Feels Like Family (24 page)

“What?” Erik asked.

“We’re not even going on a honeymoon,” she whispered. Not taking advantage of the one thing between them that was so right seemed like a terrible way to begin their life together.

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to be alone with me,” he admitted, then grinned. “But I took a chance, anyway.”

Her eyes widened. “What kind of chance?”

“I booked us a suite in Paris for a few days.”

Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him in wonder. “Paris? How did you know I’ve always wanted to go there?”

He laughed at that. “Wasn’t a shopping trip to Paris supposed to be your reward if you met your goals in that deal you had going with Maddie and Dana Sue a while back?”

“You knew about that?”

“You have no idea the things I know,” he said. “So, do you want to go or not?”

“I have court on Monday morning,” she lamented.

He shook his head. “No, you don’t. Barb spoke to the judge and rescheduled, just in case you said yes. She moved all your appointments for the rest of the week, as well. We’ll come back on Thursday and you can do a little catch-up in the office on Friday and you’ll have the whole weekend to recover from jet lag. How does that sound?”

“It sounds amazing!” she said, clasping her hands behind his head and giving him a kiss. “Let’s do it.”

Just then Dana Sue stuck her head into the kitchen and grinned. “You know about Paris?” she guessed.

Helen nodded.

“I thought that would make you happy.”

“Were you in on it?” Helen asked her.

“It was Erik’s idea,” Dana Sue said. “He simply asked me what I thought. I just told him I hoped he had a huge limit on his credit card.”

Helen bristled. “He won’t need it. I have mine.”

Erik shook his head. “We’re married now. I can buy you a couple of those fancy blouses you love so much.” His eyes lit up. “Maybe even some sexy lingerie.”

Annie stepped into the kitchen just as he said that and Dana Sue made an elaborate show of covering her daughter’s ears and elbowing Ty back out of the kitchen.

“Mom!” Annie protested, standing her ground. “I know guys like sexy lingerie.” She grinned at Erik. “I’d love to see the look on your face when you go shopping for it, though.”

“I’ll be off at Le Cordon Bleu taking a cooking class,” he said.

“You’re supposed to do things
together
on your honeymoon,” Annie scolded.

Erik winked at her. “Can you see Helen in a cooking class?”

“About as easily as I can see you in a lingerie boutique,” Annie teased. “Come on. You have to stick together. Promise me. I want pictures.”

Helen listened to the banter with a sense of wonder. It was surprisingly relaxed and normal, almost the way it had been between Erik and her before he’d found out about the baby. Maybe they could recapture that connection again, after all.

“How was the wedding?” Frances asked when Karen and Elliott got home that evening.

“Tense,” Karen said. “But something happened during
the reception. I don’t know what, but things seemed to be better.” She turned to Elliott. “Did you notice that?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t paying much attention to Helen and Erik,” he said. “I had other things on my mind.”

Suddenly Frances was on her feet and bustling around the living room gathering up her things. “I’ll see you two tomorrow,” she said.

Karen frowned. “Don’t run off. Stay and have some wedding cake. I brought a piece home for you.”

Frances winked at Elliott. “I’ll have it at home with a nice cup of tea. You two have more important things to do.”

“No, we don’t,” Karen protested. “We’re just going to sit here and unwind.”

“Enjoy yourselves. That’s what I’m going to do at my place—unwind. Mack and Daisy were a handful tonight. I’m a little tired.”

Karen regarded her worriedly. “Were they too much for you?”

“No, of course not,” Frances said. “Good night.”

She was out the door before Karen could ask any more questions.

“That was odd,” she said to Elliott. “She loves to stay and hear all about whatever we’ve been doing. I really hope the kids didn’t wear her out.”

“I think she was just trying to be subtle.”

“Subtle?”

“She knew I wanted to have you all to myself,” he explained.

Karen met his gaze and suddenly she knew what was on his mind, what had been on his mind for weeks now. “This is about you and me, isn’t it?”

“Let’s sit down,” he said, drawing her to an easy chair
and pulling her onto his lap. “I couldn’t stop thinking about us today.”

