Four Weddings and a Fiasco: The Wedding Caper (10 page)

She recognized the flaw in that plan while lying beside Eric in the dark in the too-small bed. That’s when she realized that unless he snored, she was unlikely to know for sure that he was asleep.

They’d prepared for bed with distant politeness. Those who watched the cameras might infer seething sentiments beneath the politeness, but K.D. knew it was simply distant politeness, through and through.

They were here for one reason. To get the job done. As he’d said, it was time to get to work.

That she knew how to do.

He’d waved her to the bathroom first.

As soon as the door closed with him in the bathroom, she changed into the capri pajama bottoms and three-quarter-sleeve top she’d bought. Thank heavens she had.

If she hadn’t wanted to be more covered up to share a house with him, she would have been about to share a bed with him wearing a ruffled nightshirt and nothing more.

Even with the extra covering, she made sure to have her clothes folded and put away, and to be in the bed with the covers up while he was still in the bathroom.

When he came out, he wore a pair of pajama bottoms. Only a pair of pajama bottoms, and they did not start at his narrow waist, but significantly lower. That jolted her for a second.

But that was silly. He was more covered than he would be at a swimming pool.

Thank heavens there was no pool. Although the hot tub—

No. She saw men’s bare chests all the time. This was no big deal. At all.

Eyes closed and breathing deepened, she listened to him quietly moving around the room. He checked the door, put his clothes away, turned off the lights, then moved to the far side of the bed.

Whether by sound or feel she didn’t know, but she was aware of him draping something at the foot of the bed. A robe? Well, he could have worn that earlier and spared her the distraction of —

She shut off the indignant thought. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t really been distracted. Not at all.

He climbed in, pulled his side of the sheet up, leaving the blanket to pool between them, and turned on his side with his back to her.

All she had to do then was wait for him to fall asleep . . . that was the moment she recognized the flaw in her plan. How would she know?

Maybe she could tell with someone she knew well, but not under these circumstances.

Yet she still couldn’t bring herself to hope that he snored. Her sleep was likely to be cut short anyway with nighttime sleuthing, and it would be a very long weekend if she was kept awake for the rest of her time in bed.

A hot tickle across her nerves declared that there were other ways to be kept awake in bed than by a partner’s snoring.

She slid one foot out from under the covers. Stretched that leg down until her toes touched the floor. Smoothly, silently, with as little disruption of the covers as possible, she rolled sideways out of the bed, then stood.

She waited, but he didn’t stir. Taking her time, she walked to the dark bathroom, aided by a sliver of light under the hallway door.

She took her time in the bathroom, too. Making sure that if he hadn’t been asleep he had time to fall asleep now, and if he had been asleep but her coming in here had disturbed him, he’d be back into a deep sleep.

At last she figured she’d waited long enough. She dug to the bottom of her toiletries bag for one of the pairs of evidence gloves and the tiny combo pinpoint flashlight/digital camera she’d hidden beneath the usual stuff.

With the light out, she eased out of the bathroom and listened. Nothing. Holding her breath, she slowly turned the handle on the hallway door, and opened it only enough to allow herself out. Before she silently closed the door, she listened again. No stirring. Good.

In the dimly lit but camera-less hallway, she let out a breath, and strode confidently along. If she was questioned, she was a light sleeper in search of something to drink.

Still, no sense inviting questions. So she skipped the elevator and its camera, and took the stairs. Apparently authenticity had prevented any cameras from being added there.

In the reception area she hesitated an instant. This might be the perfect time to check out Ms. Smiley’s domain behind the desk.

No, she’d decided to try the area marked “Safe” on the drawings first. She followed plans, not impulses.

She went under the archway beneath the stairs, listened for a second, because past here it would be harder to explain her presence.

She heard nothing.

She moved quickly and quietly past the counseling rooms.

How is your sexual relationship?”

Non-existent.

