She finally looked away from her reflection and over her shoulder to meet his eyes.
Then what an utter fool she’d been.
He shifted and lifted the paper plate that she hadn’t even noticed sitting beside him on the bed. “Sis didn’t exaggerate about them.”
She noticed the fat muffin studded with crimson cranberries.
She turned so she could reach for the plate with her right hand rather than her left and something in his eyes flickered. “You don’t have to hide your scars from me, Laurel.”
Her fingers curled and she pulled back. “They’re ugly.”
“Nothing about you has ever been ugly. Not back then. And not now.” He set the plate down on the bed again and nodded toward a cup on the desk. “There wasn’t any hibiscus tea, but I brought you what Sis did have.” He rose and picked up his overnighter. “I’m putting this in the car. When you’re ready, we’ll go back and have something more substantial than a muffin. We have a long road ahead of us.”
He left, closing the door again quietly behind him.
That long road, she knew, was made of a lot more than simple miles.
* * *
They crossed from Oregon into Idaho by midmorning and stopped for lunch a few hours after that at a restaurant overlooking the Snake River in Twin Falls.
Neither one of them brought up what had occurred in the Captain’s Quarters.
Instead, they talked about the passing landscape, which was, admittedly, something to talk about. They talked about the weather and what both of them recalled from school about the Oregon Trail.
And the more they circled around what happened that morning before cranberry muffins and homemade sausage and fluffy scrambled eggs and Sis pressing A dam’s receipt and his one dollar of change into Laurel’s hand before they left, the more it hung in Laurel’s mind.
The weekend traffic was heavy when they reached Salt Lake City, Utah. And even though Adam had planned to make it further south of the city before they quit for the night, he pulled off the road and into a hotel while the city’s freeways were still packed with traffic.
The hotel had several stories and several wings and a near-empty parking lot.
She knew there wouldn’t be any need this time to head down the road in search of alternate lodgings.
He went inside the characterless entrance and returned with a map of the facility and a key card tucked inside a small envelope. “Fourth floor.” He handed both to her. “Other end of the right wing.”
She folded the map in half, sharpening the crease while he moved the car to a parking spot near the grassy strip separating the parking lot from a chain fence overlooking the freeway below.
He pulled their bags from the back seat and they headed for the glass door at the end of the wing. She slid the key into the security lock and heard it release just when Adam’s cell phone rang.
He glanced at it as he pulled open the door. “Head on up. I need to get this.”
She nodded and went inside.
“Hey, Ashley,” she heard him answer as the door swung closed again.
She chewed the inside of her cheek and forced her feet to continue along the carpeted hallway. She followed the signs to the elevator and went up to the fourth floor. When she unfolded the little envelope, she saw the room number was written on the inside flap and she followed more signs along another carpeted hallway.
The room was at the very end and she realized the lot where they’d parked was right below. Adam was walking slowly along the grassy strip, the phone at his ear.
Her child wasn’t the only one waiting in Texas.
He had an Ashley waiting there, too.
She sighed, stuck the key in the door lock, and went inside the room. The door swung closed behind her with a soft snick.
Tastefully furnished in neutral colors with two queen-size beds, the room was three times the size of the Captain’s Quarters and had none of its character.
Feeling adrift, she dropped the keycard on the dresser and rubbed her arms. Despite her cardigan she was chilled.
When she heard the knock on the door, she swiftly pulled it open.
“Here.” Adam handed her her canvas bag. “There’s a restaurant downstairs when you’re feeling hungry for supper.”
“Okay.” Her voice sounded faint even to her own ears. She opened the door wider, stepping back so he could enter, but he held up his hand.
He was holding another little envelope with a key card inside. “I’m next door,” he said.
It should have been relief that pumped through her stomach, then. “Okay,” she said, even fainter than before.
He gave her a close look. “I figured you’d prefer some privacy.”
She made herself nod.
He took a step back, one foot still in the room, one foot out. “There’s a connecting door.”
She automatically looked and saw there was, indeed, a locked door on the side of the room next to the closet.
Again, she made herself nod.
She knew she had to be imagining what seemed to be hesitancy on his part to actually leave the room.
“I’ll be fine,” she said more forcefully. She gestured toward the bathroom where all of the fixtures were conveniently located in one space. “Big bathtub. Can’t wait.”
His gaze shifted to the side, as if confirming the fact that there was, indeed, a big bathtub. “Knock on the door when you’re ready to eat.”
She hugged her arms again and nodded.
Finally seeming satisfied, he removed his foot from her doorway and it swung closed, leaving her alone.
Her shoulders sagged.
She turned and looked at the two beds. The connecting door.
“You should be glad, Laurel.”
Why wasn’t she?
She reached up to the thermostat on the wall and turned the temperature up several notches.
Then she sat down on the bed closest to it.
She bounced slightly. Stood and turned around to sit on the second.
It was identical to the first.
