The Baby Chase

by Jennifer Greene

  “We’re not finished with this discussion.”

  “I know. You want to meet around noon or so tomorrow? The lobby here?”

  “Yeah. That’ll do.”

  She stood up, unable to stop a yawn from escaping. There was a ton of emotion in his dark, shadowed eyes. Frustration—a familiar response that she seemed to evoke in Gabe. Relief—as if trying to deal with her exhausted him, and he was mighty happy she was disappearing to bed. But some other emotion played in his eyes, too.

  It was just for an instant that his gaze brushed over her, her tumbled curls by candlelight, her figure in the sleek black sheath, her cream skin catching the glow of flame and shadow. There’d been no desire in his eyes before this. If anything, he’d given her the same respectful distance he’d give a loaded Uzi. But there was desire now…followed rapidly by an expression of alarm, as she rose from the table and leaned over him.

  “Night, love bug.” He was frozen more solid than an ice cube when she bent down and impulsively brushed her lips over his forehead. The kiss was soft, swift, the contact lighter than the stroke of a feather and over faster than a finger snap. Yet her heart was suddenly racing, racing. Under that ice-cube brow was one hell of a potent fever.

  She straightened, avoiding his eyes as if they could bite her, and with deliberate casualness swung her heels over one shoulder. “Try not to worry. We’re going to make a great team on this little problem, darlin’.”

  She escaped before he could say anything. Within five minutes, she had disappeared into the elevator and strode down the hall and was safe and sound behind the locked door of her room.

  She tossed her shoes, flopped on the bed and stared blankly at the ceiling. Her brother’s face popped into her mind. Jake’s. Jake, at fifty-four, was significantly older than she was, and when she last saw him, he’d been behind bars. Jake was so naturally handsome and distinguished—but not in that place. He’d looked gaunt, all his dynamic energy and spirit crippled by being trapped in that horrible cell. Adam, Jake’s son, had confided that he did not believe his dad would survive a year if he was convicted.

  Rebecca didn’t believe he could survive it, either.

  Gabe thought she was playing with this investigation, she knew. It wasn’t so. She joked when she was afraid. That was just her way of coping. The family had long teased her with the tag “the intrepid Rebecca,” because she charged into problems head-first, her own way, and no one had ever seen her scared of anything.

  She was scared of failing her brother, though.

  And she was increasingly afraid of her building, disturbing feelings for Gabe. A simple kiss, no more than a gesture of affection, had her pulse charging like a souped-up jalopy. Always, she’d trusted her instincts. Always, she’d listened to her heart, but even an intrepid optimist of a risk-taker should be able to recognize danger when it slapped her in the face.

  Gabe drew her like a storm on a parched summer night. He touched her, and she no longer felt that arid aloneness. When she was with him, even just talking, there was excitement, an electric connection. Way, way beyond any sexual pull, he reminded her of Jake. Lord. Not because her feelings for him were brotherly. But Gabe seemed trapped, not unlike her brother. There were prisons and there were prisons, and Gabe seemed to have put up bars between himself and any hope of love.

  Damned stupid to think she could get through those bars, though. Gabe didn’t want kisses from her. He’d made that clear as a mirror last time. He was antifamilies, antibabies, and if his rough background was the source of those feelings, that didn’t mean that Rebecca had the power to change them—or him.

  She felt as lost trying to help her brother as she did trying to understand Gabe. Both, though, could be hurt if she made mistakes. She couldn’t afford to fail with her brother.

  And she was increasingly afraid that she could lose her heart unless she put a careful lid on her feelings for Gabe.

  Gabe paced the lobby, jingling the change in his pocket, then yanked out his hand and looked at his watch again. Three o’clock. Well, 2:56, to be precise. But the four-minute difference was moot.

  Gabe never panicked. Give him any crisis, he stayed cool. He’d gotten a couple of medals in the Special Forces, for Pete’s sake, because he could keep his head in any situation.

  At the moment, enough adrenaline was gushing through his veins for him to spontaneously combust. Where was that damn redhead?

