The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!)

by Ashley Rhodes

  “What kind of proof can you offer that you can afford this lengthy hospital stay?” He asked finally.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “What kind of cash do you have saved up that you can pay out of pocket to be here,” he clarified, though it didn’t really shed a light on the point.

  “Enough,” I told him. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

  “And what if Valentino knew you were here? What if he knew when you were getting out?”

  A hot spear of anger shot through my spine, turned my vision momentarily red. I sat forward. “You threatening me, Officer Desouza?”

  “I’m just posing hypotheticals, Jack,” he said calmly. “Making sure you’ve thought everything through. You think a guy like Valentino is going to care that you’re laid up, that you’ll still be weak when you leave here?”

  “I told you, I don’t know Valentino, and he don’t know me. Where’s this going?”

  “You don’t belong here,” he said. His whole body was tense. Was he gonna take a swing at me? Looked like he might.

  “I got busted ribs, a busted arm, a busted face,” I said. “If I don’t belong in a hospital, who does?”

  “You don’t belong with Naomi,” Desouza barked.

  There it was, plain as day. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Desouza. Whatever you think you know, you don’t. We’re done here.”

  He took a step toward me, though, fists tight. I tensed, relaxed, moved my hands so they rested near my waist.

  “Whatever is going on between you two,” Desouza whispered, “I can’t imagine you give a fuck about her but I do, so you hear me nice and clear when I say this.” He leaned in close, his face contorted with a sneer. “She’s too fucking good for you. And if you and her are linked, somehow, and someone wants to fuck you up—and I’ll just bet they will, eventually—that buckshot is going to hit her, too. And if anything happens to her, I’ll fucking kill you myself and they’ll never find your body. Am I made perfectly clear, asshole?”

  I leaned forward from the bed, so that our faces were inches away. I didn’t need to put on the show he did. That was what guys who only wanted to look tough did. Guys like me? We didn’t need to do that. So I spoke calm, slow, so he’d understand what I was saying.

  “You don’t fuckin’ know me, and you obviously don’t fuckin’ know Naomi, or you’d know you didn’t have to have this conversation. And if she was here, what do you think she’d say about it?”

  Adrenaline was hot in my body, but I didn’t shake from it the way Desouza did. Hell, I only felt normal when it was pumpin’ through me.

  Desouza straightened, took a step back. He nodded slowly, looked toward the closed door, and then back at me. “I’ll make this simple. You leave, tonight, go back to whatever hole you crawled out of. If you don’t, I’ll inform Naomi’s manager she’s been involved with you outside of your professional relationship. She’ll lose her job, and probably won’t work in this city again, anywhere in the Saint Michael’s network—which is everything in fifty miles—or anywhere they call in her reference to this place for.”

  “You’d screw her out of a life?” I asked. “What kind of friend are you?”

  “The kind that would rather see her jobless than dead. It’s your decision. I’ll call to check and see what you decided in a few hours.”

  The pain didn’t matter just then. Whatever atrophied leg muscles Naomi had been worried about weren’t an issue, obviously. I was out of the bed and a foot from Desouza, ready to crack his skull after all before he could move.

  Or; no—he’d moved. Just a little. On hand behind his back, under his jacket where I was smart enough to know he probably had a plain clothes side-arm.

  I watched him. He was calm. Of course, why not? If he shot me it was self-defense, right? That would solve his little problem.

  And if I didn’t do what he said, Naomi was screwed. I almost wanted him to do it, to tell about us. Then, maybe she and I could…

  But that was a woman with a mission. She did this job for a reason. Because she wanted to do good in this shitty, fucked up world. Wanted to take care of assholes like me that gave her hell and didn’t think we needed it. If I made that choice for her, took it away from her—even if she said it wore her down—then what kind of person was I, really? What did I want from her? How far was I willing to take this?

  Far enough that we’d outrun the shit I was tangled up in? Far enough that I could keep her safe?

  Not in this town.

