by Lacey Baker
“Did he try to talk to you afterwards?”
“He called a couple of times before he left town. His mother was really sick, so he spent most of his time with her.”
Parker made a noise. “Most of the time that he hadn’t spent forcing himself on innocent females.”
Drew shook her head. She didn’t want to relive this, and she especially didn’t want to relive it in the place she’d thought to call her home. “I wish he’d just leave. The last thing I want is for anyone here to find out what happened between us. I mean, hell, it’s bad enough the rumor mill’s going to be in live-action mode for the next few days as Louisa announces that I’m carrying your child.”
“You’re worried about that?” Parker asked. He’d been pacing in front of the bed but now stopped to look at her. “Were you planning on keeping it a secret?”
“I was planning on having my baby peacefully. I didn’t know what position you were going to take, so all I could do was hope everything would go along quietly.”
“You thought things would go quietly in Sweetland? I hate to tell you, but that was never going to happen. They were going to have questions regardless of who the father of your baby was. They just like to know everything.”
“And now they’re going to want to know what comes next,” she said quietly. She’d been kind of wondering that herself.
It was Parker’s turn to shrug. “We’re having a baby. And I don’t care who knows it. I’m not running back to Baltimore and leaving my child behind. In fact,” he said, giving her a long look. “How fast can you pack a bag?”
Drew narrowed her eyes at him. “Pack a bag? Am I going somewhere?”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to go to the city?” he asked, a playful gleam in his eyes.
Chapter 14
Drew said she was all right with what he’d just done, but Parker wasn’t so sure. Still, it was for the best, and he wasn’t about to let her sulk any more than she already had over that jackass Mansfield.
The phone call to Carl Farraway was as short and concise as Parker could possibly make it.
“Why don’t you come on into the station, Cantrell? We can talk when you get here,” Carl said the moment Parker announced who he was on the phone.
“I’m actually on my way out of town, so that’s not going to be possible.”
Carl tsked. “Running from the law? Now what would your superiors in Baltimore think about that?”
They’d probably think it was the final straw and officially fire him. Funny thing, about six months ago that might have really caused Parker some grief. Now, the thought didn’t seem so far away from his reality.
“I still hold a badge of my own, Farraway, so despite what you think, I won’t be doing anything illegal. That’s actually why I’m calling you,” Parker continued without letting Farraway get in another jab. “My brother told me you were at the house looking for me. So I’m calling to give my side of the story.”
He proceeded to tell the dunce deputy about Mansfield’s history of assaulting Drew and that Drew would be filing for a restraining order the moment they returned to Sweetland and that Farraway should keep an eye on Mansfield as long as he was in town. To his credit, Carl agreed to contact the authorities in Stratford to see about the report Drew had filed years ago. He even agreed with Parker’s suggestion that Carl talk to Mansfield again, maybe get him to agree to giving his prints or DNA so they could do a database check and see if there were any other women the man had gotten too friendly with. It was unlikely for a guy to sexually assault one time and then quit cold turkey. No, with the money and the power Mansfield assumed he had, his personality would almost force him to dominate over and over again.
Carl still wanted to talk to Parker when he got back, and Parker was more than happy to agree to that meeting. As long as he had some time alone with Drew first. Some time to show her that not all men dominated and not all reputed bad boys were actually bad.
He let her sit in the passenger seat of Preston’s SUV, seat belt intact, seat reclined. She’d requested he turn on the radio, so he did, some station that was playing slow songs that he figured a female would like. In the backseat, Rufus had settled on the fleece blanket that normally lay across his dog bed in Parker’s room at the B&B. On the third bench seat were their bags and Rufus’s kennel. They were taking a road trip, and Parker felt oddly familial at the thought.
It was just about eleven PM when Parker turned into the entrance for the underground garage to his apartment building. The attendant knew him by face but was taken a little off guard by the vehicle.
“Mr. Cantrell, you’re back,” said Styles, the twenty-year-old college student who worked part-time in the building.
“Just for a couple of days,” Parker told him.
“New vehicle, I see, along with some other new things.” Styles gave a wag of his eyebrows at that comment.
The younger man had no problem getting into Parker’s business. After all, Parker had been the one to arrest Styles over a year ago for fraudulently using a debit card in the convenience store down the street. He’d also paid Preston to represent the kid in court and was pleased when Preston had negotiated a probation before judgment sentence with community service instead of jail time and the possibility to have the conviction expunged from his record with good behavior. In return for that favor, Styles had been a model citizen since then, and Parker hadn’t hesitated to help him get a job as well as get him enrolled in the local community college. “Sometimes, all they need is a chance,” Parker could hear his own father telling him as they’d watched the news depicting the rise of violent crime in teenagers years ago.
In his years working on the force, assigned to the inner city, Parker had seen his share of teenagers and adults who weren’t going to do the right thing with another chance no matter what. And for those, Parker could only pray for an end to their reign on the streets. He was willing to give people second chances as long as those second chances didn’t involve someone else getting hurt or another crime being committed.
