Loe raamatut: «A Baby Between Them»
“I wish I didn’t know you were a cop.”
Why was it such a big deal to her? It had never made sense to him and it didn’t make sense now. Unless she had a record of some kind, unless she was on the run….
He took a step toward her and took her shoulders in his hands, resisting the habit of pulling her into a full embrace. She’d always fit against him perfectly. She was exactly the right height, exactly the right shape, her body a perfect match for his. Even with the baby growing inside her. His baby.
“Why do I want to trust you so much?” she said softly.
“Because somewhere in your heart you know you can.”
A Baby Between Them
Alice Sharpe
MILLS & BOON
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This book is dedicated to my very dear friend
and fellow writer Elisabeth Naughton, with much love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alice Sharpe met her husband-to-be on a cold, foggy beach in Northern California. One year later they were married. Their union has survived the rearing of two children, a handful of earthquakes registering over 6.5, numerous cats and a few special dogs, the latest of which is a yellow Lab named Annie Rose. Alice and her husband now live in a small rural town in Oregon, where she devotes the majority of her time to pursuing her second love, writing.
Alice loves to hear from readers. You can write her at P.O. Box 755, Brownsville, OR 97327. SASE for reply is appreciated.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Simon Task—This lawman has known and loved Ella Baxter for a long time, but he’s recently had to admit love isn’t always enough. Less than a week after leaving her, she disappears. Now he’s either on a fool’s errand or the rescue mission of his—and Ella’s—life.
Eleanor (Ella) Baxter—She’s always been secretive about her past. An auto accident leaves that past a secret from her. The trick becomes surviving events set in motion by an unseen hand. All she’s sure of is her determination to reunite with her father and her growing feelings for the “stranger” who comes to her rescue.
Carl Baxter—Ella’s husband or maybe her ex-husband. He seems to be caring for her after the accident, but there’s no denying his very touch leaves Ella cold. What is he after and how far will he go to get it?
“Chopper”—This big, menacing man wields his knife with deadly accuracy. There is nothing he won’t do to get what he wants.
Kyle Starling—Ella’s father is a wanted murderer and thief who disappeared from her life many years before. Now he’s instigated a deadly chain for Ella to follow—if she can stay alive long enough.
Jack—This larger-than-life man appears out of nowhere. He’s a good man to have on your side in a fight. Just what—or who—is he fighting for?
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
A blob of color off to the left caught Simon Task’s attention as he sped out of a town whose name he’d already forgotten.
He immediately pulled off the highway, the truck spraying gravel as he braked to a stop. Swiveling in his seat, he looked back. There it was, a pink-and-orange plastic ladybug, the kind that attached to the top of an automobile antenna. What was it doing buried in a wrecking yard?
His imagination got the worst of him as he waited for a break in the traffic before making a U-turn into the parking lot. He pulled up next to the shell of a rusty van with a shattered windshield.
It had to be a coincidence. There had to be more than one of those silly ladybugs in the world.
His mission, or quest or whatever you wanted to call it, had begun twelve hours earlier when he’d driven by Ella’s house at three o’clock in the morning. Since their big fight and their subsequent breakup a few days before, he’d avoided her street, but last night had been a busy one. By the time his shift had ended, he’d been tired enough to take the old shortcut. It wasn’t as though she’d be awake to see him drive past.
Much to his surprise, her house had been visible the moment he’d turned the corner, blazing with lights both inside and out. He’d pulled up to the curb in front and sat there until curiosity and uneasiness forced him out of the squad car and up the path to her door.
Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if the instincts and skills honed on the police force, a job she’d begged him over and over again to quit, now provided the very abilities she depended on to rescue her?
Or was he reading this all wrong?
Wrenching his thoughts back to the present, he caught sight of the small snow globe on the passenger seat and picked it up, twisting his wrist, sending glittery “snow” falling over an otter “floating” on a sea of blue acrylic. On the night he’d found the lights on, he’d gone looking to see if her car was in the garage. No car. Instead, there was the snow globe, all alone where the car should have been, so out of place it caught his eye.
