The Baby Miracle

by Rayner, Holly

  “Chase!”

  He turns.

  I run after him, not wanting to yell across the parking lot. The heels of my boots clack against the pavement, and my jacket makes swishing sounds. The jacket isn’t dressy, but at least I’m in a casual dress over tights instead of a sweatshirt and leggings. That’s something.

  “Are you okay?” Chase asks.

  His face is full of concern as he looks down at me, and I suddenly register how much taller than me he is. My head only comes up to his collarbone.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I was just thinking of grabbing a nightcap before I go home, and I wondered if you’d like to come along.”

  Even as the words are coming out of my mouth, I’m surprised to hear them. I definitely wasn’t planning on going out for a drink tonight. But I’m not ready to go home. I’m not ready for my evening to end. And, I realize, I’m not ready to say goodbye to Chase. Not just yet.

  Chase smiles. “Sure. I could go for a drink. Do you know a place? I was looking into the nightlife around here before I settled on the movie, and I couldn’t find anything.”

  “There’s a good bar over by the campus,” I say.

  “Won’t that be full of college students?”

  “Not on a Tuesday. There might be a few of them there, but not many.”

  “Should we take your car? Or can we walk there?”

  “It’s a few blocks,” I say. “Are you in the mood for a bit of a walk? If not, we can drive.”

  “It’s a nice night,” he says. “Walking sounds good to me. If you’re up for it?”

  “Yeah. Definitely.”

  “In that case, lead the way.”

  Chapter 5

  Kendall

  The bar is quiet, with just a few people scattered about, and no one looks up when we come in. I take Chase’s hand and lead him to a booth in the far corner, where we’ll be able to carry on a conversation without being interrupted by people trying to reach the dartboard.

  “So you’re here visiting your aunt?” he asks as we take our seats.

  I nod. “Aunt Mariel. She looks after me. I look after her. I don’t know. It’s both at this point, I guess. We’re very close.”

  “That’s great,” he says. “What about your parents?”

  “I never knew my father,” I say. “And my mother…”

  I swallow. This is still hard to talk about, even though it’s been several years. It’s hardest when it’s with people who don’t already know. With my friends and Aunt Mariel, I can just allude to Mom or mention her in passing, and they already understand all the pain and grief and confusion I’ve been through. With new people, I have to start at square one. I steel myself.

  “My mother died a few years ago,” I say.

  His eyes don’t leave mine. “I’m so sorry.”

  And that’s it. Nothing about how he knows how I feel. No follow-up questions. Just sincere empathy. Something inside me, something hard and painful, dissolves.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Thank you.”

  He nods slowly.

  “Anyway, it’s just me and Aunt Mariel now,” I say. “So I try to get out to see her as often as I can. She’s pretty old. She’s doing well, and her retirement community is basically a singles’ cruise, but there’s nothing like family, is there?

  “No,” he says. “I suppose there isn’t.”

  “What about you?” I ask. “What’s your family like?”

  “We’re not close,” he says slowly. “My father doesn’t approve of my career choices, and my mother backs him up in everything he says. So we’re… I don’t know. Not estranged, exactly, but we see each other on holidays only, and it’s always awkward.” He gives me a sad little smile. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not a very kind story to tell you after you opened up about losing your parents. You must think I’m awfully ungrateful for what I have.”

  I don’t, actually. “Everybody’s different,” I point out. “I have no idea what your parents are like. I don’t think you should feel guilted into having a close relationship with them. I mean, my father’s probably still alive, and I’m not even interested in knowing where he is.”

  Chase chuckles. “Well, that’s a good point.”

  “This got heavy. Do we need drinks? I think we need drinks.”

  “Sit,” he says. “I’ll get them.”

  “Okay.” I reach for my wallet.

  He waves me off. “I’ve got it covered.”

  “All right, then the next round’s on me. I’ll take a dirty martini, please.”

  Chase nods and heads off toward the bar. I press my palms flat against the tabletop and look around. It’s been so long since I’ve been in here.

  I don’t feel old, not exactly, but I’m suddenly acutely aware of how young I was in college. I was a child. We were children, traipsing down to this bar and ordering bottles of beer that we could hold while we danced. We had no idea what we were doing or what was in store for us in life.

  I glance over at Chase, who has reached the bar and is leaning across to place our order. It’s so strange to be here with someone like him. He’s no child. If I’d seen him in college, the last time I was here, I probably would have just felt uncomfortable that there was an adult around. But that was ten years ago, and he can’t be much older than I am now. Which means it’s appropriate for me to be looking at him this way.

  Not that I’m getting any ideas. I hardly know him. I’m not that impulsive. But he is awfully nice to look at. The way he’s standing, I can see the line of his thigh muscle and the curve of his ass. I bite my lip. God, I’d like to go over there and grab him.

  Okay, where did that thought come from? That’s highly unlike me. I force my gaze away from his lower half and back up to his face. He really does look familiar.

  He said he’d never been to Applewood before, but could he have been lying? Maybe he did go to Vesper. But why would he lie about something like that? I must have seen him somewhere in Chicago. That’s hard to believe too, but I’d rather think that I ran into him at the dentist’s once or something than that he’s been lying to me.

