The Naughty Nine: Where Danger and Passion Collide

by Nina Bruhns

  “He’ll be here in a minute.” Her gaze cut to the side mirror.

  She caught her breath as two coils of rope rolled down, then Joe’s dark form appeared as he stepped over an undamaged section of the guardrail. He rappelled down barehanded, no security line, just holding on to the rope, walking down the steep embankment to them.

  Watching him made her even more nervous, but his face betrayed no fear. He kept coming, slowly but steadily. He stopped behind her car. She shifted her gaze to the rearview mirror to see what he was doing. Her lungs squeezed so tightly, she could barely breathe.

  Joe was bending down, probably tying the second rope to the trailer hitch the previous owner had left on the car when he’d sold it.

  “Are you two okay?” he called over as he straightened.

  “We’re fine. Be careful.” She didn’t know if the rope could hold the full weight of the car if something happened, but that extra bit of security made her feel better, anyway.

  He used the second rope to lower himself in line with her, looking in the open window on the driver side, looking her over first, then her son.

  “Hey, Justin, buddy.” He flashed a worry-free smile and kept it on as he turned back to her. “I called 911. Rescue should be here within minutes. The rope should hold until then.”

  She nodded, even if they both knew that they had no way of knowing for sure. Just as she was thinking that, the car slipped forward a couple of inches. The chassis creaked and popped around her. She hung on to the steering wheel for dear life, not that it would help her if they crashed.

  But the car stopped moving the next second. The rope held.

  Justin started crying again. “Out!” He stretched his little arms toward her.

  “In a minute, sweetie.” If the rope can’t hold the weight and the car goes down….

  She switched her gaze to Joe. “If I get him out of the car seat and hand him out to you, could you hold on to him?”

  He measured up the situation, then nodded. “Don’t move. I’ll do it. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, or him.”

  And then he leaned in through the open window and kissed her, his lips firm on hers but gentle.

  The unexpected kiss pretty much short-circuited her brain. Before she could fully regain her bearings, he was pulling away.

  Now, he was kissing her? Now? “Why?”

  He gave a nonchalant shrug. “Could be my last chance. I mean if you fall to a fiery death.” He went back up, then around to the other side of the car.

  “You are such a freaking jerk!” she yelled after him, but she was smiling. He managed to take her fear away, even if for only a few seconds.

  Joe shrugged out of his jacket one sleeve at a time while hanging on to the rope with the other hand, then he made a harness across his chest. “Roll the back window down.”

  She did, then held her breath as Joe reached in and unsnapped the car seat.

  He was smiling at Justin, as if it was no big deal. “I’m going to get you out, and you’ll sit inside my jacket, okay?”

  “Out!” Justin stretched toward him.

  Joe eased him through the window little by little, placed him into the harness one-handed, and tightened the jacket around the little boy. “Can you put your hands around my neck and hang on?”

  “Piggyback ride.” Justin squealed.

  “Almost. We’ll do piggyback ride on the front.” Joe tucked him in securely, and Justin clamped on.

  “Want to play freeze?” Joe asked next. “When I say freeze, you have to stay still. Can’t move a muscle. Then when I say, wiggle, you wiggle and jiggle as hard as you can.”

  “I want to play!”

  Joe’s eyes met Wendy’s over her son’s head. “I’ll put him in my car, then come back for you. I’m not going to let anything happen to him.” He dipped his head to Justin. “Ready? Freeze!” And then he began climbing.

  She watched every step in the rearview mirror, praying while he climbed. He wasn’t halfway up when she heard sirens, the sound getting closer with each passing second. Cars screeched to a halt. And then she saw firemen stepping over the guardrail and helping Joe up and over.

  More ropes were dropped, with proper security lines this time. Then two firemen came for her.

  The rescue lasted another twenty minutes. In full gear, the firemen moved slower than Joe had. She was a nervous mess by the time they helped her up and over to flat ground. Joe was right there, holding Justin. Justin was wiggling like a drunken worm.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said. “They wouldn’t let me go back down for you.”

