Covert Conception

by Delores Fossen

  "Why didn't you go to the police with this?" Natalie demanded.

  "And tell them what, exactly? That maybe someone at your party slipped an unspecified narcotic into my drink? I decided I'd wait for the lab results before I started pointing any fingers. Of course, that was before I saw that surveillance video. I'm ready to do some finger-pointing now."

  Natalie shifted her position slightly, trying to find some kind of equilibrium both mentally and physically. "Why would someone on the catering staff have drugged you?"

  "I've asked myself that a dozen times, and the only thing I could come up with was maybe it wasn't intentional. Maybe the beer was contaminated or something."

  "Then why wasn't anyone else affected?" she immediately asked.

  He stared at her and waited for her to draw her own conclusions. It didn't take long. Rick was likely the only person at the party drinking beer. It was indeed a champagne crowd. But then, she was probably the only one who'd had sparkling fruit juice.

  And that in turn meant it would have been fairly easy to drug them.

  That explained the how, but it certainly didn't explain the who and why.

  "I don't know the caterer," she continued. "And I don't know the man who handed me my drink."

  But she could find out, and that's exactly what she intended to do.

  Natalie checked her watch. It was nearly 6:00 p.m. and she wished for more hours in the day, because her list of things to do was growing. "I want to talk to your doctor and the lab technician who ran the test on you. I'll also want to talk to my mother, since she's the one who hired the caterer. She'll be home from her therapy session by now. I'll call her."

  Rick caught onto her wrist when she reached into her purse for her phone. "Think this through. If you start asking questions about the caterer, your mother will want to know why. And she won't quit until she gets the truth. The whole truth. So, if you plan to tell her about the baby tonight, you won't want to do that over the phone."

  That was true. Natalie only wished she'd thought of it first.

  "We'll drive over there and talk to her," Rick insisted, keeping hold of her wrist.

  Natalie shook off his grip. "We?"

  "We," he confirmed. Without warning, he peeled off his damp T-shirt, grabbed a clean one from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and slipped it on. "I want to get to the bottom of this, too, and I want as much information as we can get about this caterer."

  Natalie almost argued with him. Mainly because it was natural to argue with Rick about any- and everything. But he had a point. The caterer or someone on his or her staff could have orchestrated all of this.

  After all, someone had cleaned up the "crime scene."

  Someone had gotten both Rick and his motorcycle back to his house. Someone had dressed her for bed and discarded any evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened. So that meant someone at her party had been involved on a very personal level. Her mother was the first step to figuring out whom.

  And they could do that after they told Macy about the pregnancy.

  Natalie was already dreading the conversation. It would be messy. Her mother just wasn't very good at handling contingencies, and this pregnancy definitely fell into that category. There'd be tears and perhaps hours of melodrama. Unfortunately, her mother had to know.

  Rick grabbed his keys from the desk and headed for the door. Natalie was right behind him.

  "We'll take my car," she insisted.

  Rick glanced over his shoulder and gave her that look. One she instantly recognized. And hated. She called it his blue-collar/chip-on-the-shoulder glare.

  "This has nothing to do with the price of my vehicle," she pointed out. "It's just I'm conveniently parked right out front, and I'm not exactly dressed to climb onto the back of your Harley."

  He made a sound to indicate he didn't believe her explanation.

  She made a sound to indicate she didn't care what he thought.

  It was going to be a long drive to Macy's.

  "Besides," she added, "riding a motorcycle in my condition wouldn't be smart. And even you can't argue with that."

  He didn't.

  With both of them still stewing and no doubt asking themselves a dozen unanswerable questions, Rick let one of his employees know that he needed to run an errand before they got into her car.

  Natalie hadn't thought the tension could get any worse, but she was obviously wrong. Without the noise and the distraction of the shop, the silence settled uncomfortably between them. And with each additional moment of silence, Natalie became more and more upset. More and more frightened.

  More and more incensed.

  Why was this happening?

  Why had she become pregnant with Rick's child?

  Rick, of all people.

  They had so much bad blood between them. Too much. But it hadn't always been that way. Rick and she had known each other since childhood, and her mother had tried to get them together for years. Why, it was never clear to Natalie, but apparently Macy felt that Rick and she were the "perfect couple" destined to lead the "perfect life."

  Ironic.

  Because her family was old money. To the proverbial manor born. Rick, on the other hand, was a self-made businessman with a keen sense of turning nothing into plenty of something. No Ivy League degree for him. No degree at all. He'd shunned his parents' investment business and had become everything they hadn't wanted him to be—the owner of a custom motorcycle shop. Yet, the normally socially conscious Macy had seemingly overlooked all of that so she could encourage a relationship that Natalie and Rick knew would never happen.

  And it wouldn't happen because of that one lapse in judgment three years earlier.

  Neither Rick nor she had had much luck coping with that lapse. Hell on earth wasn't just a meaningless expression for them. They were living it.

  "You're totally certain about this pregnancy?" Rick asked.

  Natalie almost preferred the silence to the question. There was none of that chip-on-the-shoulder animosity in his voice, which meant all of this was likely sinking in, and he wasn't taking it too well.