And despite the long hours in the car, the many miles they’d traveled that day, she wasn’t the least bit inclined to rest. The television held no interest, though she made a stab by flipping through every station it offered. And the big bathtub most certainly could wait until later.
She got up again and tucked the key card in her back pocket and left the room. She was proud of the way her footsteps barely slowed when she passed the room next to hers. Not so proud of the gnawing thought that he was probably on the phone again to his pretty blonde Ashley.
When she’d taken the elevator earlier, she’d seen the signs pointing out the direction of the pool, the fitness center and the guest laundry. She bypassed them all for the complimentary business center.
Once inside, she was alone with the three computers situated against each wall.
She sat at the first one and made a small sound when she noticed the Robinson Tech insignia on the monitor. The screen leaped to vibrant life when she touched the mouse, and she opened the internet browser and began typing.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she hoped to find.
She searched Rambling Rose, Texas, and found a simple municipal website featuring a photo of a very attractive woman. Ellie Hernandez Fortune. Mayor.
Good for you, Ellie.
She poked the mouse and the mayor’s image disappeared. She skimmed a few blog posts about activities around town. An ice cream social at a medical center. Something called Mariana’s Market featuring live music and a new food truck. She even read through the notice of an upcoming town council meeting.
She tucked her hands between her knees, staring blindly at the screen while her pulse ramped up. She hadn’t come down here to look up Rambling Rose. Pretending otherwise was just more cowardic
e.
She swallowed hard and set her hands back on the keyboard. She added more terms to her search and hit the mouse again. The results were so immediate that she snatched her hands away and stared at the picture of Eric Johnson. A much larger picture of him than the one that had been in the video.
A link to an article titled “Museum Benefactor and Business Owner Shows Philanthropic Side” accompanied the image.
She warily probed the nervousness tightening her chest but decided it was no worse now than it had been when she sat down at the computer.
His hair was brown. Shades and shades lighter than Adam’s. Lighter than her own, really. Less Van Dyke brown, more raw umber. His eyes were gray and seemed to have a cool shrewdness to them.
He was a business owner, she reasoned. Shouldn’t a business owner be shrewd?
She touched the mouse again, opening up the link beneath the headline. She expected an article about his philanthropy. She ended up at the website for his trucking company named JLI.
She started to close the browser but stopped. She’d been engaged to marry the man. He was the father of her child. She tucked her hands between her knees again and made herself read more but after ten minutes, she felt like her eyes were crossing. Logistics and supply chains and warehouse solutions were about as interesting as watching mud dry.
She closed the JLI site and then, feeling like she was sneaking into places she didn’t belong, she typed Adam Fortune. Then Provisions.
She ended up with a bunch of results for someone’s obituary in Florida.
She added the word Ashley, which didn’t change the results in the least.
She sighed and propped her elbow on the table next to the keyboard. Then she typed in Constance Silberman Doing Good and the familiar video bloomed to life. But she couldn’t make it all the way through the video.
Not anymore. Not knowing that she was the baby’s mother. Was it her fault he’d gotten sick?
Delete, delete, delete.
She ferociously jabbed the key repeatedly until all of her search words disappeared, leaving her back at the Rambling Rose municipal site.
She clicked on the ice cream social link and recognized the doctor in the picture as the same one from the Silberman video. Below the announcement for the social was a stream of comments that updated even as she read through a few.
Another chance for me to make a glutton of myself, one person posted, with a smiley face after it. Can’t wait!
Smiling slightly, Laurel scrolled further down the screen.
And then her smile died.
Chapter Nine
Adam knocked on the connecting door again. And for the third time, he got no answer at all.
He’d given her an hour since the second knock. In case she was in the bathtub.
But even if she were, he’d never known her to soak in bubbles that long. Because she got too pruny, she’d always said.
He knocked more sharply, trying to curtail the gnawing inside him. “Laurel.”
Still nothing. When he pressed his ear against the connecting door, the only thing he could hear was the mumbling drone of the television.
He shouldn’t have left her alone. He should have sucked it up and given some excuse about needing to share a room again, no matter how many more sleepless nights he added onto his life as a result.
He palmed his room key and left the room. He went to her door and pounded to no avail, then wheeled around and strode down the hall and around the corner, nearly plowing into the housekeeping cart that sat there.
Seizing the opportunity, he glanced into the room next to the cart and spotted the uniformed girl inside.
“Excuse me.” When she looked up with a start from the pillow she was fluffing, he managed a friendly smile. “Sorry to startle you.” He jerked his head. “I locked myself out of my room. You wouldn’t by chance be able to let me in?”
She was shaking her head before he even finished. “You’ll have to go to registration to get another key.”
One part of him was glad she wasn’t going to be so easily talked into opening up a guest room. But another part was aggravated. All he wanted to do was verify in the most expedient way possible whether Laurel was in her room.
