Eden's Baby

by Adrianne Lee

  Then his hands slipped lower, gliding over her belly, and Eden tensed. Would he notice its new roundness? She hated not telling him about the baby. Hated worse not knowing whether or not he was the father. But his words “for as long as we’re together” rang inside her head and reinforced her conviction that she would not use this pregnancy to trap him into a commitment.

  His hands, doing wild things to her body, his mouth pleasuring her, grabbed her attention and sent her troubled thoughts skittering away. “Oh, David.”

  She could no longer resist touching him. She reached for the fragrant French milled bar and lathered her hands, then began washing him as he had washed her, spending long minutes enjoying the sensuous play of her palms over his sinewy chest and washboard stomach, his lean, taut buttocks, finally wrapping her fingers around his erection and sliding soap-slicked strokes up and down that hard, fevered flesh.

  “Eden,” he cried, pulling back with desire-glazed eyes.

  Steam swirled around them, floating, rising. Warm water sprayed down over their bodies, sweeping away the soapy suds. His gaze was hungry now, his breath as quick and ragged as her own.

  Moving behind her, David cupped her breasts and gently pulled her back to his front, then he slipped inside her. And as small as she was, she took all of him as if God had created her especially for him alone. Need—throbbing, coursing—drove him deeper and faster into those hot, tight, moist depths.

  Lost in the fervor of their joining, Eden felt herself spiraling out of control, higher and higher, her breath quicker and quicker, her heartbeat wilder and wilder, until she crested the peak with a shout of triumph that sliced through the foggy steam and echoed off the bathroom walls seconds before David’s did the same.

  THEY ATE DINNER in robes provided by the hotel, then afterward curled up on the deep-cushioned sofa with cups of coffee. Eden felt as sleepy as a sated cat in a sunny window. The only shadow over her mood was a stray thought about Rose Hatcher. “Did you contact the police?”

  “I tried getting hold of Tagg, but he wasn’t in. I’ll be damned if I’d give Kollecki the information. I wouldn’t sic him on anyone, not even Rose.”

  The shadow gained density. “What if Rose isn’t the murderer? Have you thought who else might be?”

  “No, but she had me considering Lynzy pretty seriously.”

  Eden lifted her brows in surprise. “Really? To me, Lynzy seems the least suspicious of all our suspects. She’s too obvious to be a liar, let alone a murderer.”

  “That’s just it.” David took a swallow from his cup. “In any good mystery novel, the least suspicious person is usually the guilty one.”

  “This isn’t fiction.” Eden laughed. “Besides... Lynzy seemed to genuinely think that Rose was the murderer. Do you think she was faking that?”

  “No. Then again, I believed with all my heart that Rose had killed Marianne. Now... well, I have to admit, I’ve had my doubts.” He opened his arms, and Eden scooted closer, resting her head against his shoulder. He said, “Okay...for the sake of speculation, let’s suppose Rose is innocent. Who would you suspect?”

  “If not Rose...” Eden didn’t even have to think about that. “Denise. If looks could kill, I’d have died on the spot from the one she gave me when she saw me in your arms at the hospital right after she was taken off Beth’s case.” She craned her neck sideways and gazed up at him. “How do you feel about her—could she have murdered her stepsister?”

  He rubbed his chin. “I knew Denise and Shannon carried on a fierce competition over men. But Shannon made it clear to me that she cared too much about Denise to let any man really come between them.”

  Did Denise feel that same loyalty? Eden stifled a yawn. “Ariel hinted that, too. But how can we know if Denise felt that way about Shannon?”

  “Maybe there is no way to know. Hell, maybe we should wonder about Ariel.” David toyed with a strand of Eden’s raven hair, short and ragged edged, framing her face and emphasizing the cornflower blue of her eyes. “Ariel seemed eager enough to accuse Denise of sibling jealousy, but what about her own motives?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could she have anything against Shannon, or Valerie, or Peter?”