  "Dead certain," she assured him.

  Rick shook his head, leaned forward. "I don't remember even speaking to you that night."

  "Same here," she agreed.

  "Yet according to that video, we ended up in the hall outside your bedroom. Kissing. Touching…"

  Oh, yes. Definitely kissing. Definitely touching. They'd been all over each other—literally.

  Though she knew it wasn't possible, especially since she hadn't remembered anything else, Natalie could have sworn she recalled that kiss.

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and it was as if that one glance opened the hormonal floodgates. There were still no specific memories for the night of the party. But there were other memories, ones that were best forgotten.

  As was Rick.

  And she'd spent the last three years trying not to remember that he was the most unforgettable man she'd ever known.

  It was hard to believe all of his mismatched features could add up to something extraordinary. But heaven help the female population, they did. The olive, bronzy skin: a DNA contribution from his Greek father. Those sizzling gray eyes framed with indecently long lashes. The cheekbones of a Celtic warrior. She'd yet to meet a woman of any age or any background who hadn't found Rick Gravari hot.

  Including her.

  Much to her disgust.

  That one kiss they'd shared three years ago, that one short lapse in judgment had caused someone to die. Not just someone though. Someone they both loved.

  "David," she said under her breath.

  A little over three years ago David had asked her to marry him. She'd said yes, even though David knew she didn't love him. He also knew she was looking for an out, a way to stop her mother's relentless matchmaking. That's why Natalie had agreed to be his fiancée. But not his wife. She'd told him upfront that there would be no marriage.


  David obviously had thought he could change her mind.

  Natalie had thought an engagement ring would stop her from wanting Rick. It hadn't. One night, Rick and she had run into each other at a party. They'd talked. Had too much to drink. Had gotten way too close. One thing led to another, and they kissed.

  Just as David walked in on them.

  Obviously feeling betrayed by his two best friends, David had swallowed what turned out to be a lethal dose of sleeping pills. He'd died in the ER only a few hours later.

  David's death would always be with Rick and her. It would always connect them.

  And it would always keep them apart.

  At least Natalie had been sure of that until now. Until this pregnancy.

  She was carrying Rick's baby. That was the one element that neither of them could dismiss. And it was the element that had brought them together.

  "Take the next turn to get to Commerce Street," Rick instructed. "And don't put on your blinker."

  "Why?" she immediately asked, forcing herself out of her troubling thoughts.

  "Just do it."

  And for some reason unknown to her, she obeyed him. Maybe it was because she had no fight or argument left in her, but it also had something to do with that suddenly intense expression on Rick's face.

  "Do you recognize that SUV behind us?" Rick asked.

  Natalie's attention flew to the rearview mirror. There was indeed a black SUV following closely behind them. "No. Why?"

  "Because it's been behind us since we left the shop."

  "It's probably a coincidence." This particular street wasn't the busiest in the city, but it did lead to several main intersections.

  "Maybe." But he didn't sound as if he believed that.

  Natalie, on the other hand, decided to hope for the best. She'd already had enough thrown at her for one day without borrowing more trouble.

  "Take the next left," Rick told her.

  Without turning on her signal, she waited until the last possible second to make the turn. She was going a little too fast, and the tires squealed in protest.

  She checked the mirror again.

  The SUV made the same slightly out-of-control turn.

  Her heart went into overdrive. That turn didn't seem to be a coincidence. It seemed deliberate. But why would someone be following them?

  "Speed up," Rick insisted.

  Natalie did, and the SUV followed suit. In fact, it continued to mimic her actions when Natalie slowed down and switched lanes.

  What the devil was going on?

  With that scary question pounding in her head, Natalie slammed her foot on the accelerator and pushed her car well over the speed limit.

  The driver of the SUV followed them.

  Chapter Four

  Rick hadn't thought this day could get any worse.

  But he'd obviously thought wrong.

  He didn't have a clue why that SUV was following them, but it was. He had no doubts about that. Coupled with the drugged sex/baby news, Rick was ready to concede that he was in the middle of one crazy dream.

  Except this was too real to be a dream.

  "Turn right," Rick instructed Natalie.

  She didn't argue, but he could see the concern all over her face. She was chewing on her bottom lip, and she had a white knuckle death grip on the steering wheel. Still, she made that right turn and sped up. Once again, the SUV stayed right on their bumper.

  Both Natalie and he cursed.

  "What now?" Natalie asked.

  It was too risky to have her stop so he could confront the other driver because Rick had no idea who or what they were dealing with—carjackers, someone with a case of road rage or idiots who'd taken a car out for a joyride. Natalie might be hurt in a confrontation, especially since she probably wouldn't just stay put and let him handle it.

  Still, he had to do something.

  He pointed to an upcoming intersection. "Take that turn, and drive toward the police station on Arbor Street."

  Rick also considered calling the cops, to report what was going on, but he realized he might sound a little paranoid. And he likely was. Besides, if he made the call, there'd be a police report, and he might have to bring up the drugging and the pregnancy. He didn't want to do that yet. Not until they'd spoken to Macy and gotten the information about the caterer.

