“Well, shoot,” she whispered. She waited until he’d turned the corner and then she limped to the front door and let herself inside the shabby lobby.
Not until she had showered and shampooed the smell of fried onions from her skin and hair and slipped on her favorite muumuu did it occur to her that something was different. Everything, so far as she could see, was just the same—same sofa with the tacky throw. Same slightly tilted platform rocker, a ten-dollar steal at the thrift shop. Same books on the shelf.
But not in the same order. The Dummy books had been on the middle shelf, the romantic suspense on the top…hadn’t they? She could have sworn she’d left the book she’d been reading on the sofa instead of the coffee table.
And those boxes…
Had they been stacked on the left or the right inside her mother’s room?
It had to be one of the more bizarre symptoms of pregnancy, but suddenly she was almost certain someone had been inside her apartment. A quick search revealed nothing missing. Not that she’d had anything of value to steal. Even her mother’s guitar was at Will’s place, along with the watercolor, which was nice but hardly worth breaking in for.
She put it down to an attack of prenatal paranoia. That and the fact that with all the recent changes, her life seemed to be coming apart at the seams.
Will had said seven. She didn’t know where he was taking her. Claire’s was hardly casual, and she seriously doubted he would take her to the Royal Diner for dinner. The greasy-spoon special of the day had been country-fried steaks and hash browns. The very thought made her sick.
She wore her black slacks and a beige turtleneck sweater that came down far enough to cover the slight thickening of her waistline. She’d had to loop a rubber band through the buttonhole at her waistband and slip it over the button.
Will arrived at three minutes before seven. She opened the door and thought, This is a mistake. This is like giving a candy addict a big box of chocolates and saying, Look but don’t taste. Sniff all you want to—admire the little swirls on top, but don’t you dare sink a tooth into all that luscious, delectable sweetness!
He was wearing khakis that hugged his lean hips like a glove, with a black flannel shirt. Evidently he’d left his jacket in the car. His cuffs were turned back to reveal several inches of tanned, muscular forearm, lightly dusted with dark hair.
It’s not fair, she told herself. He had married her out of some misguided sense of obligation, and they might even have been able to work out a reasonable arrangement, but then he’d had to go and make love to her. Dammit, it just wasn’t fair!
She smiled, and he said, “Ready to ride?”
“Do I need a coat?”
“It’s not cold. The sweater should be enough for the amount of time we’ll be outside.”
Not until they’d driven several blocks did she begin to wonder. She knew where most of the restaurants were, and they were not in this direction. “Will?”
“Salmon. You like grilled salmon?”
“Of course I like grilled salmon—who wouldn’t?” She’d never had it, only the canned variety. “But where are we?” And then she knew, of course. He pulled into the parking lot and parked in his usual spot, under the security light, nosed up against the row of lush Leyland cypresses.
She could have argued, and he would probably have argued right back that this was a civilized arrangement for a couple who were married but lived apart. And then what? Tell him she was didn’t trust herself alone with him?
He would want to know why, and the answer was just too humiliating:
I know you married me out of some misguided sense of honor and duty. Maybe it’s a marine thing—you were both marines, you and my baby’s father. But you see, the trouble is, I’m dangerously close to loving you. If I get any closer, I might not survive.
Sure. She could just tell him all that and wait for him to howl with laughter. And just before she died of humiliation, she might even manage to laugh, too.
“I need to be home by nine,” she declared firmly. “I’m working first shift again.”
His lips tightened, and she knew a brief moment of satisfaction at having scored a hit.
The salads were made, the table set for two. With candles. There was brown rice in a special cooker, and salmon fillets ready to go into something that looked more like an autoclave than a grill.
Fancy-schmancy. When she caught him sneaking a look at the instructions, she had to smile. If he wanted to impress her with his culinary skills, she could afford to let herself be impressed.
She wandered into the other room, avoiding the bedroom wing. An open door led to what appeared to be a home office. There was a mixture of fiction and dull-looking accounting books on the shelf, interspersed with several photographs. The kind of pictures Jack had displayed in his office, but without the same ostentation.
Will standing between two horses, a battered black Stetson on his head, a cast on his left leg and a huge grin on his face. Roy Rogers, he was not. There was another picture of Will and Tack leading a knobby-kneed foal from a barn. Slightly out of focus, but easily recognizable. The foal was obviously the center of interest.
She almost missed the third photo, as it was half-hidden behind a cigar box filled with loose change. Carefully lifting it out, she studied the face and the inscription.
“All my love forever, Shelly.”
His first wife. She’d never heard her name—or maybe she had. Jack might have mentioned it, and she’d forgotten, but she knew as well as she knew her own name that this was the woman Will had loved enough to marry. A beautiful, starry-eyed face, a mop of blond curly hair.
No two women could be more different, she thought with a sinking feeling, than the first Mrs. Bradford and the second.
“Soup’s on,” Will called out from the kitchen.
Replacing the picture, she hurried into the dining room, a fixed smile on her face. “Smells great,” she said. Suddenly, her appetite was gone.
