From Dare to Due Date

by Christy Jeffries

  “Oh, come on, Garrett. I find that extremely difficult to believe. Sure, there may be some women out there who would love that type of public life—my mom, for one—but most rational ladies I know wouldn’t want anything to do with that kind of constant exposure.”

  He took his hand-tooled wingtip off the brake and resumed driving toward Cessy’s house. But every few hundred yards, he would look over at her, as though the tooth fairy had just fluttered into his truck with him and he couldn’t quite accept the realness of the situation.

  She pointed to a large craftsman-style home with a huge wraparound deck that looked out over Lake Rush. “That’s it up ahead.”

  His four-wheel-drive tires crunched along the U-shaped gravel driveway. “Do you think there’s room to park my truck in the garage so it can be out of sight?”

  “Probably.” She took the keys out of the cup holder in the center console. “I’ll go in and open the garage. I might have to move Cessy’s car and park it out front.”

  “Wait,” he said, reaching out and wrapping his fingers around her upper arm. “Are you really willing to hide out here with me? I mean, how do I know that you’re not going to be calling the paparazzi the moment we get inside and blabbing out our location?”

  She stiffened her back, trying not to be insulted by his question. None of his behavior this morning had been the reaction she’d expected from him when she’d first spotted his famous dad and the cameraman today.

  The second she’d heard his father say “GP,” her first thought was that Garrett had lied to her. She’d been right and he was some spoiled rich guy used to getting what he wanted. Her second thought was that he’d gone just as pale as she had, if not more. Then he’d told his notorious father to get out.

  At first, she’d assumed that he didn’t want it found out that he’d gone slumming with some has-been cheerleader and was now expecting an illegitimate child. But she’d quickly seen that his disgust was directed at the camera and his anger aimed at the older guy dressed like some big kahuna. Several comments he’d made in the past were finally adding up.

  “First of all, my only other choice would be back at my apartment with my mother. Second of all, why is it so hard for you to believe that I want nothing to do with any of that forced notoriety, Garrett? From what I saw back at the café, you weren’t too thrilled to be in front of those cameras, either. So if that’s the case, clearly it would stand to reason that there are other people in the world who aren’t any different from you—people who would detest the intrusion just as much as you do. I’m not even sure why you hate it, but let me assure you that some of us have a lot more than just our privacy to lose.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Is this the part where you decide to tell me about whoever the hell this Nick guy is?”

  * * *

  He still didn’t know whether he was buying it. But he had to admit she’d looked downright petrified at the thought of having her whereabouts disclosed on television. Then, when her mom had walked in and made that comment, Garrett recalled that article he’d read on the internet. The one about her stalker.

  If they were going to lay all their cards out on the table, now would be the time. He held her gaze, willing her not to clam up now.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you about Nick. But let’s get inside the house first. I’m freezing.”

  He looked down at her skimpy attire and mentally kicked himself for shutting off the truck and its heater. “Fair enough.”

  She jumped out and ran up the front porch steps. Damn, he would never get tired of watching her body in motion. She sashayed through the large redwood door and slammed it closed behind her.

  The garage door slowly lifted and he saw the taillights of Cessy Walker’s red coupe back out into the driveway. Once Mia had it parked along the side of the house, Garrett pulled his truck inside. He had to park at an angle to make the extralong bed fit, and he cursed himself for purchasing such a useless vehicle.

  Sure, when he’d bought it, he’d just come home from a two-year assignment in Afghanistan and he’d been missing some of the luxuries he’d grown accustomed to stateside. Being stationed just outside Boise, it hadn’t seemed like that much of a splurge at the time since he’d needed something for the rugged mountain landscape, but with the hint of the luxury he preferred.

  His whole life he’d tried to do everything the exact opposite of his old man. When he’d started junior high, his dad took him back to school shopping at Tommy Bahama. So when it was time to go to high school, Garrett begged to attend an elite prep academy with uniforms so he could wear a coat and tie. His dad drove an old VW bus, so Garrett bought a used Buick for his first car. But blood ran thicker than premium unleaded and extra starch, and he wondered if he would ever be able to escape his connection to his family.

  And now that he had his own child on the way, he wondered how he would feel if his son or daughter turned out to be the opposite of him. Deep down, he knew he would still love him or her and would never give up on his offspring.

  He looked at his cuff links, then unfastened them and dropped them in the center console before rolling up his shirtsleeves. There were a lot of ways he was exactly like his father, and persistence was one of them. Garrett’s clothes and the car he drove didn’t make him who he was. But how could he prove that to Mia?

  Mia reentered the garage and held open the mudroom door for him. He jumped out of the truck and followed her inside. They bypassed the kitchen and entered a living room three times the size of the Cowgirl Up Café.

  Speaking of going overboard on luxury, Cessy Walker’s decorating bill had probably eaten up a large chunk of her monthly alimony payments. Vaulted wood-planked ceilings with exposed beams arched high above his head and huge unadorned windows faced the crisp blue lake outside.

