She’d called the doctor’s office again that morning. The earliest she could get in was Wednesday. Which meant that tomorrow night she was going to have to take another one of those damned home pregnancy tests. Which would show the same elevated hormone levels because her stupid cycle was off, and then Chris would really start to panic.
And what? Ask her to have an abortion?
Which, of course, she would never do.
Or, maybe he’d sign off on his paternity?
Which would be fine. Better for her and the baby.
If there even was a baby.
Which there wasn’t.
“I think Chris likes you,” Lucy was saying before Emma had caught on to where the other woman was going with the conversation.
“We’re more than a decade apart in age.” The statement was weak. “And complete opposites.”
“Opposites attract.”
Emma told the detective about her father. And Chris’s own dedication to a life on the ocean.
“I’m sorry, Emma.” The sincerity in Lucy’s words almost broke her. “I misunderstood. I thought maybe you and Chris were starting something. I shouldn’t have pushed. Hopefully we’ll get through this quickly and you’ll be able to move on and meet someone who will make you as happy as you deserve to be.”
People didn’t always get what they deserved. Claire had certainly not deserved to be stolen from her family. Rose had not deserved to lose the child she’d paid such a high price to bear.
And look at Lucy…
“What about you and Ramsey Miller?” she asked. “You two seem pretty close.”
“We think the same, professionally speaking.”
“You spend a lot of time together.”
“Not really. Last week was only the second time we’d ever met. We talk on the phone. Mostly about work. Ramsey’s married to the job, Emma. Truth be told, I’m not sure he has it in him to open up to intimacy. Some people are just that way.”
“Something must have happened in his past. Something that made him this way.”
“I’m sure you’re right. But it’s not just Ramsey. I love my job, too. Way more than I can ever see myself loving a man. Any man.”
“Don’t you want a family of your own someday? Kids?”
“Truthfully? I’m not sure. With the things I see on the job…this job does something to you. It takes away your innocence. Once you’ve crossed a line, once you know things, once you’ve seen firsthand things that no one should have to see, you can’t go back. A normal life in suburbia doesn’t work for you anymore. It’s not real.”
Maybe that was Emma’s problem, too. Not the seeing part, but the knowing. Maybe she couldn’t believe in real happiness because she knew how quickly it could be taken away. Maybe she’d had it mostly right all along—opting for safety and security over excitement and joy.
She’d just chosen the wrong man.
Twice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHRIS BROUGHT BACK ANOTHER lobster for dinner. Emma made garlic mashed potatoes and steamed asparagus.
If nothing else, they were both eating well.
“How is your mother?” Chris asked as they finished serving themselves.
“I didn’t go to Mom’s.” Emma sat down and put her napkin in her lap.
Chris was a fisherman. He set his napkin, still folded, on one knee.
“I went to the Caffeine Café instead. Mom’s getting ready to go to an educator’s seminar on Wednesday and I didn’t want her to see something different about me and do something stupid, like cancel,” Emma said. She hadn’t looked him in the eye since he’d gotten there. “She needs these times away. Four days to think about nothing except her job.”
“You think she’d notice something different about you?” Like the fact that she was pregnant?
“I don’t know, Chris.” Emma’s tone was truculent. It was a different side to her and he kind of liked it. “Let’s see,” she continued. “In the space of a few weeks I’ve slept with a man I didn’t know, multiple times—”
“Well you only slept with him once when you didn’t know him. Sleeping with a guy kind of qualifies as getting to know him, wouldn’t you say?” Chris interrupted, feeling kind of irritable, himself.
“I’ve reunited with my stepbrother,” she continued as though she hadn’t heard him, “was told that my baby sister might have been a victim of a pedophile, then told she wasn’t but that she was at a home known for black-market adoptions three states away. I caught my fiancé in bed with another woman, which Mom already knows, but now he’s stalking me. I find out he has internet sex associations, and he probably has some connection to my sister’s disappearance. I’m guessing someone as close to me as my mother would know that something’s going on.”
“You forgot to mention that you might be pregnant.”
She shoved a hunk of lobster in her mouth, if a woman as refined as she could actually shove, the butter dripping down her chin.
He wanted to lick it off. She wiped her chin with her napkin.
“Yes, and even if I’m not, have someone making sure I worry about it. So if that’s why you’re here, because you think you have to be in case I’m carrying your child, you can go now.”
“You’re telling me to leave?”
“Would it do any good if I was?”
“No.”
“But you admit that you’re here because you think I might be pregnant.”
“I’m here because I’m not a man who can walk out after giving my word, or my commitment, to anything.”
Which was why he would never marry. Never have a family. He knew he could not be true to the commitment.