“Actually, I was lying. There’s no soup. What you see is what you get. I, uh, bought a cake from the bakery, but it looks pretty dry.”
The conversation was stilted at first. She complimented him on the salmon, and he told her the grill came with a guarantee.
He told her he’d noticed her car was due for inspection, and she started to fire off at him but relented. He was a responsible man. It was his nature. At this point he probably wasn’t going to change.
Besides, it was one of his more admirable qualities. He had a long list of those, a few of which could be threatening to a woman who was teetering on the edge of love and trying hard not to fall in and drown.
After the meal was over he served dessert. The cake was indeed dry, but she ate every bite to postpone whatever came next.
She knew what she wanted to come next.
She also knew it wasn’t going to happen. Once was enough.
Once was too much.
“I was looking at your bookshelf,” she said. “The pictures—” They had never talked about his first wife, but there were rumors about her among the secretaries. The fact that no one had met her only added fuel to the fire.
Instead, she found herself telling him about the latest among her symptoms. Thinking things were in the wrong place, when they couldn’t possibly be.
“You know how it is,” she said, laughing at her own silliness. “You take things off a shelf to dust and put them back out of order but don’t notice it until later.”
“When’s the last time you dusted your bookshelves?”
She sobered at that. “I don’t remember. Mama used to…”
“Anything else you don’t remember?”
“Well, how would I know if I don’t remember? How often do you dust your shelves?”
“I have a housekeeper three days a week. I’m serious, Danny. That place of yours could be broken into with a paper clip.”
“Who’d want to? It’s not like I was hiding anything of value. You’ve seen the place—w
hat would anyone want to steal? My new toaster?” She tried to laugh it off, but he was making her uneasy by taking it so seriously.
“You asked about my wife—”
She hadn’t. She’d intended to but lost her nerve. “Shelly was killed when some kid broke into our place. God knows, we didn’t have much to steal, but she ended up dead, anyway.”
Dear Lord, she thought, appalled. “Will, I never knew—that is, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well…it was a long time ago. But Shelly wasn’t thinking about break-ins, either, she was going about her business. And it happened. It…happened.”
What could she say? What could she do? “I’ll get a stronger chain,” she promised. The one she had wasn’t even real brass. Even the screws were loose. She hardly ever remembered to use it.
“Stay here.”
“Will, I can’t do that.”
“Dammit, things are going on at work, and I can’t afford to be distracted by worrying about you staying alone in that dump.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly. “You can take me off your worry list.”
“That’s just it,” he exclaimed, scraping his chair back so that it struck the fawn-colored wall. He raked a hand through his hair and stared out the window at the lights of the business district, only a mile or so away.
Diana stood, torn between offering comfort and escaping before things got out of hand. A quiet, civilized dinner conversation she could manage. Comforting a man who was tired, distraught and utterly irresistible was out of bounds.
Everything about him affected her. She knew how his skin felt—the resilient muscles, the silken hair on his chest that grew wiry below the belt. Her hands reached out before she could stop herself, and she must have made a sound because he turned.
“Danny…”
“No. I can’t—don’t ask that of me, Will. Please?”
“I’d better take you home,” he said after a hollow moment of silence.
Neither of them spoke on the way. “Don’t get out,” she told him, knowing it would do no good to protest.
“I’ll see you upstairs and look around, then I’ll leave.”
The truth was she wanted him to. Maybe not leave, but that was another matter. She had never felt threatened before, even though they had lived in some rough neighborhoods.
At least, not threatened by strangers.
“All clear,” he said after a quick walk-through of her four rooms and bath. “See anything that doesn’t look right?”
She shook her head. “It’s all the way I left it. Empty milk glass on the table, shoes under the sofa.” She tried to make a joke of it, but they both knew that not all the tension was due to the possibility of an intruder.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’m working.”
“I’ll come for lunch,” he said with a wintery smile.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, as if there wasn’t enough speculation.”
And then, just as she thought she was safe, he turned and took her in his arms, kissing her so thoroughly her knees threatened to buckle.
“What was that for?” she gasped when she could catch her breath.
“Luck? A down payment?” He shrugged and opened the door. “Hook the chain behind me, will you? You might want to shove a chair under the knob.”
“Now you’re making me nervous,” she said with a shaky laugh.
“Good. It’ll do…for now.”
Ten
Diana paused outside the corner drugstore on the way to work the next morning after another largely sleepless night. Between her coffee habit and Will, she couldn’t seem to fall asleep. What she needed was to start tapering off caffeine.
Better yet, start tapering off Will, she thought ruefully. Will might be good for her baby, but he certainly wasn’t helping her peace of mind.
While she waited for the light to change, she considered going inside to buy liniment and a new set of shoe inserts. She was still contemplating when the light turned green. Maybe thick socks would help pad her insoles….
Deciding to give it another day, then pick up whatever she needed on the way home, she stepped off the curb. Instantly a car that had been idling at the curb picked up speed and raced toward her. Startled, she jumped back, but not soon enough. Something slammed into her hip, spinning her around as she fell.
