Just Eight Months Old...

by Tori Carrington

  Her anger slowly ebbed away.

  “Damn it, Hannah, how could this have happened?”

  She blinked at him and he turned and grasped his plastic cup.

  “You’re right. I didn’t want to be found,” he said. “I—I needed time to think after our breakup. Time to work everything out.” He sought her gaze, looking as if he needed to convince her of something. “You have to believe me, if I had known—”

  “Chad, I—”

  Abruptly he turned away. She swallowed her words and swiped at a lone tear that plopped down her cheek and onto the table.

  “Tell me one thing, Hannah.”

  She shifted her gaze to his back.

  “Did you know you were pregnant when you asked me…what you did?”

  Hannah’s tongue felt like a wad of cotton in her mouth; her heart throbbed an erratic rhythm in her chest.

  “Forget it. It doesn’t matter,” he said roughly. “It’s all over.” As if seeking reassurance in the commonplace, he took a long sip of his iced tea. “I need something stronger than this.” He started for the door. “You want anything?”

  The door slammed behind him before she could answer and she winced. He strode stiffly past the window in the direction of the minimart on the other side of the motel parking lot. The bright beam of a car’s headlights stabbed her eyes and she leaned back, away from the invasive rays.

  Hannah kneaded her forehead, denying the seductive urge to give in to the hot tears pressing against the backs of her eyes. Her and Chad’s words fifteen months ago had been so very, very final. But time and circumstance somehow had dulled their significance, taking away their bite, making Hannah question if she had either heard or said them at all. But if there was one thing she knew, nothing, nothing would dull the memory of what had just happened.

  Chad had said he’d needed time to work everything out. She pressed shaking fingertips against her closed eyelids. Time was something she had never had.

  Trembling from head to toe, she slid her chair back from the table, urgently seeking the rock inside that had supported her so steadfastly before Chad had come back. Why did his reaction to not having been told about Bonny hurt her so much? Fifteen months had passed since their breakup. Fifteen months in which she had endured her pregnancy…alone. Gone through labor…alone. Learned to raise her child…alone. She had grown accustomed to being alone during those times when Bonny napped or slept, wrapping herself in the love she felt for her daughter even when she wasn’t with her. She didn’t need anything more than that. Did she?

  Hannah pulled the file on the table closer to her, not really seeing it through a sheet of irrepressible tears.

  “It’s late,” Chad said quietly.

  She turned to find him leaning against the open door frame. She drew in a deep, unsteady breath at the sight of him tugging at his T-shirt. She scrubbed her cheeks with her fingertips and watched him take the shirt off, then mop his neck with it, the tanned, firm waves of his abdomen rippling as he moved.

  She noticed he didn’t have the “something stronger” he had gone after. Glancing at his duffel lying at the foot of the free bed, she remembered the vodka bottle she’d found inside earlier. He’d said he’d needed time to sort things out after their breakup. Had that bottle, and others like it, helped him do that? And had their conversation pushed him to seek comfort in liquor again?

  Hating the bleak silence weighing down the already heavy air, Hannah motioned toward the table, grasping for something to ease her pain…their pain. And, strangely, above everything swirling between them hovered a stronger attraction, a need for him that hadn’t been there before. She had always wanted Chad. But she had never needed him.

  “Chad?”

  He didn’t acknowledge her query.

  “Why did you come back?”

  She wasn’t aware she was holding her breath until she was forced to draw a fresh one. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she was pretty sure that he hadn’t returned to New York solely because Elliott had called him. If that were the case, he would have gone on the trace on his own and not insisted to go with her.

  He shifted his head to meet her gaze. “I came back to apologize to you, Hannah.” She saw the truth in his eyes. The sincerity. Also the pain. He again turned his back to her. “I returned to tell you I was sorry. Only it looks like I have a whole lot more to be sorry for, doesn’t it?”