He was here because of this damn snow globe.
But was he in the right place?
He set it back down and got out of the truck, striding toward the fence with determination etched on the lean planes of his face. With his thirty-seventh birthday well behind him, he was a man accustomed to knowing what was going on or moving heaven and earth to find out. First things first.
Rounding a stack of tires, he could finally see through the chain-link fence and what he saw almost froze him in place. The antenna supporting the ladybug mascot was attached to a silver late-model sedan, or what was left of one, the same kind of car Ella drove. The hood was buckled inward and up, all but obscuring the windshield. The passenger compartment was partly crushed, shattered headlights and sprung doors attesting to the power of the impact that had put it here in the first place.
Had the driver walked away from this accident? More to the point—had Ella walked away or was she lying in a morgue somewhere? He swallowed hard.
Make sure it’s her car. Bending at the knees, he perched on his heels as he tried to decipher the bent license plate three feet away. Every letter and number he could make out matched up to Ella’s.
“You interested in that car?” a deep voice asked. Simon rose to a standing position as a man popped up from behind a dented SUV, a crowbar in one big hand, two hubcaps tucked under his opposite arm. With a shrill clang, he dropped everything on the rusty hood of yet another wreck and lumbered over to the fence, giving Simon the once-over.
He was fifty or so, pasty and short of breath, a layer of sweat glistening on his brow despite the cool May day. Simon started to reach for his badge but thought better of it. Finding Ella was personal, not official. He said, “It’s in pretty bad shape,” bracing himself to hear the worst.
“Ain’t that the truth?” the man said, producing a can of chewing tobacco. He pinched off a few leaves, tucked the wad in his cheek and added, “Can you believe the driver walked away without a scratch?”
Simon let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Then she’s okay?”
“He’s okay, yeah.”
Simon narrowed his eyes. “Wait a second. He?”
“The driver. Uninjured except for a scratch or two. Amazing thing. Course, his wife got bonked on the head pretty good. They had an ambulance take her to the hospital.” With a wave of a thick arm, he added, “It happened just a mile or two down the road where the highway curves as it drops to the coast. Car went off an embankment and wrapped around a tree.”
Okay, just a second. Since when did Ella allow someone to drive her car, and what was this talk of a husband? “Did you catch any names?”
“Sure. Carl and Eleanor Baxter.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to protest that the Eleanor Baxter who owned this car wasn’t married. This had to be a mistake. But he paused as he considered her nature. It wasn’t inconceivable that she could keep an estranged husband a secret.
He’d actually liked that mysterious quality about her, at least at first. To Simon, coming from a large family with two sisters who never seemed to edit a word they said, Ella had seemed peaceful, composed. It was the churning oceans he’d since detected underneath her calm exterior that grew to worry him.
The wrecker’s eyes narrowed. “The Baxters were tourists. How about you? You from around here?”
“No, I’m from Blue Mountain, high desert country. I’m a friend of theirs from back home. Can you tell me how to get to the hospital where Ella, Mrs. Baxter, was taken?”
“If you came from the east, you must have driven right by it. Won’t do you no good to look for her there, though. She was released this morning. My wife, Terry, works over there in Housekeeping. She says everyone was surprised Mrs. Baxter left so soon.”
Simon’s mind was racing. “Was this woman tall with long wavy blond hair?”
“Tall, maybe. Truth is she was in the ambulance by the time I got to the scene. I got a glimpse of her, but her head was wrapped in bandages.”
Simon hadn’t slept in well over twenty-four hours and he’d been driving for eight. No wonder he couldn’t make sense out of anything, no wonder his eyes burned in their sockets. Running a hand through his hair, he said, “Bear with me while I try to understand this. When exactly did the accident happen?”
“Three days ago,” the older man said. “In the middle of the night. Every cop in the county showed up along with the fire trucks in case there was an explosion. It was a real circus.”
“And the female passenger was released this morning?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know if she’s still in town? I mean she and her husband?”