“Still paying attention to details, I see,” Parker joked with him. “This is Preston’s truck. And this is…” He hesitated because he really didn’t know what to introduce Drew as. And since she was asleep, he went with saying she was a friend and proceeded to his parking spot before Styles took that meaning any further than was necessary.
When he parked the car, he gently nudged Drew to wake her. Then Rufus, who no doubt had roused the second the truck stopped, barked and Drew jolted.
“Sorry about that. You already know he’s insubordinate,” he told Drew when she turned her head on the console and looked at him. “We’re here,” he announced quickly, because the sleepy sluggishness of her eyes, the way her tongue slowly licked her lips, and the lift of her breasts when her arms went over her head while she stretched were making him want to touch her instead of showing her how much of a gentleman he could actually be.
She stepped out of the car without a word and without Parker’s help, as he was busy letting Rufus out and then reaching for their bags. “Could you grab these and lock the truck?” he was forced to ask since his hands were full.
“Sure,” was all she said as she reached for the keys that were on top of the truck as the nod of his head suggested. “Do you want the alarm on?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “In the city it’s best to lock and alarm your vehicle to cut down on theft.” In Sweetland they locked the car but rarely used the alarm system.
In the elevator there were two other couples laughing and giggling, clearly having just enjoyed a fun night out on the town. As Parker lived on one of the top floors, they’d gotten off before Drew remarked, “Do people sleep at all in the city?”
Parker laughed. “It’s not even midnight yet. And I live in downtown Baltimore. It’s likely you’ll see people up all night long down here. Those four looked like they were just coming from an Orioles game. We got lucky and had one of the finals games here this year.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t follow baseball,” she replied quietly, and Parker wanted to bite off his tongue. Of course she wouldn’t follow baseball after what happened.
He decided it was best just to keep quiet after that. They walked down the hall once they were off the elevator, and then he nodded to her once more. “You’ve got the key.”
“Oh.” She’d been holding Rufus’s leash and the dog had been more than excited by his new surroundings. She wrapped the leash around her wrist so Rufus wouldn’t run off while she tried to open the door.
After a few seconds of working with the key, the door opened and Parker nodded her inside. She walked ahead of him, bending to take the leash from Rufus’s neck the moment Parker closed the door. Rufus took off, disappearing into one of the back rooms. Parker put down the bags and turned on the lamps in the living room, which was about three feet from the small foyer they’d come through. He watched her look around and remembered when he’d done the same thing in her apartment.
“What do you think?” he asked after a few minutes of watching her walk around, touching this, smiling at that.
“Definitely a bachelor pad,” she quipped.
Parker chuckled. “How did I know you were going to say that?”
She laughed with him. “Because you know what your house looks like. There’re absolutely no female touches in here.”
Parker moved to one of the end tables where the phone and the blinking answering machine were. He pressed rewind and waited. “That’s because I’m not a female.”
She blinked, then looked as if she thought he were joking. “But surely you have females here, I would think you’d try to at least appeal to them on some level. You know, make them a little more comfortable.”
He shook his head. “I don’t bring females here.”
She was quiet; that was telling. Parker had already pushed the button to listen to the messages, so he didn’t look up to see the further extent of her reaction to his words.
“Where’s your bathroom? I’ll go now while you’re listening to your messages,” she said.
He did look up then, just as the machine was announcing the date and time of the next message. “Do you have to go to the bathroom now?”
She looked a little wide-eyed at him, then down to the phone and back to him again. “No. I just, um, I was just offering you some privacy to listen to your messages.”
What she meant was she was giving him an out. If a female was leaving him a phone message, she wouldn’t hold it against him. But she really would, Parker thought. She already was. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, reminding himself that this was new for both of them. She’d had a bad experience before, and he did have a reputation. But standing in her kitchen several hours ago, Drew said she thought she trusted him. He’d trust her enough not to get angry at her presumptions that spoke otherwise.
“There’s not going to be a female leaving me any messages, Drew. My home address and phone number are personal and off-limits to the women I date.”
“But dating is personal, isn’t it?” she asked.
Standing in front of the fireplace, stark white walls, cool gray leather furniture, black statues, and gray carpet surrounding her, moonlight streaming through the wall-to-wall windows to the left, she looked lost and a bit out of place. Her eyes wide, her demeanor uncomfortable, she’d asked him a pretty simple question, yet it felt like one of the most important questions he’d ever had to search for an answer to.
“It can be,” he said, treading lightly.
Before the conversation could go any further, a familiar voice sounded through the machine and Parker looked away from Drew to the phone as if that person were actually there.
“Cantrell, your name’s coming up where it shouldn’t be again. I know you’ve been out of town, but if you get this message, I need you to get your ass back here, pronto!”
Yes, he’d said “pronto,” as if anybody in this day and age still said that.
“He sounds angry,” Drew said, stating the obvious. “Maybe you should call him back now.”
Parker shook his head. “He’s my supervisor and I’ll call him in the morning.”
“But he asked for you to get back here right away, that has to mean it’s urgent.”