  Absently she watched him move around the room, taking things from his duffel, pulling the cover from the other bed, his words penetrating the batting her head seemed to be stuffed with. She didn’t know quite what to say. She didn’t know what she’d expected him to say, but what he had wouldn’t even have made it in the top one hundred.

  She stared at the papers in front of her on the table.

  “Don’t you…don’t you think we should put the personal stuff aside?” Her words sounded so far away, as if another person said them. “We need to talk about the possibility that Persky and Furgeson were working with someone else. If they were, and we can uncover that person, he or she can probably lead us straight to them—”

  “It’s late, Hannah. I’m tired. You’re tired. Everybody’s tired.” He stepped toward her and closed both files, but there was no anger in the move, only calm determination. “Like they say, time flies when you’re having fun.”

  She slowly rose, her legs threatening to give way. She reached to close the curtains, the sound of a dull clatter near the open window halting her hands. Fear laced through her bloodstream, making her dizzy with the sudden shift. Chad instantly shut off the lights.

  “What was that?” he asked, standing close behind her. Too close.

  “I don’t know.” She vaguely remembered the headlights that had pierced her eyes a few minutes earlier, when Chad had left. She swiveled to face him, finding herself in the cradle of his arms.

  “What did you buy?” she whispered.

  She sensed rather than saw him in the darkness. “Nothing.”

  “Did anyone follow you?”

  “No.”

  Hannah reached for the can of pepper spray fastened to her concealed waist belt, trying to summon the strength she had lost during their encounter. Shifting to the other side of the window, she peeked through the crack between the curtain and the wall. A shadowy figure hurried down the darkened sidewalk, away from their room.

  Chad opened the door. He bent and picked something up off the walkway. Hannah turned the lights back on.

  “He’s gone,” she said quietly.

  “Looks like our nighttime visitor is into playing kick the can.” He held up a crushed soda can, then bent to put it back outside the door.

  She shivered despite the heat. “I didn’t see anyone pass the window.”

  “Neither did I. And an innocent passerby doesn’t normally run in the other direction when you hear them.”

  Hannah rubbed her arms, unsure if she could handle this one more thing heaped on top of everything else. “Looks like we’re being followed.”

  Chad eyed her, his gray eyes filled with an emotion she couldn’t immediately identify. Concern? Fear? “That it does.”

  She stepped back to the window and peered out at the eerily quiet parking area and walkway. She recalled the two thugs at Eric Persky’s house. Could their prowler have been one of them?

  “Are you okay?” Chad asked.

  Foolishly, Hannah wished he would put his arms around her, if only for a minute. If only to calm the demons haunting her from within…and to show her in a definitive way that he didn’t hate her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Bonny sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed. “Maybe we’re overreacting. Maybe the guy is a motel guest out for a stroll. Who else could it possibly be?”

  “Not the FBI, that’s for sure,” Chad said quietly. “They would have barreled in here by now.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Look, standing here all night waiting for the guy to return
isn’t going to accomplish anything. He won’t be coming back. Let’s say we get some sleep. We’re going to need it.”

  She nodded numbly.

  “Sleep, yeah.” She carefully pulled back the covers next to Bonny, and slid under the sheet. Chad stood watching her and she rolled to put her back to him.

  “Could you turn the lights out, please?” she whispered.

  He flicked the switch. Darkness claimed the room, the outside streetlights backlighting the curtains. Hannah awkwardly tugged her skirt and bra off, laying them both next to the bed where she could put them back on at a moment’s notice. She stared at the ceiling, listening to Chad rustle around, then she closed her eyes. How could she possibly sleep with her heart thudding, and every muscle aching with the restraint she used to keep herself from climbing into the other bed next to Chad?

  “Hannah?”

  His ragged voice reached out for her in the darkness. “Yes?”

  “She—Bonny, I mean—she looks just like you.”

  Hannah burrowed her face in her pillow and gave herself over to the sadness clutching her heart.

