by Lacey Baker
“Hello, Mrs. Stanley,” Parker said to her, his smile and charm quickly appearing.
Marabelle smiled in return, blinking her eyes as if that were suddenly going to make her young enough to smile at a man Parker’s age. Then she looked at Drew as if just remembering she was there. “Parker and Drewcilla. I would have never thought to run into you here. Did you have an appointment?” she asked, pinning Drew with her too-nice-to-be-true stare.
“Um, we came by to see Quinn,” was Drew’s quick response. Too bad it was the wrong one.
“Oh, my dear, Dr. Cantrell’s office is that way.” Marabelle pointed. “And my Sam is next on his appointment list. The receptionist over there said Quinn was running a little late, had to deal with some sort of issue at the B and B. I figured I’d pick up Louisa after I finished here with Sam and we’d go over to see what was going on over there. But here you are, I can just ask you.” She looked at Parker then. “What’s going on at the B and B and why are you here with her, instead of there with your family?”
Parker’s grip tightened on Drew’s elbow and she sucked in a breath. He quickly loosened his hold on her, slipping his arm around her waist instead. “If you would excuse us, Mrs. Stanley, Drew and I need to get going.”
Just as they were about to walk away, Nora, Dr. Lorens’s assistant, came running up to them, two CDs in hand.
“Oh, Ms. Sidney, I’m glad I caught you. Dr. Lorens always gives her patients a recording of their baby’s first heartbeat. Here’s a copy for you and one for Mr. Cantrell.”
Nora was a lovely young girl, hair in one long braid draped over her right shoulder, eyes shadowed with a lime-green color today that matched the apples decorating the pink shirt of her scrubs. She was simply doing her job and very happy that she’d caught Drew before she’d left. Her smile was honest and genuine because she had no idea what she’d just done.
Parker took the CDs from Nora. “Thanks,” he muttered, because by now he’d caught on to the fact that Drew was absolutely speechless. They moved to take another step, only to find Marabelle still standing there, this time smiling as if she’d just received the award for Best Gossip of the Year—which she might actually claim once she started spreading the word that Drew Sidney was pregnant with Parker Cantrell’s baby.
* * *
Michelle was a mind reader, Parker was certain of that now. He was also certain that was another trait his sister had inherited from their grandmother. Gramma always seemed to know what they needed, just when they needed it.
“I wish I could cook like your sister,” Drew said, wiping her hands on a napkin.
She was sitting across from Parker at the small table in her kitchen. About an hour ago, just a few minutes after they’d returned from Dr. Lorens’s office, Michelle had appeared at Drew’s back door, picnic basket in one hand, jug of summer punch in the other, Rufus standing right beside her as if he’d been trained to do so. Parker had only smiled as he took the jug from her hand and let her and the dog pass him to go up the stairs.
“Everybody wishes they could cook like Michelle,” Parker replied.
Drew had sat back in her chair, so he reached across the table and helped himself to another seasoned potato wedge from her plate. Michelle had made crab cakes the size of a fist, six of them, and enough seasoned potato wedges to feed a small army. Before sitting down to eat, Drew had retrieved her own plastic bowls to use for all the food that would have to be consumed later. She’d eaten only half a crab cake and about three wedges. Parker was helping himself to the rest.
“Doc said you should eat more,” he told her when he’d finished chewing.
“She said I should eat more frequently, not more in quantity,” Drew corrected. She smiled as she pushed her plate toward him so he wouldn’t have to reach across the table again.
He liked her smile. It was simple, not dazzling like Savannah’s, and it touched her eyes, giving her face a happy and calm look that Parker didn’t see her with often. He’d waited patiently for her to voluntarily tell him about the bastard at the B&B and why he’d thought he could put his hands on her. More important he’d waited for Drew to tell him why she was trembling when the man held her and why each time Parker had touched her since, she’d started as if in fear. His instincts said old boyfriend, domestic abuse, the past coming back to haunt her. His instincts also said to kill, but Parker was trying desperately to tamp that down.
“It’s been a long day,” she started after standing and taking her empty glass to the sink. “I think I’ll take a bath and lie down for a while.”
Parker used his napkin, then stood to help clean the table. “That sounds like a good idea,” he told her.
When they met at the sink, he took her hands in his. It was a gentle motion, one he’d made while keeping eye contact with her. “Do you trust me, Drew?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but Parker was already shaking his head.
“What I’m asking you is do you trust the Parker Cantrell you’ve come to know over these past months? Not the reputation that preceded me or even what people are saying about me now.”
Drew took a deep breath, licked her lips, then replied, “I think I do.”
Parker smiled. They weren’t the exact words he wanted to hear, yet they touched him with a soft warmth that soothed him.
“I mean, we haven’t known each other long. Or rather, we haven’t been on speaking terms that long,” she corrected.
“I understand. And I want to thank you, even for that.” He took a deep breath, still trying to grasp how such simple words could almost take his breath away.
“Parker, I know we got off to a strange start, but I think you’ll be a great father,” she continued.
And she was going to be a wonderful mother, he thought with the deep compassion he could hear clearly in her voice.