The wrecker looked over his shoulder as though he’d suffered a sudden stab of conscience. His wife was no doubt cautioned not to gossip about the patients, but she obviously had and now the wrecker seemed to realize he was repeating her disclosures to a stranger. He spit tobacco with practiced ease, the brown glob landing a few feet away, and scratched his belly through a smudged shirt.
Simon casually took out the leather folder that held his badge. It didn’t give him the right to go to the hospital and demand private information without a court order, but he flashed it just the same and the wrecker’s face lit up.
“Oh, you’re a cop. I get it now. What were they, bank robbers, drug dealers?”
“No, no,” Simon said quickly. “I’m just a friend like I told you. I was supposed to meet up with them. I’m showing you the badge so you understand I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
The wrecker appeared mildly disappointed. “Well, the answer is they ain’t here anymore. Rented a car from Lester down at the Pacific 88 Station, and took off. The husband wanted to continue on their vacation over to Rocky Point.”
Rocky Point—Simon had suspected as much. Actually, it had been a toss of the dice, either Otter Cove or Rocky Point, but he’d had a feeling it was the latter. He was itching now to get back in his truck and make it to the coast before dark. One way or another he’d find her. He still didn’t know what was going on, just that he needed to see her with his own eyes. If she’d been playing him for a fool the last year or so, well, that was the past, they weren’t together anymore anyway. But he had to know why she’d left the house all lit up and the snow globe in such an odd spot.
The wrecker, meanwhile, had continued rambling and Simon tuned back in to hear him say, “Doctors said as long as he didn’t pressure his wife, it probably wouldn’t hurt her, and might do her some good. They said it could go away overnight or take a few days or even weeks, just not to push her.”
Once again, Simon found himself playing catch-up. “What could go away?” he asked.
“Like I said, her amnesia.”
Amnesia? Ella had amnesia? Unsure how to respond to this, Simon worked at looking nonplussed as he racked his brain for a comment that made sense. The wrecker lowered his voice, leaned closer to the fence and added, “The wife heard he’s not even supposed to tell her their baby lived through the crash unless she remembers and asks about it.”
The shock these words engendered on Simon’s face must have shown. The wrecker quickly added, “Her memory better come back pretty damn quick, you ask me.”
Okay, this had to be another woman. It wasn’t Ella, it couldn’t be. Maybe she could have hidden a marriage, but a baby? The sudden image of her perfect nude body, of the taut skin covering her abdomen, flashed in his brain. He’d bet almost anything she’d never given birth.
Now all he had to do was figure out what had happened to Ella to separate her from her car so far from home.
The wrecker added, “My wife said the gal hasn’t started showing yet, but nature will take care of that soon enough.”
“She’s pregnant,” Simon blurted out, unable to hide the tremor in his voice.
The wrecker looked pleased with himself. “Yep.”
That meant the woman in the car could be Ella.
And that meant the baby they were talking about could be his.
“IT’S GETTING COLD, Eleanor. Come inside,” Carl Baxter called, his voice drifting out to the outdoor balcony through the partially open sliding glass door.
Glancing into the room, Eleanor saw that he’d stretched out atop the king-size bed and was watching the news on television.
“In a minute,” she said, wrapping the thin blue sweater closer about her body.
Their room was on the tenth floor and overlooked the Pacific Ocean, the distant horizon flushed with color as the sun plunged toward the sea. The thin wind might be cold, but it was still preferable to being inside the small room with her husband.
Her husband! She absently twisted the gold band on her left hand as she tried yet again to conjure up a memory of Carl that preceded waking up in the hospital. Nothing. But the truth was, it felt funny to think of Carl as her husband. He was good-looking enough, with longish blond hair and an aristocratic face, but there was absolutely nothing about him that spoke to her on any level. He was older than she was, forty-one to her twenty-eight, or so their drivers’ licenses revealed. His manner toward her was one of indulgent fondness, she guessed, though it seemed as though he might be a little on the controlling side.
