Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She GoesA Promise for the BabyThat Summer at the Shore

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Is the baby really mine?”

  “What?” Anger burned in her stomach at his question, melting the ice of his tone.

  “I know you’re pregnant. You couldn’t fake the doctor appointment, but is the baby mine? Or are we married because you knew you would need someone, and I looked like a chump with money?”

  She ignored her own anger and pleaded, rather than yelled. “I know what you must think of me....”

  “No,” he drew the word out and it echoed through the apartment. “I don’t think you have any idea how I feel about you right now.”

  “But I haven’t lied to you. I didn’t tell you the full truth, but when I told you something, I didn’t lie.”

  “Mother of my child or not, I have no sympathy for cheaters or liars.”

  “But I didn’t...” She stopped begging when she realized Karl’s face hadn’t softened. “Are you going to kick me out?” God, what a position to be in. To not be able to fight back for fear of being homeless while pregnant.

  Karl closed his eyes briefly. “I have to go back to work and figure out how to nail someone who thought they could use city money to enrich a friend’s pocketbook. I’ll think about what to do with you while I’m working.”

  She’d rather he decide what to do with her while he was looking at kittens and puppies frolicking in a meadow. “It’s not the same, Karl,” she murmured. “I changed my mind.”

  “Pack. By the time I get home, I’ll have someplace else for you to go. Mine or not, you’re still pregnant, and I’m not going to kick you to the street without a roof over your head. It just can’t be my roof anymore.”

  He turned toward the front door, then seemed to think better of it. “As soon as that baby is born, we’re getting a divorce. I’ll provide you with money for the baby, but you had better be able to provide me with a detailed accounting of every penny you spend so I know it was all put toward the baby.”

  Without sitting down, without even unbuttoning his coat, Karl left her sitting on the floor holding tight to the hat she’d knit him.

  * * *

  SHE DIDN’T KNOW how long she stayed on the floor. By the time she unfolded herself, every muscle in her body was stiff. The apartment smelled like pot roast. Like a home with people who sat around a table together and talked about their days. The pot roast was a liar. She turned the oven off, but left the pot roast in so it could continue to cook in the cooling oven until Karl got home. Then she went into her room to pack.

  Resourceful. She shoved her clothes into her suitcase, leaving one of her winter coats in the closet. Practicality beat out pride, so she took the cheaper of the coats Karl had bought for her.

  You’ll manage, Vivian, you always do. She yanked the bags filled with her personal items out of the closet. She’d planned on unpacking them tomorrow—good thing she hadn’t grown too comfortable. Her father had gotten her ejected from the only permanent home she’d ever known, and now his specter managed to get her kicked out of her temporary home, as well, just as she’d begun to feel settled.

  You always land on your feet. Just like your mother. Except her mother was dead.

  She hadn’t seen Aunt Kitty in two decades, but her aunt was still family and family looked out for one another. Even if neither of them had any Irish blood in them, St. Patrick’s Day counted as a holiday, right? By the time Vivian drove from Chicago to Reno, it would nearly be time to don the green shamrocks. When Aunt Kitty expressed surprise at seeing her, Vivian could just make vague references to the upcoming holiday.

  Or she could throw herself into her aunt’s arms and cry.

  The fact that Reno was still Nevada and jobs would be hard to find in casino-land was a problem she would have the entire drive to think up a solution to. Anything was better than seeing Karl and his expressionless face again.

  Vivian didn’t think she could stand Karl’s cold gaze, not after she knew what he looked like when warmth filled his eyes.

  She left Xìnyùn in his cage on the kitchen counter. If Aunt Kitty wouldn’t take her in, Vivian wanted to limit the number of dependents she had.

  The odious doorman must have had a sixth sense about her, because he was waiting in the garage for an elevator when she stepped off with her bags.

  He raised an eyebrow. “May I help you with your bags, Mrs. Milek? It is Mrs. Milek, right?”

  Humiliation flooded her face, but she blinked it away. She didn’t owe this man an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything. “I can get it, thanks.”

  And she would carry her own bags, even if her back was killing her. Feeling his smirk on her shoulders for the walk from the elevators to her car would hurt worse than her back, anyway.

  She realized she had forgotten to leave Karl a note—and that she’d embarked on a foolish mission—at the same moment she was able to see through the snow long enough to realize she’d gotten on the wrong highway.

  Despite their long and comfortable phone conversation, she’d still not seen her aunt since she was a child. Showing up on Aunt Kitty’s doorstep with an unborn child for which her aunt bore no responsibility was hardly the way to further a pleasant family relationship. Jelly Bean was a responsibility she and Karl shared; they would share the bond even if neither of them wanted anything to do with each other. Not to mention that her aunt lived in Reno. Vivian might be able to say, “I’ll think about how I’ll get a job in Nevada later,” while in an apartment in Chicago. But that laissez-faire attitude would desert her the moment she crossed the Nevada–Utah border.

  No matter how cold Karl’s eyes had looked as he’d informed her she no longer had any secrets, she couldn’t be the type of person to hurl herself off into the distance with no plan.