  He’d never trusted her to make their agreed-upon noon meeting time. Hell, Rebecca could have been up and out and caused a couple of wars before noon. He’d called her room at 9:00 a.m. No answer. He’d redialed at ten, then eleven, paced the familiar carpet in the lobby at noon, left, checked back at one and then two.

  Impatiently he slammed out the front doors again, and tried to search the street in both directions. The searing-bright sun made him squint. Taxis hooted, and dozens of passersby cluttered the sidewalks, but there was no sign of a five-foot-five redhead.

  He stalked back inside, raked a hand through his hair, then checked his watch again. Two fifty-nine. Three minutes since he’d checked the last time. He was gonna kill her when he caught up with her. If she was hurt or in trouble, he was gonna kill her worse.

  The only thing keeping his blood pressure from blowing like a volcano was the sure knowledge that she couldn’t have been directly in the path of trouble—because he had been. Keeping Rebecca safe was a full-time job, but dammit, he had a serious job he was being paid for that needed doing. Rebecca couldn’t have located Tammy Diller and the woman’s sidekick boyfriend—because Gabe had.

  Circus Circus would have been an ideal metaphorical place for those two clowns to stay. But enough digging, and Gabe had scared up the address for the hardscrabble apartment those two had rented outside of town. Once he located the address, he’d driven there, walked around, knocked on doors, talked to neighbors. The two were definitely flopping in that ramshackle shack, but were temporarily not around.

  They could wait, now that Gabe had their home base pinned down.

  Rebecca couldn’t.

  She couldn’t, he promised himself, have seriously intended to go out to any of those whorehouses. She liked to tease. She called him “cutie” and “love bug” to get his goat, had always taken merciless pleasure in getting a rise out of him.

  Rebecca only had to walk in a room to get a rise out of him, and Gabe wasn’t thinking in metaphorical terms. The dress she’d worn last night would tempt a monk. Those long legs, that soft cream skin by candlelight, that wild sexy hair, the impish devil in her eyes…she was a test, Gabe decided. Was there a woman alive who could drive him insane? Obliterate the control he’d counted on his entire adult life?

  He glared at every stranger in the lobby, shoveled a hand through his hair again, and then stomped over to the house phones. He’d call her room one more time. If she didn’t answer this time, he didn’t know what he was going to do. Start calling hospitals, police, the marines—or her mother—and since none of them were likely to be able to control the damn woman…

  He’d just picked up the house phone when he saw a blur of color racing past.

  He recognized the fanny first. There weren’t many women running around with that one. Just her, and blindfolded in a back alley, Gabe would know that minuscule bouncing tush. He hung up the phone. The fear clawing in his pulse slowly, slowly simmered down. She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t in trouble.

  She was ramming around the lobby so fast that it’d have been easier to halt a speeding bullet. Still, he caught sight of the oversize Mickey Mouse T, the scraped-into tight jeans, the tennies with the fluorescent green laces and the chunk of gold flashing on her wrists. Her hair was a fuzzfest of curls, no goop on it today. Flashing around this fast, if he hadn’t known her, he might have mistaken her for a twelve-year-old.

  He not only knew her. He’d touched her. She was more full-blown woman trouble than Lorelei had been for the sailors in that old tale. No telling why she was dressed so ditsy, but
she was definitely a stinging shot of life in a lobby that’d seemed damn pale until she raced through. Relief chugged through his bloodstream, singing rich.

  Thank God she was alive…so he could kill her.

  “Gabe!” Finally she spotted him. Zigzagging through bodies and travelers’ suitcases, she galloped toward him. Her enthusiastic grin was bigger than sunshine. “Guess what!”

  She didn’t seem to have the first clue that he intended—could hardly wait—to mop the floor with her. The damn fool redhead was so excited she hurled her arms around his neck.

  Seven

  “You’re late.” Gabe certainly meant to yell the admonishment, but something happened to his voice. For that instant when her arms were looped around his neck, she was impossibly close. Her hair smelled like fresh strawberries, her lips were parted and her skin was baby-soft, and suddenly his throat went bone-dry.

