“I had the chills, too,” she explained.
Without a second thought he ran a hand under the quilt, down her arm. She felt warm enough. His hand went to her stomach.
“Is the baby okay?”
“It’s kicking up a storm. I don’t think it liked what I ate any more than I did.”
He retrieved his hand, but his palm continued to feel what it had. Her stomach had been hard. Small, but solid. He knew, intellectually, that there was a baby in there. Feeling it was something else. The last time he had done it he’d been in pain. The pain he felt this time was different.
“What did you eat?” he asked, gruffly again because he resented the tightening in his groin.
“Nothing special,” she said in that same hoarse voice. “Apples. Lots of apples. Maybe there was a worm in one.”
“Where did you get the apples?” Some of the local orchards used insecticides. He hadn’t gotten sick from the apple pie she’d made, and he’d eaten more of it than he’d ever let on. Leo hadn’t gotten sick, either. But those apples had been peeled and cooked. She might have had a reaction if she was eating them raw.
“Farmer Galante,” she said, reading his mind. “He doesn’t spray, and anyway, I washed everything first.” She burrowed under the covers. “I’m going back to sleep.”
“You missed your conference call.” He figured that if anything could get her up, that would.
She didn’t move a muscle. “It’ll hold.”
Worried in spite of himself, he stood by her bed for another few minutes, during which time she didn’t budge. Then he left the room, went into the kitchen, and reached for the phone.
There was no dial tone. He jiggled the hang-up button. Still no dial tone. He returned to her bedroom and picked up the phone there. It was dead.
“Your phones are out,” he said.
Chelsea didn’t respond.
He looked over the mound of covers. Her eyes were closed. The quilt was moving rhythmically—very slightly, but moving—with her breathing. He stayed to watch for a minute, fascinated by the sheen of her skin. Then, dismayed by his own whimsy, he strode out of the room and the house.
The hospital was a ten-minute drive. He went straight into Neil’s office, explained what had happened to Chelsea, called the telephone company and Fern on the hospital line, then drove right back to Boulderbrook.
Chelsea hadn’t moved an inch in the time he’d been gone. He watched for her breathing again. It was as rhythmic as before. He slouched on the chair on the far side of the bed, favoring his shoulder, which had started to ache, and didn’t take his eyes off her until he heard a knock at the front door.
“Took you long enough,” he grumbled when he let Neil in.
Neil shrugged out of his coat. “Twenty minutes. Relax, Judd.”
“I don’t want two deaths on my conscience.”
“They won’t die.” He gestured. “Lead the way.”
By Judd’s eye, Chelsea still hadn’t moved. Neil drew the covers back to her hips, took her wrist, and measured her pulse. “She’s some sleeper,” he mused.
“She’s sick.”
“I’ve seen her look better, I’ll give you that.” He opened his bag and within minutes had a stethoscope pressed to her back. “Sounds okay here.” He put a hand on her stomach, let it sit, moved it, let it sit, moved it.
“What do you feel?” Judd asked.
“It’s either a half-bushel of apples or a baby.”
Chelsea stirred. She shifted her legs. She covered Neil’s hand with one of hers. Then she came awake with a start.
“Neil,” she said, breathless with fright. “What are you doing?” Her eyes went to Judd. “You brought him here? But I’m fine.”
“You’ve got a baby in there. If something happens to it, I don’t want it on my conscience.”
Neil rolled his eyes. To Chelsea he said, “Tell me everything you told Judd before.”
“I’m fine.”
“Tell him,” Judd ordered.
As soon as he was sure that she would, he left the room and went down to the front porch. The cool air felt good. While he was there, the telephone repair truck pulled up.
“Can’t find anything in the central office,” the repairman said. “Goin’ ta take a look here.”
Judd motioned for him to get to it. A short time later Neil joined him on the porch. He was putting on his coat.
