Carrying His Secret

by Marie Ferrarella

  The child she was carrying below her heart most definitely belonged to Whit Adair.

  If she heard Whit deny it—or tell her to simply “take care of the problem”—it would absolutely break her heart. Not just that, but it would completely destroy the way she thought of Whit.

  No, this was most definitely not the time to tell Whit Adair that he was going to become a father.

  Perhaps, Elizabeth thought as she turned her vehicle in to her neighborhood, there would never be a right time and this would just be a secret she would keep from Whit forever.

  Better that than to have her heart destroyed.

  Elizabeth blew out a long, ragged breath. No matter how she looked at it, this was going to be a no-win situation.

  Getting out of her car, she headed straight for the front door of her two-bedroom town house. She wanted the solace of having familiar things around her.

  Preoccupied, she didn’t notice the person who remained in the shadows.

  The person who had followed her and was intently watching her every move.

  * * *

  It was hard remaining in the shadows, hard not to give in to the surge of adrenaline the observer could feel coursing through their veins, bringing with it a desire to act. A desire to have Elizabeth Shelton done away with and have her join her dead boss in whatever hell was reserved for godless people like that.

  Soon. The word shimmered seductively in the observer’s mind. Soon the world would be rid of the girl just like it was now rid of that pompous ass with his phony, shallow smile.

  Checking the impulse to follow Elizabeth into her town house and bring her to her knees, having the so-called “administrative assistant” beg for her life, the person cleaving to the shadows savored the deed that still lay ahead. The mistake would be improved on. Adair was allowed to die too quickly. Next time, there would be torture. Slow, painful torture.

  The observer smiled in anticipation.

  And made plans.

  * * *

  As she opened the medicine cabinet to reach for the light cologne she liked to spray on before she left the house, she saw that it wasn’t in its usual place. It wasn’t there at all.

  What had she done with it, Elizabeth asked herself, trying to remember when she’d had it last. This was getting very annoying, she thought. Yesterday, her lipstick had been missing—she never had found it.

  Opening the drawer where she kept several different brushes that she used to style her hair, she saw that the cologne was lying on its side—the drawer was long and shallow. She took it out, hit the spray quickly twice and then put it back in its customary place.

  What was going on with her? she thought. She was too young to be going senile.

  If she was going to be of any use to Whit, she was going to have to get ahold of herself and pay attention to what she was doing, she silently upbraided herself.

  Opening another drawer, she took out her spare lipstick and put it on. At least that was where it was supposed to be, she thought with some measure of relief.

  Chapter 4

  Ordinarily, unless he was busy with something that necessitated his coming into work on the weekend, Friday night was the time Whit left the city for the family ranch. Adair Acres had initially been an investment property that his father had bought with the very first million he ever made.

  Totaling more than 180 acres, the sprawling ranch, comprised of alfalfa fields and avocado groves to name just a couple of its crops, was located halfway between Carlsbad and Fallbrook and was also within easy driving distance of San Diego and AdAir Corp.

  The ranch was also not far from Los Angeles. The location had been chosen in part to placate his mother, Patsy, who hated the country and thrived in more social surroundings. In years past, she’d made it her mission to turn the ranch into a showplace that people craved an invitation to visit.

  For Whit, the ranch represented happier times. It was where he had grown up and where he now went to find inner peace. It was his escape from the world when the world became too demanding. Working on the ranch always seemed to calm him. It helped him cope with whatever demands he had to face come Monday morning.

  Not that he was exactly out in the wilderness. Adair Acres came with a twelve-thousand-square-foot hacienda-style house that had seven bedrooms and eight and a half bathrooms. He still had a room there, as did Carson and Landry. His parents had separate suites as well, on opposite sides of the hacienda. As far as Whit was concerned, the ranch would always be home to him.

  But this weekend, because of what had happened, Whit opted to remain in the San Diego bungalow he maintained during the week, located only a few minutes away from work. While the ranch was his haven, he wanted to be available to the local police should any progress be made in his father’s murder investigation. He wanted to be of any help he possibly could.

  So far, he hadn’t heard a word. Maybe the police was too busy breaking the news to his family, Whit thought. Maybe it made him a coward, but he was relieved that he didn’t have to be the one to tell his brother and sister about the murder. Especially his sister.

  Both his personal cell phone and the landline he maintained remained frustratingly silent as far as getting a call from the police detective handling his father’s case went.

  Oh, both phones rang almost incessantly, but each call that came in was either from someone expressing their sincere sympathies, or from someone who was associated with some venue of the media. Those callers were looking for exclusive details that hadn’t been broadcast by every other form of media that was covering his father’s horrific murder.

  Whit hadn’t wanted to turn off his phones because that meant he would also miss the legitimate calls, coming from his family or his father’s friends. But it got to the point that having the phones on became unbearable. He dealt with the problem the only way he knew how—he shut off the phones after he’d called everyone he felt he needed to inform of his father’s untimely death.