No. This wasn’t the time to think about that. No time was the time to think about that. She refocused. The door that corresponded with the spot labeled “Safe” was right here.

She’d brought tools, but the first move was always to try the easiest way. She turned the handle, then slowly pushed in the unlocked door.

Even the dim light from the hall seemed like a torch in the darkness in front of her. She stepped in, pushing the door closed behind her to minimize the time standing in the hallway in front of the open door.

In the fraction of a second before her thumb found the button to bring her flashlight to life, a hand clamped over her mouth from behind.

“I
t’s me, K.D. Eric. It’s —”

But her elbow had already connected with his diaphragm. He bent over, knowing she’d knocked the wind out of him. Thinking — hoping — that weapon of bone and quick-reactions hadn’t done more damage.

She had him by the shoulders. He figured the next move was a knee to his groin, and he couldn’t get out anything more articulate than a gasp.

“Eric?”

So he was actually happy when she pointed what felt like a laser into his eyes. Because that meant she wasn’t holding him still for a no-doubt expert kneeing.

“Eric?”

He gasped again. The good news was that in order to knee him in the groin now she’d have to straighten him up, because he was bent practically double. The bad news was he couldn’t breathe.

“Your diaphragm is spasming,” her voice said in his ear. Somehow that phrase hadn’t figured into any of his wayward imaginings of having her mouth this close to his ear. “Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.”

She had one hand on his arm. The other moved the flashlight systematically. “There’s a cushion there. If you can lie down on your stomach and stretch —”

Thanks to the nose in, mouth out, he had enough breath to say, “Uh-uh.” Then “minute.”

She allowed him half of that.

“You followed me,” she accused.

He was still at somewhat of a disadvantage, but did get out. “I left room first. I was here first.”

“How could you have left the room first?”

“You were in the bathroom.” A complete sentence on one breath. Life was looking better.

She made a huffing noise, and he envied her the breath.

“So you sauntered down here and walked in and —”

“Uh-uh. Door was locked.”

“How’d you get it opened?”

He reached into his robe pocket and, hanging on to the edge of some shelves, straightened enough to hold a plastic card up into the narrow stream of light from the flashlight she was methodically casting over the enclosure.

This time she clicked her tongue. That was a sound he might have been able to make, too. Didn’t take a lot of breath.

“It’s a janitor’s closet.” She sounded disgusted.

He knew how she felt. “No safe,” he agreed.

She swung the light around and into his eyes. This time he was able to put a hand up to shield them.

“So you did see that on the plans.”

“Uh-huh.”

She shifted the light and continued her survey. By the time she finished, he was starting to feel like his lungs hadn’t permanently gone on strike.

“Dead end,” he said.

“Eliminating false trails helps find the real ones. Okay, we better get — Shh,” she ordered, even though she’d been the one talking. But it was just as well, because until she issued that order he hadn’t heard the voices approaching.

Too distant to make out words. But definitely voices.

She turned off her flashlight.

They stood still in the darkness, listening as the voices came closer. One male, one female. He thought the female one—

“Ms. Smiley,” K.D. murmured.

“Perfect nickname,” he said, barely above a breath.

“. . . so I could have been mistaken. But I thought I caught a shadow in a counseling room. We have so many confidential papers, we can’t be too careful.”

“There’s some who could be more careful,” said the male voice. Presumably a security guard.

“That’s all in the past now. I’m sure Melody is being more careful, and I know she deeply regrets any possible implications that you might have been responsible.”

Interesting.

The guard humphed. “Appreciate your speaking up for me, Miss. And don’t you worry about a thing tonight, Miss. I’ll be right here until five o’clock.”

Eric laid his hand on her shoulder, then put his mouth close to her ear and said, “Trapped.”

She reversed their positions and whispered, “For now.”

T
hey’d found — moving with great care — the cushion she’d spotted, and sat with their backs propped against the wall. She’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder.

