Love to Believe: Fireflies ~ Book 2

by Lisa Ricard Claro

  She glanced back at her father’s office and shook her head. Even with everything she had done in the past few months to grab his attention, give him a shake, he still treated her as though she were an entry-level office clerk.

  And that, she reminded herself, was the reason she planned to leave the only job she’d ever had, why she was turning away from the family business that she loved and thrived on.

  Turning a page! Beginning anew! Chanted the little angel on her shoulder.

  The devil on her other shoulder, not be outdone, whispered, Giving up. Running away.

  She tossed the coffee and bun in the trash, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and got to work.

  ***

  At three o’clock she said goodbye to her father, grabbed her laptop, and headed off to the doctor. She considered the appointment to be superfluous now as her nausea had evaporated by lunchtime. She ate a cup of soup and crackers with no ill effects, but decided it best to keep the appointment. She needed a refill on her birth control pills anyway. Her prescription ran out a few weeks after Sean ended their arrangement and she hadn’t bothered to get it renewed, but the sudden withdrawal had pushed her system into a tailspin and her cycle had been screwy ever since. Maybe that was the reason she’d been feeling like crap, why she’d been so emotional lately. Not to mention eating comfort food as if she suffered constant PMS.

  She sat in the doctor’s exam room and opened her laptop. No reason to waste time when she could get some work done. The nurse Jen, a stout redhead with a big laugh who Rebecca remembered from high school, had taken her vital signs and sent her off to pee in a cup, then drew some blood and left her alone with the promise that Dr. Hanlon would be in sometime before the next ice age. According to Jen, the flu was going around and the office had been hopping like a flea circus. She punctuated her statement with a robust laugh and a dramatic rolling of her eyes. “You might be in here awhile,” she warned. “I’d settle in for the long haul if I were you.”

  Rebecca took Jen at her word, fired up her laptop, and got to work. She was in the middle of a tax projection worksheet when the door opened and Dr. Hanlon breezed in.

  “Hello, hello.” Dr. Hanlon marched her five-foot-nothing frame into the room with enough energy to power a small city. “Feeling a little flu-like, huh?”

  Rebecca shut her laptop and set it aside. She smiled at Dr. Hanlon because it was impossible not to. The woman radiated confidence and good humor, no matter the circumstances. Born in China, she was adopted as an infant and raised up to be as much of a Georgia peach as Rebecca herself, and her Southern dialect no doubt confused many who prejudged her by her Asian characteristics. Rebecca recalled that upon her first patient visit, she had been one of them.

  “I was, but I’m feeling better this afternoon. It sort of comes and goes.”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Dr. Hanlon nodded and tucked her sleek black hair, cut in a blunt chin-length bob, behind her ears. “I understand you let your birth control lapse.”

  “Toward the end of January. I was in a relationship that fizzled and—” Rebecca shrugged. “—it wasn’t critical anymore. My cycle’s been off, though, so even though I’m not sexually active right now, I’m thinking maybe I should go back on it just to straighten things out.”

  “Right, right. Well, here’s the thing.” Dr. Hanlon paused and lifted her brows for emphasis. “You don’t have the flu. You’re pregnant.”

  Rebecca stared at the doctor as if she’d started talking Chinese.

  “I—what?” Rebecca stared into her doctor’s dark eyes. A fearful awareness prickled into her chest and she sucked in a breath, certain her heart had stopped beating. But no, it thudded hard against her ribs, a slow and steady throb, painful and tight. Maybe she was having a heart attack. What were the symptoms of a heart attack, anyway? Hallucinations, possibly, because she could have sworn the doctor just said—only she couldn’t have—

  “You’re pregnant,” Dr. Hanlon repeated the impossible words slower this time, as if that would help them sink in. “Based on the date of your last real period—” She grabbed the glasses hanging around her neck and slipped them on to read Rebecca’s patient file. “—I’m guessing you’re about eight weeks, give or take.” She removed the glasses, dropped them, and they bounced at the end of their gold chain before coming to rest against the lapels of her lab coat. “You weren’t expecting this.”