“If I walked out and Evert got away with this and hurt you, or anyone else…well, let’s just say I need to be able to look myself in the mirror.”
“I don’t think he’s physically dangerous.”
“I’m not willing to take that chance. And obviously, neither are the off-duty police officers keeping a watch on you. Besides, if Evert’s somehow involved in your sister’s disappearance, if keeping up this charade can help you and your mother find some answers, then I want to help. No one should have to live with what the two of you have been through these past twenty-five years.”
He’d said more than he meant to, but the words must have mollified her as she finished her dinner without another word.
And before the tension building in both of them had another chance to explode, Chris took Emma upstairs to bed. It was going to be the last time he’d have sex with her. It had to be.
* * *
INCONCLUSIVE AGAIN.
Emma wasn’t surprised at the results of the pregnancy test Chris had handed her when he’d walked in the door Tuesday evening after work. She’d been hoping that with everything else that was going on he’d have been able to let it go another day—her doctor’s appointment was tomorrow.
“I told you this might happen. My cycle is about to begin again. The internet said that can sometimes cause higher than normal levels of HCG, just not enough to confirm pregnancy.”
He was standing before her in black jeans, a black T-shirt and the blackest expression she’d ever seen on his face.
“Don’t you think that if I was pregnant, the HCG should have risen enough in a week’s time to change the results?”
“You have an appointment with your doctor tomorrow, right?”
“Yes.” The man was beside himself. Emma’s heart re
ached out to him. Putting the test kit in the trash, she turned off her bathroom light and led the way downstairs.
“Let’s watch a movie. Get your mind off things.”
“Will she give you an answer the same day?”
“Chris…” She knelt by the DVD shelf to the right of the large flat-screen television Rob had insisted they get. “Try to relax.”
He stood over her.
The man was desperately afraid of the thought of being a father. If she’d needed any more proof that he was wrong for her, he was serving it to her on a silver platter.
“Yes, she’ll give me an answer before I leave the office. There’s a lab on-site and that kind of test doesn’t take long for results.” Giving up on the movie, she took his hand and pulled him over to the couch. Rob had called seven times that day and left the same brief message.
And, so far, besides making the phone calls, he’d done nothing out of the ordinary since Miller had begun looking at him.
“Maybe we should go out. Have a glass of wine or something,” Emma said.
“You shouldn’t. Not until we know for sure you aren’t pregnant.”
“Fine. I’ll have tea.”
“You really aren’t worried at all?”
“No, I’m really not.” At least, not that she’d ever admit. If she found out she was wrong, that she was somehow carrying Chris’s child inside her, she’d have plenty of time to panic then.
“What’s the point?” she said. Maybe she could help him see that his way of dealing with this was counterproductive. “It’s like borrowing trouble. It’s not as though I can do anything at this point to reverse what happened. If I could go back in time I would. If I have to pay for my negligence sometime in the future, I will. But right now, I don’t feel pregnant and I’m going to save myself the stress of worrying about it. Life’s too short and gives you enough trouble to borrow more.” Emma was so concerned about kidnappers, Claire’s fate and a dangerous ex-fiancé, that the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy just didn’t seem that threatening at the moment. The whole idea seemed surreal.
He seemed to ponder her words and Emma went back to browsing her movie selection. Anything that would take her mind off Claire. And Rob. And the fact that she and Chris were so diametrically opposed.
The real tragedies.
* * *
CHRIS WAS FEELING cantankerous. He’d had more sex in the past week than he’d had in one week’s time ever. And he was randy again.
And worried, damn it. He’d always heard that stress wreaked havoc on a guy’s libido. He wasn’t seeing it. The woman of his desires was thumbing through movies as though she didn’t have a care in the world. From where he sat, she had more to deal with than he would’ve been able to handle. “What do you worry about?”
“You want the truth?” She stared at him.
He wasn’t sure how to answer that. Of course he wanted the truth. But he didn’t want to know her any better. “Yeah,” he said finally.
“What I’m most worried about these days, what I worry about almost constantly, is the fact that all I have to do is look at you and I’m suddenly willing to risk anything just to feel you inside me one more time.”
He shouldn’t have asked. His zipper was ready to burst.
“I’m like a stranger to myself when you’re around,” Emma said. “I hate it.”
He didn’t. But he should.
“I don’t know what it is about you, but you’re a lethal weapon and I can’t seem to keep myself out of the line of fire.”
He had to stop her.
“And what if this is it for me?” she added. “I’ve never reacted like this to a man before. What if I never do again?”
“You will.” He found his voice. He was older, so supposedly wiser. It was up to him to steer them both out of danger. “Trust me on that one. Sexual attraction is merely a set of circumstances.”