“That’s just because we were at a wedding. Everyone feels a little misty and romantic at a wedding, even one as rushed and crazy as this one.”

“Does that include you?” he asked. “Did you give any thought to where we’re headed?”

“I thought we’d agreed to move slowly,” she said, though her pulse was racing in anticipation.

He traced the outline of her lips. “I’ve changed my mind. I know what I want. I want us to be a family, Karen. I don’t want you to have to struggle anymore. If we’re partners, I can share things with you, take some of the burden off your shoulders. I love your kids as if they were my own. I’d even like to adopt them, if it could be worked out and it was something all of you wanted.”

The picture he painted held tremendous allure, but she was still hesitant. She knew her feelings for him were deep, that it might even be love. And she trusted that his feelings for her were solid and true. The kids adored him. Frances, the closest thing she had to a mother, approved. So why was she hesitating?

Ironically, it was because of one of the things she’d so admired about him—his attachment to his family. Staunch Catholics, they were unhappy that she’d been divorced and had made no pretense about their disapproval. She’d seen it written all over his mother’s face and his sisters’ when she and Elliott had shown up at his niece’s birthday party.

“Your family won’t be happy,” she said at last. “And I can’t bear to be the cause of a rift between you.”

“I’ll deal with my family,” he stated. “They’ll come around.”

“Elliott, my being divorced strikes at the very core of their beliefs,” she reminded him. “I should have anticipated that before I even met them. So should you.”

“You could have your marriage annulled,” he suggested.

“I’m not Catholic,” she reminded him. “I wasn’t married in the Catholic church. It was a civil ceremony.”

“Then the church won’t even recognize it as a marriage, anyway,” he said. “Look, I don’t know all the church law on this, but it doesn’t matter to me. I love you. You’re the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. We’ll work it out. We can meet with a priest and he’ll tell us what needs to be done.”

He made it sound so simple, but there was one thing he wasn’t considering, the one thing that mattered most to her. “I won’t do anything that will suddenly turn my children into bastards,” she said fervently. She met his gaze. “I won’t
do
that to them, Elliott. I won’t. As useless as their father has turned out to be, he
was
their father. They were legitimate. I grew up not having a clue who my father was. It made me feel unwanted and ashamed. My mother abandoning me, emotionally at first and then physically, only added to that. I never felt good enough. I know now that I am a good, decent person, but I had to fight to accept that. I don’t want my kids to ever struggle with that kind of insecurity.”

“But they’ll have
me,
” Elliott said, his hand on her cheek, the touch meant to be reassuring. “Together, we’ll see to it that they know who they are, that they’re loved and respected and cherished. If we can work it out, I’ll even legally adopt them. It won’t be the same for them as it was for you, I promise.”

Karen wanted to believe it could be that way, wanted to
believe she hadn’t come this close to finding the man of her dreams, only to have him slip away.

“We can talk to the priest,” she said at last. “I’ll listen to what we’d have to do to be married in your church and to win your family’s approval. That’s as much as I can do for now.”

His eyes filled with relief. “Then we’re engaged?”

“No,”
she said adamantly, then tempered her tone at the flash of hurt in his eyes. “Maybe engaged to be engaged.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “That’ll do for now. It will all work out,” he said with a certainty she was far from feeling.

She recalled the condemnation in his mother’s eyes when she’d realized Karen was divorced. His sisters had been kinder, but no more enthusiastic about the relationship. Karen knew that winning them over was going to be an uphill battle.

Then she looked into Elliott’s eyes and saw the love shining there and thought that maybe, just maybe, it was a battle worth fighting.

Helen returned from Paris with seven new pairs of shoes, six new designer suits and a whole suitcase filled with sexy French lingerie. She also came home with new hope for the future of her marriage. The honeymoon had been a brief, but idyllic four days. She’d even learned to make a roux at the exclusive culinary school, though when she would ever need to do that escaped her. It had been fun, though, seeing Erik in his element. And as Annie had insisted, they’d come home with pictures. Hundreds of them, it seemed, including one of a red-faced Erik amid a dozen mannequins dressed in lacy bras and panties.