  The following morning Hannah shaded her eyes against the overly bright sun rising up over the endless gray of the Atlantic. She followed Chad up the walk-way toward the casino, hiking an agitated Bonny up a little higher on her hip, earning a grunt of protest in response. At quarter after five, her daughter had awakened with a vengeance, filling the motel room with her inconsolable wails and refusing to take her cereal or even the strained peaches that had always been her favorite. Chad had paced the room restlessly, giving Hannah gazes she didn’t know what to do with. From confusion and helplessness, to uneasiness, his expressions ran the gamut. At least until he murmured something and left the room, leaving Hannah to deal with the crying baby alone.

  Disentangling Bonny’s chubby, curious fingers from where they tugged mercilessly on her hair, Hannah pressed her lips against her daughter’s temple.

  “You have another tooth coming in, don’t you, Munchkin?” she said quietly.

  Bonny robustly delivered her response, her soft mouth pinched. Despite the heat, Hannah hugged her a little closer. She knew exactly how her daughter felt. Being with Chad again after everything that had happened, and suffering his rejection in new and different ways, she’d welcome the pain of an emerging tooth. At least that pain would eventually go away. But his acting like he didn’t know what to do with her or Bonny…well, she feared that pain would stick around far longer.

  She tugged her gaze away from where he walked next to her.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Hannah hesitated, not fond of the idea of handing her daughter over to him. But they both knew she was the better person for the job of finding out who Rita Minelli was. A woman asking questions about another woman was almost always easier, while a man could be suspected of being a spurned boyfriend. Reluctantly she kissed Bonny and tried to pry the baby’s hands from her hair.

  “Now, you’re going to have to hold on to her. When she decides she wants to go, she goes, and her lunges can be pretty hard to handle. And since she’s teething, anything she gets her mouth on, she chews—”

  “I’m familiar with taking care of babies, Hannah,” Chad said quietly.

  She gently bit her tongue, feeling stupid and inconsiderate. She supposed her overlooking that he’d not only had a child before, but a wife as well, was a subconscious protective measure. No, right now she didn’t need the reminder that he’d already had a wife and child. A wife and child he had loved, been part of a family with…and tragically lost. She didn’t want to think about his inability to love her in the same way. His reluctance to bond with their daughter the way he’d bonded with his lost son.

  The picture that sat at the bottom of his duffel was reminder enough.

  Bonny easily went to him. Too easily. Her daughter’s mood lightened the instant Chad put his arms around her, no matter how awkwardly he did so.

  “I—I shouldn’t be long,” she said haltingly, battling the urge to take her daughter with her.

  Bonny tried to stuff her fingers into Chad’s mouth and he caught them gently in his. “Take your time.”

  Hannah started to walk away, then stopped, hesitant to leave her child with a man who didn’t care so much that she was his daughter, but was more concerned with the fact that he hadn’t been told. She hastened her steps toward the casino entrance. She intended to do this as quickly as possible.

  Chad watched as Hannah rushed to the casino entrance as if the devil had a death grip on her ankles. He knew she was nervous about leaving the baby with him. He stared at the flyaway tufts of dark red hair peppering the girl’s head, not sure who was more worried about his being left alone with Bonny: Hannah or him.

  He crossed the street, moving toward a park bench set up beneath a shady oak. He sat down and clumsily positioned Bonny on his lap, finding a sharp contrast between his tanned, corded forearm and her pale, chubby legs. The comparison struck him solidly in the solar plexus. He represented a bitter past with little hope for the future, while Bonny had a clean slate on which to write anything and everything she chose.

  “Dah!”

  Chad grimaced, torn between wanting to keep a safe distance between himself and the baby, and needing to crowd her closer. Inhale her sweet baby smell. Marvel in the feel of her tiny, soft body weighing in his arms.

