Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

by Anna J. Stewart

  “I never have understood how women can manage to walk across the room in heels, let alone to navigate the stairs, but you’re doing a fine job. You look lovely in that skirt, by the way.”

  And she’d never understood why some men felt the need to comment on a woman’s appearance while they were positioned to get a great look at her ass or her legs beneath her skirt. And she was his boss!

  “We do our best.”

  Tatiana didn’t answer his other comment, given that he shouldn’t have made it, and he was giving her the creeps. She made a mental note to talk to Travis about the company’s sexual harassment policies and either have HR add additional training for everyone or insist that the older engineer have a refresher course. She would also make a trip to the shoe store a higher priority on her to-do list.

  As she exited the stairs, she gave Enzio a side glance. He waved and, without looking back at her, continued to the third floor.

  She barely had time to hang up her coat and stow her laptop bag before her gaze caught a vase of yellow roses on the bookshelf next to the window.

  “Subtle,” she groused.

  Still, she brushed her fingertips over her lips that suddenly tingled again. He would stop apologizing to her over his kiss if he knew that the memory of those tender moments would keep her warm through many lonely nights ahead.

  “Knock. Knock.”

  She whirled to find the man she was thinking of standing at her open doorway but waiting to be invited in. That she appreciated. She waved him inside.

  “How’d it go?” Travis asked.

  “What?” She shook her head. “Oh. You mean my physical? It was positively delightful.”

  He glanced behind him to the open door and then stepped over to close it. When he faced her again, he was grinning. “Then why don’t you look happier? I know it was kind of a surprise, but you’re okay with it now, aren’t you?”

  “I am. Really.”

  Tatiana tried to smile, but the incident on the stairs was still bothering her. She’d told Ellie that she hadn’t felt strange vibes from any of the male employees. That was no longer the case. Could Enzio be the man who’d sent her the email?

  “Then what is it?”

  “We’ll deal with that later. First, let me show you this.” She pulled a notebook out of her computer bag and opened it. Inside lay a small square ultrasound photo, showing a mostly white blur, with a black oval in the center and a tiny shape attached on one side.

  Travis stepped in front of her desk and reached for it but then looked up in a silent request for permission to touch it. At her nod, he lifted it and turned his back to hide the picture from anyone peering inside the office windows. Then he pointed to the tiny spot in the pond of dark.

  “That little bean in the middle is our kid, right?” he asked, grinning.

  His happiness was contagious as her excitement from earlier washed over her again, and tears welled in her eyes. The circumstances of the conception didn’t matter anymore. They were having a baby together, and no matter what, they would be great co-parents for this child.

  “I take it you’ve seen an ultrasound photo before.”

  He nodded, still beaming. “You might have noticed, but I have a lot of relatives around here. More if you head to Grand Rapids.”

  “Well, according to my doctor’s calculation, another Colton baby will be born somewhere around October the ninth.”

  Travis sat forward in the chair. “And there was a heartbeat?”

  “I got to hear the little whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, and everything appears to be fine.”

  Her own heart beat a little faster as she recalled the sound from the Doppler stethoscope. The photo had made their baby real for Travis, but for her, it was hearing that wonderful confirmation of what she’d already known. Their child was growing inside her body, its heart beating out a healthy rhythm, and she was already in love with that tiny person she’d never met.

  She reached for the photo that he’d gently rested on the notebook page. “I do have to agree that our child looks like a bean, which has led me to a possible name. If it’s a girl, Bean, and if it’s a boy, well, Bean.”

  “At least you’re consistent.”

  “And since he or she bears a resemblance to a shrimp, too, it’s going to be a while before I want shrimp cocktail again.” She paused, grimacing, as a wave of nausea sprang out of nowhere. “Maybe never.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Did the doctor give you other details?”

  She shared as many as she could with him, surprised that he was interested in hearing them all. For a guy who’d just found out he’d made a woman pregnant by accident, he seemed to be enjoying every minute of it. So much so that she hated to end his good mood by reporting on other events at Colton Plastics.

  “Are you ever going to tell me?” he asked.

  “I think that’s about it.”

  “I mean, when will you let me know about what was bothering you when I came in? Has there been another email?”

  She pointed to her borrowed laptop on the corner of her desk. “I took my bag with all my paperwork but not the laptop to the doctor’s office.”

  “Then what is it?”

  As Tatiana told him about the conversation with Enzio on the stairs, Travis’s hands fisted against his pant legs, and his jaw flexed, as if he were gritting his teeth.

  “I’ll fire him.”

  She raised a hand in a signal for him to stop. “Now we don’t know that it was him. He might just be an old-school guy who doesn’t realize he lives in a post–Me Too world. Would I say we might want to have the staff go through another round of sexual harassment training modules? Probably. But that doesn’t mean that Enzio is the person who sent that email.”

  Travis frowned, clearly not ready to give the engineer a pass. She tried not to grin over his protectiveness. It wasn’t exactly office-appropriate, either, but it was endearing.

  “Did he make you uncomfortable?”