  In a great many of the cases, he found that he didn’t have to bother with the notification. The people he called were already informed, either via the news or because they had received a call from Elizabeth. A few of the people she’d called told Whit that she had broken the news to them as gently as possible, saying she’d felt that they would want to be told personally rather than hearing about it from one of the various news programs. Thinking that he was behind this, they’d thanked him for her call.

  About to set the record straight, Whit decided just to let things stand. It was easier that way.

  She was efficient, he’d give her that, Whit thought as he hung up for the last time and turned off his landline. At first glance, Elizabeth Shelton had struck him as a frail, delicate hothouse flower. But as he grew to know her, he’d realized it was a case of her being more of an iron butterfly than an orchid. He had seen her tackle all manner of things head-on without any hesitation.

  But that still didn’t keep him from feeling as if he needed to protect her.

  Maybe, he mused, it was because that gave him something to focus on other than the details of the terrible occurrence that kept exploding into his consciousness just when he thought he had a handle on the way he felt.

  Just when he thought he could deal with his father’s death, it sneaked up on him and erupted in his brain all over again.

  Unable to sleep more than a few minutes at a time, Whit finally gave up at around five in the morning. Instead of tossing and turning, he decided to start making lists of things that had to be attended to either immediately or somewhere down the line.

  First and foremost, he had to make the funeral arrangements. His father’s body still hadn’t been released from the coroner’s office, but he had put the family lawyer, Nathan Miller, on that. He’d told Miller to use his influence—and whatever else was necessary—to move his fat
her’s autopsy to the front of the line.

  Quite frankly, Whit didn’t see why there even had to be an autopsy, since the cause of his father’s death was obvious: it was a death by bullet straight to the heart. He felt the medical examiner could just dig the bullet out of his father’s chest, allowing them to learn what caliber gun had been used. What else was there to learn about the crime?

  But nothing, Whit had come to learn, was ever as simple as it seemed to be. So he’d told Miller to do whatever he had to—pull whatever strings needed to be pulled—in order to get his father’s body released.

  A little after nine in the morning, his brain had temporarily placed itself on hold. He stopped writing lists, most of which were beginning to make little sense to him at this point.

  Pacing around the bungalow like a caged tiger, Whit stopped dead when he felt the incessant vibration coming from his hip pocket. Unable to cut himself completely off from all communications, he’d picked up a burner phone from AdAir Corp’s developmental lab early Saturday morning. He’d given the number to the family lawyer, then told the man to call him the minute he got Reginald’s body released.

  “Hello?” Whit practically shouted even before he held the phone to his ear.

  Miller didn’t bother to give his name. He assumed the burner phone had caller ID. “I finally got the ME to release your father’s body a few minutes ago. Where do you want it sent?”

  Now there was a sentence he’d never thought he’d have to answer, Whit thought. He rattled off the address of the funeral parlor he’d hired to handle all the arrangements regarding his father’s funeral. A few discreet inquiries had convinced him that he could trust the almost 150-year-old establishment not to turn the proceedings into a media circus—or, at the very worst, not add to it.

  “Got it,” Nathan Miller said. “Do you want me to release a statement regarding viewing your father’s body lying in state?”

  “He’s not going to be lying in state and there’s not going to be any viewing of the body,” Whit snapped. “Just a funeral. Cut-and-dried,” he said, as if that was to be the final word.

  Except that it wasn’t. Some flexibility was called for. “You might want to think about that, sir,” Miller advised. “We don’t want anyone to think that you’ve got something to hide.”

  Whit frowned at the phone. “Not that I give a damn what anyone thinks, but exactly why would they believe that?”

  “If you rush this, that’s the natural assumption that people will make,” Miller explained patiently, “that you don’t want something to be seen, to be taken into account. Your father was murdered suddenly. Don’t let him be buried the same way. He was a great man, Whit,” Miller reminded him.

  Obviously, he was going to have to okay a viewing. Something else that was apparently out of his control, Whit thought.

  “Okay,” he agreed reluctantly, “one day.”

  “Two or three would be better,” Miller pointed out quietly.

  Even one day was more than he wanted. He didn’t want to share his father with the world. He just wanted to be able to bury the man in peace.

  “One day,” Whit repeated more firmly.

  “One day,” the voice on the other end of the line echoed, giving in.

  “Call me on this line when the funeral parlor has my father’s body,” Whit instructed. He terminated the call before Miller could agree.

  Whit had no sooner placed the burner phone back in his pocket than his front doorbell rang.

  His entire six-foot-two body stiffened as every fiber within him automatically went on high alert. He had specifically chosen this bungalow for its privacy and relative inaccessibility to the public. Overlooking the ocean, the two-bedroom abode was situated within a gated community. Access was difficult at best, but he was not about to underestimate the ingenuity of enterprising, relentless reporters and bloggers.

  He was, however, determined to ignore the intrusion. Whit remained unresponsive to the doorbell, planning to wait out the invader until he or she gave up and went away.