  Her more immediate problem was that she’d left her keys in the apartment, which she had meant to do so that she couldn’t convince herself her behavior was stupid and return to Karl’s. She’d been so driven by her shame and anger that she’d purposely made it impossible for herself to retreat without anyone noticing she’d been reckless. If she wanted back in the apartment, she’d have to ask the odious doorman to let her in.

  Or sit in the apartment lobby with all her bags again—another humiliating option.

  She had flicked on her blinker to get on the highway headed in the correct direction when she noticed the light glowing on the name of her current highway through the dark—Stevenson Expressway.

  Mrs. Milek, the Mrs. Milek who deserved the title, lived off the Stevenson. Karl had taken Vivian near here for the family dinner. Mrs. Milek didn’t like her, would probably be happy the marriage was going to fail, but she would also probably give Vivian a place to sit until Karl got off work and announced what he planned to do with her. Mrs. Milek’s open suspicion was preferable to the doorman’s smarmy obsequiousness. At least Mrs. Milek was honest.

  Moving from one mostly white western town to another mostly white western town had taught Vivian that she preferred the children who were hostile to the ones who asked, oh-so-politely, if her dad was the cook at the Chinese restaurant—every western town, no matter how small, had one. Then they snickered, “I didn’t know Chinese people did anything but work in restaurants,” to their friends while pretending they thought she wasn’t listening. Only they hadn’t said “Chinese people.”

  Vivian didn’t like thinking about either of those two types of kids because it did a disservice to the vast majority of her classmates for whom she was only ever “the new girl” and who never got to know her because she always moved before she stopped being the new girl. For whatever reason, her father had managed to keep himself out of trouble for her last two years of high school, and she’d actually made the leap from “the new girl” to “Vivian.” Even after he gambled away her college fund, they’d stayed in Jackpot so she could graduate from high school with friends.

  After a couple wrong turns
and one minor skid, Vivian found the house she was looking for. The lights in the living room were on, and the television flickered through the curtains. She sat in the car trying to convince herself that driving from Chicago to Reno was a good idea, then shook the nonsense out of her head and marched to the front door. When no one answered the bell, Vivian knocked. Still no one answered. It felt as though somebody was in the house, and a car was even in the driveway. Vivian looked at the clock on her phone, then pounded on the door. When no one answered after two minutes, she tried the knob. The front door was locked, so she went around to the side entrance.

  “Mrs. Milek?” she called through the door as she eased it open. “Mrs. Milek, are you here?”

  Canned laughter floated through the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. She followed the laughter, hoping to find Mrs. Milek engrossed in the television or on the phone with one of her children and simply ignoring the door.

  The first thing she saw was a pool of coffee seeping into newish beige carpeting. Then she saw a coffee mug. The sound of vomiting rolled from the hall into the living room.

  “Mrs. Milek?” Vivian eased her way down the hall—not wanting to leave her mother-in-law if she was sick, though not willing to burst in on the woman while she was vomiting. “Are you okay? Mrs. Milek?”

  “Who’s out there?” The question came out in a huff.

  “It’s Vivian, Karl’s wife.” Vivian risked Mrs. Milek’s privacy to look in the bathroom. Her mother-in-law sat on a rug in front of the toilet, wiping her mouth with one hand and holding her back with the other. Vivian swallowed her first question—the answer to “are you okay?” was clearly “no.” Instead she asked, “Can I help?”

  “It’s just the flu.” Mrs. Milek’s breath caught on the next words, like she’d been running a marathon rather than sitting on the floor. “A little rest and I’ll be fine.”

  Middle Kingdom had been adamant that every employee learn to recognize the signs of a heart attack and be able to provide bystander CPR or administer a defibrillator shock if needed. Nausea, back pain and shortness of breath were all signs of a heart attack. “Do you have chest pains?”

  “No,” Mrs. Milek wheezed. “Not any longer. It’s just the flu.”

  “Mrs. Milek, I think you’re having a heart attack. I’m going to call 911.”

  “It’s just—” the woman wheezed “—the flu.”

  “If I’m wrong, they’ll send you home. If I’m right, you need paramedics.”

  When Mrs. Milek turned back to the toilet and lost any ability she had to argue, Vivian called 911. After Mrs. Milek was loaded in the ambulance, Vivian grabbed her mother-in-law’s purse and dug out the house keys. She locked the door, then tried to call Karl at work. After leaving an anxious voice mail on some number in the inspector general’s office that she hoped would get to Karl, she got in her car and drove to the hospital.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  KARL KNEW THE apartment was empty the moment he walked through the door. Despite the bird hopping from side to side in his cage—on the kitchen counter!—and whistling a greeting, his once-peaceful apartment felt devoid of life. He hung his coat and scarf in the closet, then grabbed a towel to dry the snow off his head.

  “Vivian,” he called into the vacuum. He peeked in her room. He didn’t expect an answer, but he also hadn’t expected to see all of her stuff gone. The only thing left in the closet was one of the winter coats he’d bought her and the slight smell of jasmine. “Why did you leave the coat? What am I supposed to do with it?”

  He looked by the front door, expecting to see her packed bags—perhaps she had taken a walk to clear her mind. But nothing was there.