Right this minute, those pictures were spread out over a table on the patio at The Corner Spa as Maddie and
Dana Sue pored over them. Helen ignored their envious sighs as she held out a foot and admired one of her new pairs of shoes, high-heeled mules with a pointed toe in a leather so soft it felt like butter. She figured she only had a few more weeks before she’d be too ungainly to walk in shoes like these.

Maddie glanced over and caught the direction of her gaze. “Did you do anything over there besides shop for shoes?” she inquired.

“Of course we did. You’re looking at the pictures to prove it.” She grinned wickedly. “And there were quite a few things we did that I don’t care to discuss. There are no pictures of any of that.”

“So things are good again between the two of you?” Maddie asked, her eyes filled with concern.

“Not perfect, but improving day by day,” Helen replied. “It’ll take a while before Erik trusts me again, and I’m not sure how things are going to be after the baby arrives.”

Dana Sue frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“He told me from the start we could end the marriage then if that’s what I wanted,” she said, her voice hitching despite her efforts not to think that far ahead.

“He told you that because you were so determined to raise the baby on your own,” Dana Sue said with exasperation. “Erik loves you.”

“He’s never said that,” Helen said. “Not to me.”

Dana Sue sighed. “I told him that was going to come back to haunt him,” she muttered. “Look, while he’s working on the whole trust thing, maybe you need to try to take a few things on faith.”

Maddie gave Dana Sue a wry look. “You’re talking to a woman who sees things as black or white.”

“Funny,” Dana Sue said, her gaze pinned on Helen. “I always thought she was a woman who understood that actions speak louder than words. How many times have you told a client not to listen to all the sweet words her lying, cheating husband utters, but to watch what he does?”

Helen had no idea what to say to that, so she gathered up her photos and stood up. “I need to get to the office. Barb says my calendar’s jammed starting Monday and there’s a pile of messages, even though I was gone less than a week. I need to make a dent in all that today.”

Maddie looked alarmed. “Don’t you dare try to do too much on your first day back. A whirlwind overseas trip is hard enough on your body. You don’t need more stress.”

“It’s just one day,” Helen reminded her. “I’ll have the whole weekend to recuperate while Erik’s busy at the restaurant.”

“I’m just saying—” Maddie began, but Helen cut her off.

“I know what you’re saying,” she said, bending down to give her friend a hug. “And I love you for worrying, but I won’t do anything foolish, I promise.”

“Okay, then,” Maddie said. “But I’m calling your office later. Barb will tell me if you’re misbehaving.”

“Only if she wants to lose her job,” Helen retorted as she picked up her briefcase and headed toward the patio exit, rather than going through the building.

“Hold it,” Maddie hollered after her. “You need to go through the spa. Elliott’s going to walk you to your office.”

“I saw him when I came in. He’s already with a client,” Helen said. “I’ll be fine.”

Maddie frowned. “Helen, please. It’s still not safe for you to go anywhere alone.”

For a brief flash the image of Caroline as she’d last seen
her appeared in her mind, along with a reminder of the promise she’d made, not just to Caroline, but to herself.

“Okay, fine, I’ll get Elliott,” she said, making a U-turn and heading into the spa.

“If he can’t break free, I’ll drive you,” Maddie called after her.

Helen chafed at all this protectiveness, but she knew it was justified. She resolved to call the sheriff the instant she reached her office and demand to know the status of their hunt for Brad. If she sensed that Brad wasn’t a high enough priority for them, then she was going to put her own detectives to work tracking him down. It was time for this to end.

W
ith Elliott at her side, Helen walked back to her office, trying to take some pleasure in the gorgeous day. Elliott’s grim demeanor wasn’t helping. He obviously took his bodyguard duties seriously. His gaze was directed up and down the street as they walked and he answered all her questions in monosyllables without once glancing at her. Helen finally gave up trying to have a conversation with him.

