“I’ll see that Brooklyn gets this,” she promised, moving the teddy bear to one side.
“Good.” Adam began to walk away, but he got no farther than ten steps when he abruptly turned around and doubled back. Reaching her bed, he framed her face and kissed her. The kiss was quick—he couldn’t allow himself to linger, didn’t trust himself to linger—but it still left an impression. On both of them. “Give her that, too.”
“Not until she turns eighteen,” Eve answered breathlessly, then realized her error as her words replayed themselves in her head. Her eyes darted to his. Damn it, why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut around him? She’d given too much away.
So what? she silently demanded the next minute. It wasn’t as if Adam wouldn’t have guessed that a very large piece of her heart still belonged to him, despite everything. Her problem was that she had a face that couldn’t keep a secret.
Adam knew he should be on his way. For more than one reason. And yet, he found himself lingering a moment longer. “The baby’s okay, right?”
“She’s perfect.”
“And you, the doctor says you’re all right, too?”
Her own doctor had stopped by this morning, right after she’d woken up. Dr. Mudd had expressed surprise that she had delivered so early—and so quickly to boot. It wasn’t unheard of, she’d told Eve, but it wasn’t the norm, especially with first babies.
Eve smiled. “She said I’m none the worse for wear—just a little sore.”
“So when are you being discharged?”
The doctor had given her a choice of tomorrow or the day after. She’d chosen sooner rather than later. “Tomorrow.”
Adam nodded, more to himself than to her as he began rescheduling things in his head. “When?”
“Before noon.”
That was doable. Especially if Hugh came through with someone. “Eleven-thirty work for you?”
“I don’t—Why?” she asked, confused. And then it dawned on her. “Are you planning on taking us home?”
He couldn’t gauge her tone, and her expression just registered surprise. “I thought, unless you made other arrangements, that I would, yes.”
With everything so new and in fast-forward mode, she hadn’t been able to think that far ahead yet. Now that she did, she supposed she could have Vera or Susannah take her home. And if something prevented that, she was fairly certain that Josiah would be more than delighted to come to her rescue.
None of these options made her skin tinge the way it did when she thought about Adam taking her home. That wasn’t a good sign.
Eve pressed her lips together, doing what she could to seem indifferent, hoping she carried it off. “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“No inconvenience,” Adam assured her, unconsciously flashing the smile that sent her stomach into a spin-dry cycle. “Okay, it’s settled. I’ll be here tomorrow before noon to take you and Brooklyn home,” he promised, then forced himself to leave.
Even though he really didn’t want to.
He was fifteen minutes late.
The meeting with his handler had run long and then the near-noon traffic seemed to conspire against him, moving slower than an aged inch worm.
On top of that, he’d had to park outside the hospital grounds because, apparently, everyone and his brother had decided that today was a good day to pay someone a visit. Twenty minutes of circling around the lots hadn’t yielded a single empty space. He parked down the street, then ran back to the hospital.
Because waiting for an elevator would eat up more time—and who knew if there would be space for him when the elevator car arrived—he elected to take the stairs instead and ran up the five flights to the maternity floor. When he came hurrying in, doing his best not to breathe heavy, he found Eve sitting on her bed, dressed, with her hands folded in her lap like a school girl attending an old-fashioned parochial school.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, he apologized. “Sorry.” It wasn’t easy not sounding breathless, but he pulled it off. “Traffic,” he tacked on by way of an explanation.
“You really don’t have to do this,” she told him. “I could have easily asked Vera or Josiah to take us home. Not that I don’t appreciate it, but there was no need for you to break up your day like this.”
Was she annoyed, or trying to distance herself from him? Either way, he wasn’t here to get into a discussion. He was here to make sure she was safe. That was the main reason he was here, he told himself.
Adam quickly scanned the room. Nothing seemed out of place. The flowers he’d brought her yesterday had been transferred into a simple glass vase. The teddy bear was seated not too far from it.
“You have everything?” he asked her.
“I will once the nurse brings Brooklyn.”
Adam laughed. “I meant other than that.” He looked around again and came to the same conclusion.
“I didn’t exactly have time to bring anything, remember?” There hadn’t even been the traditional suitcase to grab because, confident that she still had several weeks to go, she hadn’t bothered to pack one. So much for living up to the Boy Scout motto.
“Traveling light has its advantages,” Adam commented. Moving the teddy bear right next to the flowers on the table, he asked, “What’s the protocol? Are we supposed to buzz for the nurse to tell her you’re ready to go, or should I go out and see if I can find her instead?”
We. The single, deceptively small word echoed in her head. He made it sound as if they were a unit. A family. But they were nothing of the kind, Eve reminded herself. Adam’s sense of responsibility was warmly comforting, but she wasn’t fooling herself. Her gut told her that this wasn’t going to last. Not unless he’d actually told her the truth. That he meant what he’d said when he claimed to be through with his old way of life. It could happen. It could be true. He could have given his old life up, opting for a clean slate. Maybe this was him, trying to live his life as best he could.