  Eden recalled her suspicion that Ariel had told Kollecki how Peter verbally abused the women of his family. It seemed even more plausible now that she was the one who’d told the cop. “She might have resented the way Peter sometimes talked to Beth... but would that give her motive?”

  “It doesn’t seem likely. Could he have done something specific to Ariel? Something we don’t know about?”

  “Certainly” She curled her feet beneath her. She was quiet for a moment, then it struck her they were looking at this all wrong. “David, since we believe the murderer is a stalker, shouldn’t the real issue be how all of these women feel about you?”

  She was right. That was the way they should consider all their suspects. But, dammit, it was degrading enough even thinking about being the object of someone’s demented obsession; trying to imagine one of their suspects as that “someone” made him sick. “I know Ariel was grateful when I recommended her to you. But she’d done a super job nursing James’s daughter last summer when Mindy’s first attempt at waterskiing resulted in a broken pelvis. And you know how good she’s been with Beth. As to her feelings for me... I haven’t noticed anything. But I can’t say I was looking, either. What do you think?”

  “To be honest, I’ve been so wound up in my own problems, I haven’t paid that kind of attention to any of our suspects.” But she should have. She grew thoughtful again. “What about Colleen? Secretaries often fall for their bosses.”

  “She’s hard to read. Plus she’s been too tied up with her mother to have been at the lake house.”

  “Has she?” Eden sat straighter. “Aren’t we taking her at her word?”

  He frowned and swore again. “That’s the trouble... we’re both so basically honest that we’ve been taking everyone at their word. Colleen’s alibi is something we can check out. I’ll call the nursing home in the morning.”

  Eden settled against his shoulder again, and David shut his eyes, letting his mind roll over his earlier thoughts about neuroses and people like Colleen. Was she an obsessive personality? Lynzy certainly was. Even when she had lots to do, her desk was always tidy, a place for anything and everything....

  But Colleen, for all her prissy attire and prim appearance, was slower and, if he were honest, less efficient.

  Denise had plenty of obsessive behavior, now that he thought of it. She denied her softer side, keeping her emotions rigidly controlled. Her hair and clothes were, if nothing else, bother free.

  Ariel, on the other hand, seemed a free spirit with her tousled hair and her hot-pink nursing outfits. But she was a fanatic about her patients, keeping precise charts and following exacting routines.

  Which if any of them had violent tendencies?

  He ought to know.

  Which if any of them had an obsession with him?

  He ought to know that, too.

  But he didn’t.

  RAGE BOILED through the woman’s veins. She gripped the letter opener like the dagger it resembled and slashed its blood-crusted tip across the photograph of David’s face, cutting a jagged tear from ear to ear.

  He had chosen Eden.

  Revenge whistled through the hollow pit in her chest where once her loving heart had pulsed. Now that organ was but a shriveled black lump, too dark for a ray of sympathy, too dried-up to provoke tears, too small to ache at his betrayal.

  She stabbed the picture again, digging the tip of the letter opener into his temple like a pin poked into a voodoo doll. David had sealed his own fate. He wasn’t going to die. But he was going to wish he had.

  IN THE QUEEN-SIZE BED of the hotel suite, Eden fell asleep in David’s arms. He liked the feel of her nestled against him. She was so tiny and so tough. He smiled to himself, realizing he liked both those things about this woman. His wom
an. Damn. He also liked the sound of that.

  But would she? He blew out a melancholy breath. Eden was recently widowed and, unhappy marriage or not, as abandoned as she was in their lovemaking and as much as she seemed to care for him, he knew better than to entangle himself with someone on the rebound. Yet he had jumped in with both feet. If she broke his heart, it would serve him right.

  He kissed the top of her head, inhaling the sweet, fragrant scent of her silky hair. Would she break his heart?

  Thunder boomed overhead as if God were confirming this fear. He shuddered and shoved the awful thought away. But the rain hitting the window seemed to tap the thought free. Gingerly he disentangled himself so as not to wake Eden, then threw off his covers and strolled into the bathroom.

  Whiskers grazed his jaw, and his hair was tousled. The troubled man reflected in the mirror brought to mind another rainy night that he’d stood staring at himself like this.

