabbed the cushion underneath her butt. Fear and anxiety clawed at her emotions, but in the shower of shreds, she found one a little different from the rest and clung to it with all her might.
“We’re missing something, Cy. I don’t know why the number he gave me suddenly went dead any more than I understand why a woman I personally witnessed get into a verbal bitch slapping match with Arnie came out of nowhere and tried to buy me. Or scare me. One of those things is true. But you don’t know what it means, and neither do I. I have a feeling,” she exclaimed. “And no, it’s not wishful thinking.”
“Survival is ninety percent instinct and feelings, missy. What is it you feel?”
One of her favorite romance authors wrote a brilliant story about fate and how shitty timing made a happy outcome a lot harder to achieve. Summer’s takeaway? If you believe with all your heart, true love finds a way.
“We both grew up without our mothers. We know what agony the other carries. There is no way the man I knew, the man I love, would walk away from his child. Trust me, Cy. There are pieces missing to this puzzle.”
“I can’t activate the phone. It’s a mistake. I hear what you’re saying, Summer, but you have to be extra careful. Think of the baby. Now is not the time to get sloppy.”
He hadn’t called her missy. She sighed and changed the subject. “How’s Jo? I miss her.”
“I’ll let her know you were asking. She’s out of it by the time she comes home at night, so I’m not sure how much gets through. Her mom’s a tough old bird. The hospice people say we’re in for a long haul.”
At a loss for words, she murmured the usual about taking care and extracted a promise they’d call if she could help in any way.
She hung up after a hastily muttered, “Bye-bye.”
Her stomach was rumbling again. Was it hunger or another bathroom bl
owout on the way?
A quick assessing body diagnostic was inconclusive.
Suddenly, more tired than she realized, Summer decided she might as well nap since there was nothing pressing on her schedule.
Messing up the pillows she fluffed earlier, she pulled a throw blanket over her legs and fell promptly to sleep.
A few hours later, she awoke drenched in sweat. When she sat up, her entire being ached from the inside out.
Nausea made her woozy.
Summer needed to use the arm of the sofa to get up. When she straightened, the low ache in her belly turned to pain sharp enough to steal her breath.
Moving on shaking legs, she slowly made it to the chair by the front door. Her overnight bag sat at her feet.
Seized by terror, she looked at the wall clock and noted the time. “Five-seventeen.”
For the next thirty-seven minutes, she sat perfectly still while nothing else happened. At six o’clock, she was sure there was no need to overreact.
Rising from the chair, she took four steps toward the refrigerator when without warning, a warm liquid drenched her inner thighs. Her reaction was shock mixed with panic.
All the clinic doctors, nurses, and the birthing class instructor made it very clear what she should do if her water broke. To avoid infection, she was to get medical help immediately.
Medical help. Not a thoughtful, uneventful trip to the birthing center.
Paralyzed by confusion and unsure what her next move should be, Summer lost her cool when the constant, dull ache in her back triggered an angry spasm.
Her hand grabbed the edge of the counter. She grunted when the pain stole her breath.
“Shit.” Was that a contraction?
What should she do first? Where was her phone?
Her eyes darted everywhere. The suddenness of her water breaking and the shockingly unpleasant labor pain left her dazed.
Locating her phone, she initiated the memorized step-by-step plan.
First, she ordered an Uber. The closest available car was ten minutes out, which gave her enough time to call next door and alert Bud and Lynda.
Finding Summer (Nightwind Book 3) Page 38