  Her aunt was on the other side of the country in a state where Vivian knew she couldn’t find a job.

  Where else would she go? He breathed concern—not panic, not yet—out of his chest. He’d said he would find her somewhere else to live. She was practical enough not to run off—she was pregnant! Resourceful, her father had called her.

  She must be just on a walk.

  Between the knitting and the cooking and the walks and the job applications, Karl had found her to be a doer, and she would be better served by doing her walk quickly and getting back to the apartment.

  He walked into the living area and looked around. Then he looked behind the couch and chairs. No bags. There weren’t bags near the dining table, in the kitchen, in his room or out on the balcony, either. The only evidence in his apartment that Vivian had ever been here was the coat in the closet, the bird on his counter and the smell of roasting meat in the kitchen.

  She wouldn’t leave the bird. Her father may have won that bird in some scheme or another, but she’d driven the bird across the country. It didn’t matter that she’d had a destination in mind when carting the bird across five states and she might not have a destination now. Vivian held family dear, and the bird was family. She wouldn’t leave the bird. Perhaps she was waiting in the lobby.

  When he finally exited the elevator in the lobby, Karl looked around for his wife. It would be some kind of slap in the face if she’d been sitting in the same seat where she’d originally waited for him, her bags piled at her feet. But the only person sitting in a lobby chair was a man—definitely not Vivian.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  Karl turned to face one of the building’s doormen. “Phillip, I’m looking for my wife.”

  “She left about three hours ago, in her car. I offered to help her with her bags, but she didn’t seem to want my help.”

  “She had all her bags?”

  “Yes, sir. I think so.”

  “Thank you for the information and for offering Vivian help with her bags.” He turned to walk away, but thought better of it. “Phillip?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Ask management to see to those elevators. The ride from my floor to the lobby was inexcusably slow.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The maddeningly slow elevator ride from the lobby to his apartment gave him plenty of time to consider his next option. A note. Vivian wouldn’t have driven off without leaving a note. Despite cheating and casinos and her wastrel father, Karl believed her when she said the baby was his.

  His words had been said in anger, not in truth.

  He also believed that she thought his role in the baby’s upbringing was important—and not just for financial reasons. She wouldn’t have cut him out entirely. And there was the stupid bird to care for. If she didn’t leave a forwarding address, she would’ve at least left instructions for the damn bird.

  He kept calm and refused to hurry through the door and into the apartment to find the note—it would be there, next to Lucky or whatever that bird’s name was.

  Except it wasn’t. It wasn’t next to the birdcage, under the birdcage or even in the birdcage. Karl threw his tie over his shoulder and got down on his hands and knees to look on the floor. The note wasn’t under the bar stools. He went around into the kitchen. It wasn’t on the kitchen floor, either.

  He was exhaling trepidation—still no need to panic yet—when his cell phone rang. “Vivian,” he said, not bothering to check the number on the screen. “Why did you leave me the bird?”

  “Karl Milek?”

  Karl vaguely recognized the male voice on the other end of the line. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Jan. You know...”

  “Officer Czaja, what can I do for you?” An image of a ten-year-old boy following his sister Tilly around the neighborhood flashed in Karl’s mind. Until he’d run into Jan’s mother at Healthy Food proudly showing off a picture of her son in his police uniform, Karl hadn’t known the boy existed anywhere other than within spitting distance of his youngest sister.

  “I wasn’t sure if you knew, but Makowski heard it on the radio. Your mother’s in
the hospital.”

  * * *

  TILLY, DAN, MILES and Renia got to the hospital at almost the same instant Karl did. They all stopped short in the hospital waiting room as none of them had expected to see Vivian sitting in a chair, her head in her hands.

  “What are you doing here?” Karl asked.

  She looked up at him, the normally warm undertone of skin a deathly white. “I came to the hospital after your mom left in the ambulance.”

  “That’s not what...” Karl stumbled to a halt. He normally asked the exact question he wanted an answer to. “How did you know she was in an ambulance?” Only that wasn’t the question he wanted to ask, either.

  Nothing about this scene made sense. Karl wanted to go back to this morning when he and Vivian were riding a wave of happy family over rice porridge. “You disappeared.”

  “What Karl means to say—” his sister Renia shot Karl a dirty look before continuing “—is that we are wondering how Mom is doing.”

  “I don’t know very much.” Vivian’s gaze traveled over the group before settling on Karl. “I called 911 because I thought she was having a heart attack. I don’t know how long she’d been in the bathroom. The coffee on the floor was still warm.”

  Karl couldn’t parse that statement in any way that made sense, his confusion overriding any feelings of fear for his mother. And being confused was easier than worrying about his mother.

  “The doctors told me it was a heart attack, but they should be out soon with more details.” That sentence made sense. Karl’s heart clenched.

  As if on cue, a doctor came into the waiting room and headed directly for Vivian. “Mrs. Milek?”

  Hearing his wife called by his mother’s title while she lay in an unknown state somewhere in this gargantuan hospital made the situation seem even worse. The doctor could be coming out to tell him he was an orphan. His child might never know his—her?—grandmother or get the chance to make a lamb cake at Easter.