  Rebecca swallowed hard. Coherent thought evaded her. She stared at Dr. Hanlon and shook her head. When at last she spoke, the words rasped in a sandpaper whisper. “I can’t be pregnant.” She cleared her throat and tried to swallow again in a mouth gone desert dry. “I can’t be.”

  Dr. Hanlon rummaged through one of the cabinets and found a small plastic cup which she took to the sink and filled with water. She handed it to Rebecca. “Sip this. Take your time, get your bearings. This is obviously a shock to you, but you have options, and you don’t have to decide anything today, or even tomorrow. Okay? You have time, Rebecca, to make an informed decision.”

  Rebecca nodded and sipped. Nausea rolled through her again that she feared had nothing to do with her condition and everything to do with the panic rising in her chest. She pushed past Dr. Hanlon to puke in the trash can.

  Well, she thought. There goes lunch.

  Trembling, she accepted the doctor’s aid in returning to the exam table.

  “Lie down, lie down. Rest for a few minutes.”

  “How can I be pregnant? I never missed my pill, ever. And we always used a condom, every time.” Except for the last time. The best time. The most wonderful time of all because she knew with every cell in her body, with every ounce of awareness she possessed, that she loved him, and was so certain—idiot, idiot, idiot—he felt the same way.

  Stupid. Delusional. A study in self-deception.

  “You had bronchitis around Christmastime and I treated you with two rounds of antibiotics, which can affect the efficacy of oral contraceptives. Without that factor, the pill is about 99% effective, condoms a little less. If you were using both methods, I’d agree that pregnancy was a long shot. But—” Dr. Hanlon’s lips curved in a quiet smile and she shrugged. “—some babies just insist on being born. I’m going to write you a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and a script for something to help with the nausea. Do you have a gynecologist?” At Rebecca’s negative head shake she said, “I’ll give you a couple of recommendations. Wait here. I’ll be right back with samples.”

  Dr. Hanlon closed the door with a gentle click. Rebecca lay on the exam table staring at the ceiling tiles. Sean’s statement from the night at Chez Eloise echoed in her mind: ‘A wife and children are not in the cards for me. Ever. As in never, ever.’

  She rested her hands over her flat abdomen and blinked back tears. How could there be a baby in there?

  And, dear god, how was she going to tell Sean?

  Chapter 15

  Rebecca strode into the drug store on a mission. She slowed her gait in the middle of the store and came to a full stop, fifteen feet from the pharmacy. Her heart sped up, and she made fists of her hands so she wouldn’t give in to the urge to gnaw at her thumb.

  She felt eyes on her, looked over her shoulder with a furtive movement of her head, but the aisle behind her lay empty. Still, what if someone saw her here? Last thing she needed was for one of her mother’s friends, or anyone, to hear her talking to the pharmacist about these particular prescriptions.

  Her jumpiness won out. She walked past the pharmacy to the greeting card aisle. She picked up a few cards but returned them to their slots without reading them, then moved on to the magazine rack. She flipped through the pages of a celebrity gossip rag, but reading comprehension didn’t exist. The words blurred. She glanced around again but saw no one.

  She was being ridiculous. The problem, she decided, wasn’t some unseen stalker lurking behind the potato chip display. The problem was closer to home, hiding somewhere behind her belly button, inside her own body. />
  Pregnant. She was pregnant. Sean’s baby lived inside her right this minute, growing fingers and toes, a nose, ears, mouth, bones, internal organs, developing girl or boy parts. At eight weeks—she’d counted to be sure—the little booger’s heart already beat inside her. No wonder pregnant women had morning sickness, or in her case, all day sickness. How could they not be queasy with a little alien inside them sucking up all the nutrition and looking to move in on important real estate?

  Okay, well, probably best not to call the little booger an alien. And the nausea med she’d taken before leaving the doctor’s office appeared to be doing its job.

  She dropped the magazine back in the rack and began wending her way to the pharmacy, trying to ignore the silly notion that she was being watched. She looked up and down every aisle and saw no one she recognized. No one, certainly, who would have a reason to follow her or scrutinize her movements.