  He’d come and saved them. She so didn’t care about anything else. Even as the rescue personnel tried to talk her into lying on the waiting stretcher, she threw her arms around Joe and Justin with a sob of relief.

  Justin wiggled over to be held by her, threw his little arms around her neck and held tight, burying his face into her neck.

  As she turned her head toward Joe to thank him again, she never got to say the words.

  “Freeze,” he ordered, and his lips closed over hers in a hard kiss.

  Her eyes flared as she stared into his dark gaze that boiled with emotion. Liquid need shot through her so strongly that it nearly buckled her already weak knees. And for a second, just for a second, she let her lips relax against his before she pulled away.

  * * *

  Joe went with them in the back of the ambulance, entertaining Justin, who wasn’t thrilled with the prodding and poking of the medics. The floor smelled like disinfectant. Supplies and instruments sat tucked neatly into every nook, everything stainless steel and white around them.

  The space was tight with the two medics, plus Wendy on a stretcher as a precaution. Joe held Justin. The kid wouldn’t let himself be tied down, screamed bloody murder. Joe tried to keep him busy, only half hearing what Wendy was saying next to him as she answered a list of questions.

  “I’m three months pregnant,” she told the medic taking care of her.

  Okay, what? Joe’s attention snapped to her. He’d assumed the pregnancy was a more recent thing. Three months was…. Their wild night had happened three months ago.

  He cleared his throat. “Wendy?”

  She looked at him at last, reluctance in her eyes. “I was waiting for the right time to tell you. It’s—” She swallowed, the apprehensive look in her eyes filling him with sudden foreboding. “I’m having your baby.”

  The world spun with him.

  He handed Justin to the man examining her and called up to the driver. “Stop the car!”

  And when the ambulance slowed, he moved past a stunned medic to the back door, opened it, and stepped out right in the middle of downtown traffic. People might have beeped their horns around him. He couldn’t hear it.

  Deathblow: Chapter Ten

  “Okay. That could have gone better,” Wendy told her son as she lay in a hospital bed an hour later, Justin in the crib next to her. “Joe will come around.” Hopefully.

  He’d actually taken the news better than Keith had, back in the day. At least Joe hadn’t screamed at her and threatened her if she didn’t get an abortion.

  Sophie sailed in, looking as if she’d run from Broslin, breathless, her red curls all messy. “Are you okay? Is Justin okay? What happened?”

  “We’re fine. The car went off the road.”

  Sophie hugged Wendy, then smacked a dozen kisses on Justin’s head before lifting him from the crib.

  Wendy looked at her best friend’s worried face. Time to come clean. “I’m pregnant.”

  Sophie pulled up short. “What? How?”

  “I’m immune to contraception, apparently. Fertility researchers should study me. I have the superfertile gene. I’m not kidding.”

  “Who? When? Oh God. Please tell me Keith is not the father.”

  “It’s Joe.”

  Sophie’s eyebrows inched up. “But you only spent a day together. Like yesterday.” She stared. “I mean, the man has a reputation for
being quick, but how quick can he be?”

  Wendy closed her eyes. “Three months ago, he came to a fund-raiser where I was modeling.”

  On autopilot, Sophie reached into her purse and handed a lollypop to Justin as she sank into the chair next to the bed. “Okay. Obviously, you did more than meet.”

  Wendy groaned.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought I should tell him first, but then I could never find the right time.”

  After a long moment, Sophie nodded. “How do you feel about it?”

  “Like an idiot. I mean, I’m okay with the baby. I handled Justin, and I’ll handle this little munchkin. I just wish I could have planned for it. I was on the pill. And he used protection. What’s wrong with me?”

  Sophie stared at her stunned. “Wow. You have to give my brain a second here to catch up with all this.” She paused and stared some more, her gaze flitting to Wendy’s midriff, then back to her face. “So did you tell him?”