“She’s fine. The baby, too. Pretty strong, all things considered. Whatever it was must have passed. And don’t tell me that’s good, that you didn’t want anything on your conscience, because you’re full of shit, Judd. Face it. You like her, so you were worried.”
Judd didn’t see the point in arguing. Neil already had his mind made up. “She’s goddamned bullheaded. Do you know that she’s still doing aerobics?”
“She does it gently. Judd, pregnancy isn’t an illness. It’s what the female body was made for.”
Judd had a pithy comment on the tip of his tongue when the telephone repairman came around the corner of the house, looking smug. Saving the pithy comment for another time, he said, “That was fast.”
“Don’t take long to spot cut wires.”
“Cut?” Judd’s insides went cold.
“Snipped in two,” the man said, and started off for the truck, calling, “No problem, though. I’ll have the phones working in no time.”
Judd looked at Neil, who for once looked concerned. “Cut wires are a deliberate act.”
“Like mysterious phone calls. Maybe even a burned barn. Something’s odd here, Judd. I’ll stop by Nolan’s on my way back to the hospital and send him out.”
“Thanks,” Judd said, but he was distracted as Neil left. He didn’t like the idea that someone was after Chelsea. He didn’t like the idea that she was alone in Boulderbrook. He wished she’d go back to Baltimore while Nolan checked things out, but he doubted she would. Her father still didn’t know she was pregnant.
Suddenly that fact struck him as being insane. Remorselessly he returned to the kitchen, opened her purse, then her Filofax. She had Kevin’s new address listed there. He picked up the phone, realized it was still dead, slammed it down. Promising himself he’d be back, he went to her bedroom.
She was awake, lying on her side with the covers more neatly arranged than they had been before. Moving only her eyes, she watched him approach. “Neil says you’re okay.”
“I know.”
“I forgot to ask if you were supposed to eat anything special.”
“Only what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
He wanted to remind her that even if she didn’t feel like eating, maybe the baby did. He didn’t say it, though. He guessed that her insides were still pretty raw.
He did say, “The phone lines were cut.”
Her eyes widened.
“Neil is sending Nolan out. Maybe he can get a footprint.”
To her credit, she looked properly shaken. “Cut?”
“Someone wants you spooked, Chelsea. It’s gone past the point of being funny. I think you should take off for a while.”
“Leave here? No way.”
“Just for the weekend even. Just to give it a break. Go see your father. That’s long overdue.”
He saw a sadness creep into her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
“If not now, when? Thanksgiving? Christmas? After the baby’s born?”
She rolled over, putting her back to him.
“Yo! Anyone home?” came a call from below. “The phones are fixed!”
When Chelsea didn’t respond, Judd set off for the kitchen to make his call. The repairman was gone. In his place was Hunter. He was standing at the counter by the phone, holding Chelsea’s wallet.
“What are you doing?” Judd asked. He was still annoyed that Hunter had disappeared. Oliver had been on his back about it. And then there’d been his shoulder. He could have used the help.
Hunte
r held up her driver’s license. “Looking at the picture. It stinks.” He slid the license back into the wallet just indolently enough to tick Judd off.
“Did you cut the phone lines?”
Hunter leveled him a stare.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I heard she was sick.”
“She’s better now.”
“Too bad,” he said. Raising the collar of his leather jacket, he took his gloves from the counter and started for the door. “We’re not keepin’ real far ahead of her. It’s about time she had a little bad luck.” He disappeared into the hall.
Judd took off after him. “What in the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Hunter went out the front door.
“Did you cut those lines?”
Hunter stopped, looked at the ground, then over his shoulder at Judd. “Nah. Someone else got to it first.” He strode on.
Judd let him go. He recognized bravado when he heard it. Hunter liked Chelsea. He wouldn’t do anything to harm her. Yes, something was eating at him, and Judd would find out what it was. But not now. Now he had more immediate things on his mind.