  Natalie took the next turn that would get them to the police station. "What's going on?" she asked. There was more than a tad of desperation in her voice, and though he hadn't thought it possible, she was gripping that steering wheel even harder than before.

  Rick didn't mention his theory about road rage or carjackers. Instead, he went with the most benign scenario. "It's probably kids taking their parents' car for a joyride."

  But he couldn't discount that this was yet another incident of unnerving things that just didn't make sense. First, someone had drugged them. From the looks of that video, it'd been a date-rape-type drug. Or maybe some weird, powerful aphrodisiac that'd induced memory loss.

  And why?

  So that Natalie and he would head to her bedroom and therefore place themselves in a compromising position?

  Was that it?

  Had this really been some sort of elaborate blackmail or revenge scheme? Had someone taken pictures of them having sex and was that person planning to use them in some sinister way?

  He gave that some thought and decided that didn't make sense, either.

  Nothing about this made sense.

  Neither Natalie nor he was married. Nor were either involved in a relationship. It was the same for their jobs. Their businesses wouldn't be adversely affected if their customers learned they'd had sex.

  So, what could possibly be the point?

  Rick didn't have an answer for that, either.

  Frustrated and concerned, he checked the side mirror again and didn't think it was his imagination that the SUV was even closer. He considered having Natalie slam on her brakes, which would almost certainly cause a rear-end collision. That would allow him to get a good look at whoever was following them, but it would also put Natalie at risk.

  And perhaps the baby.

  Not only did he have to consider Natalie's safety, but they both had to consider the child.

  "We should be at the police station in about five minutes," Rick let Natalie know. He'd hoped that would relieve some of the tension in her body. It didn't.

  Instead, her eyes widened.

  Rick's attention went back to the mirror. The SUV had sped up again. And it was no longer behind them. It'd moved out into the lane to the left of them. It pulled up, driving until the two vehicles were side by side.

  "Can you see who's behind the wheel?" Natalie asked. She glanced over at the SUV just for a second.

  Rick tried and failed to see who was inside. "The windows are too heavily tinted. Just keep driving and try to stay calm. Nothing's going to happen. It's still broad daylight, and there are three other cars nearby."

  However, high visibility apparently wasn't enough to deter the SUV driver.

  The vehicle swerved to the right, moving directly into their lane. Natalie veered to avoid it, but the SUV immediately repeated the maneuver. That wasn't the action of a bad driver. Or a joyrider.

  This person was trying to run them off the road.

  Rick caught onto the steering wheel so he could help Natalie maintain control of her car. He kept watch on the front end of the SUV, and every time it made a move toward them, Rick and Natalie moved her car out of the way.

  "We're going into the emergency lane," Rick explained just seconds before he steered the vehicle in that direction. "Hit the brakes now."

  She did, and instantly there was the sound of tires screeching on the hot asphalt. The SUV apparently hadn't expected them to do that because it sped on ahead.

  Rick saw the other vehicle's brake lights, but it was too late to try to cut into the emergency lane and back up. There were cars coming directly behind them. The SUV had to speed up to keep
from being hit.

  Rick held his breath until the other vehicle was out of sight. "Are you okay?" he asked Natalie.

  "No. I'm not." She groaned, and Rick pried her hands off the steering wheel so that she wouldn't have bruises. "What is going on?"

  "I don't know."

  She smacked her hand on the steering wheel. "Do you think this is all connected to the pregnancy?"

  "No," he answered.

  And he hoped that was true.

  But Rick had a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach that the driver of that SUV had wanted to harm them.

  "I fired a mechanic about two weeks ago," Rick said. He kept a close watch on the cars speeding past them. He wanted to make sure that SUV didn't do a turnaround and come right back at them. "Maybe the guy was more riled than I thought he was."

  Natalie nodded and she seemed to calm a little. "I had to let someone go, too. A housekeeper. About a month ago. Because she was stealing things." She paused. "That might explain who was in that SUV, but even a pair of disgruntled former employees probably wouldn't have come up with a plan to punish us with drugs and a pregnancy. It'd be easier just to hurt us. Or kill us."

  Rick was on the same page with her. But that didn't mean there weren't answers out there.

  "Macy," he mumbled.

  Natalie repeated her mother's name under her breath. "Give me a few minutes to compose myself, and then let's have that chat with her."

  Definitely.

  And he prayed that Macy would have answers.

  * * *

  "YOU WON'T be able to see your mother this evening. She's had a difficult day, and I don't want her disturbed."

  Natalie stared at her mother's personal assistant, Troy Jackson, as he delivered his message. Troy, the blond, blue-eyed, beefcake pretty boy, was doing his best to block the front door so that Natalie and Rick couldn't enter.

  No amount of blocking would work this evening. Rick rolled his eyes and just muscled Troy aside.

  Troy might have a weightlifter's body, but Natalie figured he was essentially a wimp and wouldn't attempt to take on Rick. She didn't blame Troy. With Rick's fierce expression and don't-mess-with-me demeanor, it was clear he meant business.