  He knew she meant nothing more than an affectionate gesture, an exuberant impulse. Both were typical of her. Rebecca never curbed the expressing of emotion. She freely trusted too damn much in life—doubtless because of her moneyed, sheltered background—yet that hug somehow pulled at him, yanked his personal chain more than the hottest-spiced kiss. He wasn’t used to affection. Didn’t expect it, didn’t ask for it, from anyone. And damnation, he’d never figured he’d ever missed something as foolish and stupid and inconsequential as affection. Until her.

  “I know I’m late. And I’m real sorry. I couldn’t help it.” Her eyes met his for a heartbeat—no more, not even a second more. Slowly her arms slid away from his neck, dropped, and suddenly she was bubbling with more chitchat than a magpie. “I was in one of the back-room poker games, Gabe. Big money back there, whew, a real cutthroat crowd, but it wasn’t that easy to suddenly pick up and leave. I knew how late it was getting, but it’s considered bad manners to take off when you’re winning. I could have fixed that by throwing a few hands. But the thing was, I was learning so many things—”

  “You were in one of those back-room high-stakes poker games?” he asked again, because it was possible he’d misheard. He hoped he’d misheard.

  “Yup. In fact, that’s why I wore my Mickey Mouse T.” She motioned to the big ears on her chest with a grin. “I figured the guys would peg me for a sucker, you know? More to the point, someone they didn’t have to worry about trusting or talking to. Anyway…guess what?! I’d hoped Tammy might have been hanging around one of those high-roller games, and she has been, Gabe! One of the guys knew her, told me all kinds of things about her—and about her boyfriend, too. Boy, I’m having a low-blood-sugar attack—you think there’s anyplace in this town we could get an ice cream cone?”

  She didn’t really want ice cream. She wanted the healthier, fancier frozen yogurt, preferably raspberry-flavored. It took a bit to track that down. Then, because she was sick of sitting still, she chose to eat it walking. It was blistering-hot outside, the sun blinding-bright, and the yogurt was trying to dribble and melt on her from every direction. She zigzagged around pedestrians, her tongue lapping at that raspberry cone, her eyes dancing with all her news.

  “Tammy’s been hanging out at Caesar’s Palace, also a place called O’Henry’s—especially this O’Henry’s place. I’m not talking about the two-dollar tables out front, but the big-money action in the back rooms. And, Gabe… I really don’t believe this—the guy was probably just talking—but he made out like he’d slept with her.”

  “Uh, shorty, I don’t think Tammy ever read a real long rule book on morals.” He grabbed another napkin from his pocket. She lifted her chin so he could take a swipe. Damn good thing he’d brought a handful of napkins.

  “You don’t understand. She was with her boyfriend. And this guy. I mean…both of them. At least that’s sure as heck what he was implying.”

  Perhaps, Gabe thought, his fascination with her was logically understandable. He’d never met a woman who wore diamonds and drank milk. Or discussed sexual threesomes in between licks on an ice cream cone. “How,” he said carefully, “did this totally strange man start talking about his sex life with you?”

  “He didn’t start talking about sex. We were playing five-card draw, for heavens sake. Eventually I got around to saying that I was looking for an old school friend whose name was Tammy Diller…and right off, this guy’s eyes lit up, and suddenly he was winking and posturing at the other men around the table, telling this story. He didn’t actually say the words—it was all in disgusting little innuendos. He was a real jerk, Gabe. Like I said, I don’t necessarily believe that part of what he said—but he also described her. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, medium to tallish, slender… I almost laughed—she sounds like half the women in my family. Only he was mostly going on about certain embarrassing physical features besides that. Holy smokes, she just met him! And I can’t believe any woman would—”

  Gabe had a bad feeling that she was willing to dwell on that threesome scene indefinitely. Worse yet, she appeared more than willing to share every embellishing detail with him. Driven to shift her mind to a different track, he interrupted with the information he’d learned about the twosome—from the name of Tammy’s boyfriend, Dwayne, to the location of their rented digs and where Ms. Diller was clocking up credit-card charges.