  His gaze fell to the counter, to the complimentary comb provided by the hotel. A sudden shiver scurried down his spine as the thing he’d struggled for days to recall popped clear and whole into his head. Combs. Three combs had been taken from his house two months before Rose Hatcher had escaped from jail.

  He let out a pent-up breath. She couldn’t have taken them. Nor could she have taken Valerie’s gun from her Mercedes. And Valerie would have mentioned seeing Rose driving through her neighborhood. Unless Rose was disguised. But that also ruled her out as the woman Valerie had thought she recognized.

  It didn’t prove she hadn’t killed Marianne, but it meant she was innocent of the more recent murders.

  Did she really know who the killer was?

  Dear God, was she completely innocent as he’d thought when she’d first been arrested? Eden had told him to trust his gut. He decided to do just that. What time was it?

  He hurried back into the bedroom and found his watch. Not quite eleven. If he left right away, he could still keep the rendezvous with her.

  He tossed on the clothes he’d left heaped on the floor, scribbled Eden a note and pinned it to his pillow. The note was only a precaution. He doused the lights, confident that Eden would be safe here, that he would be gone and back before she even woke.

  Minutes later he exited the elevator into the lobby. His attention was so focused on the coming meeting with Rose Hatcher, he didn’t notice the raincoat-clad woman ducking into a corner as he headed for the front doors.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eden’s dreams were haunted by the stalker. She was at the hospital again, feeling those eyes drilling into her back. This time she looked around and scanned the crowd. There she was. Standing in the shadows near the corridor to the Health Sciences Building. Eden turned to tell David.

  But he was gone.

  Eden spun back to the woman. A man was hurrying toward the shadowy figure. David. No. She wanted to snatch him back to the safety of her embrace. He was too far away.

  She set out after him, calling his name. He didn’t seem to hear. He kept on, racing after the shadowy woman, away from the main corridor into the Health Sciences Building. She saw them duck into a stairwell and followed them down two flights to the basement. Terror ran with Eden, speeding her heart to a breathless tempo.

  The basement was a maze of halls, eerily shadowed. David and the woman disappeared through one endless hall, then another and another, each darker than the last. Eden tried to quicken her pace, but her legs were leaden and it seemed to take forever to travel a short distance.

  She rounded a corner and stepped into total darkness. She tensed, frozen like a snow sculpture. “David?”

  He didn’t answer. Where was he? Had the woman done something to him? Eden couldn’t breathe at the thought. Where was the woman?

  A disembodied laugh rang from the darkness, and a glowing yellow light suddenly filled the end of the hall. The woman was still a shadowy haze, reflected in the queer light. But Eden could see David clearly, and her heart was seized with pain. He lay at the woman’s feet, a dagger protruding from his chest.

  Horror riveted Eden in place for a full second. She leapt forward, railing at the woman with all her might. As she reached David, she dropped to her knees beside his lifeless body. The eerie light shrank from David and skimmed up the woman’s body like a false moon. Despite her fear for David, Eden couldn’t resist its powerful lure; she lifted her head and gazed at the woman.

  The woman had no face.

  Eden jerked awake. Pitch darkness greeted her, momentarily disorienting her. Her body was damp with sweat, her heart pummeled her chest wall. It took long seconds to recall she was in a hotel room. With David. She sagged in relief and began shaking off the nightmare, but as her roaring heart quieted, she realized the only breathing in the room was her own.

  She felt across the bed for David. His place was empty. Cold to the touch. She lurched to a sitting position. Had he gone into the bathroom? “David?”

  Silence. She called out louder. Still no answer. She switched on the bedside light, blinked against the sudden brightness and scrambled out of the bed. She searched the suite. He was gone. Like in her dream. Her heart thumped unsteadily.

  No. She was being macabre. The stalker hadn’t gotten David. But his bed was cold. He’d been gone for some time.

  Worried and befuddled, she strode back into the bedroom. A slip of white paper was stuck to his pillow. She let out a shuddery breath, snatched it up and read quickly. Her relief scurried away, and the chilling sweat once again flushed her body. Had he lost his mind?