Don’t get caught up in a fantasy. You know better.
“I’ll try buzzing for her.” Eve reached over for the call button.
Very gently, he took the device from her. “I might have more luck,” he told her when she looked at him in surprise. Putting the call button aside, Adam stepped out into the hall.
“You probably will,” she murmured. She doubted many women could ignore Adam or say no to him.
He was back in less than a minute. She was about to ask if he’d changed his mind, then stopped when she saw that he was not alone. Shadowing Adam was the slender young nurse, Kathy, who had attended to her earlier.
“All set?” Kathy asked cheerfully.
“That I am,” Eve assured her. Preparing to get up, she slid to the edge of the bed.
“I’ll go get your little princess.” The promise, Eve noted, was made not to her, but to Adam.
“She thinks Brooklyn is yours,” Eve commented.
Adam’s eyes met hers for a long moment. “She is,” he reminded her.
After being on her own and thinking of the next eighteen years in terms of just the baby and her, sharing Brooklyn was going to take her a great deal of getting used to—and she wasn’t really convinced that it was worth the effort. She’d had enough pain in her life without consciously leaving herself open for more.
But he was the father.
She’d think about it all later, Eve promised herself. For now, she just needed to get home.
“Here she is,” Kathy announced, walking in with the swaddled infant.
Hesitating before Adam, the young woman seemed undecided as to whom to give the baby to. A moment later, the nurse opted for the traditional choice. She passed the sleeping infant to Eve.
“Wait right here, I’ll bring in the wheelchair,” Kathy told her.
“I can walk,” Eve protested, calling after the nurse’s back.
The young woman returned in a heartbeat, pushing the wheelchair in front of her. She pulled down the brakes on either side of the chair
, then took the baby back for a moment, waiting for Eve to get into the wheelchair.
“Hospital policy. I could lose my job if I let you walk out the front door,” Kathy told her.
Taking her arm, Adam helped Eve into the wheelchair. “Wouldn’t want that.”
It wasn’t clear to Eve if he was addressing his words to her or to the nurse. Making the best of it, she put her arms out for the baby.
The second the transfer was completed, Brooklyn woke up and began to fuss.
It was happening, Eve thought, banking down the panicky feeling as she gazed down into her daughter’s face. Brooklyn and she were on the cusp of starting their new life together.
Nerves undulated throughout her system. All the things she could do wrong with this baby suddenly paraded through her mind.
Her panic intensified. She wasn’t ready.
“Don’t worry,” Adam whispered, lowering his lips to her ear so that only she could hear. “You’re going to be great.”
How could he possibly have known what she was thinking? Eve twisted around to look at him, a quizzical expression of disbelief on her face. “How did you…?”
The smile he gave her magically restored at least some of her confidence.
“Not so hard to guess what’s going through your mind right now,” he assured her.
Eve blew out a breath. It was going to be all right, she told herself. It was going to be all right.
If she repeated the sentence a few hundred times, she thought philosophically, she might just wind up convincing herself.
Maybe.
Adam glanced up into the rearview mirror. Again. He’d been doing it with a fair amount of consistency since they’d left the hospital.
He wasn’t watching for tailgaters.
The last ten miles to her house, he wasn’t certain if his imagination played tricks on him or if his instincts were dead-on. Either way, he could have sworn that a car was tailing him. A late-model domestic beige sedan followed two cars behind his. So far, he’d only managed to get two of the numbers on the license plate.
When he pulled up into Eve’s two-car driveway, the beige car passed her house and continued down the street. Was he paranoid or were his survival instincts so finely tuned that he could spot a tail a mile away? Right now, he couldn’t answer that with any kind of authority.
After parking his car, Adam quickly got out and rounded the back of the vehicle. He opened the passenger door and extended his hand to Eve.
Rather than resort to bravado, she reluctantly wrapped her fingers around his hand. Trying to get up on her own, she realized that he actually pulled her to her feet. She was still wobbly. So much so that she had to steady herself by grabbing on to his arm.
Surprised, concerned, Adam held her for a moment. “Are you all right?”
“Just a little light-headed,” she admitted. “But I’m fine now. You can let go.”
He did so, but only slowly, watching her carefully as he withdrew his arms.
She hated feeling like this. How had women managed to give birth and then continue working in the fields decades ago?
Turning carefully, she looked into the backseat. Brooklyn was strapped securely in an infant seat. An infant seat Adam had bought because she hadn’t gotten around to it. Again, because she’d felt she still had a few weeks left in which to prepare.
“By the way, how much do I owe you?”
About to open the rear passenger door, he stopped and looked at her. “For what?” he asked incredulously. “For the ride home?”
“No, for the infant seat.” She felt remiss in being caught so unprepared. But then, this whole pregnancy had caught her unprepared. “I was going to pick one up this weekend.”
“And now you have one,” he told her. “You don’t owe me anything, Eve. The baby’s half-mine, remember?”
Her mouth curved in amusement. “Which half are you claiming?”