If she were, and was refusing to respond for some reason, that was problem enough. If she weren’t, then he needed to find her. He wasn’t going to let her disappear on him again.
“Look.” He offered a chagrined laugh. “You don’t even have to let me in. Just look inside and tell me—” he thought fast “—if I left my cell phone sitting on the bed.”
She returned to the heavily loaded cart and reached up to the top of the folded towels stacked higher than her head and when she did, he realized she was pregnant.
He raised his hand, oath-like. “I’ll stand at the end of the hall in full view of the security cameras. It’s just—well, the thing is my girlfriend went into labor a few hours ago in Texas and I haven’t been thinking straight since.” He spread his palms. “I just want to know if the phone’s there or if I forgot it at the meeting I was at. She’ll be calling me, you know?” He waited a beat. “Please?”
Her lips compressed. But he could tell by the way her shoulders softened that she was going to do it even before she nodded.
“Room four-three-two,” he told her quickly.
She tucked her hands into the patch pockets of her uniform tunic and quickly headed around the corner.
He followed until he stood in the middle of the adjoining corridors where experience told him the security camera would be focused. When she reached the end of the hallway and glanced back at him once more, he spread his hands. “Staying right here,” he promised.
She knocked on Laurel’s door, waited a moment for some response and then used her passkey to enter. She emerged a second later, pulling the door closed behind her. She shook her head at him as she approached.
“No phone on the bed,” she told him.
And obviously no Laurel, either, he concluded. “Thanks.” He took the corner in a hurry, aiming for the elevator. The maid headed the same way, pushing the cumbersome cart.
Laurel had no money. No identification. If she left the hotel, how far could she get?
His gut churned with the possibilities, and none of them was good.
He’d go straight to the security office. He’d paid for both rooms. The same security cameras that might have captured Laurel leaving the hotel were the ones that had seen them entering together. He figured his chances were about even whether they’d be helpful to him.
“Is it your first?”
The housekeeper’s question interrupted the plan he was mapping out inside his head and he glanced back at her.
He thought of Linus. The baby who had Adam’s bone marrow flowing in his system. Who also had Adam’s DNA at his core. The baby he’d never even held or touched.
“Yeah.” His voice sounded gruff.
“Everything’ll be fine,” she told him kindly, coming abreast with him. She patted the small mound at her waist. “My second.”
“Congratulations.” He could see the elevator now. Right beside a door with the word Housekeeping printed on a small oval plaque.
“It ought to get easier.” She sounded breathless. “But my husband is as much a wreck this time as he was the first.”
Adam hadn’t had an opportunity to be a wreck the first time. He knew there wouldn’t be an opportunity to be a wreck the second time, either.
He heard the soft ping of an arriving elevator. “Are you headed there?” He pointed to the Housekeeping door.
“Yes.”
He closed his hand over the cart.
“Sir, there’s no need—”
“I owe you.” He pushed the cart close enough to the door that all she’d have to do was nudge it through once she’d unlocked it. “Thanks
for checking the room,” he told her just as the elevator doors began sliding open.
A slender virago shot out of the car before he reached it, and Laurel nearly skidded to a halt on the carpet when she spotted him. “You!”
That first jolt of pure relief he felt nosedived into abject alarm. Her features were twisted as she hovered there on the balls of her smiley-faced tennis shoes. He started to reach for her. “Laurel, sweetheart, what’s—”
She suddenly launched herself at him and shoved him so hard, he nearly fell back.
He heard the housekeeper’s gasp.
“Why didn’t you tell me!” Laurel’s voice was high. Thick with tears. She raised her hands again and he caught her wrists before she could unleash the second attack. “You should have told me the truth about the baby!”
Then she suddenly crumpled against him, crying against his chest.
The kindness in the housekeeper’s face had disappeared. She gave him a searing look as she wheeled her cart through the door. “Two-timer. Shame on you,” she hissed before the door closed between them.
Adam carefully wrapped his arms around Laurel’s heaving shoulders.
Her hands were fists between them. “I didn’t l-leave him with his fa-ather,” she hiccupped. “I just left h-h-him!”
He closed his eyes, swearing inside.
He should have told her. But he’d still had three days left to figure out how.
“Why?” She took no notice as he began backtracking along the hallway, trying to get her to walk with him, but her feet only dragged. He swung her into his arms and carried her swiftly back to his room.
“Why did I do such a h-horrible thing?” Her face was buried against his neck and she pounded her fist on his back.
If pounding on him made her feel better, he’d take it. “We’ll figure it out,” he said huskily, though he had no idea how. He had to set her down long enough to unlock his room, which first entailed unwrapping her fisted arms. Not an easy task when she was clinging so tightly. “Come on, sweetheart—”
“Figure out what?” She was beyond logic, her breath a constant wheeze as she cried and swung out wildly again. “That I’m a monster?”
The Texan's Baby Bombshell Page 11
