by Lori Ryan
He finally slipped his arms under her shoulders and legs, lifting her in a cradle hold. If he held her tightly, she shouldn’t be able to slip away.
She came awake groggily and looked up at him. “Chad?” Her brow furrowed with confusion but he could also see the exhaustion evident in her face. When they got to the cabin, he needed to find out if this level of fatigue was normal for someone at her stage of pregnancy. She seemed too tired, too sick. And, that scared the hell out of him.
“Time to hit the road, Jen. Rick Bandon may be headed this way and I’m pretty sure he has your name. You and I are going away for a bit until the feds can pick him up,” Chad said as they moved quickly through her small house and out the front door.
“What? No! Put me down, Chad. You can’t do this!” She kicked and squirmed in his arms but he held tight.
Oh, shit.
Old Mrs. Stempski was out on her porch in her bathrobe, newspaper in hand, watching as Chad forcibly removed Jennie from her house.
Not good.
“Hi, Mrs. Stempski! How are you this morning?” Chad called out cheerfully as he pinned Jennie’s arms with a tighter grip.
“Is everything all right, Jennie?” the nosy busybody asked.
“Oh sure. Dentist appointment,” he said. “She does this every time.”
“I do not! Call the police, Mrs. Stempski! He’s kidnapping me!”
Chad put Jennie down in front of the passenger side door, holding her tightly with one arm as he swatted her ass with the other. “Knock it off. You’re going whether you like it or not.”
He smiled again at Mrs. Stempski. “She’s terrified of drills and shots.”
Zeke barked excitedly from the back seat as if he were going on a fun trip, apparently unconcerned that his mistress was being carted off against her wishes.
“Some watchdog,” Jennie mumbled.
“You listen to that boy, Jennie, and let him take you to the dentist. You have to take care of your teeth, dear!”
Chad barely suppressed a laugh at the look of shock on Jennie’s face when Mrs. Stempski not only bought his story, but began to lecture Jennie about proper oral hygiene. It was pretty comical.
He put Jennie in the truck and buckled her in, ignoring the rush his already ridiculously turned-on body felt when his arm grazed her chest.
As Chad rounded the front of his truck, he kept the key chain pointed at the truck. Jennie unlocked the electronic locks; he locked them. She unlocked them again; he locked them.
Now how to unlock them fast enough to get in and then lock them again without her getting out? Shit. He’d have to get her to go along with his plan somehow. He crossed back over to her side and opened her door, blocking her escape with his body.
Speaking quietly so Mrs. Stempski couldn’t hear, he did the only thing he could think to do to get her to come along. He scared the hell out of her. It fucking gutted him to do it, but it was better than getting a call that she’d been killed.
“Jen, the Masters brothers were found dead. They were tortured and then shot in the head. This Bandon guy isn’t screwing around. I know you’ll never love me the way I love you, Jennie. And I’ll find a way to live with that. But, I won’t lose you, and I won’t lose our baby. You are leaving with me now, whether you like it or not.”
Jennie stilled and watched him wide eyed. He hated to scare her like that, but she needed to understand what they were up against. She needed to know the truth so he could protect her.
She nodded her head, saying nothing, but he knew she’d acquiesced. She would let him protect her, at least for the time being. He let out the breath he’d been holding and shut the door, then raised a hand to wave at Mrs. Stempski.
He pulled away from Jennie’s home, not at all sure when or if he’d ever be able to bring her back to it.
Chapter 26
Jennie stared out at the yellow lines of the road. It seemed they’d passed miles and miles of them. She finally cleared her throat to break the uneasy silence that filled the cab of Chad’s truck.
“Where are we going?” she asked. She kept her head against the window, facing away from the man who was her friend, a lover of sorts, the father of her baby—and now, quite possibly, her savior.
“A cabin in New Hampshire. I rented it a couple of weeks ago under a fake name and paid cash. It’s near a small town so we’ll have access to anything we need, but secluded enough that we won’t run into people much. When that lease is up, we’ll move to another secluded spot.”
“No room service?” Jennie let a teasing tone enter her voice but the sadness, the shock over what was happening was still there. She could hear it, and she knew he would, too.
She got a laugh out of Chad though. “Sorry. Not this time. I have a few dry things packed in the back. Cereal bars, juice boxes, dog food for Zeke. We’ll stock up on more when we get there.”
“I don’t have any clothes,” Jennie said almost to herself as she realized she was in the shorts and T-shirt she’d slept in.
“I packed you some last week. I came in while you were at work and packed a bag full of stuff from the back of your closet that you wouldn’t notice was missing. Mostly dresses so you can wear them later in the pregnancy,” Chad said.
She turned to her traitorous dog that lay sleeping in the backseat. “Do you let everyone walk in when I’m not home?”
Chad laughed. “Only people with sausage treats. We’ll get you some new clothes eventually. I brought enough cash for us to manage for a while. Jack plans to use my credit card around town and I’ll call Kelly and have her get one of your cards from your house and use it. If Burke runs our cards it will look like we’re still in town.”
Jennie looked down at her purse on the floor. “You left my credit cards at my house?”