  The bartender walks away from him to get our drinks, and Chase turns around to look out at the room while he waits. He leans back, elbows on the bar, body angled just so, chin up. He gazes out into the middle distance. And suddenly it hits me.

  I know where I’ve seen him before.

  He should be leaning on a car, not a bar.

  I fumble in my purse, pull out my phone, and open a browser window. Quickly, my fingers clumsy, I type in the make and model of a luxury car and the words “print ad.”

  I remember this now. I saw it in my entertainment magazine. A flashy yellow car, parked at a scenic overlook and lit dramatically. And leaning against it, staring off into the middle distance, an attractive blond man in a fitted designer suit…there.

  There he is, right in front of me. It’s Chase. He’s in the ad for this car. This is a big deal, a nationwide ad campaign. Chase isn’t just a model, he’s a very successful one.

  What the hell is he doing in Applewood? Shouldn’t he have some kind of entourage insulating him from normal people like me?

  I pull up a new window and run a second search, asking for the name of the model in this luxury car campaign. I have no idea if that kind of information will be accessible or not, but it turns out that it is. Chase Harker, the results say. I run a quick image search to ensure that it’s correct, and yeah, that’s him.

  I glance up at the real Chase, still at the bar, and give thanks for my investigative reporting skills that have prepared me to do this kind of digging so quickly.

  I click open an article and read:

  Billionaire model and philanthropist Chase Harker, who broke out in the modeling world just a few short years ago, has experienced a decline even faster and more unexpected than his rise. After declaring his retirement just over a year ago, Harker retreated from the spotlight and hasn’t been seen since.
What is he doing, and will he ever re-emerge into the public eye?

  He’s missing? Well, not missing in the missing person sense, of course—this isn’t that kind of drama. But there’s a story here nonetheless, and it’s one I could crack. The world wants to know where billionaire ex-model Chase Harker is and what he’s been doing? I know exactly where he is, and with a few simple questions, I could easily find out what he’s been doing.

  I could write this story instead of that stupid avocado thing. If I turned this in to Georgia, she’d finally see that I’m capable of handling stories with real substance.

  Chase returns to the table, interrupting my thoughts. “One dirty martini for the lady.”

  I accept it. “Thanks.”

  “I saw a pool table over there,” he says. “How about a game?”

  “Sure, sounds fun.”

  I know enough to know that a drink and a little light distraction are the perfect tools to get an interview subject talking. I’ll find out everything there is to know about Chase Harker and why he left the modeling world.

  But as he grabs a couple of pool cues and hands one to me with a smile, I feel a prickle of hesitation. He’s been nothing but kind to me all evening. First running off that unwanted man in the theater, then walking me to my car. Buying us a round of drinks. Listening to me about the loss of my mother… Is this really someone I can exploit for a story?

  I’m not sure. Maybe I won’t be able to do it after all. But I can at least get the information. That won’t hurt anybody. I can learn all about him, his career and what led him here, and what he’s going to do in the future. And once I have all the facts, then I’ll make a decision. After all, maybe the story isn’t damaging at all. Maybe it’s something that will make him look good. Maybe he’ll be happy a reporter’s finally here to set the record straight about his “mysterious disappearance.”

  Take it easy, Kendall. Follow his lead. See what he gives you and go from there. This night could still go all kinds of ways.

  Chapter 6

  Chase

  We don’t even have to wait for the pool table to become available.

  “This would never happen in Chicago,” I say, racking up the balls.

  Not that I’d know, really. The kinds of bars I frequented during my time as a model didn’t exactly have pool tables in them. Nor would I have been allowed to play if they did.

  My agent always made it clear to me that public appearances were all about appearance. I wasn’t allowed to do anything that might permit someone to take an unflattering photo of me, and that included leaning over a pool table. For that matter, I wasn’t supposed to have personality attributes either, and liking pool would probably have counted as one. “The public needs to see you as a blank canvas,” my agent always reminded me. “They need to see themselves in the clothes you’re wearing, or with the product you’re selling. That’s how this works.”

  “What bars do you go to in Chicago?” Kendall asks.

  She’s leaning on the pool table, the ceiling fan causing her skirt to ruffle gently around her thighs. And suddenly I’m noticing the shape of her thighs, how firm they are, and I’m wondering how it would feel to have them wrapped around me.

  Shut it down, Harker, I warn myself. It’s been too long—way too long—but that doesn’t mean I can go jumping on the first girl I meet in a movie theater.

  I force my eyes back to her face, but there’s a knowing look there now. I think she saw me checking her out.

  She asked me a question. I force my mind back to it.

  “I don’t really go to any bars anymore,” I stammer. “I’ve been…you know…focused. On work. For the past few years.”

  “Oh, really? What do you do for work?”

  “I told you, didn’t I?” I don’t want to tell her the truth, but I also don’t want to be caught in a lie here.

  “We didn’t talk about our jobs.” Kendall cocks her head at me. “You must be misremembering.”

  “Right. Well. I’m in app development.”

  Technically not a lie.