As they walked along Main Street, she spotted Ronnie inside his hardware store and waved to him. At Wharton’s, she told Elliott to wait while she poked her head inside to say hello to Grace and Neville.

“I brought you something from Paris,” she told Grace. “I’ll bring it by later.”

Grace’s arms were loaded down with plates of scrambled eggs and pancakes. “You had a wonderful honeymoon, then?”

“It was amazing,” Helen confirmed, knowing that half the town would be chattering away about that before the morning was out. Maybe it would put a stop to the rumors probably circulating about her walking down the aisle under duress.

Once they reached her office, she grinned at Elliott. “Your job here is done,” she told him. “You’ve delivered me safely.”

“Why don’t I go inside with you?” he suggested.

“Barb’s here,” she said, spotting her car in the driveway. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, then. You need me to go anywhere with you, all you have to do is say the word, okay?”

“Thanks, Elliott.”

As he started to jog back toward the spa, she opened the door and went inside. Barb glanced up from the phone call she was on and beamed at her, then mouthed, “Welcome back.”

When Helen would have picked up her messages and gone on into her office, Barb gestured for her to wait as she wrapped up her call.

“I just wanted to alert you that there’s a client waiting in your office,” Barb told her. “He said it was an emergency and since you didn’t have anything on your calendar for today, I told him he could come in if he didn’t mind waiting ’til you got here.”

“Who is he and what kind of emergency?” Helen asked, annoyed because she’d counted on having the whole day to catch up on her cases.

Barb glanced at a note on her desk. “He said his name is Bryan Hallifax.”

“I don’t recall a Hallifax family in Serenity.”

Barb shrugged. “He didn’t say if he lived here in town. I didn’t recognize him, either.”

“And the emergency?”

“Something about his wife threatening to take his kids away from him,” she said. “She hit him with this right
after he got back from a business trip and he panicked. He didn’t give me a lot of details.”

“Okay, whatever. I’ll deal with him, but no more calls and definitely no more appointments.”

“Got it,” Barb said. “I’m sorry about this, but he was so frantic.”

Helen gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. I know what a softie you are.”

When she opened to door to her office, she didn’t immediately spot the man. It was only after she’d closed the door that she saw him standing in the shadows. When he turned, her heart leaped into her throat. It was Brad Holliday, his eyes filled with rage and satisfaction at having caught her off guard.

Helen instinctively started to yank the door back open and yell for Barb to call the police. But then she saw the gun in Brad’s hand and froze. It was trained on her.

“Good,” he said when she stepped away from the door. “You’re a smart woman.”

“What do you want, Brad?”

“Justice, satisfaction,” he suggested, then shrugged. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Helen moved cautiously until she was behind her desk, where she could sit down. Hopefully the solid desk would offer some protection for the baby if Brad decided to fire the gun. Unfortunately, she’d never installed the panic button that some attorneys insisted on having on the floor beside their desks. She dealt with divorces, not criminal law.

She forced herself to look directly into Brad’s eyes. They were filled with hate. Still, she managed to keep her tone even and reasonable. “Brad, don’t you think you’re
in enough trouble after what you did to Caroline? Do you really want to make things worse?”

He gave her a wry look. “Like you said, I’m already in a lot of trouble. What’s a little more? I don’t have much to lose. You took everything from me.”

Helen knew better than to engage in an argument with someone who wasn’t thinking clearly. Some instinct, though, made her want to get through to him, maybe save him from himself.

“Brad, you know that’s not true,” she said quietly. “You still have plenty of money. You have your kids.”

“They hate me now.”

Helen knew the sons were angry, but his daughter was another story. “Your daughter doesn’t hate you. She’s trying very hard to believe in you, but if you do something to me, that will be it. She won’t be able to ignore the truth—that you’re not the man she thought you were.”

His laugh was bitter. “But don’t you see? I’m
not
the man she thought I was. And it’s all because of you.” His expression hardened. “Now I want you to know what it’s like to have your life ruined.” The gun in his hand wavered as he spoke, but it was still pointed at her.