“Yes. And your phone. I have disposable phones for us. Andrew’s driving over to see your parents today. He’ll fill them in. Make sure they know you’re safe. He’ll bring them disposable phones so we can call them later to let them know we got to the cabin safely.”
“How do you know how to do all this, Chad? Why do I get the feeling you could make us disappear forever if you needed to?”
Chad didn’t answer her. He kept his eyes locked on the road.
“I think you owe me at least that much, Chad. Tell me what’s going on.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know how I served three tours as an Army Ranger?”
“Uh huh,” Jennie said, watching him. They all knew about his time in the military.
“I didn’t.”
“Excuse me? What? You…what?” She sputtered.
“I did eight years in the military as a Ranger. The rest of the time my family thought I was serving overseas, I was working for a private company. I hooked up with three of the men I served with after I was honorably discharged. We did freelance work around the world.”
“A mercenary! You were a mercenary!” Her eyes practically bugged out of her head.
He laughed. “No. I mean, technically, I guess you could call it that, but we did a lot of work extracting people from dangerous places. We were occasionally hired to rescue people who’d been kidnapped, and other times we helped people disappear when they needed to. We could do things the U.S. military couldn’t do. But, I swear, we got paid enough that we were able to be selective. We could pick and choose who we wanted to work for and we always made sure we were on the right side.”
Jennie shook her head, unable to process what he’d told her. He really could make her disappear as long as she needed to. She could hide forever if these people came after her.
The enormity of the situation was hitting home a little at a time, but things still felt a bit insane to Jennie. Okay, a lot insane.
How could this be happening? It wasn’t enough that she was pregnant. That the baby inside her wasn’t her husband’s. Now she might have a crooked building inspector after her? On what planet does this happen? Because it wasn’t supposed to be happening on hers.
> “How long will we stay at the cabin?” Jennie asked.
“We have it the rest of the summer. If this isn’t resolved by then, we’ll switch locations.”
She looked at him for a long time. “Fine. But, if we change locations, I get a say in the next place. You can’t take over my life. If we do this, we’re doing it together from now on.” She tried to sound firm, even though she guessed he could see right through her to the shaky uncertainty she was swimming in.
Chad nodded and she wondered if he’d really let her have any say in where they went or how they hid or how long they stayed in hiding.
She watched him from the corner of her eye and could see the tension in his body. The pain in his eyes. God, how she hated what she was doing to him. How she was hurting him. And would continue to hurt him.
He was giving up his life, his job, his friends and family for her. And she hadn’t even told him about his baby.
She couldn’t stop the tears that came as everything she was feeling began to hit at once. They streamed down her face full force and much faster than she could get control over things.
She owed this man so much “I’m sorry, Chad. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about the baby. I only needed to be alone with it for a while longer. I just needed to think, without anyone knowing. It’s confusing, you know? And if I told anyone, it made it real. I just wasn’t ready for it to be real.”
Chad glanced at her. “Aw, Jen. Don’t cry, honey.” He reached over and threaded his fingers through her hair, brushing the tears from her face with his thumb.
Jennie waved off his concern and brushed away the tears with the backs of her hands. “Ignore this. I cry at the drop of a hat now. It’s the hormones. I cry over the printer being out of paper at work, and the birds chirping outside my window and waking me up too early, and the fact that I can’t drink coffee anymore.”
And how much I miss Kyle and want him here with me. How much I wish you could hold me but I can’t ask you to do that because it’s not fair to you. I cry over how much I’m hurting you.
She couldn’t say any of that to him. There was so much that couldn’t be said between them.
He was quiet for a while as the truck ate up the road and Jennie reigned in her tears. When he spoke, there was a steely resolve to his tone.
“I will be a part of the baby’s life, Jen. I know you wish it wasn’t mine, but I won’t walk away from my baby.”
Jennie closed her eyes and nodded. “I know.” She wouldn’t expect any less of him.
She didn’t know how they’d negotiate this one and what they’d work out, but she knew regardless of what they agreed on, there would be a lot of pain for both of them in the months to come.
Chapter 27
Being together at the cabin was much harder than sharing the villa at the resort. In the cabin, they were isolated with no one around to buffer their interactions. Jennie and Zeke slept in the only bedroom while Chad slept in the living area on a cot outside her door. The cramped kitchen and small bathroom made up the rest of the space.
They cooked meals together instead of going to restaurants. They washed and dried the dishes together and went to the grocery store. They did laundry and all of the other mundane domestic things that couples did.
When they first arrived, Chad saw that the light that usually surrounded Jennie had gone out. She wasn’t happy and laughing like she used to.
Oh, he had always known that there was some sadness in Jennie. But, despite the scars she carried, Jennie had been happy before all this. She’d been the one to joke around. She was a smart ass. She was bold and edgy and impertinent. She never showed him an ounce of respect on the outside as her boss, but he knew she respected him just the same.
It was hard to explain, but it was the way she was. The way they had been, until the Florida job.
Now, there was no lightheartedness in her. By giving in to his enormous need to be close to Jennie, he’d been the one to take all that from her. He should have talked to Jack as soon as he suspected the reason behind the Florida trip. He shouldn’t have let Jennie get on that plane with him.