  But after whoever was on the other side of the door had rung the bell two separate times, he suddenly heard a female voice call out, “Mr. Adair, please open the door. It’s Elizabeth Shelton.”

  Surprised, he strode quickly to the door, punched in the security code to disarm the system and then flipped the two locks he had installed himself—just in case.

  Pulling open the door, he found that Elizabeth was indeed on his doorstep. She was still pale, but she looked a great deal better now that she wasn’t wearing blood-soaked clothes.

  “What are you doing here?” Whit asked her as he opened the door wider.

  “I came to check on you,” Elizabeth told him simply. Then, to take the strictly personal edge off, she added, “Your father would have wanted me to.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Whit contradicted. “My father didn’t concern himself with things like that. At least not to my knowledge,” he qualified. This past year or so, he had a feeling that Elizabeth had probably been closer to the old man than he was.

  Still standing on the other side of the threshold, Elizabeth asked politely, “May I come in?”

  Whit lifted his shoulders in a careless, noncommittal shrug and stepped over to one side.

  “You might as well,” he replied.

  It was only after she came in and he had closed the door behind her, rearming the security system, that he noticed the brown bag she was carrying. He couldn’t quite place the aroma coming from it.

  “What’s that?” Whit asked, nodding at the takeout bag.

  “I had a feeling that you probably haven’t had anything to eat yet,” Elizabeth told him.

  She put the large bag down on the nearest flat surface. In this case, it was a highly polished ebony coffee table. At the last moment, she slid a magazine on the table under the bag.

  Whit looked at the bag but made no move to open it or look inside. Eating was not a priority for him at the moment.

  “It’s Thai food,” she told him as if he had asked what she’d brought. “You seemed to really like that Thai restaurant outside the hotel in Nevada,” she reminded him, referring to their fateful business trip.

  That night, with his inhibitions and restraints loosened, he would have liked a serving of dirt as long as they were sharing it together, Whit thought. But he kept that to himself and merely nodded at her comment.

  “Thanks,” he murmured, still making no effort to open the bag and take out its contents.

  It wasn’t her place to tell him what to do and she knew it. But at the same time, she wasn’t about to leave until he made some sort of an effort to eat something.

  “It only does you some good if you actually take it out and eat it,” she coaxed.

  Whit still made no move to open the brown bag.

  Okay, if he wasn’t going to open up the bag and take the food out, Elizabeth thought, making up her mind, she was going to dish it out for him.

  Not wanting to just walk into the kitchen and begin rummaging through his cabinets like some unchecked, nosy neighbor, she asked Whit, “Where do you keep your plates and silverware?”

  He was still processing the fact that she had taken it upon herself to come here. Coming to, he indicated the cabinet right behind Elizabeth. It was to the left of the sink.

  “Right there,” he said. Expressionless, he continued to look at her.

  Elizabeth walked over to the cabinet he’d just indicated and opened the door to find a stack of medium-size plates.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked, taking what she needed. Her back was to him.

  The question seemed to come out of left field. “What?”

  Plate in hand, she took several utensils out of the drawer and put them down on the counter. She began emptying the bag. There were fou
r containers in all.

  “How are you holding up?” she repeated, dispensing a little from each container onto his plate, then moving it and the necessary utensils in front of him.

  “Fine,” he all but bit off. “I’m holding up just fine. How are you holding up?”

  “Still trying to process it,” she admitted honestly, making him ashamed for having snapped the answer at her. “I keep waiting for your father to call me on the phone and say that a mistake had been made. That he’s fine and did I remember that the presentation I’m making for him is at eight on Monday.”

  The smile on her lips was one of the saddest Whit could ever recall seeing.

  “I can’t really believe he’s gone,” she told him quietly. Taking a breath, she asked him, “Have you heard from the police yet?”

  Her question instantly alerted him. “No, why? Have you? Is there any news?”

  But Elizabeth could only shake her head. “Not that I know of. But then, I really don’t expect them to tell me anything. I thought that if they found anything at all, you’d be the one they’d tell.”

  Whit shook his head. “I haven’t heard a word.” Since Elizabeth had put herself out like this, he felt he owed it to her to let her know the little bit of progress that had been made. “What I do know is that the coroner released my father’s body.”

  Saying those words felt so surreal, he thought. Right up to the end, his father had always been in such excellent physical shape. Reginald Adair seemed to be larger-than-life and up to any challenge. Reducing him to just a body, an empty shell, felt so very wrong, and yet that was all his father was now—a body waiting to be interred.

  The very thought was painful to deal with.

  “Oh.” Elizabeth had just assumed that the autopsy would take longer. But now that Mr. Adair’s body had been released, there were things that required immediate attention. “Would you like me to handle the funeral arrangements for you?” she asked. It wasn’t something she would have welcomed doing, but she wanted to take the burden away from him and lighten his load if that was at all possible. It was the least she could do for him at a time like this.