  What did he know about being a father? His own father had been little more than a “maybe later” kind of dad who was rarely around, had never come to any of his baseball games, missed his two graduations, and hadn’t bothered to come to the airport when he’d returned from serving in the Gulf War. The military had supplied Chad Hogan, Sr. with all he’d ever needed in a family. And when his mother died ten years ago the rift between him and his father had gaped even wider. The last time Chad had spoken to his father he’d been stationed at Twenty-nine Pines, California. Was he still there? Chad couldn’t say. Not that he’d been exactly accessible himself for the past fifteen months.

  No, his father hadn’t given him a good example of paternal behavior. And Chad had gone on to make the same mistakes with his own wife and son.

  Chad repositioned Bonny on his lap, realizing he’d never at any time in his life said, “I want to have a child.” When Linda got pregnant with Joshua…well, that was just the way things went, wasn’t it? You graduated from college, did your tour in the military—at least, according to the way he’d been raised—got married and had kids. He’d never made a conscious decision to take that path. That was what everyone did and he’d done it, too. Then he’d lost his wife and son and he’d realized that having families was a choice. A choice a man should give thorough thought to.

  Of course all that didn’t matter now. He was a father. And he needed to consider everything attached to that role in a way he hadn’t before, had to stare all his faults in the face. Problem was, he didn’t like what he saw.

  A burst of pain shot up his right arm. A pain he quickly recognized was the result of Bonny chomping down on his forearm.

  “Hey there, short stuff,” he said gruffly. He pulled the eight-month-old and her four teeth away from his flesh. “Do I look like a teething ring to you?”

  Her answering giggle and the bright twinkle in her wide blue eyes as she looked at him were enough to knock the breath right out of him.

  And enough to tell him that he didn’t dare grow any more attached to the child in his arms than he already had. If it wasn’t too late already.

  “You don’t want me as a father, Bonny,” he said roughly. He used the towel Hannah had left with him to wipe at the slobber on her chin. “I can’t be the type of dad you need. I’m afraid I’ll never be able to look at you without thinking of…him. I’m terrified that I’ll only end up disappointing you.”

  She jabbered, a frown marring her soft, feathery brow.

  “Trust me, my staying out of your life just may be the best for you. For all of us.”

  He jerk
ed his gaze away from her open curiosity, new emotions meshing with the others already crowding his chest. Feelings of regret. Bitterness that Hannah had never told him about her birth. And finally fear that he should not play a role in Bonny’s life.

  He imagined not seeing the little imp on his lap grow into a young woman, and a pain he’d never known seized his chest.

  Bonny launched a fresh attack on his arm, thankfully giving him a pain of a whole other ilk to think about. Chad rose from the bench and swept her up into the air above him, gazing at the only solid proof that he existed in this world. “We need to get you a stroller, sweet pea.”

  He spotted a shop nearby and started in that direction.

  Twenty minutes later he returned to the bench, Bonny strapped into a brand-new stroller the salesclerk had assured him was top of the line. She squinted at him against the sun. Opening one of the two bags he held, he took out a floppy pink hat and carefully put it on her head.

  “You went shopping.” Hannah’s voice sounded odd as she came to stand behind him.

  Chad turned to face her. “Uh, yeah.” He held out the other bag. “I picked up something for you, too. You know, in case you felt left out.”

  She appeared not to know what to do.

  “Take it, Hannah.”

  She did, but she didn’t look inside at the form-fitting T-shirt he’d picked out.

  Chad corralled the emotions connected to the decision he had yet to make, then took the photo she offered. He watched as she took Bonny from the stroller and propped her against her hip.

  She said, “Our Rita Minelli is in there enjoying her morning coffee before punching in. Last stool at the far end of the bar. Looks just like her picture so maybe it wasn’t taken so long ago.”

  Chad wondered at the relief that eased Hannah’s tense features as she looked over the baby.

  “Guess it’s time for the phone call then, huh?” He frowned at the way she fussed over Bonny. What did she think? That he’d brainwashed their child during the fifteen minutes she’d been inside?

  “Bonny and I will go get the car. Wait out front here when you’re done.”