“If it were really urgent, he would have used my cell or called the inn. He has both numbers.” So why hadn’t he used them? Parker thought to himself. And what did he mean, Parker’s name was coming up where it shouldn’t be? He’d been out of town for almost five months now, on suspension. How could his name come up and he wasn’t even here?
“Let’s get you and Rufus settled,” he said, not wanting to deal with any of this tonight.
She followed him into the bedroom, and Parker could almost hear her mind ticking off one question after another. He’d never had to explain himself to anyone before and wasn’t sure how it worked. How would she react if he told her he’d been suspended from his job? Would she think he wouldn’t be able to support his child? He shook his head, stopping to put the bags down and to shoo Rufus off his bed.
“Off! Now!” he told the dog sternly.
Behind him, Drew snickered. “Did you bring his bed with you?”
Parker groaned. “He’s not a baby, and he has that silly blanket that Raine gave him. He’ll be fine in the kennel or on the floor over there.” He pointed to the spot he was referring to and waited while Rufus trudged over there slowly. Then he felt bad and found himself on his knees, rolling the dog over and scratching his stomach. Rufus laughed … well, for all that dogs could laugh: His mouth was open, tongue hanging out. He loved this type of attention and Parker didn’t normally mind giving it to him. It’s just that these last couple of weeks had been really stressful.
“Five dollars says he ends up in this bed by morning,” Drew said.
Parker turned. She’d crossed her arms over her chest and stared at them. She wore yoga pants that rested beneath the bump of her belly and a teal shirt with glittering high-heeled shoes on the front of it. The shirt came to the tops of her thighs, but as she’d lain back in the car, it had risen up, and that’s how he’d seen that the yoga pants didn’t go over her stomach. But from here, looking up at her, the bump was definitely visible. Their child was growing inside there, and in a couple of months she would be bigger, their baby would be bigger.
“I don’t usually take money from females, but for you, Ms. Sidney, I’ll make an exception.”
“Wow, wait till I tell Heaven and Delia I’m getting special treatment now,” Drew said, smiling, heading to the bathroom with her bag.
Parker used that time to undress, moving through the room with vague familiarity. This was his home, had been for the past ten years. Yet it felt as if he were the outsider here. Drew was back before he could further examine that feeling, and they quickly ditched the lights and climbed into bed.
* * *
“That was delicious,” Drew said, sitting back against the soft, leather-bound booth. “I’ve never had steak cooked so well.”
Parker agreed by nodding his head because he was still chewing the last bite of her steak, which he’d forked after she’d shaken her head in defeat. She was so full, she thought she’d burst. But Parker had already told her they were walking along the harbor as soon as they finished at the restaurant.
He was giving her the complete tourist treatment, showing her around Baltimore City like the seasoned veteran he was. Earlier today, they’d taken a cruise to Fort McHenry and had lunch on the plush green lawn. Afterward, Parker had insisted they return to his place, where they’d gone for a swim at the pool in the apartment building.
“I can’t swim,” she’d admitted as she’d sat on the side, letting her feet dangle in the four feet section of the water.
“No problem, I’ll carry you,” Parker had replied.
And thus he had.
At first she’d clasped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck as he glided through the deep end of the water. Their bodies we
re warm together, and she laughed like a schoolgirl when he returned to a more shallow part of the water and flipped her off his back so that she plunged into the water. Drew came up sputtering and gasping. That’s when he laced his arms around her, pulling her close.
“I really like swimming with you,” he whispered about two seconds before his lips grazed hers.
Her body hummed with mounting desire and Drew hungrily kissed him back. Her legs twined around his waist once more, and he backed her up to the wall of the pool. His hands were everywhere, grasping the side curve of her breasts, moving downward to cup the globes of her bottom. Then his fingers were beneath the band of her bathing suit, touching the moistened heat of her center. Drew gasped, barely managing to break the kiss in time to pant, “Stop. We can’t do this here.”
Parker rested his forehead against hers, his breath coming as fast, if not faster. His fingers were still touching her, stroking her. “I can’t seem to keep my hands off you,” was his reply. “No matter where we are.”
“Um,” she started to say when one finger slipped slowly inside her core. The partial word ended on a moan and Drew had to close her eyes, clamping her teeth down on her bottom lip until she thought she might draw blood, to keep from screaming out her pleasure. “I hope you don’t think I’m complaining,” she started again, once she felt steady enough to speak real words and not just sounds.
“I’m certainly not complaining,” he said, nipping along her cheek down to the line of her jaw. All the while he’d added another finger and was now stroking her gently, coaxing what Drew feared would be a soul-shattering release.
“Parker,” she whispered, letting her head loll back against the lip of the pool.
He went for her neck so quickly that if she were of the mind for fanciful thoughts, she might have been afraid he were some breed of vampire. Instead, his tongue lathed along her damp skin, moving downward to her collarbone, then the swell of her breasts. Drew did scream then. It was a low scream, but it echoed throughout the pool area as if she were in a gymnasium.