Thank heavens she woke first. Not only so she could remove her head from his shoulder, while hoping he wouldn’t know it had been there in the first place, but also so she could listen carefully, then give him a shake and say, “We gotta move now. It’s clear.”

It sounded considerably more confident than she felt.

M
elody greeted them at their morning session with a smile, though this one seemed tinged by rueful understanding.

“We’re going to take on one of the big, bad elements today. Trust. No, don’t worry, I’m not so naïve that I think we can work through that thorny thicket in one session, but we can start.”

When she turned away, they exchanged a quick look.

“When trust has changed to its dark opposite of distrust,” she said when they were all seated, “it can produce a self-perpetuating cycle. Especially when one attempts to catch out the other in suspected misdeeds.”

Melody looked from Eric to her and back.

Eric made a sound. Melody might take it as an indication he was listening, but K.D. knew he was fighting amusement.

Lack of sleep affected some people that way.

Not that long ago, they’d slipped past a snoozing Albert, up the stairs, and back into their room. They’d resumed their back-to-back positions, and slept for the couple hours left before the alarm sounded.

“One partner tries to catch out the other in a misdeed, then the other does the same. Only to discover that their own suspicions
caused
the behavior that makes them even more suspicious.”

Sorting through the oblique verbiage, K.D. figured the counselor, and presumably others on the Marriage-Save staff, knew that first Eric, then she had slipped out of their room last night.

Apparently, they thought Eric hadn’t known she was in the bathroom, that he’d thought she’d sneaked out, so he went searching for her. Then she had followed Eric, suspecting him of being up to no good.

Melody, clearly, had interpreted their movements that way, which was better than her suspecting the truth.

But how did she know about their movements? If the room cameras were night-vision, wouldn’t she know even more than she seemed to?

Until they figured that out, there’d be no more night roaming.

But, first, they had a more immediate problem — Eric was struggling to keep from breaking out in laughter.

“You can talk all you want about forgetting suspicion,” K.D. said, cutting across Melody’s ongoing lecture about restoring trust. “If he hadn’t had that fling with Gigi, there’d be no suspicions to rekindle.
That’s
what caused the suspicion.”

Eric covered his mouth with his hand. He managed to look sufficiently serious above it to not raise Melody’s suspicions.

Besides, Melody was too busy floundering. “Gigi? I don’t recall —” She touched the folder as if it could inform her about this new issue.

“Not everything is in the paperwork. A woman has to preserve some shred of pride.” Distract, distract, distract.

“But something that serious, you should have included it —”

“There wasn’t time.”

“This just happened? When —?”

“If you hadn’t had so much pride and reserve — icy cold reserve — there wouldn’t have been a Gigi,” Eric said.

K.D. swung her head around to him. “How dare you!” Then she mouthed at him,
If you laugh, I’ll kill you
. “I am not frigid,” she finished with full outrage.

“No, no, of course not,” soothed Melody, clearly sidetracked by this new issue. “There is no frigid personality. There are only frigid circumstances.”

“With K.D. the circumstances are always frigid.” He had it back under control. The remaining strain in his voice could easily pass for anger.

“You’ve made sex all about having a baby,” she threw back at him.

“It wouldn’t be if we did it more than once every other month.”

“That’s —”

“Let’s pause there a moment,” Melody said quickly, almost thankfully. “I don’t want to slide past this issue. It seems that having children is important to you, Eric.”

“It is.” He opened his hands and looked down at them, as if he were seeing a baby there.

K.D.’s heart
ka-thumped
at the image.

“He wants children to carry on the great Larkin name. To become little clones of him. So he can live on through them. It’s all about ego gratification.”

“It’s all about family.” He looked directly at her. “I don’t want kids in my image. I want a family in my family’s image, with the focus on being together, being good to each other, having some fun, and raising good human beings. That’s what matters. If having babies isn’t in the cards for us, I’d want to adopt. Maybe adopt
and
have babies ourselves.”