  The information diverted Rebecca’s mind from sex. But it didn’t exactly save him from her pursuit of more troublesome subjects. “Damn. I could swear I’ve heard that Dwayne’s name before. Something keeps itching in the back of my mind. Somehow I think I know this woman some way—”

  “Ah. Is this your infamous women’s intuition at work again?”

  She finished the cone, and licked her fingers with a giant grin. “You keep making fun of my intuition, you skeptic, but it isn’t just your logic that’s gotten us this far. Didn’t I tell you it’d work out this way? We got double the information, by coming at this from two entirely different angles. Ask me, we make a pretty unbeatable team. And what do you think? Should we check out this O’Henry’s place tonight?”

  Gabe heard her test out that “we make a good team” philosophy the night before. If she hadn’t skipped out before giving him a chance, she’d have heard his “over my dead body” philosophy. Now, though, he hesitated.

  It was pretty tough to deny—even if it grated—that Rebecca was pulling her weight in this investigation so far. Of course, it was luck that she’d found the Tammy/Monica letter. And luck that she’d chanced on a man who knew Tammy. She was intuitive and perceptive, Gabe was willing to concede, but working as a team was out of the question. He worked alone. Always had. It was faster, safer, more efficient. And by his sense of honor and values, there was no way he could justify allowing Rebecca anywhere near a dangerous situation.

  Unfortunately, he was coming to the painful and annoying conclusion that Ms. Rebecca Idealist Fortune was a menace on her own. She’d nearly killed herself breaking into Monica’s house. She’d blindly taken off cross-country—twice now—without a thought about consequences. And the kind of company she started chance conversations with—that gang-size bruiser in L.A., the cretin bragging about threesomes that she’d found in that back-room poker game—was enough to give Gabe a case of hives. He’d never been prone to hives.

  He’d never met a woman who was kissing kin to an adult Dennis the Menace before, either.

  “Gabe, did you hear me? Don’t you think it’d be a good idea for us to go to O’Henry’s tonight?” she questioned again.

  Obviously, she was too antsy for an answer to give him five seconds to think it through. Thinking probably wouldn’t help this problem, anyway. There were no good answers regarding Rebecca—except that she was safer in his sight than out of it. “Fine with me,” he said curtly. “We’ll hit Caesar’s. We’ll hit O’Henry’s. We’ll make the run of all the places traditionally associated with big money. I want some ground rules agreed on first, though, shorty.”

  “Sure.”

  “You stick with me. No wandering off on your own.”

&
nbsp; “Okay,” Rebecca agreed.

  “Our goal is to locate her. See the lay of the land she’s trying to map out here. Then we’ll decide how to approach her, not before.”

  “Makes good sense,” Rebecca agreed.

  “And assuming we find her—I don’t want her knowing you’re a Fortune. I don’t want her knowing you have any association with Jake—or Monica. You stay quiet as a mouse, no starting a conversation with her or any other strangers. And if we do find her, that’s it—you’re out of here.”

  She turned to him with a frown. He braced for an argument. His pulse bucked for an entirely different reason when she lifted a hand and, like it was her business, straightened the collar of his shirt. “You really have to stop worrying about me,” she said gently. “I’ve been on my own a long time. I can take care of myself, Gabe.”

  The hell she could. Gabe guessed any comment he made would come out sexist and earn him a feminist tongue-lashing. But it wasn’t her strength as a woman that he doubted, or, in spite of his teasing, her brain. Rebecca was no ditz, but, tarnation, the woman believed in love. She believed in white knights, that right would prevail, that nothing would hurt her. Since she’d been protected by the Fortune empire her whole life, he didn’t blame her for such innocence. She’d just never been exposed to the rougher side of life.

  But her idealism made her vulnerable.

  The strange thought crossed his mind that he didn’t want to change her. He wanted her to stay free, to believe in all that impossibly wholesome “good,” to stay exactly who she was. But it sure made protecting her difficult.

  A knife twisted in his gut at the thought of anything happening to her. A sharp, serrated knife, with a painfully pointed blade.

  Until that moment, he’d assumed any wayward feelings he had for Rebecca were hormone-caused.