He should have considered the consequences and said no when she asked him for one night. And, when he didn’t have the strength to say no, he should have made damn sure he had a condom on before he went anywhere near her.
Those few minutes in the shower when he’d slipped up and taken her without protection had cost Jennie so much. His lapse was costing her whatever bit of happiness she’d managed to find after Kyle’s death.
He was also concerned about her pregnancy.
On their first trip to the store, Chad bought a copy of that What to Expect pregnancy book. He read to Jennie from it sometimes when they were sitting and watching television or rocking in the side-by-side rockers on the front porch.
He had to admit, that book turned him into the pregnancy police. He monitored Jennie’s intake of fruits and veggies, even though many days, it was all she could do to keep toast down. Jennie craved pastries so he bought her oranges.
“Where is the logic in that? What do oranges have to do with pastries?” she would ask him.
“Eat an orange and I’ll go get you pastries,” Chad would say to her some days.
Instead of negotiating and saying, “I’ll eat half an orange,” like he expected her to, Jennie had given him the hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-pregnant-woman-without-her-pastry look and countered, “I’ll eat an orange if you carry the baby for the rest of the pregnancy. How about that? Now get me my damned pastries.”
Yeah. Their negotiation tactics had changed somewhat lately.
Slowly, she began to build up that outer façade of happiness with him again. She joked more, even when her head was in the toilet bowl puking up whatever he got her to eat.
She yelled at him for feeding Zeke table scraps but would laugh when he said he wanted to stay in Zeke’s good graces so the dog would take his side in any arguments with Jennie.
In the afternoons, when her morning sickness had subsided, they went for walks together in the woods. Zeke would run around them off leash and Jennie would laugh and chitchat with Chad, acting much more like the Jennie he had fallen for.
Chad could almost pretend everything was normal and she wasn’t gutted inside.
They were in a holding pattern, waiting for Jack to call with news from Agent Burke. They’d only been able to talk to Jack and Kelly and to Jennie’s parents once when they first arrived.
Jack reported that Jennie’s house had been broken into and trashed. Someone had been there looking for her or for signs of her whereabouts.
Jennie knew the danger she was facing but she still wished she could talk to Kelly and Jill. She hadn’t told any of them about the baby and neither had Chad. It had been a week since they arrived at the cabin and Jennie was getting tired of watching TV, playing card games, and taking walks with Zeke in the woods.
The hardest part, and the thing that Jennie couldn’t understand, was that after all that had happened—including being ten weeks pregnant and having a money-laundering building inspector after her—Jennie was still so turned on by Chad she could barely breathe. Shouldn’t the pregnancy slow down her libido? She’d never been so freaking aroused in her life.
And seeing Chad every day after his morning run with Zeke didn’t help. He came back sweating, with his T-shirt clinging to that godlike chest of his. He’d strip the shirt off and jump into the lake to cool off.
He probably had no idea she watched him through the kitchen window—actually stood there timing herself to his routines every day to be sure she didn’t miss it. Then he’d walk out of the lake dripping wet, with beads of water running over his shoulders and his wet hair looking even darker than it was.
Oh, God.
Jennie curled her feet up under her on the couch as she tried to banish the slide show playing in her mind’s eye. She needed to learn to ignore the way her body reacted to Chad. She needed to get her body in line with what her head and
her heart wanted.
As if he could read her mind, Chad chose that very moment to look up from his What to Expect book.
“Says here some women get really horny when they’re pregnant,” he said, waggling his eyebrows with a shit-eating grin.
“It does not!” Jennie said, feeling two hot spots form on her cheeks.
How does he know?
“Does too. They don’t phrase it that way, but that’s essentially it. Anything you need help with, Jennie? Any cravings I can take care of for you?” He laughed as he leaned in suggestively.
“Gah!” She stood and stormed off to the shower, not looking back at him as she went into the bathroom.
She gave in to the urge to rearrange his neatly laid out toiletries on the counter by the sink, though. It was an activity she allowed herself to indulge in at least once a week to keep her sanity. Mussing up his ordered tidiness helped her feel a little better about his teasing.
It didn’t do anything to diffuse the insane arousal she was fighting at the moment, though. Chad had her so wound up, she felt like she would burst soon. Her heart raced and she had the sweet achiness of need between her legs almost twenty-four hours a day.
And, no amount of self-indulgence seemed to quell her hunger for Chad. If anything, it seemed to make it worse.
Jennie sighed as she turned Chad’s razor perpendicular to his toothpaste and moved his toothbrush over to the other side of the sink, then stepped into the shower. She knew better than to hope a cold shower would help, and truth be told, she didn’t have it in her to take one.
She needed the comfort of the warm water beating down on her nowadays. Her life had become one long twisted joke lately and she didn’t have any idea when it was going to change.
She put her hand to her belly and tried to imagine the tiny life that was growing there. This poor child was going to come into a mixed-up mess of a situation and Jennie didn’t know how to change that.
She closed her eyes and stepped beneath the spray remembering a shower in Florida that started all of this. She rubbed her hand over her belly again. She couldn’t regret the baby, but she did worry that she wasn’t going to be able to give the little one anything resembling the kind of life she should.