  I backed down. I didn’t look away, though. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll leave. You’re a worse bastard than I am, though, you know that? You love her, right? I can tell. Nobody’s willing to kill somebody over a casual acquaintance.

  “Let me tell you something about Naomi you obviously don’t know, bud.” Desouza rolled his eyes and looked like he was gonna speak. I didn’t let him. “She sees right through you. Right through me, too. I don’t know what she sees when she looks into me; I can’t make sense of that. But you? You want to know why she doesn’t love you back?”

  Desouza’s arm tensed, like he might actually pull that gun on me.

  I shook my head, pitying the man that probably was closer to her than I ever was, but so far away he’d never cross the distance. “Because she can see this; this right here,” I said, wavin’ at him here, in my room, trying to make her decisions for her. “She wants to be free, man. She wants to live her life on her own terms. She’s tired of all the people pullin’ her this way and that way, like they think she’s a doll or somethin’. You’re doin’ it right now. That’s why she don’t want you, pal.”

  I shrugged, and turned to gather the pictures. I slipped them in the envelope, and tossed it at him. “Do what you want with those. I don’t fuckin’ care. I’ll leave. But it won’t change anything for you, man. Not a damn thing.”

  That was it between us. I turned away, started collecting the blanket and sheet I’d dropped on the floor when I came off the bed at him. The adrenaline was draining away, bringing back my aches. I held onto the pain like a lifeline, to keep me sharp; keep me hard. I’d walk out. I wouldn’t come back. Not if it meant that Naomi got to make her own decisions, live her own life safe from me, and my shit. At the very least, that made me better than this asshole.

  I didn’t see Desouza leave, just heard the door open, and then close.

  A few hours later, I left through the front door, next best thing to broke, and tried to sort through what the hell I was supposed to do now.

  Chapter 10

  Naomi

  I called Nic on the way home, wincing with every ring until she answered. If she’d let it go to voice mail, or just screened it entirely, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  She did answer though, after the fifth ring. “Hi.”

  Alright. I deserved that. “Hey, Nic… what are you doing right now? We should talk. I don’t like how we left things and I feel awful about it and… well there’s just a lot to talk about. Can we meet?”

  She didn’t answer right away. I could hear her rummaging through something on the other end, maybe papers or her purse. “Yeah. Okay. I get off in half an hour. Maybe Lane’s?”

  The bar of choice, for all three of us. I almost changed it to someplace else; Jason might well show up unannounced and if I saw him again in the very near future I was going to lose my shit. But, she’d wonder why if I didn’t want to meet there, and that would lead to questions she wouldn’t drop until I answered and… “Yeah, Lane’s. About an hour. I’ll see you then, Nic. Hey,” I said when she didn’t acknowledge, “I love you. Okay? You know that.”

  A sigh. “I know. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  She hung up, and I put my phone down to focus on driving. Lane’s was a drive from my place, but I didn’t mind. I did use the hour to drop by the apartment, change clothes and manage a short-lived shower before I got back in the car and sped down the long avenue to downtown.

  I managed to get
there before Nic did. Lane’s was named for the first owner, Lane Murphy, whose picture adorned the wall above the back of the bar, the various letters and signed pictures of his patrons plastering the space around it in memoriam. His daughter ran the place now, and knew the three of us from way back. We’d been going here for years. Lane used to serve Nic and I drinks before we were legal. We didn’t dare bring Jason here until I was twenty-one—he’d have called the cops, probably, and turned Lane in for serving me under aged.

  “Beat everyone here?” Lisa asked when I took a seat at the bar.

  I shook my head. “Just me and Nic tonight.”

  Lisa went to work fixing me a cherry martini. Lane himself had shown her how to do it just a year before he died, when Lisa was starting to take over as his health failed. Now, I hardly drank anything else.

  Lane’s had been a good idea. With everything else spinning out of control and upending, this was the neutral ground of our lives; solid ground while the rest was swallowed up by the mudslide around us, a haven from the threat of drowning. The weight of all our good memories was here, from before things grew complicated and painful; before there were secrets. Lane’s was a place of redemption, confession, and peace-making.

