Negotiation Tactics (Sutton Capital Series Contemporary Romance)

by Lori Ryan

  She finally cleared her throat to break the uneasy silence that seemed thick and foglike in 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 town 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 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.

  Jennie turned to her traitorous dog that lay sleeping in the backseat. “Really? 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. I gave him a disposable phone earlier in the week. He’ll bring it to your parents so we can call them on it 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.”

  Chad 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?” Jennie 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!”

  Chad 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 foggy to Jennie. 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.”

  Jennie looked at Chad 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.

  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.

  Jennie looked at Chad 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.

  Jennie couldn’t stop the tears that came as everything she was feeling began to hit at once.

  “I’m sorry, Chad. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I only needed to be alone with it for a while longer. Just needed to think, without anyone knowing. It’s really confusing, you know?”

  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.

  Chad was quiet for a while as the truck ate up the road and Jennie reigned in her tears.

  “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,” he said.

  Jennie closed her eyes and nodded. “I know.”

  She didn’t know how they’d negotiate this one and what they’d work out, but she knew regardless of what they agreed to, there would be a lot of pain for both of them in the months to come.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Being together at the cabin was much harder than sharing the villa at the resort. In the cabin, they shared so much more. Jennie and Zeke slept in the only bedroom while Chad slept on a cot outside her door in the living area. 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 together.

  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 be. Oh, he had always known that there was some sadness in Jennie. He knew it had to do with her husband’s death. 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, all of that lightheartedness was gone. And 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 seconds in the shower when he’d slipped up and taken her without protection had cost Jennie so much. His lapse wa
s 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 Chad 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 damn pastries.”

  Yeah. Their negotiation tactics had changed somewhat lately.

  She gradually began to build up that outer façade of happiness with him again. She started to joke more, even when her head was in the toilet bowl puking up whatever he tried to get 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 Zeke would take Chad’s 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.

  ***

  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 had reported that Jennie’s house had been broken into and trashed. Someone had been there looking for her and 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. Chad came back sweaty with his T-shirt clinging to that godlike chest of his. He’d strip the shirt off and jump in 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 onto the beach, 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?” Chad laughed as he leaned in suggestively.

  “Gah!” Jennie stood and stormed off to the shower, not looking back at him as she went into the bathroom.

  She did give in to the urge to rearrange Chad’s 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, then stepped into the shower.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chad waited for Jennie to turn off the water in the shower before knocking on the door.

  “Jennie,” he said through the door. “Dinner – chicken or beef?”

  “Cheese Danish,” came her reply.

  “Uh, no. Chicken, then. Stir-fry chicken with veggies or grilled chicken and salad?” Chad countered.

  Jennie opened the door, letting out a cloud of steam around her. Chad looked down at her, hair wet, bathrobe around her tiny frame, and her hands fisted on her hips as if she were ready to take him on. She smelled of that light flowery scent he was pretty sure was lilacs but also seemed to be innately Jennie. His body’s response to her was involuntary and unwelcome, but it was there just the same. There was no stopping it. He only hoped he could ignore it and that she didn’t notice.

  He knew, if she asked, he would probably give her anything she wanted.

  Except cheese Danish for dinner.

  “Pudding, then. I’ll have pudding,” Jennie said.

  She brushed past him and either didn’t see his eye roll or chose to ignore it.

  “Jennie, you can’t just eat shit like that. You need more nutrients in you.”

  Chad could tell she wasn’t eating nearly enough to feed both herself and the baby. As much as he didn’t want to be angry with her, his frustration was wearing on him. He wanted to strap her to a chair and force-feed her something more than pudding, but he forced his expression into a neutral mask.

  “I puke up more nutrients. I can keep pudding and pastries down. If I eat anything else I throw it up. My doctor said not to worry about it for now. The nausea should stop in a couple of weeks. Then I can eat all the fruits and veggies and lean protein you want to shove in me. But for right now, she said to eat whatever I can keep down. I can keep down pudding and pastries. So, you choose. Either one is fine with me.”

  Her grin was cheeky, but Chad didn’t want to give in, no matter how cute she looked when she argued with him. He hated that she was so sick at times and he was beginning to wonder if this was normal. There were times when she was retching on what he knew had to be an empty stomach and he wondered if the baby could be harmed from that. It couldn’t be good for the baby. He read his way through most of the book on pregnancy and realized nausea was pretty standard but he’d feel even better if she saw a doctor.

  “Hey, Jen. We could be here awhile. Maybe we need to find a doctor in this area to see you. Aren’t you supposed to go in for regular visits now?” he asked.

  Jennie stopped pulling clothes out of her dresser and looked at him.

  “My next visit isn’t for a couple more weeks. I don’t have to go in very often right now, but as things progress, I’ll have to go more regularly.” She stopped and furrowed her brow. “Wouldn’t we need to give them my real name and show ID if we go to someone here, though?”

  Chad shook his head. “No. A walk-in clinic would only check ID if we were using insurance. We’ll pay cash.”

  Jennie nodded. “Okay. We’ll go soon,” she said and went back into the bathroom to get dressed.

  “I’ll go start the pudding,” he said w
ryly as he left the room. He was sure she was losing weight instead of gaining. Chad shoved down the irritation, knowing it wasn’t her fault she couldn’t keep healthy food down. His urge to fix things, to make everything all better for her, was overwhelming and frustrating. Because, it seemed, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t fix this for Jennie. He couldn’t take care of her and the baby if he couldn’t even figure out how to get her to keep food down.

  ***

  The sharp metallic smell of blood and the cruel odor of twisted, burned flesh invaded Chad’s nose, bringing him back to consciousness with a start. Chopper blades sounded overhead, letting him know his men would get to safety. An extraction team would get them out.

  The pressure and pain in Chad’s chest penetrated the cloud in his head. He struggled for a full breath of air, but none came. He couldn’t fill his lungs. Chad turned his head to a medic crouched by his side – the man’s shirt was covered in blood. The medic spoke to Chad, but the noise of the helicopter drowned out the sound. His lips moved, but nothing came out. The needle the man was pushing into Chad’s chest drew all of Chad’s attention briefly as the pain came alive.

  Chad turned his head away from the pain, but immediately wished he hadn’t. Jennie lay beside him, her body limp and lifeless, her eyes open but no longer seeing. Chad struggled to get up, but his body was frozen. He couldn’t move to help her. Chad cried out to her, but Jennie didn’t move.

  Chad was panicked and weak with fear as he realized Jennie’s body was covered in blood, a gaping hole in her stomach where his baby, their baby should be.

  “Jennie!”

  Chad struggled to move, then turned to yell at the medic to help her, but the man just kept talking calmly to Chad as if nothing was wrong.

  “Jennie!”

  “Chad! Chad!” Jennie’s voice sounded miles away as it came at him through a thick fog, as if she were trying to draw him back to her.

  Chad opened his eyes. Jennie stood at the foot of his cot, as if she knew better than to get too close while he was having a nightmare, but wanting to be near. Chad was drenched in sweat, his thin T-shirt stuck to his chest as his heart beat uncontrollably. Chad wiped a hand down his face, trying to erase his mind’s image of Jennie covered in blood, their baby gone. He focused on the willowy cotton gown Jennie wore and the way tendrils of her hair fell over her breasts.