For instance, on the drive from the hospital she’d begged him to drive her home—wherever that might be; no place sounded familiar to her. He’d told her they were going to continue their long-planned road trip, that the doctors had suggested traveling until she regained her memory. They would go back to Blue Mountain when she remembered who she was. It didn’t matter that she wanted to go now; the doctors knew best.
Who was she to argue with the doctors? Except this plan seemed backward to her. Wouldn’t her own space and belongings trigger a memory or two? And what about her parents or brothers or sisters?
All dead, Carl had told her, and then he’d folded her in his arms as though comforting her, but how was she supposed to mourn people she couldn’t even remember?
Her sweater wasn’t warm enough for the wind and she fought her reluctance to go inside. She needed better clothes if they were going to stay on the coast. A Windbreaker, for instance. She apparently wasn’t much of a packer or maybe her suitcase had been lost in the accident.
She could remember absolutely nothing about the crash. It was as though her head was the inside of a pumpkin: mushy, stringy. The irony of being able to recall the look and smell and taste of a squash but not have a sense of self seemed absurd, and she thought more kindly of Carl. It couldn’t be very pleasant to be saddled with a wife in such a befuddled state. She should be grateful to him for standing by her.
But why wouldn’t he help her out a little? Why wouldn’t he show her pictures or tell her stories about her past or explain what she did for a living, what she liked, what she didn’t like?
The doctors. That’s why. He was following their orders.
The door opened behind her. Carl stood half in, half out, the wind whipping his hair. Her own short brown locks barely stirred.
“Time to come inside,” he said, standing aside to allow her to pass him.
He didn’t try to touch her, and for this she was grateful. As she heard the door slide closed behind her, she paused in front of the TV. An announcer was offering details of a homicide, the cameras scanning a weeded lot as a gurney topped with a body bag was wheeled toward a waiting ambulance.
The picture disappeared as Carl clicked the remote. “I was watching that,” she said as she turned to face him.
“It happened a long way from here, Eleanor.”
“But—”
“I don’t want you to watch upsetting, unpleasant things.”
She took a deep breath. Was the man always this calculating or had her new vulnerable state aroused his protective instincts? “How long are we staying here?”
“Through Thursday,” he said, moving toward her. He put a hand around her arm and, leaning forward, gently kissed her forehead. “You can rest tomorrow. Then the next morning we’ll continue on our trip.”
“Where exactly are we going?”
“Wherever we want,” he said with a smile.
“I want to go home,” she said.
“We’ve been through this a dozen times today,” he said.
“Then let’s get the map and choose somewhere else to go. I don’t like the beach.”
“We’re staying through tomorrow,” he snapped, his eyes flashing even as he resurrected a smile. “Why don’t you let me do the planning? You just rest and get better. Are you hungry?”
“Not really. I think I’d like to take a bath.”
“You got chilled staying outside so long, didn’t you? Well, don’t get the bandage on your forehead wet, okay? I’ll order dinner from room service.”
She resisted nodding, knowing from experience the motion would make her nauseated, then escaped into the bathroom, where she quickly flicked the lock.
Chapter Two
Simon knew he was looking for a blue car with chrome hubcaps, two years old. He knew the license plate number and the fact that it had a green rental sticker in the left corner of the rear window.
Thankfully, Rocky Point wasn’t a big town, but it relied heavily on tourists, and as Simon drove into the city, he saw more motels and hotels than he could count. Before the light disappeared altogether, he wanted to cruise parking lots looking for the blue two-door coupe. If the car was parked underground or in a controlled parking lot, he’d be out of luck.
Not for the first time, he wondered if he shouldn’t ask for police help. Or maybe he could march up to every front desk in town and demand to know if there was a Carl and Eleanor Baxter registered. But all of that came with official ramifications, and for now he didn’t want anyone else involved. He knew if he started waving his badge around in a town this small, it wouldn’t be long before the local cops came looking for him—no, thanks.
The beginning letters on the plate he sought were YSL. He pulled into a motel on the beach and drove each row as though looking for a parking place, slowing down at every blue car. Who knew there were so damn many of them?