  And the cherry martini definitely soothed my frayed nerves, too.

  Nic showed up a few minutes late, looking harried, and worn out, and not happy to see me. But we hugged, and we nabbed the booth in the back corner. I decided I should probably talk first; set the tone.

  “I was out of line the other night,” I said, solemnly, I hoped and with as much humility as I could muster. It wasn’t my strong suit. “I was angry, and I purposefully tried to hit you where I know it would hurt and… and I’m so so sorry, Nic. I swear, I didn’t mean what I said about… any of it.”

  Nic looked sad. She looked like she’d been sad for days. Jesus, how could I have struck her a blow like that? She sighed, though, and glanced around the place. Maybe, I hoped, she was wandering down memory lane a little, remembering all the good things this place was for us. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. Or, I mean, that you felt bad about it afterward at least. Shit happens, Nomi. It’s fine.”

  “About Jason,” I started.

  Nomi held up a hand, squeezing her eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about him. Not now, anyway. I know how he feels about you. I won’t say I’ve made peace with it, but, you know… if you two… I would be happy if you were happy, you know? That’s all.”

  I reached across the table for her hand. She was holding her whiskey sour with both hands, but she let go with one of them to let me take it. “Me and Jason,” I said, “that’s never going to happen, Nic. And I should have had that conversation with him a long time ago but I was so worried it would ruin our friendship, you know? And… well, it might have.”

  Nic looked up at me, eyes wide. “Oh, Nomi… you didn’t, did you?”

  I recounted parts of my encounter with Jason.

  Nic looked hurt, at first, that he’d finally confessed his feelings to me instead of ultimately coming to her, but then she was worried, and finally angry. “Has he lost his fucking mind?” She hissed. “Jesus, Nomi… I had no idea he was capable of—”

  “He was just upset,” I said. “And I get it. I mean… I was definitely a little scared, for a second but; I mean it’s Jason. I knew he wasn’t going to do anything.” I kept to myself the fact that in the moment, when it was happening, I actually wasn’t one hundred percent certain that was the case. Fear and rationality don’t mix.

  “Still, he should have taken the first ‘no’ and left it there.” She didn’t mean it because it would mean Jason was out of my ball field, finally; but because when it came down to it Jason was our friend—but I was her little sister, and nobody messed with Nicola Ellis’ little sister. “God, if I’d been there, Nomi, I would have torn him a brand-new shiny asshole.”

  I bit my lip. God, Mother Mary, whoever’s listening and wants to lend a divine hand, let this not set her off. “There’s… more.”

  Nic’s face fell. She assumed the worst. “He… he didn’t…”

  “God, no, Nic,” I said quickly, “I would have opened with that. No, it’s about… um… something I said to him…”

  Her face grew confused, and then still, and then red. “Jesus, Nomi, you didn’t.”

  “It just came out,” I said. “I was so angry at him for jumping on me like that, and for treating you like he has and I wanted to, I don’t know, distract him or redirect him or something and the first thing I could grab onto that might do it was telling him… how you feel about him.”

  Nic buried her face in her hands, mortified. “Jesus Christ… how am I supposed to look him in the eyes after this. Nomi,” she groaned my name the way she had when I’d drawn all over her wall with crayons when I was little, right before she helped me clean it up instead of telling Mom and Dad. “Shit.” She finished her whiskey sour, and waved for another one. Lisa got on it.

  “Think of it this way,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. “Now he knows, and he knows I’m not interested in him like that so, after he… cools off a little, who knows? Maybe he’ll come around. He needs time to process.”

  “He’s going to think I’m some simpering, moon eyed twelve year-old following him around like a puppy,” she sighed. “You weren’t wrong. I do chase around after him. It’s degrading. God, I’m like four years older than him I should be the aggressor here or something… I still remember having boobs when he hit puberty.” She made a disgusted noise, although whether it was Jason’s rough transition into adulthood or at her own perceived childishness wasn’t clear.