  Paranoid, she decided. Nervous and paranoid, to add to her nausea and vomiting.

  What an attractive combination.

  She shook off her discomfort and feigned a confident stride to the pharmacy counter where she chatted and joked with the pharmacist, a gray-haired man with pleasant features and an accent that made her hungry for her favorite Indian restaurant and a monster plate of tandoori chicken. He answered her questions about the medication, and while she focused on his answers, the small hairs on the back of her neck stood up from intuitive awareness. She took a quick glance around but still caught no one watching her. Just in case, she opted to leave and come back for the prescriptions later. She made a deliberate circuit of the store just to satisfy herself she was being an idiot.

  Instinct had her casting another glance over her shoulder. Artie Brewster, Nate’s occasional partner, loomed behind her, uniform and swagger in place. Her own startled expression reflected back at her from the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.

  “Artie!” She laid her hand against her chest and it bounced with the rapid thump of her heart. “You scared me.”

  His lips curved into a sardonic smile. “Maybe you should be more aware of your surroundings.”

  He stepped past her, and she suppressed a shudder when his shoulder brushed against hers. She watched him saunter to his black sheriff’s cruiser. He paused to stare at her before climbing in, and a trickling fear wended through her.

  She shook off her discomfort with the reminder that Artie Brewster, though a certified redneck asshole, presented no threat. He was a cop, for heaven’s sake. She settled into her car and buckled up, twisted the top off a bottle of water and downed half of it. She sat in the car and watched people come and go while she sipped the rest of her water, satisfied that she had no reason for her overblown nervousness.

  The prescriptions were probably ready now, but when she put her hand on the door handle a vehicle pulled into the space next to her. She recognized the driver as a friend of her mother’s. Great. Just what she didn’t need was some random person spotting the prenatal vitamin label and then blabbing to her mother or someone else. If anyone was going to blab it would be her, and not until she was damn good and ready. That settled it. She’d come back for the prescriptions in a couple hours.

  Her belly rumbled, but in a hungry way this time, so she pointed her car toward home. Rush hour traffic clogged the roads, which in Bright Hills wasn’t saying much. Still, she could probably shave a few minutes off her time if she circled around town instead of going through it, a route that would land her within spitting distance of Caravicci’s. One of Dante’s calzones would sure taste good, along with that special salad with the fresh basil and mozzarella. Even if she puked it up, it would still be worth it.

  She glanced in her rearview mirror and did a double take. A black sheriff’s car followed too close to her bumper. Artie Brewster, she’d bet. She checked her speed without tapping the brakes and eased off the gas to slow down. She doubted five miles an hour over the posted limit warranted a stop, but she kept her speed on target for the next few miles.

  As she neared the strip mall where Caravicci’s was located, the blue lights flashed behind her.

  “Crap. Is he serious?”

  She flicked her directional, turned into the parking lot, and parked in a space at the far end of an aisle. She cut her engine and opened her glove box to locate her registration.

  A glance in the rearview mirror confirmed it was Artie who stopped her, and she grimaced at the sight of him sitting behind the wheel. The egotistical jerk. On a curse, she yanked her license from her wallet, opened the window, gripped the steering wheel, and waited for His Arrogant Highness to approach.

  ***

  Howard Windler cut the engine on the Walker & Son Construction truck, a big-ass Ford 350 Super Duty he felt privileged to drive and glanced with a frown at the bug-eyed young man in the passenger seat.

  “Trey, put that damn fool thing down. It’s time for pizza and beer.”

  “Hold on.” Trey’s thumbs tapped the screen of his new phone. “Y’all won’t believe the shit this thing’ll do.”

  “I don’t care. It’s been a long-ass day and I want food. First, the damn hold up for supplies, and then the problem with the inspection at the Bartholomew building, all because that jackass Big Will hired don’t know how to do his job. The whole day was FUBAR right from the get. That kind of shit never happened when Rebecca was in charge.” Howard scrubbed a hand over his face and covered a yawn. “Now, c’mon, Trey. Ain’t like you won’t be bringing the damn phone with you anyways.” Howard grasped the door handle.