  “Well, sure—”

  “Then we need to call him in and—”

  She shook her head. “Do you plan to haul every guy in the building into our offices? Because I’m nervous around all of them. I can’t help feeling I’m being watched.”

  Travis flexed and unflexed his hands. “But I have to do something.”

  “Then watch and wait. Remember that Ellie made us promise not to take anything into our own hands. I’m going to hold you to it.”

  “Fine.” As he slumped back into the chair, Travis turned toward the window and pointed to the roses. “Those are nice. Who sent you flowers?”

  Tatiana froze, a chill starting somewhere deep inside her and worming its way out. “I thought,” she began, then cleared her throat. “I thought they were from you.”

  Travis leaped up from the chair and crossed in three long strides to the vase on the bookshelf. He picked it up just as someone knocked at the door.

  “Come in,” Tatiana called out.

  Jan turned the handle and leaned in.

  “I didn’t realize you were both in here.” She pointed to the roses. “I just wanted to make sure you got the beautiful flowers.”

  “Do you know how they got in here?” Travis asked.

  She stepped inside the room, her brows lifted. “I brought them up after they were delivered to the security desk.” Jan smiled at Tatiana. “I hope you don’t mind that I unwrapped them for you. We don’t get a lot of roses around here between Valentine’s and Mother’s Day.”

  “That’s fine,” she assured the assistant.

  Across the room, Travis didn’t appear to be listening any longer as he pulled the tiny white envelope from the long plastic prong in the arrangement.

  “I didn’t open the card. None of my business.” Jan turned to go but stopped at the doorway. “All the interviews are set for tomorrow.”
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  “Thanks, Jan. I really appreciate your help.”

  The woman left quickly, as if she, too, felt the chill in the room. Only then did Travis set aside the flowers and carry the card to Tatiana’s desk.

  “You weren’t expecting flowers, were you?”

  “Expecting?” She tried to make sense of what he’d said. Then she understood. He’d accepted with no more than her word that the child she carried was his and suddenly had a reason to question whether there might be other men in her life.

  She shook her head. “There’s no one.”

  “Then who...?”

  Both stared down at the tiny, sealed envelope. Finally, Tatiana reached for it and slid her thumb under the seal. She took a deep breath, and, with trembling fingers, she flipped open the card.

  Her breath caught, and blood seemed to freeze in her veins as she read the typed message on the florist’s card.

  Cheering you on in your new position, Miss Co-CEO. Don’t forget to make snow angels. You’ll always be my little girl.

  Love, Daddy

  * * *

  Tatiana lay in bed that night, the white card clasped in her hand appearing more eerie under the soft yellow lamplight. She should have left it at the office to show to the police later like Travis had suggested, but she’d wanted to look at it again. Needed to think. So, she’d slipped it in her purse when they’d left the office. For unlike Travis, who still had the luxury of believing that the flowers could have come from the same person who’d sent her the email—someone who was fixated on her father, her or both—Tatiana knew better.

  They were from Len Davison himself.

  She should have told Travis right away that her father and not the copycat obsessed with him had sent the flowers. But she’d panicked. Why had it been so easy not to correct Travis when he’d assumed that they were dealing with only one suspect? What was wrong with her? She’d promised not to lie to him, even if it was a lie of omission.

  Lies were far from her only problem, she decided, as she stared down at the card in her hands. The one that proved her father was nearby. You’ll always be my little girl. As they had then, those words on the page made her shiver, and bile backed up in her throat. Whether it was revulsion from her father’s actions or fear on his behalf, she wasn’t sure. Would he hurt her? She shook her head against the pillow, refusing to believe that. But she’d been wrong before. Now she was more convinced than ever that he’d murdered those two men in the park.

  My little girl. She didn’t know why she kept focusing on that part of the message when the yellow roses and the snow angels had been the most telling parts of the note. Those things would have appeared innocuous to someone who didn’t know better. Yellow roses were supposed to mean friendship and joy, and snow angels were almost a given for any Michigan childhood. Both also were symbolic in her family.

  Those blooms had been her mother’s favorite. On those Friday nights when Len brought Marcia flowers, he’d always included at least one of them in the bouquet, even in the winter when the rest didn’t match. What would Travis have thought if he’d known that she’d experienced a moment of profound loss when he’d tossed her roses into the dumpster, and an explosion of lemony petals flew up from the bottom?

  The reference to snow angels on her father’s card was equally significant. It brought back both happy memories and a location she could still see clearly. She couldn’t be sure where her father was, but he’d practically shouted that he was headed to the ice-fishing cabins they’d rented as a family.

  Cheering you on... She hated that her father’s approval still mattered. That the lingering, hopeful side of her wanted to believe he’d sent those flowers just to celebrate her new position. The developing cynical side knew better. He hadn’t called her since December or reached out with a card or a text. Nothing. So why now after he’d been spotted in New York and was more vulnerable to capture? He’d made national news, for God’s sake.

  Love, Daddy. And suddenly, she knew exactly what the gift had been: a test of her loyalty. Would she tell Travis that the flowers were from her father and report her suspicion about dear old Dad to the police? Her face felt hot, and her stomach churned in a way that had nothing to do with the baby. It was worse than that she’d kept the truth from Travis, and that was bad enough. She’d convinced him to hold off before reporting the gift or even giving Ellie a call. The delay might have prevented her father’s capture.