“You’re saying sex feels just as good for you all the time?”
“No, but our circumstances—”
“Do you feel turned on all the time when we’re together?” she interrupted, her eyes burning right through him.
“No.” He was his mother’s son, apparently, able to lie while looking someone in the eye. “When we have sex, yeah, I get turned on. But that’s normal.”
“That’s it? You only get turned on when we’re intimate? So, it has nothing to do with me, in particular?”
“That’s right.” He was doing her a favor.
“I’m disappointed in you, Chris.”
So be it. It was for the best.
“I’m just telling it like it is,” he said, sealing their fate. Relief was good. He’d concentrate on that.
And hope to ignore, and forget, the pain he saw in her beautifully expressive brown eyes.
“No. If what you just said was true and you really were telling it like it is, I’d be embarrassed—humiliated, even—but I wouldn’t be disappointed. I didn’t figure you for a man who would lie to me. That’s what disappoints me.”
Shit. Chris sat up. “I don’t lie.” The words came from deep within. From the boy who’d adored a woman who wouldn’t be straight with him. From the man who swore to himself that he would never be like her.
“You did just lie,” Emma said. “You were as hard as a board a few minutes ago. You’re definitely aroused by me—and not just when we’re having sex. I’m not alone here.”
Chris sat back. Wiped his hand over his face, and then laughed. “Aw, Emma, what the hell am I supposed to do? Yeah, you turn me on. All the time. But I’ve lived four decades, have four decades’ worth of experiences that have given me wisdom, and I know that you and I are a recipe for disaster. Everything you want and need, physical attraction aside, is the exact opposite of what I want and need—or even have the ability to give to you.”
“I know that.”
“So I thought I was doing us both a favor by shutting this down. It’s going to end, anyway. Tomorrow. Or the next day. Or soon after that. But with us spending this time together, we’re getting to know each other better and better, and someone’s going to end up hurt. We probably both will.”
“I know.” Her voice sounded strong. “I’m as determined as you are to end this, Chris. I just don’t know how to stay away from you.”
“Oh, Lord, woman, I can’t seem to keep my hands off you, either.” Chris reached for her, pulling her on top of him and plunging his tongue deep inside her mouth.
And heard someone coming down the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EMMA HEARD THE FOOTSTEPS at the same time she felt herself spin over and be crushed. She couldn’t breathe. Chris’s body held her down to the cushions. His lips pressed against her cheek, blocking her head from view.
In the second it took her head to clear, she realized he was protecting her.
“Let her up, Talbot.”
Rob’s voice! How had he gotten in her house? She’d had the locks changed. No one but her mother had a key. The windows were all dead-bolted from the inside. She’d double-checked them on Saturday after her meeting with the detectives.
“How’d you get in?” She gasped for air, her words muffled behind Chris’s shoulder.
He held up a single key. “With this, of course. I was upstairs getting some discs I needed for work when I heard you both come in. Nice little scene there in the bathroom. I was just around the corner in the office, waiting with bated breath. So you think you’re knoc
ked up? No problem. We’ll say the baby’s mine.”
The off-duty cops were protecting her, watching her, not her house. Regular-duty officers were making random drive-bys on her house. It would have been easy enough for Rob to watch for police cars and slip into the backyard when the coast was clear.
And then it dawned on her.
He had her mother’s key. He’d gotten to Rose.
“No!” she screamed, shoving her weight against Chris until she’d unbalanced him enough to get out from under him.
“What have you done to my mother?” she screeched at the man who was standing in the living room they’d shared for two years, a gun pointed at the man she’d been about to have sex with. Rob thought he’d pass Chris’s baby off as his? Not in this lifetime.
Rob glanced at her, and then immediately back at Chris, the gun aimed straight at the older man’s heart. “Rose is safe,” he said, staring at Chris. He didn’t so much as glance at Emma as he said, “I wouldn’t hurt your mother. You should know that. I care about her.”
“Put the gun down, Evert.” Chris’s voice. In a tone Emma didn’t recognize at all. It was deep. Threatening.
She was glad he was there.
And scared to death for him, too. If he died because of her—if he even got hurt because of her…
If something had happened to Rose…
“Like hell you care, Rob,” she snapped. How could she ever have thought this man was safe? “Where is my mother?”
She couldn’t live without Rose. Couldn’t bear the thought of her mother afraid. In pain.
“She’s apologized to the conference committee for her absence, and no one else is going to miss her for the next few days. Don’t worry, she’s perfectly safe.” His smugness nauseated her.
Emma took a step toward him. “Where is Rose?” she yelled. “What have you done with her?” She had to keep him talking.
She had to get to her mother. Assuming Rose was still alive.
She was.
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