“We’re going to be great parents,” he continued. “But for right now, I want you to take that bath while I clean up in here. Then when you’re finished I want you to sit down and tell me about the man at the B and B and what he’s doing here in Sweetland.”
As expected, Drew’s entire demeanor changed. Her eyes blinked rapidly before she dropped her head and sighed.
Parker cupped a hand to her cheek and prodded until she looked up at him again. “I’m not trying to be pushy, I just want to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Right,” she replied quietly. “I’ll be back.”
And then she was gone and Parker was left standing alone in her kitchen, wondering how he’d ended up in this place. Earlier this year, he was at the top of his game. He was one of the most renowned detectives in the city, closing murder cases that others hadn’t even attempted to investigate. He’d worked alongside other great detectives, had dinner with the mayor, the chief of police, and the state’s attorney. Parker had done everything he’d promised himself he would do and thought there was nothing left but to grow old gracefully.
He’d thought wrong. In the last two weeks, as he’d worked secretly with Ryan DelRio, a friend of Preston’s who was with the FBI, digging up anything and everything he could about Officer Tyrone Vezina and the cases he was working on, Parker was convinced that what he’d witnessed was a professional hit put out on Vezina. The visit to his apartment by the killer later had been a scare tactic, not a hit, which led Parker to also believe that whoever had started the ball rolling against Vezina suddenly felt that killing another cop might be detrimental. However, intimidating that cop into a fearful silence was not—hence the email and the pictures of his family in Sweetland. He and Ryan had implemented some safety measures around the B&B, and Ryan was staying just outside of town at a hotel where his cameras could keep surveillance of the place. For that reason, Parker had stayed away from Drew for the past couple of weeks. Of course he’d wanted to see her, to check on her, but getting to the bottom of this Vezina thing was a priority that would keep them all safe.
As if that weren’t enough for Parker to deal with, he’d walked out
of his bedroom to hear raised voices coming from the front desk area. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Drew being manhandled by someone Parker didn’t know. He’d instantly seen red and reacted. He knew he probably faced assault charges against the guy, but he didn’t give a damn. He shouldn’t have touched Drew, and he’d better have learned his lesson.
Now, Parker wanted to know who the guy was and why Drew was afraid of him. In his pocket his cell phone vibrated, pulling him from the murderous thoughts he found himself having despite the fact that he was on the opposite side of the law.
“Cantrell,” he answered quickly.
“Farraway’s looking for you,” Quinn said. “Jared Mansfield wants to press charges for you trying to break his jaw.”
Parker sighed. He’d figured as much.
“Where’s this Mansfield character now?” he asked.
“Packed up and looking for someplace else to stay in Sweetland. He’d just checked in for an indefinite stay, but Michelle reversed his charges and just about tossed him out after he insisted on having you arrested and Drew found and brought to him.”
Parker’s fist clenched. He walked across the room to keep his composure. “What did he say about Drew?”
“Just that he wanted her found and brought to him immediately. He said that a couple of times until Farraway warned him to stay away from Drew or risk being arrested himself.”
“Finally, the dunce supercop does something right,” Parker murmured.
“Well, the dunce supercop is out for blood where you’re concerned. I’m guessing it has something to do with your past,” Quinn continued. “At any rate, I thought I’d give you a heads-up.”
“Thanks,” Parker replied.
“Parker?” Quinn continued.
“Yeah?”
“You’re a good guy. I know I don’t tell you that often enough and I know being here brings back memories of when you weren’t such a good guy. But it’s not just about you this time around. Drew’s carrying your child. You need to think about that first now, before you react.”
Parker gritted his teeth. That was precisely what he’d been thinking about these past two weeks. He wanted to end the issue with Vezina’s murder and get things straight with his job so he’d be able to support his child—and then he saw the man assaulting Drew and wanted only to protect her. He was doing the right thing despite what people around him thought.
“I hear you,” was all he managed to say to his older brother. “And I’ll take care of Drew and the baby and everything else.”
Parker clicked off the phone before Quinn could say anything else. Then he went back to cleaning the kitchen before the adrenaline pumping through his system incited him to go out and do something else. Something dangerous. Something only the Double Trouble Cantrell brother would do.
* * *
“Everybody in town loved Jared. He was tall and handsome and talented. All his life he’d been groomed for the MLB. His father had played for years in Seattle and had moved to the East Coast when Jared was in fifth grade. That’s when I met him. He sat behind me in Mrs. Frostburg’s math class.” Drew sighed, resting her head against the pillows that Parker had piled there.
He was sitting on the edge of her bed. Rufus was right beside her, his head and floppy ears resting on her thigh. She’d started rubbing his head the second the dog joined her and now did so without thought.
“His father was inducted into the Hall of Fame. In his sophomore year Jared took the high school team all the way to the national competition, where scouts began watching him. By the time we graduated he’d had more scholarship offers than anyone else in town. He went to Virginia Tech and came home during the summers. I went to the community college and worked as a waitress at night. We dated our senior year in high school and then broke up when he went away. By the time he graduated and had been drafted to play in Florida, I’d finally finished my business degree at the community college and was planning to take all the money I’d saved and move to the city.”