Returning to the kitchen, he punched out Kevin’s number. He couldn’t tell the man that his daughter was pregnant. That was Chelsea’s job. But he could tell him that she was in danger. Kevin was her father, and she adored him. If anyone stood a chance of talking sense into her, he was the one.
There was no answer. He went back into the bedroom to find Chelsea sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands braced on either side. Her head was bowed.
He was drawn to her, now more than ever, but he staunchly kept his distance. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Who would cut my telephone line?”
“Any number of people.”
In a smaller voice she said, “Hunter was here, wasn’t he?”
“Briefly.”
“He was angry with me. I’m not sure why, but I’m sure that’s why he disappeared. He wouldn’t have done it, would he?”
“He could have, he knows his way around wires, but I doubt he did.”
She blew out a breath. With an effort she pushed herself to her feet. Her nightgown was wrinkled from the night she’d spent; still, it moved gracefully with her body when she went to the closet. She emerged with a small bag. After setting it on the bed, she scooped her hair back from her face and looked at Judd.
“I’ll go to Newport. Dad doesn’t go there this late in the season, so I’ll have the place to myself. Just for the weekend. Then I’ll be back.”
Judd would have hugged her for her good sense if he weren’t afraid of never letting go. He knew what it was about her that attracted him—she was one sexy lady, pregnant or not—but that didn’t make it any easier to control. For the hundredth time he wished she were as cold and slick and ambitious as Janine. Then he might be able to sustain scorn. But she wasn’t Janine by a long shot, standing there with her long hair a reckless foil for her pale skin and her body willowy in her long granny gown. She looked vulnerable. He was a sucker for vulnerability.
So why was he fighting it? he asked himself, and proceeded to list the reasons. One, she was pregnant by another man. Two, she had deliberately kept that information from him. Three, she was in the Notch under false pretenses, since what she wanted far more than Plum Granite was to learn the truth of her parentage. Four, and most important, she just wasn’t the woman for him. He wanted someone sweet, someone soft, someone totally devoted. He wanted someone who saw him as her profession, not building buildings or negotiating divorces. He was stuck in the Notch because Leo was here, but Leo wouldn’t be around forever. Come that time, Judd wanted to decide where to go and what to do, knowing that his woman would go right along with him.
Old-fashioned. Yup, he was that and proud of it. And part of being old-fashioned was being noble to the point of occasional self-sacrifice. At least that was what he told himself an hour later when he hit the highway with Chelsea. Being with her was a torment. But he couldn’t let her go alone.
“This is really unnecessary,” she said as she’d been saying for half an hour, but the more she said it, the more determined he was to do it. “I could have driven myself.”
He grunted his disagreement. “You look like a light breeze could blow you over.” Wearing jeans, a sweater, and an oversize parka, with her hair in a ponytail and her face free of makeup, she also looked sixteen years old. He couldn’t believe that she was thirty-seven and an almost mother.
“You’d have been more useful with Leo,” she said.
“Leo has a sitter. You need a driver.”
“But your arm still hurts.”
“Not while I’m driving it doesn’t.”
“It did while you were putting your bag in the trunk. I saw the look on your face. It hurt.”
“The stitches just came out, so it’s stiff. That’s all.”
“You have zero mobility. You can’t even get it up.”
You can’t even get it up. He should only be so lucky. He gave her a dry look and was marginally satisfied to see color rise on her cheeks.
“You know what I mean,” she murmured, and sank into her parka. Her face was hidden from him, but he could tell when she fell asleep by the relaxation of her limbs. She awoke in time to direct him to the house and lead him inside. Then she disappeared into her bedroom, pulled up a thick afghan, and went back to sleep.
Judd explored the house. It was large, old, and surprisingly unadorned. Its two most noticeable features were the porch that wrapped completely around it and the dock that protruded over the water. He sat at its end for a while, breathing the ocean air, thinking that the shore might not be a bad place to settle someday. He’d always been landlocked. Here he felt a sense of release.