An hour passed, then two. He drove through a fast food restaurant and ordered a hamburger and black coffee, then went back to his task, gradually working his way north through town.
The task seemed impossible and more than once he was on the brink of taking a room, getting some sleep and heading home in the morning. But he kept at it, more out of perverse determination than because he thought his plan held merit.
A dozen lots later, his eyes burning like red-hot embers, his headlights picked up the letters YSL attached to a blue coupe. He pulled into a spot a few cars away and walked back. The rest of the plate checked out, too; the green sticker was right where it belonged. He used his pocket flashlight to briefly scan the interior. There was nothing in the car he could see except a road map.
He grabbed his overnight bag from his truck and walked into the hotel. It was eleven o’clock by now and the place was all but deserted. He toyed around with asking the clerk who gave him a room if they had a couple named Baxter registered, but held off—he didn’t want Baxter alerted to his presence until he got a feeling for what was going on.
A few minutes later, he let himself into his room with the intent of taking a shower and then casing the hotel. He sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes.
If Ella was the woman in the car, then she was here, in the same building as he. Was her memory completely gone? Before that had happened to her, had she really left clues in the hope he would figure out she needed him, or had he jumped to a bunch of conclusions?
No. She might have lent her car to someone else, but she certainly hadn’t willingly lent her identity. So who was the man acting as her husband and why had he brought an amnesic woman on a vacation instead of taking her home?
He took the snow globe out of his overnight bag and turned it in his hands, remembering the day a few months before when he and Ella had bought it at a gift store less than a mile from here.
Back when they’d been a couple.
Rubbing his eyes, he fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She was here. He could almost feel her presence. When he’d walked out on their argument just days before, he’d intended it to be permanent, but here he was and so was she.
Which added complicated dimensions to the question burning in the back of his brain: What in the hell was going on?
He woke up hours later, still lying on his back, gray morning light filtering through the sheer curtains. “Damn,” he muttered as he tore off his clothes on the way to the bathroom. Five minutes later, he’d taken the fastest shower since his stint in the navy and caught an elevator to the lobby. He immediately crossed to the windows to see if the blue car was still in the parking lot. If he’d slept through their departure, what would he do next?
What could he do?
ELEANOR STARED AT THE PLATE of food Carl had ordered against her wishes and felt a wave of sickness rise up her throat. Thank goodness they were in their room and not the dining room.
“What’s wrong?” Carl said.
She didn’t have time to answer. Throwing her hand over her mouth, she ran to the bathroom and was sick. Sometime later, after she’d washed and brushed her teeth, she wandered back.
“I thought you could eat,” he said.
“My stomach—”
“The doctor warned you’d be sick off and on again due to your head injury,” he said.
“Well, the doctors were right.” The smell of the congealing eggs was making her stomach tumble again. She grabbed her handbag off the chair. She’d searched her purse; she knew she had credit cards in the wallet. “Give me the car keys. I need different clothes and I need to get out of this room,” she said, her hand on the knob.
He was grabbing his jacket. “I’ll go with you.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to add, I need to get away from you most of all! Instead she said, “I remember how to drive. The town didn’t look that big yesterday—I can make my way.”
She stopped talking because he’d put on his jacket and held the keys in his fist. “No, Eleanor, you will not drive yourself around with a head injury. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Besides, mine is the only name on the rental. You’re not insured.”
“Then I’ll walk.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
And because her head throbbed and her stomach roiled, she opened the door and left the room, Carl close on her heels.
It was a drizzly day outside. As Carl went to the front desk, she perused the lobby. Several people were standing or sitting in chairs in front of a big, hooded fireplace. She longed to be one of them, longed to go stand by the fire without Carl hovering nearby.
Her gaze met the gray eyes of a man in his thirties. He was tall and solid-looking, wearing boots, jeans and a black sweater. His hair was dark and thick, combed away from his face. His features were attractive, his mouth perfectly formed, but it was the intensity of his gaze that held her, that sent her left hand up to her cheek. His gaze grew even more piercing and a trill of excitement sputtered along her skin.
She looked away at once, but for some reason looked back. He had turned to stare at the fire.