  How could she do that to Travis? He’d been so kind to her and so accepting of the pregnancy, and she’d repaid him by involving him in covering up for a murderer. Travis had been right to reject her a second time. She didn’t deserve him, and she didn’t deserve to be the mother of their child.

  After tucking the card under her pillow and flipping off the lamp, Tatiana lay in the darkness for several minutes. She hugged her knees beneath the covers. Her dad might have intended this as an examination of her devotion to him, but it really was two tests in one. She could honor her dad, or she could earn the trust of her baby’s father. Her heart squeezed with the truth that she’d passed Len Davison’s test and failed Travis’s at the same time.

  CHAPTER 14

  A familiar sense of dread settled on Travis’s shoulders that Saturday night as he pulled off the quiet lane of massive lakefront properties onto the curved driveway. That wasn’t the feeling that he should have when returning to his childhood home, but there you had it. Less ostentatious than most in the west side neighborhood, the yellow wood-frame house had a cross-hipped roof, superior craftsmanship and a feel of old money that disguised the new. It also had a view of Lake Michigan from the bluff out back that could take your breath away.

  Travis pushed open the door as quietly as possible, hoping for a moment of calm before the onslaught of family. After leaving his boots in the slate entry with all the others and stowing his coat in the closet, he stepped in his socks on the hardwood that led through the molded-panel, arched hallway to the great room. The scents of his mother’s amazing roast beef and the dried lavender she always had in containers throughout the house brought him back to less complicated times.

  He paused as he emerged from the tunnel to look out the wall of windows, formed by a set of French doors and three sets of sliding doors with grid-covered windows at the top, connecting them all. Outside, the gunmetal sky stretched down to meet the water at some point, but since March sunsets still collided with the dinner hour, he couldn’t see where.

  Around the corner and past the staircase, the chaos of a Colton family dinner was already underway in the kitchen. Clarke, the oldest sibling and the one with hair and coloring closest to Travis’s, was stuck at the stove stirring something he probably hadn’t cooked and scrolling his phone with his free hand. He’d either shed his sweater down to his fitted black T-shirt, or he’d skipped it entirely, since their mother always kept the house warm enough to boil potatoes without lighting the stove.

  Youngest brother Stanton set the eight-foot, dark-wood dining table in the great room, his tousled brown hair falling over his piercing blue eyes girls always loved. Funny how Stanton was able to effectively run Colton Protection, an elite agency that provided security services for movie stars and politicians, but he couldn’t get the dishes right that he placed around the table. At least their mother, Italia, must not have thought so. She followed behind him, redoing his work.

  Even the new Colton recruits had been called into action for the dinner. Clarke’s bride-to-be, Everleigh, chopped vegetables at the counter, occasionally using a forearm to push her short blond hair out of her face. Melissa’s always well-dressed fiancé, Antonio, was probably sorry he’d worn a suit jacket to a family dinner, since he was stuck helping Frank lift the huge lidded roasting pan from the oven and set it on top of the stove. The local hotelier had a good chance of impressing his future father-in-law with his effort.

  At the wet bar, Melissa appeared almost re
laxed in her cashmere sweater and dress pants as she opened two bottles of cabernet, but Travis didn’t buy her act. Until the suspects in the Grave Gulch murders and the evidence-tampering cases were taken into custody, Chief Colton wouldn’t be getting any sleep.

  She poured the wine into a glass to sample, but when she caught sight of Travis, she hurried over instead.

  “About time you got here,” she said as she sidled up next to him.

  “It’s great to see you, too, sis.” He dipped his head to drop a kiss on her cheek. “Looking a little fancier than you did the other night.”

  She glanced down at his black V-neck sweater and gray wool-blend trousers.

  “And you look as fancy as usual. You’re lucky I didn’t show up in my pajamas the other night. Where is your houseguest, by the way?”

  The emphasis she placed on the word grated on him, but he refused to let her get to him. “She’s at home, but I’ll let her know you asked after her.”

  “Were you too afraid to invite her here?”

  This time, he couldn’t keep his jaw from flexing. Travis was afraid, all right, but it had nothing to do with bringing Tatiana to a Colton family dinner and everything to do with the creep who’d sent that email and now those flowers. Could they have been the same person, or had Len Davison himself come out of hiding to congratulate his daughter on her new job?

  Both of those possibilities made him want to rush out the door right then to get back to her. He wouldn’t have come at all if he hadn’t been able to hire at the last minute a security guard to stay with her at the condo. His connection to Stanton had paid off there.

  “Whoa, it’s that bad?”

  Travis lifted his gaze to find her observing him in a way that was far more suspicious police officer than concerned sister. He couldn’t afford to drift off in his thoughts around her tonight. Melissa was trained in the art of questioning, and he needed to remember that she was curious about him this time.

  “As a matter of fact, I did invite Tatiana, but she wasn’t feeling well.”