Riding on the wave of that release, he got back into the car and drove around for a while. He’d been to Newport years before. Nothing had changed, including the location of the supermarket. Given that he hadn’t had lunch, that daylight was waning, and that the Kane refrigerator was empty, he stopped for food. When he returned, Chelsea was sitting on a rocking chair on the porch, wrapped in her afghan, staring out at the darkening sea. He perched on the edge of the thick wood railing with his back against its post.
“How do you feel?”
“Better.”
From what he could see above the folds of the afghan, her color had improved. She was staring out over the water, looking wide awake.
“I always loved it here,” she said on a wistful note. “It was a less formal life than in the city. We had more fun. There were lots of families like us who came every summer. The kids all hung around together.”
“What did you do all day?” Judd asked. He couldn’t imagine doing nothing for weeks on end. He had never had that luxury, probably wouldn’t know what to do with it if it suddenly came his way.
“We sailed—naturally,” she added with a sheepish smile. “We sat blithely in the sun without a thought to skin cancer. We swam and played tennis at the club. When we were old enough, we made nuisances of ourselves on the roads. It was good-natured fun.”
“Carl’s family was here, too?”
“Uh-huh.” She wrapped the afghan more tightly around her. The wind off the water was picking up at the same time that the air cooled. He wondered if she was warm enough.
“Do you think about him much?” he asked.
“About Carl?” She shrugged. “I try not to.”
“Do you miss him?”
“As a friend. No other way. It’s weird, though. I mean, this is his baby and he’s married to Hailey. Everything makes sense in my mind, how it happened and all. But when I think of it bluntly like that, I feel cheap.”
“If anyone should feel cheap, he should. He was the two-timing bastard.”
Her brows gave a shrug that said she wouldn’t argue. Then she caught his eye.
“Judd, is Matthew Farr having an affair with his sister-in-law?”
“Where did you hea
r that?”
“At the library tea yesterday afternoon. Is it true?”
“Probably. Matthew isn’t the most scrupulous of men. He’s been in love with Joanie for years.”
Chelsea frowned. “Why did he marry Donna?”
“Because Joanie was taken. And because his parents were after him to get married. He was in his mid-thirties and single. People were saying he was gay.”
“They don’t say that about you, and you’re single.”
“No,” he said, and couldn’t resist a dry half smile. “They don’t.” Because that sounded cocky, he added, “I’ve been married. Besides, I’m in a different league from Matthew. The standards that apply to a Farr don’t apply to a Streeter. I do what I want.” A case in point was this weekend. There would be talk when he wasn’t at the quarry in the morning. But he didn’t give a damn.
“What about Donna’s hearing?” Chelsea asked. “How did she go deaf?”
“I’m not sure,” Judd answered honestly.
“Margaret said it was a sudden illness. The woman I talked with said it was Margaret.”
He had heard rumors to that effect. It made sense, given Margaret’s subsequent breakdown and the way the woman had hovered over Donna in the years since. Guilt had a way of making people hover.
“There’s no proof of anything.”
“What could Margaret have done?”
“I don’t know. I was just a kid when it happened.”
“Was Donna hospitalized?”
“For a while. Then she went away to a special school. When she came back, we didn’t ask questions.”
“I feel for her,” Chelsea said, looking stricken. “Matthew treats her terribly. How can Oliver stand by and watch?”
“Oliver sees what he wants to see and doesn’t see what might make him uncomfortable.”
“Is Hunter his son?”
“Probably.”
“Will he ever recognize him?”
“Not as long as Margaret is alive. She’d be hurt and humiliated.”
“Just like Hunter has been all these years,” Chelsea said.
“I didn’t say it was right. But that’s the way it is.”
“Why doesn’t Hunter fight it more? He’s a rebel. He could pin Oliver down. If I were in his shoes, it would drive me crazy not knowing if the man was my father.”
The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 36