  Her overstuffed sofa was covered in a soft taupe-colored suede while chairs and throw pillows in matching beige tones filled up the living room. Several pottery vases were lined up along a glass-topped coffee table that had the same square footage of his sleeping quarters on board the USS Bowler. The vases were probably more expensive than the rest of the furnishings in this entire room. But they were ugly as sin. Hopefully, Ms. Walker wouldn’t bring up any more suggestions for decorating his office.

  Mia walked over to the thermostat and pushed some buttons before finally giving up. “I can’t figure this stupid thing out. It’s too high-tech for me.”

  “Maybe I should make a fire,” he said, nodding toward the wide hearth made entirely out of river rock.

  “That would help. I’ll check the kitchen to see what the food supply is like. I hope we don’t have to stay here too long because if I know Cessy, there’s probably only expired carrot juice and a fifth of vodka in the fridge. If we’re lucky, we might find some frozen diet meals and a bag of Snickers miniatures in the freezer.”

  Mia left the room and he walked toward the fireplace, noticing there wasn’t a log to be seen. He looked around the room again and then stuck his head behind the screen before realizing it was a gas line with a hidden light switch to turn it on. He flipped the toggle and a roaring fire shot to life.

  That was easy.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and his first thought was that his dad had probably just come to the conclusion that he had vanished and was already on the hunt.

  But when he looked at the screen, he saw Cooper’s number pop up instead. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Doc,” his friend said. “It looks like you’ve been found out. Maxine told me about your old man showing up at the café. She said you and Mia hightailed it over to Cessy’s place to ride out the storm.”

  “I was right about the provisions,” Mia said, walking back into the room holding a spoon and a small container of peanut butter. “But at least she had this in her pantry. Oops, sorry,” she whispered when she saw him on the phone.

>   “It’s Cooper,” he mouthed and watched her settle in on the floor in front of the fire. She took off her shearling-lined boots, then winced before lying on her back and stretching one leg up into the air. She pointed a toe before bringing her shin all the way to her forehead. Man, she was flexible. He’d remembered that from when they’d made love that night in the hotel room. He watched her, mesmerized as she put that leg down and raised the other one up for the same stretch.

  “Did you hear me, Doc?”

  “I’m sorry. What was that you were saying?” Garrett turned his back so he could concentrate on the call.

  “I asked how persistent your father was. As in, how long do you think you’re going to have to hide out before he gives up and takes his camera crew home?”

  “I don’t think it should take more than a couple of days.”

  “A couple of days?” Mia yelped from the floor. Garrett looked back at her to nod, but she was now sitting up with her legs in an open position, her torso leaning forward and her back arched.

  Aw, hell. How was he going to last a couple of hours alone in this house with her, let alone days?

  He walked toward the back deck and opened a sliding glass door, needing to cool off.

  Cooper continued. “Well, Mia left her purse and cell phone at the Cowgirl Up. The ladies think that if she plans to be there for a few nights, she might want a change of clothes. Kylie’s going to hit Duncan’s Market and grab some groceries for you guys and Max is going to pack her an overnight bag. They’ll meet up and bring some stuff over later. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Do you want me to swing by your condo and grab some gear for you, too? I mean, Cessy has a pretty extensive wardrobe and I know you’re a sucker for the designer clothing. But I don’t think you two wear quite the same size.”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess I probably will need some clothes. Thanks, man.”

  “No problem. So how’s Mia doing?”

  “I think her knee is a little bit sore.”

  “I wasn’t talking about her knee, Dr. McCormick. I meant, how is she doing considering the big blowup at the café earlier?”

  How the heck was he supposed to know? She’d seemed flustered at first, but then she’d gotten a little attitude in the car when she’d insisted that not all women were after his money or his notoriety. Actually, he’d liked seeing her square her shoulders and challenge him. But at this second, he really just didn’t know what to think.

  He looked back toward the fireplace. Mia had removed her sweater and was lying on her back, her arms extended above her head and her feet out in a wide V.

  “I’m not entirely sure. She looks pretty fantastic, if you ask me.” A heat rose up Garrett’s cheeks as he realized he’d just confessed exactly what he’d been thinking. “I mean she’s...uh...stretching right now and... Aw, hell. You might want to tell Maxine and Kylie to just hurry up.”

  Garrett pulled the phone away from his ear so that Cooper’s sudden burst of laughter wouldn’t pierce his eardrums, then discontinued the call when he realized his buddy’s loud guffawing wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

  He returned his cell phone to his pocket before rubbing his forehead. “Your friends are going to be here any minute with some clothes and groceries and stuff.” His voice sounded unusually scratchy to his own ears.

  Mia sat up and he suffered a moment of guilt for bending the truth. Really, nobody would be here for probably a couple of hours, but he needed to tell himself otherwise so he didn’t put either one of them in a compromising position.

  “Then we might as well relax while we wait for them.”

  Relaxing and letting down his guard was the last thing he wanted to do. “Why don’t you tell me about Nick?”

  There. Hearing about a former lover would dim any man’s desire.

  Her blue eyes grew darker, and her lips turned down slightly. But she nodded and stood up. “Okay.”

  Her bare feet padded over to the sectional sofa. He waited until she was settled in one corner and then sat on the opposite side of her, wanting—needing—to keep his distance.