“Ready?” Carl asked.
She startled.
“The clerk at the desk told me there’s a nice clothing store less than a mile from here. Come on.”
SIMON WAITED UNTIL HE SAW the taillights go on in their car before he left the building and ran to his truck. Within a few moments he’d caught up with them on the main drag.
A brisk, overcast Tuesday morning in April wasn’t exactly high tourist time, he discovered, and wished there were a few more cars around. He’d already announced himself by allowing Ella to notice him staring at her. He couldn’t afford another sighting.
But he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Her hair was short and dark, a fringe of bangs somewhat obscuring bruises and a bandage, framing her deep blue eyes. She’d looked wistful, vulnerable in a way he’d seen her look so few times. He’d wanted to walk up to her, talk with her, see if she knew who he was, ask her to explain what was happening.
Of course, he hadn’t, and when she’d raised her hand to her face in an almost shy gesture, he finally noticed the sparkle of gold on her finger.
She wore a wedding ring. And the man who had come up to her wore one, too. A tall man with long fair hair, chiseled features and a hustler’s tilt to his head.
Damn.
Simon hung back a block until he saw the turn signal on the rental. By the time he turned the same corner, the man was helping Ella out of the car. Simon pulled up to the curb half a block away and watched as they entered a building.
The man. Ella’s husband. Carl Baxter. Call him what he was. But why had Ella dyed her hair? She had to have done it before the accident; surely she wouldn’t use dye with scratches and wounds on her head, but again, why? Her hair was a source of pride for her, at least it had been, so why whack it off unless to disguise herself?
After getting rid of you, maybe she just wanted a change, an inner voice suggested.
Simon pulled his sweater over his head and put on the denim jacket he kept in the backseat, then snatched a green baseball cap out of a side pocket. As disguises went, it wasn’t great, but it was as good as he could do without risking losing them, and he wasn’t going to chance that. He darted across the street.
The inside of the store wasn’t exactly booming with customers, but it was jammed with racks of clothes that seemed to go from floor to ceiling. The clutter made lurking a little safer. He’d just make sure they were in here to actually look at clothes, and then he’d leave and stake out the exterior.
Cap pulled low on his forehead, he caught sight of Ella fingering a rack of blue-green sweaters. It was his favorite color on her.
She took one of the sweaters off the rack and held it up against her supple body, the soft material at once clinging to her breasts and evoking a million erotic memories. It was a long garment and as she turned to look at herself in the mirror, he felt his breath catch in his throat. The night they first met came stampeding into his head and heart like a locomotive off its tracks.
Carl Baxter chose that moment to take the blue sweater from her hands and thrust a yellow one at her.
Simon immediately turned around and left the store, retracing his steps to the truck, where he took out his cell phone. He made two calls. One to work to request a few days’ vacation and the other to an old friend. Then he hunkered down to wait.
“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL,” Carl said, placing his hands on her shoulders and leaning down to kiss the nape of her neck. He was standing behind her as she faced the mirror, trying to arrange her hair to hide her abrasions and bandages.
She didn’t really like the look of the yellow against her skin, and Carl’s lips left her cold, which made her ashamed of herself. As he raised his head and their gazes locked in the reflection of the mirror, she said, “Do we have a good marriage, Carl?”
He smiled. “Of course we have a good marriage.”
“Then why won’t you tell me about it? You know, about one of our days, maybe. A Saturday, for instance. Tell me what we do on a Saturday when I don’t have to go to work at the…”
He laughed. “Trying to trick me into telling you what you do for a living?”
“Can’t you just throw me a bone? What do you do for a living?”
“Why this preoccupation with jobs?”
“I don’t know, I just feel so lost waiting around, I want to do something. I want to know what I used to do, what we did as a couple.”
He moved away toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Carl—”
“You haven’t eaten all day. You must be starving.”
“But the reservation—”
“Is for an hour from now, I know, but they serve wine and cheese before dinner in the lobby. A little wine will do you good.”
Tasuta katkend on lõppenud.