Helen was beginning to doubt her ability to make Brad lower the gun, and a cold fist of fear formed in her belly. She scanned her desk looking for anything heavy enough to serve as a weapon. A crystal paperweight, an award from the bar association, could probably do some damage and it was within reach. She knew she’d only have a split second to throw it at him and pray her aim was accurate. Maybe if she kept him talking, she could get her hands on it before he realized what she was up to.

Sweat rolled down her back as she rested her hands on
top of her desk, hoping the sight of them in plain view would make him lower his guard. “Brad, you really don’t want to do anything you can’t take back. Why don’t you put the gun down and let’s talk? Maybe I can help you find a way out of this situation you’re in.”

“You’re a helluva lot better than Jimmy Bob,” he said, “but even you aren’t clever enough to fix this. My life’s over.”

“Come on. It doesn’t have to be that way. You’ll serve a little time, maybe even get probation for what you did to Caroline,” she said, deliberately minimizing what was likely to happen. “Then you can have a fresh start.”

He shook his head. “You can’t fast-talk your way out of this, hotshot.”

Helen’s hand had been inching toward the paperweight and now closed around it. It felt solid in her grip, but was it enough?

Just then Barb tapped on the door. Brad’s head jerked in that direction and Helen took advantage of his distraction to hurl the paperweight directly at his head. It hit with a glancing blow that wasn’t nearly enough to cause serious injury. He whirled around and shot without taking time to aim. The bullet splintered the wood on the corner of the desk. Outside the door, Barb screamed.

Helen dove beneath her desk, but not quickly enough. A second shot grazed her arm, sending a bolt of searing pain through her. A third shot went wild and shattered a window.

“You bitch!” Brad yelled, just as the first sirens split the air.

It took Helen a second to realize they weren’t police sirens at all, but the building’s security alarm, set off when the window shattered. Nonetheless, the sound was enough to make Brad bolt from the room.

Then Barb was there, helping Helen into her chair, murmuring apologies even as she used a towel she’d grabbed from their restroom and tried to stem the bleeding.

“I had no idea,” she said over and over. “I’m so sorry. I should have asked more questions. God, what was I thinking?”

Helen squeezed her hand. “Barb, it’s okay. How could you know? You’d never met Brad.”

“But I should have been more suspicious. Everyone in town knew you were off on your honeymoon this week. The second he called for an appointment on a day you were only supposed to be catching up, I should’ve guessed he was up to no good.”

“Barb, you can’t second-guess the motives of every potential client.”

“But that man almost killed you!” she said. “I’ll never forgive myself for that.” She glanced around, her expression panicked. “Where are the police, dammit? And the paramedics? You’re bleeding!”

Just then from outside, another shot rang out, followed by a collective, horrified gasp—the onlookers who’d apparently gathered when the alarm went off.

“What happened?” Helen asked Barb, even as she rocked back and forth, clutching her bloody arm and trying to ignore the pain.

“I don’t know,” Barb said, pressing the towel to the wound, her expression grim. “The EMTs should be here any minute. Just take deep, slow breaths—you’re hyperventilating. Come on, sweetie. Slow breaths. That’s it.”

“Oh, God, my baby,” Helen whispered, her hand on her still-flat stomach.

“Hush now. Your baby’s going to be just fine,” Barb reassured her.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the EMTs arrived. When Barb started to move out of their way, Helen grabbed her hand and clung to it. “Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Let me call Erik and I’ll be right back.”

“No,” Helen said. “He’ll just worry.”

“He has a right to worry, don’t you think?” Barb scolded.

Helen must have answered a hundred questions, first for the EMTs, who were insisting that she go to the hospital, then for the police, who were surprisingly tight-lipped about whether Brad was in custody or not.

It seemed like hours, but was probably no more than minutes before Erik arrived. Kneeling down in front of her, he took her hands in his.

Expecting a lecture about her recklessness, Helen was surprised when he turned the full force of his fury on the police. “Where the hell were you? Someone was supposed to be watching her at all times!”