  “Hold on, hold on.” Trey hit a button and held up the phone. “Tell me what you really thought of your day, in language a redneck boy like me can understand. And smile pretty, ’cuz I’m recording you.” He barked a guffaw when Howard let loose a string of curses and made a grab for the phone. “That’s going up on YouTube, you know.” Trey snickered and tapped the screen. “Relax, man. Just kidding.”

  “Can we go eat now, asshole?”

  Still smiling, Trey reached for the passenger door handle and stopped, his eyes bugging more than usual. “Hey, look over there. Ain’t that Rebecca’s car?”

  Howard peered through the window. “Yep. I wonder what she got nailed for.”

  Trey grinned. “I dunno, but let’s mess with her.” He lowered the passenger window and zoomed in with his phone’s video feature. “We’ll call it her Cop Stop of Shame. Oh, man, this’ll be great. I love this phone. Look how close it gets, Howard. I can practically see the—holy shit! That cop just busted her taillight! Smashed it with his flashlight. Did you see that? Howard, did you—”

  “Shut up,” Howard said, his voice a harsh growl and his eyes frozen in a Clint Eastwood squint. “I saw what he did. You’re recording, right? You got it on your phone?”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Trey said. “What cop would knock out someone’s taillight like that, man? Is Rebecca in trouble? Think she needs our help?”

  “Rebecca can handle herself,” Howard said. “But if you want to do something to help, keep that fancy-ass phone recording.”

  Trey nodded, his eyes bugging. “You got it, boss.”

  ***

  Rebecca watched Artie in her rearview mirror. He took his time fiddling with something in his car, then climbed from the vehicle and sauntered toward Rebecca’s Civic. She slid her gaze to the side-view mirror and frowned, unsure what he was doing at the rear of her car.

  His arm came back and he swung the heavy flashlight, and the resultant smashing sound and thump against her vehicle had her flinging the door open and jumping from the driver’s seat.

  “What the hell, Artie?” Rebecca stood beside the open door, arms akimbo, eyes flashing. “Since when does the sheriff’s department go around busting taillights?”

  “Is that what you think happened here, Ms. Walker?” He clipped the flashlight onto his duty belt and approached her, one hand on his holstered weapon.

  Rebecca blew out a sigh and knew from the heat bursting up her neck to her f
ace like a tsunami that her skin splotches had erupted. “Are you the asshole who’s been watching my house? Have you added stalking to your list of things to do now?”

  His answering smirk provided the answer. “I understand you carry a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield. You have that weapon with you today?”

  Rebecca’s nostrils flared and she drew a calming breath, but her voice shook with anger. “I have a permit to carry concealed, which I’m sure you already know. But no, I’m not carrying today. My gun’s locked up at home.”

  “I need to search your vee-hicle.”

  “I need a winning lottery ticket. Looks like we’re both destined for disappointment.”

  “Move aside, Ms. Walker.” Brewster took a step toward the car, and Rebecca positioned herself in front of the open door.

  “Unless you have a warrant, officer, I’m declining your request. And if you feel you have just cause to do a search, then I want your supervisor present, so make the call and invite him to come on. And since you just smashed my taillight, I’m going to make a formal complaint to the sheriff’s department.”

  His lips curved in a slow smile as he stepped closer. “You think I give a flying fuck about a complaint? It’s my word against yours, and honey I’m the one with the badge.” He moved back by a margin and rolled his gaze over her body. “You exited your vee-hicle without cause, you’ve refused to show me your concealed weapon, and I’m feeling threatened by your aggressive demeanor, Ms. Walker. Put your hands against the car where I can see them.”

  Rebecca’s eyes shot fire. “Screw you, Artie. Go bully someone else.”

  She made a move to return to her car and knew regret for underestimating him in the next split second when he manhandled her into position against the Civic, using the weight of his body to hold her still. His duty belt pressed into her back, and his body held her immobile.