  No. She forced herself to calm down and reason out his motives. She sank onto the bed, clutching the note to her heart. He wouldn’t have gone to meet Rose unless something had convinced him she was no threat. What? She reread the note. Nothing. Not one little clue.

  A noise from the living room startled her. Was it the door? David? She leapt off the bed to investigate. The door locks were still engaged. Disappointment rattled through her. What had she heard? The storm?

  She ambled back into the bedroom, catching sight of the note, now crumpled on the floor. Images of her nightmare replayed, and a fear as chilling and harsh as the wind flailing the windows swept through her. David might have come up with some reason to trust Rose Hatcher, but she had no cause to believe the woman wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

  What if she meant to kill him?

  Eden grabbed the phone and dialed David’s number. After the twentieth ring, she hung up. Fear squeezed her chest. She tried calming herself. It wasn’t midnight; maybe he hadn’t reached the house yet.

  Good. She didn’t want him meeting Rose alone. She made two more quick calls, then dressed and hurried downstairs to meet the taxi she’d ordered.

  THE DOWNPOUR was relentless. The taxi maneuvered cautiously through the water-clogged Seattle streets and onto the freeway. Eden perched uneasily on the back seat. Her sense that something was wrong increased with each mile marker they passed. “Could you go a little faster?”

  The cabdriver glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m doing as good as I can for the conditions, lady.”

  She knew he was. He switched lanes, spewing a jet of water at a taxi parked on the side of the road, jacked up, the driver changing a tire. Eden gripped the seat with tense fingers. Things could be worse: she could be the passenger whose taxi had the flat tire.

  They arrived on David’s street after midnight. Streetlights did little to relieve the gloom. The taxi pulled to a stop, and Eden peered through the rain-streaked car window, immediately reminded of another rainy night that she had sat outside this house. It had looked beckoning then.

  Now it seemed dark and uninviting. She glanced again at the streetlight. The power wasn’t off. Why weren’t the lights on inside the house? Her bad feeling doubled. Where was David? He should have been here long before her. Was it his cab on the freeway?

  “You gettin’ out, lady, or you want to go back to the hotel?”

  “Getting out. But I want you to wait.” She ga
thered her courage and raced through the rain to the porch. She lifted her hand to the door, but the moment her knuckles connected with it, it swung open. Her nerves leapt. “David?”

  Her voice echoed eerily in the house, as if the whole place were devoid of people. Fixtures. Furniture. Life. With her heart in her throat, she stepped into the foyer. “David?”

  The silence brought her nightmare flooding into her mind again, the vision of his dead body uppermost. Striving to curb her fear, she forced herself to move into the house and, starting with the living room, she searched for him, turning on lights as she went from the living room to the kitchen, to the office, to the spare bedrooms.

  The bathroom door hung open, and there was a smear of something dark red like fresh blood on the floor. She drew a sharp breath, retreating a step. Fear prickled her neck and tightened her skull. Was it David’s blood? Would she find her nightmare had come true?

  David’s bedroom was at the end of the hall. She realized a light was on in there. She approached with caution. David’s agonized voice cut through the stillness. “Eden!”

  He was alive. She scrambled to the bedroom door and froze at the sight before her. David was kneeling, gripping a blood-soaked dagger. Again he spoke her name in that same agony-choked voice she’d heard a moment before.

  But he wasn’t speaking to her.

  His cries were for the woman lying on the floor beside him, her face turned toward the wall. Her denim coat had a pool of dark liquid in the center of her back. Impossibly Eden felt she was looking at herself.

  “David?” Her voice cracked.

  He jerked as if he’d been struck by a whip.

  He shifted toward her, lurching to his feet, rearing back in shock. His eyes were filled with tears, then disbelief and confusion. “Eden?”

  His gaze flicked between Eden and the woman on the floor. “Then who?”

  The front door crashed open, and footsteps clumped down the hall, coming closer. Eden lurched around.