The officer closest to them, a fresh-faced kid new to the force, winced. “The sheriff thought you all were still on your honeymoon. No one notified us you were back.”

Erik turned pale. “Then this is my fault,” he said, lifting his gaze to meet hers. “It’s because of me you were shot.”

“Don’t be crazy,” she began, but before she could say another word, he was on his feet and out the door. She stared after him in confusion.

“Ma’am, we need to get you over to Regional Hospital to be checked out,” the EMT told her. “The wound’s not deep, but I gather you’re pregnant. You should probably see an obstetrician while you’re there.”

Helen nodded, then glanced up at Barb. “I need Erik.”

“He’ll be there. I’ll see to it. You go with the EMTs. I’ll follow. I’ll call Maddie and Dana Sue, too. They’ll want to know about this.”

“You don’t need to bother them,” Helen said, but Barb merely shot her a look that said she was the one making the decisions for the moment. Helen didn’t waste any more breath arguing.

Docilely, she let the EMTs carry her to the ambulance on a gurney. They managed to shield her view of all the activity still going on on the street. Maybe it was just as well. She suddenly felt drained.

Inside the ambulance, she closed her eyes and tried to block out the worry that was crowding out everything else, even the pain. She didn’t understand that bleak expression in Erik’s eyes right before he’d taken off, but somewhere deep inside, she knew she was responsible for putting it there. He felt guilty. She got that, no matter how misguided she thought he was. She also suspected the depth of that guilt cut to the heart of why he’d never wanted to marry or have children.

She knew suddenly and with absolute clarity that she could lose him over this. And the realization scared her to death.

Erik was mindlessly stirring a triple batch of brownie dough when Maddie and Dana Sue converged on him in the kitchen at Sullivan’s. They looked a little like avenging angels, and he seemed to be the target.

Not that he was surprised. He’d known that sooner or later someone would tell them what had happened to Helen and how he’d abandoned her. He simply hadn’t been able to make himself stay. Her pain, the blood, all of it had brought back too many heart-wrenching memories.

Worse than that had been the crushing fear that he would lose this wife, this baby. Even though his medical training told him Helen would be fine, he’d panicked. There was no way of getting around that. He was human. Maybe it was time they all understood that. He was nobody’s hero.

“Why are you here?” Dana Sue demanded.

“Someone has to think about the restaurant,” he retorted as he kept right on stirring. “We open in a couple of hours for lunch.”

“Let them eat fast food or grab a burger at Wharton’s,” Dana Sue snapped. “That’s what they did before Sullivan’s existed. They can do it again for one day.”

Erik frowned at her. “You don’t mean that.”

“I most certainly do,” Dana Sue said. “Your wife was just shot by a maniac. Nobody in this town gives a damn about brownies right now. Everyone’s worried sick about Helen and the baby. If you think brownies are more important, then there’s something wrong with you. You should be with Helen. At the very least you should be on your way to the hospital.”

“I was with her. She’s in good hands,” he insisted, though his pulse still jolted when he thought about how close he’d come to losing her.

“That’s it?” Dana Sue said incredulously. “You spend two seconds with her, then turn her over to strangers?”

“They weren’t strangers. She knew everyone in that room,” he muttered defensively. And they’d all been capable of handling the crisis that had leveled him.

Maddie, who’d been silent up ’til now, finally spoke up. “Erik, you don’t have any reason to blame yourself for what happened,” she said, studying him intently. “And right now blame’s not what’s important. You need to get to the hospital and be with your wife.”

Dana Sue yanked the bowl of brownie mix away from him. “Go, dammit! I’m capable of making the stupid brownies for once. I did it often enough before I hired you.”

“I’ll drive you,” Maddie said.

A part of Erik wanted to argue. A part of him wanted to stand his ground, to hide out right here in a world that made sense to him, but deep in his gut he knew both Maddie and Dana Sue were right. His place was with Helen. He’d just lost his mind for a little while when he’d realized how close he’d come to losing her. The sense of déjà vu had been overwhelming.