“You wanted to be a city girl?” Parker asked, a small smile on his face.
She could tell he was being extremely patient with her. He wanted to know why Jared was here in Sweetland, not the whole sordid tale of their past. But Drew didn’t know the answer to that question. She had to assume the reason was somehow wrapped in their sordid past.
“I wanted to get away from that town. The town where everybody knew everybody and they all knew your business. I was so tired of being there.”
He nodded as if he understood. “Why didn’t you go away to college?”
“My mother didn’t work. My father wanted a traditional family where the wife was a homemaker and the three kids did as they were told. Unfortunately, Mom only had one child, so she tried to make up for that by being the Martha Stewart of Stratford. Still, Dad drank and gambled and basically treated my mother like crap. As for me, he ignored me as much as he possibly could, which I guess was my blessing in disguise.”
Drew shrugged, because rehashing all that now didn’t give her that same depressing feeling she used to get. Now there was just this kind of sadness for the life her mother had endured and the tragic end Arthur Sidney had inflicted on her.
“So you stayed to help take care of your family?”
She sighed. “Dad had some new business venture, said it would take a year or two to get off the ground. So I gave him some of my savings and I stayed to help with monthly bills and still saved as much as I could. I took online medical encoding classes during that time, hoping to enhance my chances of getting a good job when I finally made it to the city.
“The winter before my dad died, Jared’s mother was diagnosed with leukemia. He came home. We went out twice.” Drew stopped then, taking a deep breath and willing herself not to crumble in front of Parker. She wasn’t a weak person, had known that even in the midst of all the turmoil she’d gone through at that time. No matter what, she would hold her head up high, she would move forward, and she would live her life on her own terms. She’d been doing just fine at that, until now.
“On the third date Jared apparently had more detailed ideas of how it would end. I wanted to go home. He wanted to go to a hotel. I said no and got out of the car to walk. He followed me, pushed me between two buildings, and dared me to scream. I did it anyway because I wanted him to know I wasn’t afraid of him. He clamped one hand over my mouth and used the other to rip my shirt off. His hands were down my pants when I bit him and kneed him in the groin simultaneously.”
Drew looked down then. She focused on Rufus and his dark brown eyes. She watched her hand moving mindlessly over his black fur.
“Did he rape you, Drew?” Parker asked in a voice that sounded so raw with emotion, her head jerked upward so she could stare at him.
A muscle in his jaw twitched, and his lips were pulled in a tight line. She could tell he was angry, but his eyes were warm and compassionate.
She cleared her throat. “No. No. He didn’t get the chance to. A car had stopped at the red light and saw us between the buildings. The driver got out to see what was going on. It was the principal from the high school, and when he saw that it was Jared he was so busy asking for an autograph, he hadn’t bothered to ask if I were okay. I walked home that night. Went straight to the bathroom and showered for an hour. Then I went to bed and tried to forget.
“But by the next afternoon my mother was already receiving calls about me being caught in a compromising position with ‘the’ Jared Mansfield. By the end of the week there was talk of a big wedding, of Jared coming back for me and giving me the life of the rich and famous. Then Jared had to leave for spring training. When it became obvious that I wasn’t going with him, gossip started again. Now, Jared had left me because I wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t pretty enough or smart enough. When I finally told my parents what really happened that night, my mother cried. My dad scowled. We went to the police and they basically laughed at us. To the whole town I was the woman scorned
and tried to get revenge by spreading vicious lies about the town’s golden boy. Then my dad got sick. The doctors told him he was dying, and rather than linger on like Mrs. Mansfield was still doing, he killed himself, leaving my mother with a mountain of debt and the life insurance company refusing to pay because the death was a suicide.” She sighed heavily, having just told a story she’d never told before.
“And that’s when you came here?” Parker asked after a few seconds of silence.
She nodded. “We moved to Sweetland almost a year after my dad’s death. Mom was going to live with Uncle Walt and I was going to stay until she got settled in.”
“Then move to the city?” he asked.
It hurt even to hear him say those words, a quick pang that reminded her of just how much those events had changed her goals and ultimately her life.
“My mother was so distraught. For the entire first year in Sweetland she couldn’t even leave the house to go help Uncle Walt at the restaurant. So I helped him as a way of earning her keep. Then I started planting flowers around Uncle Walt’s house, taking arrangements to The Crab Pot. Word got around that I was good with flowers and gardening, so I took some side jobs.” She shrugged. “Then one day the idea to start my own business just hit me. I never thought I’d make my home in another small town where everybody knew everybody and they all knew everything about you. But Sweetland seemed different. Besides, I figured the people here didn’t know everything about me. They didn’t know about Jared.”
“But now Jared’s back.” Parker stood after saying that. “He had paid to stay at the B and B, but Michelle gave him his money back. Do you think he knew you were here?”
“I don’t know how he could have known,” she said, then thought about it. “Uncle Walt was born in Stratford, maybe he connected him. I don’t know, and why would he go through the trouble of coming to see me? I haven’t spoken to him since that night.”