“It’s too early to tell,” he quipped. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
After removing the belts from around his daughter, he picked her up and then gently tucked the baby into the crook of his arm as if he’d been doing this all his life. There was no need for Eve to know that he had bought a life-size baby doll at the toy store and had been practicing this since yesterday.
Adam slipped his free hand around her waist, ready to help guide her up the front walk. “Okay, let’s get you both into the house.”
The short distance seemed to stretch out before her like a twenty-mile run. Pressing her lips together, Eve walked up the path on shaky legs. She surrendered her key to Adam and waited for him to unlock the door. Once inside, she headed toward the sofa, relieved to be able to rest.
As she sank down on the sofa, she could feel Adam watching her. She hated letting him see her like this. It wasn’t part of her self-image.
“This is just temporary,” she assured him.
He shifted Brooklyn to his other side. “No reason to believe it’s not,” he agreed.
Under the pretext of closing the door, he looked out and saw the car he’d thought was tailing them pass by in the opposite direction. It was quite possible that the driver was lost, looking for an address in an unfamiliar neighborhood. But he hadn’t lived this long in a dangerous field by being lax. He remained on his guard. The stakes were higher now than they had ever been.
Crossing to the sofa, he laid the baby down in the bassinette that stood beside the sofa. He’d purchased the item yesterday when he’d gone to get the infant seat.
“Look, I have to get back to the shop for a little while.” Sederholm was going to call him this afternoon and he didn’t want to have to take the phone call around her. “But I’ll be back later.”
He had already done more than enough. She needed to process things, to find a way to get used to dealing with all this—without becoming used to having him around.
“You don’t—”
“—have to,” he completed the sentence for her, banking down a wave of impatience. “Yes, I know. But you’re obviously not yourself yet, and taking care of a newborn isn’t a walk in the park.” He remembered how exhausted his mother had been when his baby sister was first born. “It’s demanding. So, unless you have some kind of support system in place, I’ll be hanging around for a week or so until you can get on your feet again.”
“A week?” she echoed.
“Or so,” he added again.
“Or so,” she whispered in disbelief.
She knew her hormones were in flux and she could always blame this roller-coaster ride on them. But right at this moment, sitting in the shade of Adam’s unexpected offer, Eve wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh—or cry.
Chapter 8
“What’s this?”
The question Eve asked pertained to the eight-by-eleven manila envelope Adam had handed her on his way to the kitchen.
Having taken care of business both at New Again, the rare first-edition bookstore in Newport Beach he supposedly owned, and with Sederholm, the latter involving humoring the college student, Adam had made a quick stop to pick up dinner for Eve and himself. He’d gone to an actual Mexican restaurant that had takeout on the side, rather than going to one of the numerous fast-food places that touted familiar Mexican meals. Time might be at a premium, but taste didn’t necessarily have to suffer because of it.
“Dinner,” he answered, assuming that she was asking about the two large white bags he carried into the kitchen. Adam turned to look at her over his shoulder as he deposited the bags on the counter. “Don’t worry, I made sure your portion wasn’t too spicy, in case you’re—you know.” His voice trailed off as he avoided her eyes.
Considering the incredibly intimate contact they’d already shared, not just when they’d made love months ago, but during the far more recent process of bringing their daughter into the world, Eve found it strangely amusing and perhaps more than a little touching and sweet that Adam had turned suddenly shy.
“Well, just for the
record, I am ‘you knowing,’” she told him, making no attempt to hide her smile at his polite reference to her breastfeeding, “so that was very thoughtful of you, but I was actually referring to this.” She held up the manila envelope. “What is it?” she asked again.
His back to her, Adam began to take their dinners out of the bags and placed the various wrapped selections on the granite counter. “Insurance.”
She glanced back at the envelope, not sure if she even wanted to open the clasp and peer inside. “Against what?” she asked slowly.
“No, insurance,” he repeated, turning around. She was still holding the envelope in her hands. Most women would have already ripped it open. That made her incredibly devoid of curiosity, he thought. “Life insurance,” he emphasized, adding, “on me,” when her expression remained bewildered.
Eve turned the envelope over in her hands, regarding it the way someone might a brand-new alien life-form—and finding it displeasing.
“Okay. Again, why?” This was completely out of the blue and it made her feel uncomfortable without really understanding why. “Is there something wrong with you?” Even as she asked, the dark suspicion behind the words hit her. “You’re not going to…?”
“Die?” he supplied with a touch of amusement. “Well, I’m not planning on it, but you never know.” Especially considering his real line of work and the kinds of people he found himself dealing with on almost a regular basis. “And if something should happen to me, I want to make sure that Brooklyn’s taken care of.” He’d almost included her in the statement, but his gut told him that she would balk at that. He had more of a chance of her going along with this if she thought only the baby was named as a beneficiary.
Not that she seemed exactly thrilled with this revised version, either.
The expression that came over her face was like a dark storm rolling over the prairie, swallowing the terrain whole.
“What’s the matter?” he prodded. “I’m just doing the responsible thing,” he added when Eve didn’t answer his question.
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