  She ran a hand through her long dark hair, then deftly wrapped it into a loose knot on top of her head—as if she were preparing to get down to business. “Nick Galveston was a guy I met when I was cheering in Miami.”

  “Nick Galveston? Where do I know that name?”

  “He was the punter for the team I cheered for a few years ago.” Aha. She’d been involved with a professional athlete. Maybe he’d had her pegged right, after all. But he sat silently, keeping his forming opinions to himself. “I’d never really met him, but he called me out of the blue one day. Said he’d seen me during one of the halftime routines and had bribed someone in the admin office to get my personal number.”

  He nodded, but she wasn’t looking at him anyway. She stared straight ahead at the fire, seemingly lost in her recollections. “I told him that there was a strict rule against players and cheerleaders fraternizing off the field. And honestly, even if there wasn’t, he certainly wasn’t someone I would normally date anyway.”

  “And what kind of guys do you normally date?”

  “Lately?” Her head whipped back toward him and he saw the flash of sadness in her eyes before it was replaced with an air of defiance. “Not any kind of guys. Actually, back then, I didn’t date much, either. I was focused on my career.”

  “Your cheerleading career?”

  She looked at him as if he was a bunion on her foot. “No. On my dance career. I was planning to attend Florida State to get my master’s, but my mom had been pressuring me to audition for an NFL team and I needed to earn some money to cover my first year’s tuition. Anyway, even if I had been in the market to date, it surely wouldn’t have been with some spoiled, rich playboy who’d paid someone money to break the rules just to obtain my number.”

  “So, you have a thing against rich guys?”

  “Not because they’re rich.” She looked down at his shoes before quickly refocusing her gaze on the vaulted ceiling. “I don’t like them because of their sense of entitlement.”

  Why did he have the feeling that she was lumping him into this same category?

  Whoa. He needed to check himself. Mia’d been on the cusp of opening up and he’d put her on the defensive. While she was cute when she got riled, he needed to stop acting like a jealous lover and more like a compassionate listener. “So this dirtbag... I mean, this Nick guy was pretty entitled?”

  “That’s okay. You can call him a dirtbag. Lord knows Kylie and Maxine have called him way worse. I have, too.” She put her elbows on her knees and propped her chin in her hands, her resignation obvious. She took a deep breath before continuing. “But he was even more creepy than entitled.”

  She leaned forward to reach for the jar of peanut butter on the coffee table and sucked in a breath, grabbing her knee instead.

  “Are you okay?” He was by her side in an instant.

  “I think so. I’m pretty sure I just tweaked my leg when we were running to your truck earlier. I was stretching it out, but it’s still pretty tender.”

  “Here, let me see,” he said, then sat next to her and pulled her leg onto his lap. He kneaded the muscles around her knee, not wanting to put too much pressure on her tendons. “Feel better?”

  She nodded then leaned toward the container on the glass table again, but Garrett was quicker and handed it to her, along with the spoon she’d brought from the kitchen.

  “Thanks.” She lifted the edge of her mouth shyly, but Garrett could tell the smile wasn’t heartfelt. He had a feeling telling this story was harder on her than he’d anticipated.

  “Maybe we should talk about this later. It’s kind of been an emotional morning and...”

  “No.” She held up her spoon to interrupt
him. “You need to know and I’m supposed to be able to talk about it and put it in my past.”

  She unscrewed the lid of the container. “I’m also supposed to watch the extra calories during the first trimester, but since I tend to use food as a coping mechanism, well, I figured I might just need a spoonful of PB reinforcement.”

  He watched as she took a bite, mentally steeling herself for the conversation, and decided she was much tougher than she looked. He could sit here all day, watching the emotions cross her face. But when he heard her take in a resigned breath, he knew he wouldn’t have to.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “the first couple of times he called, I was polite, but told him no. After that, he had roses delivered to me at one of our rehearsals. I was mortified and my choreography coach was wondering who had sent them. So, not wanting to get in trouble, I refused the bouquet and sent the deliveryman on his way. When I got out to my car the next night after practice, there were torn flowers and stems all over my car.”

  “That is creepy.”

  She bit her lip and nodded. He kept massaging her knee, more for support than pain relief now. “Things just progressed from there. All season long, he called me and drove by the practice field and the studios where we had our rehearsals. I changed my number, but then he started escalating. He got bolder, coming over to talk to me during the games while I was on the sidelines. During the last game of the season, he missed an easy kick, causing a fumble and the team lost. He ran over to me afterward, screaming that I had distracted him and that because I was all he could think about, he hadn’t been able to focus.”

  Garrett could feel her leg tensing and knew her whole body was reliving the fear and stress of the verbal attack. He wanted to relax her and remind her that she was safe now. But he also needed to keep her talking. Not only because he needed to hear the rest—but because he sensed she finally needed to let it out.

  “Where was security during all this? Where were the managers and coaches? Did everyone see this happen?”

  “The station had cut to commercial break already and, did I mention that it was Nick Galveston?” She took a bigger bite of peanut butter, as though she was using the food to wash the jerk’s name off her tongue.