“Oh, my God, did you see that?”
“He ran her down! He ran a damned red light!”
“Lady, are you all right?”
Of course she was all right, Diana thought calmly. She was simply lying there on the gritty sidewalk watching the fireworks display. But the dazzling lights quickly faded, and she realized in some corner of her brain that wasn’t about to explode that they weren’t real.
It actually happens, just like in books, she marveled with a disoriented sort of pride. She’d seen stars.
Slowly she became aware of the noise. The shouts, the cursing, screeching brakes and blowing horns. At least she could hear, which meant she probably wasn’t dead yet. She seemed to be lying on her back with her head against the curb. She was still breathing. Dazed and terrified, but still alive.
Hands were reaching for her, touching her. Someone urged her to sit up and someone else said lie still until the ambulance crew could check her over. She tried to speak, to tell them that she was fine, just fine, but couldn’t seem to coordinate her tongue and her brain, so she simply closed her eyes. Her head felt like a cantaloupe that had tumbled off a truck, but at least it seemed to be working. After a fashion.
“Did you see that idiot?”
“I called the ambulance! Lie still, lady.”
“Call the cops— Ma’am, don’t try to move, y’hear?”
She heard the voices. It was like dozing through an old movie—something that didn’t really affect her personally. Breathing through her mouth, Diana opened her eyes, then closed them again. Looking up at the ring of concerned faces, she felt a sudden surge of nausea. Not now! I don’t want to be sick in public!
“Shh, don’t you worry, honey, you’re going to be just fine,” said a heavy woman with the face of an angel.
You’re going to be just fine. Hold that thought, Princess Danny.
She was in a hospital bed. Her head hurt. Her arm hurt. Her everything hurt! “My husband—did anybody call…?”
“Yes, ma’am, he’s on his way right now. He was in Houston when they got ahold of him, but I ’spect he’ll be walking though that door most any minute now.” The nurse adjusted her pillow.
“My baby?”
“Still doing just fine. You’ve got a goose egg—more like an ostrich egg—on back of your head, but other than that and a few scrapes and bruises, you checked out just fine. Doc Woodbury happened to be here when they brought you in. He called the clinic and had your chart sent over. He’ll be by directly to talk to you.”
She felt sick. Not morning sickness, but sort of the same. And her head really, really hurt, but pain medication wouldn’t be good for the baby. Besides, she probably couldn’t keep anything down, the way she felt now.
“Water?” she whispered.
“A sip.” The nurse held the straw to her lips. She sipped and would have grabbed it for more, but her hands were shaking too hard.
And then Will was there, looking thunderous—looking so concerned she wanted to cry, but for once in her life the tears wouldn’t come.
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “Don’t try to talk,” he said, and when the nurse left the room, he leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. Which was probably the only part of her that didn’t actually hurt.
“Now you can talk.” His smile was beautiful, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Those were dark with concern.
Or anger?
No, it was concern. For her, she thought, and felt the tears clog her throat all over again. She swallowed hard, determined not to show weakness, and when the absurdity of that thought struck her, she had to choke back a giggle. “Emotions all over
the place. Hormones strike again,” she murmured drowsily.
Will hitched a chair closer and straddled it. “It was a clear case of hit and run. Several witnesses said you looked both ways and—”
“I always do.”
“—and just as you stepped off, a car that had been idling at the curb pulled out, revved up and kept going, after it had knocked you down. If it had had time to pick up any speed, you’d have been—”
She reached blindly for his hand, managed to find it and gripped tightly. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it. I obviously wasn’t as careful as I thought I was being.”
“Something on your mind?” He arched his brows, and she was tempted to pull her hand away, but she needed his strength. Just for now. Just until she got over this awful shakiness.
“I was considering whether to buy liniment and shoe liners before or after work. Did anybody think to call the diner and tell them I’d be late?”
He hooted with laughter. “Honey, I suspect they’ve already guessed as much. News like that takes about ten nanoseconds to make the rounds. Right now they’re probably placing bets down at the diner as to how long it’ll take before the damn fool will be hauled up on a charge of assault with a lethal weapon.”
She sighed, aware of aches she hadn’t felt a few minutes earlier. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Could I have some more water? I hurt all over, but the nurse said nothing’s broken and the baby’s still doing fine.”
Will lifted her bandaged head carefully and let her take a few sips of ice water from the straw. Every instinct he possessed urged him to sweep her up, blanket and all, and carry her off somewhere where nothing could ever hurt her again. If he’d needed a clue that he was edging over into no-man’s land, this was it.
He’d talked to the doctor. He’d talked to the cops. The vehicle had been found abandoned about eight miles out of town. The guy it was registered to had reported it stolen a few hours earlier.
“They’re going to keep you overnight for observation.” He broke the news, hoping she wouldn’t kick up a fuss. Holding up two fingers, he said, “How many?”
The Millionaire's Pregnant Bride (Texas Cattleman's Club: The Last Bachelor Book 1) Page 13