  I did my best to run triage either way. “You and Jason have always been connected by your mutual joy of running my life,” I said. Nic frowned at me, rolled her eyes, and then finally shrugged when she’d thought about it a second. “You have everything in common and you love the fact that he’s a sexy police officer, and he loves that you’re so practical and put together and sexy as hell. You two were made for each other. It can be embarrassing and messy if that’s what it’s going to be at first but… isn’t that worth it? In the end, I mean?”

  Nic sipped her fresh drink, lost in thought and not looking at me. I did some damage to my own martini, neglected in the midst of my rush to convince her this was all a good thing and not the awful, muddy, potentially destructive situation I kind of thought it might be. Better for Nic to think there was hope. She tended to self-destruct when she thought there might not be. That worrier thing she’d gotten from our mother.

  I’d gotten my father’s infectious optimism, even if it tended to come and go these days, so I plied it with everything I had. “And now this is out in the open, things will be so much better between us, right? I mean, every time we’d go out I felt so much pressure to be interested in Jason’s fucking cop stories and you and I hardly ever talked because you were busy trying to get his attention—”

  “That’s so not true,” Nic complained.

  I laughed. “Uh, yeah. It is an entirely accurate observation. It’s fine, though, I get it. I might have done the same thing.”

  Nic shook her head slowly, “No, Nomi, you wouldn’t have. God, you just have this ability to not give a fuck. That’s probably why Jason has been so hung up on you from the first place. I probably seem high maintenance compared to you.”

  Anyone who saw us in the booth together would make the same assumption. I had a tight button up, sleeves rolled, a tee shirt and bra on underneath, and jeans. My hair was in a pony-tail because I hadn’t had time to blow dry it and, frankly, didn’t feel the need to gussy up just to go to the bar.

  Nic had obviously stopped at her place on the way here, and probably spent half an hour touching up her makeup and slipping into this flawless blouse and skirt combination, and knew exactly which heels to step into on the way out without having to look. She was high maintenance. But that was fine. Jason wanted me to be that.

  “Once Jason has about thirty se
conds to stop and think for a second, he’ll come howling to your door,” I said. “Believe me. He’s not bright sometimes, but he can see what’s right in front of him if you point him at it. Why do you think he’s not detective yet?”

  Nic giggled a little, and shrugged a shoulder. She seemed happier. Maybe she was finally beginning to imagine what it would be like to finally get what she wanted, to finally show herself to Jason.

  She frowned. “Wait… but, what brought all this on? Jason just showed up and said he loved you and went ballistic? That doesn’t sound like him.” She squinted at me, looking for my tells. Damnit.

  I played it casual, and swept loose hair behind my ears. “He just hit his boiling point, I guess, I don’t know.”

  Nomi pointed. “You did the thing. You do that when you’re hiding something; Nomi, what don’t I know?”

  “Jesus, Nic, I don’t have a thing that I do like that, you’re looking for secrets that aren’t there. It’s like I said it was.” I rolled my eyes and sipped my martini. I sipped a lot of it, and flagged Lisa for another one.

  Nic was staring at me.

  “What?” I asked, put off and nervous and really wishing she’d just finish that drink and dull the edge off her suspicious nature.

  She searched my eyes.

  She looked me over.

  She squinted.

  “Oh my God you had sex with that patient!” She whispered it, loudly, and then glanced around like someone would have heard us. Lisa delivered my Martini with a sly grin, but minded her own business otherwise. She was a vault, that woman; I wasn’t worried.

  I was, however, incensed and shocked that Nic would make an accusation like that, even if she was right. Fuck me, she’d gotten Mom’s crazy intuition, too. “I did no such thing!” I whispered back at her, just as loud. “God, you and Jason both!”

  “So that is why Jason showed up,” She said. “That fucking idiot; I told him not to say anything.”