  “Have you built any apps I would have heard of?” She hooks her ankle around her cue to hold it steady as she chalks it up.

  “No,” I say, fixing my gaze on my own cue to keep from staring at her.

  In truth, some of my investments are fairly well known, but I’m enjoying my anonymity in this small town. I don’t want her to figure out that I’m really Chase Harker, model and recluse. I don’t want to answer a million questions about what it’s like to be a model, and what I’ve been doing in the years since my retirement. I just want to enjoy my gin and tonic and a game of pool with this girl. It’s like I’ve been given a vacation away from my crazy life and into the land of normal people, and I’m finding I really like it here.

  “I’ll break,” Kendall announces. She strides to the end of the table, leans over, and takes her shot. The balls scatter in all different directions, caroming off the walls of the table, and the nine ball drops into a side pocket.

  She cheers, grabs her drink and tips it at me, and downs it in a single long swallow. “I guess I’m stripes.”

  I can’t keep the smirk off my face. She’s stripes, huh? If that’s the case, she’s set me up perfectly.

  I step up to the table and take aim, relishing in the feeling that in a small town like this, no one is watching me. What I said before was true—this would never have happened in Chicago. But it’s not just the crowds that flock to the bars there that would have prevented it. In Chicago, somebody would have recognized me by now. My face has been on billboards there.

  With a snap of my arm, I connect with the cue ball, knocking it into the three. The orange ball angles off the edge of the table and drops into the corner pocket.

  “One to one,” I say.

  Kendall whistles. “Not a bad shot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean, I did set you up for it.”

  “On purpose?” I ask her, grinning.

  “Not entirely,” she says, grinning back.

  “It’s your shot,” I tell her, waving her toward the table.

  She leans over and takes her aim. Before shooting, though, she looks back over her shoulder at me. Does she suspect me of checking out the curve of her ass when she bends over the table? I mean, I was doing that, but the thought of being caught in the act is mortifying.

  But she smiles and turns back to the table, lines up, and shoots. She connects with the seven ball, one of mine, and I’m about to gloat until I see that it’s headed for the thirteen. Sure enough, it’s the thirteen ball that drops into the pocket, and the seven bounces off the wall and rolls to a stop in the middle of the table.

  “There you go,” she says. “I didn’t line it up for you that time.”

  She certainly didn’t. The seven ball is stranded, and the cue ball is nestled against a wall, rendering it almost impossible to hit. At least, from one angle it would be…

  I walk around the table, take aim, and hit the cue ball directly into the wall, using enough force that it ricochets back. Peripherally, I see the smile vanish from Kendall’s face as the cue ball connects with two of the solid color balls, splitting them and sending them neatly into opposite corner pockets.

  “Wow,” Kendall says. “You’re really good at this.”

  “My father taught me,” I admit. “I’ve been playing all my life.”

  “I thought you weren’t close with your father,” she says.

  “I’m not now. But this was when I was younger. The distance between us only came up when I was an adult and told him I wasn’t planning on following him into the family business.”

  “What was the family business?”

  “Cars. He owns a chain of dealerships.”

  “Wow. He must be very successful.”

  “Yeah, and I guess he always dreamed of passing it on to me. But I don’t have a passion for cars, you know? They’re all the same to me. And I’m always going to recommend a safe, affordable vehicle o
ver a flashy one, and that’s not a very good quality in a car salesman.”

  She laughs. “I guess it’s not. It’s a nice quality in a human being, though.”

  She steps to the table and fires off a shot, and though it’s not as flashy as my two-for-one, she does get a ball to drop.

  “You’re pretty good at this yourself,” I tell her. “Who taught you?”

  “Oh… A guy I knew once.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “Daniel.” She looks down, focusing on the chalk and her cue even though it’s already over-chalked. “I guess you would call him my college sweetheart, if that’s a thing. We dated all of sophomore and junior year.”

  “Sounds pretty serious.”

  “It was the most serious relationship I’ve ever had,” she says. “For a while I even thought he might be the one.” She sighs, sets her cue aside, and reaches for her drink. “Have you ever thought that? That you’re in the middle of your life’s big love story?”

  Of course Ashley immediately comes to mind. “I can relate to the feeling,” I say carefully. I want to talk about Ashley and everything that happened there even less than I want to talk about my true identity. “It’s definitely hard when something like that ends.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “It was so long ago, and I don’t have feelings for Daniel at all anymore, but I still feel like I lost something big and important. Not the person, but like…the idea of the person. I spent two whole years with him believing I’d found the love of my life, and it’s hard to recover from the realization that I could be so wrong.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I say softly. “What happened between the two of you?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. We were young. We were never as well matched as we thought we were, but we were too young to realize it. And he wanted me to change.”

  “Change how?”

  She shrugs. “He likes traveling, and he wanted me to make all these plans for big trips with him. Well, that doesn’t make sense for me. I have my aunt, and I don’t have the kind of money for that sort of thing anyway. But Daniel wanted me to be someone more, I don’t know—carefree, I guess. Someone who could pack up at a moment’s notice and head off to Europe or Fiji. And that sounds fun, I’m not going to lie, but I have my family to think of.”