  Wendy nodded.

  “And?”

  “He ran. He actually jumped from a moving ambulance.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence stretched between them.

  Then Sophie gathered herself and said, “He’ll come around. He’s a good guy.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Bing says he is. He wouldn’t work with someone who doesn’t have moral integrity.”

  “He’s a womanizer.”

  “It doesn’t mean he’s going to shirk his responsibilities. If he does, I can have Bing beat him up for you.”

  “You’re a good friend.”

  “I know.”

  “He saved our lives.”

  “There’s that.” Sophie nodded. “I can see the attraction. Those worn jeans and the way he wears them.”

  “It’s that laid-back, lazy smile,” Wendy said miserably. “It gets to you. That big smile, those big hands….”

  “Big feet?” Sophie added helpfully.

  Which brought a momentary smile onto Wendy’s face. She shook her head. “What are we, juveniles?” She sighed. “Yes, big…feet.”

  She closed her eyes for a long second. “Why is life so complicated? I just want a normal guy who’s nice, who will love us and stick by us. When I’m ready for a relationship,” she added. “I’m so not even ready.”

  “It could be Joe,” Sophie said carefully.

  “What are the chances?”

  Sophie grimaced. “Slim.” She looked away, carefully examining the room.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you.” She shook her head. “Probably shouldn’t. It’s Joe’s private business.”

  Wendy sat up in bed. “But you’re my best friend.”

  But Sophie still hesitated a couple of seconds. She blew out some air, then filled her lungs again. “Okay, so you know he used to be this great local football star and he got to go away on a football scholarship?”

  “I think everybody who’s ever been to Broslin knows that.”

  “He was being recruited to turn pro, but he left everything and came back to town.” Sophie paused. “There’s a rumor about that. About why he quit just when he was making it big.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s only a rumor.”

  “Sophie!”

  “Okay. Fine.” She pressed her lips together. “I heard that he hooked up with a girl when he was back in town for a visit. And then a month later, she tracked him down and told him that she was pregnant. He left everything for her. Then a few months into their rushed engagement, she told him she lost the baby. Only she faked the whole pregnancy.” Sophie made a helpless gesture.

  “She was trying to get him on the hook before somebody else did,” Wendy finished for her. “That’s terrible.” Pregnancy was a blessing, not a weapon.

  To know that you had a baby on the way, be all excited about it, then have that beautiful hope crushed—she couldn’t even begin to imagine how much that would hurt. And to find out it’d all been a lie. Getting fooled like that, okay, that could make a man jump out of a perfectly good ambulance if he thought he was being set up again.

  Sophie kissed the top of Justin’s head. “He hasn’t taken a woman seriously since.”

  Wendy clasped her hands on her lap. “And here I am with more baggage than a socialite on world tour: a toddler, another child on the way, and a violent ex.” No wonder Joe had run in the opposite direction.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d held it together during the accident and its aftermath, but suddenly she felt like crying.

  Joe had been burned before. He wasn’t going to stick his hand into the fire again.

  Not that she’d expected him to. She’d expected some kind of civilized arrangement. She hadn’t been foolish enough to think that he’d suddenly turn into the perfect guy for her and they’d create the perfect family.

  Except, after they’d spent time together in Broslin, part of her was beginning to wonder.

  God, she really was stupid.

  “You’re a beautiful person, inside and out.” Sophie reached out to squeeze her hand. “Any guy would be lucky to have you.”

  But Wendy shook her head. “I’m going to have two children from two different men, married to neither. I should go straight to a tattoo parlor from here, get my tramp stamp, and get it over with.”

  “How many men have you slept with? Grand total?” Sophie demanded.

  “Three. Including Joe. But I went out a lot pre-Keith. I was a model and super tall for my age. I never got ID’d. I partied.”

  “You were young. It’s not a sin. Some partying a tramp doesn’t make.”

  Bing popped his head in the door. “Hey there. Can I come in? Is everybody okay?”

  “Bi-bi!” Justin squealed.

  The police captain didn’t look the least put out by the indignity of a baby name. He loved Justin, and Justin loved him right back. The kid couldn’t wait to go out to the farmhouse, where there were horses and his favorite dog in the world, Peaches.

  “Hey, you trooper.” Bing plucked Justin from Sophie. “How do you feel about a cookie?”

  Justin smacked his lips.

  Wendy caught a look of longing on Sophie’s face as she watched her man with the toddler, and wondered if they were trying for a baby. There hadn’t been a proposal, but one had to be imminent. Theirs was the kind of fairy-tale, all-out love story movies were made of: danger and passion, unimaginable setbacks, then love conquering everything.

  And then it occurred to Wendy that since Sophie was a heart-transplant patient, maybe she was advised not to have a baby. She was supposed to avoid physical stress as much as possible.

  Her heart twisted as she watched her friend and the open longing on her face. Bing pulled an oatmeal cookie from his shirt pocket, unwrapped the clear plastic, and handed the cookie to Justin.

  Wendy placed her hand over her belly. Every pregnancy was a blessing. If she could have another baby as healthy and happy as Justin was, she would count herself extremely lucky. She’d been an only child of older parents who didn’t have the energy to drag her around to playdates. She’d been a pretty lonely kid. She didn’t want that for Justin.

  Sophie caught the hand on Wendy’s barely there baby bump. “So everything checked out?”

  “Yes. No harm done. We’re all healthy.” All three of them. “As soon as the doctor comes and signs the discharge papers, we’re good to leave.”

  “Bing can take you home.” Sophie stood. “I’ll swing by the grocery store and get enough stuff to fill your fridge so you won’t have to leave the apartment for a couple of days.”

  Because her car was all smashed up. Wendy closed her eyes for a second. She had no idea where she was going to get the money for repairs. All she could do was pray that her insurance would pay.

  “Thanks.” She glanced toward Bing. “You came separately?”

  “He was at the office.” Sophie smiled at him
before turning back to Wendy. “Do you need help dressing? Bing could take Justin out to the hallway.”

  Wendy looked down at her green hospital gown and nodded, grateful beyond words for her friends.

  They were home within an hour, her fridge stocked, Bing and Sophie on their way home. Justin was sleeping in his room, tuckered out from all the excitement. Wendy lay down next to him and watched her son sleep.

  They could have died today. There was nothing like a near-death experience to make you appreciate what you had.

  She received a second chance with her babies, and she swore she wasn’t going to waste it. She wasn’t going to live it in fear. She was going to make something of herself. She was going to make her fledgling photography business work.

  Since she’d moved to Wilmington, she’d been modeling for weekly circulars, corporate commercials, charity fashion shows, and even received regular calls from a home shopping channel that filmed its shows in West Chester.

  She’d lost a lot of that during her first pregnancy, but her needs had been minimal at the time. She’d been living with Keith. She didn’t have to worry about rent.

  After Justin was born, she lost the weight quickly and went back to work full-time. But a lot of that work would stop again once she started showing with this baby. And even if her current agency still wanted her after the pregnancy, the income simply wouldn’t be enough to support her and two children.

  She was twenty-six. Soon to be the single mother of two kids. With no formal education, and no marketable skills. But the good thing about making bad decisions was that anyone could stop at any time and march off in the opposite direction. Theoretically.

  Keith had always said that she’d starve to death if she ever left him. He’d taunted her with predictions of how fast her life would fall apart without him.

  She refused to prove him right. That wasn’t the kind of role model she wanted to be for her children.

  She thought of Sophie, pretty much the strongest woman she knew. What would Sophie do?

  She’d have some inspirational quote handy, for starters. Like CREATE THE LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE or something like that.

  Then she would probably make some lists and a plan.